Last night Donald Trump was fanning the usual anti-Islamic hate flames by attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar for referring to the 9/11 attacks last month as “some people did something.” Righties have glommed onto these four words as an indication of a blithe disregard about a truly horrific slaughter, but lefties haven’t helped the situation by focusing only on conservative Islamophobia while ignoring the import of Omar’s words.

Which was worse — Trump declaring on 9.11 that 40 Wall Street was “now the tallest” building in Manhattan after the collapse of the Twin Towers, or what Omar said?

But in all honesty, what would the reaction be if any official or politician was to refer to the 9/11 attacks as “something” that “some people did”? The Left is aggravating the situation by ignoring the fact that Omar did attempt to minimize the 9/11 tragedy. A Somali-American, Omar was obviously indicating an unwillingness to strongly condemn the perpetrators, whom (be honest) she probably feels a slight kinship with on some vague cultural level.

Imagine the reaction if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had described the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre as “a local disturbance.” What would the gay community have said if a Florida politician had described the 2016 Orlando massacre as “an unfortunate incident involving a nightclub crowd”? Imagine if Franklin D. Roosevelt had announced to a joint session of Congress that Japanese bombers had “stirred things up” with the 12.7.41 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Omar could have made this whole thing go away by apologizing for a poor choice of words, and expressing profound sorrow about the slaughter of nearly 3000 New Yorkers that day.

Posted on 10.3.14: Abel Ferrara‘s Pasolini, screening this evening at the New York Film Festival, is about the last day or so in the life of the noted visionary Italian filmmaker — a brilliant writer and impassioned artist, upscale and refined, incredibly hard-working, the maker of one of the most rancid and perverse films of all time…and a guy with a thing for low-class, curly-haired boys. And an inclination on some level to flirt with danger.

Ferrara is obviously in awe of Pasolini’s artistic bravery (or obstinacy) and has captured some of his visions and dreams by depicting portions of Pasolini’s “Petrolio,” a meandering unfinished book he was writing, and has depicted his violent death with a certain raw power but…how to best say this?…I was faintly bored by some of it. Not dead bored — it’s an intelligent, earnestly presented film about an interesting man — but my fingers were tapping on the tabletop. Too many shots are murky or underlit…not Gordon Willis dark but “you can’t see shit” dark.

I actually loved Ferrara’s capturing of three scenes from Porno-Teo-Kolossal, a film Pasolini intended to make as a follow-up to Salo, The 120 Days of Sodom. And Willem Dafoe‘s performance as Pasolini is arresting — he obviously looks the part, and for whatever reason I didn’t mind that Dafoe and almost everyone else speaks English the entire time. And I love the way he pronounces “bourgeoisie” as “BOOJHwahzEE.”

But it’s finally a mercurial film aimed at Pasolini devotees. I agree with Variety‘s Peter Debruge that “it’s not fair to require audiences to know Pasolini’s ‘Petrolio'” — if you haven’t done your homework some portions of Ferrara’s film will throw you blind. But it’s lively and unfamiliar and anything but sedate. It’s not so bad to be faintly bored; it also means that you’re somewhat engaged. I’m glad that I saw it. It has portions that work. My vistas have been somewhat broadened.

Yesterday I found a yellow, dog-eared copy of the November 1979 issue of The Thousand Eyes Cinema Guide. Only three or four issues were published before the wily and colorful Sid Geffen, publisher of this TV Guide-like publication and operator of the then-thriving Bleecker Street and Carnegie Hall Cinemas, pulled the plug.

I served as the tireless managing editor and even, for a brief while, as the advertising guy. It was a great publishing experience while it lasted, but also grueling as hell because all 60 pages had to be written, edited, re-edited, copy-corrected, pasted and re-pasted by hand. With adhesive and Exacto knives. It took two or three days, two all-nighters and 85 cups of shitty coffee to finish the job at a composition-and-print house north of the city.

Yep, there really were 21 repertory cinemas (or venues) operating in Manhattan at the time. And yes, there was a certain musty romance to the analog, 27″ x 41″ display poster, reel-changing celluloid movie world of 1979. But for lovers of classic. indie, foreign or weird cinema, things are much better today in so many respects. Choices, image quality, ease of access…everything.

Over the years many actors and performers have ducked out of sight for a year or two (Robert Downey, Jr., Dave Chappelle, Winona Ryder, Eminem, Britney Spears), but as far as I can recall only three big-time movie stars absented the screen for several years — Henry Fonda, who vacated after 1949’s Jigsaw and didn’t re-appear until 1955’s Mister Roberts, Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie to Ishtar) and Al Pacino, who disappeared between Revolution (’85) and Sea of Love (’89).

Who am I forgetting? Contenders don’t measure up to Fonda, Hoffman and Pacino unless they were a big star when they dropped out, and they had to stay away from movies at least three or four years.

Warren Beatty doesn’t count. His post-Reds career has mostly been about not pulling the trigger.

