A Variety report by Matt Donnelly and Chris Willman assures that Disney’s forthcoming Lady And The Tramp reboot (not “animated” but a blend of CG and live action) will be scrubbed clean of politically incorrect inferences and foul racist stereotyping.

I’n alluding to the notorious Siamese cat song, sung by the Asian-accented “Si” and “Am” (i.e., Peggy Lee) in the original 1955 animated feature (“We are Siamese if you please, we are Siamese if you don’t please”), and Disney’s decision to give it a p.c. makeover.

The tune is being rewritten by Janelle Monae, and the cats in the new version are “not Siamese,” according to the Variety story. That way progressive Asians (including those who made and celebrated the immaculately tasteful Crazy Rich Asians) won’t feel offended.

To explain p.c. objections to this 64-year-old song, Donnelly and Willman reference an influential Flavorwire essay titled “The Code Behind the Kitty: Unpacking the Racist Myth of the Siamese Cat.” The article was posted by Marcus Hunter on 6.13.13.

The piece noted that Si and Am are among “the most racist cartoon characters ever depicted on film,” and described them as “jaundiced and sly, slick and feral [and] domesticated, though nevertheless propelled by their mischievous, impish nature to deceive and intimidate.”

In other words, Si and Am denigrate Asians. They could also be regarded, I suppose, as animated cousins of Mickey Rooney’s Asian landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s as well as characterizations of what Secretary of State Dean Rusk once called “the yellow peril.”

Tweeting with an apparently sincere intent, Donald Trump implied earlier today that Rev. Jerry Falwell had a good point when he tweeted last night that Trump deserves “reparations” by way of an extra two years added to his term. With the Mueller investigation having given his administration a clean bill of ethical health (or so they believe), Trump is asserting that his first two years were squandered by the Democrats’ “corrupt failed coup,” and he should therefore be given a two-year “gimme” to make up for this.

Trump is spouting this lunacy to entertain his supporters, of course, but he’s also conveying a half-serious, sociopathic indifference to U.S. Constitutional law and procedure. The man is undeniably sick — easily the most unstable, least rational, foaming-at-the-mouth President this country has ever had, and 35% (possibly less, possibly more) of the country supports his fat ass.

“I, Donald J. Trump, do solemnly swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

Tatyana has an ongoing insomnia problem, along with an occasional case of agitated nerves. This is largely due to her having been afflicted with Bell’s Palsy five years ago, which was triggered by stress issues due to a high-pressure job she had with a Swedish cosmetic company.

She wound up being treated for the malady during three successive hospital visits in Nizhny Novgorod, but a certain female physician didn’t correctly treat her with the right remedy at some point in the process, and to varying degrees she’s been living with nerves and occasional anxiety ever since. No big deal for the most part and certainly managable, but sometimes it spills over.

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Four days ago a guy named “r/ProRevenge” posted the following revenge saga on Reddit: “So about a year ago, I made a post on Instagram about how excited I was to see Infinity War, and I foolishly used the hashtag “Thanosdemandsyoursilence” As you may know, you can look up hashtags on Instagram and browse through posts using that hashtag.

“After I made the post, a random guy (whom I assume was browsing the hashtag to find people who used it) randomly targeted me, and commented on my post [with] a full list of everyone who died. I hadn’t seen the movie [at that time], and this guy did spoil it for me.

“But by that time, Endgame was confirmed (just not the name) and it was then that my master plan was born. I messaged the guy and told him that I had already seen the movie, but that was a good prank. It was then that we became ‘friends’, so for about 7 months, he and I messaged each other, texted memes, talked about movies, and stuff like that. (Keep in mind the friendship was fake — I was just trying to get his trust and make him comfortable with me.)

“Skip forward to about last week. I bought my Endgame tickets for opening night. I asked him if he was going on opening night and he said no, which was great news. He said he was going next week (this week.) So I saw Endgame, and while I was in the theater, I took PLENTY of pictures. I took pictures of [all the heavy stuff that happens in the third act].

“When I got out, I almost thought of not doing it. I don’t like to spoil movies, but I reassured myself that this guy deserves it. So I texted him that I saw it, he asked how it was and I told him it was great. He told me not to spoil it, and I said ‘Oh, like how you didn’t spoil Infinity War?’ Then he switched moods and was all like ‘Hey man, that was a long time ago, we’re friends now,’ stuff like that.

“Then, in one glorious action, I sent all the pictures as fast as I could, messaging plot points along with the pictures. It was all over in like 30 seconds, but he definitely saw it all. He cursed me out, saying I was a horrible person and stuff. Then he said ‘why would you do that, we’re such good friends?’

“And I texted back, ‘We’re not friends! A year ago you picked me out of a crowd of thousands and ruined a movie that I had been wanting to see for months. Since then I’ve been lying to you, deceiving you and gaining your trust all for this moment. You are not my friend, just a person who got what they deserve.’ Then he cursed me out some more, and I haven’t talked to him since.”

