The general consensus has sunk in all over, and it’s this: Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C. felt rote, pallid and under-attended while the NO KINGS demonstrations across the nation were broadly supported and far more vigorous. I think that’s fair to say.

“I have never experienced such a joyless, lifeless, and sterile mass event in my entire life. Grim-faced soldiers, marching past half-empty grandstands, many of them obviously wanting to be somewhere else. No bands. Little bunting. Just piped-in rock music and MAGA hats. If this truly was meant to honor the 250 years of the United States Army, all we got was an endless procession of uniformed troops looking like they’d prefer to have been at Valley Forge. The president, sitting on the reviewing stand in that weird, forward-leaning attitude that he has, rarely smiling, a skunk at his own garden party.

“I think there probably was more good feeling and genuine emotion when they took Jack Kennedy out to Arlington for the last time.” — Esquire‘s Charles P. Pierce, 6.15.25.

I’m going to say this plain and straight and no bullshit. I hate (i.e., am totally bored by) Ennio Morricone‘s score for John Carpenter‘s The Thing (’82), and all my life I’ve completely worshipped and adored Dimitri Tiomkin‘s score for Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby‘s The Thing From Another World (’51).

This video of Brad Pitt and g.f. Ines de Ramon was shot yesterday in Manhattan. It immediately sent me into a tailspin of depression.

One, the poor guy looks awful — at least 15 or 20 pounds heavier that I’ve ever seen him before, and his hair all but completely shaved off. I’m presuming this is because Pitt has been playing a former Navy SEAL in David Ayer‘s Heart of the Beast, but nobody wants to see a handsome movie star looking all bloated and grunted up.

Even worse is Pitt’s ghastly baby-blue velour suit — oversized, extra-baggy pants. Plus he’s wearing a beige-yellow striped shirt that looks like he snagged it at a Goodwill store…what the hell are you doing, man?

I was going to call this post “Fat Pitt”, but that would’ve made me feel worse.

If there’s one genuinely funny gag in this whole film, I’ll eat my gray, Chinese-made cowboy hat. Because it’s understood that this reboot will lean heavily on the same kind of gags that defined the old Leslie Neilsen versions. We know the newbie won’t even flirt with being truly subversive.

Witness testimony from a guy who’s seen it: “The O.J. Simpson gag is ostensibly the biggest laugh in the film, but I will give credit to a protracted sequence centering around Liam Neeson and Pam Anderson innocently making dinner in a kitchen while being observed through infrared surveillance equipment that makes it look like they’re having wild, savage sex. When they bend over an oven, the device translates it into something really funny visually. That bit felt fresh while the majority of the jokes are Antediluvian Marx Bros. one liners like ‘Would you like a chair?’ and ‘No, I have one at home’, and set within uninspired, rote situations.

“And there’s really no social commentary on law enforcement, save for one passing gag in a bar that hints of race relations. This entire film smacks of Seth MacFarlane’s patented derivativeness. He was obviously brought aboard to imitate instead of create. The studio wanted a redo of the first film and got that.

“Neeson< seems too old to start lampooning his serious action career, so there’s a sadness in watching him in this, but Anderson does really well. Her character isn’t a dimbulb like Priscilla Presley since she possesses a personal vendetta against the villain, a tech giant, and wants payback. THAT felt like an update.

“What I groaned at most were some puerile toilet jokes, something the original films never reveled in, as well as misplaced attempts at ‘warmth’ as Neeson pines for his lost ‘old man’ meant to dovetail affection for the late Leslie Nielsen. At least Neeson doesn’t mug as much as Nielsen increasingly did. Oh, there’s a touch of topicality from a driverless car and AI references. The bag guy invokes Elon Musk, and not just his technology but personal life.

“At one point, they were going to call this NAKED GUN: DREBIN’S INFERNO, which hints of where the finale goes. This is a cheapjack ‘in name only’ sequel. There’s some breaking of the fourth wall in the third act that aficionados will recognize as lifted from a few Monty Python episodes. This film looks so cheaply made that they’ll probably eke out enough money the first weekend, especially if there are review embargos, but this feels very much like the sort of sequel that normally Netflix would debut since a living room couch is more forgiving than a theater seat. Consider this a warning shot for the 2nd SPACEBALLS as well.”

Five days hence (6.20.25) marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws.

Given its reputation as the film that pioneered the ubiquitous wide-release saturation strategy, HE is again reminding that the real saturation trailblazer was Chartoff-Winkler’s Breakout, a quasi-exploitation prison-break flick costarring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Robert Duvall.

HE update: Commenter Sonny Hooper argues that 1974’s The Trial of Billy Jack (11.13.74) began with a thousand-theatre break on a four-wall basis, and therefore launched the practice of saturation bookings six months before Breakout and Jaws. I’ve always thought that the indie nature of that film plus the four-walling thing…I’ve always thought these factors constituted an asterisk.

Put it this way: Breakout and Jaws were the first studio-distributed films (Columbia and Universal being the studios) to launch with saturation bookings.

Posted on 4.17.16: A veteran filmmaker reminded me yesterday that Breakout, a 1975 B-grade action flick that’s basically about a helicopter pilot (Charles Bronson) air-lifting a framed American prisoner (Robert Duvall) out of a Mexican jail, was the first film to open via wide saturation booking, and not Jaws, which usually gets the credit.

After Breakout opened internationally on 3.6.75, Columbia opted for a radical, roll-the-dice decision to open this mezzo-mezzo actioner in 1350 situations on 5.21.75. After two weeks it had grossed a then-head-turning $12.7 million.

Impressed, Universal chairman Lew Wasserman and studio president Sid Sheinberg decided to ape this strategy by opening Jaws, which they knew would be a big hit, on 6.20.75 in a similar fashion.

The initial Jaws plan was to open it in 900 theatres, but Wasserman cut that figure down to 464. Wikipedia claims that Breakout opened on 1300 screens, or nearly three times the opening-day screen count of Jaws.  The veteran who reminded me about Breakout recalled a screen tally more in the 600 range.

I just think it should be recognized or remembered that the Breakout guys were the saturation pioneers and not the Jaws copycats.

Full disclosure: I don’t think I’ve ever seen Breakout. (Or have I?) It was regarded as a harmless, enjoyable diversion at the time, although no one thought it was anything more than a throwaway for drive-ins and sub-runs. Now that it’s been re-activated in my mind I intend to stream it soon.

So says F1 watcher Raleigh St. Clare**, who caught an unfinished earlybird preview a few months back.

Back in the ‘90s Jerry Bruckheimer said he makes Chateaubriand guy movies as opposed to hamburger-level — a money quote that stuck.

** The spelling of Bill Murray’s Royal Tenenbaums character was Raleigh St. Clair…just saying.