If a director is no longer making good films or having trouble getting funding for his/her next project, there’s almost always a good reason for that.

Usually it’s because he/she has simply aged out and has therefore (a) lost the ability to hear and respond to the cultural current, (b) has nothing new to say or (c) has simply run out of gas. Then again you have to remember the case of the 82-year-old Sidney Lumet rebounding with Find Me Guilty (’06) and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (’07). Lumet’s comeback was a thing of absolute wonder.

If I could magically re-ignite the creative fires of any big-name ’80s director so that he/she could make one more really good or great film, I would choose John Carpenter, Rob Reiner, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam or Bertrand Blier. But it’s a silly idea. Artists tend to lose their strength and vision when the fire goes out — period. Some are long-game players but most are not.

From “Visual Maestro, Yes, But A Sworn Enemy of Logic,” posted on 4.20.16:

Posted on 9.10.15: “My view is that Brian DePalma was a truly exciting, must-watch director from the late ’60s to mid ’70s (Greetings to The Phantom of the Paradise to Carrie), and an exasperating, occasionally intriguing director from the late ’70s to mid ’90s (Dressed To Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes).

“But he’s been over for years. I used to love the guy but then he made Mission to Mars (’00), Femme Fatale (’02), The Black Dahlia (’06), Redacted (’07) and Passion (’12)…forget it. Baumbach and Paltrow surely understand this. They surely made this doc in hopes of restoring DePalma’s rep as well as educating Millenials and reminding the old-time fans what a legendary helmer he was in his day.

“…and the sound of a clown crying in the alley.”

There are two double-if not-triple-electrifying Bob Dylan performances in Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue (Netflix, 6.12), which I saw yesterday but can’t write about until Monday evening. This is one of them — a hard-charging, hard-punching version of A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall; the other is a similar sounding rendition of “Isis.” A third musical highpoint is footage of Joni Mitchell (who joined the RTR tour in Connecticut) playing and singing “Coyote,” then a brand-new song, for Dylan and three or four others.

It would appear that the basic bones of Michael Dowse‘s Stuber are roughly the same as those in Michael Mann‘s Collateral. Kumail Nanjiani is Jamie Foxx, and of course driving an Uber instead of a cab. Dave Bautista is a thicker, heavier, sweatier, more Cro-Magnon version of Tom Cruise‘s Vincent.

You can tell right off the bat it’s a crude action comedy aimed at morons — basically a run-of-the-mill Dwayne Johnson movie. Collateral was a real-deal movie with a tough-love theme and a knockout ending (“Think anyone’ll notice?”). It was basically about a bad guy saving a good guy…about Foxx being goaded by Cruise into manning up, stop fantasizing and taking control of his life. What is Stuber likely to be? Be honest.

Summary: You’re not that special. In fact, you’re fucked. Because mom and dad pampered and spoiled and made things too easy for you. And your coping skills with the unfair world that awaits…? Forget it.

I said this last summer, and then I reposted; now I’m saying it again. A healthy percentage (half?) of the none-too-brights who voted for Donald Trump did so for three reasons. One, they wanted to deliver a resounding fuck-you to the business-as-usual mainstream establishment by throwing a brick through the proverbial plate-glass window. Two, they wanted to deliver some pushback to the p.c. community for aggressively kowtowing to POCs and LGBTQs at every turn. And three (and this is the main reason), they couldn’t stand Hillary Clinton.

I voted for her, of course, but I had problems with her. (As did tens of thousands in my lefty-urban contrarian camp.) I would have voted passionately and wholeheartedly for Elizabeth Warren if she’d won the nomination. Or Bernie Sanders even. Hillary’s adamant refusal to listen to what was happening in ’16 — the Bernie and Trump explosions on both sides of the spectrum — is what sealed her fate. Instead of begging Warren or Bernie to be her vp and thereby embracing what they stood for, she chose Tim fucking Kaine. I hated her for doing that.

And then she went out there and committed suicide by acting like a peevish substitute teacher, by running on genderism, by fainting at that World Trade Center tribute event, by cackling and walking around with those awful eye bags, by allowing her stupid-ass emails for become a thing, by nodding with approval as DNC honcho Debbie Wasserman Schultz schemed, rigged and plotted against Bernie, by failing to campaign more aggressively in Wisconsin and Michigan, and for trying to sell a liberal moderation casserole when the bumblefucks wanted to hear “shake this place up!” And then the James Comey letter finished her off.

I will never, ever forgive Hillary for her blindness, and for what she did to all of us. She singlehandedly engineered the most horrifically anti-Democratic phase in the history of U.S. of A. governance. She did this — she allowed the most odious, fiendish, openly fascistic and wantonly destructive president in the nation’s history to seize power and take us all down in the process. The voters screamed and howled in ’16, and Hillary turned a deaf ear.

