Perfect. Eloquent. Spot on.

…there’s always someone eyeballing the shooter (i.e., me) with an expression that says, “Uhm, are you stealing a little piece of my soul?”

Here we are in hipster wokester Brooklyn, and the philosophy of Anthony Quinn’s Auda Abu Tayi still has a foothold.

The restaurant is Fan Fried Rice Bar, 740 Driggs Ave., Brooklyn, 11211.

It took the N.Y. Times editorial board a full working day to post this urgent plea — President Joe Biden needs to man up, smell the coffee and pack it in.

If he refuses to do this and if Donald Trump wins on November 5th, Biden will surely be reviled by historians as the blindest, most egotistical and reprehensibly selfish U.S. President in U.S. history.

In Pablo Larrain’s Maria, Angelina Jolie will play a twitchy, headstrong, tempestuous performer…no day at the beach!

Lonely, unhappy and temperamental, Maria Callas spent her last years living largely in isolation in Paris. She died of a heart attack at age 53 on 9.16.77.

Who dies at 53 from a heart attack? A non-obese person, I mean.

A funeral was held at St. Stephen’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral on rue Georges-Bizet, Paris on 9.20.77. Callas was later cremated at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Her ashes were ultimately scattered over the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece, in the spring of ‘79.

During a 1978 interview, Callas’s friend John Ardoin said the following:

“There are times, you know, when there are certain people who are blessed and cursed, with an extraordinary gift, in which the gift is almost greater than the human being. And Callas was one of these people.

“It was almost as if her wishes, her life, her own happiness were all subservient to this incredible, incredible gift that she was given, this gift that reached out and taught us all – taught us things about music we knew very well, but showed us new things, things we never thought about, new possibilities.

“I think that’s why singers admire her so; I think that’s why conductors admire her so; I know that’s why I admire her so. And she paid a tremendously difficult and expensive price for this career.

“I don’t think she always understood what she did or why. She knew she had a tremendous effect on audiences and on people. But it was not something that she could always live with gracefully or happily.

“I once said to her, ‘It must be very enviable to be Maria Callas.’ And she said, ‘No, it’s a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it’s a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand.”

Jordan Ruimy has polled over 100 reputable film critics about the best of ’24, and the winner is Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune: Part Two.

That’s a respectable preference. I paid no attention to the story but I loved the cinematic penetration aspects — the look and the flavor and the rhythm of it.

The Ruimy critics chose George Miller‘s Furiosa as their #2…not so much on this end. And Luca Guadagnino‘s Challengers is in third place.

I really, really don’t get why Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man came in fourth. I didn’t love hut certainly respected the fifth-placed Love Lies Bleeding.

Among the second five (#6 through #10) only Alex Garland‘s Civil War and Alice Rohrwacher‘s La Chimera really rang my bell.

Here are HE’s Top 12 2024 films, posted on 6.6.24:

Barack Obama, Jill Biden, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi need to explain to Joe Biden that it’s over…that the bell has tolled…that the cock has crowed three times.

Friendo: “There’s a silver lining in the Biden debate catastrophe.

“If the debate had happened after the Democratic Convention, we’d be toast. But now, 18 weeks before the 11.5.24 election, the debate about whether Biden can be replaced can actually happen.”

HE to Friendo: “Yes, and good for that.  But Biden should have bailed last March, Lyndon Johnson–style.  (LBJ quit on 3.31.68.) Then there would have been a solid historical precedent.”

HE-posted on 11.5.23:

This is as serious as a heart attack. It’s the doddering, slurry-voiced, squinty-eyed, 80something thing.

Joe is Jimmy Carter in ‘79, and he’s really gotta step down. The Beast is at the door. Lyndon Johnson read the writing on the wall in March of ‘68 and acted accordingly. Trump will not defeat Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer.

Barring an electoral miracle, Joe Biden has almost certainly doomed us to four years of howling totalitarian saliva-spray madness…a descent into punitive, assaultive, grunt-level and relentlessly malicious chaos.

Grim up and get ready for a 48-month chapter that will almost certainly maim if not poison the fabric of our already weakened democracy.

Joe has done this to us…it’s absolutely his fault…and I feel nothing but sputtering rage about what’s likely to happen tonight…again, barring a miracle…and more crucially on Election Day a bit less than five months hence.

If the worst happens, subjecting this nation to four more years of Donald Trump will be Joe Biden’s terrible legacy. If he loses the general election, God forbid and God help us, may he suffer grievously for not wisely and prudently stepping aside and allowing a younger normie substitute (Whitmer, Newsom) to run in his place.

No matter what happens tonight and over the next few months, Biden has already risked way too much…he’s responsible for a foolish, arrogant and catastrophic error of judgment. Of this I am certain. I’m almost convulsing with anger right now.

I’ll be live-blogging reactions starting at 9 pm. The challenge will be to react as fairly and even-toned as possible.

