Mild-mannered Piers Morgan attempts a semi-normal conversation with the fearsome “Crackhead Barney“, who taunted Alec Baldwin the other day…watch the first five minutes.

2009 was 15 years ago, and by any fair standard a banner year for films, resulting in a very decent lineup for the Best Picture Oscar. But I’m wondering how these films have aged…which ones have held up the best in retrospect?

My personal faves among the Best Picture nominees were Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man, Jason Reitman‘s Up in the Air, James Cameron‘s Avatar, Lone Scherfig‘s An Education and Neill Blomkamp‘s District 9…six in all.

I wasn’t in love with The Blind Side but I understood why others were. And I was meh or mixed-negative on Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds, Lee Daniels‘ Precious and Pete Docter‘s Up.

It hit me this morning that my 15-years-later thoughts about Up in The Air are fairly alpha and sturdy. Please give my Toronto Film Festival review a read-though and share your present-tense feelings.

“Up In The Air really has it all — recognizable human-scale truth, clarity, smart comfort, the right degree of restraint (i.e., knowing how not to push it), and — this got me more than anything else — a penetrating, almost unnerving sense of quiet.

“This is one of the calmest and most unforced this-is-who-we-are, what-we-need and what-we’re-all-afraid-of-in-the-workplace movies that I’ve ever seen. From an American viewpont, of course. The Europeans have almost made job-anxiety films into a genre — i.e., Laurent Cantet‘s Time Out, etc. But I would guess that Up In The Air will play very, very well in Paris.

“It’s a film that walks and talks it and knows it every step of the way. Work, adulthood, asking the questions that matter, compassion, family, stick-your-neck-out, etc. The whole package. With an almost profound lack of Hollywood bullshit and jerk-offery. And a kind of Brokeback Mountain-y theme at the finale — i.e., ‘move it or lose it.’

“Up In The Air doesn’t tell you what to feel — it lets you feel what it is. All the best movies do that. They don’t sell or pitch — they just lay it down on the Oriental carpet and say to the viewer, ‘We’ve got a good thing here, and if you agree, fine. And if you don’t, go with God.’

“You know what? The hell with that attitude. If you really watch and let this movie in and then say, as a friend of a good friend said after watching it in Telluride a few days ago, “I don’t know…it’s nice but it’s more like an okay ground-rule double than a homer,” then due respect but you’re the kind of person who likes candied popcorn and Strawberry Twizzlers and feel-good pills. No offense.

“Variety‘s Todd McCarthy called it “‘a slickly engaging piece of lightweight existentialism.’ That’s an unfair and inappropriate characterization. There’s a difference between lightweight and having the goods and taking it easy and laying it on gradually.

“The thing that puts Up In The Air over is that it’s about right effin’ now, which is to say the uncertain and fearful Great Recession current of 2009. Reitman has been working on it for six years, and if it had come out last September — just as the bad news about what those greedy selfish banking bastards had done was being announced and everyone started to mutter “uh-oh” to themselves — it wouldn’t be reflecting the cultural what-have-you as much as it is now. And yet it never alludes to anything that specific. It doesn’t have to.

“We all know about the story by now. Ryan Bingham (Clooney) is a kind of lightweight Zen smoothie who specializes in gently firing people when their bosses are too chicken to do it themselves. He doesn’t just like travelling around in business class seats and staying in nice hotels — he relishes the sense of belonging and security that he gets from being constantly in motion and never digging into a life of his own. And it’s easy to spot the arc — i.e., will Ryan find some way to let go of skimming along and maybe go for a little soul infusion?

“The basic story propellant comes from two women who represent a certain kind of change/growth/threat element — Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow traveller who’s an exact replica of Bingham save for her sexuality, and with whom he strikes up a nice groove-on relationship in the film’s beginning, and Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a hamster-sized junor exec who’s sold Ryan’s boss (Jason Bateman) on whacking people through a video conferencing system rather than face-to-face.

