Jeff Wells

AI sez: Alpine goats are the best for vegetation management because they’re good at clearing land with taller plants and weeds because they can reach higher than other breeds. Boer goats, who are primarily meat goats, are the fastest at clearing land and are considered the best breed for land management.

In a discussion about the L.A. firestorm, former L.A. mayoral candidate Rick Caruso sounded pretty good.

The fire department lesbians are definitely facing heat in more ways than one.

Posted a half day ago by Walter Kirn:

“Many years ago the New York Times paid all my expenses and held out a nice check on the simple condition that I hang out for a few days with David Lynch and write up the experience.

“I did the hanging-out part, but it didn’t really amount to an experience. I couldn’t get a grip on him, at all. Because there was nothing to grip.

“I’m not saying he was shallow, more that he was truly elusive, meaning the ‘self’ that was in there, supposedly, was simply that of an artist in his off hours. Which is like the self of a vaccum cleaner in its off hours. Meaning it just sits there.

“In Lynch’s case, he smoked and drank coffee while he just sat there. And sometimes he said something. Nothing memorable.

“Anyway, the assignment completely defeated me in a way that no other magazine assignment ever has. I think I’ll write about this at greater length soon, this non-experience I had with someone so eccentric he didn’t even come off as an eccentric, but suffice it to say I’m sorry to hear he’s gone. He kept alive in the minds of millions the figure of the artist, the artist as individual, useless to society at large and therefore invaluable to all.”

At noon on 1.20.25, Orange Plague will be inaugurated inside the Capital rotunda. No, I haven’t the slightest interest in watching. (YouTube clips will suffice.) Horrid cold temperatures have forced the ceremony, which normally happens outdoors on the nippy Capitol steps, to huddle inside.

The same deal prevailed 40 years ago when Ronald Reagan‘s second-term inauguration happened under the Capitol dome.

Washington, D.C, was covered in several inches of snow — essentially a coating of “ice-nine” — during JFK’s inauguration.

Last night I spoke with HE’s “Eddie Ginley” about what the recent BAFTA and PGA nominations portend. And Ginley’s basic thesis was that Best Picture Oscars are fundamentally about Big Swings.

What Ginley said, in essence, was that Sean Baker can and should be celebrated, but he can’t win a Best Picture Oscar…very sorry…because Anora, obviously his finest film, isn’t enough of a Big Swing. It’s too Brooklyn, too Russian, too slapstick, too boozy and lap-dancey… right? It doesn’t, like, “say” anything.

This, at least, is what your basic industry dullards appear to feel, according to Ginley. To them it doesn’t matter if a Big Swing movie hits the ball long and hard. Babe Ruth swings don’t have to pay off in a sweet-smell-of-success fashion. All that matters to the none-too-brights is that a filmmaker said “no half-measures or standard strategies…here comes my go-for-broke Stanley Kubrick or Andrej Tarkovsky or trans Stanley Donen film!”

Hats off because Jacques Audiard and Brady Corbet picked up that big fat bat and swung hard! Big concept, drug cartel guy goes trans, long length, overture, intermission, etc. Okay, so they only got a piece of the ball and maybe hit a line drive or a pop-up. Doesn’t matter!

What matters is the ambition, the hunger, the size of the dream and the pretensions and the fevered imaginings that were poured into it. Don’t tell us about smart tap-dancers and brainy popcorns and soul baths that leave audiences in states of soothe and groove…toss that stuff aside, they’re saying.

Eff those guys.

Anora, Conclave, A Complete Unknown…these are the “sing” movies…clear water and unpretentious nourishment….movies that work.

Warning: I’m heartbroken about the static disturbance sounds in these two mp3 recordings, which last about 30 minutes each. I’ll have to figure another way of recording. My trusty digicorder served me well for so many years…no longer!

I’m just going to be flat-out honest about eccentric filmmaker extraordinaire David Lynch, whose untimely passing at age 78 (four days short of his 79th birthday) was reported earlier today. But I’m going to speak in generalities.

