Excerpt from 8.19 Facebook post by Robert Chandler, a Brit:

“During a flight a couple of days ago, I watched John Huston‘s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre for the first time in my life.

“Now a hale and hearty 74 years old, this gold-mining allegory (greed, capitalism) is shockingly good and uncompromising. It is spare and essential, and full of excellent performances.

“I had no idea where the story was heading or how it played out for Humphrey Bogart‘s character, Fred C. Dobbs. There’s no vanity in Bogart’s performance, no weakness, no movie-star nod to the camera that says ‘hey, I’m a good guy, really.’

“Bogart’s performance is matched by his fellow drifter on the gold trail, played by Tim Holt, and then exceeded (perhaps) by the director’s father, Walter Huston, as a veteran prospector who talks with a frenzied excitement but has his greatest moment in a scene where he says very little as he saves the life of a drowned Mexican boy.

“There’s an incredible moment where Bogart, after a moment of betrayal, is shown being consigned to hell when he rolls nearer to the campfire and the flames rise up in the camera as it tracks in to reframe him.

“The Tampico kid who gets his face doused while selling lottery tickets is played by a young Robert Blake, who had a colorful and lengthy Hollywood career, including playing one of the killers in Richard Brooks‘ In Cold Blood (’67). But he’ll always be known — at least to my generation in the UK who frenzy-fed on cult movies at the Scala — as the pint-sized cop in Electra Glide In Blue (’73).

“Sierra Madre plays fresh and hard, and is exciting to watch. No scene is wasted. If anything, it’s a refreshing reminder of how film stories used to be told sparely and without compromise.”

In Stephen Frears‘ fact-based, semi-fictionalized The Lost King (IFC Films), Sally Hawkins plays Philippa Langley, who ten years ago (2012) was able to guesstimate the accurate location of the bones of Richard III. Steve Coogan (who co-wrote the script with Stan & Ollie‘s Jeff Pope) plays Langley’s husband; Game of Thrones costar Harry Lloyd is an imaginary ghost of King Richard.

The film will premiere at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“I am a brilliant, neurotic, judgmental little prick in need of some Prague neck-wattle work**, but the combination of my lacerating wit plus my spirited madman persona is killer and I know it, especially since I take the time to write good material before coming on the show.” — Martin Short muttering to himself between commercial breaks on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

Slight objection: Short began with “James Thomas Fallon — my God, your name screams out diversity!” Translation: We’re both Irish — my dad was an Irish Catholic emigrant from Northern Ireland, and my mom comes from English and Irish stock — so in today’s woke realm we’re almost an endangered minority…would it help if we apologized for being white Irish guys?

Bottom line: Chiding Fallon for not being diverse isn’t funny — it’s actually kinda paranoid.

We all understand that within the conservative nutbag Presidential preference realm, Florida governor Ron DeSantis (who is not a nutbag) is ascending and Donald Trump (a totally deranged, anti-Democratic narcissistic crime boss) is declining.

If it has to be one of the other, DeSantis is obviously the saner, less scary choice. But it’s starting to hit me that DeSantis doesn’t really have it in terms of JFK- or Obama-level charisma. And that’s a big thing not to have. He doesn’t even have that Trump swagger thing.

One, he’s not slender enough and in fact seems a tiny bit chubby — he’s certainly on the stocky side. DeSantis is nowhere near as fat as Trump, but a would-be President has to look trim and healthy and well-disciplined — daily workouts, no 11 pm cookie-jar raids. Do you think Jack Kennedy would have squeaked out a victory over Richard Nixon if he’d had a Ron DeSantis body? Think again.

And two, DeSantis has cold beady eyes. He doesn’t radiate warmth or charm. He seems like a semi-reasonable fellow, but something inside him seems prickly and prick-ish.

Bottom line: Cold eyes, chunky bod, prickish vibes…DeSantis probably can’t win.

…it’s bad karma for the relationship. Because a film jointly made by a famous couple is like a child, and if the child fails to make its own way by winning respect from critics or at least from paying audiences, this is often…okay, sometimes interpreted as a referendum on the couple itself. And then a certain vibe takes hold.

There is some evidence to back up this theory, but with significant exceptions. The success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? aside, the union of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor endured several mediocre films. The marriage of George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere not only survived the debacle of The Savage Is Loose (‘74) but 25 subsequent years of living until Scott’s passing in ‘99.

I’m mentioning this theory because I’m starting to suspect that the response to Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling (Warner Bros., 9.23), a ‘50s-era white-male-conspiracy creeper in the vein of The Stepford Wives, is not going to strengthen Wilde’s relationship with Harry Styles.

Have I seen Darling? No. What do I actually know about its quality? Apart from the fact that no big-name film festivals will be screening it except for an out–of–competition slot in Venice, very little.

So why don’t I just shut the hell up? Because I can feel it. Because the insect antennae vibrations are ringing in my ears. Largely due to the trailer.

The general presumption is that Amazon’s My Policeman, a gay-themed British indie in which Styles plays the lead (and which is debuting in Toronto), is the better bet.

Three to four hundred bills for high-end heating pots at Bed, Bath and Beyond? You can pay even more, of course, for Nancy Meyers-style copper pots**. If you’re into fashion or status statements with kitchen ware, $400 is a drop in the bucket…right? Not this horse.

** No filmmaker living or dead has done more to promote the magnificent owning of copper pots than Meyers.

As far as they go, HE approves of high–end compact wallets. The built-in tracking devices are especially welcome as I’m sometimes unsure of my wallet’s hiding place. But I prefer my old–school, king–size, elephant–hide leather wallet, which I’ve had since the mid ‘90s. Ample and manly and worn down by time…an Ernest Hemingway wallet that can hold a passport, wads of cash, eight hard-plastic cards, unfolded Telluride passes and so on.