Kate Winslet did herself no favors by attempting to earn #MeToo cred by presenting herself in interviews as a reformed Woody Allen and Roman Polanski collaborator.

Forgive me if I’ve misread, but the idea seemed to be that open repentance (“what was I thinking?” or words to that effect) would help to launch or at least clear the way for a would-be campaign as a Best Actress Ammonite contender.

Her late-to-the-table, after-the-fact opinions about Allen (Moses Farrow be damned, pre-Allen v. Farrow) and Polanski, disputable but legit in and of themselves, struck many of us as convenient and calculating on her part.

I for one was therefore delighted when Ammonite fizzled on the award circuit and any hoped-for award recognition factor failed to materialize.

Winslet pitch: “Now that I’ve condemned these two men and appropriately flagellated myself for showing bad judgment in deciding to work with them on Carnage (‘11) and Wonder Wheel (‘17), I trust that no one will hold this against me,” etc.

This left a bad taste, to put it mildly.

As far as I’m concerned Winslet has cast herself in a dubious light for the foreseeable future. I’m sure I’m not the only one to regard her askance in a present-day context.

That said, if Mare of Easttown is regarded as approvable and worthy of respect (as appears to be the case) then so be it. She’s always been a top-tier actress. Is Winslet currently operating under a cloud? In my opinion, yes. But things change and life eventually moves on.

His acclaimed turns in Platoon and Wall Street afforded due respect, it could be argued that Charlie Sheen‘s charismatic druggy-on-the- police-station-bench in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was his most memorable performance ever. He certainly made a hell of an entrance, and it happened (yes, I know) 35 years ago.

“While it’s somewhat exciting to try to guess the killer, the series wastes potential to dig into its characters and their relationships, and the landscape is the more lasting feeling after finishing the final episode. It just leaves you with a noticeably detached feeling of, ‘Okay, well that’s done.'” — Candice Frederick, TV Guide.

“For all its unevenness, Mare of Easttown‘s strengths carry it through its many muddles.” — THR‘s Inkoo Kang.

“More than halfway through the series, there’s barely any momentum to the mystery, and the relationship drama is sprawling and unfocused.” — CBR.com’s Josh Bell.

“[While] commendably ambitious, the plot elements sometimes work against each other — too baggy to be a compelling crime thriller, too busy to flesh out all the characters — to make it truly satisfying.” — Empire‘s Ian Freer.

“A series that will have you less focused on solving the whodunit and more on experiencing the lives of these characters.” — Alex Maldy, JoBlo.

Kevin Pollak‘s impressions never miss, especially the Peter Falk. But what caught me in this instance (a 1988 Tonight Show clip) is his elegant apparel. I remember those late ’80s Giorgio Armani suits. I had one or two, and they made me feel beautiful. But pay special attention to Pollak’s light loafers, which everyone wore back then. The idea was to make your feet appear smallish and delicate and almost womanly. Those were the days.

Compare these inauspicious hush puppies to the clunky civil servant cop shoes worn by Jimmy Kimmel on Real Time with Bill Maher in early February.

These 4K 60fps upgrades, increasingly common over the last couple of years, vary in quality. This assortment of clips of 1927 Berlin is one of the better ones. A capturing of the actual world of Cabaret, which was based on Christopher Isherwood‘s “Goodbye to Berlin“, about his time in Weimar-era Berlin (1929–1933). I’ve visited this storied city three or four times — I’d go there again in a nanosecond.

The Stay Puft marshmallow gremlins, I mean. The mere thought of watching a film with these guys…shuddering repugnance. Directed by an unfortunately slumming Jason Reitman (The Front Runner, Thank You for Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air, Young Adult, Tully), produced by Ivan Reitman. Costarring PPaul Rudd, Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Logan Kim, Bokeem Woodbine, Oliver Cooper, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts.

Sony will open Ghostbusters: Afterlife on 11.11.21.

Does anyone know anything about David O. Russell’s untitled 1930s flick, which has been shooting for several weeks and may have wrapped? I know someone who worked as background actor a few weeks ago, but they didn’t know much. Wiki logline: “A doctor and a lawyer form an unlikely partnership.”

The 20th Century release (slated for ’22) boasts a big-name cast — Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola.

