The actions of Bob Bergdahl prior to his son’s Bowe‘s release are “now under increased public scrutiny. Was he a worried parent who would do anything to gain the release of his child as the U.S. government’s efforts lagged? Was it, as some have suggested, a secondhand case of Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages express empathy for their captors? Or was it something more — an aggrieved American family that had come to doubt its own country? Bob Bergdahl, many say, was waging his own undeclared war at home.” — from a 6.4 L.A. Times story by John M. Glionna.

My feelings about the Afghanistan military campaign are probably similar to Bob and Bowe Bergdahl’s in some respects, but Bowe’s desertion sounds to me like an act of a mentally unstable asshole, particularly since his desertion led to a search party that resulted in the deaths of fellow combatants.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Shailene Woodley for her gracious response to my having accidentally whacked her across the chops during a Descendants party in Telluride three years ago. Because she cut me a nice break I’m determined to cut her one from here to eternity. That said, the photo on the cover of the new Vanity Fair makes her look too honed-down or something — the vibe feels a little too fine and exacting. But the most interesting riff since last weekend’s surprise success of The Fault In Our Stars is Matt Patches‘ Vulture piece accusing Ansel Elgort‘s Augustus Waters as a vaguely creepy “manic pixie dream guy.” It’s all hard to refute, but I liked Elgort’s performance anyway — the charm and charisma had a lulling effect. I sat there saying to myself, “This guy’s got it.”

In a 6.7 Observer piece, Phillip French offered a rote analysis of Kirk Douglas‘s Chuck Tatum, an avaricious journalist, in Billy Wilder‘s Ace In The Hole (’51): “Like the tarnished heroes of Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment, Tatum is a characteristic Wilder protagonist, a self-loathing anti-hero on his way down and eventually finding redemption or salvation as he approaches rock bottom. [The film] is morally gripping and unsentimental in its refusal to give the audience an easy point of sympathetic identification.”

In fact Ace In The Hole offers a much darker and more rancid portrait of a self-loathing character that the other Wilder films mentioned. I’ve always felt at least some measure of affection or compassion for Sunset Boulevard‘s Joe Gillis, Double Indemnity‘s Walter Neff and The Apartment‘s C.C. Baxter. These guys had ethical issues but were obviously human in various respects. (Baxter was pretty much a cuddly love bunny.)

Tatum isn’t inhuman as much as a conceit — Wilder’s concept of cynical behavior pushed to level 11. A snapping turtle, a piss-and-vinegar reptile from start to finish. His only half-tender moment is when he rhapsodizes about the spiritual glories of New York City. The last time I watched Ace in The Hole (on a Criterion DVD) Tatum began to piss me off. Is there anything about him that isn’t fueled by resentment and spit?

I’m looking to read a PDF of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail Caesar!, a 1950s period piece about a kind of shady Hollywood fixer and scandal-squasher. The character may be based on former ex-cop and private investigator Fred Otash, or on former MGM vp and general manager Eddie Mannix. Or perhaps a mixture of the two. I don’t know if the lead role is being played by George Clooney or Josh Brolin. I don’t know anything, really, but half the fun of any Coen Bros. film is reading it first. I’ve been doing this since Raising Arizona.

I can’t respect a storyteller who doesn’t respect the finality of death. You can’t finesse or modify or bullshit your way around the Big Finish. To say this or that deceased character can be brought back to life is like saying that leaves on the ground can be dyed green and moistened and pasted back on the branches of trees. It was a stretch when James Cameron divulged a couple of years ago that Stephen Lang‘s Colonel Miles Quaritch would return for one or more of the Avatar sequels…after taking a huge arrow in the chest at the end of the 2009 original. Now it’s been announced that Sigourney Weaver‘s character, who also died in Avatar, will return in the three sequels. Cameron’s rationale, offered three years ago, is that “no one ever dies in science fiction.”

A little less than eight years ago I posted a qualified rave about Michael Mann‘s Miami Vice. I made a big passionate deal about the “fumes” in this film, and have taken a lot of shit for using that term ever since. But it’s one of the better-written reviews I’ve ever posted, I feel. I did a nice job of qualifying my praise, and it’s not easy to do that fairly when you’re talking about an 8 rather than a 9 or a 10. I own a Bluray of Miami Vice but I haven’t re-watched it in a long while. Seasons change, things fall away and you move on. But now I’m committed to going there again and experiencing what happens. Here’s the 7.11.06 review in full:

Michael Mann‘s movies are so good and so Rolls Royce that when a new one comes up 8, it’s an easy 9.5 or 10 by everyone else’s standards. If you know his stuff, you know what I’m saying is true. I’m not using the Rolls Royce analogy casually. The elation I felt yesterday from Miami Vice (Universal, 7.28) wasn’t just about tromp-down speed or engineering or a perfectly-tuned engine — that’s standard content in any Mann film. And it wasn’t quite about the sadness and the soul, which is in this film but not in the abundant qualities found in Heat and Collateral and The Insider.

