Day: June 29, 2024

…and thereby make life miserable for God knows how many thousands of innocent, considerate, responsible drivers…these are bad people, and if you ask me the obstructionists should be severely punished.

I’m talking 60, 70 hours of picking up roadside garbage, minimum, while wearing orange jumpsuits. Supervised by Cool Hand Luke guards in aviator shades

I don’t dare suggest a more brutal penalty. Okay, I’ll mention it. Don’t be alarmed but I’m thinking of the mass crucifixion of Spartacus’s slave army along the Appian Way. Theatrical “pretend” crucifixion, I mean. No nails or spikes or blood but tied to crosses alongside highway signs and forced to bake in the sun for hours on end. Drivers would be permitted to throw eggs and tomatoes.

Are you going to sit there and tell me that Frodo (aka Nico and Schnitzel) isn’t the single coolest element in A Quiet Place: Day One?

Are you going to sit there and tell me that Frodo isn’t the Clint Eastwood of cats?

And what do you think of it? I know Kevin Costner‘s multi-part, big-swing western isn’t doing very well commercially (earned a lousy $4 million yesterday) but it’s a big, sweeping thang by a major-league director, and attention needs to be paid.

Here’s what I wrote after catching it in Cannes…”Horizon Broke My Heart“:

I went into this morning’s Horizon screening totally pumped. I wanted to embrace and celebrate a classic-styled American western, which is what the advance-word crowd has been calling it. I wanted to see Open Range 2: Westward Ho The Wagons. Give it to me, bruh…make it happen!

Alas, it pains me to admit that Kevin Costner‘s big-swing western isn’t all that good.

Costner said during today’s lunch-hour press conference that Horizon “is a journey…it’s not a plot movie.” But that’s exactly what I wanted! I wanted a solid, gripping wagon-train saga with a commanding narrative — the kind of movie in which characters say and do what they must because of who they are and what they need and so on. And that didn’t happen, and I’m all but weeping as as result. Seriously…real tears.

I don’t hate Horizon — it just doesn’t do the proverbial thing, and I feel crestfallen about that.

Costner’s 181-minute film is kind of a mess, truth be told. It feels like the start of a ten-part miniseries, and it just feels odd to be sorting through several characters and locales and situations over a three-hour period and asking “when is the actual movie going to start?”

Because this is a Hulu or Paramount Plus or Apple miniseries with a big movie star (i.e., Kevin), and his Gary Cooper-like character, Hayes Ellison, doesn’t show up until the 65-minute mark and he really doesn’t do or say a hell of a lot throughout the whole film except shoot a crazy-evil guy (played by Jamie Campbell Bower) at the halfway mark.

Maybe the “movie” will kick in when Part Two rolls along in August, but with the exception of a couple of rousing action scenes (my favorite is a moonlit horseback chase) the film I saw drifted and meandered and dragged at times. It does a whole lot of talk-talk-talking and scenery-gaping, and I felt kinda trapped watching all these unfamiliar faces rambling on and on.

Why am I listening to you guys trying to sort stuff out? Who are you? Why should I care what you think about anything? You mean nothing to me.

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Or otherwise attending the 58th Karlovy Vary Film Festival (6.28 to 7.6), here is some helpful, no-big-deal, “it’s up to you” information…just putting it out there.

If the last 36 hours are any indication, doddering Joe Biden is apparently committed to ushering in a second Donald Trump term.

He’s no longer a sensible and decent man with practical inclinations. Barring an electoral miracle, he’s becoming the circumstantial, cliff’s-edge architect of our democracy’s demise. He’s the decrepit gatekeeper who could, if so inclined, at least try to orchestrate a scenario that might marshall our best resources and with God’s help hold back the yokel barbarian hordes…but he won’t do it.

He knows he’s too old and doesn’t give a shit. Post-debate Joe knows the chances of defeating Trump are almost nil, and he doesn’t want to hear it. He’s determined to charge forward atop his Old Paint and somehow muddle through.

His primary offense is (switching from horse-riding to sea-faring or Cincinnati Kid metaphors!) not so much that he’s doggedly determined to hold the course and perhaps go down with the ship. It’s that he’s determined to gamble on a hand that almost everyone (excepting he and Lady Macbeth and a handful of reality-denying, inner-circle loyalists) knows is weak and Jimmy Carter-ish and almost certainly doomed.

It’s that his Irish, mule-headed tenacity has bullied the shrewd or at least seasoned card player aspect of his nature into submission.

God help us but the post-debate, “what, me worry?”, damn-the-torpedoes Joe Biden has, by all apparent appearances, become a kind of delusional banshee. This wretched bastard has determined that tens of millions who believe in sanity and decency — the blue or blue-purple flock, the fair-minded, non-MAGA faithful — may have to suffer for his hubris, and so be it. Four years of hell (1.20.25 to 1.20.29) and perhaps longer than that.

Joe is showing his true colors, and they are not the colors of a patriot. He’s no longer the proverbial good guy.

If the worst happens on 11.5.24 and The Beast takes back the reins, it will be small comfort knowing that Joe’s ignominious and reprehensible place in the annals of American history will be locked in and branded deep like the Red River D. Damn this obstinate great grandpa…damn his old-coot, drooling sponge brain all to hell.