A spooky submarine voyage occuupies about a third of Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (’59). With most of the world covered in radioactive haze and hundreds of millions dead from this, the USS Sawfish, a nuclear sub based in Melbourne and commanded by Capt. Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), is ordered to explore the devastation in North America — specifically in Point Barrow, San Francisco and San Diego.

There’s something unsettling and even vaguely horrific about the telescopic periscope footage of the latter two locations. The smoggy-looking air, dead quiet, no humans and everything looking quite tidy and orderly…not even a random corpse or two lying on a sidewalk or a street, not a misparked or abandoned car or commuter bus…nothing amiss.

After the Sawfish arrives in San Francisco a crewman named Ralph Swain (John Meillon) jumps ship and swims ashore. The radiation will kill him within a few days, but Swain is from the San Francisco area and wants to die near his family rather than Down Under.

A few hours later Swain is fishing off a bayside pier, and out of nowhere and right nearby Sawfish surfaces and an unseen Peck, his voice amplified and metallic-sounding, asks Swain how he feels and what’s it like in the city, etc. Swain says it’s quiet and bleak, but imagine the horrific smell of all those hundreds of thousands of bodies…how could anyone stand it? But On The Beach is determined to avoid the gruesome and emphasize the stillness, and something about this strategy gets to you. An eerie feeling.

I’m an especially ardent fan of Giuseppe_Rotunno‘s black-and-white cinematography, which is constantly handsome and well-balanced and curiously soothing for that. Rotunno’s credits include Fellini Satyricon, Five Days One Summer, Carnal Knowledge, Wolf and All That Jazz.

A new 4K restoration of Jean Pierre Melville‘s Le Samourai will have its premiere showing at Manhattan’s Film Forum (3.29 through 4.11). It will open elsewhere on April 5. Who knows when the 4K Bluray will pop?

Jeff is a derivative of Jeffrey, of course, and is not spelled “Jef” by anyone in any country or any planet in the galaxy. So why is the first name of Alain Delon‘s hitman character, whose last name is Costello, spelled with only one “f”? A sickening decision. I hate it.

25 minutes into Some Like It Hot, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis suddenly appear in skirts, wigs and high heels, and somehow it’s not a stopper. They’re dead broke, remember, so how did they manage the transformation? Easy — they borrowed the apparel from one or two of the showgirls they knew.

Months before Tootsie opened on 12.17.82, I did a lot of making-of research for two stories I was writing, and I heard a lot about how difficult it was to create Dustin Hoffman‘s “Dorothy” look. Weeks and weeks of makeup and wardrobe tests, trying on different wigs, trial and error. And yet in Tootsie, Hoffman’s Michael Dorsey manages to create “Dorothy Michaels” within a few hours or at least overnight.

And I didn’t buy this, Right away I was asking myself, “Where did he get the garb and makeup and whatnot?” All director Sydney Pollack had to do was insert a mention of Bill Murray‘s “Jeff Slater”, Dorsey’s roommate, having acquired a closetful of women’s clothing from an upstate theatre company that’s gone bust. Then I would have bought the makeover.

Also: I read a couple of drafts of Tootsie early on, and there was a perfect Act One scene. Michael and Jeff are working as waiters in a swanky Manhattan eatery, and Dorsey is horrified to discover an ex-girlfriend and some rich guy being seated in his section of tables. Dorsey begs Slater to wait on them, but Slater is too busy or hassled about something else. Dorsey has no choice. The shocked ex-girlfriend is embarassed for him but tries to be as polite and supportive as possible — and it’s mortifying.

A great moment, I said to myself when I read it. Excruciating and relatable. And it wasn’t used.

Plus Pollack decided to shoot Tootsie in widescreen Panavision (2.39:1), and that didn’t seem to fit Tootsie, which at heart is an intimate indoor comedy about quirky showbiz types. Why the panaromic aspect ratio? Wrong call, I decided.

Because of these three issues I wasn’t completely in love with Tootsie, I would never argue that it’s not funny or not good enough (it’s fine), but in my mind it’s a 7.5 or at most an 8 — a B-plus effort.

How hard is it to accept that The Abyss opened almost 35 years ago?

I’ve seen it twice on a big screen (standard theatrical version plus the longer director’s cut) and have never bought the “Ed Harris brings the chalk-faced, eyes-fixed-and-dilated Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio back to life” scene…I thought it was manipulative bullshit.

MEM is obviously drowned and lifeless and yet Harris pounds her chest and slaps her two or three times and yells “don’t quit!” and suddenly she starts breathing?

And I never bought the climactic appearance of those beatific dragonfly aliens saving Harris from death and hauling him through their magical underwater metropolis, plus those huge tidal waves that almost wipe out several major cities and then change their minds out of compassion for homo sapiens…an eye-filling finale, for sure, but it doesn’t work.

