Month: August 2024

Joe Biden‘s big farewell address happens tomorrow night (Monday, 8.19) at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He’s going be showered by loyalist love and cheer, but never forget what a deranged, unhinged sonuvabitch he sounded like between that catastrophic debate performance on 6.27.24 and his blessed withdrawal from the race on 7.19.24.

For 24 days Joe Biden showed the civilized world that he’d become one of the most selfish and obstinate Oval Office pricks in the country’s 250-year history.

For three and a half weeks doddering Joe insisted on a fantasy that everyone knew was hopeless — that he could beat Donald Trump on 11.5.24. Don’t buy the lie. Biden didn’t withdraw because he saw the light and decided to put his country’s welfare above his own political ambition…bullshit. He withdrew his candidacy because he was heavily pressured to do so. Otherwise this egoist would be running today and taking the country to doom and ruin. He’s a bastard.

— from Maureen Dowd‘s “The Dems Are Delighted, But a Coup Is Still a Coup,” posted on 8.17.24.

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I have basked in the glow of Alain Delon for decades. His aloof vibe, youthful beauty, gangster coolness. He’s as big of a 20th Century world cinema legend as Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, etc. He’s as eternal as it gets, and now he’s gone at age 88.

The progressive left decided to hate him several years ago for the crime of becoming an anti-feminist and an anti-immigrant right-winger. I’m sorry he went there, but old guys tend to be less tolerant and more hair-trigger. We all know this.

Delon’s peak period lasted 17 years (’60 to ’76), beginning with Rene Clement‘s Purple Noon (’60), continuing with Jacques Deray‘s Borsalino (’70) and ending with Joseph Losey‘s Mr. Klein (’76).

Other highlight films include Luchino Visconti‘s Rocco and His Brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Eclisse, Luchino Visconti‘s The Leopard, Jean Pierre Melville‘s The Samurai and Le Cercle Rouge, Jack Cardiff’s The Girl on a Motorcycle and Deray’s La Piscine.

Last night I finally caught Doug Liman, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck’s The Instigators (Apple+, 8.9), and during the first 20 minutes I knew for a fact that the Rotten Tomatoes naysayers (critics plus Joe Popcorn) had been mostly clueless and certainly small-minded in their pissy reactions.

For this downbeat Boston noir comedy is a true American original —- The Friends of Eddie Coyle meets deadpan screwball fatalism.

Despite the downish tone of this heist-gone-wrong ensemble chase thriller, it’s fundamentally a low-key noir comedy…sardonic sarcasm meets “fuck our lousy luck and Jesus, have we fucked things up or what?” meets a kind of loser Keystone Cops squad of half-assed, not-smart-enough “bad” but not altogether disreputable guys, principally played by Damon (who produced through Artists Equity) and Affleck (who co-wrote the script with Chuck Maclean). Their performances are sweet, sublime, spot-on.

I was truly delighted by this existential crime sitcom, which is darkly hilarious without ever quite announcing that’s a hah-hah “comedy”. It’s certainly too smart and cool for the idiots out there who hate the idea of mixing humor and loser-stamped noir. It almost delivers the same kind of tonal balancing act that Pulp Fiction was about.

And the supporting cast is aces — Hong Chau, Paul Walter Hauser, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Jack Harlow, etc.

The only thing that doesn’t work is the title. If it was my show I’d call it I’ve Been Waiting All My Life To Fuck Up Like This.

They haven’t seen Blitz…they’re just coasting along, playing it by ear…a wing and a prayer.

…is reportedly causing episodes of cardiac arrest among your 1.85 fascists. For Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic was out and about for roughly a full year after the April 1953 mandate for 1.85 theatrical framing had been instituted in the U.S.

Japanese exhibition standards may have been different 70 years ago, granted, but Kurosawa was no dummy — he knew his technical shit as well as Stanley Kubrick or any other top-of-the-line maestro — and therefore understood that The Seven Samurai would most
likely be projected stateside within a 1.85 a.r.

The sole criteria for 1.85 fascism, remember, is that it doesn’t matter if a given film was shot with an open aperture or with an ethos on the part of a d.p. that “more height is always right” (a longtime HE motto), but what the prevailing exhibition standards were when the film was released.

Hence the fascist shrieking being heard right now in certain quarters.

…will set you back a little over $200 these days, if not more. I bought these things for the boys at Toys ‘R Us in the early ‘90s, and the prices were in the vicinity of $35 to $40, if I’m not mistaken.

Remember that scene in Broadcast News (‘86) when Albert Brooks insisted to Holly Hunter that William Hurt’s smooth, amiable and ethically flexible news anchor was, in a certain sense, the devil?

I have long felt that the very likable and easy-going Ryan Reynolds represents, no offense, the same kind of satanic energy and influence.

The same corrupt-insider, look-the-other-way mentality that allowed Matthew Perry’s ketamine addiction to be fed and indulged is roughly similar to the friends-of-Joe Biden mentality that resulted in months and months of straight-faced denial and lying when questions about his obvious cognitive decline were raised time and again

For the fourth or fifth time, witness Oskar Werner‘s brilliantly phrased summation of his case against suspected double agent Peter Van Eyck in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

Werner is one of the finest actors who ever lived, but his heyday only lasted for six years or so, from Jules and Jim (’62) to The Shoes of the Fisherman (’68). He was an alcoholic, and he died too young of a heart attack.

11:50 pm: I’m watching the cleaned-up 4K Bluray of James Cameron‘s Aliens (‘86), and it’s truly wonderful. Every frame is immaculate. Heaven.

Beware of minor, dismissible spoilers…the kind that only lily-livered, falsetto-voiced spoiler whiners will arch their backs over:

Earlier this evening, however, I sat through Fede Alvarez‘s Alien: Romulus, a handsomely designed, densely and confusingly plotted, under-lighted greatest-hits retread (“Get away from her, you bitch!”), and it made me feel more bored and frustrated and furious than I could possibly convey.

It was good to see the old, primitive, 1979-era computer fonts; ditto the return of Ian Holm’s Ash, but he overstays his welcome. Oh, and I really hated the spider-like human xenomorph mutant…I wanted to throw something gooey at the screen.

Wait…there is intact wreckage from the Alien-era USCSS Nostromo, which was totally blown to smithereens, and “remains” of the original Xenomorph are being researched? He/she/it was ejected into the external nothingness of space by Ripley.

The ensemble cast is way too young (“Where are the adults?”, I was muttering early on). I was able to discern roughly a third of the dialogue, if that, which forced me to pull out the phone and read the Wiki plot synopsis as I went along. The busy-bee script (penned by Alvarez and Rodo Sayaguez) drove me crazy, and the general overkill approach drained my soul. Alvarez is a house-music DJ.

I knew right away, of course, that each and every cast member except Cailee Spaeny would be dead before the finale, so there was that small comfort at least. Except Spaeny, a first-rate actress, is way too small of stature (what is she, 48 inches tall?) to take Sigourney Weaver‘s place.

Cameron’s 38-year-old film is somewhere between 15 and 20 times better than what Alvarez has wrought.

Blake Lively‘s Lily Bloom has two Boston-based boyfriends in It Ends With Us — neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (played by pic’s director Justin Baldoni) and Atlas Corrigan, whom she fell for in her teens and who is currently the owner of a restaurant.

The teenaged version is played by 26 year-old Alex Neustaedter (top); the Boston restaurateur version is played by 34 year-old Brandon Sklenar (bottom).

Does anyone see the slightest resemblance between these guys? Same character, different planets.