Lynch was basically a fascinating, unconventional, gut-hunchy, marquee-brand surrealist artist who excelled as an auteur filmmaker for roughly a quarter-century (from ’77’s Eraserhead to ’01’s Mulholland Drive).

In HE parlance Lynch didn’t exactly peak for that whole 25-year stretch but he certainly flourished creatively for most of that period– Eraserhead, The Elephant Man (sturdy, compassionate period piece), Dune (not admired), Blue Velvet (arguably his only truly great theatrical film), Wild at Heart, the groundbreaking Twin Peaks TV series (’90 and ’91), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway (in my book his second best feature), The Straight Story (fourth best…spare, earnest and true) and Mulholland Drive (third best).

Yes, Lynch continued to work excitingly or at least imaginatively in the 21st Century (Inland Empire, the 2017 Twin Peaks reboot for Showtime, paintings and musical collaborations and whatnot) but if you ask me his main creative effort / handle / identity over the last 15 or so years was projecting his testy, feisty, snappy-ass personality in YouTube and TikTok videos…his John Ford cameo in Steven Spielberg’s The Fablemans was a standout for most, but for me the clips of Lynch losing his temper over this and that are wonderful. The iPhone rant, the “what is this shit about the length of a scene?” rant…all are magnificent.

So he was basically a prolific signature-level director over the last quarter of the 20th Century (face it…the ’80s were his glory years), and a sometime filmmaker but mainly a great, irascible, cranky-as-fuck personality from the late aughts until just recently.

A lifelong smoker, Lynch stated last November that emphysema had gotten the better of him. And yet his poor health was exacerbated, it seems, by the ongoing L.A. firestorms. Sometime last week Lynch evacuated one of his Los Angeles homes (he owned three on or near Mulholland Drive) due to the fires. He went downhill soon after.

Read more

Barry Levinson‘s The Alto Knights (Warner Bros., 3.21.25) would sell more tickets if it was called Wise Guys (original title), Goombahs, Vito and Frank or Old Fuckheads.

Okay, those aren’t very good titles either, but what the hell does The Alto Knights mean?

The Alto Knights Social Club was the original name of Little Italy’s’s Ravenite Social Club (247 Mulberry Street). Founded in 1926, the joint was a hangout for Charlie “Lucky” Luciano and Albert Anastasia. (The name “Alto Knights” came from the Order of Saint James of Altopascio.)

The screenplay is by Nicholas Pileggi (co-author of Goodfellas).

The Alto Knights stars 81-year-old Robert De Niro in a dual role as mob bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci and Michael Rispoli play supporting roles.

If someone were to offer me a clean, crisp $100 bill in exchange for my agreeing to sit through the entirety of Leigh Whannell‘s Wolf Man, I honestly wouldn’t know how to respond. I think I’d hold out for $250. I would sit through this obviously poisonous film for that amount.

I’ve never seen Terence Fisher‘s Curse of the Werewolf (’61), which starred Oliver Reed and was set in 18th Century Spain. (Although it was shot in England.) It was the first werewolf film to be shot in color. Stills indicate that Reed’s makeup wasn’t bad.

For the last 30 years my all-time favorite werewolf flick has been Mike Nichols‘ Wolf (’94), which has an excellent screenplay by Jim Harrison (whom I met and hung out with on a warm evening in March ’96 at the premiere of Carried Away, which was based on Harrison’s “Farmer”) and Wesley Strick. I didn’t like the last half-hour of Wolf, of course — nobody did. But the first 90 minutes moved along nicely.

No backbone, no principles, no belief in the rule of law.

How deep of a cultural imprint was left by the standout films of 1986? How many were genuinely worth the candle, or are remembered with genuine affection or excitement?

The answer is that ‘86 was a phenomenal year. It saw the release of 30 films that really and truly rang the bell, and that ain’t hay. In my book ‘86 is at par with 1971 and 1999.

