Criterion has a multi-disc Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Bluray package coming out on 7.2 — two 4K discs, two 1080p discs, all kinds of extras.

It will contain three versions of Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 western. The longest and most true to Peckinpah’s original vision (allegedly around 122 minutes) is called the 50th Anniversary Release. A 115-minute version, I think, and the truncated 106-minute theatrical cut will round things out. Something like that.

I saw the 106 way back when, and it’s slightly better than okay. Standard Peckinpah flourishes. Talky. Decent performances (James Coburn’s Garrett stands out, Kris Kristofferson’s Billy is okay, Bob Dylan’s “Alias” is mostly a goof). Peckinpah himself has a cameo. The film reaches for sadness, radiates a certain folklore current, a loathing of selling out and thereby losing your soul, etc. I recall R.G. Armstrong getting shot by Kristofferson, and Kris performing a sex scene with Rita Coolidge.

I wouldn’t call it a problematic film, but I can’t imagine an extra 15 minutes making a huge difference. I’m therefore not sure that the film is worth the royal Criterion treatment.

…that what Bill Maher was talking about last Friday night is happening in schools? That it’s real? And that shaping the soft-clay minds of young kids on trans issues has become a mainstream public-school thing…stamped, signed and endorsed by the Democratic Party?

He really thinks all is well, and that my seconding what Maher said the night before last is…what, some kind of obsessive, fear-driven thing on my part?

Friendo sez…

Again, here it is.

I’m sorry but Hitchcock’s continuity person on North by Northwest should have been canned.

Termination error #1: Roger Thornhill’s scrawled message on the inside cover of his R.O.T. matchbook was composed within three lines, but when Eve Kendall reads it on the couch downstairs it has four lines.

Termination error #2: Several matches are missing when the message is initially written, but when Eve reads it the match supply is restored to full capacity.

Errors copied — not discovered by me.

Screenshot

Posted, ignored and quickly fire-walled on 8.7.21: It was a warm midsummer evening in the small town of Walton, New York, possibly ’81 but more likely ’82. I was staying that weekend with my dad, Jim Wells, at his country cabin on River Road, right alongside the West Branch of the Delaware River.

Jim was an avid fly fisherman, and when dusk fell all he had to do was put on the rubber waders and stroll into the waist-deep water, which was less than 100 feet away. I’m not exactly the Henry David Thoreau type, but I have to admit that the cabin and the surrounding woods and the other atmospheric trimmings (crickets, feeding fish, fireflies) was quite the combination as the sun was going down.

Alas, I was frisky back then and accustomed to prowling. As a Manhattanite and Upper West Sider (75th and Amsterdam) my evening routine would sometimes include a 7 pm screening and then hitting a bar or strolling around or whatever. The “whatever” would sometimes involve a date with a lady of the moment or maybe even getting lucky with a stranger. It all depended on which direction the night happened to tilt.

So there we were, my dad and I, finishing dinner (maybe some freshly-caught trout along with some steamed green beans and scalloped potatoes) and washing the dishes and whatnot, and I was thinking about hitting a local tavern. I wasn’t a “sitting on the front porch and watching the fireflies” type. I wanted to get out, sniff the air, sip bourbon, listen to music.

So I announced the idea of hitting T.A.’s Place or the Riverside Tavern and maybe ordering a Jack Daniels and ginger ale on the rocks. If I’d been a little more gracious I would’ve asked Jim to join, but we weren’t especially chummy back then. Our relationship was amiable enough, if a little on the cool and curt side. Plus the idea of Jim and I laying on the charm with some local lassie seemed horrific.

I wasn’t seriously entertaining some loony fantasy that I might meet someone and luck out, not in a little one-horse town like Walton, but then again who knew? It was the early ’80s, the ’70s were still with us in spirit, I was looking and feeling pretty good back then, the AIDS era hadn’t happened yet, etc. You had to be there, I guess, but singles had just experienced (and were still experiencing to a certain degree) perhaps the greatest nookie era in world history since the days of ancient Rome.

Plus you could still buy quaaludes at the Edlich Pharmacy on First Avenue. It sounds immature to say this, but life occasionally felt like a Radley Metzger film.

Jim apparently had thoughts along the same lines, as he quickly suggested that we do T.A.’s as a team. I immediately said “uhm, that’s okay,” as in “I’m thinking about going stag and you’ll only cramp my style.” I shouldn’t have said that, and if my father is listening I want him to know that I’m sorry. It was brusque and heartless to brush him off like that.

To his credit, Jim was gracious enough to laugh it off. I heard him tell this story to friends a couple of times.

Jim had bought the River Road cabin from Pam Dawber, who was pushing 30 and costarring in Mork & Mindy at the time. It was located outside of town about three or four miles. My father would send her a check every month, and was very punctual about it. Walton was roughly a 100-minute drive from Manhattan.

“An unexamined life is not worth living but an examined one is still no bargain” — Woody Allen line from Cafe Society.

Angsty Loner (i.e., me) to Mr. Lonelyhearts: I’m 17, a high-school junior, and miserable. Partly (mostly?) due to the fact that my hormones are raging while my experience with hetero physical intimacy has been, shall we say, limited.

