I can only surmise that Susan Sarandon is afflicted with some form of mental instability. She’s a symbol for and an argument against everything that Average Joes & Janes despise about the absolutist, vitriolic, nihilistic left. Every sensible person understands that “defund the police” was insanity…everyone except Sarandon. It’s like she’s an agent provocateur planted by the right — like some kind of Manchurian assassin.

If by the late winter or spring of ’23 it looks like Joe Biden‘s chances of being re-elected are somewhere between slim and shitty, and if, like me, you’re terrified of Kamala Harris somehow wrestling the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination into her court and if you think Ritchie Torres is too young, the brilliant and semi-folksy Al Franken should step up to the plate. I’m 100% serious. Trump vs. Franken would be beautiful. Franken is frank, smart and sensible, and everyone knows that he was torpedoed out of his Senate seat over bullshit. Trump is a criminal sociopath and a destroyer of worlds.

Franken’s only problem is that he’s 5’6″ — too inches shorter than Michael Dukakis.

Six or seven years ago I began to assemble a list of the greatest lead performances in feature films, and Monica Vitti in L’Avventura was one of them, you bet.

The names that that came to mind off the top of my head were James Gandolfini in The Sopranos, Geza Rohrig in Son of Saul, Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront and The Godfather, Amy Schumer in Trainwreck (I’m dead serious), George Clooney in Michael Clayton, Gary Cooper in High Noon, George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, Mia Farrow in Broadway Danny Rose, Lee Marvin in Point Blank, Alan Ladd in Shane, Brad Pitt in Moneyball, Marilyn Monroe in Some like It Hot, Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast and Betrayal, Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings, Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton, Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and, last but not least, Vitti in…aww, hell, her entire Michelangelo Antonioni travelogue.

After 90 years and 2 months on the planet earth, Vitti has left for realms beyond. I’m very sorry but then again she really lived a life, particularly during her ultimate star-power and mesmerizing collaboration years with the great Antonioni — a five-year exploration comprised of L’Avventura (’60), La Notte (’61), L’Eclisse (62) and Red Desert (’64).

Were it not for this five-year chapter, we wouldn’t this day be praising Vitti to the heavens. She “lives” today because of Antonioni, and a significant reason for his own exalted early-to-mid-’60s rep is due to — owned by — Vitti’s allure.

In her Antonioni films Vitti always seemed to be thinking “is this all there is?” Or “my God, there’s so little nutrition…I’m sinking into quicksand, withering away…so little in the way or sparkle and joy…nearly every waking minute I’m consumed by the glammy blues.”

Yes, she laughed and loved in L’Ecclisse, but only briefly and anxiously and in a sense ironically. The African tribal dance sequence was the exception — a spoof, of course, but lively and sexy.

Born in 1931, Vitti was 28 or 29 at the beginning of her Antonioni period and 33 when their collaboration ended — no spring chicken even at the start.

From Adam Bernstein’s Washington Post obit: “Her willowy physique, husky voice, full lips and mane of sun–kissed blond hair gave her a raw sensual appeal. But Antonioni cast her against type in a cycle of acclaimed films about emotional detachment and spiritual barrenness. He made her the personification of glamorous malaise.”

Take L’Avventura, for one example. It’s about wealthy Italians wandering about in a state of gloomy drifting, anxious and vaguely bothered and frowning a good deal of the time.

The movie is about the absence of whole-hearted feeling, and it never diverts from this. If there’s a moment in which Vitti conveys even a hint of serenity in her intimate scenes with Gabriele Ferzetti, it barely registers. I don’t remember a single shot in which Ferzetti smiles with even a hint of contentment.

From “Red Desert Return“: “I saw Red Desert for the first time in 2015. I know the Antonioni milieu, of course, and had read a good deal about it over the years, so I was hardly surprised to discover that it has almost no plot. It has a basic situation, and Antonioni is wonderfully at peace with the idea of just settling into that without regard to story.

“And for that it seemed at least ten times more engrossing than 80% or 90% of conventional narrative films I see these days, and 87 times better than the majority of bullshit superhero films.

“Vitti plays a twitchy and obviously unstable wife and mother who’s been nudged into a kind of madness by the industrial toxicity around her, and Richard Harris is an even-mannered German businessman visiting smelly, stinky Ravenna. The film is about industrial sprawl and poisoned landscapes and a lot of standing around and Vitti’s neurotic gibberish and a certain caught-in-the-mud mood that holds you like a drug, specifically like good opium.

“Each and every shot in Red Desert (the dp is Carlo di Palma, whom Vitti later fell in love with) is quietly breathtaking. It’s one of the most immaculate and mesmerizing ugly-beautiful films I’ve ever seen. The fog, the toxins, the afflictions, the compositions.”

