Jeffrey Wells

I was walking back to the car after visiting a shoe repair place on Van Sant Street in East Norwalk when all of a sudden this ruddy-faced, shaved-head guy wearing long baggy shorts is right next to me and saying the following in quick succession, like a Gatling gun: (1) “Whassup, Elvis? “, (2) “I like your shoes” and “put it there.”

A voice told me not to shake his hand, and I knew I’d made the right call when he said a second later, “Don’t wanna be friends, huh?”

I’ll shake hands with a stranger over a point of mutual agreement (i.e., “You don’t want a trans person with monster elephant boobs teaching your five-year-old? Put it there, pardner”) but I’ll never shake hands just to shake hands, especially with a skeezy guy.

This really actually happened around 3:15 pm today.

** He didn’t actually say what I said he said. He actually said “whass goin’ on there, Elvis?” I didn’t like how that looked as a headline so I shortened it. Then the lie began to burn through my soul.

At least once a year I stare at the night sky and think of all the hundreds or thousands of intelligent civilizations living on hundreds or thousands of planets out there. Tonight is one of those nights.

Note: This doesn’t change HE’s negative opinion of Jupiter, a pretentious gas planet that you can’t even land on. I used to think of Jupiter as the home of the 2001 black monolith as well as the site of Dave Bowman’s 18th Century condo. No longer!

Since glimpsing this college film-course chart, I’ve been reading about the influential Dziga Vertov. who was very close to Vladimir Lenin. But before this morning I had never heard of the guy. At least I’m willing to admit it.

Eric Clapton and Van Morrison earned their disrepute for Covid-ignoring, mask-refusing obstinacy. But Roger Waters has outdone them by becoming a Putin admirer, or at least a supporter of Russki slaughter in Ukraine.

To me the Nuart has always been the West Los Angeles version of the Cinema Village — a certain storied, neon-marquee, down-at-the-heels atmosphere but never a theatre to get excited about attending, much less write home about.

If you ask me it peaked in the ‘70s and ‘80s, which many regard as the summit of L.A.’s arthouse era (Fox Venice, Beverly Canon, LACMA’s Bing, the varied Laemmle westside showplaces).

From a presentational or impressionistic viewpoint, the Nuart has always been a bowling alley-slash-quonset hut with a smallish screen.

My last viewing at the Nuart was the restored Becket (Glenville + O’Toole + Burton). The quality difference between that subdued, somewhat murky-sounding presentation and what this 1964 film undoubtedly looked and sounded like in big-city, first-run bookings, not to mention the first-rate Bluray….forget it, man.

The best aspect of the vaguely grubby Nuart is still the pinkish-red neon marquee, and even that isn’t what anyone would call spectacular. Okay, maybe I’m being too harsh.

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…posted by Mad Magazine in a June 1969 issue. I’ve never written about the flophouse “hit” scene in Peter Yates’ Bullitt (‘68). A professional assassin, armed with a pump shotgun, nonsensically fails to do the job. Written by Al Jaffee, drawn by Mort Drucker .

But they certainly fill an empty wall.

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This morning “Rosso Veneziano” dismissed Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light as a “panned” film, at least in terms of its award-season potential.

HE response: “Empire of Light is my idea of a sublime and deeply moving yesteryear film, and is exceptionally well acted. There was no question in my mind that it was an authentic, emotionally fine-tuned masterwork after I saw it at the Herzog. It seemed “just right” in so many ways.

“As a study of a few characters living smallish lives in a somewhat isolated English coastal village in 1980 and ‘81, it recalls the complex textures of another tale of small-town characters, some of them grappling with sexual matters and with a certain movie theatre occupying an iconic space in their lives — Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (‘71).

“A few wokester fanatics panning Empire of Light in Telluride (vigilant defenders of Black identity and dignity, they didn’t care for the curious but affecting inter-racial romantic rapport between Olivia Colman and Michael Ward’s characters) doesn’t mean shit.

“Critics are truiy their own species these days, living on their own politically-attuned planet. Eternally fickle and excitably hair-trigger, they often seem divorced from and in some cases contemptuous of Average Joe perceptions about this or that film, and particularly those, it seems, that have explored racial situations or narratives. (2018’s Green Book being another example.)

