Tatyana wanted to visit Top of the Mark, the 19th story bar-restaurant on the penthouse level of the Mark Hopkins hotel. I hadn’t visited since the mid ‘80s so what the hell. It opened in ‘39 and became quite the essential stopover for WWII officers (slender, nattily uniformed, in the company of classy ladies in bright red lipstick) bound for combat in the Pacific or returning from same.

The cultural atmosphere at the Top of the Mark is a little different these days. A few nice-looking people, sure, but also a fair amount of overweight, horribly dressed proletariat commoners wearing baggy jeans, knitted skullcaps and whitesides. A time-traveling anthropologist comparing the differences between 20th and 21st Century clientele would be struggling for the right politely descriptive phrases while conveying an honest assessment, as I am now.

The truth is that over the last 60 or 70 years certain aspects of American culture have not only gone downhill but sunk into the swamp. We’re talking about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire here. Herb Caen would be in shock.

I could do Sundance ’20 without breaking a sweat. I could wangle tickets from publicists like I did last year, and without a single care about wearing a Camp Woke press pass around my neck. And I’d have a good time doing the usual social whirlygig and wearing my black cowboy hat and so on.

But you know what? Fuck Sundance. The films simply aren’t vital or necessary enough — they’re for people in the greater Sundance community who may or may not tell their friends to stream this or that festival favorite down the road, and that’s all.

Yes, they screened Lulu Wang‘s The Farewell last year and that was certainly a good thing, but the classic Sundance glory days are over. The era of debuting Oscar favorites like Manchester By The Sea and Call Me By Your Name is almost certainly drawing to a close. Because Sundance is no longer a launchpad — it’s become a self-absorbed instruction chamber for woke Stalinism and the perpetuation of Sundance movies that say the right p.c. things.

I’d like to go because I’ve been attending for 25 or 26 years straight and it’s in my January blood, but it’s just not worth the money and the hassle any more. The usual five or six standouts will screen and stream in good time. On top of which money is a little tight this year so maybe next year or maybe never again…who knows?

Or maybe not until independent film culture shifts into another mode and instructive representational wokesterism is no longer the dominant tune being played on the bagpipes.

Say what you will about Hollywood Elsewhere, but let no man dispute that (a) I am a Reality Fortress, and (b) I’m almost never a go-alonger when the critical community loses its collective shit mind over an auteurist favorite of a dubious caste.

For when it comes to difficult films I am a slice-of-pepperoni-pizza kind of guy and an all-around “man of the people.” Not when it comes to masterpieces like Cold War or cop films like Les Miserables, but in the matter of irritating, eccentric, frenetic-style-for-its-own-sake films.

Case in point: Josh and Benny Safdie‘s Uncut Gems, which I was appalled by when I saw it at last September’s Telluride Film Festival, but which 93% of elite critics dropped to their knees for. Well, compare their Safdie worship with the current Uncut Gems situation: (a) 55% Rotten Tomatoes audience rating and (b) C+ CinemaScore rating.

It’s almost as if critics and Joe Popcorn saw two different films, no? Translation: Many if not most critics live on a secular planet that orbits around Betelguese.

And you know what? The Safdies are going to keep making “crazy Safdie” films. They’re not going to learn from this. Because they live in their own Manhattan echo chamber. And that’s par for the course.

Fairly or unfairly, Paramount’s Clifford the Big Red Dog is generating Cats-type advance buzz. I don’t know why this would (allegedly) be. A dinosaur-size Irish setter living in an urban apartment building sounds like money…great fun for the whole family.

Near the peak of Marin County’s Mt. Tamalpais. My breathing is labored in a Wheezy Joe sort of way, and my heart is thumping and chugging like piston rods inside the engine of the RMS Titanic. Pike Bishop: “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Received this morning from HE friendo: “It bugs me that people are charging the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation with sexism. Vulture tracked down their members, and at least 50% of the membership is female” [after the jump].

There are few things in modern life that I despise more than slow elevators. Okay, there are dozens if not hundreds of things I despise, but slow elevators are near the top of the list. Particularly those that take 20 or even 30 seconds to settle into position before opening the doors on a given floor.

Now that Cats has been seen by at least a portion of the HE community, is there anyone besides myself who feels a bit sorry for this poor film…this widely despised, universally-shat-upon Tom Hooper musical? It’s not awful, just miscalculated and therefore unsatisfying. I’ve had more painful times with many other films, and I got through it without dozing. And I didn’t walk out. This means something.

Sue Lyon’s iconic portrayal of the impudent and vaguely teasing Dolores Haze was enough to give her a certain allure or erotic topicality or something in that realm. Lyon was 15 in ‘61 when Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita was shot, and the buzz from that film was enough to land her a supporting role in John Huston’s Night of the Iguana (‘64). Things gradually diminished after that. John Sayles‘ Alligator (‘80) was her final film.

