Two full hours of digging into Shampoo with The Rewatchables‘ Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey, joined by special guest visitor Cameron Crowe…excellent stuff.

A Cameron Crowe nugget (or “easter egg”, as he puts it) about the making of Shampoo, starting at 10:38: “Paul Simon was, like, the hottest guy around, at that time, as far as doing a song for a movie. So Warren Beatty was really looking for a song to end Shampoo with, but he’s also looking for a score from Paul Simon. I gather it was quite a dance to get the new song from Simon or the new score. But ultimately all Simon came up with was ‘doo-dah-dooo-yeaaahh-yeah-yeah”, which plays through the movie in every possible way. It’s very strange.

“So meanwhile, I guess, Beatty is dating or about to date Joni Mitchell, and he asks Joni for a song. And she writes a song called ‘Sweet Bird’, as in ‘Sweet Bird of Youth.’ And it kind of references the iconography of Beatty and Splender on the Grass….it’a seriously insightful song about the Beatty persona and the George Roundy character, and Beatty heard the song and he’s like ‘uhn-uh, nah-nah, no-no….great song but not great for this movie.

“And if you listen to the song, and think about what the power of a song would have been over the last scene, it’s not about the proverbial bumbling guy [whom Beatty was playing in Shampoo and whom he seemed to be actuality, socially and sexually and whatnot, back then]. The movie would have conveyed that this was a persona, under which was incredible insecurity and doubt, but Beatty was like ‘no, no…don’t need that song in the movie.’ I’d rather have Simon’s ‘doo-dee-dooooo.'”

Read more

It’s such a shattering bummer that audiences are so primitive minded…so shallow and kneejerk vapid that the obviously schlocko Sinners, a 1930s musical vampire film that bears the stamp of Samuel Z. Arkoff and features main characters named “Smoke” and “Stack”, has pulled in $367.9 million while the obviously superior and so much richer and more artistically nourishing Sentimental Value has only earned $3,365,957 so far.

I am truly sickened by award-season handicappers who say Sentimental Value isn’t really in the game because it’s Norwegian with subtitles….God in heaven!

Scott Mantz is a case in point — he’s actually named Sinners as his all-time favorite of 2025. Would Mantz be this much of a Sinners booster if Clem Kadiddlehopper had written and directed it? And don’t forget that Mantz never even mentioned Criterion’s teal-tinting on the recently popped Eyes Wide Shut 4K Bluray.

Why hasn’t some YouTube hotshot mixed Bernard Herrmann‘s discarded Torn Curtain score onto the film’s soundtrack, just for experimentation’s sake?

“The supreme high point of collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann was on Psycho, but it laid the seeds for the disaster that would happen six years later in March of 1966 when Hitchcock went to hear the score for Torn Curtain.

“You couldn’t really hear a film score in those days before it was recorded, if it was written for an orchestra. Hitchcock showed up to the session wanting a miracle for this movie that he knew wasn’t particularly good. He heard that Herrmann had written a heavy, dark, sometimes lugubrious score that Benny thought would convey the sense of the Soviet Union…the Iron Curtain that the heroes are trapped behind. Benny thought Hitchcock would love that.

“I was able to hear the recording of the session, and you can tell that Benny has no idea what’s coming. He’s in a great mood, so he was absolutely stunned when Hitchcock listened to two cues and fired him on the spot and canceled the session.” — “Hitchcock & Herrmann” author Steven C. Smith in a discussion wityh Variety‘s Chris Willman.

For what it’s worth, I like Dimitri Tiomkin‘s scores for Strangers on a Train, I Confess and Dial M for Murder as much as Herrmann’s Hitch scores. Well, almost as much.

Otherwise the Sydney fuzz might have presumed he was with the bad guys and plugged him.

And by the way, why didn’t the Sydney fuzz respond sooner? Onlookers said the shooters were unchallenged for quite a while…15 minutes or longer. Early reports are hazy, but the general impression is that cops definitely weren’t Johnny-on-the-spot.

“For fanatics who have been led to believe that the Jewish state is the apotheosis of evil, killing Jews represents a twisted notion of justice. Even when the victims are unarmed civilians. Even when they are celebrating an ancient, joyful holiday.

“Though we’ll probably learn more in the weeks ahead about the mind-set of Sunday’s killers, it’s reasonable to surmise that what they thought they were doing was ‘globalizing the intifada.’ That is, they were taking to heart slogans like “resistance is justified,” and “by any means necessary,” which have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies the world over.” — N.Y. Times columnist Bret Stephens, “Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like,” posted on 12.14.25.

If a snowfall is intense enough and if you make the mistake of staring at the onrushing snowflakes instead of the road and the barely visible white lines, you can lose your bearings. This video doesn’t capture the visual deluge like my naked eyes were doing this morning around 1:30 am, but it conveys some of the odd visual envelopment that I’ve just described.

