This trailer for season #2 of Big Little Lies (6.9.19) has a cheap, pandering odor. Soap-opera stuff. I’m presuming it doesn’t represent the actual style and content of it, especially considering that the great Andrea Arnold (American Honey, Fish Tank, Red Road) has directed all seven episodes.

How do fires start outside of arson? Electrical sparks, a carelessly tossed burning cigarette…what else? News reports indicate it had something to do with wooden scaffolding that was being used for restoration. A good portion of the main roof has reportedly collapsed; ditto the famous tall spire.

The just-released Cannes ’19 poster is an image of the late Agnes Varda shooting her first film, La Pointe Courte, sometime in the summer of ’54. Pic costarred the unpaid Phillipe Noiret and Silvia Monfort. Shot in the Mediterranean coastal city of Sete, the film’s total budget was $14K.

I watched an episode of Game of Thrones back in 2012, and my immediate response was “this is grandiose melodrama but it’s well made, well acted…intelligent people are behind this.” I’ve watched a few slivers since but never another full episode, and I feel quite serene about that. Mainly because I hate the faux-medieval milieu. I hate those expensively designed, finely stitched tunics and gowns and exquisite fur hoodies and fur-lined seal boots. And I hate stories in which a semi-significant character reveals in Episode 8 that he/she is actually someone else with a heretofore unsuspected agenda or, you know, is secretly descended from a certain well-thought-of character or whatever. I’ve always found Lena Headey foxy but I’ve never been able to decide whose face I hate more — that of Kit Harington or Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. I hate sagas in which little kids are pushed out of windows. I hate pretentious-sounding character names like Daenerys Targaryen, Davos Seaworth, Theon Greyjoy, Tyrion Lannister, Samwell Tarly. I hate the idea of flying dragons despite their gargantuan bulk and weighing at least as much as a blue whale. I hate long-running miniseries that seem to be mainly about perpetuating their own mythology. I guess you could say I hate the general GoT sprawlingness, the go-for-the-bucks attitude, everyone pocketing their paychecks. Fuck all of that.

When you pull into a supermarket parking spot, what’s the first thing you do? Turn off the engine and the lights, right? Because you’re about to go shopping and you have no need for either until you return with groceries…right? Except there are sociopaths out there who pull into parking spaces and don’t turn their lights off until 15, 30, 45 or even 60 seconds have elapsed. For no reason that makes any sense to anyone. They just do this. Because they’re sociopaths.

Earlier this evening I was sitting in my little car in the parking lot of West Hollywood Pavilions. Engine off, lights off, surfing Twitter and thinking things over.

Directly across from me a big fat Range Rover pulled in, and as it sat there and sat there with no one getting out, the lights were flashing right in my face for the longest time. The lights were so bright I was squinting and shielding my eyes. After 25 or 30 seconds I was muttering “what the fuck are you doing, man?” After about 60 seconds, the dick behind the wheel finally turned his lights off and got out and went into the market.

For what it’s worth I’ve never done this. After I pull into my spot I kill the lights and the engine because — logic! — I’m there to buy some yogurt, cat food and mineral water, and I won’t need the lights or the engine until I return.

Three or four minutes later a white SUV pulled in next to the Range Rover and did the same damn thing. Sat there, sat there and fucking sat there with the lights still burning. Has the driver changed his/her mind? Is he/she wondering whether he/she should be shopping this evening, or whether there’s something more important that he/she needs to do? Okay, maybe so, but what’s the problem with turning your fucking lights off while you think things over? Has it occured to you that others (i.e., people like myself) might find your super-glarey lights obnoxious? Oh, this hasn’t occured to you? I see.

45 seconds later the lights on the white SUV finally went off. Thanks for the squinting session!

15 minutes later the Range Rover guy returned with a couple of grocery bags. He loaded them into the back seat, got in and turned on the lights. And just fucking sat there again. If you’re like me and you don’t feel like driving off into the night, fine. But why sit in your car with your lights on? Are you doing this to, what, aggravate people or something?

