It’s 1:10 am, and I’m filing from the lobby of the Than Thien hotel in Hue. Filing from my third-floor room would be preferable, of course, but the upstairs wifi is on the fritz. The horror of Brussels has obviously cast a pall over everything and everyone, and yet as ghastly as this sounds mass murder at the hands of ISIS has almost begun to seem…well, not routine but certainly not uncommon. What happened today was a shock but who was surprised? I hated admitting this but my first thought was that today’s event will probably fortify Donald Trump‘s appeal among fence-sitters…God help us.

Obviously there’s no reconciling today’s tragedy and the fact that we’re here in Vietnam and (this almost sounds puerile in light of today’s massacre) enjoying a world-class adventure. But that’s the shot.

Hue Citadel — Tuesday, 3.22, 10:10 pm.

River valley adjacent to Phong Nha’s Dark Cave — Tuesday,3.22, 2:10 pm.

Today’s activity was an exhilarating eight-hour excursion inside the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park — Paradise Cave, Dark Cave (the highlight of which was a fairly difficult trudge into a pool of mud so dense and liquidy-smooth that it looked and felt like melted milk-chocolate sauce), ziplining, swimming, hiking. We returned to the Phong Nha Lakehouse Resort around 4:45 pm, and then hopped into a Vidotour van for a three and 1/2 hour drive to Hue.

Jett and Cait weren’t in the mood but I roamed the city for a couple of hours, walking along the Perfume river, snapping photos of the Citadel and whatnot. It’s quite warm here and humid — you can work up a sweat just by walking at a leisurely pace. We leave tomorrow morning at 9 am for a six-hour scooter voyage to Hoi An, which is roughly 125 kilometers or 77 miles.

Yesterday morning we flew from Hanoi to Dong Hoi, a modest-sized coastal city, and then were driven inland past some profoundly calming, wonderfully aromatic countryside up to the Phong Nha Lakehouse. An hour from now we’re embarking on a day-long hike into the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, which will happen under the professional guidance of a Phong Nha Farmstay guys. The day will include all kinds of good stuff including the exploring of Paradise Cave.

Monday, 3.21 — public Dong Hoi beach.

The rice paddy vistas outside the Phong Nah Farmstay headquarters.

Yesterday afternoon we scootered 20-plus kilometers into Dong Hoi and flopped on the beach for a couple of hours. Jett’s scooter stopped starting once we arrived, but we were twice saved by the kindness of strangers — a young Vietnamese guy helped us to kick-start it in town, and an Australian guy came along and suggested a running jump-start, which worked.

Obviously this is why I’m not filing much. I can’t seem to fit much in, but I can’t leave it alone either. Come hell or high water Hollywood Elsewhere posts every damn day, and with jottings of at least some substance. When we return late this afternoon we’re driving straight down to Hue (over four hours), and the next morning we’re doing a nine-hour scooter journey down to Hoi An.

Filed from Cannes on 5.15.15: “Gus Van Sant‘s The Sea of Trees “was initially greeted with one or two souls applauding, but this was immediately followed by a chorus of boos, loud and sustained for a good five or six seconds. I wasn’t feeling the hate as much as lethargy and disappointment, which began to manifest fairly early. I was getting the wrong vibes even before it started due to the word ‘The’ in the title. That in itself told me plenty.

“The symphonic, rotely soothing score by Mason Bates (i.e., the kind of music that tells the audience ‘you’ll be okay…this is a film about caring and compassion…no rude shocks in store’) told me right away that Trees would be one of Van Sant’s Finding Forrester-like films — an initially solemn, ultimately feel-good drama about ‘redemption’ and rediscovering the joy and necessity of embracing the struggle rather than dying by your own hand blah blah.

“It’s not ineptly made or anything. It starts smoothly and delivers what most of us would call professional-level chops along with an emotionally earnest lead performance from Matthew McConaughey as a Massachucetts high-school teacher and widower looking to commit suicide under the shade of Japan’s Aokigahara forest. But Chris Sparling‘s screenplay jerks the manipulation chain once or twice too often, and the general scheme of the thing just felt tired and pat to me.

“Some were complaining that only McConaughey’s woes seem to matter to Van Sant with scant attention paid to the anguish of Ken Watanabe‘s character, whom McConaughey encounters in the suicide forest and whose life he tries to save all through. This observation isn’t quite true because as there’s a third-act twist…forget it.”

Bob Yari‘s Papa, about a fact-based, late ’50 relationship between Ernest Hemingway (Adrian Sparks) and late journalist Denne Bart Petitclerc (Giovanni Ribisi), had its premiere at last November’s Key West Film Festival, which I attended. I had every intention of seeing Papa but something got in the way and I missed the screening. I did, however, attend the Papa after-party at Hemingway’s Key West home, during which I spoke with a 20something looker named Sammy and got this piece out of it. I did, however, ask around and can report that nobody at the party seemed to have mich to say about Papa. I’m curious to see it despite the obvious insect antennae perceptions. Yari should’ve manned up and not retitled it Papa: Hemingway in Cuba as this conveys panic. Pics opens on 4.26.