I knew Steven Spielberg’s 1941 would be a tank less than five minutes after it began. Spielberg used a few seconds of John Williams’ Jaws theme (“dent-dent-dent-dent-DENT-DENT!”) to aurally announce the arrival of a Japanese sub off the California coast. Right away I said to myself “Spielberg is paying satirical tribute to his own, relatively recent blockbuster?” It was such an unfunny egoistic instinct that I knew 1941 would be a bust.

“AS THEY ROARED INTO BATTLE, ONLY ONE THING WAS MISSING….LAUGHS!”

A 8.30.21 piece by Rolling Stone‘s Angie Martoccio reported that Dennis Rodman‘s wacky, wild-ass 48-hour vacation in Las Vegas in the middle of the Chicago Bulls’ 1997-1998 season would be chronicled in a narrative feature titled 48 Hours in Vegas.

That was four and 1/3 years ago. The Lionsgate project obviously languished and then petered out. Now it’s back ‘on” and ready to roll with LaKeith Stanfield as Rodman. The script is by Jordan VanDina with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller producing, blah blah.

The Rodman incident was covered in episodes #3 and #4 of The Last Dance, a ten-episode, ESPN/Netflix doc that streamed in the spring of 2020.

The Lionsgate project — is Rodman still exec producing? — will take some “creative license” with the actual story, blah blah. It will center around Rodman’s adventures in Sin City with his skittish assistant, “GM”, and chronicle their unlikely friendship.

“Dennis refused to follow the herd,” Lord and Miller said in a 2021 statement. “That is what made him a target and it’s also what made him a star. His weekend in Las Vegas is full of fun and hijinks, but it is also full of important questions about the way public figures, and workers are treated, especially when their individuality is expressed so vividly,” blah blah.

Bulls head coach Phil Jackson allowed Rodman to take a break in the middle of the NBA Finals. Alas, party-animal Rodman didn’t return within the timeframe he told the Bulls he would, prompting both Jackson and Michael Jordan to go to Vegas and retrieve Rodman themselves, blah blah.

Edge-of-a-steep-cliff character actor Peter Greene was “found” dead yesterday in his East Village apartment. The N.Y. Daily News broke the story, but my first awareness came from Mark Ebner, a onetime friend of Greene’s, on Facebook. Greene had “demons”, as the saying goes. Smack and crack in the ’90s and perhaps beyond.

There was a fascinating, well-written Premiere article about Greene that appeared in November 1996. Here’s an excerpt:

“In many industries, an employee found getting high on the job might get one shot at a hush-hush rehab, and then be shown the door. Unless they’re just fired on the spot. That’s not how they do it in L.A., where industry mechanics can be somewhat more perverse.

“Here, sometimes the trick is to keep ‘edgy’ stars sated with just the right amount of drugs to enable them to function (if merely for the benefit of the cameras), but not enough to push them over the brink. One-take wonders like Jan-Michael Vincent can be propped up in front of cameras until the day their liver explodes, their last ancillary market is exploited, and they become yesterday’s tabloid news–or until they break their neck in a car wreck, as Vincent did recently.

“If they’re luckier, like recovering cocaine addict Gary Busey, they get a chance to cycle through the Hollywood system again and again, making more comebacks than mere mortality can explain.

“Unlike some no less tragic has-been actors, the fiercely talented Peter Greene delivers. Marginally talented or charismatic screwups are a dime a dozen, but a true junkie artist is a rarity. And in Hollywood, such creatures are deified for living outside of the lines of self-control and responsibility until an industry of celebrity winds up flourishing around their tombstones.

“During filming on The Usual Suspects, Greene luxuriously improvised a memorable filmic moment by flicking a lit cigarette into Stephen Baldwin‘s face. Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie calls Greene a ‘million-dollar day player,’ which could be translated as ‘Get him in, nail the money shot, and get him out before he wreaks havoc.'”

Read more

If I could spread the Best Supporting Oscar wealth by way of re-categorizing, I would arrange for Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard to win the traditional BSP trophy with One Battle After Another‘s Benicio del Toro winning a Best Supporting Underground Smuggler Chill Bro Oscar.

How do you pronounce Yvonne Villarreal‘s last name again? I’m not too bad with Spanish, but I’ve listened to her pronunciation three times…no dice.

Christopher Nolan’s six-minute Odyssey prologue is currently playing in IMAX theatres that are showing (choke, gag) Sinners and One Battle After Another. Well, there’s no effing way I’m paying $20something to catch Sinners again and I’ve already seen OBAA twice so eff that jazz. It’s being reported that the full prologue will be attached to Avatar: Fire and Ash 70mm IMAX screenings starting on Friday, 12.19. (I hate the idea of watching Cameron’s latest but I might submit.) Non-IMAX screenings will be getting a truncated version of the prologue. Nolan’s Odyssey flick pops on 7.17.26.

Will it be fair to call The Odyssey a sword-and-sandal flick? I’m asking. Swords, sandals, helmets, beards and loincloths.