I haven’t re-watched Russell’s I Heart Huckabees since it opened 15 and 1/2 years ago (10.1.04). Now that it’s in my head, I might just do that.

Review excerpt: “Huckabees shot right through my skull on Wednesday night and came out like some cosmic effusion and just sort of hung there above my head like a low-altitude cloud and sprinkling light rain.

“That sounds too tranquil. A movie this funny and frantic and this totally off-the-planet (and yet strangely inside the whole universal anxiety syndrome that we all live with day to day) can’t be that cosmically soothing. That’s not the idea.

“But it is soothing…that’s the weird thing. Huckabees makes you laugh fairly uproariously, but it leaves you in a spiritual place that feels settled and well-nourished. Variety‘s David Rooney said it was ‘largely an intellectual pleasure with a hollow core.’ Rooney has probably never been wronger in his life. Not because he isn’t smart or perceptive, but because he failed to do a very important thing.
He didn’t see Huckabees twice.

“This is one of those rare movies in which you have to double-dip it. You obviously don’t have to take my advice. Go ahead and just see it once and then say to yourself, “Well, that happened!” Just understand that Huckabees is, I feel, too dense and arch with too much going on to fully get it in one sitting.

“On one level it’s a kind of psychobabble satire; on another it’s the most profoundly spiritual Hollywood film since Groundhog Day. And the amazing-ness of it may not come together in your head…if at all.

“That’s how the first viewing happened, at least. I was initially into it on a ‘whoa…what was that?’ level and for the antsy, pedal-to-the-metal pacing…but it goes beyond that. The first time is the eye-opener, the water-in-the-face, the violent lapel-grabbing; the second time is da bomb.

In the early aughts Albert Brooks delivered an entertaining speech to some industry gathering of some kind (I seem to recall it occuring in Santa Monica). I somehow got hold of an audio tape of Brooks’ remarks, and transcribed some of them. And one of the stand-out portions, for me, was when he talked about watching Bob Hope on TV as a kid in the 1950s, and how his father would get really excited when an upcoming Hope appearance loomed, but when Hope did his act “you never laughed,” Brooks recalled.

I can’t say I ever found Hope’s movies (or most of them) all that funny either. I’d occasionally chuckle at one of his stand-up routines on the tube, but I rarely cracked a smile at his films. He wasn’t in the business of selling humor as much as attitude — basically the attitude of a smart, selfish, cowardly opportunist with an eye for the ladies and a perhaps a slight willingness to pocked illicit dough on the side. That was his persona.

And that’s why my favorite Hope film might be Beau James (’57), a more or less straight drama about New York City major Jimmy Walker.

Among the Hope “comedies”, there’s one I saw a long time ago that struck me as moderately funny — a silly WWII-era romcom called Caught in the Draft (’41). Don’t hold me to this as I haven’t seen it in decades, but it might be funny. One of the mildly amusing things is the name of Hope’s character — Don Bolton. (How can a movie about a guy with that name not be good for a chuckle or two? Don Bolton!) Sometimes it’s the inauspicious little sausage comedies that seem best in retrospect.

Directed by David Butler and written by Wilkie C. Mahoney and Harry Tugend, Caught in the Draft costars Dorothy Lamour, Lynne Overman, Eddie Bracken, Clarence Kolb and Paul Hurst. I’ve just discovered that Kino Lorber has a Bluray version for sale.

“…for a very important date!”

I’ve occasionally driven aggressively, and always because I’ve been late for a serious appointment of some kind. Luckily I’m a good enough driver to have never even come close to risking an accident. Okay, maybe I came close.

But there are limits to crazy driving. Even if my life depended on not being late to a meeting, there’s no way I’d drive between 84 and 87 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone. That’s just nuts. I could imagine driving, say, 15 or 20 mph over the speed limit but twice that?

Tiger Woods was nonetheless doing exactly that (i.e., flying down the road at 85 mph) in the region of Pacific Palisades on 2.23.21, and in so doing crashed his SUV and broke a few bones in his lower right leg, resulting in “open fractures” — meaning that bones had pierced his skin a la Burt Reynolds in Deliverance.

Source: A 4.7.21 N.Y. Times story by Kevin Draper.

HE commenter “freeek”: “In other news, the trailer for Taylor Sheridan‘s Those Who Wish Me Dead (Warner Bros./HBO Max, 5.14) is out and it’s awesome.”