The whole world is watching this…a certifiable sociopath and ego monster vs. a decent, withered career politician who’s done a reasonably good job over the last three and a half years, and the former seems poised to win. It’s a nightmare.

10:26 pm: A lying sociopath is winning — has won — the debate. There’s no question which man is the better person, the more decent and honorable. And it’s obviously not Trump. And yet this doesn’t seem to matter. Biden is a sensible man, a better man, and he’s not able to sell it. This is a calamity.

10:11 pm: Trump claims Biden, a reasonable and decent man, is “the worst President in American history..,if he’s re-elected we won’t have a chance.” Biden responds with the more-or-less unanimous conclusion of respected historians that Trump is the worst president ever. Biden is a much more truthful fellow, and this doesn’t seem to matter. Trump is repeatedly lying through his teeth, and this doesn’t seem to matter either.

10:08 pm: So nobody is going to ask about the Biden administration’s embrace of radical woke-ism. This seminal issue isn’t going to be even touched.

10:04 pm:

9:56: Dana Bash tries to drill Biden with a question about disaffected and disillusioned black voters? Again, Biden’s words are more substantive than those from the lying, distorting Trump. But Biden isn’t poking or jabbing, much less slugging. Half the time he looks stunned.

9:53 pm: Biden needs to withdraw from the race and thereby allow someone stronger — a sensible classic Democrat who has a semblance of vigor and mental clarity — to replace him. This is horrific.

9:40 pm: Trump totally dodges a tough question about the Capitol riot. Word salad derangement. And Biden can’t capitalize on this. He mutters, he soft-speaks, he mumph-mumphs. Biden righteously calls Trump a convicted felon, and yet he sounds mushy, hazy-brained. Trump is a diseased scoundrel but he’s presenting a better “performance.” Trump says “I did nothing wrong.” Substance-wise Biden is holding all the aces, but he’s losing the debate.

9:36 pm: Friendo: “Do you think they’ll try to replace Biden after this performance?”

9:35 pm: Where’s the adderall? Why didn’t they shoot Joe up?

9:26 pm: Biden is confirming everyone’s worst fears about his lucidity, his age, his mushy muttering. He’s calling Trump a liar and a loser, and with ample justification. But he doesn’t have any bite. His voice is slushy, wheezy. Ttump is a sociopath and a fiendish bullshitter, but he sounds crisper, sharper, more precise. Biden: “I’ve never heard so much malarkey in my life.” And he’s right! But he sounds so withered and under-energized.

9:24 pm: Friendo: “Jesus, Biden looks worse than I expected. What’s with his voice?”

9:22 pm: Trump says about Biden, “I don’t know what he’s just said. I don’t think he knows what he’s just said.”

9:20 pm: “We are not for late-term abortions…period, period.”

9:15 pm: Biden looks astounded, a bit stunned. His energy is lacking. Half-sentences, half-stammering. Friendo: “Are you watching this mess?”

9:11 pm: Biden’s voice sounds soft, muffled, old-guy ish. An unmistakable absence of vigor. As much as I despise Trump, he sounds better…sharper, more decisive, more engaged. I wish it were otherwise.

…they would have had Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn play supporting players, and made the four-legged “Frodo” (played by the identical Nico and Schnitzel) the front-and-center star.

Imagine a major studio producing a $67 million franchise horror flick prequel and making it mostly or primarily about a cat….a fucking cat! Talk about a pure-genius move!

Silent, Stealthy Frodo vs. The Spider Monsters would have elevated A Quiet Place: Day One into the realm of major blockbuster art…a mind-blower that everyone would have to see and which would have easily become a Best Picture nominee.

The almost universal reaction to Edward Dmytryk‘s Walk on the Wild Side (’62) was that the black cat in the opening credit sequence was a far, far more compelling and fascinating character than the humans played by Laurence Harvey, Capucine. Jane Fonda, Anne Baxter and Barbara Stanwyck.

My immediate reaction during last night’s AMC Empire all-media screening was “this cat is Clint Eastwood…way beyond cool…no offense but my money’s on this guy and not the emotionally hamstrung, vaguely tiresome humans.”

I’m simply saying that as sufficient and approvable as Nyong’o and Quinn’s performances seemed last night, I identified more strongly with Frodo. Because he/she didn’t react with shock and tearful emotionality to those big brown spider monsters, and because this impassivity made him/her ten if not fifteen times more interesting. Plus the rooting factor would have been much greater because we know that left to their own devices, cats are much better at survival than humans….quieter, faster, able to hide better, never betrayed by emotion, etc.

I’m not putting down Nyong’o and Quinn. They’re excellent actors and very effective at inviting us into their emotional worlds. But they can’t compete with Frodo.

I’m not saying that A Quiet Place: Day One should have been entirely about Frodo, mind. Nyong’o and Quinn should have been given a certain amount of screen time, but as secondary or peripheral figures.