Day: April 22, 2025

The exact running time of Mission Impossible 8 (Paramount, 5.23.25) is two hours and 51 minutes, It’s right there on the Wiki page.

The fact that no one’s paying the slightest bit of attention to Andrew Ahn‘s The Wedding Banquet, I mean,

Seriously — it’s been in theatres since last Friday (4.18) and there hasn’t been so much as a teeny weeny peep out of anyone. This summarizes, I suppose, the ensemble drawing power of Bowen Yang, HE’s own Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-chan and Joan Chen.

Wall Street Journal: “Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (’93) is impressive for how it wrings something genuine out of what might, in other hands, have felt like little more than a sitcom.

“If Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet has now not fallen into those hands, exactly, it has nonetheless suffered a degeneration, courtesy of the director’s present-day remake of the same name.

“The new Wedding Banquet has been awkwardly contorted to fit the world of today, with flat direction and a cast that largely flounders in a muddled middle ground between antic comedy and sentimental drama.”

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Imagine a sprawling relationship story (two men and the women they get involved with) told in three in-depth, period-specific chapters — the late ’40s, the early and late ’60s, and the early ’70s. By today’s single-season streaming standards, this would be a ten-episode limited series, minimum. Or perhaps a two-season thing…20 episodes in all. If someone were to attempt, against all odds, a theatrical, stand-alone remake, it would run at least 120 minutes and more likely 130 or 140.

Which is why it’s fairly startling to realize that Mike Nichols‘ Carnal Knowledge runs all of 98 minutes.

Whenever you use a Hitler or Nazi Germany parallel to make a point in a debate, the reaction is always the same: “You’ve just lost the argument…bringing up Hitler is a cheap shot…back to the drawing board.”

But I think Larry David‘s use of this analogy was fair. Plus we all understand how sociopaths are good at playing people so I don’t see the problem. Anybody can be nice at a dinner of social function. Which is why I’ve always felt irritation when someone says that some famous person they’ve hung with “is sooo nice!” My reaction is always “Yeah….so? They’re performing!”

“Vaudeville Rules“, posted on 4.20.17: There’s a strictly enforced system in Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy (’55). Old-school mummies kill their victims by strangling them, but whenever Klaris the mummy (Eddie Parker) comes up behind Lou Costello, he can only stand 12 inches behind him with his arms out. When Costello takes a step, Klaris takes a step…but he can’t strangle Costello. He’s only allowed to give him a mummy bear hug.

Then again Klaris couldn’t be too toothless. I’m presuming that director Charles Lamont told Parker to make a scary noise every so often. Parker: “What kind of noise?” Lamont: “I don’t know. Some kind of growl.” Parker: “A Wolfman growl?” Lamont: “Of course not. A dead man’s growl..filtered through tana leaves, whatever…the roar of dessicated centuries and ancient pyramids and dry-mouth.” Parker: “Dessicated?” Lamont: “Just don’t sound like the Wolfman.” And so Parker came up with “yaaawwwhrrrrr!”

According to a 4.22 post by Deadline‘s Melanie Goodfellow, the late Pope Francis didn’t fully understand the famous “pebble scene” in Federico Fellini‘s La Strada (’54), which the pontiff repeatedly called his all-time favorite film.

That or some Deadline person mis-translated a 2013 video in which Francis laid out his impressions.

Goodfellow: “As a child I saw many films by Fellini,” the pope said, “but La Strada always stayed in my heart. The film that begins with tears and ends with tears, begins on the seashore and ends on the seashore, but what stayed with me most was the scene with the madman and the stone in which he gives meaning to the life of the girl.”

Francis was referring to a dialogue scene between Richard Basehart‘s “Il Motto” and Giulietta Masina‘s Gelsomina. While the dialogue is all Basehart’s, he’s not playing a “madman” but a clownish tightrope walker with a big heart — a circus fool — and he’s not talking about a “stone” but a tiny pebble. If thrown hard a stone can break a window, after all, but a pebble can’t.

Basehart: “Everything in this world is useful for something. Here, take this pebble, for example. It has a purpose, but how should I know [what]? If I knew, do you know who I would be? The Almighty, who knows everything: when you are born, when you die. And who can know that? No, I don’t know what this stone is for, but it must be for something. Because, if this is useless, then everything is useless: even the stars. And even you, you are also useful for something, with your artichoke head.”

More Francis: “We too, little pebbles on the ground, in this land of pain, of tragedies, with faith in the Risen Christ, we have a purpose, amid so many calamities. The purpose of looking beyond, the purpose of saying: ‘Look, there is no wall; there is a horizon, there is life, there is joy, and there is the cross with this ambivalence. Look ahead, do not close yourself off. You, little pebble, have a purpose in life, because you are a pebble near that rock, that stone which the wickedness of sin has discarded.”

Goodfellow’s article also notes three other Pope Francis favorites: Gabriel Axel‘s Danish Oscar winner Babette’s Feast (’87), Akira Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August (’91) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublëv (’66).

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I’ll watch a Super Bowl game now and then, but am otherwise indifferent to the comings and goings of big-time football (NFL or college). I barely glance in its direction.

And yet even I know who the legendary Bill Bellichick is, and that he’s 73 and part Croatian and that he wears eight Super Bowl rings. And that his foxy girlfriend of two-plus years, Jordon Hudson, is 49 years younger. (Hudson’s previous boyfriend is around 40 years older.)

I say (a) “if they’re happy, fine,” (b) “it’s none of my damn business” and (c) “live and let live”.

But Bellichick’s maroon or burgundy sport jacket is utterly impossible. No one of any taste comes within 100 yards of burgundy or maroon anything.