The Palisades fire is raging and spreading and obviously dangerous, but what got my attention while watching this clip was the fact that a Millennial KTLA reporter didn’t recognize 66-year-old Steve Guttenberg. Poor guy…imagine the feeling in Guttenberg’s chest when the reporter asked for his name.

All hail fond memories of Peter, Paul and Mary as we lament the passing of Peter Yarrow, who had a gentle spirit within him. Or so I always felt.

Peter, Paul and Mary peaked for roughly a decade — between the early to late ’60s. But they’re regarded as a classic evergreen act, or they were for a long while.

Peter had the gentle soul, the late Mary Travers had great pipes and the blonde folkie hottie glamour thing until (I’m sorry but there’s no sidestepping this) she turned into a whale, and Paul Stookey had the folkie smartass thing.

When I think of Yarrow I think of “Puff, The Magic Dragon” (’62), which he wrote based on a Leonard Lipton poem. And when I think of Mary I think of her excellent 1969 recording of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane”, which was written by John Denver. And when I think of Paul I think of “I Dig Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” (’67), which he co-authored.

I don’t like admitting this, but when I look at YouTubes of Peter, Paul and Mary, I vastly prefer videos recorded when they were young, slender and attractive. Old bald Peter is okay because his kind-heartedness comes through at any age, but I still prefer the guy he was in the ’60s. But I really don’t like looking at…uhm, I prefer looking at videos of young, rail-thin Mary.

Here’s a slightly less articulate version of HE’s post-Golden Globes complaint (2.6, 10:30 am) about Emilia Perez beating Anora in the comedy-musical category.

John Ford’s The Searchers, which is back in the stream of things with a brand-new 4K restoration, is not the greatest American movie or even the greatest American western.

It goes on and on and on. Episode after episode after episode. Runs 119 minutes, but feels like 150 minutes if not three hours.

The visual compositions are magnificent start to finish and the iconic John Wayne is excellent in a caustic and ferocious way, but oh, God, the story and the supporting performances drive you crazy

Jeffrey Hunter’s over-acting is deeply painful (I’m sitting there begging him to effing tone it down); ditto Vera Miles.

Hunter’s Martin Pawley writes Miles’ Laurie Jorgensen ONE non-romantic letter over a five-year period and is surprised that she gets engaged to someone else?


The over-spirited Ford ensemble celebration scenes amount to a kind of cornball endurance test. Hank Worden‘s acting as village idiot Mose Harper is silly and cartoonish.

The simplistic racist depictions of Comanches as mere bloodthirsty savages, not to mention that poor overweight Indian woman who is treated like garbage and then killed by U.S. troops and especially the wailing delirium of those white women who had been kidnapped and raised by Native Americans…all deeply repulsive.

The film offers no explanation why Natalie Wood’s Debbie has no children by Henry Brandon’s Scar, who has been fertilizing her for years on end and probably prior to puberty as Lana Wood was eight or nine when she played adolescent Debbie at the time of her abduction.

Ethan Edwards’ last-minute abandonment of racist fanaticism is just thrown in there without rhyme or reason — his character arc is basicallly “Indian hate and revenge, hate and revenge, hate and revenge, hate and revenge…hate, hate, hate” and then “let’s go home, Debbie.”

Ford’s The Horse Soldiers (‘59) is much more realistic and just as sad and even poetic and far less arduous.

From Reid Rosefelt‘s admiring, strongly written, no-holds-barred Facebook review of A Complete Unknown, posted this morning:

And this…

It’s utterly miserable out there. Nothing but frosty, biting, stinging pain when you step outside. It’s mostly the wind chill. North Pole agony.