Three days ago I rewatched Robert Benton‘s Places in the Heart (9.21.84). Sometimes older films hold up and sometimes they can seem a bit softer or less formidable in retrospect. Well, you can sheath that sword because the sands of time haven’t diminished Places in the Heart in the slightest. In my book it’s a truly great film. The church communion scene at the very end still turns me into mush.

Sally Field‘s “you really like me!” speech upon winning the Best Actress Oscar has been endlessly belittled, but over the last 40 years I’ll bet that few have given the film another shot and really settled into her performance. Her Edna Spalding is fairly magnificent…about as pained and stressed and rock-solid as it gets.

Director-writer Benton, who’s still with us at age 91, really knew rural, Depression-era Texas, having been born and raised in the backwater of Waxahachie (where Places in the Heart takes place) and you can feel that authority and authenticity in every scene.

Heart includes uncomfortably frank depictions of racism, and there’s no way in hell that the wokesters would allow such a film to be made today. But every frame is real and honest and humane. It’s touching, grueling, affecting…the way it really was back then, at least in Benton’s recollection.

I don’t want to hear one HE comment-threader argue this point…not one!

And the cast….good God! Field, John Malkovich, Danny Glover, Lindsay Crouse, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Lane Smith, Terry O’Quinn, Bert Remsen.

There’s a scene in which Smith urges the financially strapped Field to allow Malkovich’s “Mr. Will”, his blind brother-in-law, to stay with her as a lodger. Field’s initial response is “this isn’t a good time,” which I partly understood. At the same time I was muttering to myself, “Don’t say ‘no’ to Malkovich staying with you…please! He’s John Malkovich!”

Malkovich’s career erupted that year. His Heart performance resulted in a Best Supporting Actor nomination. He played a tough photojournalist in Roland Joffe‘s The Killing Fields. And he played Biff in a celebrated Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, costarring with Dustin Hoffman. I caught Salesman in the spring or summer of ’84, and five minutes after Malkovich came on stage I said to myself, “Jesus fuck, this guy is amazing.”

This CNET video includes a crudely animated reconstruction of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman on the night of 6.12.94. I’m uncertain as to when it originally aired — possibly in the mid ’90s or certainly more than 20 years ago.

I had never watched this horrorshow until after the death of O.J Simpson on 4.10.24.

The key portion begins around 4:35…ghastly.

It should be noted that the animated action doesn’t square with the earwitness account of local resident Robert Heidstra, who testified that he heard a male (almost certainly Goldman) yelling “hey! hey! hey!” around the reported time of the killings, or 10:35 pm.

The eyes are the window of the soul…

(top) Donald J. Trump; (middle) Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus H. Christ in King of Kings (’61); (bottom) Robert Ryan as John the Baptist in same film.

I’m sorry but a very hotsy-totsy Hollywood screening of a 4K DCP restoration of Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest will happen two days hence, and I need to hear reactions from sophistos who can roll up their sleeves and evaluate the quality of the restoration like pros.

People have been waiting for a NXNW 4K restoration for many years. Talk about long-anticipated, pulse-quickening, etc.

What kind of a bump or enhancement does the new restoration offer, and in what way exactly? Be specific. Or is the restoration more in the realm of a sturdy, respectable capturing of what the currently purchasable Bluray already offers?

Those planning to attend the Saturday, 4.20 viewing at the TCL Chinese IMAX theatre (it starts at 2:45 pm) need to send reviews to HE as soon as possible.

A 4K UHD Bluray will “street” at year’s end.

44 years ago I attended a glorious Radio City Music Hall presentation of Kevin Brownlow‘s restoration of Abel Gance‘s Napoleon (’27) — a Francis Coppola-sponsored, once-in-a-lifetime cinematic happening that knocked everyone’s socks off…three 35mm projectors and a super-wide screen (those triptych sequences!), a live symphony orchestra conducted by Carmine Coppola…a magnificent trigger switch…genuinely exciting blood-pump cinema.

Many different versions of Gance’s masterpiece have been screened over the last century, and all were quite lengthy.