Herewith an unverified and highly suspicious copy of a statement allegedly prepared or first-drafted by CNN honcho Jeff Zucker…prepared but never released:

“For 20 years I have been closely allied with Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vp and chief marketing officer and one of the highest-ranking leaders of the network, totally involved in all major business and communications decisions. Anyway we were CNN colleagues and allies for a long time, and at a certain point and with both of us divorced we added physical intimacy to the mix. And to that I say two things — ‘big fucking deal’ and ‘what’s it to ya?’

“Seriously, it’s really none of your damn business. I can use the high, hard option to consecrate any relationship with any consenting and unattached adult on the face of the planet, inside or outside of the company, and in a perfect world CNN stockholders would have nothing to say about this. Private boning is not an activity for public sharing or examination.

“It used to be just Allison and I, thick as thieves, conferring about everything. And then there was suddenly a third presence — i.e., Mr. Happy.

I shouldn’t have to state the obvious, but I’ll say it anyway. Mr. Happy had nothing to say about CNN strategies and administrative policies. He has his own agenda, an agenda that has zip to do with the fortunes or visions of CNN or the satisfaction levels of the viewing audience, and so I, Jeff Zucker, decided to keep his presence on the down-low.

“What difference could this make to viewers or shareholders? Power couples, married or not, have long indulged in sexual affairs to fortify and solidify their power within a given company or situation, and I mean for centuries. We were collaborators and mutual consultants for years, and then we added heavy breathing to our activities. BIG FUCKING DEAL.”

Whatever the validity of this alleged statement, Zucker has resigned from CNN because of the Mr. Happy factor.

Relatively inexpensive, corporate-brand pizza sells the world over. Ordered yesterday in Moscow by Gleb, Tatiana’s 22 year old son.

I’m 100% dead certain that Whoopi Goldberg has heard the 1930s and ‘40s Third Reich notion that Nazis were building a “master race,” and that they regarded Jews as an inferior or untrustworthy tribe, and therefore the Holocaust was driven by racial hate. Whoopi has certainly absorbed this basic history lesson — who hasn’t? She therefore screwed up when she said otherwise on The View. I’n filing this under the heading of “an error of articulation,” but in today’s culture you have to be punished when you say the wrong thing.

Chris Petit‘s Radio On (’79) may be the most lethargic and downish “cruising the motorway while listening to cool music” film ever made. Nothing “happens,” it goes nowhere, and the energy levels are almost nonexistent. And yet it captures something, although I know not what. It gets into your head and somehow sticks to your ribs.

Martin Schaefer‘s black-and-white cinematography captures what it felt like to be all listless and bummed out in England 42 or 43 years ago. Bummed verging on catatonic, I mean. It captures what it felt like be a sullen, morose, borderline nihilistic, soft-spoken hipster with a cutting edge flat-top haircut (fuck you!), tooling around and listening to all the late ’70s cool groups — Police, Devo, Kraftwerk, Spandau Ballet, Dire Straits, Cheap Trick, The Rumour, The Clash — on the car radio as you were going nowhere in the rain, thinking nothing and barely awake…just plotzing in the driver’s seat, nodding out, dreaming about possibly scoring some heroin.

A friend and I were discussing the strength of Academy-voter enthusiasm for Nicole Kidman‘s performance in Being The Ricardos.

I honestly like and respect her Lucille Ball as far as it goes, but I’m not getting the Best Actress fervor. Put it this way: I admired her in Being The Ricardos, but I like Lucille Ball‘s performances in Five Came Back or Too Many Girls a bit more.

We all know what the Nicole narrative was before everyone saw Being The Ricardos. “She’s wrong for the part, doesn’t look like Lucy, they should have hired Debra Messing,” etc. Then it opened and everyone said “oh, Nicole’s better than we expected…not bad!” And then somehow that got turned into Best Actress Oscar heat.

Kidman’s Lucy is satisfactory but is it Oscar-level good? She’s fine but it’s almost laughable to even compare her Lucy performance to Penelope Cruz in Parallel Mothers.

While Jordan Ruimy also approves of Kidman’s Lucy performance, he claims it isn’t as good as she was in To Die For, Birth, The Hours, The Others, Moulin Rouge, Destroyer, Birthday Girl, Bombshell, The Paperboy, Rabbit Hole, Portrait of a Lady and Dogville.

This led me to wonder what David Thomson, author of “Nicole Kidman” (’08) and arguably her greatest fan, thinks of her work in Being The Ricardos. So I reached out and Thomson replied as follows:

“I agree with Jordan. I think Being the Ricardos is an absurd project that ends up dejected. Whereas the younger Kidman could take silly ventures and make them seem necessary. I don’t think Kidman is turned on by Lucille, whereas we felt she was eating To Die For (among others) alive.”

Alternate Thomson take: “Miraculously Kidman could channel her sexuality into the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf [in The Hours], but she can muster none of that interest in Lucille Ball. I suspect she [had] dreamt of being Woolf but finds Ball a pain in the neck. Just guessing.”