A Criterion Bluray (4K digital restoration) of David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet pops on 5.28. I was immediately haunted, enthralled and perversely amused by this wild, brilliant noir when I first saw it 32 and 3/4 years ago (it opened on 9.19.86). And yet I haven’t rewatched it since. The bottom line is that it’s more fascinating than likable.

What do I actually “like” about Blue Velvet? Dennis Hopper‘s performance mostly. Breathing in the nitrous oxide. That line about Pabst Blue Ribbon. “Mommy…Daddy wants to fuhhhhck!” Plus the famous slow-mo shot of a small-town fireman smiling and waving from a fire truck as it passes by.

I also have a vaguely unpleasant recollection of poor Isabella Rossellini (who was romantically involved with Lynch from ’86 through ’90 or thereabouts) having been seemingly treated like a piece of erotic meat with all the s&m nude scenes and whatnot.

There must have been semi-profound currents between Lynch and Rossellini for their relationship to have lasted four years, but this famous Helmut Newton photo is, for me, a portrait of a guy who’s more fixated and erotically intrigued than taken by genuine love and affection.

Helmut Newton photo, taken in ’86 or ’87. I think.

Here’s an account of the Lynch-Rossellini relationship; here’s another. Both report that Lynch ended the relationship. Quote: “The couple reportedly broke up and one of the reasons given was that Lynch could not stand the smell of cooking in the house because it would infect his drawings and writing papers.”

Anecdote: In the fall of ’85 I was working for New Line Cinema as an in-house publicist for A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge. The Jack Sholder-directed thriller (which is better than half-decent) costarred Hope Lange, who at the time had also landed a supporting role in Blue Velvet.

One afternoon somebody called Lange about some p.r. matter. Before picking up she apparently had an idea that a Blue Velvet person was calling. Her tone of voice was very spirited and friendly during the first few seconds of the call, but things turned sour and chilly when she realized she was talking to New Line. As in “ohh, it’s you guys…can I help you?”

My heart skipped a beat when I read a Variety story about Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York, which Amazon is refusing to distribute out of fear and cowardice, having arranged for distribution in Italy via distributor Lucky Red. Nick Vivarelli is reporting that “other European territories [are] also believed to have closed local distribution deals”…yes!

Right away I was imagining renting a car in Cannes and driving to San Remo, Italy (roughly a half-hour drive) and catching Rainy Day at one of the plexes there.

Then I read the words “in the fall.” Oh. This suggests that Rainy Day may premiere four months hence at the Venice Film Festival.

Vivarelli’s story indicates that Rainy Day hasn’t sold to each and every European or Middle-Eastern territory. It logically follows that there might be a market screening or two during the Cannes Film Festival. It would certainly be an opportune occasion to the film’s reps to seal the deal. I’m going to see if I can discreetly wangle my way into one of these showings.

If you discount the softballers (which conscientious review-readers need to do on a regular basis), the general reaction to Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis‘s Yesterday seems to be that it’s (a) cheerfully sappy and (b) occasionally eye-rolling.

Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich: “This sweet but vacuous exercise in suspending disbelief is an overstuffed and underwritten misfire; a studio-engineered crowd-pleaser so convinced that All You Need Is Love that it loses sight of some other essentials along the way: Believable characters, elegant pacing, a script that develops an actual heart instead of just nodding its head to a steady drumbeat of Hallmark emotions.”

In Owen Gleiberman’s view, Yesterday is “a cut-and-dried, rotely whimsical, prefab experience. [Supporting player] Kate McKinnon pushes her postmodern sarcasm to the wall — in Yesterday, she’s the acid-tongued incarnation of music-industry corruption. Yet beneath it all, there isn’t much difference between what Mandi does and what Boyle and Curtis are doing. They’re selling the Beatles all over again.”

To me Yesterday, which is basically about an enormous cosmic gift bestowed upon busker “Jack Malik” (Himesh Patel) by making him the only guy in the world who knows the entire Beatles library of tunes, seemed like an underwhelmer from the get-go.

From a 3.14 riff about Tribeca Film Festival announcement + trailer: “The fact that the trailer cutters chose to show clips of Patel singing ‘Yesterday’, ‘Let It Be’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand speaks volumes.

“If this film was even half-cool, Patel/Malik would be shown singing ‘Girl’, ‘Things We Said Today’, ‘Norweigan Wood,’ ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘Cry Baby Cry’, ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’, ‘Here, There, Everywhere,’ ‘Lovely Rita’, ‘Savoy Truffle’, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’, ‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey’, ‘You Know My Name — Look Up The Number’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’

“But no — he can only croon the sappy top-40 Beatles tunes (I hate ‘The Long and Winding Road’ with every fibre of my being) that everyone has heard 17 million times and is sick to death of.”