A little while ago I kicked this topic around with Sydney-based movie hound Nathan Laird, who is quite the whipsmart gabber. It’s loading as we speak — maybe it’ll post by midnight. Or by 9 am tomorrow…who knows?

HE’s top 30 films of 1986, and not necessarily in this order:

(1) Oliver Stone‘s Platoon, (2) James Cameron‘s Aliens, (3) Oliver Stone‘s Salvador, (4) David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet, (5) Jonathan Demme‘s Something Wild, (6) Michael Mann‘s Manhunter, (7) Neil Jordan‘s Mona Lisa, (8) Woody Allen‘s Hannah and Her Sisters, (9) David Cronenberg’s The Fly, (10) Jim Jarmusch‘s Down By Law, (11) Mike Nichols‘ Heartburn, (12) James Ivory‘s A Room with a View, (13) Jean-Jacques Beineix‘s Betty Blue, (14) Roland Joffe‘s The Mission, (15) Claude Berri‘s Manon of the Spring, (16) Tony Scott‘s Top Gun, (17) Spike Lee‘s She’s Gotta Have It, (18) Fons Rademakers‘ The Assault, (19) David Zucker‘s Ruthless People, (20) Paul Mazursky‘s Down and Out in Beverly Hills, (21) John Hughes‘ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, (22) Adrien Lyne‘s 9 1/2 Weeks, (23) Hal Ashby‘s 8 Million Ways to Die, (24) Randa Haines‘ Children of a Lesser God, (25) Martin Scorsese‘s The Color of Money, (26) David Anspaugh‘s Hoosiers, (27) Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge, (28) Jamie Foley’s At Close Range, (29) Sidney Lumet‘s The Morning After, (30) Bruce Beresford‘s Crimes of the Heart.

According to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, Eric Roth recently dumped on….sorry, recently confessed to having genuine feelings of disappointment about Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon. Naked honesty! Clear light!

Roth: “Leonardo was concerned that it would be too much of a great white hope story, so he decided to play the other part which is fine…except I had already written five years worth of scripts [based on David Grann’s novel).. I have some mixed feelings about the movie…not, uhm, I love the movie all and all, Marty made an incredibly sorrowful and accurate portrayal of what we did to these people and the greed. I think it’s a very important movie. I just wish it had more entertainment. I love Tom White, the [originally conceived] main character who Jesse Plemons ended up playing. I wish we had more of him.”

“All Hail Tom White, Taciturn Hero of Killers of the Flower Moon”, posted on 1.20.24:

Here’s how I put it to a screenwriter pally a couple of hours ago: “My God, what a truly compelling and fascinating film Killers of thge Flower Moon could have been. Hats off to Roth for some wonderful writing, sublime tension, terrific structure. It really lives and breathes!

“And what a great, soft-spoken, drillbit character Tom White is! His laconic, man-of-the-prairie dialogue is so spare and true and eloquent.

“If only John Sturges had directed this screenplay in his prime! Or Oliver Stone in the ’80s or Michael Mann, Chris Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson…Sam Peckinpah even.

“If only Marty and Leo hadn’t lost their nerve…if only they hadn’t been so scared of provoking the wokesters and suffering their ferocious wrath, i.e., “We’re done with white heroes! Only racists-at-heart would tell such a tale! And fuck David Grann!”

“My head was completely turned around by reading this, and Roth wasn’t even afraid of including racist cracker dialogue from time to time. (Brave.) And Mollie Burkhart actually conveys a certain gratitude (i.e., a slight smile) to White at the very end. I don’t know if Lily Gladstone even read this version of the script, but if so she almost certainly would’ve hated it.

“I wish I had read this six or seven years ago. It would have clarified a lot of things. Roth and Scorsese went with a woke version of Grann’s tale, of course, but in the early stages Roth truly did himself proud.”

If you weren’t much of a fan of Killers of the Flower Moon or even if you were, please read this early Roth draft — it’s a revelation.

Read more