Tatiana and I attended last night’s 6 pm screening of George Clooney and William Monahan‘s The Tender Bar (Amazon, 12.17 theatrical, 1.7 streaming) at the DGA. Then we hit the after-party at the Sunset Tower hotel.

Set in Manhasset and Connecticut in the ’70s and ’80s, the movie is a warm, occasionally jarring family affair about the usual dysfunctions and obstacles…nurtured in a bar, romantic yearnings, toil and trouble, struggling to be a writer, etc.

Tye Sheridan‘s performance was the best element for me; Ben Affleck delivers an “amiable boozy uncle with a distinctive Long Island accent” performance that might result in a Best Supporting Actor nom. This, at least, was the general consensus at the Sunset Tower.

Tatiana says The Tender Bar is going to emotionally connect like Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast has. Sid Ganis wasn’t at the screening or the party so I couldn’t check about this, but if Tatiana likes a film, attention should be paid.

The food, drink and company were all wonderful, and we were especially delighted by a three-song performance by Jackson Browne, which included one of the all-time favorite songs of my life, “These Days.”

The Stewart version [after the jump] is more impudent and anatomically specific.

Titane submission in less than an hour, and then The Tender Bar at 6 pm.

SPOILERS FOLLOW: A day or two ago I wrote that Leslie Odom’s Harold McBrayer struck me as the most compelling character in The Many Saints of Newark. Or at the very least the most centered — he just “was” in a Zen sense — a character with a thing or two to prove to the goombahs, but an actor with nothing to prove to the audience.

I also mentioned that Harold’s rising in the ranks with impunity and murdering a certain prominent Italian guy without apparent reprisals seemed a bit of a stretch.

There’s also the matter of Odom’s affair with a certain well-connected Italian woman, which seems unlikely given the deeply embedded racism in Newark’s Italian mob culture of a half-century ago.

Even more so this Italian woman inexplicably confessing this affair to her significant other, knowing as she surely did that Italian mob attitudes about black dudes were extremely toxic, not to mention the Italian machismo factor and territorial attitudes when it came to wives and girlfriends.

This really doesn’t calculate. A woman in her position would never confess to this, as in NEVER EVER as it would be tantamount to suicide.

Friendo spoiler: “I can believe that Giuseppina would have slept with a black guy, but no way would she have ever confessed this to Dickie. In that time period, when this kind of thing was hugely verboten among urban Italians? Just no way.”

The Critical Drinker’s review of No Time To Die is fairly amusing (a bit that appears at the :43 mark is a good hoot) and he doesn’t spoil anything. For a discussion of the ending and whatnot, you need to watch this Critical Drinker After Hours video (96 minutes) and go to the 11-minute mark.

Most of the British YouTubers are discussing spoilers as the film opened in England on Thursday, 9.30. It opens here in select, early-access venues on Wednesday, 10.6.

The Critical Drinker sidesteps the obvious conclusion that your progressive purists wanted James Bond, the smooth, martini-sipping pig chauvinist from MI6, dating back to the Kennedy era and before…they wanted him finished and finalized. In this climactic sense No Time To Die is, from a certain perspective, definitely wokey-wokey.

Prior to its BFI Löndon Film Festival debut (10.10), George Clooney’s The Tender Bar (Amazon, 12.17) has screened this weekend for Los Angeles industry early-birds, and will show again this evening. Upbeat responses so far, particularly for Ben Affleck as a Manhasset bartender with paternal instincts and inclinations. (Thanks to Jordan Ruimy.)

“…tryin to be a rock star at age 50, you’re sadly, sadly mistaken.” — Jimmy Fallon to Stillwater members in Almost Famous (“00).

Yesterday (10.1) Tatiana received her U.S. passport in the mail. Less than a month ago (9.5) she received her renewed Russian passport. On 8.20 she became a U.S. citizen. And roughly eight months ago, after receiving several union vouchers on various shoots, she received her SAG/AFTRA membership card. That made a difference. Except for a down period last summer (late May to mid July) she’s been working vigorously on films, TV shows, commercials and music videos. Especially recently. Boom time. So there’s some positive energy in this house.

