Director-screenwriter Oliver Stone, currently the Noam Chomsky of Hollywood filmmakers, is still fully engaged, plugging away and firing on all cylinders. He’ll probably remain that way until the day he drops dead. But from ’86 through ’91 Stone was incandescent and untouchable — Salvador (’86), Platoon (’87), Wall Street (’87), Talk Radio (’88), Born on the Fourth of July (’89), The Doors (’91), JFK (’91). You could extend the streak, I suppose, to Natural Born Killers (’94), even though Heaven and Earth (’93) was a problem. Any Given Sunday (’99) was of course a major rebound. Okay, call it a 13-year streak.

In Anne Thompson‘s “10 Things We Learned at CinemaCon” piece, the #4 lesson is that “Netflix may have to open The Irishman via indie theater chains.”

“Of course, the big circuits would love to play the $175-million Martin Scorsese gangster epic — as long as it isn’t released by Netflix. Even Mexico’s Cinepolis refused to show the Oscar-nominated Roma — directed by favorite son Alfonso Cuarón — because Netflix would not respect the exclusive theatrical window. That means that no major chain will show the Scorsese [film] either.

“That leaves Netflix going back to the 100 or so indie theaters it booked on Bird Box and Roma. In New York, The Irishman could wind up opening at the IFC Center. And in L.A., Netflix is in the process of acquiring and partnering with the American Cinematheque to program the venerable Egyptian Theatre. That would give the streamer a permanent weeknight venue for L.A. awards events and premieres all year long.”

Friend: Look at this new voter poll — that lame Joe Biden handsy “controversy” didn’t make a dent.

HE: Mr. and Mrs. Older Middle America are half-asleep at the wheel and lazy as fuck.

Friend: Will you ever be able to face reality?

HE: It’s not that I find Joe deficient, but he’s YESTERDAY’S NEWS….he’s the SENIOR-SET LAYOVER FROM THE OBAMA YEARS, and really, from the ’90s and early aughts. People start to decline in their late 70s and certainly by their early ’80s. The Presidency is not for Joe…not now. He’s an 18-years-older Stuart Symington, when Symington was running in ’60. Or Symington running in ’80, when he turned 79. Joe’s moment has PASSED…water under the bridge. Joe isn’t even a baby boomer — he was born in ’42, or right at the tail end of the Baby Bust generation. The boomers came along in ’46. A number of N.Y. Times and Washington Post columnists have said this over and over. The verdict is clear — in the long run Biden would be better off stepping aside.

It HAS to be Buttigieg, Beto or Harris. They are now, Biden is yesterday. It HAS to be this way. Biden’s numbers are simply about name recognition — that and the astounding laziness and lack of focus on the part of middle-range poll respondents. Once the real debates start and the ’20 primaries begin, his big lead will evaporate like that. Beto is not over — he’s just gathering himself, working the towns, finding his national voice. The man connects with people. My favorite is Buttigieg — he’s really GOT IT — but Beto would be excellent, and he’s taller than Trump (while Mayor Pete is four inches shorter). The only thing that scares me about Buttigieg is the Alfred E. Neuman resemblance and the fact that he’s only around 5’9″ or thereabouts. The only thing that scares me about Harris is that voice of hers, that lack of oratory command, that scolding tone. She may win against Trump, but she may not.

Friend: Oh, for fuck’s sake! How can people on the left be THIS ETERNALLY STUPID, going all the way back to 1972? THINK about where we are. Three years ago the country was yanked HARD RIGHT. There is zero chance, after the first term of a presidency, that the country will swiftly be pulled HARD LEFT. So Harris is out automatically. She is not a moderate. Mayor Pete is gay. The number one job of the commander in chief is not to make boomers feel like their life is worth a damn or to sell false hope to millennials it is to be in charge of the most powerful army in the world. Anyone who becomes president has to be THAT before they are anything. It isn’t about what YOU LIKE. It isn’t about what liberals need to feel good about themselves. It is about asking an entire country to change horses midstream.

Right now Trump’s disapproval ratings aren’t anywhere near Jimmy Carter’s. Carter was primary-ed by Ted Kennedy. The entire Democratic Party turned against him and we got fucking Ronald Reagan and HW for 12 years! Do you know how badly they raped this country in ten years? THAT SHIT IS ON THE DEMOCRATS. Cut to 2000 — idiots who supported Ralph Nader let Al Gore slip through because people like you didn’t think he was hip enough. We got BUSH for eight more years. Now we come to 2016 and Green Peace and fucking Naomi Klein and idiots like Shailene Woodley could go to Standing Rock and pretend they gave a damn but in reality they would not vote for Hillary. So now we have Trump.

On 6.7 CBS Films will release Ron Howard‘s Pavoratti, a grand summary of the life and career of the late, world-famous tenor.

I’m sure Howard will hit all the right notes, but I wonder how he’ll treat Yes, Giorgio (’82), which is about a love affair between the bearish, barrel-chested Pavoratti (more or less playing himself) and a doctor, played by the wafer-thin Kathryn Harrold.