You’ll notice that in this candid from the making of Touch of Evil, Orson Welles (dressed in his Detective Hank Quinlan get-up) is simply looking at and listening to Janet Leigh as costar Charlton Heston looks on. Notice that Welles isn’t sneering, cackling, cracking wise, puffing on his fat cigar or being grotesquely animated in the old Quinlan way — he’s just being decent and considerate and listening to what Leigh has to say. This is what Quinlan never does in Touch Of Evil. He’s always “acting’, always behaving, always “on” and is therefore, I feel, constantly dragging the film down into the swamp of ego and personality that’s at least half about Welles himself.  Every time I contemplate re-watching Touch of Evil, I remember this will involve having to deal with Welles’ pain-in-the-ass performance. Nine times out of ten, I watch something else.

A still from L’Avventura, portrait shots of Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe and Faye Dunaway, an image of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward used for advertising art for A New Kind of Love — I’ve been feeling at best placated and at worst underwhelmed by the design of Cannes Film Festival posters over the last few years. But the 2016 poster, an echo from Jean-Luc Godard‘s Contempt (’63), is the first that I’ve really liked and admired in a long while. Question: Why do Cannes posters always harken back to the ’60s or before? The ’60s were a half-century ago — weren’t there any strong iconic images or profound cinematic stirrings that arose out of films from the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s?

In a little more than a week March will have ended and 25% of 2016 will have passed. So let’s assess where we are, highlight-wise. I haven’t much time (our Hanoi airport taxi leaves in 45 minutes) and yes, I usually wait until the one-third mark to post a spitball assessment but here’s a starter list that stood out for me. I haven’t time to re-explain my choices so I’ve included links to original reviews.

I’m assuming that Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which I won’t be seeing until I return on 3.28, won’t be good enough to rank as one of the first quarter’s best nor bad enough to be called a legendary stinker. Apologies for missing films that might’ve been mentioned had I been more diligent:

Three-Way Tie for Best Film of 2016 So Far: Robert Eggers‘ The Witch, Gavin Hood‘s Eye in the Sky and Bob Nelson‘s The Confirmation.

Best New Unreleased Film I’ve Seen in 2016, Hands Down: Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea.

Reprehensible: Tim Miller‘s Deadpool.

Over-Praised By Lockstep Critics Determined to Give Jeff Nichols A Pass Because He’s One Of The Good Guys: Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special.

Wildly Over-Praised: Dan Trachtenberg‘s 10 Cloverfield Lane.

I Don’t Do/Can’t Do/Won’t Do Family-Friendly Animation: Zootopia.

Tragic Collapse: Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups.

Very Good For What It Is, But Calm Down: Roar Uthaug‘s The Wave.

Shortfaller, Not Up To Par: Joel & Ethan Coen‘s Hail, Caesar!.

Efficient, Reasonably Decent, Trump-Approved War Movie: Michael Bay’s 13 Hours.

Sloppy, Sometimes Idiotic, Trump-Mentality, Kill-the-Terrorists Exploitation: Babak Najafi‘s London Has Fallen.

I’m afraid this is one of those times when I won’t be able to bang out the usual quota. It’s 11:05 pm Sunday in Hanoi (9:05 am in Los Angeles), and we’re leaving tomorrow morning on an 8:15 am flight to Dong Hoi, where we’ll be for the better part of two days. That means a 5 am wakeup and I haven’t packed yet. We’ve just returned from a five-course dinner at Ly Club. This morning I captured seven minutes of GoPro footage of a bike ride through the Old Quarter, but I somehow forgot to pack the upload cord that fits into the camera, and the local GoPro dealer doesn’t sell them — brilliant all around. So I shot the below footage during the cab ride back to the Art Trendy hotel. No GoPro footage until I return to Los Angeles. Time to pack and crash.

Ho Chi Minh mausoleum.

I liked and respected the Broadway stage version of All The Way, but it didn’t knock me flat on my back. The trailer for Jay Roach’s HBO adaptation (debuting on 5.21), in which Bryan Cranston again plays Lyndon Johnson during his greatest historical hour, suggests it might be a bit more finessed and therefore a tad more engrossing. Some things work better when they don’t have be broadly performed and more or less shouted from a stage. Costarring Anthony Mackie (Martin Luther King), Melissa Leo (Lady Bird Johnson), Bradley Whitford (Hubert Humphrey), Stephen Root (J. Edgar Hoover), Todd Weeks (Walter Jenkins), Mo McRae (Stokely Carmichael), Spencer Garrett (Walter Reuther) and Frank Langella (Sen. Richard Russell).

In yesterday’s “Don’t Count Chickens” post, I said that Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation “might snag a Best Picture nomination, maybe, but it’ll be no duckwalk.” I was immediately chided by commenters who were certain I meant to say “cakewalk.” No, I didn’t. “Piece of cake”, fine, but what does “cakewalk” even mean? I’ve been using the term “duckwalk” since Al Pacino‘s Tony Montana used it in this scene from Scarface (’83). So that’ll be enough of that, thank you very much.

Yesterday Vulture‘s Mark Harris tweeted that perhaps the best thing that could happen to Terrence Malick would be if some producer or distributor of a vulgar bent were to get tough with him and demand at least a semblance of a well-shaped, thematically developed script and, one could add, adherence to at least some of the basic staples of narrative drama. And then Dave Kehr re-tweeted this. At which point yours truly, way the hell out of the loop in Hanoi, breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Because two noteworthy persons have finally gotten on-board with what I’ve been saying all along, which is that Malick needs another Bert Schneider to slap him around and save him from his worst tendencies. Glenn Kenny pooh-poohed this suggestion when I first brought it up two or three (more?) years ago. Ball’s in his court.