Day: June 24, 2025

33 year-old Zohran Mamdani, an ardent wokester in the tradition of former San Francisco mayor London Breed and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, held a very significant lead last night (Tuesday, 6.24) over chief rival Andrew Cuomo in NYC mayoral primary.

Cuomo has conceded and that’s pretty much that.

Next is a follow-up general election on 11.4.25 with Mamdani, the official Democratic candidate, running against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate. Sliwa will lose, of course.

Despite his reputational stains, Cuomo — a sensibly liberal, practical-minded sort — would have been a wiser choice. Mamdani is not “sensible” but a woke ideologue. He will spark a lot of anger and chaos. Just as San Franciscans, infuriated by the obvious cultural decline of that fair city (un-prosecuted shopliftings, shit loads on the sidewalks), booted out Breed, Mamdani will last a single term (if that) in NYC

A festival run is definitely being planned for Derek Cianfrance‘s Roofman (Paramount, 10.10), a fact-based drama about real-life felon Jeffrey Manchester, “known colloquially as Roofman due to his propensity to steal from branches of McDonald’s after entering their premises via the roof and evaded capture from police by hiding in the wall of a Toys “R” Us store.”

Channing Tatum plays Manchester, and Kirsten Dunst plays romantic interest Leigh Wainscott.

I don’t know for a fact that Dunst winds up helping the cops arrest Tatum, but if this is what happens — if she indeed betrays him and rats him out — I’ll be deeply unhappy. Girlfriends of felons never deal with the fuzz….period. Just ask Adriana La Cerva.

I’m figuring Telluride and Toronto, but I’d rather see Roofman kick things off in Venice.

Dax Shepard‘s day-old interview with F1‘s Brad Pitt (they’re AA bros) is kinda jizz-whizzy and goofbally for the first six minutes.

Pitt to Shepard: “I’ve never had a gay experience — I kinda missed that window — but if I did, it wouldn’t be [with] you.”

Pitt “missed” the gay experience “window”?

…if news of Criterion’s teal-monster defacement of their Sorcerer 4K Bluray could somehow be communicated to Hurricane Billy’s afterlife realm.

Freidkin to Criterion: “How dare you….how fucking dare you saturate my 1977 masterpiece with grotesque teal-green tones…you don’t flood your Carnal Knowledge 4K with teal so why did you do it to Sorcerer?…do you understand that what you’ve done represents a form of evil? Do you even get that, fuckers, or are you oblivious?”

Friedkin-to-Criterion followup: “Do you guys know that Birds scene in the Bodega Bay diner when that hysterical mother says to Tippi Hedren, ‘Who are you?…what are you? I think you’re evil….EVIL!!’ You know that scene? Well, that mother is the Bluray-buying public, and you’re Tippi Hedren!”

It would be one thing if Mary Astor’s performance as femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (‘41)…it would be one thing if Astor had a scene in which she wore a steamy dragon-lady dress (the kind Myrna Loy occasionally wore in the early 1930s). But of course she never did. Warner Bros. marketers lied to the public! Spit right into their eyes!

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No disrespect to the late James Horner, but I can’t remember a single note from his Braveheart score,, and I can only remember fragments of Braveheart itself.

I was nominally “impressed” by this 1995 Oscar winner (well-captured horseback battle sequences, blue face paint, “freedom!”) but I didn’t really like it all that much. Too fecking violent. That contorted expression on William Wallace’s face as he was being disemboweled by the British…thanks all the same.

It opened 30 years ago and I’ve never once re-watched it.

My first and only viewing was at a pre-opening Rod Lurie screening series in Burbank. Mel Gibson, whom I’d initially met during an Elaine’s press schmooze in ‘83, showed up for a post-screening q&a. He was wearing mandals, for God’s sake, and I was sitting near the front and silently muttering to myself that the sight of Gibson’s peds was…uhm, unwelcome. Any guy who wears mandals to any public event (even a neighbor’s backyard brunch) has earned a reputational stain that can never be washed off.