Thanks to HE reader Kevin Kunze for digging up an alleged copy of Tony Soprano‘s driver’s license, as featured on worthpoint.com. The site contends that the New Jersey license is a genuine article “from the Sopranos set,” whatever that means.

At the very least the 1959 birth year agrees with Soprano’s Wikipedia page. Which is yet another indication that William Ludwig‘s Tony is indeed eight years old during the 1969 portion of The Many Saints of Newark.

As I wrote earlier today, this timeline unfortunately makes Tony 12 years old in the second half (or final 70 minutes) in ‘71, which doesn’t fit as Michael Gandolfini, 20 when MSON began filming began in ‘19, is supposed to be around 16 or 17.

Excerpt: “For Michael’s casting to completely work Tony Soprano would have to have been born in ‘55 or thereabouts, which throws other timelines out of whack. When he cast Michael as teenaged Tony, Chase was obviously saying to himself and to MSON colleagues “this doesn’t add up but Michael is such a good call in other respects that we’re just going to hope that no one does the math or complains too much.”

A new poll from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia reveals that “over half of Trump voters surveyed, and 41% of Biden voters, are in favor of blue and/or red states seceding from the union.”

Similar findings emerged on 7.15.21 about a YouGov poll having found that “66% of Republicans in southern states want to secede from the United States.”

Hollywood Elsewhere has been advocating for a Czechoslovakian-style split of the U.S.A. for eight, nine years now.

In 2012 I posted a sincere piece called “Solve Almost Everything.” It basically said that if you cut loose the hinterland crazies many of the nation’s problems would vanish in one fell swoop. In 2014 a book by a right-wing guy, Douglas Mackinnon, called for the same thing. Secede from the multicultural U.S. of A., form a “traditional values” nation called Reagan (screw minorities, LBGTQs, progressive women) and peacefully coexist.

“Break the country into two nations like Czechoslovakia did. A red Slovakia and a blue Czech Republic. Most of the economic vitality and enlightenment are concentrated in the blue states (I think), and a lot more could get done if the blues could run things in a reasonable, less-crazy fashion. Let the reds have their retrograde, anti-healthcare, let’s-preserve-our-white-heritage attitudes with their higher divorce rates and fatty foods and worship of old-school, fossil-fuel lifestyles and “drill, baby, drill.”

“Everyone could still travel around and visit the other sector any time they want. Nothing would change access-wise. Northerners could still drive down to see relatives and visit Texas any time. Manhattan hipsters could still visit Austin during South by Southwest. They could still go down to Louisiana and get drunk and buzz around on the bayou on flatboats. Everything would be the same except that most of the foul people would be running their own red nation, and would have a lot less to say about the progressive shape of things as far as the serious money and real power centers are concerned.

“Abraham Lincoln said that a nation divided against itself — a Northern United States vs. a Confederacy — cannot stand. He may have been right in the early 1860s, but today geographical unity isn’t what it used to be. And a nation like ours, paralyzed by the refusalism of the loony-tune right, is pretty much a stagnant and ungovernable thing. Cut out the fungus, let the cultural conservatives have their Dogpatch Nation and things will be better. And we could still enjoy each other’s company when we feel like it.”

Last night we went on the Panini on Sunset website and ordered a medium-size pesto pizza with chicken, plus a Ceasar salad with chicken strips. When all was said and done (tax + $5 tip for the delivery guy) it came to $46 — might as well call it $50. The pizza was tasty and pleasing, but I felt very slightly burned. This little meal just wasn’t worth the candle, I told myself. $30 or $35 but not $46.

Five and a half years ago Jett, Cait and I were enjoying delicious bowls of Vietnamese Pho at a classic Hanoi eatery called Pho Thin. They only serve Pho — clear stock, boiled beef, rice noodles, herbs, green onions and garlic. They charge a little less than $2 U.S. a bowl, but it’s one of the greatest bowls of anything you’ve ever eaten in your life.

$2 for a bowl of magnificent, spirit-lifting, life-changing Pho vs. $46 for an agreeable pesto pizza-and-salad combo.