20 years ago I owned a Palm5 or Palm vx…one of those. There was no email on phones back then, but I remember how cool it felt to beam info (address, email, phone #) to other Palm users. No more asking for business cards or phone #s or writing anything down…love it!

If you were on the receiving end you had to set your device to “receive beam” mode…right?

The Palm started to die three or four years later, especially after the first iPhone was introduced in ’07. Alas, the Apple guys ignored the beaming option. Android phones offer a beaming capability but Apple refuses to. I’ve never understood why.

If you sit down and actually read the reviews of Ari Aster‘s Midsommar (A24, 7.3), you’ll quickly understand that a Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% is a less-than-fully-comprehensive assessment.

Randomly: (a) “More unsettling than frightening”; (b) “A gnarly horror movie…some of the kills are admirably nasty”; (c) “An intermittently impressive and frustrating film, but worth watching for every single one of its flaws“; (d) “As opposed to Hereditary‘s hushed, focused terror, Midsommar explodes with blood and gore”; (e) “Though viewers may be shocked by the occasional bit of self-conscious gore, any tendency toward slow-building dread is leavened by the script’s frequent ‘WTF?’ asides.”

I could catch a screening tomorrow night, but I’ve decided to attend another on Monday evening. There’s plenty of time.

Critic friend: “It was…okay? The entire time I was wishing it could be a better movie. Aster uses so many familiar tropes of the pagan cult genre, many of which were practically invented by The Wicker Man more than 45 years ago. The last hour or so is fairly entertaining, a lot of batshit stuff happens, but it’s no Hereditary.”

Time seems to move more quickly these days because I’m always trying to jam in as much activity as possible on a daily basis.

In my early 20s I had to strive and struggle as much as anyone else, but I spent most of my time daydreaming. Over and over I was saying to myself (a) “This situation vaguely sucks” and (b) “I’d rather be doing something else.” I spent my time watching movies or TV, taking road trips, chasing women, working as a tree surgeon and getting high or drinking in bars.

It was only when the writing bug kicked in that things began to take shape.

“I was in love with Alan Ladd and I went to a party at Romanoff’s. I’m 5’7” but in heels I’m 5’9” or 5’10”. They said, “Shirley, your favorite actor is here. Come and meet him.’ I turned around. He was there and I went, ‘Oh hi, Mr. Ladd.’ He was about 4’9” and all my admiration disappeared literally in the dust.” — attributed to Shirley MacLaine but who knows?

Ladd was notoriously insecure about his height, which (to go by most accounts) was somewhere between 5’5″ and 5’6″. For his entire professional life this psychological albatross was draped around the poor guy’s neck. On the other hand James Cagney was roughly the same size (5’6″ or thereabouts) and he never squawked about it. He spent his whole adult life playing tough urban guys who slapped, punched or psychologically dominated other fellows, and nobody ever said “Jeez, he’s kinda short.” They said, “Shit, here comes Cagney…watch out.”

In short (pun), a good part of life is about owning the right kind of psychology — about feeling secure and confident about who you are and what you look like. It’s about planting your feet, looking the other guy in the eye and saying “take or or leave it but this is me…got a problem with that? Because I don’t.”

On the other hand I understand the Shirley MacLaine mindset. I’ve been a tall, slender, broad-shouldered guy with fairly good hair (augmented by Prague-installed follicles when I got older) all my life. I’ve been that guy since I was 11 or 12, and by the time I hit my early 20s I was feeling pretty cool about it. I know my looks helped in my hound-dog days in the ’70s and early ’80s.

But I’ve always had this unfair or prejudiced attitude about short guys, and I mean going back to when I was nine or ten. I’ve always had this belief that guys need to be 5’8″ or taller, and if they’re not…well, not a problem for me personally but they will have a certain gauntlet to contend with on a daily basis. Life is unfair and often cruel.

Alfred Hitchcock was only 5’7″ — only an inch or so taller than Ladd. By any fair standard he was short. Plus he was rotund and a half-baldie. Stanley Kubrick was also 5’7″, but I strongly doubt that anyone on a movie set ever said about him, “Look at that little guy.” Martin Scorsese is only 5’4″, for Chrissake — the same height as Tatyana. (And to me she doesn’t seem all that short.) If Ladd hadn’t accidentally overdosed in ’64 he would have been delighted to work with Scorsese in the ’70s — they would’ve gotten along famously.

The Bella Thorne nude-pic thing happened last weekend. Some hacker threatened to release some photos, and so Thorne released them herself in order to “reclaim her power.” Got it — good move.

But then The View‘s Whoopi Goldberg said Thorne was being reckless by sending nude photos to a boyfriend or even putting them on her phone in the first place. (Which is true — if you’re hot and famous the odds of your phone being hacked are high.) Thorne freaked and posted a “shame on you and fuck you, Whoopi” video.

This is basically a generational divide thing. Thorne’s contemporaries regard the posting of nude pics and sex tapes as totally routine and no biggie; women Whoopi’s age and older regard it (i.e., the sharing of intimate details) askance.

All screen villains are perverse or flamboyant in one way or another, but it’s fairly rare to run into one with a truly twisted or offbeat attitude. In an off-handed, no-big-deal, between-the-lines sort of way, I mean. Muddy-souled, less-than-admirable fellows who are both neurotic and a bit moronic. Not “comedic” figures, but dour, compromised souls whose bizarre manner, obsessions and quirks makes them a bit laughable or at least amusing to some extent.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Notice a certain resemblance between Lucas Hedges and director-writer dad Peter? And between Tatyana Antropova and her son Gleb? Outside of Hollywood movies and casting circles this kind of thing is fairly common. Parents actually resemble their kids and vice versa.