It was the only film in which Pavoratti starred, and it became one of the biggest box-office catastrophes of all time, costing $19 million to produce and earning only $2.3 million. It’s probably a safe bet that Howard will deftly sidestep this episode, as his doc was made with the cooperation of the Pavoratti estate.

As a young-buck critic (and I realize this is a totally predictable HE observation) I remember being struck 37 years ago by the fact that Yes, Giorgio was the first mainstream Hollywood film in which a fat man played the lover of a slender hottie. This was probably a significant reason why the film didn’t work with audiences — they just couldn’t accept this as a real-life scenario. The other reason is that the Franklin Schaffner-directed romance tended to skirt the surface — it was almost all cuteness and froth. On top of which Pavoratti played a sexist, self-absorbed egotist, albeit with a gentle manner.

When in real life has a girthy, rotund fellow landed a rail-thin girlfriend or wife? Orson Welles scored with Oja Kodar, but who else?

We’re all part of this very exclusive club, basically, and we’re all getting super well paid for being these brilliant, never-miss-a-trick, cool-cat characters and generally quipping and slinking around and never, ever over-acting. We’re smug, dude, but in a cool way. We’re invested in the story, of course, but not to the point of stepping outside of our respective frosty zones. We live on one side of the screen — the inside, the side you can’t get into — and the rest of you are out there, standing in lines, paying for tickets, chewing the popcorn and losing your shit over the smallest little things. We’re not saying we’re better than you are, but maybe we are. No, take that back! We’re all together in this. Same planet, same air, same dance. Heh-heh, ahem…whatever.

From Stephen J. Whitty Facebook post about Notorious, the 1946 Hitchcock film that he screened yesterday for a class at Montclair State College, but primarily about Leopoldine Konstantin, who played Claude Rains‘ icy, watchful, hawk-like Nazi mom:

“Konstantin had been a great star in early 20th century Europe. She worked for Max Reinhardt, appeared in the original Spring Awakening and the first film version of Lola Montez. Did an American stage tour in 1911. She got married, began a family and got divorced. Hitler came to power. She left for England, and lost her son in the blitz. Eventually she came to America. With her English uncertain and her fame receding, she took a job in a factory.

“Hitchcock, meanwhile, was casting Notorious. Who to play Rains’ domineering mother? Ethel Barrymore was suggested. Mildred Natwick’s name came up. But neither seemed right. Then one of the emigre actors already cast, Reinhold Schuenzel, said, ‘Do you know the perfect actress is already here in Los Angeles? And she needs a job.’

via GIFER

“Watching the film now, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role.

“Her best scene comes when Rains tells her that his new wife has betrayed him. First Konstantin sits up in bed. She smiles, slightly — it is so wonderful, isn’t it, to have one’s most evil thoughts about your daughter-in-law confirmed? Then she hears her son explain the details. And, very coolly, she reaches across to her nightstand, pulls a cigarette out of a box, and lights it.

“Six times I’ve hosted this film, and every time the crowd laughs.

“And I think it’s because, in that one moment, as she stabs the cigarette into her mouth tough-guy, Jimmy-Cagney style — Konstantin has told us everything we need to know about her character. She is unromantic. She is resolute. She is a thousand times fiercer than her son, and she will do whatever it takes to protect him. All that in the lighting of a cigarette.

“This is what great actors do. They find the tiniest moment, the smallest action, and they invest it with meaning and metaphor.”

Initially posted on 7.5.15:

One of the defining moments of my early childhood — my life, really — happened when I wasn’t quite three years old. It was a late summer evening, and my mother (her name was Nancy) and I were roaming up and down the century-old boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey. One of the evening’s highlights (in my mind at least) was the famous Asbury Park merry-go-round.

After going on a ride or two We gradually made our way south (or was it north?), maybe a mile or two. Then I somehow slipped my mother’s grasp and disappeared. Gone.

For the first time in my life I had decided that it would be more exciting and fulfilling to go on a solo boardwalk adventure rather than stay with mom. Hey, I was only two-something.

Nancy freaked, of course. She found a couple of cops and asked for their help. They looked, searched, asked all the merchants…no luck. They finally made their way back to the merry-go-round and there I was — staring, bedazzled.

This incident put the fear of God into both my parents. From then on they decided I had to be kept on a short leash and monitored extra carefully. The result is that I began to feel that my life was being lived in a gulag, a police state. Rules, repression, “no”, time to go to bed at dusk, “because I said so,” “you’re too young,” etc.

A vaguely similar incident happened when I was around eight. In no way traumatic but it confirmed a pattern.

It was a hot Saturday morning when I convinced my seven year-old girlfriend, also named Nancy, to go on an adventure. The idea was to stroll from Harrison Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey (our homes were 100 feet apart) to my grandparent’s home in Rahway — a distance of roughly six miles. I’d never walked it before but I had a rough idea of how to get there.

