Surely there are a few HE regulars who’ve seen Sian Heder‘s CODA (Apple TV+) over the last couple of days, and are willing to be honest and modify the enthusiasm levels a bit. The critics have gone apeshit for this film, and yet as agreeable and nicely handled as it is, CODA is not my idea of a a 96% Rotten Tomato score. The Metacritic community has given it a more appropriate 75% score.

As far as it goes, CODA is a pleasing, well-made family drama. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of film. It’s just not triple-A level, and that’s not a putdown — it’s merely a qualification.

Peter Rainer: “As effective as it is — and it is an effective tearjerker — it does go down the checklist of things to push your buttons on. It’s almost like a really well-designed Broadway show.”

The Telegraph‘s Tim Robey: “Sian Heder’s film [reduces] far too many of the family dynamics to the level of a bickering sitcom. The film is also obsessed to a fatuous degree with how much hilariously loud and vigorous sex her parents have. The film is way too busy playing things cute.”

“CODA especially suffers because of its release four months after Darius Marder’s tremendous Sound of Metal, a genuinely adventurous, formally experimental take on deaf issues which was also directed, written by and principally starred hearing individuals.”

Update from MSNBC’s Richard Engel: “This city is bracing for a Taliban takeover…the city has collapsed…there is no security…there are signs of looting…a woman’s hair salon is tearing down or painting over posters of women with [upscale] hair styles.”

Earlier: We always knew that when U.S. troops finally leave Afghanistan, a terrible massacre would follow. Joe Biden knew this all along, and of course is bearing the psychological burden of having decided to pull up stakes. Everyone understands the likelihood of coming carnage. Nobody wants to think about it, but there it is all the same.

The Taliban ran Afghanistan with absolute Sharia Law brutality for five years (’96 to ’01). Massacres of Afghan civilians, public whippings and executions, denying UN food supplies to starving civilians, the burning of fertile lands, cultural genocide (banning of paintings, photography, movies, music), preventing women from attending school and working in public places, and requiring women to be accompanied by a male relative and wearing a burqa at all times in public.

In October 2001, a month or so after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and routed the Taliban regime. Taliban forces fled to Pakistan. We’ve been in Afghanistan for just shy of 20 years now, knowing each and every day that we couldn’t win in the end, and that sooner or later all outside invaders retreat to their own shores. We never accomplished anything more than a stalemate situation. U.S. troop levels went way up during the first five years of the Obama administration (’10 and ’11 were the peaks) and to no end.

According to a Brown University study posted on 11.13.19, the U.S. had spent around $978 billion in Afghanistan (including expenditures earmarked for the 2020 fiscal year). The same report says the total expenditure for all anti-terrorist defense campaigns in the Middle East since ’01 comes to $6.4 trillion.

And now, with U.S. forces pulling out for good, Taliban forces are already occupying the vast majority of the country with Kabul sure to fall by sometime very soon. Life will be nothing short of hellish for Afghan women and their children.

How many tens of thousands of South Vietnamese were killed by North Vietnamese forces after Saigon fell in April ’75? How many tens of thousands of Afghan citizens will be put to death when the Taliban takeover is complete?

George Clooney‘s The Tender Bar (Amazon), a boozy proletariat community relationship flick (Manhasset) with a father-son, male-role-model current, will presumably begin streaming sometime in the mid-to-late fall season. Ben Affleck, Tye Sheridan, Chris Lloyd and Lily Rabe topline.

I’ll never touch another drop for the rest of my life, but every now and then (and I mean rarely) I’ll say to myself “I kind of miss that warm, boozy, half-in-the-bag camaraderie…stroll into a bar, bend the elbow, get a buzz-on,” etc. But not that much.

Review excerpt of same–titled book: “A Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, J.R. Moehringer” — played by Sheridan in the film — “grew up fatherless in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York, in a ramshackle house crammed with cousins and ruled by an eccentric, unkind grandfather (Chris Lloyd).

“Desperate for a paternal figure, he turns to his Uncle Charlie (Affleck), and subsequently, Uncle Charlie’s place of employment — a bar called Dickens that soon takes center stage.

