I saw Jules Dassin and Mark Hellinger‘s The Naked City (’48) back in the early ’80s, or so I recall. I would’ve gotten around to a re-viewing sooner or later, but now I’m revved after catching Bruce Goldstein‘s “Uncovering The Naked City,” a 23-minute doc that explores the various locations and strategies that went into filming this hard-boiled New York cop movie, shot entirely on location. Now I’m locking into watching Criterion’s HD version this weekend.

Enterprising photographer Stanley Kubrick, 19 at the time, was spotted hanging around the Naked City set.

Hellinger, who narrates the film (and I wish they’d forgotten about any narration at all — it makes it feel hokey now), died of of a heart attack on 12.21.47 at age 44. (Who keels over at age 44?) The Naked City opened the following March.

Film historian William Park has argued that, despite Weegee‘s work on the film and its title coming from Weegee’s 1945 photo book, the film owes its visual style more to Italian neorealism rather than Weegee’s photographic work.

In my view, a 5.26 Variety story by Elsa Keslassy (“‘The French Dispatch’ to World Premiere at Cannes“) buries the lead.

Everyone has known been assuming over the past year that Wes Anderson‘s film, originally slated to play at last year’s cancelled fest, would return this year. Keslassy devotes the first five paragraphs to Dispatch…okay, all right, got it.

The surprise (revealed in paragraph #6) is that Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater will also play there. That’s a significant vote of approval by Cannes honcho Thierry Fremaux.

Up until this moment I’ve been a little iffy about the Stillwater potential (Matt Damon‘s apparent miscasting plus his character’s swallowed, guttural, working-class patois) but now I feel more hope. Even if it’s more or less a riff on the dramatically beaten-to-death Amanda Knox story.

Misheard rock lyrics is a popular meme. No less than three fellows (Gavin Edwards, Martin Toseland, Charles Grosvenor) have written books about this topic. Everyone understands that rock lyrics occasionally invite misinterpretation, and nobody accuses anyone of being an asshat if they insist that the key line in “Blinded by The Light” is not “revved up like a deuce” but “revved up like a douche,” as in fucking douchebag. That’s on Manfred Mann,** of course, and not “Blinded” author Bruce Springsteen.

But if you mishear dialogue spoken by a French actress (Camille Cottin) in the Stillwater trailer, you’re deaf and clueless. At the :43 mark, she says a quiet line to Matt Damon‘s character — a beefy, burly, cap-wearing 40something bumblefuck type -— and is apparently referring to his incarcerated daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin). The line she says to Damon is “the father of duhkat?…he left in six” something-or-other.

You’re also an asshole if you mishear movie dialogue spoken by a British actress of Asian descent in the new Eternals trailer. Despite the unmistakable fact that Gemma Chan absolutely does not say “beautiful, isn’t it?” but says “Eefrent…isn’t it?” Or possibly “Steefrent…isn’t it?”

Look at the teaser again — Chan’s line comes at the :29 mark.

When you say “beautiful” you have to get that first syllable right — sounds like “byew” or “byoo.” The second and third syllables are pronounced either “tihful” or “teefull.” There is no way on God’s green earth that Chan says “byooteefull.”

As predicted, the crazy fever (weakness, fatigue, muscle ache plus a general inability to sleep or eat or do anything but lie on the couch and suffer) began to loosen its grip early this afternoon. I’m still weak, but the worst is apparently over.

I’ve been through this shit before, and the HE flu always lasts 36 to 48 hours. This, motherfuckers, is what “German genes” is all about.

When I told a doctor earlier today that my flu battles never exceeded 48 hours, she said “well, that’s highly impressive…you’ve quite the immune system.” Given my age, you mean? “I’ve treated patients in their 20s who’ve stayed under for three or four days or even a week,” she replied.

Let’s suppose that New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance manage to persuade a jury that Donald Trump and his minions were guilty of elaborate tax fraud…guilty. So after the appeal process has been exhausted, what’s the potential penalty? Are we talking orange jumpsuits or what? News analysts don’t want to speculate because to do so would erode their posture of impartiality. But c’mon…every reasonable person wants that fat fuck sociopath behind bars. He’s dirty, he constantly lies (Barack Obama called him “a bullshitter”) and he’s the boss of a crime family

If a studio-backed genre film becomes a hit, a sequel inevitably results. But the sequel is almost always less impactful than the original (anomalies like The Godfather, Part II aside) and the brand is thereafter mitigated. And then comes the idea for a second sequel and it’s like “oh, God…leave it alone.” But the suits know that Part 3 will perform decently, even if the general audience reaction to Part 2 is “not bad but a little meh.” And the principals can’t resist the idea of more fat paychecks and profit participations. And so we, the audience, are stuck with Part 3 whether we want it or not.

…of even the slightest exertion…of summoning the strength and discipline to tap out a thought or two…it’s exhausting to even consider. It’s draining to even think about sitting up. I slept restlessly all day yesterday and into the night — the kind of feverish sleep that isn’t really sleep. It’s bad. Hot cup of Thera-flu an hour ago…weak, sweating (which is good)…it’ll “break” later today, I suspect.

Four years ago I switched webhosts, signed up with Austin’s WP Engine. To save disc/cloud space the guy who did the transfer migrated a good portion of my JPEGs to Amazon Web Services. But uploading these images from AWS to Siteground has taken a fair amount of time, and so far it’s been a day and a half. Honestly? The migration has been agony. I can’t seem to manage the “pull” myself. The process is dragging on and on. Between this and the fever, I’m in hell.

Aching muscles, feverish feeling, faintly damp forehead, can’t stay awake, couch-napping for the last couple of hours, etc. If I hadn’t been double-vaxxed, I’d be worried. I’ve been through this before. I’ll be out of it by tomorrow morning, perhaps sooner. Maybe.

I’ve posted this summer-of-1974 photo once or twice before. For me the biggest stand-out element, more so than the dusty brown Ford Pinto looking to join Sunset Blvd. traffic, the VW camper wagon heading west and the run-down-looking city bus, are the thick sprouts of bleached yellow grass at the base of the billboard.

West Hollywood was a less attractive place back then, certainly in the daylight hours, but empty grassy lots were par for the course, and when the constant stink of smog and exhaust wasn’t as strong you could stand on a Laurel Canyon or Playa del Rey streetcorner in the early evening and smell the dirt and the grass and the other forms of under-watered shrubbery. Those aromas are gone now.

I’m a fool for slick, modernized trailers of classic films, and Lord knows there are easily a couple hundred out there. But when Dan McBride’s One-Eyed Jacks trailer surfaced four years ago, I knew right away that it was triple grade-A. McBride: “[Looking to] breathe new life into older, forgotten or overlooked films. Mainly to spread awareness and hopefully inspire more people to seek them out.”