HE reply: Actually, it’s an aggressively produced, go-for-broke action exploitation flick…shot and edited in such a slam-bang, visually searing, Bruce Willis-in-the-’90s way that the trailer will inspire certain viewers to say “it’s awesome!” But it’s obviously loaded with jet fuel and cranked WAY TOO HIGH (black-attired bad guys firing automatic weapons at a woman and a kid in the middle of firestorm?), and if you believe that a beautiful, super-rich, fashion-magazine icon slash Brad Pitt-ballbuster with her own personal pedicurist can be (or ever could be) a Montana firefighter…well, that’s up to you.

I took one look and said “no way.” Maleficent women with those ravishing eyes and cheekbones and that “stop the presses!” kind of facial symmetry…women that beautiful and slender and financially loaded are legally prohibited from serving as Montana firefighters. (The Montana state legislature passed the law back in the late ’90s, I think.) And even if the “Angie-level women can’t be Montana firefighters” law wasn’t on the books, she’d never get past the first interview. The human resources official would say, “And a woman with your looks and wealth and living with all those kids in Cecil B. DeMille‘s Los Feliz mansion and throwing all those lawyers at Brad Pitt like incendiary grenades…how exactly did you come to decide that Montana firefighting was your destiny? Because I’ll be honest — I don’t get it.”

You KNOW that she can’t be a firefighter, and that only in movies like this do demonic assassins…ahh, forget it. And yet you say “awesome!” And that kid! Didn’t I just say yesterday that we’re sick of kids in prominent roles and that they need to sit in the back seat and just watch and listen?

It would appear that Gia Coppola‘s Mainstream (IFC Films, 5.7.21) is dead meat, having been murdered last September by Venice Film Festival critics.

What gets me about the trailer is that 40-year-old Jason Schwartzman, who played the precocious 15-year-old Max Fischer in Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore (’98), is playing the older, wiser, sensible college professor while Andrew Garfield, 37, is playing the young, egoistic, wild-ass social media guy, and he’s less than three years younger than Schwartzman.

Actors inhabit what they can inhabit and sell what they can sell, but it feels vaguely odd that Schwartzman is suddenly the middle-aged guy.

I hated Steven Spielberg‘s A.I. when I first saw it nearly 20 years ago, and…uhm, that was the last time. But I don’t need to replenish the hate. For years the A.I. remnants have become more and more fragmentary and insignificant, and I’ve been cool with that. All through the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, it’s been like “A.I. who?”

But sometime earlier today Nick “Action Man” Clement, a man who’s rarely met a film he hasn’t liked, ran a positive looking-back riff about this “robot version of Pinocchio” (a description favored by Stanley Kubrick when he was thinking about directing it in the ’80s), and suddenly a switch flipped and I saw red.

“Enough With The Kids,” posted on 3.25.09:

I don’t like movies about kids. Not any more. Exceptions will happen, of course, but I don’t give a damn about coming-of-age movies or learning-a-tough-lesson movies or movies about young kids going through an adventure that changes their life and/or has a profound impact. Really, throw all of that shit out.

I’ll tell you one reason why I’m not the only one thinking this. The Great Recession has been scaring the hell out of people, and with everyone getting down to brass tacks and doing what they can to survive parents are realizing that they haven’t done their kids any favors by funding a cut-off, over-indulged fantasy realm for them to live in. That’s what the Wall Street pirates have been doing in a sense since Bush came in and look what happened.

Kids need to grow up and grim up and learn the basic survival skills and disciplines. So enough with the Spielberg-aping films that portray a child’s world as a magical-fantastical kingdom in and of itself that adults might be able to learn something from.

I loved E.T. at first blush, but the last time I saw it I had a moderately hard time. There’s no filmmaker who’s more sentimental, manipulative and emotionally cloying than Spielberg when it comes to under-age characters, and that doesn’t age well.

It’s taken years to realize this, but I think my profound dislike of kid films initially came from the one-two punch of Spielberg’s Hook (’91) and George Lucas‘s The Phantom Menace (’99). (Jake Lloyd‘s performance as Anakin Skywalker was surely one of the most agonizing ever delivered in motion picture history.) Those two left me doubled-over, and then along came Spielberg’s A.I. and I was really done with kids playing lead roles. A ten-year process, that.