Hence my decision not to shell out $50 for the just-released 4K Abyss Bluray…it’s a tense, fascinating, well-throttled James Cameron superfilm but it’s not worth five sawbucks aka a Ulysses S. Grant. I would go $25 or $30 but no higher. Eventually a 4K streaming version will pop.

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Franklin is an eight-episode Apple miniseries about the randy statesman, inventor and roving ambassador. Directed by Tim Van Patten and written by Kirk Ellis and Howard Korder, it’s based on Stacy Schiff‘s “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America” (’05). The series launches with three episodes on 4.12.24, and concludes on 5.17.24.

Mr. Franklin was a wise, ingenious and well-educated printer, inventor and statesman, but he was also a serious hound, and I fully expect to see this aspect of his personality depicted…the life of a charming, pot-bellied smoothie who ravaged dozens of Parisian women during his ambassadorship and beyond.

I don’t know what the voice of the Boston-born Franklin sounded like, but it’s a near certainty that Michael Douglas said “fuck it, I’m going to play Franklin with my own deepish, gravelly voice and let the chips fall where they may.”

The 79 year-old Douglas is the right age to play Franklin — he hits the big eight-oh on 9.25.24.

Franklin lived in France (mostly Paris, based in a home in Passy) for nearly 20 years, from late 1776 until sometime in 1785. For roughly eight years Franklin served as the United States ambassador to France, and in so doing persuaded France to lend financial assistance to the United States fight against the British.

Forward to Schiff’s book: “In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France.” So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin — seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French — convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America’s experiment in democracy.

“When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin’s most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man.”

What’s the one thing that comes to mind when everyone thinks of the prosecution of Trump and others over Georgia election interference? Obviously the taped 1.2.21 phone call in which Trump tried to cajole and threaten Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — “I just want to find 11,780 votes” — into overturning Trump’s loss of that state in the 2020 election.

A tape of the phone call was obtained by The Washington Post and released the following day. Over and over Raffensperger responded with respectful “sorry, Mr. President, but no way” statements.

And yet, believe it or not, this phone call — irrefutable evidence of Trump’s attempt to alter the Georgia vote count and steal the election — has been thrown out by Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court. Six charges against Trump and his hooligan allies have been tossed by McAfee, leaving a total of 35.

The ruling was not related to a Trump defense attempt to disqualify Fulton County D.A. Fani T. Willis, over committing apparent perjury in court testimony over a now-concluded romantic relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade. McAfee is expected to rule on that matter by week’s end.

In response to some recent Sharon Stone recollections about 1993’s Sliver, told to Spotify podcaster Louis Theroux and repeated by Metro’s Rishma Dosani and Danni Scott, director Phillip Noyce has sifted through his own memory vault:

Timothee Chalamet is going to look great as he ages into his 40s, 50s and beyond. Those eyes and bones…he’s going to become a combination of a graying David Niven and a gentle-faced Basil Rathbone with bushy salt-and-pepper hair.**

Ditto Emma Stone. She’ll never put on weight, her face will retain its tightness as long as she submits to an occasional Prague touch-up, and those grand, luminous eyes are never going to lose their wattage.

Margot Robbie is going to radiate much of what she has now when she passes the 45-plus threshold. Firecracker eyes, delectable bones. As long she ignores her gay hairdresser’s advice to wear her hair shorter as she ages, she’ll be totally fine.

Zendaya is also going to weather fairly nicely.

But you know who isn’t going to age all that well? Florence Pugh. She’s pretty and everything but it’s clear she’s just about to flip over. On her way to Kathleen Turner-ville. A round little ball.

Journalists and columnists aren’t allowed to talk candidly about actors’ appearances, but you should listen to casting directors and beauty professionals after they’ve had a couple of drinks and let their hair down.

Who else is seemingly fated to experience significant (i.e., unwelcome) changes as their genes come in for the kill?

** Chalamet may get into trouble if he allows himself to bulk up and become Alan Bates, but he’ll be fine if he sticks to a Cary Grant diet..

David Lynch losing his mind when a producer says scene is “too long”

pic.twitter.com/19Zz4aLAkg

— Emir Han (@RealEmirHan) March 12, 2024

…begins with a single strum. Two years, four months on the planet.

…were the wokesters (i.e., those who feel that the celebration of this or that non-white or non-straight identity is more important than the cherishing of art and craft and soul from whichever contender).

Not lying. An observable fact. They were polite but there is no doubt that many people in the room wanted a different outcome. Be happy people are viciously attacking her, which is what I thought might happen. https://t.co/85MWDc157C

— Sasha Stone at Awards Daily (@AwardsDaily) March 12, 2024