One mark of a substandard thriller is to assign evil, malevolent motives to animals. Big animals with big teeth might seem scary to humans, but they don’t think evil thoughts or kill for “sport,” which is to say for perverse reasons. They’ll kill for revenge or because of tribal animosity (lions killing hyenas, giraffes kicking lions) but not sport. Humans do that. Animals are about basic instincts.

HE to HBO Publicists: “Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All pops next Sunday and Monday on HBO, and aside from Deadline‘s Michael Fleming and his ex-Variety boss and colleague Peter Bart, I don’t know a soul who’s been offered access to a screener or an online code or a theatrical screening or anything. N.Y. Post contributor Robert Rorke critic ran a review on 3.25, but nobody in my realm has seen it or anything. Anything you can tell me?”

About six and a half years ago I posted an mp3 of Sinatra’s “Soliloquy” — not the’46 version but the one recorded for the 20th Century Fox/Henry King film version of Carousel before Sinatra abruptly quit and Gordon MacRae was hired to replace him. Sinatra wasn’t quite the belter that MacRae was, but he brought so much more finesse to this song. The intimate phrasing, soulful tremolo, bassy comfort zone, etc.

I’m sorry but this is the only Dwayne Johnson skit from last night’s SNL that I really laughed at. I would’ve responded earlier but I only caught the show this morning, and I was only half-watching anyway. SNL is so white noisey these days. Oh, and if they made a feature-length movie out of this (i.e., fuck the hunters), I would definitely buy a ticket.

The great Czech-born cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek, whose career began with ’60s Czech New Wave films including Milos Forman‘s The Firemen’s Ball and The Loves of a Blonde and who later shot Forman’s Taking Off, Hair, Ragtime and Amadeus, has died at age 80. Ondricek also shot Lindsay Anderson‘s If… and O Lucky Man!, Mike Nichols‘ Silkwood and George Roy Hill‘s Slaughterhouse-Five (i.e., “Schlachthaus-fünf”). He also dp’ed Penny Marshall‘s A League of Their Own. Salutes, sadness, condolences. One of the great ones. Ondricek’s work on Ragtime and Amadeus was Oscar-nominated for Best Cinematography but he didn’t win. I’ll take it very badly of the Academy if they don’t include this legendary artist in next year’s death reel.

Celebrated cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek

In a 3.29 post, Deadline‘s Anita Busch has given some attention to a testimony-based play about the Ferguson tragedy by journalist and documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer. The “staged reading,” based on grand-jury witness testimony from the Darren Wilson-Michael Brown shooting investigation, will be presented for four nights next month at L.A.’s Odyssey theatre. After the show ends “the audience will…judge whether Ferguson officer Darren Wilson should have been indicted,” Busch writes.

Excuse me? The last time I looked the Wilson-Brown incident had been thoroughly investigated in a fair and judicious fashion, and — I hope what I’m about to say doesn’t disturb anyone — the consensus is that Wilson is in the clear and that Brown would be breathing fresh air today if he didn’t act like an aggressive asshole when Wilson confronted him on Canfield Drive. On 3.4.15 Eric Holder‘s Department of Justice delivered an 86-page report about the 8.9.14 shooting, and concluded in no uncertain terms to Wilson acted reasonably and with justification.

So what’s the verdict on the Get Hard outrage? Some HE regulars must have seen it last night. Is saying “take it easy, this is way overblown” a semi-legitimate view or not? Does the politically correct anger seem excessive or more or less appropriate? Is Get Hard a rough equivalent of Eddie Murphy‘s “Mr. T in a gay bar” joke?

“I’m sadly very familiar with the aesthetic that drives this film. Hollywood will always pay lip service to the gay community but when it comes down to the bottom line, they are still going to dredge up those old derogatory tropes and stereotypes. Gay panic is one thing and rape jokes are another and to put these two things together is especially pathetic on the part of the studio.

My first thought was that (a) Marina Caregivers is an assisted living facility for elderly folks, and (b) it seemed a little bizarre to have blondie, who looks like a love doll, try to lure fresh customers from the corner of Washington Blvd. and Glencoe Avenue. Then I looked them up and realized they’re selling different strains of cannabis sativa. I don’t know how long blondie has been flashing their sign but what kind of fiend comes along and tears her arm off?

In a 2008 More Intelligent Life piece about Bill Forstyh‘s Local Hero (’83), star Peter Riegert is quoted by Jasper Rees as follows: “Bill [Forsyth] understood that moviegoers are not interested in what the actors are feeling. They’re interested in what they’re feeling.”

Precisely! This is a perfect distillation of the entire Hollywood Elsewhere approach to reviewing movies and performances. This is the sine qua non, the emerald, the whole magillah, the words in passing from Peter Reigert, speaking six and a half years ago, that give the game away.

I’m always perfectly aware of the feelings that an actor is attempting to generate with his or her personality or application of technique or whatever, but all I care about is what I’m feeling as I sit slumped in my seat, tripping happily on the film or the performance or trying to make heads or tails of either one. I might “respect” what a filmmaker has tried to accomplish with this or that approach, but all I care about and all I’m going to write about at the end of the day is if this approach works for me. For I am King Solomon…the ultimate arbiter, the one-man jury, inspector of the final product, giver or denier of the FDA seal of approval.

A performance or a movie, in other words, is not about the idea or theme or cultural undercurrent propelling the filmmakers, but about how I fucking feel as I contemplate the finality of it
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I’m a teeny bit nervous about the trailer for Rob Garver‘s What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, which is currently filming and expected to open at the end of the year. It’s just a trailer on the fly, but the dependence on stills and tag lines feels substandard. There’s a general aura of caution and a lack of funds. A doc about the most influential film critic of the 20th Century should be dynamic, vividly visual, bothered, manic, flourishy and to some degree reflective of the rhythms and brushstrokes of some of the mid-century filmmakers Kael deeply admired. It should move and seduce and agitate. It should deliver, in short, a facsimile of the colloquial style and obsessive energy of Kael’s writing. The trailer doesn’t begin to suggest that it will do that. Here’s hoping everything works out regardless. [Note: Ignore the idiotic “sorry — because of its privacy settings, this video cannot be played here” message and just click on “watch on Vimeo” button.]

I am Steve Coogan‘s character here, and he is me. Except I’m less testy with a somewhat more positive outlook. It should be noted that Happyish (Showtime, debuting on 4.26) was primarily developed by Shalom Auslander, an American author and essayist whose writing style is “notable for its Jewish perspective and determinedly negative outlook.” It should also be noted that Ken Kwapis, a lightweight, Catholic-raised sitcom guy who directed the pilot and “most” of the first season’s episodes, directed The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and He’s Just Not That Into You.

The first words you hear in this teaser for Spectre (MGM/Columbia, 11.5) are out of the mouth of Naomi Harris‘s Miss Moneypenny: “Frehnsic finelee relees’d this.” Listen to it a couple of more times and you finally realize she’s saying “forensics finally released this.” Then she informs Daniel Craig‘s 007 that “you’ve got a secret…something you can’t tell anyone because you don’t trust anyone.” Is James Bond is about to learn that his father is Darth Vader? At the end it says “coming soon”…29 or 30 weeks from now is “soon”? It’s opening on 11.6.