More than any other time in cinema history, today’s elite critics are, to a large extent, living for and within their own realm.

“There are noteworthy exceptions and honorable outliers, thank God, and I’m not saying the elite critic cabal is entirely untrustworthy, but in the matter of films that either touch upon or seriously explore the holy woke covenant (race, gender, sexuality and whitey-very-bad), they’re never been more unreliable than today.”

Friendo: “I dunno. I’ve spoken to folks who don’t like it, and they didn’t seem to be coming from a woke perspective.”

HE to friendo: “They’re not ‘wrong’ but they’ve allowed themselves to be triggered by the romantic inter-racial dynamic. If Michael Ward’s character (who is only slightly older than Mendes’ age was in ‘80) had been white, the same know-it-alls you’ve spoken to would be much more accommodating. Then again the film wouldn’t stand out as much, of course, if Ward’s character had been a pale-faced Mendes stand-in.”

Bottom line: If you’re dealing with a Black lead character, a director-writer has to play his/her cards in exactly the right way or the elite critics will scold to no end.

Mendes casting Ward as a generational stand-in for himself seemed, at first, like a fashionably woke gambit before I saw it. But the writing and the acting and the overall quality factor won me over. I melted. And Ward is so charming and good-looking.

We can assume that “not suitable for general exhibition” was roughly equivalent to what an R rating means today. (Or used to mean). What in Casablanca could have given moral guardians this level of concern? Probably the allusion to sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage between Richard Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). What else could it be?

Danielle Deadwyler’s performance as the late Emmet Till’s grieving mom was seen this morning by NYFF press…

I have no problem with Rege-Jean Page, the 34 year-old Bridgerton and Gray Man costar, becoming the next James Bond.

Well, maybe I do. I wasn’t knocked out by his one-note Gray Man performance, and Page is kind of slender and small-shouldered and lacks the necessary Sean Connery-like brawn, no? If he were to get into a brutal fight with Robert Shaw aboard the Orient Express (Istanbul to Venice), nobody but nobody would bet on him winning. He’s a bit willowy.

Just for the pure euphoria of it, I would love it if they write the next Bond so he’s not in touch with his delicate inner feelings, but would regress into a courtly, well-educated, Connery-like hound. Connery’s Bond was polite and deferential with women, but he was also a caddish, semi-entitled, self-amused sexist swaggerer. Which is what everyone liked that about him.

A friend says “alpha men can’t be eliminated from film or film will die” — it’s that simple.

Honestly? I say put aside the idea of a BIPOC James Bond and cast Jake Picking. You can dismiss the idea but Picking has the goods — 31, good-looking, muscular, big-chested, nice jawline. All he lacks in the British accent, but that can be learned.

And may I say one other thing? The last time I checked James Bond was dead — killed by British missiles at the end of No Time To Die. I realize that at the end of the credit crawl it didn’t say “007 will be back” but that “James Bond will return.” Which made no sense, of course. How would that work unless the Bond films are going to become period pieces, set in the ’60s or ’70s or whatever? What’s the point of killing a franchise figurehead if you’re just going to bring the character back in a couple of years, like nothing ever happened?

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Late yesterday afternoon I caught Manhattan’s first commercial screening of Peter Farrelly’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple, 9.30 streaming). It happened at 5 pm on the top floor of Union Square’s Regal plex, and I almost died from watching all the crap-level trailers. (The Black Adam is especially toxic.)

This isn’t about the film (my review will appear later this morning) but about a mentally disturbed guy who talked loudly throughout the entire film. To himself.

Nobody said or did anything to influence the behavior of this horse’s-ass-who-was-off-his-meds, myself included. I should’ve manned up and walked over and offered my usual usual —“due respect, bruh, but would you please shut the fuck up?” But an instinct told me that this erudite 30something skull-capped gentleman might be the hair-trigger type. So I sat there and took it.

Thank you, Regal management. I paid thirty-six bills (including medium-size popcorn and a “small” half-quart-sized drink) to have my Greatest Beer Run experience interfered with by a muscle-bound, brain-scrambled psychopath.