Last night I saw about 65 minutes’ worth of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which runs 169 minutes. You can’t say I didn’t man up, buy the popcorn and give it the old college try. I didn’t hate it but it didn’t hook my heart or elevate my soul, and the more Swift sang and waved and strummed and strutted around and gave it up for her adoring, beaming and even tearful fans, the flatter I felt within.

As concert films go The Eras Tour is quite the visual power-punch (first-rate photography, editing, choreography, lighting design plus considerable personal charm and audience rapport) but aside from the fan-rapture aspect (95% younger white women) Swift’s act just doesn’t levitate. Or at least it didn’t in my situation.

I swear to God I sat down with an attitude of “okay, I’m here…let’s do it!” But it just didn’t connect.

Swift doesn’t have the greatest singing voice (it’s okay) and her country music origins put a damper on things. Her songs are rather flat and pop–fizzy and lacking in catchy, inventive hooks…they all kinda sound the same…no rivers of soul (not even streams of it)…confessional lyrics (ruptured romances, shitty boyfriends) but rendered without much in the way of edge or unusual style or anything “extra”…imbued with an unmistakably bland, girly–girl current, and a general lack of sophistication or complexity.

Swift is no Joni Mitchell-in-her-prime. Her songs seem to lack depth and intrigue.

I was engaged and studying the spectacle (which is fascinating in some respects) for the first half-hour but starting around the 45-minute mark I began to feel narcotized and then drained.

I nonetheless respect Swift’s energy and verve and swagger, and the Beatles-like following that she’s acquired over the last 16 or 17 years.

I was collecting my reactions in the AMC Westport lobby when a Manhattan-based journalist who’d also escaped at the one-hour mark (he’d been sitting two seats to my left) came over and said howdy. He’d been unable to snag a ticket to any Thursday night Manhattan showing and decided that a show in Connecticut was his best option.

We chewed things over for a half-hour or so. He felt roughly as I did about the film. “What’s the essence of Swift’s appeal?,” he asked. “Power,” I said. “The Swifties relate to who she is and where she’s been, and are really getting off on the bold persona and image…she’s a heroic figure in their eyes. It ties in, I think, with the Barbie explosion on some level.”

He had taken a Metro North train and then Uber-ed to the theatre, but didn’t want to see any more of the film. So I gave him a lift to the East Norwalk train station. Nice guy.

A respectful hat tip lo Eras Tour director Sam Wrench, director of photography Brett Turnbull and editor Don Whitworth.

Shot last August at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium over a period of three nights, The Eras Tour is indisputably a huge cultural and commercial phenomenon. Swift-produced, Swift-starring, Swift-distributed (straight to AMC and Cinemark) and sure to pull down God knows how many hundreds of millions.

Everyone did a great job. It just wasn’t for me.

Friendo: “You’ve offered a reality-based corrective. The media is offering her a rubber-stamp rave. I think she’s got a number of very good songs like ‘Mean’, ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and ‘Shake It Off’ and — possibly her greatest — ‘Lover’.

“But you have to watch what you say if you have young daughters. You can’t come down on Taylor too hard, but I think her war against men is deplorable. And fundamental to her appeal. But I can’t say that in mixed company.”

HE: “I give her football player boyfriend (Travis Kelce) another couple of months. Okay, five or six months total.”

Friendo: “These men are just momentary accessories to her. Her message is basically ‘fuck men — they suck and we don’t need them’. In that sense, she’s doing her own bit to bring Trump back. All woke behaviors help the other side. Because the majority of people don’t want to vote for psychosis.”

Friendo: “I’m confused.”

HE: “I’m catching it this evening at 6 pm. If Paul Schrader can find it in his heart, maybe I can too.”

Friendo: “Why on earth would you bother?”

HE: “It’s a cultural event. Like Barbie. I can’t ignore it. I can’t live in a cocoon. I have to open myself up to it.”

Friendo: “Do U like Taylor Swift? Ur gonna be crazy bored watching a concert movie in a theater.”

Kamala Harris! What a wounded showhorse of a vice-president, not to mention the target of a devastating profile that will almost certainly make things worse all around. The N.Y. Times reporter, Astead W. Herndon, is a sharp-minded dude of color who doesn’t miss a trick, and he clearly has issues with her.

Five words: Herndon’s portrait is not flattering.