“But I don’t want to get into the story more than that. What happens, happens for the right reasons. The main thing is that none of the developments feel the least bit ungenuine. And I will square off with anyone who says the ending isn’t sufficiently ‘happy.’ Anyone who doesn’t realize that Clooney is quite another man and open to the next good thing at the finale simply hasn’t been paying attention.

“There are many witnesses in this film a la Reds — real-life people who’ve been laid off and are facing the abyss in more ways than one — and I’ve already read complaints that Reitman overplays this card. I respectfully disagree. The clips appear symmetrically (i.e., at the beginning and end), and have an added weight at the finale. “Repetition” doesn’t necessarily mean ‘repetitiously.’

“I’m really glad I caught Up In The Air at the beginning of the second wave — i.e., immediately post-Telluride. By the time it comes out on 11.13.09 it’ll be something else, and by that I mean the movie that snarkers will be looking to shoot down just to do that. Snarkers are so reprehensible. They pummel and flatten things down and rob them of their fresh-soil beauty.”

Hollywood Elsewhere regrets that the life and career of French director and Cannes favorite Laurent Cantet has ended too soon. The poor guy was only 63. Cantet was a social realist with a frequent focus on workplace and labor issues. The standouts were Human Resources (’99), Time Out (’01), Heading South (’05) and the Palme d’Or-winning The Class. I can’t remember which film or year, but for me Cantet’s most memorable scene involved a pair of late middle-agers, a man and woman who may or may not have been married, who were suddenly laid off from their jobs, and held each other intensely as they openly wept.

If anyone knows what I’m thinking of, please advise.

It is HE’s contention that the two most depressing paragraphs ever written for a trade piece about the general state of the movie industry…said paragraphs can be found, trust me, in “Why It’s Never Been Easier to Land in Director’s Jail,” a 4.24 Hollywood Reporter article by Mia Galuppo. It’s basically about certain harsh, sudden-death judgments currently prevailing in the big studio realm.

Here’s the one-two punch…paragraphs #8 and #9…strap yourselves in:

“[Nowadays] new talent must deliver multiple successful projects in a row, sans slip-ups, before being afforded the grace (albeit only so much) to fail at the studio level. Says a top manager with a stable of studio directors of the gauntlet for filmmakers, ‘You basically get one shot [at proving yourself], three times in a row.'”

“For their part, executives offer that there is a dwindling number of working directors, even those with a bomb or two, [who] can be trusted with bigger budgets to deliver on time, on budget and on brand. Stuntperson-turned-director David Leitch is at the top of studio wish lists as someone who is able to direct entertaining films while having a great relationship with talent.”

David Leitch directs entertaining films? Since when? If you’re a brainless dork perhaps, but if you’re saddled with that terrible, bordering-on-lethal virus called ‘taste’. Leitch’s movies are a nightmare. And yet he couldn’t be doing better.

That’s really it, man….good God…game over. An entertainment or diversion industry that worships a soulless, mechanized, empty-coke-bottle hack like Leitch has become so submerged in shallow cynicism that there’s really no recovery scenario…the old idea of movies being an occasional delivery system for spiritual oxygen…if there’s one thing that David Leitch-ism stands for, it’s a conviction that movies are best de-oxygenated…that studios need to commit to eliminating those emotional potions that Joe and Jane Popcorn used to treasure and pay for back in the day.

From HE’s 8.2.22 review of Leitch’s Bullet Train:

“Bullet Train is looking to excite those tens of millions of action fans who despise the idea of realistic action (you know, the kind with roots in that tedious realm that exists right outside the theatre doors or when you take off your headphones and turn off your Playstation games), and if it winds up making money, great.

“Because that’s who and what Leitch is — a man of impudence and conviction and hunger who’s out to make money. And Sony loves him for that. And Brad Pitt, who was allegedly paid $30 million to star in this thing, is almost certainly swooning with affection

“I’m not saying Bullet Train is a bad, empty, cynical, unfunny, idiotic, overwrought, soul-polluting film (although it is). I’m saying I’m not in this. Bullet Train wasn’t made for people like me. It was made in order to sell tickets to people with a jaded (corrupted?) sense of taste in this stuff, but the secondary motive (and Leitch will be the last one to deny this) is to make people like me feel poisoned and bored and drained while watching it.

