Jeffrey Wells

I’ve watched it twice, and I personally think it’s one of the most repellent ads I’ve ever seen in my life.

To promote the just-published “The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface,” author Glenn Kenny hosted a Wednesday evening (5.8) IFC Center screening of Brian DePalma’s 1983 gangster classic.

After the show GK discussed aspects of the production saga, took questions and signed a few books with a felt-tip pen.

HE has read the first 40 or 50 pages and heartily approves. A very tasty and nourishing Hollywood story with dozens of first-hand sources. The prose is smooth and confident…swaggering even.

Al Pacino didn’t speak to Kenny because his own personal Scarface saga account will appear in the autobiographical “Sonny Boy,” which will publish in October.

I was devastated to learn that Kenny wasn’t able to locate the whereabouts of that legendary 10–foot–tall oil painting of Tony and Elvira.

Just call him “Worm-head” or, you know, wormy. This is not going to go away.

And you can’t trust the fanboys, of course. And that includes the sometimes too friendly or obliging Jeff Sneider. And I wouldn’t trust David Ehrlich either. None of them are really and truly straight-from-the-shoulder, let-the-chips-fall types.

You can, however, trust sourpusses like myself. If HE really and truly tumbles for George Miller’s latest wasteland saga, fine. But wait until Cannes for that to happen or not.

“Oh, Diogenes…find a man who’s honest.”

I for one would love to see Taika Waititi taper off onto insignificance…no offense. Rita Ora’s gown is cool.

Congrats to New Yorker critic Justin Chang for having won a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism. But if you ask me his 10.26.23 pan of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers was cheap and petty — a woke gangster hit job. Justin is a bright fellow and an excellent writer, but this swan-song review was a disqualifier, plain and simple.

And immediately humiliated myself when, having forgotten his name, I idiotically addressed him as “Captain Smith”. The glancing look on his face, a combination of mild contempt and mild disgust, is forever branded upon my memory.

I’m not saying that Captain Edward Smith was or wasn’t the chief culprit in the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, but someone needs to explain how Bernard Hill’s performance as this tragic figure in James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster was in itself infamous.

These things happen, I realize, when an obit writer is under pressure to quickly bang out copy but still.

His performance as Theoden hadn’t happened at the time of our unfortunate encounter (sometime in ‘98 or ‘99) but being a Lord of the Rings hater I would have avoided any such mention anyway.

Ominous indications of what may be coming are making me feel more and more depressed and sick in my soul. I don’t want to succumb to despair but this awful pit-of-my-stomach feeling won’t go away.