“No prisoners!….no prisoners!”

BREAKING: Syria TV says Bashar Assad has fled Damascus to an unknown location.

ASSAD FLED!! pic.twitter.com/dpvuzI5wsE

— Mazen Hassoun (@HassounMazen) December 8, 2024

Posted on 4.19.07: “Robert Altman‘s casually-paced detective film, released on 3.7.73, re-imagines Raymond Chandler‘s Phillip Marlowe as an old-fashioned man of honor with a zen slacker attitude. The intrepid but low-key Elliot Gould got under the skin of this loose-shoe shamus and gave the second-best performance of his life (after “Trapper John” in Altman’s M.A.S.H.)

The Long Goodbye‘s most noteworthy signature, I’ve always felt, is how Vilmos Zsigmond‘s widescreen camera is always slowly tracking in a very gentle arc to the right or left. I always saw this as a metaphor for the constant mobility and lack of roots that goes with life in Los Angeles, where the film takes place. I shared this view with Zsigmond himself, the film’s illustrious cinematographer, during a q & a at the Newport Beach Film Festival. He agreed with the thought, he said, but remarked that Altman never discussed the “meaning” of the constant camera movement. He just said, “Just keep it moving.” That’s an artist for you — go with the instinct and leave the dissertations to others.

My two favorite dialogue portions: (a) Mark Rydell, playing a haunted sociopathic gangster, mentions to Gould that he was always afraid of getting undressed in the locker room at the end of gym class because he “never had any pubic hair until I was 15 years old,” and Gould deadpans “Oh, yeah? You musta looked like one of the Three Little Pigs”; and (b) a small-town Mexican official, speaking English with a very thick accent, refers to Gould’s friend, a morally sleazy guy named Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) who may have committed suicide, as “the deceased,” and Gould immediately says, “The diseased…yeah, right.”

As much as I’ve loved Joe Jackson’s music for the last 40-odd years, I always found his Pee-Wee Herman dress sense (nerd collars, pants pulled up to his chest, Clarabelle suspenders) more than a bit odd. Jackson turned 70 last August, and currently bears a distinct resemblance to Joe Biden.

In the comment thread for yesterday’s Sean Connery piece (“Connery In The Flesh“), an HE regular posted an anecdote from a woman friend who told him she “did” Connery way back when, and that his package was unimpressive.

I hate that kind of cheap snark so I deleted the post. Today the guy asked why.

HE to Connery disser: “I despise any and all comments that try to belittle someone’s reputation by claiming their schlong was smallish. James Ellroy once wrote that JFK was ‘hung like a cashew’…fucker! It doesn’t get much lower or scummier than that.”

Connery disser to HE: “You seem pretty obsessed with masculinity, yet when I point out that someone doesn’t measure up in a certain area, whether that yardstick is valid or not, you become really upset. Seems kinda funny to me. And BTW, the woman [who fucked Connery] is totally credible.

HE to Connery disser: “It’s a shitty thing to say. Besides almost all guys are growers. Very few have hefty animal members in repose.”

In Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer (Neon, 11.5), Kristen Stewart‘s Diana says that “beauty is useless, beauty is clothing.”

That is one of the most full-of-shit lines I’ve ever heard in a film…hell, in my entire life on this planet.

We all understand that good looks won’t do much for a person unless accompanied by sufficient smarts, social skills, a healthy lifestyle and some sort of gift or ability that can be understood and appreciated in the marketplace. But when you’re young and just starting out in whatever field (and even after you’ve gotten going), good looks are a golden passport, and they always have been. They open doors, turn people on, pave the way.

Diana became Prince Charles‘ bride because of her looks plus all the other alluring qualities. But definitely because of her looks. I mean no disrespect when I say that Charles would have never proposed if Diana had looked like, say, the quietly attractive Sally Hawkins.

If Paul McCartney had looked like Gerry Marsden (of Gerry and the Pacemakers) and John Lennon had looked like Ed Sheeran, the Beatles would have had a much tougher time of it…okay?