The world premiere version happened at the Paris Opera in April 1927, and it ran 4 hours and 10 minutes. A nine-hour version played the following month at Paris’s Apollo theatre. A six-hour, 43-minute version was sent to the U.S. in 1928. Many different cuts shown at varying film speeds were exhibited worldwide over decades. The Coppola-Brownlow version shown at RCMH in 1980 ran four hours with a longish intermission. It’s also viewable on Bluray, of course, with a running time of 333 minutes.

All to say that a brand-new Cinematheque Francaise version is premiering at next month’s Cannes Film Festival — seven hours total but shown in two parts. The first half (which will run three hours and 40 minutes) will screen on Tuesday, 5.14. HE will attend, of course.

Gance’s Napoleon is a much more vital and essential film than Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix‘s Napoleon — I can tell you this without qualification. What ever happened to the idea of streaming a much longer version on Apple?

I never saw Jeannot Szwarc and Carl Gottleib‘s Jaws 2 (’78) because I knew it would be dogshit.

Even though it was produced by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown and costarred Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton, it was obviously corned beef hash. But before today, I had never seen a frame of it, and I must say that the water-ski-attack-meets-exploding-motorboat scene is hilarious!

Is there another scene as ludicrous? Does Hamilton’s mayor character get eaten? Answer: No — Murray is spared.

Jaws 2 cost $30 million to produce; it wound up earning $102,922,376 domestic and $105,978,000 foreign for a total of $208,900,376.

Richard Linklater‘s caper-esque Hit Man premiered…what was it, seven months ago? The big debut happened at last September’s Venice Film Festival, then a couple of weeks later at the Toronto Film Festival (where Netflix picked it up) and then the New York Film Festival.

Everyone loved Hit Man — the most popular light-hearted thriller of 2023. And then it kinda dropped out of sight, at least as far as advance screenings were concerned. Those not paying close attention might have thought it had opened. It never did, of course.

And now it’s back! Back to the future! One of 2023’s most likable hit movies is opening theatrically on May 24th, and will begin streaming on Netflix on June 7th.

I did a sitdown interview with Brian Wilson and then-fiance Melinda Ledbetter during the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. We were supposed to talk about Don Was‘s documentary about Wilson, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, which was having its big premiere up there, but we went all over.

I remember telling Wilson that I always loved the reverb guitar-and-keyboard intro for ““The Little Girl I Once Once Knew,” and he quickly agreed. (That same year he told a British interviewer that “the intro is the only good part of it.”) I then told Wilson how I once tried to learn to play the intro on keyboard but I couldn’t “hear” the separate harmonized notes in my head.

Wilson responded with disappointment and even a lack of patience — “You couldn’t figure that out?” That’s how geniuses are. When the stars are aligned they can swoop right in and solve any riddle, and if they’re in any kind of mood people who lack their gift can seem…I don’t know, tedious?

After seeing Love & Mercy I decided to buy a few songs from The Beach Boys Today!, which was recorded a little more than a year before Pet Sounds.

Today! is occasionally experimental and in some ways a kind of Pet Sounds forerunner. It contains similar elements — sophisticated off-rhythms and swirling harmonies, a feeling of sadness and vulnerability in the lyrics, that symphonic white soul thing — that Wilson built upon and made into something extra with Pet Sounds.

The track that knocked me out was “Kiss Me Baby.” It’s not so much a love song as a “we almost broke up last night so let’s not get that close to Armageddon again!” song.

The melody is a bit on the plain and familiar side, but the lyrics are so child-like and emotionally arrested…an immature boy-lover recovering from nearly losing his mommy-lover: “Please don’t let me argue any more…I won’t make you worried like before…can’t remember what we fought about…late, late last night we said it was over,” etc.

But when the chorus kicks in the harmonies and the general meltdown sound of this song are just amazing. This was Wilson’s unique realm — he made it sound just so, and with such exquisite balance and texture.

This instrumental track for “Let Him Run Wild” is also interesting for its resemblance to the instrumental Pet Sounds Sessions tracks.