Congrats to the obviously gifted Tony Award-winning Jessie Mueller for her triumphant performance as ’70s songwriter and singer Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” (Which I should have seen when I was in Manhattan five weeks ago.) I think her singing and particularly her phrasing of King’s “You’ve Got A Friend” is more arresting than King’s version, if you want to know. But a sinking feeling poured into me when I read that Mueller said the following during her acceptance speech at the Tonys: “I have to thank God because without him, nothing is possible, and that is true — that will always be true. I’d never want to tell anyone what to believe or not believe. But there’s no doubt in my mind that God put me in the right place at the right time.” Terrific. Because when God joins forces with special-glow humans on this or that endeavor, only wonderful things result. Because God is selective in his alliances. He never buddies up with people of questionable character or motives.

By God’s grace or some other influence, non-Scope films produced by United Artists in the ’50s and ’60s have been mastered for home video (laser disc, DVD, Bluray, streaming) at 1.66 for the most part. This tradition has led Kino Lorber to issue their forthcoming Bluray of Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (’59) in that blessed aspect ratio and not, thank fortune, in the dreaded 1.85. I’m presuming there is ample documentation to prove that On The Beach was projected in many U.S. theatres at 1.85, and I’m fairly certain that aspect ratio historian Bob Furmanek would be happy to provide this documentation and in so doing push for a 1.85 masking if Kino Lorber asked him for advice, but thank God they haven’t.

You too can look like a clueless, fashion-following metrosexual dipshit with the “short suit,” which Business Insider‘s Hayley Peterson says “is finally going mainstream.” J. Crew, Topman, Asos and Barneys are among the retailers selling the short suit. “They may be taking cues from fashion icon Pharrell Williams, who donned tuxedo shorts to the Academy Awards earlier this year,” Peterson writes. The short suit “is definitely having a moment, particularly with younger guys,” Jon Patrick, the creative director at menswear company J.Hilburn, tells Peterson. Especially among brain surgeons who live in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Fargo.

Yesterday’s “What Does Edge Under-Performance Say About Cruise’s Drawing Power?” piece got a lot of replies, but the best was written by HE regular Anna Zed. This might be the nub of it, I’m thinking. Maybe not the whole enchilada but a very significant portion:

“In the AMC in Arcadia where I saw Edge of Tomorrow there was a technical snafu of some kind after the warm-up trailers and ads,” she writes. “We had a blank screen for a full five minutes right at what was supposed to be showtime. I finally went off down the hall in search of an usher (no one else did). Typically, the theater had no idea that the full house was sitting there with no feature playing. The projection booth literally had nobody in it.

“I’m telling you this story because when I found somebody to complain to (all the way out front) I could not remember the title of the film.

“I told him there was a lights-out problem with ‘the Tom Cruise thing.’
“The guy said ‘huh?’
“I said again ‘the Tom Cruise movie.’
“‘Huh?’ again.
“Theater One.”
“Oh, okay, we’ll get someone there right away to fix the problem!”

“So what does that tell ya? I couldn’t remember the name of the damn thing and I spend all of my leisure hours reading movie blogs and had just bought a ticket to it, and the guy working in the theater didn’t even recognize what I was talking about.

“I think they should have gone with Live.Die.Repeat, as someone suggested somewhere on here.

The common assessment was that Doug Liman and Tom Cruise‘s Edge of Tomorrow is an inventive, highly diverting Groundhog Day-meets-D-Day-meets-Starship Troopers, and that it would do bang-up business. Clearly a huge hit waiting to happen, or at least a pretty big one. But it did only moderately well. It didn’t quite top $30 million and therefore came in third behind The Fault In Our Stars ($48 million) and Malificient ($33 million). (The upside is that Edge did $82 million overseas.) Boxoffice Mojo reported that Edge‘s Friday tally of $10.7 million “was lower than Cruise’s last movie Oblivion ($13.3 million) and last August’s Elysium ($11.1 million).” It doesn’t figure. Will it have stronger legs than Stars and manage a bounce-back next weekend? Did a portion of the potential audience believe that Edge might be too similar to Oblivion (futuristic battle scenarios) and figured it was just more of the same? Or has something happened to the Cruise brand? I only know this was unexpected and in fact feels like a bit of a shocker.

Yesterday afternoon I was standing in line at a Best Buy checkout line, and I suddenly felt the too-close presence of the guy behind me. I turned slightly to check him out. He was Latino and heavy-set with a foggy-eyed expression, like a slightly overweight Michael Pena on too much Percodan. And wearing low-rider threads — crummy-looking T-shirt, baggy pants, 99-cent store lace-ups. What struck me was that he wasn’t standing steadily but seemed a tiny bit woozy and unsure of his balance. Was he bombed? Possibly, but that seemed like a bizarre thing in the mid-afternoon inside a big, bright, antiseptic environment like Best Buy. All I knew was that he was violating my 18 inches of space. He would be 24 or 30 inches away and then lean forward and shift his balance and suddenly his head would be less than 12 inches away. Once or twice I felt his breath on the back of my neck or arms. Fuck’s your problem? I turned around and glanced again. This guy’s obviously a psycho, I told myself. Don’t say anything, don’t eyeball him….just chill down and pay for your stuff and let it go. But what kind of asshole can’t stand up straight and observe the 18-inch rule, which is recognized the world over?