Conclave begins with the death of an elderly pope…that and the subsequent need to choose a replacement. Ralph Fiennes portrays plays Cardinal Lawrence, the British-born manager of the conclave — a cloistered Vatican City gathering of cardinals — that will choose a new pontiff.
Fiennes’ performance is exquisitely subdued…highly concentrated but low-key, solemn, down-under. You can read every thought and consideration on his lined, late-50ish face, but on a seep-out, leak-out basis.
Fiennes does, however, have fun with a pair of vocal outbursts…brief Shakespearean gushers.
One at the conclusion of an intense discussion with John Lithgow‘s Cardinal Tremblay. It ends with Tremblay suggesting that for discretion’s sake “this conversation never took place”, and then walking off. Lawrence waits a couple of beats before bellowing “but it did take place!”
10 or 15 minutes later Fiennes is discussing the latest pope vote with Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who hails from Kabul. Benitez tells the reluctant Lawrence that he’s voted for him three or four times. Fiennes goes loud again: “I don’t want your vote!”
In my mind these hors d’oeuvres are almost in the same ballpark as Daniel Day Lewis‘s “I drink your milkshake” in There Will Be Blood. Except Fiennes sounds more like Ian McKellen.
I’ve said this once or twice before, hut if WHE were to release a Bluray of the boxy version of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Dial M For Murder, I would buy it in a split second.
All through the 20th Century and into the 21st I watched Dial M for Murder at 1.33 or 1.37. I also saw it in 1.33 or 1.37 3D at the Eighth Street Playhouse in ’80. And the compositions and framings were and are entirely satisfactory and didn’t need to have their tops and buttons CHOPPED OFF WITH A MEAT CLEAVER.
Sidenote: This is a very small deal and barely worth mentioning, but in Dial M for MurderRay Milland and Grace Kelly‘s street-level, one-bedroom flat is not in Mayfair, as Marty says below at the 1:19 mark, but Maida Vale.
The 1.78 or 1.85 a.r. on the Dial M For Murder Bluray was favored because of one reason only — because this a.r. conforms to the 16 x 9 aspect ratio of high-def flat panels. The people who made this call were nothing but a FASCIST REVISIONIST GANG.
“We have a vision,” their manifesto reads. ‘A vision of all films shot from the early ’50s to mid ’60s with their tops and bottoms CHOPPED OFF, and we will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Because of 16 x 9 high-def screens, we are committed to killing visual information. And we will succeed because we have the factual data and research to back up the assertion that these films were shot to be shown at 1.85, but could also be shown at 1.33 or 1.37 for purist film buff screenings and for television airings and VHS and DVD versions.
“Repeat after us: WE HAVE A VISION, and it is about KILLING VISUAL INFORMATION by slicing off the tops and bottoms of films.”
I’m physically sickwithworry about what may happen 12 days hence.
James Carville has noted that just before close elections things tend to break one way or another, and right now…dear God I can’t even think it, much less say it.
I’ve suffered nightmares in which I’m about to be executed…two or three minutes before being led up the wooden steps of the gallows or tied to a PathsofGlory firing-squad post, and the burning, churning stomach acid sensations have been so intense and convulsive that I’ve awoken in a cold panic, Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo-style.
That’s what I’m feeling now except I’m wide awake, and God help us all. I’m Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse, tied buck naked to a four-poster with Satan approaching….”this isn’t a dream…this is reallyhappening!”
Tens of thousands of registered nihilists are telling pollsters that they believe that slapping down the extreme left (a goal I completely sympathize with) is more important than preserving a semblance of order, decency and democracy…
These under-educated, rural-or-suburban heartland psychos apparently believe that a Trumpocalypse, an authoritarian, Hitlerian revenge scenario…a threatened state of siege orchestrated by a clearly declining 78 year-old, foam-at-the-mouth criminal sociopath…is preferable to handing the reins of power to a decent, sensible humanist normie who may underwhelm due to her regulated mediocrity but then again she might not…who knows?
I’ve been trusting all along that fundamental decency would prevail in the end. Now I don’t know.
What kind of sick, reality-denying animals believe that bringing Trump back would be a good thing? I feel like I’m barricaded inside that house in Night of the Living Dead and that zombie Trumpies, naked and growling, are pounding on the doors.
Then again KamalaHarris has mostly done this to herself.
All she had to do was renouncetheprogressivecrazies and pledge herself to sensible, constructive, classic liberalism, and she didn’t have the stones to do that…she didn’t even have the minimal courage to say that white males needn’t be a problem and that healthy masculinity can and should be a vital cultural ingredient…she couldn’t even admit that wokeinsanityisathing, which it has been, of course, since ‘18 or thereabouts…
Would it do any good if GeneralJohnKelly, DonaldTrump’s longest serving chief of staff, were to hold a press conference and repeat everything he said on the record to TheAtlanticJeffreyGoldberg and the N.Y. Times? If doing so would move the needle even slightly, he should do this immediately. The cause of decency demandsit.
Jill Stein could come to her senses, but of course, being who and what she is, that’s not an option.