In the case of red-haired kids at least one parent will be a red-head also. (Not always but 95% of the time.) If a mother has big, beautiful, roundish eyes, there’s a decent likelihood that her son or daughter will have the same. I know that’s not the way things happen in Hollywood, but in the real world they do. Really.

I don’t know the last time I saw a more unlikely family pairing than Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges, who will play mother and son in French Exit, a dark comedy that Azazel Jacobs will direct from a script by Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers). Look at how absurdly different they are; they don’t even look like cousins.

Did anyone think that Hedges even vaguely resembled Julia Roberts in Ben Is Back? She was supposed to be his mom…please.

Jim Jarmusch‘s The Dead Don’t Die opened last Friday. More than a few HE regulars have presumably seen it. Reactions would be greatly appreciated. Here’s a re-post of my 5.14 Cannes review:

Dry, droll and deadpan are what you always get with Jim Jarmusch (and that’s fine with me), but The Dead Don’t Die, a small-town zombie comedy, is too slow, passive, resigned, lethargic and self-referential. It kind of works during the first half, but gradually spaces itself out.

Die‘s central problem is that it’s about watching a zombie apocalypse rather than somehow dealing with it.

Strange as this sounds, none of the characters actually try to survive. Well, they do but half-heartedly. It’s a laid-back hipster riff, but if you want to get serious and divine a social-political message, the film is basically saying “we’re going so wrong now and are more or less fucked at this point so why even fight it?”

Jarmusch occasionally flirts with the thematic thrust of George Romero‘s Dawn of the Dead (passive, brain-dead consumers are real-life zombies) and takes shots at the spreading Trump cancer, but he doesn’t really engage. Well, he does but in the manner of an aging, despairing, heavy-lidded type.

The Dead Don’t Die is baroquely amusing here and there, but the mood of laid-back nihilism and a general “submission to the plague” mentality is too persistent. Around the two-thirds mark the lack of any semblance of narrative energy starts to work against itself.

Horror fans are going to stay away in droves, Joe Popcorn is going to say “where’s the movie?” and Jarmusch devotees are going to feel under-nourished.

Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloe Sevigny play cops in an upper New York State town called Centerville, and all they really do is watch and comment, watch and comment, watch and comment.

One of the most serene and soothing mountaintop villages I’ve ever visited in my life, ten years and three weeks ago to the day. Alpha vibe-wise it was neck and neck with Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, which I first visited in May of 2012. Both trips were with the boys.

Wait…no mention of Mayor Pete in brief political discussion between Vulture‘s Bilge Ebiri and The Dead Don’t Die director-writer Jim Jarmusch? Why not?

Let’s say you’re a successful 34-year-old screenwriter in the grip of certain self-destructive behavior patterns. Behavior that not only hurts others, but requires immediate psychiatric attention. Obviously.

Let’s also imagine that this psychological malady has resulted in charges of cruel and abusive behavior from at least eight women.

Let’s further suppose that the screenwriter in question has an interest in continuing to work and thrive in the business. So he can pay his mortgage, afford a car, start a savings account, travel, take his pets to a vet when needed…stuff like that. Let’s presume all this.

What kind of manic looney-tune nutjob doesn’t say to himself, “Let’s see…I’ve been acting like a seriously abusive asshole with women and sooner or later I’m going to have to pay the piper, especially given the current social-political climate out there. So…I don’t know but maybe I should think about possibly getting help, maybe seek treatment for my alleged cyclothymia affliction, issue apologies, commit myself to some kind of 24-hour care facility….something that might allow for a slightly better future than if I just wait for the hammer to come down, which it will sooner or later?”

There’s a phrase I’ve been hearing since I was three or four years old. The phrase is “actions have consequences.” It’s amazing how some people develop an idea that they can somehow duck this.

Last night I finally watched episode #1 of Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Too Old To Die Young (Amazon, 6.14). I have nine more episodes to go, but I’ll tell you right now I’m not much of a fan.

I “respect” the noirish-arthouse atmosphere (solemn, menacing, gates-of-hell atmosphere) and the slow, snail-like pacing. By which I mean that I’m okay with Refn’s decision to shoot it this way as, you know, a stylistic “look at me” signature thing. But I didn’t find it involving. Like, at all. It’s basically about ugliness, evil, malevolence, posing, slowness, dark lighting, irony, set design, death, perversity.

“This is not human behavior as I know it,” I kept saying to myself. “This isn’t even noir behavior. In the first scene it takes…what, 15 minutes for a cop to hassle and interrogate a young woman that he’s pulled over and apparently wants to take advantage of in some fiendish way? Less? Feels like 15. They talk and talk and talk and talk…what is this?”

If human history progressed at this pace we’d still be back in the heyday of the Roman Empire. I’d be wearing a toga and sandals and writing for the Foro Romano Gazette. Everyone takes too damn long to speak or do anything, for that matter. I asked myself again, “Why the fuck am I watching this?”

To be honest, I watched TOTDY because I’d heard it was a problematic slog and I wanted to see Miles Teller struggle. I’ve had it in for this fucking guy ever since that 2014 Hollywood-Highland escalator episode (“Don’t be a pervert, man”).

“This is not going to add to my understanding of or appreciation for the wonder of God’s universe,” I went on. “This isn’t going to turn me on or make me laugh and drop to my knees like I’m watching the second coming of Michelangelo Antonioni. It’s just going to irritate me so you know what? Fuck this series. Okay, I’ll probably watch a few more episodes.”