Which doesn’t mean I haven’t emotionally suffered over this or that dashed relationship. I’ve eaten my heart out over…I don’t know, seven or eight girls since the third grade. Maybe more. And none of the objects of my desire have been more than semi-interested, if that.

Girls are fickle and flighty and all over the map, and at the end of the day I don’t seem to have what they want. Even temporarily, I mean. Before their mood changes.

So I know a thing or two about unrequited love or lust or, in the best of situations, a combination of the two that is casually, half-assedly or all-too-briefly reciprocated and then forgotten. One of these days or years the real thing will happen, and when it does…I’ll cross that bridge.

My current obsession is blonde and blue-eyed and a little scatterbrained. Or scatter-hearted. She likes me in spurts, and then some other guy moves in.

There are three others she’s enamored of. A cute, stocky, chubby-faced jock. A hippie-ish dude with longish hair, Brooks Brothers shirts and mocassins. And a local cop who’s 27 or 28. And then fourth-place me.

I rolled around with blondie on a bed of pine needles near the local reservoir…once. We made out at a party…once. She slapped me repeatedly at another party, which was her way of saying she wanted my attention. We’ve had some fun times.

But I’m strictly backup. So what do I do? Is there any path to salvation in this agonizing situation?

Mr. Lonelyhearts to Angsty Loner: I’m sorry but no, there isn’t. It sounds cruel to say this, but you’re just going to have to suffer through this infatuation and then eventually move on.

One reason you’re in fourth place (and not third, second or first) is that you’re probably radiating weak, squishy vibes. Probably born of low-self-esteem. If you have any moxie you’ll grow out of that but for the time being it’s your cross to bear.

High-school women are reticent as a rule, and they do hold most of the cards, and if they’re not that interested you can’t stop ’em.

The fact that she’s nursing relationships with four guys simultaneously is a red flag, of course. It means she has self-esteem issues of her own. It won’t kill you to pine for this flighty little blonde. It hurts, of course, but life is a never-ending stream of hurt and troubles. Get used to it. Pain makes you stronger if you can take it.

I’m glad that David Fincher has spent several months restoring as well as upgrading certain aspects of Se7en…cool. I’m also glad that this effort has yielded a 4K Bluray that will pop on 5.3.

I’m sad that I can’t be there for today’s special TCM Classic Film Festival screening, but if a NYC screening happens between now and 5.3, perhaps Fincher will let the cool kidz know or put them on an invite list or something?

From 4.19 Bill Desowitz IndieWire piece:

I sadly understood when Vietnamese monks burned themselves to death in Saigon in the ‘60s, and I sadly understood when Norman Morrison self-immolated in front of the Pentagon in 1965.

But I don’t get why a guy has gone up in flames outside the building in which Mango Beast is being tried for illegally paying off Stormy Daniels and Susan MacDougal.

Maybe the burnt toast guy is some MAGA wacko, protesting the prosecution of his Lord and Savior by the Deep State?

If so, I’m thinking of a scene in The Godfather, Part II in which Michael Corleone is given pause over that Fidel Castro supporter who blows himself up and takes a Batista army officer with him. I have a bad feeling about this.

GRAPHIC:

Man sets himself on fire outside the courthouse at the Trump Trial in NY.

This MADNESS MUST END!

This entire sham trial is ripping our nation apart and causing mass scale, demonic chaos.

The left wants chaos. https://t.co/4NToi6rahr

— Mike Crispi (@MikeCrispiNJ) April 19, 2024

N.Y. Times update:

Okay, forget the MAGA wacko theory.

If Nancy Sinatra says no, perhaps her sister Tina feels the same way?

Anyone with any respect for the biological reality of Francis Albert Sinatra as he walked the earth in the early ‘50s would find the proposed casting of the too-tall, too-wide-faced Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s Frank-Ava biopic to be absurd.

World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy caught this first.

Variety’s Tatiana Siegel, posted on 4.17:

HE agrees with Nancy — the proposed Leo–JLaw casting doesn’t cut it:

On 11.23.11 or 12 and 1/2 years ago I wrote that Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio (then 37) were apparently seriously interested in a Frank Sinatra biopic with Leo playing the relatively short-statured Hoboken crooner.

I was relieved when this idea fell by the wayside as DiCaprio’s physical characteristics don’t even vaguely echo Sinatra’s (zero facial resemblance, Leo is way too tall and not skinny enough, the timbre of their speaking voices couldn’t be further apart).

But now this crazy idea is back again with Variety’s Tatiana Siegel filling in some of the details.

The focus will be on the volatile early ‘50s chapter of Sinatra’s career (seriously slumping as a singer and an actor, embroiled in a torrential marriage to Ava Gardner) and how he was finally rescued and restored by his Pvt. Maggio performance in From Here to Eternity (‘53).

Except the about-to-turn-50 Leo (DOB: 11.11.74) is too old to play Sinatra in his late 30s, plus he’s still the wrong size and shape and everything else.

Plus Jennifer Lawrence can’t possibly pull off an Ava Gardner performance…not in the cards.