Day: July 25, 2025

Late last week a local man with “issues” — some temperamentally distracted, possibly mentally unbalanced fellow — attracted the attention of the citizenry in HE’s very own Wilton, Connecticut.

And then the cops got wind and eventually this poor soul was led away and driven to a nearby hospital.

Alas, the readers of Good Morning Wilton, which is written and edited by the socially obedient Heather Borden Herve, were told a somewhat different story.

The disturbed guy with issues was given an upgraded description, for one thing — he became “an individual in crisis.” And the episode was sanitized to a fare-thee-well. Herve decided to forego any physical descriptions — not even the approximate age of the poor guy.

What Herve wrote and posted was bad reporting, plain and simple. Regimented police-blotter stuff. And an insult to the art and the challenge of good writing.

For many years Michael’s Telluride Blog, run by the Oklahoma-residing Michael Patterson, carried an endorsement quote from Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, to wit: “The best Telluride predictor I know.”

But in the wake of Sasha’s industry-wide cancellation following Rebecca Keegan’s 8.14.24 THR hit piece, Patterson decided to play it safe by ditching the Sasha quote and replacing it with a nearly identical one from nextbestpicture’s Matt Neglia (“The best blog out there for predicting what will be going to Telluride“).

HE to Patterson: “So when did you jettison Sasha’s quote, Michael, and arrange to replace it with a similar one from Matt? How long ago? I just noticed the switch when I checked this morning.

“Oh, and by the way: Why have you listed Scott Cooper‘s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century, 10.24) as a film “that could still play Telluride”? You don’t see this as a highly likely booking? It would not only be almost surreal if it doesn’t play Telluride, but you can almost bank on Bruce himself showing up at the Telluride picnic and maybe even performing an acoustic set at the Sheridan Bar or at a party somewhere on Colorado Avenue. I don’t know this for a dead fact, of course, but c’mon…”

Before and after:

…than never to have D.H. Lawrenced at all.

We all understand that it’s not only inappropriate but grotesque to speak of film critics and columnists in this…uhm, regard. Rest assured I’m not going there, but the mere thought of some present-day, 50-plus critics (no names) engaged in…uhm, whatever is too terrifying to contemplate. But you know who always intimated that she may have led an active and perhaps even a joyful sensual life in the flower of relative youth? Back in the ’80s, I mean? Former Philadelphia Inquirer critic Carrie Rickey.

I’ve been ignoring James Cameron‘s Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century, 12.19.25), and for good reasons. I need to see it, of course, but I don’t want to…not really. If I could make this third Avatar flick disappear by clapping my hands three times, I would clap my hands three times.

Ask me to recall key moments from Cameron’s The Terminator (’84), Aliens (’86), The Abyss (‘89), T2 (’91), True Lies (’94), Titanic (’97) and the first Avatar (’09), and I could recite them like a gatling gun any hour of the day.

And yet recollections of Avatar: The Way of Water (12.16.22, 192 minutes) are blurry at best. There’s a reason for that.

If I concentrate I can vaguely recall certain specific bits or accelerators or wowser whatevers from The Way of Water (the sinking super-craft sequence at the finale), but I don’t want to bring it back into my head. Because the whole big Avatar world feels like such a chore — such a flooding, such a visual gullywash that demands as much as it provides — that I want to leave it there and never return.  

To be sure, The Way of Water, which opened two and two-thirds years ago, was a first-rate Cameron creation or visitation or envelopment, certainly on a visual level. Like everyone else I loved the 2009 original, which was and is a total transportational knockout, but as far as seeing Avatar: Fire and Ash is concerned, there’s a big, deep-down part of me that’s saying “really? I have to fucking go there again?”

Something inside is telling me that sitting through the Avatar franchise all the way to the end (three more films remain, Fire and Ash being the third) will surely swallow my soul.  It’s going to be another huge CG vacuum cleaner ordeal, and I know it’s going to fucking eat me.

Cameron has specified that the running time of Avatar: Fire and Ash (29th Century, 12.19.25) would be longer than the 192 minute length of Avatar: The Way of Water.

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