Please turn them off. Please. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. I was sitting there going “you dick, you dick, you dick, you dick…what is your MALFUNCTION?”

Hell is other people in a parking lot.

Eric Kohn’s 4.8 interview with Criterion Channel honcho Peter Becker made no mention of image quality whatsoever. 1080p vs. 720p vs. 4K streaming down the road…nothing. Not to mention a concern that HE readers have shared about Filmstruck streaming occasionally choking and stalling.

A few days ago I asked a Criterion spokesperson if the Criterion Channel is going to be 100% 1080p or not. Answer: “Criterion shows the best format they can secure. The overall goal is to connect the audience with the movies they want to see and not let tech requirements keep good films invisible, but that said they always seek out the best format they can find, and when they improve a master they replace the one they have improved upon.”

To which I replied, “Got it — the Criterion Channel will presumably offer 1080p for the most part but may sometimes show films at 480p or 720p (‘not let tech requirements keep good films invisible’). They will always seek out the best format they can find, cool — but what about 4K streaming, which other providers offer from time to time?” Answer: “4K is not supported at the moment. We’ll see what the future brings.”

HE followup questions: “One, what percentage of Criterion Channel films are being presented at 1080p (HD)? And what percentage are being offered at 480p (DVD standard)? Two, why aren’t the films being offered with a posted assurance that they’re being streamed at 1080p, when applicable? Failing that, why not a general assurance that all films are in HD except when otherwise specified? And three, what’s the problem with 4K streaming? Does it cost too much or something? 4K streaming is becoming more and more common with other services. And so many Criterion upgrades and restorations have been scanned and restored at 4K.”

The response to the last three questions was that the spokesperson couldn’t offer specific percentages as the Criterion Channel is just starting to launch.

Scroll forward to 1:40: “There is no such thing in honest politics that revolves around the word ‘again.’ I’m here to join you to make a little news. My name is Pete Buttigieg. They call me Mayor Pete. I am a proud son of South Bend, Indiana, and I’m running for President of the United States.”

Famed Ingmar Bergman actress Bibi Andersson died today at age 83, after suffering a stroke nine years ago. Seemingly unrelated to HE’s own Harriet Andersson (or am I mistaken?), Bibi had a 14-year peak period between ’57 (costarring roles in Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries coupled with an “intense” affair with Bergman) to Bergman’s The Touch (’71, costarring Elliot Gould).

Andersson’s most significant, respected and best-known Bergman role was opposite Liv Ullman in the probing, psychologically layered, somewhat lezzy-ish Persona.

Her other noteworthy performances were in The Passion of Anna (’69), The Kremlin Letter (’70), Scenes from a Marriage (’73), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (’77), An Enemy of the People (’78), Quintet (’79), The Concorde — Airport ’79 (’79) and Babette’s Feast (’87).

Andersson always delivered a palpable undercurrent. Complex, a bit bothered. Nobody of her generation did moody and vaguely mysterious better or more provocatively.

The fanatics may or may not flinch over the following but Andersson was something of a high-toned Swedish sex object in her ’60s and early ’70s prime. A fair amount of tasteful nude scenes, a brightener of moviegoer imaginations, etc. Anyone who knows her career will tell you this. I shouldn’t mention this for obvious reasons, I realize, but honesty compels it.

In yesterday’s Paths of Glory thread (“And Today’s Verdict Is…?“), LexG claimed that my recent assertion about Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood being based on the 1969 situations of Burt Reynolds and redneck movie director Hal Needham is a “Wells loony tune” riff. LexG allegedly knows this town pretty well, and yet he says “where did this gem come from?”

I’ll tell him where it came from — (a) common knowledge and (b) Reynolds and Needham‘s Wiki pages.

Tarantino will probably tap-dance or shilly-shally when some junket journalist asks him this point blank, but it all fits together. It’s right there on the page. The 1969 career situations of DiCaprio’s “Rick Dalton” (struggling, pushing-40 TV actor) and Pitt’s “Cliff Booth” (Dalton’s same-aged stuntman-buddy who shares his home) mirror Reynolds-Needham. Fucking obvious. Okay, with a little Clint Eastwood thrown in.