Publishers Weekly: “You needn’t be a writer to appreciate the romance of the corner tavern or, for that matter, of the local dive in a suburban strip mall.

“But perhaps it does take a writer to explain the appeal of these places that ought to offend us on any number of levels…[such as] what would we do without them, and what would we do without the companionship of fellow pilgrims whose journey through life requires the assistance of a drop or two?

“More than anything else, Moehringer’s book is a homage to the culture of the local pub. That’s where young J.R. seeks out the companionship of male role models in place of his absent father, where he receives an education that has served him well in his career and where, inevitably, he looks for love, bemoans its absence and mourns its loss.

“Moehringer grew up in Manhasset, a place, he writes, that ‘believed in booze.’ At a young age, he became a regular — not a drinker, of course, for he was far too young. But while still tender of years, he was introduced to the culture, to the companionship and — yes — to the romance of it all.

“‘Everyone has a holy place, a refuge, where their heart is purer, their mind clearer, where they feel close to God or love or truth or whatever it is they happen to worship. For young J.R., that place was a gin mill on Plandome Road where his Uncle Charlie was a bartender and a patron.

“The Tender Bar‘s emotional climax comes after its native son has found success as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. On September 11, 2001, almost 50 souls who lived and loved in Moehringer’s home town of Manhasset were killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. One was a bartender we’ve met along the way. Another was one of the author’s cousins.

“Moehringer’s lovely evocation of an ordinary place filled with ordinary people gives dignity and meaning to those lost lives, and to his own.”

The other day HE commenter Manwe Sulimo asked what had happened to Channing Tatum. The 41-year-old actor hasn’t been in a noteworthy live-action film since Logan Lucky, which opened on 8.18.17.

Four years of flatlining is a long time. It would be one thing if Tatum had been out of circulation due to working on some big, classy prestige project. But his recent credits indicate more of an interest in popcorn realms.

Tatum has been delving into directing and producing over the last three or four. On 2.18.22 Dog (UA Releasing), a comedy that Tatum co-directed (along with Reid Carolin), produced and starred in, will open in some capacity.

Two months after that Tatum will be costarring with Sandra Bullock in The Lost City of D, a “cutthroat jungle adventure” from co-directors Aaron and Adam Nee. Tatum and Carolin are also producers on Spaceman, a sci-fi drama with Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano.

The present-tense bottom line is that Tatum apparently sees himself more as a behind-the-cameras creative than a leading-man actor. Cue career review assessments. For my money Tatum’s two best roles were in Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire (’11) and Magic Mike (’12).

…that last night’s Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa. was NOT played on the modest-sized, cornfield-flanked diamond that sits next to Ray Kinsella‘s (Kevin Costner‘s) Iowa farmhouse — built for the 1989 cult film, and which still stands and thrives today as a tourist attraction.

Last night’s game was played at a nearby (500 feet away) baseball field called the MLB at Field of Dreams, also cornfield-flanked but with stadium seating for 8000 people, according to both Fox Sports and The Sporting News.

In a pre-game press conference, Costner called Field of Dreams “the perfect little movie…the climax, rather than a big car chase, was ‘do you wanna have a catch?'”

Due respect but not quite. Field of Dreams was and is “a perfect little movie,” agreed, but it didn’t end with a father (Dwier Brown‘s John Kinsella) and son playing catch. If it HAD ended with the catch, Field wouldn’t be half the legendary perennial it’s become.

Field of Dreams ends, in fact, with a nighttime helicopter shot of a long stream of cars, lined up on a nearby road leading up to the Costner farmhouse. That shot of…what, 200 cars waiting to see the field and bask in those Shoeless Joe Burt Lancaster vibes…THAT’s what sold the film.

Without that line of cars, without that irrefutable evidence of what people want and need and long for in their lives, the film would’ve basically been a nice pipe dream.

Friendo: “To each his own, but every time Costner says ‘hey, dad, wanna have a catch?’, that chokes me up. That’s the film for me. The line of cars is just icing on the cake.”

