Jeff Wells

My default response to all the major Beatles album remixes (Abbey Road, White Album, Sgt. Pepper, Rubber Soul) has been to scoff. And then to buy them.

I’m no audiophile but I’ve always held that while the new versions sound agreeably enhanced they aren’t significantly different than the originals, and that these remixes, when all is said and done and digested, are mainly a marketing hustle. But I bought them anyway because of the lifelong emotional investment factor.

But guess what? This morning I compared the 2022 remix of “Taxman” vs. the 2009 version, and discovered to my surprise that the differences in the ’22 mix are striking. This is due to a technological innovation, engineered by Get Back director Peter Jackson, that allowed Giles Martin and Sam Okell to separate all the instruments and do a remix from scratch.

George Harrison‘s vocal track is on both sides now and not just the left, John Lennon‘s rhythm guitar is louder and more distorted sounding (in a good way), and the sound of the amplifier hum at the beginning of “Taxman” is now missing. You could argue that you’ve always liked the amplifier hum and that removing it kills the historic, low-tech 1966 vibe and I wouldn’t call you wrong, but if you listen on headphones the new “Taxman” is, I feel, a fuller, more alive rendering.

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Between my mid to late teens I was feeling more and more bored in school. Okay, not by everything. I liked English composition, literature and American history. But overall it seemed as if too much of school was a San Quentin experience, and I always felt instinctually suffocated by math (algebra, geometry) and science (biology, geology), to put it mildly.

It followed that I developed an intense loathing for certain professors who, I felt, were not only boring me to tears but giving me shitty grades and thereby harming my future.

Sorry for the ignorance and arrogance but I was young, angry and nihilistic, and this is how I saw things.

All to say that if the current Age of Zoomer and Millennial Entitlement Insanity had somehow been a thing during my years of educational agony, I definitely would have signed a petition to get some of my teachers fired. It wouldn’t have been fair but I saw these teachers as absolute villains who were bringing unmitigated misery into my life. So I understand the impulse of those 82 NYU students whose signatures on a petition managed to trigger the firing of NYU organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones Jr.

I don’t agree with whacking the poor guy and feel that the 82 students should have studied harder, but some teachers do have an almost magical ability to suffocate their students’ souls, and it’s possible that Jones was one of those.

From a letter to the N.Y. Times by Martin E. Ross of Boston: “The overpampering of children by parents and teachers combined with soaring tuition has turned students into entitled customers demanding to be catered to as such. The student-professor interaction has become far more transactional than in previous years, with administrators increasingly inclined to side with their customers. Students expect their professors to be like either Mister Rogers or Stephen Colbert, and woe to those less entertaining ones who dare to assign poor performers the grades they deserve.”

“The public, by now, has become wary of anything Hollywood puts out for fear of it being what most people call ‘woke.’ That means it will have some kind of ‘do better’ agenda somewhere in there.

“In simple terms, that means people are coming for the fish and chips, and they’re getting steamed broccoli and salmon. They’re on to it now so if they think there is a chance that the movie is going to deliver yet another lecture in this era of strident purity and cancel culture, they’re going to stay away.

“While it’s true that a good many people probably avoided Bros. for the same reason they avoided Lightyear — they’re just not up for it and maybe some of that is due to homophobia — the bigger reason is that Hollywood has shifted its role in society from offering up entertainment to offering up a lecture, or a ‘correction’ for human behavior.

“While that sells on social media where signaling one’s virtue ups their clout, it isn’t going to translate to people who can barely afford to put food on the table or gas in their tank.

“The broad majority of Americans don’t have much interest in Hollywood products overall, especially if it means driving to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and sitting down for two hours without access to their cell phones.

“Not that everyone adheres to that rule, by the way. I was in a screening the other night, and two people still checked their cell phones. At The Fabelmans.” — from Sasha Stone “It Isn’t Just Bros, It’s Hollywood Overall.”

Matt Walsh responds to a 10.4 Media Matters takedown piece, written by Ari Drennen and researched by Jason Campbell, Mia Gingerich & Alex Paterson.

“So here’s my official answer, for the record: Kiss my ass. I do not apologize, and in fact, by all rights, you sick freaks should be the ones apologizing to me. For lying and defaming me, and doing it all because I’m trying to prevent you from sexually mutilating children. I apologize for nothing. You damned monsters. You child-abusing psychopaths. I wouldn’t apologize to you soulless parasites if I had a gun to my head. I apologize for nothing. I concede nothing. I will never surrender a single inch of ground to a pitchfork mob of degenerate morons.”

…and you can barely feel it. Because in a certain sense, it isn’t quite “there.”

Remember that old story about Marlene Dietrich calling Fred Zinnemann to tell him that mobs of people were lined up for an opening-night showing of From Here to Eternity at Loews Capitol (B’way & 51st) and Zinnemann said “but there hasn’t been any promotion and publicity!” and Dietrich telling him “they can smell it”?

