Fascination, intrigue, recognition, emotional alignment, spiritual uplift, a reflection of a cultural-political era, etc.

Kris Tapley has allegedly seen A Complete Unknown, but David Poland apparently hasn’t. I’m completely serious about the “Poland curse” — whatever James Mangold’s film turns out to be, I don’t want it to suffer because of this write-up. It wouldn’t be fair.

Last night in Glendale, Arizona, Donald “king of beasts” Trump summoned a violent fantasy by seeming to threaten Liz Cheney with a potential shooting…”nine barrels aimed at her.” But not so fast.

To be fair Trump was using the same kind of hypothetical that a late ’60s or early ’70s anti-war protestor might have been suggested in the cases of Robert MacNamara or Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War — “If Kissinger or MacNamara were suddenly thrust into combat duty in Vietnam, the war would very quickly come to an end” or words to that effect.

Trump mentioning the idea of Cheney facing bullets was obviously a rogue, stupid, inflammatory thing to say, and once he said this you can bet that a sizable contingent of gun-toting rightwing wackos immediately began to imagine Cheney being shot. But Trump, I think, was mainly trying to buttress his argument that Cheney is a “radical war hawk”, apparently because she favors supporting Ukraine in its long war against Russia.

Quentin Tarantino to Brett Easton Ellis on Joker: Folie a Deux:

Posted on Hollywood Elsewhere, 10.3.24:

I’m not running for elective office so I can blurt out the raw truth of it. Most semi-educated, hungry-for-knowledge people hate the lazybone bumblefucks — the rural Pennsylvania ones in particular — and their grunting, shuffling, “why can’t I live like a fabulous wealthy person?” attitudes.

I didn’t mean to say “stupid” — I meant ineducable.

I am personally soothed and even delighted to hear that so many of these overweight, poorly-dressed, gold-toe-sock-wearing life forms are frustrated and unhappy. Because they deserve to suffer. Because God wants them to…really. It’s their fate, their Biblical burden. The world is for the few.

I’ve rarely said this out loud as it makes me sound like a misanthrope, but the misery of these grumbling mope-heads kinda warms the cockles of my heart. I won’t express this in social situations, of course. Socially I smile and say “thank you” and show deference, but my deep-down feelings are a different story. Especially when I’m visiting the “Alabama” sections of Pennsylvania.

…by pronouncing it correctly. It’s not PORTO Rico, as so many have pronounced it since last weekend’s MSG MAGA rally. It’s pronounced (tapping this out phonetically for the dumbshits) PuhWEHRTO Rico.

Okay?

Seriously. Iconic.

I’ve just purchased a Trivial Pursuit “Silver Screen” edition, which is only for older hardcore film buffs — Millennials and Zoomers will have a very tough time with it, and even younger GenXers may be stumped for the most part.

The questions were written in ‘85 or thereabouts so unless you’re up on the careers of William S. Hart, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Ben Hecht, Brian Donlevy, Edmond O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, Gregg Toland, Andy Devine, David O. Selznick (a racist, sexist, pep-pill-popping scumbag!), Joan Blondell, Myrna Loy, Pat O’Brien, Rudolph Valentino, etc.

It makes me sick to go through online movie trivia games that have obviously been written by (or are aimed at) clueless under-40s.

I wish for the sake of Thanksgiving gatherings that a 1984-to-2024 edition could be made available. Way back when I always aced the ‘85 questions, and I’d manage the same, of course, with my imagined Silver Screen 2. Maybe there is such a board game — maybe I’m overlooking something.

Last Friday (10.25) I posted a Nightmare on Elm Street election–anxiety freak–out piece so I can’t go there again — it’s only been 72 hours. My waiting-to-be-electrocuted feelings are only going to intensify between now and 11.5 — eight days!! — so medicating is almost certainly on the rise.

Ari Emanuel to Puck’s Matthew Belloni:

“[It’s] going to come down to 120,000 votes. You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala.” Wait — 40% of registered women voters are going for The Beast? Ari: “It’s a jump ball. We’re going to find out who wants this more — men or women.”

