…is if the film in question is still locked in the DVD dungeon…no high-def streaming, no 1080 Bluray, no 4K.

This is the situation with Alan Pakula‘s Rollover (’81), a noirish thriller set in the world of high-stakes banking. Whoever owns the home video rights has calculated that it’s a loss leader…”fuck it…nobody remembers this film, and the financial world shenanigans no longer apply…and nobody cares about Kris Kristoffersion or Jane Fonda in a romantinc context”…something like that.

Rollover has been written off…extinct.

In ’81 I was treadmilling along as a Manhattan journalist when portions of Rollover were being shot there, and I remember talking to a very sharp, well-connected female journalist who had written a profile of Kristofferson, and she said that he and Fonda had an affair during production.

It was strictly one of those “only during principal photography” deals that never crossed over into their off-set lives, she said, and so nobody (including Fonda’s then-husband Tom Hayden) was the wiser. Or gave a shit…whatever.

…can go fuck itself. I watched it late yesterday afternoon and didn’t so much as crack a smile. I didn’t just dislike it — I turned it off after 45 minutes. It’s silly and oafish in a forced kind of way. Costello’s adolescent antics are truly, excessively unfunny. All the supporting players (including Crocker Jarmon from The Candidate**) just stand there like bowling pins as they watch Bud and Lou recite their jibber-jabber material. Plus Lou yelps too much.

** Don Porter

Throughout the 20th Century each and every actor with an excessively ethnic-sounding name knew they had to adopt an easy-to-pronounce, vaguely whitebread marquee name (no more than four syllables) in order to crash the big leagues.**

Hence Issur Danielovitch became Kirk Douglas, etc. No funny-sounding names…no names that Ma and Pa Bumblefuck couldn’t say or spell with ease.

In 1937 aspiring actor Mladen Sekulovich, a 25 year-old descendant of Bosnian Serbs who’d grown up in Chicago and worked in Indiana steel mills, was reportedly persuaded by Group Theatre colleague Elia Kazan to simplify his name.

So he changed the spelling of Mladen by switching the “la” to “al” and using Malden as his last name, junking his suspiciously Commie-sounding, four-syllable last name altogether, and chose “Karl” (in honor of his paternal grandfather) as his first name. Simple.

Karl Malden’s career took off after Kazan, who’d given up acting for directing, cast him as the basically decent, lunk-headed Mitch in the B’way stage version of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947.

Malden felt proud of his Bosnian Serb ancestry but there’s no way in hell he “regretted” using a simplified name for professional purposes. If he hadn’t done that he never would have made it as a screen actor (perhaps not even as a stage actor), and he wouldn’t have wound up rich and famous and living in a flush home in Mandeville Canyon.

Oh, and he didn’t “insist” that this or that character in movies and TV shows that he starred in be called “Sekulovich”— he asked or urged or cajoled certain producers and directors into allowing the name to be heard.

“I despise inexactitude” — Hal Holbrook’s “Deep Throat” in All The President’s Men.

** Except for Allen Garfield and Keith Szarabajka.

Not to mention the hugely expensive logistical challenge of transporting Gojira all those thousands of miles.

I’m going to charitably ignore Jessie Buckley‘s years-ago remark about not liking cats. I can understand certain folks preferring dogs to cats because dogs are more openly emotional and affectionate, but how can anyone literally “dislike” cats? I’m a dog and a cat person….even steven, no prejudice or favoritism.

Sasha Stone‘s dog Jack passed away from cancer a couple of days ago. Hugs, condolences…a very tough thing to go through. Jack was part of the family. He went to the Telluride Film Festival many times.

,/p?

Mr. Nobody Against Putin won the Best Int’l Feature Oscar, but I somehow never caught it. Did anyone? Just rented HD version. The DVD (480p) debuts in a week or two. Looking forward.

They earned a mountain of dough on Project Hail Mary’s opening day, and you have to respect that. Pic instilled feelings of vague irritation and hard-science gloom, but that’s me. We learn via flashback that Ryan Gosling’s Ryland Grace had refused to join the rescue mission, thus leading Sandra Huller to forcibly put him aboard. What kind of a wimpy, petty-minded dweeb ducks out of a project that might save humanity from starving to death?

…and he therefore allowed Trump to spin, dodge and otherwise skate.

Why was Robert Mueller’s last name not pronounced like Ferris Bueller?

…he simply needs to stop wearing those garish eyesore outfits and start dressing like a low-key debonair fellow with a sense of traditional taste. This will send a message that he’s processed the message and is shifting gears.

In less than two weeks the poor guy has gone from being a super-gifted fellow with a huge fan following who may not win the Best Actor Oscar to “Jesus H. Christ, even the fans are turning on him!”

TC has to put out signals that say “okay, okay…I get it, I have to change my attitude so no more horrific orange suits or tennis-ball coifs…I promise to grow my hair out.”

From “U.S. Military Ramps Up to Clear Strait of Hormuz“, reported by N.Y. Times Eric Schmitt:

The U.S.S. Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship designed and built as a dedicated helicopter carrier (up to 20 helicopters) and carrying up to 1800 marines, is a few days away from a prime operational position near the Strait of Hormuz.

Chuck Norris, 86, passed yesterday (Thursday, 3.19) in Hawaii. Respect, regrets and condolences to his mostly conservative-minded fans (including Mike Huckabee), colleagues and loved ones, but I have to deliver my thoughts honestly…straight from the shoulder.

An arch-conservative and an Orange County Christian, Norris certainly became a brand in the Reagan years, and he held his own, commercially and culturally, throughout the ’90s, aughts and teens.

But in the realm of iconic big-screen tough guys of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s Norris wasn’t in the class of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, much less Clint Eastwood. He was in the class of Jason Statham, or more precisely Statham, who ascended in the aughts and became big in the 20teens, aspired to be Norris-like.

Like Norris, Statham has made his bones as the star of a string of mostly forgettable, formulaic action programmers, and yet he surpassed Norris 18 years ago when he finally made one good film — Roger Donaldson‘s The Bank Job (’08).

Norris, alas, never made a Bank Job-level film…not one. Everything he starred in was B-grade junk…crap, crap, crap….Lone Wolf McQuade, Missing in Action, Code of Silence, Invasion U.S.A., The Delta Force. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus loved the guy, and I worked in Cannon publicity in ’87 and ’88 so don’t tell me.

If Norris had made one half-decent hardboiled film…something with edge and restraint in the vein of, say, John Flynn‘s The Outfit…I would have some respect for him. But he was always a Walmart guy.