That’s what’s not happening with TAR right now. No one can “smell” a thing apart from highly suspicious assertions from critics (whom no one trusts at all) that it’s very good. And the safe assumption that Cate Blanchett is going to be Best Actress-nominated. Which I agree with.

Let me start again…

I’m not sure which trailers are more depressing to me personally — Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney, 11.11), Black Adam (Warner Bros., 10.21) or Halloween Ends ((Universal, 10.14). They all feel like ironclad guarantees of this or that kind of dungeon entrapment.

The only trailer I can think of that doesn’t send me into a tailspin is Ticket to Paradise (Universal, 10.21), but that’s only because it promises a familiar and amiable ride — the bickering Bickersons (George Clooney, Julia Roberts) in Bali, trying to dissuade their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever, who doesn’t resemble either of them in the slightest way) from marrying a guy she doesn’t know all that well. The trailer says “this movie will not bite you or make you feel badly…it’ll be an easy sit.”

I was just thinking how I’d like to see Todd Field‘s about-to-open TAR yet again, but then I realized it’s only playing in a couple of Manhattan houses (Loew’s Lincoln Square, Angelika) with the wide break delayed until 10.28. A friend who saw it with me in Telluride says she’s having trouble remembering parts of it…that certain portions have liquified or vaporized in her brain.

From Michael Cieply‘s “The Movies Are Playing An Insiders’ Game” (10.6):

“There’s no promise of an October blockbuster, like Venom: Let There Be Carnage or No Time to Die in 2021. Instead, the release schedule is peppered with tough little films of the sort that light up festivals, win awards and make critics fight — Tár, Till, The Swimmer, Call Jane, The Banshees of Inisherin, Armageddon Time and such.

“These are movies for insiders, to which outsiders — mass consumers — are invited on a very limited basis. That’s how the seasonal game is now played.”

TAR is such a brilliant, odd-duck, upper-stratosphere thing — elliptical and elusive, neither here nor there but at the same time alluring and fearless — that it makes insider types feel like outsiders.

It’s more about aroma than actual taste, and it refuses to come to you. And for a while that’s a turn-on…”piece by piece I’m putting it together,” you tell yourself during the first hour, “and eventually all the strands will come together…all will be revealed and known.”

Field is saying “no, you come to the film…it’ll require work on your part and maybe some feelings of uncertainty or frustration even, but when you finally get there you’ll feel sated and satisfied.”

Except a certain itchy feeling builds up as it goes along, and although TAR tantalizes and intrigues as it feeds you little hints of information and motivation (it’s basically about a brilliant Berlin-based conductor getting #Me-Too’ed to death) but without any of the meat-and-potatoes, Adrian Lyne-ish plot points and shock revealings that would tie it all together, at least for the dumb people in the room.

That’s what I didn’t like about TAR — it made me feel like a dumb-ass. I had to ask friends what had actually happened (or had seemed to happen) and even now I still don’t really get it. That’s why I want to see it for a third time, crazy as that might sound. Plus the fact that I love the cushy affluence of it all. The scarves, the great apartments, the five-star restaurants, the sublime lighting, etc. I wanted to move into TAR and never leave.

Sebastián Leilo’s The Wonder is a somber, better-than-decent, glacially-paced period drama.

Set in rural Ireland of 1862, it’s about a struggle between the oppression of strict Irish Catholic dogma vs. a woman’s common humanity. I respected the effort, and certainly admired Florence Pugh’s performance as a willful, Florence Nightingale-trained nurse.

Pugh frowns a lot but in a genuine, unaffected way. The film is fortified by believable atmosphere, perfect period sets, appropriately grim, etc. All the supporting perfs pass muster.

I’m not putting the film down. I’m saying it is what it is, and that it exudes authenticity in that it seems to be actually occuring in the mid 1800s, and without a trace of 2022 presentism. That in itself warrants respect.

For me the standout visual element is the raw brownish-green Irish countryside, and particularly those 16 or 17 shots of Pugh trudging across said terrain.

Maggie and I and five-month-old Jett visited Ireland in the early fall of ’88. I fell in love. One of my first thoughts as we left the Dublin region and drove into the countryside was “I could die here.”

If nothing else, The Wonder is an immersion into the stern oppressions of Irish Catholicism, as it existed at the time of Abraham Lincoln. A culture based on forbidding and repressing and the rigors of life for those 19th Century citizens who’d embraced the Bible and resisted the bottle.

For years I flirted with the legend about Ireland loving to bend the elbow but approaching sex with a fair amount of guilt and conflict — kind of a silly, simplistic assessment. Then again Alex Comfort‘s “The Joy of Sex” was banned in Ireland for 12 years (along with “More Joy: The Joy of Sex” and one other). I recall journalist-author Susan Mulcahy, then with the New York Post, passing along an old joke about “The Joy of Irish Sex” consisting of 96 blank pages.