“That’s how I felt last night, all right. But it doesn’t matter because action movie fans with standards don’t matter. The entire corporate movie-making, escapist-driven culture of 2022 is brushing away the lint of my opinions as we speak. Go away, you grumpy-ass fuck.

“Pay no attention to sourpusses like myself. I am like a crust of bread left over from a half-eaten chicken salad sandwich that’s sitting on a crumb-filled plate in a truck-stop diner somewhere in Indiana. Nobody cares about that crust, but they do care about the cinematic visions of David Leitch!”

Observation #2: What’s up with illustration for this article? My first reaction was that a director’s chair being consumed by flames seems like an admission by Galuppo and THR editors that many if not most directors today are writhing in a kind of hell. My second reaction was that it represents that age-old saying “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Observation #3: Galuppo doesn’t name any directors who may be residing in director’s jail, but I’m truly sick over the idea of David Leitch ruling the roost while certain directors who really have or certainly had something going on…directors like Cary Fukunaga, John McTiernan, Terry Gilliam, Shane Carruth, Tony Kaye, Alex Proyas, Brad Bird, Tom Hooper, Martin Brest, Tomas Alfredson and Terry Zwigoff (to name a few listed this morning by Jordan Ruimy)…the idea of directors of this calibre cooling their heels in movie jail is, at the very least, moderately revolting.

Observation #4: On 7.11.14 I posted the following about director-screenwriter-comedian Mike Binder…

Variety‘s Steven Gaydos responded as follows:

“Coincidentally, while researching a piece on comedy directors I recently discovered that Binder’s real sin is not the Sandler gig, but to not have had that Wedding Crashers breakout hit that everyone’s studio exec jobs are depending on. But making lean and mean, smart, touching, human-centered films doesn’t get you that spot at the head table like it should. As Johnny Cash said, ‘I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way.'”

The New York turnaround aside, Harvey Weinstein will remain in the slam in Los Angeles, where he’s serving a 16-year sentence following a 2022 conviction for sex crimes (forcible rape, forced oral copulation, sexual penetration by a foreign object). Weinstein was sentenced in Los Angeles on 2.23.23.

I don’t believe that pro-Gaza, pro-Palestinian protestors nationwide (NYU, Columbia, USC) are primarily driven by anti-Semitism, although anti-Semitism is almost certainly lurking. I think that occupying or otherwise encamped students are angered by the slaughter of Gaza non-combatants (including thousands of kids) by Israeli forces. That’s a humanitarian thing, not a tribal thing. The cops aren’t the bad guys, of course.

This is what college students do…what they did in the ’60s and early ’70s, what they’re doing now, what they’ll be doing 20 or 50 years hence.

NYPD Assistant Chief James Mccarthy and a few officers are chased by protestors after making an arrest at NYU last night.

Mccarthy is seen attempting to get inside the NYU Catholic Center, but couldn't open the door. He eventually finds an unlocked door around the corner.… pic.twitter.com/WVVriOBbMP

— Peter H (@peterhvideo) April 24, 2024

USC COPS VIOLENTLY ARRESTING@palyouthmvmt organizer. Protest turned violent at the University of Southern California (USC) campus. pic.twitter.com/JBGmflYV95

— Channel3 Now (@channel3nownews) April 24, 2024

This is NOT what vile antisemitism looks like. The media is not being fair and even handed about the Columbia campus protests. https://t.co/hyFeyy2LDd

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) April 24, 2024

This morning I accidentally sliced into the tip of my left index finger. An Exacto knife…don’t ask. You think Tony Perkins coped with a bloody bathroom situation in the wake of Janet Leigh‘s stabbing death in Psycho? Nothing compared to what I was dealing with an hour ago. It’s all bandaged up now and will be more of less healed in four or five days.