I really hate having to explain this, much less argue it, but there are some out there who seem to sincerely believe that looks aren’t necessarily a ticket to ride. They’re actually offended by the notion that attractiveness matters.

Five years ago IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich shrieked like a p.c. banshee when I tweeted to Jessica Chastain that an aspiring film critic not only needs to be talented, tenacious and willing to eat shit, but that it would “help” if he/she is “fetching.”

Ehrlich was appalled that anyone would even suggest that an attractive appearance might have something to do with how you’re received in mixed company or by potential employers. I called him a delusional little bitch, of course.

Bill Maher on 5.4.18: “News flash: People just like the physically attractive better. Sorry. The taller candidate usually wins the election. Studies show that the better-looking person, all things being equal, usually gets the job. Even babies prefer to look at attractive faces.”

The last time I gazed upon the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was in mid-May of 2019. The devastating fire (which was almost certainly caused by embers flicked by some labor-union, cigarette-smoking douchebag) had happened only a few weeks before. And now it’s restored and open for business again…wonderful. But the interiors look too spruced up or scrubbed down, too 21st century film set…they didn’t try to make those glorious architectural interiors (nave, transept, apse, stained glass, Romanesque sculptures) appear marked by the centuries.

Originally posted on 8.30.15: “The older Richard Brooks‘ In Cold Blood gets, the more Hollywood-ized it seems.

“Much of the film has always struck me as an attempt by Brooks to almost warm up the Perry Smith and Dick Hickock characters (played by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson) and make them seem more ingratiating and vulnerable than how they were portrayed in Truman Capote‘s nonfiction novel.

“You can always sense an underlying effort by Brooks and especially by Robert Blake to make the audience feel sorry for and perhaps even weep for Perry Smith. That guitar, the sad smile, the traumatic childhood. Take away the Clutter murder sequence and at times Blake could almost be Perry of Mayberry. Scott Wilson‘s Dick Hickock seems a little too kindly/folksy also.

“These are real-life characters, remember, who slaughtered a family of four like they were sheep. I realize that neither one on his own would have likely killed that poor family and that their personalities combusted to produce a third lethal personality, but I could never finally reconcile Blake and Wilson’s personal charm and vulnerability with the cold eyes of the real Smith and Hickock (which are used on the poster for the film).

“In Cold Blood is nonetheless a striking, reasonably honest, nicely assembled re-telling of the Smith & Hickock story. I respect it. I worship Connie Hall‘s cinematography. I love the editing. Quincy Jones‘ blues combo score is partly haunting and even mesmerizing and partly laid on too thick at times. The film is certainly a cut or two above mainstream fare of the ’60s. But it’s not a great film. It feels a bit too cloying and manipulative too often. Those memory and dream sequences (the sound of the mother’s voice going “Perrrry!”) are a bit much.

HE reader Michael Gebert posted this in response: “Yes, I think this is right and well put. It’s made at kind of the last moment of postwar FDR-Kennedy liberalism that was idealistic about the possibility of reforming, well, everything, if we can catch it early enough with a big dose of Freud.

“It’s sometimes referred to as noir, just because it was one of the last big-studio features in black-and-white, but it’s the complete opposite of noir, which assumes that society is as dirty as the criminals and that chance bets against you. In Cold Blood is a throwback to New Deal crime films like 20,000 Years in Sing Sing or Angels Have Dirty Faces. Within a few years that idealism would be completely overthrown, criminals would be taunting maniacs like Manson or Andy Robinson‘s Zodiac type in Dirty Harry, a lower species in need of wiping out.

“It’s kind of amazing to think that in five years, social attitudes could change so rapidly.

“So yes, it’s exceedingly well made, but lives in such a different world that it’s hard to relate to. It’s certainly hard to find any sympathy for the mindless thugs who killed the Clutters like cattle in their basement.”