HE to Friendo: “I never had a catch with my dad so it doesn’t get me as much. And in a broader sense sentiment doesn’t travel — it doesn’t expand or deepen. It always diminishes over time. Just ask John Ford and Steven Spielberg and the directors of The Bishop’s Wife and A Guy Named Joe. The only sentimental ending that never fails to get me is the Warren Beatty-Julie Christie ending of Heaven Can Wait, and for the worst of reasons.”

Friendo to HE: “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

Fred Zinneman‘s Day of the Jackal (’73) is one of my all–time favorite docu–thrillers, yet I somehow missed this Special Edition Arrow Bluray when it popped three years ago. The quality of the jacket cover is a keeper in itself — it’s rare when original Bluray art improves this significantly upon the original materials.

My first association was Charles Laughton‘s Quasimodo; my second was Pietro Annigoni‘s JFK portrait.

But you know what? Eff this effing movie and the Arrow Bluray it rode in on. Because only head-in-the-sand types pay attention to ’70s movies in the first place. Just ask the HE comment buzzards — all that matters is the streaming of agreeable, adult-angled, mezzo-mezzo longform angel food cake. Get with the program, and enough with the cranky.

))

If you’re standing on the road-facing side of the Poco Cielo hotel, it’s mainly about the rattle and gear-shifting and whaaagghhh of speeding trucks. It’s not pleasant. But if you’re on the ocean-facing side, of course, it’s soothing, transporting, etc.

Posted on 10.9.19: Yesterday three nice people (two guys and a gal) kicked the Bill-and-Monica saga around. I was one of the guys, but that’s as far as I’ll go with specifics. It started with a dispute about how much of a predator Bill Clinton might have been and how willing if not eager Ms. Lewinsky might have been.

Guy #1: Monica Lewinsky was a 22-year-old intern and he was the President of the United States. “It’s honestly hard to think of a dynamic that is more clearly an egregious abuse of power,” wrote lawyer Lindsey Barrett on Twitter.

American columnist Kristen Powers tweeted, “This actually shouldn’t be so hard. Hillary isn’t responsible for what her husband did, but she should be able to recognize it as an abuse of power.”

Last March Lewinsky wrote in Vanity Fair that she considered the affair “a gross abuse of power”, adding “he was my boss…he was the most powerful man on the planet”.

HE: That aside, are you actually contending that Bill Clinton harassed and bullied Monica Lewinsky into having an affair against her will? Don’t various accounts argue with this notion quite strenuously?

Gal #1: “She might have been ample and Rubenesque but Monica was hot. Clinton didn’t pray on some poor ignored chubby girl. She flirted outrageously with him and he flirted back. He could not resist her because she was HIS type. Beanie Feldstein is not THAT type. This casting choice alone tells you this dramatization is going to be a one-sided story of a sexual predator, which is 100% wrong. She was in her early 20s and very, very willing.”

HE: We all understand the power dynamic, but how does that work in the theoretical case of the widowed Michael Douglas in The American President? No hitting on any White House staffer, regardless of age or position? Only lobbyists like Annette Bening’s Sydney? Who exactly is a U.S. President allowed to show interest in, given the huge imbalance of power and the likelihood of being attacked down the road by #MeToo?

Otherwise, bullshit. 22 year-olds are not babes in the woods or poor little lambs. My rule is that you’re on you’re own and expected to live and cope in the adult world when you hit 20 or your junior year in college. And certainly by age 21. (Any older guy who makes a play for a sophomore or freshman or any woman in her late teens is definitely crossing the line.) But it all changes at 20 or 21, and certainly by age 22, or a year past graduation.

Clinton is/was an opportunistic hound, but so was Benjamin (“the father of France”) Franklin. So was Warren G. Harding. So were FDR, JFK, Gary Hart. Not every powerful politician with a yen for the ladies is necessarily a criminal predator. Or were they all Harvey Weinstein in your eyes?

Men and women tend to use and exploit each other in the quiet corridors of power. Lewinsky knew what she was doing. She saw an opportunity, turned on the alpha, scored and then expected to be compensated with some kind of job advancement. Which is an occasional benefit from affairs of this sort. Pay for play has been a common dynamic in business & government cultures for quite a while now. She became irate and conflicted and given to Linda Tripp confessions when she wasn’t shown what she calculated was her due.