I immediately flashed on the Yubitsume scene at the end of Sydney Pollack and Paul Schrader‘s The Yakuza (’74), in which Robert Mitchum‘s “Kilmer” slices off half of his pinkie finger as a gesture of regret.

Yubitsume or “finger shortening” is a Japanese ritual to atone for offenses to another, a way to be punished or to show sincere apology and remorse to another, etc. In The Yakuza Kilmer is offering a gesture of apology to Ken Takakura‘s “Ken Tanaka” fof having brought pain into his life.

Pollack depicts this amputation as akin to a skin prick from a rose thorn. In actual life Mitchum would be covered with spurting cherry-red vino…splattered all over his suit plus the table, tablecloth and floor. I just went through a relatively minor sliced-finger episode and it was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

All to say that if I’m ever in Tokyo again (unlikely) and I somehow wind up bringing great pain into the life of a close Japanese friend, I’m not cutting my finger off as a way of saying “sorry, bruh”. The offended guy will have to take my word of it.

I visited Houston, Texas, in late April ‘06 or 18 years ago, and I frankly doubt if I’ll ever return. There are so many beautiful, soul-stirring cities, towns and regions out there worldwide (I could write chapters upon chapters) and I’m sorry but comparison-wise and with all due respect Houston just doesn’t knock your sucks off.

Here’s how I put it back then…deep in the Dubya miasma and roughly a year before Barack Obama launched his presidential campaign. The HE article was called “Texas Town.” The money quote (“Houston is L.A. without the soul”) came from Texas gal and good friend Cherry Kutac, who had invited me to cover the still-thriving Worldfest, the Houston-based film festival.

I’m sorry to have missed last weekend’s Los Angeles showing of a freshly restored 4K version of North by Northwest, which will be the basis of a forthcoming 4K UHD Bluray that will street late this year. Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1959 classic screened Saturday afternoon (4.20) under the auspices of the TCM Classic Film Festival.

I presumed the TCM NXNW screening was a premiere. (Distributors routinely debut new restorations at TCM Classic Film Festival.) Which is why I was thrown when I discovered yesterday that a “4K restoration” of North by Northwest played at the Film Forum roughly five months ago (late October-early November).

This morning I called the Film Forum and was told by a seemingly knowledgable employee that the restored 4K version of NXNW that played at the West Houston Street theatre last fall was the same version that played last Saturday at the Chinese on Hollywood Blvd.

The employee mentioned that FF senior programmer Bruce Goldstein, who’s also involved with the TCM Classic Film Festival, had finessed the booking, etc.

And yet this didn’t seem right. Why would Warner Bros. Discovery, which oversaw the NXNW restoration and will release the 4K UHD disc…why would they present a freshly minted NXNW 4K restoration at the Film Forum five months before the big TCM Classic Film Festival debut?

Then again, the FF page plainly states “4K restoration.”

Just before last weekend’s TCM showing I reached out to George Feltenstein, WBD’s in-house archivist and restoration hotshot (his technical job title is WBD Library Historian). I wanted to learn about the technical details of the restoration and when the disc might be released, etc.

I didn’t hear back until this afternoon. I was informed as follows by email:

Sentence #1: “The version of North by Northwest that was shown at the TCM Film Festival last weekend is a brand-new scan from the original camera negative, using a new scanner adapted for VistaVision.”

Sentence #2: “To confirm, this is not the same version of the film that played at Film Forum last year.”

Because I hated David Leitch’s Bullet Train with exceptional passion, I’m 96% certain I’m going to loathe and despise The Fall Guy (Universal, 5.3). I know what Leitch is (ex-stunt man, delusions of adequacy) and what he’s basically about deep down (a quarter-of-inch deep aspirations). There’s an all-media screening in Manhattan on Monday evening (4.29) but I don’t feel that The Fall Guy is worth the hassle of travelling in and out. I’ll catch it locally on Wednesday, 5.1…like a dentist appointment.