And then I saw 44 year-old Fionnula Flanagan perform a nude masturbation scene in James Joyce’s Women (’85), which she starred in, produced and co-wrote. I quickly realized that at least some in Ireland were just as hot and bothered as anyone else.

Ever since the accidental 8.20 car-bomb killing of Darya Dugina, the 29 year-old daughter of Vladimir Putin‘s Rasputin-like adviser Aleksandr Dugin, Ukrainian forces have been suspected of orchestrating the hit.

In a 10.5 interview with intelligence committee Democrat Jim Himes, a CNN anchor stated that “U.S. intelligence community believes that elements of the Ukrainian government authorized that car bombing.” (Note: It is believed that the explosion was intended to kill the father, not the daughter.) Without confirming this allegation, Himes replied that if it’s true “this raises the spectre of Ukraine having arguably [and] very clearly lost the moral high ground.”

Moral high ground? In a war? After the Bucha massacre? Is that a joke?

There is no morality in war save the absence of it. Once serious hostilities begin between combatants the idea of anyone occupying any moral high ground is ridiculous. As Russell Crowe‘s journalist character says in The Greatest Beer Run Ever, “This war is just one big crime scene.”

Union general William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

Do you want to defeat Russia in the Ukrainian conflict? Sean Connery‘s “Malone character” (from The Untouchables) has some questions.

Malone: “You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? [If so], what are you prepared to do?”

Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness: “Anything within the law.”

Malone: “And then what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they’re not gonna give up the fight until one of you is dead.”

Ness: “I want to get Capone! I don’t know how to do it.”

Malone: “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I’m offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?”

Ness: “I have sworn to capture this man with all legal powers at my disposal and I will do so.”

Malone: “Well, the Lord hates a coward.”

…we will fire your ass in the blink of eye. This is what is known as management-level wokester terror.

From 10.4 THR piece by Ashley Cullins titled “Moral Clauses: Why a Red Scare Tactic Revived in the #MeToo Era Could Lead to a Fight With the Guilds“:

Excerpt: “In the wake of #MeToo, employers across Hollywood turned to morals clauses as an attempt to deter bad behavior. While these provisions have been criticized by talent reps for being too broad and too subjective, there’s actually a bigger problem with their presence in many contracts: They’re prohibited by the directors and writers guilds’ collective bargaining agreements — and they have been for decades.

“’The origin was the Red Scare,’ says talent lawyer Linda Lichter. ‘Companies put them in contracts so they could fire people if they were accused of being a Red. They’ve come back in the context of #MeToo.’

The clauses — which use language such as “public disrepute, humiliation, contempt, scandal or ridicule” — essentially mean anything that makes a company look bad could be grounds for immediate termination. Or, as Lichter puts it, ‘If you don’t behave, we can fire you.’

According to attorneys, it’s not uncommon for the first draft of a morals clause to include problematic broad phrases, giving examples like “neglects to govern their conduct with regard to social conventions” or “shocks, insults or offends a substantial portion of the community.”

“’Early on with the #MeToo movement we saw companies and brands going very quickly to terminating people, and they wanted to be able to rely on their morals clause to do it,’ says entertainment labor lawyer Ivy Kagan Bierman. “In some cases, the clause as drafted didn’t allow it because it had to be proven.”

“Kagan Bierman says the language has evolved so companies don’t necessarily have to wait on proof — ‘There have been tweaks in the language, where it can be alleged to have happened, or believed to have happened.'”

This is a distasteful subject, but I’ll just mention it and be done with it. I’ve ridden on underground subway systems all over the world — Paris, Boston, Berlin, Prague, Washington, D.C., Barcelona, London, Zurich, Rome, Munich, Frankfurt, Firenze — and New York’s subway system is the only one that has a serious problem with homeless urine stink. Okay, I might have encountered one or two faint whiffs in the Paris metro, but it’s not a regular thing there. You can, on the other hand, absolutely count on The Unpleasant while waiting for the IRT, IRT Lex, R or IND trains in Manhattan. Is it because homeless guys in Barcelona, London, Berlin and Prague are slightly more sanitary? Is alcoholism less of a problem over there? Do the overseas subway systems use more effective (i.e., more fragrant) disinfectant or employ more clean-up crews?

I’ve been saying for years (and there’s no question about this) New York City subways are the slowest, stinkiest and least reliable of all the major metro systems worldwide. Things have improved since the ’90s but the substandard service has been in place for decades.

Any guy knows that if you put on a pair of tallish rubber wading boots, the color has to be olive drab or dark blue. Or black-and-yellow fireman boots. But what kind of clueless dork puts on a pair of white go-go boots a la Nancy Sinatra? That’s more than clueless — it’s borderline suicidal from an image standpoint. And worse when you throw in the pot belly. If I was DeSantis I would drop at least 15 or 20 pounds — he’s too chubby to be a Presidential candidate. And while I’m working on the gut I would wear a midriff girdle under my shirt. Orson Welles wore one while playing the fresh-out-of-college Charles Foster Kane.