Pacino was technically vapor for three and three-quarter years with Revolution opening in December ’85 and Sea of Love debuting in September ’89, but you might as well call it four. The legend is that the moody and whimsical New Yorker was lost and depressed, or maybe he was just charging his batteries. But however you slice it Pacino was a movie ghost all through ’86, ’87, ’88 and most of ’89.

But once he finally returned, Pacino made history with the best decade of his career and indeed his life. Nine grandslam performances in ten years — Dick Tracy (Big Boy Caprice), Glengarry Glen Ross (Ricky Roma), Scent of a Woman (Colonel Frank Slade), Carlito’s Way (Carlito Brigante), Heat (Lt. Vincent Hanna), Donnie Brasco (Lefty), The Devil’s Advocate (John Milton/Satan), The Insider (Lowell Bergman) and Any Given Sunday (Tony D’Amato).

[Thanks to Robert “Kid Notorious” for nudging me about Hoffman.]

A digital 4K restored version of Lawrence of Arabia played last weekend at the Bedford Playhouse. It was only the second time that this super-luscious, extra-detailed version (sourced from Grover Crisp‘s 8K scan) had been shown to an east coast audience — the first time was six years ago under the aegis of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Original Lawrence restorer Robert Harris, who introduced the Bedford screening, told me this morning it’s the finest looking version he’s ever seen, including any and all 70mm presentations.

The Bedford Playhouse has a 37-foot wide screen. Sony delivered the film on two DCPs. If only I’d had the time and scratch to fly back and attend. I’m told that the 4K version has screened out here, but I’ve never heard of any such showings.

You can stream the 4K Lawrence via Amazon, of course, but as good as it looks you’re not really getting the full whack. 4K streaming delivers something like 2.6K, depending on the breaks — only physical media can deliver the full visual boatload. High-end connoisseurs have been pleading for a 4K Lawrence Bluray for years, but the market for 4K Blurays is flat, limited and possibly sinking, as we all know. Believe or not, 45% of physical media enthusiasts STILL watch films on DVD.

Last year a European audio-reference site, avcesar.com, reports that Sony will deliver a 4K Lawrence disc sometime this year**. Here’s hoping.

** The site also reports that Warner Home Entertainment will deliver 4k Blurays of Heat and Wyler’s Ben-Hur in 2019.

With Alex Ross Perry‘s Her Smell opening this weekend, a repost of my 9.17.18 N.Y. Film festival review:

“Her Smell is an audience-test movie — a kind of experiment to see how much in the way of undisciplined, pull-out-the-stops abuse viewers are willing to sit through.

“The tools of this abuse are wielded by Perry and star Elizabeth Moss, who gets to snarl and smile demonically and be all manic-crazy obnoxious as Becky Something, an edgy, drug-fueled grunge rocker (pic is set in the ’90s) who wears too much eye makeup and suggestively flicks her tongue and could stand to lose a few pounds. Five minutes with crazy Becky and you’re immediately plotting your escape. She’s Medusa-woman, lemme outta here, can’t do this…aagghh!

“Escaping wasn’t an actual option, of course, as I sitting in a New York Film Festival press screening at the Walter Reade theatre, surrounded by dozens of critics. If I’d bolted I would have never heard the end of it so I stuck it out like a man, but good God almighty.

“There’s one tolerable moment in the last third. I’m reluctant to use the term ‘third act’ as there’s no story in Her Smell, much less anything resembling story tension, although there are five chapters or sections, each announced by snippets of 1.37:1 footage. The moment I’m speaking of shows a sober Becky sitting down at the piano and gently singing Bryan Adam‘s ‘Heaven’ to her toddler daughter. Hollywood Elsewhere is very grateful to Perry for at least offering this small slice of comfort pie. Peons like myself (i.e., viewers who are unable to enjoy a film teeming with jabbering, wall-to-wall, motor-mouthed anxiety) need this kind of thing from time to time.

“85% to 90% of Her Smell is about enduring Becky’s rash, needling, abrasive behavior toward her bandmates (Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin), a trio of up-and-coming Seattle chick musicians (Cara Delevigne, Dylan Gelula, Ashley Benson), her ex-husband (dull-as-dishwater Dan Stevens), the record-label owner (Eric Stoltz, 56 during filming and eyeballing the big six-oh) and some kind of manager-agent character (Virginia Madsen, who was born only 20 days before Stoltz). They all regard Becky with the same expression, a non-verbal channelling of “oh, God…she’s gone over the edge…what can be done?” and so on.

“To sum up, Her Smell is Perry punishment. And an indulgent, highly undisciplined, 135-minute exercise in flamboyant behavior-acting for Moss. I will never, ever see it again.”

Random thoughts: (a) What is that, Wadi Rum again?; (b) Here we go again…more money, more legend-spinning, more earnest expressions; (b) I don’t get the leaping backwards into an oncoming bad-guy star fighter; (c) How come Oscar Isaac has no close-up?; (d) Nobody hates C3PO more than myself; (e) when, if ever, will Hollywood Elsewhere embark on a Lawrence of Arabia camel trip that will include camping in Wadi Rum for a couple of days?