We arrived at my grandparents’ home on West Meadow Avenue around three hours later. My surprised grandmother made us a sandwich and called my parents; my mom or dad (I forget which) drove over, took us back.

If I’d been the parent I would have said to myself, “Well, my son is obviously fearless or at least not intimidated by the unknown, and doesn’t lack for initiative or a sense of adventure…qualities that will almost certainly serve him well later in life. I’ll have to tell him to be more careful, of course, but he mainly needs to be hugged and approved of and encouraged to climb new mountains.”

Instead…gulag!

In eleventh grade I began tapping out a one-page, two-sided satirical news sheet and passing it around among my friends. Silly, sophomoric, sometimes off-color stuff about school episodes, relationships and sexual stirrings. Definitely juvenile but enterprising. One of the news sheets was snagged by a vice-principal at the school, and a day or two my father and I were hauled into his office and warned about the horrors of my having passed around pornographic material.

An enlightened, forward-thinking reaction from my father would have been something along the lines of “well, that newsletter was pretty crude and low-rent, but my son’s urge to publish a newsletter and be heard is obviously strong. I just need to encourage him to channel this in a legit way. Maybe urge him to try for a journalism degree.”

Instead…shame, anger, storm clouds.

Seymour Cassel, the creased and weathered character actor who was born middle-aged, and is primarily known for playing multiple roles for directors John Cassevetes and Wes Anderson, has passed on at age 84. Not a tragedy as he loved a long and robust life. It’s just that the journey ended. My problem, if you will, is that I never saw Cassel’s signature Cassevetes performance in Minnie and Moskowitz. My strongest recollection, for some reason, is his barber-shop father of Jason Schwartzman‘s Max Fischer in Rushmore.

Four years ago a 14 year-old named John Smith fell through the ice of Missouri’s Lake Saint Louise. He was underwater for 15 minutes. At the hospital he was clinically “dead” — no pulse, 88 degree temperature — for 45 minutes. But then God brought him back to life after his adoptive mom, Joyce Smith, begged for divine intervention.

Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta suggests that “the ice cold water actually slowed John’s metabolism so much that it allowed him to survive a situation that might have otherwise killed him.” I for one support this hypothesis.

Given the market for faith-based entertainment, there’s a new film called Breakthrough — directed Roxann Dawson, produced by DeVon Franklin, released by Disney — about this episode, made for rightwing types who adore the idea of God stepping in and saving the day.

Excerpt from Owen Gleiberman‘s 4.8.19 Variety review: “On the surface, there’s no reason why a tale of mystical healing should inherently belong to either the conservative or liberal camp, especially given that the current leader of American conservative politics, Donald Trump, is a rage-fueled narcissistic demagogue who, measured by his words and deeds, is no more a Christian than he is a Martian.

“Yet the aspect of Breakthrough that makes it, spiritually and culturally, a movie of the Trump age is the literal-mindedness of its faith. The movie isn’t just an affirmation of Christian belief; it’s a sentimental celebration of never doubting. It says to its audience, ‘If your faith is strong enough, then you will be protected, no matter what.’ That’s an incredible reassurance, but it’s also an excuse — for following certain leaders wherever they take you. No matter what.”

Pete Buttigieg to Mike Pence: Check your rightwing faith convictions, give them a re-think. Or fold them five ways and put them where the moon don’t shine.

Excerpt: “The struggle is not over when transgender troops, ready to put their lives on the line for their country, have their careers threatened with ruin, one tweet at a time, by a commander in chief who himself pretended to be disabled” — i.e., fictitious bone spurs — “in order to get out of serving when it was his turn.”

There’s never been a shortage of bad movie dads, or for that matter bad movie dad lists.

The top contenders for the ultimate bad-dad prize are Jack Nicholson in The Shining (abuser of wife and young son), John Huston in Chinatown (father-daughter rape), Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood (emotional abuser of son), Robert Duvall in The Great Santini (ditto), John Cassavetes in Rosemary’s Baby (wife abuser by way of arranging for her to become pregnant by Satan himself), etc.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Daryl Duke and Curtis Hanson‘s The Silent Partner (’78), which I saw brand-new but haven’t re-watched since, was an excellent variation on Strangers on a Train. It was actually a remake of Think of a Number, a 1969 Danish film written and directed by Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt, and based on a novel by Danish writer Anders Bodelsen.

It delivered Elliott Gould‘s last alluring, well-written lead role before he downshifted into character parts, and Chris Plummer played a deliciously demonic bank robber and extortionist. A new Kino Lorber Bluray pops on 6.18.19.

Here’s an enjoyable Sunset Gun appreciation (12.24.16), or more precisely a discussion of the film by Goyld and Kim Morgan.

I’m also a big fan of Duke’s Payday (’72), the drama about a country-music star shitheel (Rip Torn). No Bluray or HD streaming as we speak.