Jeff Wells

Back in the old days the Coen brothers would sadistically fiddle with their flawed characters…hapless or misguided fellows who struggle against a world that is often indifferent or actively hostile to their aspirations and plans. But the Coens didn’t just make things tough for these characters — they would stick little needles into them.

In a certain light A Serious Man is almost a kind of companion piece to Todd Browning‘s Freaks, except that Browning’s film is compassionate and caring while A Serious Man is anything but.

You know what A Serious Man is deep down? In a philosophical nutshell, I mean? That old joke about two anthropologists captured by cannibals in New Guinea. Chief to anthropologist #1: “You have two choices — death or kiki.” Anthropologist #1 chooses kiki and is promptly beaten, stabbed, tortured, whipped, flayed and finally thrown off a cliff and eaten by crocodiles. The chief offers Anthropologist #2 the same choice, and the guy replies, “Good God…well, I’m not a brave man so I’ll choose death.” And the chief goes, “Very well, death…but first, kiki!”

fferent or actively hostile to their aspirations and plans.

The great Marlene Warfield died…uhm, three and a half months ago. Chequita Warfield, Marlene’s sister, apparently needed time to recover from her painful loss before finally breaking the news to The Hollywood Reporter.

Marlene was 83 when she passed on 4.6.25 from lung cancer in Los Angeles. Born in ’41, she was 34 or 35 when she played Lauren Hobbs in Sidney Lumet‘s Network (’76).

“You can blow the seminal infrastructure out your ass!”

If I was a 70something Spinal Tap veteran/survivor, I would definitely pay for some neck-wattle surgery before the final concert.

Paul McCartney, overweight Elton John, hefty-frame Garth Brooks, overweight Questlove, Trisha Yearwood, Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Lars Ulrich as themselves.

I found the films of Yorgos Lanthimos weirdly engaging at first. Well, not “engaging” as much as oddly diverting with an emphasis on the weirdly doleful. Then came The Favourite and I — everybody — was fully on board. I was pretty much delighted by Poor Things except for the last 10 or 15 minutes. And then I slammed on the brakes after seeing Kinds of Kindness….fuck was that? Now I’m kinda down on the guy. This morning I told a friend that “I don’t like Lanthimos anymore,” but that’s not really it. I just don’t want to sit through another Kinds of Kindness experience again…ever!

For many years Michael’s Telluride Blog, run by the Oklahoma-residing Michael Patterson, carried an endorsement quote from Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, to wit: “The best Telluride predictor I know.”

But in the wake of Sasha’s industry-wide cancellation following Rebecca Keegan’s 8.14.24 THR hit piece, Patterson decided to play it safe by ditching the Sasha quote and replacing it with a nearly identical one from nextbestpicture’s Matt Neglia (“The best blog out there for predicting what will be going to Telluride“).

HE to Patterson: “So when did you jettison Sasha’s quote, Michael, and arrange to replace it with a similar one from Matt? How long ago? I just noticed the switch when I checked this morning.

“Oh, and by the way: Why have you listed Scott Cooper‘s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century, 10.24) as a film “that could still play Telluride”? You don’t see this as a highly likely booking? It would not only be almost surreal if it doesn’t play Telluride, but you can almost bank on Bruce himself showing up at the Telluride picnic and maybe even performing an acoustic set at the Sheridan Bar or at a party somewhere on Colorado Avenue. I don’t know this for a dead fact, of course, but c’mon…”

Before and after:

…than never to have D.H. Lawrenced at all.

We all understand that it’s not only inappropriate but grotesque to speak of film critics and columnists in this…uhm, regard. Rest assured I’m not going there, but the mere thought of some present-day, 50-plus critics (no names) engaged in…uhm, whatever is too terrifying to contemplate. But you know who always intimated that she may have led an active and perhaps even a joyful sensual life in the flower of relative youth? Back in the ’80s, I mean? Former Philadelphia Inquirer critic Carrie Rickey.

I’ve been ignoring James Cameron‘s Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century, 12.19.25), and for good reasons. I need to see it, of course, but I don’t want to…not really. If I could make this third Avatar flick disappear by clapping my hands three times, I would clap my hands three times.