HE to J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson: Luke Skywalker lives within the realm of The Force, but is otherwise dead. Rey is the inheritor but not his daughter or any immediate blood relation. (Or did I miss something?) There are no other Skywalker descendants, no Skywalker army, no Skywalker cult or tribe.

So what the hell does “The Rise of Skywalker” mean?

If it means Kylo Ren (grandson on Darth Vader) is going to turn from the Dark Side and became a last-minute hero…I really don’t care. I feel zero investment in the guy, and could never understand why he wore that Vader mask in the first place.

One implication is that Luke will return from the dead like Lazarus or Jesus but c’mon…is there any end to this? When Obi-wan died, he stayed a spirit and didn’t “rise.” Is there any such thing as any super-character in any CG-driven tentpole fantasy EVER ACTUALLY DYING? (Han Solo doesn’t count — he’s mortal.) Storytellers have to respect for what each and every living thing (human, animal, vegetable) has confronted and come to respect as natural and immutable, which is that when death comes calling and the curtain comes down, THAT’S IT. But the infantilizing of the fantasy realm by the Sons of Lucas (the original infantilizer along with Spielberg) constantly defaults to “NO, HE/SHE ISN’T DEAD…HE/SHE LIVES AGAIN!”

If Luke is indeed toast and staying that way, then I take the last paragraph back. But if it he’s toast, what does “The Rise of Skywalker” mean?

To go by the trailer, an alternate title could be “The Rise of Carrie Fisher.”

It’s not the movie but the nitrate thang. I just want to be able to say that once, just once, I watched a first-rate projection of a black-and-white nitrate print. TCM Classic Film Festival copy: “Nitrate projection made possible through support of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Turner Classic Movies and The Film Foundation in partnership with the American Cinematheque and the Academy Film Archive.”

After the show: Very handsome print with nice detail and texture, but the film looks better — sharper, a bit brighter, a bit more gleaming — when streamed at 1080p on 65” 4K monitor. Sorry but it does.

FIFOG (Festival Internationale du Film Oriental de Geneve) runs from 4.29 through 5.5, but who uses the “o” word these days? The last time was when Paul Schrader used it in a late March Facebook post (“I’ve written or directed films with a black lead, an oriental lead, a female lead,” etc.) Before that was during a viewing of What’s Up, Tiger Lily?.

I’ve just invited the usual suspects to the annual night-before-with-journalist-pallies La Pizza gathering in Cannes. It’ll happen on Monday, 5.13 at 7:30 pm. I’ve made the reservation for 20 or 30…whoever shows up. Pass along the invite to whomever I’ve missed. Bring euros.

Special added message: “I realize that the old La Pizza gang of five years ago is no more, in a sense, and that for the last couple of years the congregation has been divided into a kind of film critics’ version of the Hatfields and McCoys — i.e., wokesters vs. less woke. I hope this won’t get in the way and that politics can be left outside, but I’ll understand if certain wokesters decide to gather for their own night-before shindig. — Jeffrey Wells, HE”

Glenn Close is going to play some kind of Ma Bumblefuck in Ron Howard and Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy…right?

Close is one of our greatest actresses and Lord knows she’s covered the waterfront with many disparate characters — long suffering literary wife, Jenny the nurse, Alex the psycho, Cruella de Ville, Albert Nobbs, etc. But she’s never played a rural, dispirited, mule-stubborn, Trump-supporting Okee from Muskogee with an Oxycontin habit. I’ll believe Close’s acting (I always have) but I’m going to have difficulty forgetting that Close, the refined, well-educated, WASPy actress from Connecticut, is pretending to be this kind of…uhm, person. It’ll be like Helen Hayes or Jeanne Eagels playing Daisy Mae from L’il Abner.

Amy Adams is also playing some kind of yokel type, or so I gather.

The screenplay, based on the respected book by J.D. Vance, is by Shape of Water co-screenwriter Vanessa Taylor. Howard is producing with Imagine’s Brian Grazer and Karen Lunder.

The original 181-minute cut, I mean. Saw it on the Universal lot. Rough sit. I never saw the 129-minute Alan Smithee version.

Needless to say this Manhattan coffee shop scene between Brad Pitt and Claire Forlani would’ve worked better without the double-hit ragdoll body bounce-flop…really bad CG. Imagine if just after Forlani walks off she hears the screech of tires and vague sounds of commotion, but doesn’t realize Pitt is dead until she reads about it the next day. Maybe a small photo in the N.Y. Daily News. It’s always better if you can nudge the audience into imagining a scene of violence rather than hitting them over the head with it.

BTW: Pitt was no spring chicken when Meet Joe Black was shot (he was around 34. had made Se7en three years earlier) but he looks 24 or 25.