What the hell is “piplsay“? It seems too pop-sugary to be regarded as a reputable polling outfit. Either way they’ve posted a new poll, taken between 4.2 and 4.4, claiming that 46% of Americans (roughly 30K in the poll) are down with Dwayne Johnson running for or being President.

Last February The Rock told USA Today that he “would consider a presidential run in the future if that’s what the people wanted. Truly I mean that, and I’m not flippant in any way with my answer.” His candidacv, Johnson said, is “up to the people…I would wait, and I would listen. I would have my finger on the pulse, my ear to the ground.”

Serious question: Who would you rather see snagging the Republican presidential nomination in ’24, Johnson or Tucker Carlson? Dwayne is a rightie, yes, but (and please correct me if I’m wrong) a relatively sane and sensible green one in the Schwarzenegger mold. Better him than Ted Cruz or (God forbid) Josh Hawley.

“They Call Him No-Shame Johnson,” posted on 5.23.18: “After making so many outrageous crap-level movies, how can Dwayne Johnson expect to seriously compete as a Republican presidential candidate in 2024? Won’t voters resent him for appearing in nothing but shit-level ‘entertainments’ for so many years?

“Compared to Johnson Arnold Schwarzenegger was Laurence Olivier by the time he began running for California governor in the early aughts. The Terminator, Predator, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, Eraser, Batman and Robin — Schwarzenegger was a mainstream action star, but at least he made a few semi-respectable films. Johnson just wants to parade around and make dough.

From Adam Chitwood’s Collider interview with Killers of the Flower Moon screenwriter Eric Roth, posted this morning…

I’ve always regarded (and will continue to regard) non-fans of Silver Linings Playbook askance. Some Twitter jackals were dumping on it a day or two ago, and I was rolling my eyes. I’m especially impatient with people who rip the dance-contest ending while complaining that the bipolar monster hasn’t been put to bed or eradicated by same. It’s a romcom on meds, and either you understand and invest in the obvious perception that the pairing of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence is essential and symmetrical or you don’t. I’m astonished that some people have problems with this film. In my eyes it’s damn near perfect. It hit me the other day that if you’ve had any first-hand experience with mental issues (my late sister was schizophrenic) you’re probably more receptive to SLP than not. It’s a thought.

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.