Lyon passed on 12.26, at age 73. Condolences to fans, friends, comrades, acquaintances, etc.

HE respects that casual, gum-chewing, faintly lewd quality she seemed to radiate under Kubrick’s guidance. Whatever it was or wasn’t, Lyon’s “Lo” had a certain poise or attitude (not “sexuality” exactly but a kind of ownership of that without seeming to care one way or the other) that I never got from Dominique Swain’s performance (no offense) in Adrian Lyne’s Lolita.

Will Lyon occupy a slot in the Oscar telecast death reel? She should. Kubrick’s Lolita was quite the thing in the Kennedy era, and Lyon’s teenaged take-it-or-leave-it aroma or otherness was more or less what that thing was about.

I’ve seen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service exactly once. Most of us think of this 1969 film as the George Lazenby one-off that made the most of its Swiss alps location shoot. I remember being moderately satisfied if less than floored. Meh, decent, not bad, passable.

But I didn’t think Lazenby was the right guy to succeed Sean Connery. Because there was something about his vaguely Asian eyes and extremely high cheekbones that said…well, Nanook of the North or something in that realm. Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig had the right kind of Britishness, but not Lazenby. He seemed good-natured as far as it went, but he looked like Cochise.

I’m mentioning this because of a 12.27 N.Y. Times piece about OHMSS, written by Thomas Vinciguerra and called “50 Years Later, This Bond Film Should Finally Get Its Due.”

Vinciguerra has half-convinced me to give On Her Majesty’s Secret Service another whirl. Maybe.

“What sets OHMSS apart,” the article claims, “is its faithfulness to the original Ian Fleming novel, virtual absence of Q Branch gizmos and, above all, its emotional depth. Bond falls in honest-to-goodness love and marries, only to see his bride, Teresa Draco (Diana Rigg), murdered by the supervillainous organization SPECTRE.

“Not widely appreciated at first, OHMSS has won increasing respect over five decades. Devotees hail its deft, action-packed direction (by Peter Hunt), smart script (by Richard Maibaum), music both dynamic and romantic (by John Barry) and mastermind criminal scheme (brainwashed young women unwittingly conducting germ warfare).

HE filing from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm. Left for Sonoma and parts surrounding around 1 pm. A brutal drive through clogged East Bay traffic…80 (Oakland Bay bridge) to 580 to 101, etc. Tatyana did some wine tasting ** at the Artesa Winery, which is located amid the usual greenish brown vineyard hills; the main structure overlooks everything in the region and even allows you to see San Francisco in the distance. Then over to Sonoma (I haven’t attended the Sonoma Film Festival for a good six or seven years) and the usual roaming around. Then over to Petaluma, down the 101 and back to the city.

Eleven days after “Little Women Has a Little Man Problem,” a 12.17 Vanity Fair piece by Anthony Breznican, and six days after Janet Maslin tweeted that “the Little Women problem with men is very real” (on top of HE’s simultaneous posting of “Gender Instinct,” which addressed some of the ins and outs), another “stand up for Little Women” piece has appeared.

Today’s variation is in the wokester N.Y. Times and titled “Men Are Dismissing Little Women — What a Surprise.” The author is blogger-columnist Kristy Eldredge.

Couple this with the outraged pushback that followed the snubbing of Little Women by the Golden Globes as well as SAG and you have one of the most impassioned and sustained arguments for Oscar justice in award-season history, and the most ardent since…what, the foreign language committee snubbing of Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days?

Maslin’s 12.21 tweet identified what she saw as a basic attitude blockage on the part of dudes towards Gerwig’s film. Which had manifested, she said, in a refusal or reluctance to see it, based on insect antennae vibrations they’d been picking up.

On the same day “El Friendo” sent a response to Maslin, attempting to explain that the insect antennae readings are based upon something real, and that guys are not the problem but the film is. Here it is again:

“So I’m the problem if I don’t include Little Women on my best-of-the-year list, per Maslin. Because I’m a guy?

“Per Maslin, I am not allowed to say the performances were fine but the William S. Burroughs cut-up approach to the narrative, and the decision to lay wall-to-wall music over every scene to make up for the emotional dissonance of the fractured narrative didn’t work for me.

“Yes, I’m to blame for not approving of and/or not being thrilled by these creative decisions. Because I’m a guy.

“Little Women flat-ass doesn’t work mostly because Amy Pascal indulged Greta Gerwig in a stupid idea. Had the exact same movie been produced at Disney, they would have said ‘No William Burroughs bullshit; and maybe even dialed the stupid music score mouthwash back from drowning every fucking scene.”