Kamala is basically seen as mostly a recipient of good luck and fortunate timing — a beneficiary of racial-political largesse, a diversity hire with nothing especially dynamic under the hood, a blah and brittle vp with no defining visionary issue apart from the usual incremental wonky talking points, and no personal charisma or rhetorical pizazz. A soporific, eyes-glazed-over spouter of “word salads.” A testy, defensive tactician whom no one outside of one key demographic and identity group — black females — really likes.

Plus she’s an absolutely dreadful public speaker with a weak, whiny voice and no sense of musical rhythm in her phrasings. Plus she’s quite short (5’2”) — the word is actually elfin. Plus there’s no ignoring the fact that aside from that one moment when she attacked Joe Biden over busing, Kamala never began to connect as a presidential candidate in ‘19 and early ‘20. Plus she sheds senior staffers left and right. Plus there’s that cackle. Plus she reportedly devotes huge blocks of time to her hair. (Okay, that’s a cheap shot.)

She’s basically a drip-drip, slow-motion, can’t-sell-it implosion who terrifies many democrats and is obviously an easy target for righties.

Down here on earth, the RT consensus is that David Gordon Green‘s The Exorcist: Believer is a stinker.

I love Lily Gladstone’s Montana shitkicker accent, and especially the way she pronounces the last name of her Osage Nation character (“BURRKhahrt”) and the word “murders” (“merrduhhrrrs“). Born in ’86 and raised on the Blackfeet Nation reservation in Browning, Montana, Gladstone is an authentic country gal…talks it, owns it…forget the coasts.

From yesterday’s “I’m Not Kidding About Barbie vs. Poor Things” thread:

Friendo notes similarities between Barbie (as played by Margot Robbie) and Bella (i.e., Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things):

1. Both are manufactured creations — Barbie built by Mattel, Bella built Mary Shelley-style by Willem “Scarface” Dafoe. And as such, both are wholly innocent as they begin their journeys.
2. Both are abused by men — Bella blatantly by her cruel, misogynist Londön husband during her first life, Barbie by being infantilized and otherwise diminished or pigeonholed by her Mattel creators.,
3. Both learn hard lessons about the real world.
4. Both acquire social justice awareness during film (awakening/awokening)
5. Both are vag-centric, vag-obsessed — “What’s this thing between my legs”?
6. Both female leads are pretty.
7. Both films feature terrific dance sequences.
8. Both films feature brilliant sets, costumes, makeup,
9. Both films diminish masculinity, reward wimpy background males.
10. Both have fun with meta humor.
11. Both Barbie and Bella trick & transform stupid male characters into falling for this or that.
12. At the end Barbie and Bella choose to live and thrive in the real world, empowered & surrounded by women.

All hail Marty’s St. Crispin’s Day clarion call, but in terms of mainstream theatrical venues the game hasn’t just been lost but forfeited, starting around the dawn of the Obama era.

I’m hugely grateful that elite cinema havens (Metrograph, Film Forum, Jacob Burns in Pleasantville, New Plaza, Elinor Bunin Monroe, Netflix Plaza, BAM, Alamo, Angelika) are part of our NYC-area culture, and that elevated film festivals (NYFF, Tribeca, Montclair, Woodstock) are still going concerns. But over the last 15 years or so the moronic masses have made their position clear.

As far as the megaplex gladiator arenas are concerned (excluding the odd-but-welcome Nolan-brand detour that was Oppenheimer), your average Millennial or Zoomer schlubbo is averse to paying through the nose for “cinema” in a theatre. I wish it were otherwise but apps and streaming are carrying the ball these days.

This isn’t to say that classic Marty-style cinema shouldn’t be “fought” for but…

Since she began talking a few months ago and using this and that nickname, 22-month-old Sutton has referred to Joey as “Jo-Jo.”’ Yesterday morning, only a few hours after Joey’s sudden passing, she asked the above.

I was three when the reality of pet death sank in. Here’s what happened.

And 100% proud of having crafted this identity or calling card or however you want to describe it.

Will RFK, Jr.’s reported independent presidential candidacy siphon away more votes from Trump or Biden? That is the question. Let there be no doubt that RFK’s alleged plan to become the new Ralph Nader or Ross Perot is a total dick move. Odious, self-aggrandizing, shameful.