Cliff Booth, Rick Dalton in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.

Burt Reynolds, Hal Needham during filming of Smokey and the Bandit.

In ’69 Reynolds, who had been acting on TV since the late ’50s (when he was in his early 20s), was a steadily working but diminished “known quantity” who was more or less poking along with B-level features like Sam Whiskey and 100 Rifles and short-lived TV series like Hawk and Dan August.

Reynolds had been trying and trying but was unable, during the first year of the Nixon administration when he was 33 years old, to break through into the bucks-up realm of A-level features.

And then, after 15 years in the business (when he was 20 or 21 he was told he couldn’t play a supporting role in Sayonara because he looked too much like Marlon Brando), Reynolds finally made it over the hump and became BURT REYNOLDS.

He accomplished this with the one-two-three punch of (a) his breakthrough lead role (studly survivalist Lewis with the bow-and-arrow) in John Boorman‘s Deliverance (’72), (b) that Cosmopolitan centerfold and (c) becoming a talk-show star with his amusing, self-deprecating patter in chats with Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and David Frost.

In the space of a few months Reynolds was no longer Mr. Semi-Obscuro but suddenly the cool guy whom everyone liked and admired.

Reynolds Wiki excerpt: “Deliverance director John Boorman cast Reynolds on the basis of a talk-show appearance. ‘It’s the first time I haven’t had a script with Paul Newman‘s and Robert Redford‘s fingerprints all over it,’ Reynolds joked. ‘The producers actually came to me first.’

“‘I’ve waited 15 years to do a really good movie,’ Reynolds said in 1972. ‘I made so many bad pictures. I was never able to turn anyone down. The greatest curse in Hollywood is to be a well-known unknown.'”

For me, Tim Burton‘s Batman gradually became a parent punisher. I used laser discs to distract the boys in their toddler years, and they wanted to watch this 1989 film over and over and over. I gradually became so sick of the dialogue; every line that Pat Hingle said drove me up the wall. I’ll probably never see it again. Favorite sequence: When Jack Nicholson‘s Joker tells his goons to leave a Francis Bacon painting unharmed. Least favorite sequence: The bat-costumed Michael Keaton swan-diving off a super-tall skyscraper and not dying because…I forget. Because his leather cape slowed him down or some kind of stupid micro-thin cable attached to his belt…I don’t want to remember.

For tough-minded critics, the pared-to-the-bone perfection of Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory falls apart during this final scene, which lasts just under four minutes. To them it’s a forced finale — an attempt to abruptly squeeze emotion out of a deeply cruel situation that Kubrick has portrayed in a cool, realistic, matter-of-fact manner from the start. And then, out of the blue, a roomful of coarse, rowdy soldiers, showing their own kind of cruelty to poor Christiane Kubrick, is gradually reduced to silence and then tears in the space of 100 seconds.

In short, critics have said, the first 84 minutes constitute one thing, and the final four are something else.

In my view the scene is saved by the unknown actors (who may have been extras for all I know but nonetheless hit the notes) and the expert editing, which allows the sadness to leak out just so.

How would Paths of Glory play today, if a fact-based World War I film was to somehow get made and distributed theatrically? One, making it would be awfully difficult — too much trouble and expense for too little return. Two, it would never open theatrically — a film of this sort would never have a chance with the downmarket megaplexers, but would probably find a berth with Netflix or Amazon. Three, the film festival circuit would appreciate it but the p.c. fraternity would probably give it a mixed response, partly for the ending and partly because it’s too white (no French solders of color) and too straight (no LGBTQ characters).

Billy Dee Williams at Episode IX panel: “I’m sick and tired of people saying I betrayed Han. Did anybody die? I was going up against Darth Vader. I had to figure something out.” HE reply #1: Lando could have whispered to Han and Leia as they arrived that Vader and his goons were already encamped and ready to pounce. HE reply #2: No, nobody “died” but Lando’s complicity resulted in Han being (a) severely tortured and (b) frozen in carbon.