I disengaged from the Ghost Protocol Burj Khalifa scene almost immediately.

Tom Cruise‘s right-hand grip glove stopped working after 90 seconds of use, he fell 15 or 20 feet but stopped the fall with one grip-glove (the left one), used a firehouse to run down the outside of the bulding and then, toward the end, rappelled along the outside of the building and then leapt toward the open, glass-free window panel. Bullshit. I was so overwhelmed by skepticism that I couldn’t enjoy it.

But Matt Damon’s telling of the “safety guy” story to Conan O’Brien, which I only just listened to this morning…this is entertaining. Why? Because it reveals a certain kind of character trait — hardcore and perfectionist and focused only on the prize — in a funny way.

I love it when sea lions show trashy, texting humans who’s boss and make them run for cover. This La Jolla territorial rampage was probably about protecting pups. “Danyourd” tweeted yesterday that the small cove in question is “was built as a safe area for kids to swim. Seals showed up in the 1980s and have overrun and polluted it.”

A group of people were chased by two Sea Lions at a beach in the La Jolla area of San Diego. Lifeguards were on standby in the water ensuring no one was hurt and the sea lions could easily make their way. It's recommended people stay at least 50 ft away from sea lions. 📹: Charli pic.twitter.com/KUhLVns8H7

— Malik Earnest (@MalikEarnest) July 10, 2022

In his Variety review of Alex Holder’s allegedly underwhelming Unprecedented, Owen Gleiberman puts on his political hat and issues a warning:

I’m halfway through Tomasz Winski‘s Borders of Love, which recently debuted at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. We all understand how things eventually go when a couple tries an open relationship. Somebody abuses the rules in some way, shape or form and trust goes out the window. I’ve seen Ingmar Bergman‘s Scenes From A Marriage (’73), of course — similar territory. At the very least the newbie is moderately interesting.

Friendo: How has our world been made better by the erasure of Charlie Rose?

HE: Rose, as you well know, is serving a term of indefinite banishment for having been a creepy lech with women who worked for him. He’s been #MeToo’ed and guillotined and is for all practical purposes a dead man, and that’s that.

Friendo: I know but my question is ‘how has our world been made better without him’?

HE: It’s not better. Not by my sights. I loved his show for years. But anyone who says that openly will have the woke Stasi on their ass.

Friendo: We have these gaping holes in our culture now. It’s grotesque that we are living this way. Rose’s show was so soothing and elevating and necessary and seemingly irreplaceable, and it’s not like he died.

HE: We’re living in a totalitarian system of sorts — a tyranny of sensitive Millennial Stalinists determined to make things safer by way of terror. Rose didn’t die, of course, but he’s “dead” all the same. I loved his interviews with smart filmmakers. He could be a bit of a dick in person — a curt, dismissive type if you weren’t famous enough for his tastes.

Friendo: I guess but I feel like with all of this nonsense I’m being punished. I have to live in a world without Charlie Rose. I have to live in a world without movies produced by Scott Rudin. I have to live in a world without great comedy all because of little cry babies who throw a fit and everybody responds like indulgent parents.

HE: Cry babies by way of the East German secret police.

25 days ago the world-famous Tom Hanks, an industry A-lister for 35 years and a 65 year-old boomer looking to project an acceptance of the present, was quoted saying the following to the New York Times:

“Let’s address ‘could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now?’ No, and rightly so. The whole point of Philadelphia was don’t be afraid. One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy. It’s not a crime, it’s not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity.”

Hanks’ Philadelphia character, Andy Beckett, a hotshot attorney working for a powerful Philly law firm, was professionally closeted but otherwise “out” as far as his family, nocturnal lifestyle and loft-sharing boyfriend (Antonio Banderas) were concerned. And if Jonathan Demme’s 1993 film were to be remade today, Andy would have to be played by a gay actor, Hanks seems to believe — no ifs, ands or buts. (He’d also have to be totally out, most likely.)

But what about Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein in the currently filming Maestro?

Bernstein was a gay man, and living a life not unlike Andy Beckett’s — publicly and professionally closeted, and accomodating himself to a “beard” marriage to Felicia Montealegre (whom he genuinely loved and with whom he had three kids) to further his career. But first, foremost and finally, in the words of Arthur Laurents, Bernstein was “a gay man who got married…he wasn’t conflicted about his sexual orientation at all…he was just gay.”

So if Andy Beckett was basically Leonard Bernstein and vice versa, will the authentic identity casting fascists be complaining next year that the apparently straight Cooper shouldn’t be playing the esteemed composer of West Side Story? Hanks has called this a settled issue — no more high-profile straight actors playing gay guys because “we’ve beyond that now” and the public is entitled to “demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity.”

It is HE’s view, of course, that the “authentic identity casting fascists” are insane, and that gifted actors should be allowed to play anyone they want as long as they can pull it off, and that includes Hanks as Beckett, Hugh Grant as Maurice, Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, William Hurt as the gay inmate in Kiss of the Spider Woman, Heath Ledger as Ennis del Mar and even Laurence Olivier as “the Mahdi” in Khartoum and Orson Welles as Othello. But that’s me.

I’ve watched YouTube snippets of The Untouchables, the hit Desilu TV series that ran from ’59 through ’63. But I’ve never watched an actual episode. Partly because the lighting is so flat and the production design and general atmosphere seem so inauthentic, presumably due to the relatively low TV-series budget.

The first 25 minutes of the better funded Some Like It Hot (’59) looked and felt like old-time Chicago, or at least convinced you that it was a reasonable facsimile.

But The Untouchables used a signature image that everyone knew — a main-title drawing of a group of Chicago wise guys up to no good. It was seen at the start and close of each episode, and that image has always bothered me because of the alien-meets-carved-Pinocchio features of the second-from-the-left guy.

If he looked vaguely human there would be nothing to say, but he clearly doesn’t. Plus his hat is two or three sizes too large. Strange vibes.

It’s somewhere between a charcoal drawing and a wood carving with a conveyance of early 20th Century Ashcan impressionism (I’m reminded of George Bellows‘ “Stag at Sharkey’s“, and I especially love the lunging body language of the second-from-the-right guy) and yet none of the other six men are biologically or proportionately beyond the pale. You could call it “Six Gangsters Fleeing An Alien With An Oversized Hat.” I just needed to say that.