“As loud as Twitter can be if you pay attention to it, it’s hard to bear in mind that the screaming voices there are not a microcosm of anything except itself: a statistically insignificant number of people — with a large overrepresentation of media employees — who likely have a difficult time getting people to listen to them anywhere else. In the early days of The Reckoning, corporations built up a hair-trigger cave-in mechanism set off by any flurry of bluster on the social media platform. But more and more are finding that the best way to deal with Twitter is just to log out of Twitter, and life in the rest of the world can, amazingly, still proceed in something resembling normalcy.” — from Richard Rushfield‘s latest Ankler column, titled “Who Lost (And Won) April 2019?”.

The big New York publishers are reportedly uninterested in publishing a Woody Allen autobiography or “memwhah.” Because they’re afraid of offending the kneejerk “we believe Dylan and therefore Woody’s career must be killed” brigade. But Joe McBride‘s idea of Allen self-publishing is a sound and shrewd one. It would become an instant best-seller, all the reviewers would weigh in, etc. The odds that it wouldn’t become a hot-button must-read are almost nil. He just has to do it.

I don’t know whether to feel guilty or just accept that I’m a kind of 4K HDR peon, but lately I’ve been watching movies (1080p and 4K Bluray, HD streaming, DVDs) with the Sony XBR65X900F picture mode set to animation.

Animation doesn’t deliver any kind of motion-smoothing as far as I can tell. It certainly doesn’t deliver “motion-smoothing” as I’ve seen it before. But it does seem to add a certain extra-clear quality and a bit more smoothness in the action. It looks like a half-hearted cousin of motion smoothing while allowing a movie to retain a (polished) celluloid texture.

All I know that I recently watched my Bluray of Double Indemnity on my 4K Samsung Bluray and app player (which in itself delivers a 4K uprez effect), and I’ve never seen Billy Wilder‘s 1944 classic look this sockaroonie. I’ve seen it 15 or 20 times, and what I saw looked celluloid-based and natural as far as that 20th Century look goes, but the image also delivered a certain bumped-up clarity.

Posted on 9.12.18: “I’ve never watched a single film on my Sony 65″ HDR 4K TV with the ‘aid’ of motion-smoothing, which makes everything look overly fluid and video-tapey and generally removes the scrim-texture of film. But as appalling and repellent as motion-smoothing is, I’m strangely attracted to using it when watching old black-and-white films.

“There’s something hypnotic about watching, say, William Wellman‘s The Public Enemy, which I’ve seen several times since I was a kid, with the motion-smoothing effect. Shot 87 years ago, this rickety-feeling James Cagney gangster flick is a formally framed, somewhat squawky-sounding film for the most part, but with motion smoothing it feels (and I know I’m not supposed to say this) cleaner, fresher and less antiquated.”

Hollywood Elsewhere humbly apologizes to Long Shot co-writer Liz Hannah for posting a crude and over-emphatic dismissal of this Seth Rogen-Jonathan Levine film yesterday. I’m not a fan of the film, but I expressed myself indelicately. I just blurted it out (which occasionally happens when the spigot is turned on 24/7) but within an hour I felt badly and deleted the tweet. Then I wrote a letter of apology to Hannah last night. I’m very sorry. As I noted yesterday, I greatly respect Hannah and Josh Singer’s work on The Post.

And thanks, by the way, to the shrieking scolds and fang-toothed twitter jackals who tried to make hay out of this. You’re all such wonderful fellows, in part because you’ve never once made a mistake. Salud!

I don’t like to see my movie heroes looking craggy and Gandalf-y. It reminds me that time and biology wait for no one, and that the next chapter after Gandalf or Gandalf-Plus is The Big Sleep, and that upsets me.

It’s comforting that Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro sound sharp and canny (especially Marty), but one look and I’m thinking of “Rocking Chair“, that 1970 Band song. I’ll take these guys in any guise, but if I were Scorsese and De Niro I would want to simulate a state of being that is less in the way of the Debonair Social Club (the place where Joe Pesci met Tommy-the-gangster in Raging Bull) and more in the way of a ’70s Visconti film or that wealthy family in Luca Guadagnino‘s I Am Love.

Scorsese’s eye bags are the same eye bags that Victor McLaglen had in his 70s. I took one look and said “oh, shit.” If I were Marty I would get a get a subtle Prague touch-up (the kind that doesn’t look like anything) along with some follow-up collagen injections. If I were De Niro I wouldn’t wear old man comfort shoes but elegant Italian loafers. During public appearances, I mean. He can wear old man shoes to his heart’s content in private, but when he’s on stage he has to look slick and uptown. Less Mulberry Street, more Museum of Modern Art. Scorsese is doing it right, shoe-wise. Look at those babies.

You can laugh if you want, but I’ve been best friends with these guys since the early ’70s and I don’t want them to get any older. I want them to just stay the same from this point on and live forever. I can’t have that, of course. None of us can, including our Siamese cat, Anya. But the least they can do is pretend they’re 15 or 20 years younger, not just cosmetically and sartorially but in every way imaginable. They’ll feel better if they do, and so will I.