In my view Hillary should move to Spain or Italy (buy a home in Ravello) and stay there.

And now the same stodgy liberal mindset, the same “let’s play it safe and laid-back by not alienating the bumblefucks” Democrats are hoping to nominate a 76-year-old guy who’s been marinating in the same basic Hillary sauce for the last 30 years, the same “let’s be moderately reasonable” approach and not be so hateful and restore the Obama era with fairness and constructive compassion and establishment chumminess and blah blah.

If Democratic National Committee honchos allow Hillary to speak at the 2020 Democratic convention, they’ll be slitting their own throats and that of the Democratic nominee, plain and simple.

“You Have to Kill The Bear,” a recent Politico piece.

I’m caught up in a weird sleep cycle because of recently being in Paris, etc. And I can’t write about Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue (which I saw around midday) until Monday. So I have to take a nap but in the meantime…

[Originally posted on 8.20.15]: Director Rod Lurie is conducting another Hollywood-centric Facebook poll, this time about the greatest-ever lead performances in feature films. Which right away excludes James Gandolfini in The Sopranos so the HE version is allowing performances from longform cable.

Lurie started me off with a taste of 20 performances, and right away I was saying to myself “these are too familiar, too boilerplate…where’s that special-passion choice that defies conventional thinking?”

What is a greatest-ever performance anyway? My theory is that picks in this realm have less to do with skill or technique or even, really, the actor, and a lot more to do with the viewer and what they choose to see. The choices that people make tend to reflect their intimate personal histories on some level. Because they’re choosing performances or more precisely characters who closely mirror and express their deepest longings, fondest hopes and saddest dreams.

My late younger brother was tremendously moved by Mark Ruffalo‘s portrayal of a loser in You Can Count On Me, in large part because my brother was that character. I know a lady who’s always felt close to Vivien Leigh‘s Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind for the same reason. Bill Clinton once said on a High Noon DVD documentary that Gary Cooper‘s performance in High Noon is his all-time favorite because Will Kane‘s situation (everyone chickening out when things get tough and leaving him to stand alone) reminded him of what it’s often like for a sitting U.S. President.

When I began to assemble my pantheon the first nominees that came to mind were Gandolfini, Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront, Monica Vitti in L’Avventura, Amy Schumer in Trainwreck (I’m dead serious), George Clooney in Michael Clayton, Gary Cooper in High Noon, Mia Farrow in Broadway Danny Rose, Lee Marvin in Point Blank, Alan Ladd in Shane, Brad Pitt in Moneyball, Marilyn Monroe in Some like It Hot and Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings. This is without thinking anything through or second-guessing myself.

Tatyana wants to visit the Getty Museum tomorrow (i.e., Saturday). The Getty isn’t a “museum” as much as a consecrated tourist destination for weekend lookie-lou types. I generally avoid tourist destinations as I can’t abide the company, especially the way these places make me feel like I’m one of “them”. In my mind there are few things worse than this because it means a constant replay of “lemme outta here, lemme outta here, lemme outa here.” I would rather be confined for five hours inside a dank, windowless basement room with puddles on the floor and rats scurrying about than visit the Getty on a weekend. Visiting on a weekday afternoon might be a different thing. A couple of years ago I was given access to a private viewing of the Louvre’s Ancient Egypt exhibit — the absence of lines, crowds and people crowding into souvenir ships afforded all manner of sublime pleasures.

In a Fangoria q & a, Jordan Peele tells the following to Midsommar director Ari Aster: “I think you’ve made the most idyllic horror film of all time. You’ve taken Stepford Wives and shattered the attractiveness of that movie with this one. That alone is a feat. This movie is just so unique. This hasn’t existed yet, and anything after Midsommar (A24, 7.3) is going to have to contend with it. I mean, this usurps The Wicker Man as the most iconic pagan movie to be referenced.

“It plays a weird sleight of hand [in which] it transcends the horror of itself. It is an ascension of horror. I didn’t feel victimized; I felt like I was being put up on this pedestal and honored through the eyes of the protagonist. It’s a very unique feeling for a film to conjure because after it ended, I found myself looking back at the final act like, ‘Holy shit.’ That was some of the most atrociously disturbing imagery I’ve ever seen on film, and yet I experienced it with this open-mouthed, wild-eyed gape. I think that part of how we get there is never reducing the villains to any kind of snarling monsters with an evil agenda.”

Hereditary sold me on the idea of Aster being an inspired, X-factor. deft-touch director. My kind of elevated-horror guy and then some. I was very excited about seeing Midsommar (and I still am) but Jordan Peele creaming all over it scared me half to death.

What’s the point of staging an extreme pagan festival every 90 years? Isn’t that a bit much? Wouldn’t ten years make more sense? Or at the most every 25 years? And where does this Swedish village find these extreme 20something psychos? Notice: Does insanity run in your blood? Were your grandparents or great-grandparents committed to state asylums for the criminally insane? If so, the organizers of a once-every-90 years festival are looking to talk to you and possibly enlist you in their cause.”