From Molly Ball’s 10.27 Wall Street Journal report, “America Is Having a Panic Attack”:

Here’s my favorite paragraph:

HE for one believes in the sleeping-male–Kamala–supporter theory…thank you! Okay, not really but I’d like to believe in it.

As I confessed last Friday…

A B-plus grade isn’t a major problem, but it is a slight one. It means that a certain percentage of the Conclave respondents had an issue or argument withg the ending. trust me. Traditional Catholics, traditional-minded people, Average Joes and Janes, etc. I saw it for a third time on Thursday night (I had to flush that awful Montclair Film Festivql screening out of my head), and there was a somewhat older couple sitting behind me, and when the lights came up they were obviously a bit displeased, and perhaps even a bit stunned. I could feel their vibe

I’m physically sick with worry about what may happen 12 days hence. James Carville has noted that just before close elections things tend to break one way or another, and right now…dear God I can’t even think it, much less say it.

I’ve suffered nightmares in which I’m about to be executed…two or three minutes before being led up the wooden steps of the gallows or tied to a Paths of Glory firing-squad post, and the burning, churning stomach acid sensations have been so intense and convulsive that I’ve awoken in a cold panic, Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo-style.

That’s what I’m feeling now except I’m wide awake, and God help us all. I’m Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse, tied buck naked to a four-poster with Satan approaching….”this isn’t a dream…this is really happening!”

Tens of thousands of registered nihilists are telling pollsters that they believe that slapping down the extreme left (a goal I completely sympathize with) is more important than preserving a semblance of order, decency and democracy…

These under-educated, rural-or-suburban heartland psychos apparently believe that a Trumpocalypse, an authoritarian, Hitlerian revenge scenario…a threatened state of siege orchestrated by a clearly declining 78 year-old, foam-at-the-mouth criminal sociopath…is preferable to handing the reins of power to a decent, sensible humanist normie who may underwhelm due to her regulated mediocrity but then again she might not…who knows?

I’ve been trusting all along that fundamental decency would prevail in the end. Now I don’t know.

What kind of sick, reality-denying animals believe that bringing Trump back would be a good thing? I feel like I’m barricaded inside that house in Night of the Living Dead and that zombie Trumpies, naked and growling, are pounding on the doors.

Then again Kamala Harris has mostly done this to herself.

All she had to do was renounce the progressive crazies and pledge herself to sensible, constructive, classic liberalism, and she didn’t have the stones to do that…she didn’t even have the minimal courage to say that white males needn’t be a problem and that healthy masculinity can and should be a vital cultural ingredient…she couldn’t even admit that woke insanity is a thing, which it has been, of course, since ‘18 or thereabouts…

Dear God, I’ve never been this scared in my life.

Jill Stein could come to her senses, but of course, being who and what she is, that’s not an option.

Is Kamala Harris charismatic and razzle-dazzly enough to serve as the nation’s 47th president? She doesn’t need to be. What matters is that she’s a decent, ethically grounded, steady-as-she-goes and obviously intelligent politician.

Harris can memorize and repeat the necessary talking points and can project sincerity and conviction as far as it goes, but she isn’t much for thinking on her feet and verbally tap-dancing like some wowser wordsmith…she’s no Bill Clinton, no improvisational dynamo…generating occasional breakthrough moments and special political poetry seems to elude her for the most part.

Harris was pretty good during tonight’s CNN Town Hall but she’ll never be gifted at this stuff. We all understand this, I think. But you know what else?

Within the personality and basic approach of a hard-working, carefully constructed operator, she comes off as a serious, sensible, focused, practical–minded and fundamentally moral person who isn’t into fooling around or playing games or lowering the colloquial so the rubes can have a little fun…she is who she is, and Lord knows she’s a much better human being than Donald Trump, who is clearly dangerous and insane.

I’m going to repeat this: Harris is a much better person than Trump — more sensible, more mature, a believer in regulated thought. The woke thing burns within her and that’s unfortunate, but at heart she sees life in steady, practical terms. She’s no Gavin Newsom-level orator, but she won’t generate storms of madness and chaos.

“It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican…don’t pay it!”