Ask me to recall key moments from Cameron’s The Terminator (’84), Aliens (’86), The Abyss (‘89), T2 (’91), True Lies (’94), Titanic (’97) and the first Avatar (’09), and I could recite them like a gatling gun any hour of the day.

And yet recollections of Avatar: The Way of Water (12.16.22, 192 minutes) are blurry at best. There’s a reason for that.

If I concentrate I can vaguely recall certain specific bits or accelerators or wowser whatevers from The Way of Water (the sinking super-craft sequence at the finale), but I don’t want to bring it back into my head. Because the whole big Avatar world feels like such a chore — such a flooding, such a visual gullywash that demands as much as it provides — that I want to leave it there and never return.  

To be sure, The Way of Water, which opened two and two-thirds years ago, was a first-rate Cameron creation or visitation or envelopment, certainly on a visual level. Like everyone else I loved the 2009 original, which was and is a total transportational knockout, but as far as seeing Avatar: Fire and Ash is concerned, there’s a big, deep-down part of me that’s saying “really? I have to fucking go there again?”

Something inside is telling me that sitting through the Avatar franchise all the way to the end (three more films remain, Fire and Ash being the third) will surely swallow my soul.  It’s going to be another huge CG vacuum cleaner ordeal, and I know it’s going to fucking eat me.

Cameron has specified that the running time of Avatar: Fire and Ash (29th Century, 12.19.25) would be longer than the 192 minute length of Avatar: The Way of Water.

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Go to 1:10 mark:

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Buster Keaton‘s The General was inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862. The story was adapted from William Pittenger‘s 1889 memoir “The Great Locomotive Chase.”

A less dazzling, non-comedic but respectably sturdy retelling of the tale arrived with Walt Disney‘s The Great Locomotive Chase (’56), costarring Fess Parker and Jeffrey Hunter. It was directed by Francis T. Lyon and shot by Charles Boyle with a 2.39:1 aspect ratio.

I’ve seen the Disney version three or four times and it’s not half bad. Parker and Hunter are excellent; ditto costars Jeff York, John Lupton, Kenneth Tobey and Slim Pickens.

The Disney film didn’t do as well commercially as hoped, probably due to the fact that it went with a downer ending. Parker’s character, Union spy and train hijacker James J. Andrews, ends up captured and hanged.

For the staggering locomotive bridge collapse scene in Buster Keaton‘s The General, which happened in Cottage Grove, Oregon on 7.23.26, somewhere between three and six cameras were rolling.

One portion of the film’s Wiki page says that “the crew brought three 35 mm cameras with them from Los Angeles”; another passage reports that “Keaton used six cameras for the train wreck scene.”

And yet the scene contains only one shot of the actual collapse and kersplash — not even one alternate angle, although there should have been at least two with at least three 35mm cameras available. (And possibly even six.)

What was Keaton thinking?

If I’d been in charge of the shoot I would’ve had an insulated, gelatin water-proofed, rubber-encased 16mm camera (such cameras were being sold as of 1923) mounted and running inside the train’s engine cabin, and I certainly would’ve had another 16mm camera mounted and shooting from the right-side base of the bridge, just in front of where the engine was due to crash and splash.

With these two extra vantage points the final sequence would have been twice as astounding. But for some curious reason Keaton, who was nothing if not ambitious and energetic in his usual approach to directing stunts and action sequences, opted for only one shot and a master one at that, captured by a tripod-mounted camera located 250 or 300 feet away.

The genius-level Keaton starred, produced and co-directed The General. He was 31 at the time.

24 years later Keaton performed a cameo (more or less playing himself) in Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Boulevard. The poor guy was only 55 years old, but easily looked 65. Alcohol had taken a toll.

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How many underwhelming or dud-level Paul Mescal performances will it take to convince the HE cognoscenti that I’ve been right about this mook all along? The coup de grace, I’m presuming, will be delivered by Mescal’s Paul McCartney performance in Sam Mendes‘ Beatles quartet.