I’ll be catching Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue (Netflix, 6.12) late Friday morning, but knowing I can’t attend the big, ultra-cool 6.10 Manhattan screening (Alice Tully Hall followed by a Tavern on the Green party) breaks my heart into little pieces.

6.11 “road show” screenings will happen in London, Paris, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Portland, Tulsa, Tempe, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Bologna and Sydney as well as in Los Angeles and New York, the two cities where the film will continue to play the following day and beyond.

From “Bob Dylan’s Glam Hootenanny: Returning to Rolling Thunder,” a 6.5 N.Y. Times piece by Jon Pareles: “How distant the mid-1970s seem now. They were unkempt, hairy, hedonistic, improvisational, analog, inefficient — anything but neatly calculated and Instagram-ready. Post-psychedelic and pre-AIDS, they were a continuation of the idealistic, natural 1960s, yet they were also an immediate precursor to the polymorphous, synthetic, role-playing disco era.

“The bitterness of Vietnam and Watergate lingered; hippie utopianism was giving way to a more selfish search for individual satisfaction. Things were still scruffy, but not quite so communal.

Yesterday YouTube announced a decision to specifically prohibit hate-agenda videos, or those “alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status,” per a statement posted here.

This sounds like the right way to go except — except! — when it comes to removing Leni Riefenstahl‘s Triumph of the Will (’35), a rhetorically abhorrent but nonetheless masterful piece of political propaganda.

Will is subject to removal because it “promotes or glorifies Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory,” the YouTube statement declared. Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn has reported that a full-length Triumph was removed from YouTube last night. But there are still several clips from the film currently viewable.

The problem is that the cinematography and editing of Triumph of the Will have long been regarded as brilliant in and of themselves. On a purely visual level the film is widely acknowledged as a seminal influencer of generations of filmmakers. Some critics claimed that Will seemed to have influenced the final resistance-assembly scene in Star Wars when Han, Luke and Chewy are awarded medals by Princess Leia. And don’t forget that 1984-ish Apple ad.

There isn’t a cinematographer or director who won’t acknowledge that Triumph of the Will is a major cinematic milestone.

Obviously it can be watched via other platforms. I own a high-quality Bluray that Robert Harris restored in 2015. But what YouTube has done feels slippery-slopey.

There is a difference between garden-variety hate-mongering and important cinematic history.

If you take Triumph of the Will down from YouTube then in a certain way the Nazi Nuremberg rally of 1934 “didn’t happen”, and once you do that elsewhere how different would it be, really, to remove any and all visual records of the Holocaust? Because once you’ve done that in all formats then the murder of six million Jews “didn’t happen” either. The sword cuts both ways.

Over the last 40-plus years scores of filmmakers have used rock tunes to deliver undercurrents in their films, but no one has ever done this as masterfully as Martin Scorsese, the cinema’s ultimate rock-music maestro. No, this is not an original observation.

But here’s a semi-original one: What makes Scorsese’s rock-scoring so memorable is that once you watch a Scorsese passage that’s been perfectly blended with a well-known track (like that Goodfellas montage of Jimmy Conway murders underlaid with Eric Clapton‘s “Layla” or Harry Nilsson‘s “Jump Into The Fire” augmenting that classic cocaine-frenzy scene with Ray Liotta running around), the song always acquires an extra dimension of some kind — it becomes a stronger song for the association. As in forever.

Example #1: I’d always enjoyed Jimmy Castor‘s “Hey Leroy, Your Mama’s Calling You,” but it acquired a mythic element when Scorsese used it in that cranked-up Stratton Oakmont scene in The Wolf of Wall Street. It retains that association to this day.

Example #2: That Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore scene in which Scorsese takes us from a Gone With The Wind-ish yesteryear sequence with young Alice singing that Alice Faye song (“You’ll Never Know”) to Socorro, New Mexico circa 1974, and this is achieved with the playing of Mott The Hoople‘s “All The Way to Memphis.” It was this scene that sold me on Mott The Hoople — this plus “All The Young Dudes,” I mean.

Example #3, #4, #5 and “#6: The “Mean Streets” quartet — the “Be My Baby” opening credits, the Rolling Stones’ “Tell Me” scene in which Harvey Keitel enters the bar and says hello to everyone, the scene in which Robert DeNiro enters the same bar to the sounds of “Jumpin Jack Flash” and the “Please Mr, Postman” fight scene in that basement-level pool hall.

Example #7: The Mickey & Sylvia “Love Is Strange” moment in Casino when Robert De Niro decides that he’s gotta have Sharon Stone‘s hellcat hustler.

Big question: What non-Scorsese films have delivered phenomenal rock-tune scorings? List your top two or three.