Hollywood Elsewhere hereby nominates John Huston‘s Escape to Victory (’81) as perhaps the dumbest, phoniest, most jingoistic, credibility-straining and most audience-despising POW film ever made.

The bullshit story attempts to blend The Great Escape with a rousing tale about a big soccer match between a German team and Allied prisoners of war and blah blah. Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow, Pelé and Daniel Massey costarred.

The climatic game happens in Paris (le Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir) with a huge crowd cheering the Allies and yelling “victoire!” Not only do the allies win it, but they escape through a tunnel after doing so.

I caught a press screening at the Ziegfeld in July of ’81, and I distinctly remember staggering out of the theatre and groaning and tearing it to shreds in giddy chats with journo pals.

Everyone uses hand gestures while speaking in front of a group or crowd. It’s just a matter of using the right ones. Just make sure your palms are always facing up. Keep them open and unclenched, like you’ve nothing to hide. And don’t slash the air with your hands — just pretend you’re one-handedly dealing cards with your right (or left) hand. If you want to emphasize a point you’ve just made, “deal a card”. Another point, another card — simple. Every so often you can do a JFK finger-point gesture, but the main thing is to keep it simple and don’t over-gesture. Anyone who knows anything about public speaking will say the same thing. Make sure that your palms are facing the ceiling or the sky.

35 years ago Taylor Hackford‘s remake of Jacques Tourneur‘s Out of the Past was retitled Against All Odds — a classic Hollywood dumb-down move. The thinking was “why confuse audiences with a spooky-sounding title about dark, enveloping fate when you can sell an alternate that might refer to a tough football game or some kind of mission impossible?”

Yesterday David Chase‘s Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark, was retitled as just plain, dumb-as-a-rock, stick-your-thumb-up-your-ass Newark.

What was so bad about the Many Saints title? It had a ring. Newark sounds like it’s another Detroit, right?

The Warner Bros. execs behind the title change probably tested The Many Saints of Newark with a focus group, and the group probably expressed confusion or irritation. “What kind of saints?” “I don’t get it.” “Is this about a football team?” “Whoever heard of saints residing in Newark?”

Let’s revise some titles of some famous Sopranos episodes with the same reductionist approach. I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano is now Jeannie. The Knight in White Satin Armor is now called Armor. Pine Barrens will henceforth be known as Fucking Freezin’ Out Here. Long Term Parking will hereafter be called She Dies.

I don’t give a single infinitesimal fuck about James Gunn having been re-hired to direct Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3. Because I was down with the original Guardians but hated the second one so I figured the third would be worse. But the willingness of Disney’s Alan Horn to reverse course about a Twitter-related nervous nelly firing is somewhat encouraging.

Posted today by The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield: “I want to pause long enough to congratulate Hollywood on making it to the Belated Backdoor [of the] Who The Hell Knows What the Rules Are? era of corporate decision-making under the Social Media Backlash Sun

“That’s a step forward from the Kneejerk Duck, Cover and Throw Everyone Under the Bus era that we’ve been living through.

“But what does this experience say for the future? Sometime next week, when some other Disney employee has their ancient words ‘surfaced’ [on Twitter], is Disney now making a statement that they aren’t going to be pushed around by the social media mobs, but they’ll take their time and give things a little thought before they drop an employee over a cliff?

“Or are they saying ‘yes, if the mobs get loud enough we may have to throw you overboard. However, if somewhere down the line you can get the mobs to quiet down or get distracted, we might be able to give it another try’?”

Over the last 24 hours Ugly Lefty Purists have jumped in whole hog on their Beto bashing. Partly because his positions, which are obviously liberal and probably something close to reasonably progressive, haven’t been fully articulated in books or position papers, but mainly because he’s a Rich Charismatic White Guy.

Why isn’t his skin browner? Why isn’t he female? What’s with the sharp beak nose and those spazzy hand gestures? Takedown time!

Progressive, all-or-nothing, gotta-revolution crazies (Time’s Up feminists, POC anti-white-male congregations, classic Berniebots) hold the self-destruction cards in the 2020 election. They have the zeal and the rage to attack aging centrist Biden as well as practical-liberal-humanist O’Rourke, and possibly wound them both sufficiently so that neither will make it all the way to the Democratic nomination.

At least 12 to 14 months of in-fighting lie ahead, and the Stalinist SJW left is going to attack Beto non-stop…month after month, week after week…from here until the late spring of ‘20. Slash, stab, slug, jab, kick, gouge.

In the vast realm outside of Political Lefty Twitter, rank-and-file Democrats just want to defeat Trump. Most of the country regards Cheeto as a lying crime boss who has no business being in the Oval Office — they just want his ass out of office by 1.20.21, if not sooner.

But progressive crazies have a better, nobler, more elevated agenda — to bring about profound, much-needed social change by eliminating as many white guys as possible from positions of power and by voting in people of color, LGBTQs, and more AOC and Bernie types.

My gut tells me that as time gradually passes more average, sensible-minded Democrats will rally around Beto than Biden because Beto is younger, somewhat more liberal than Biden, more in the swing, more social media savvy, and more likely to beat Trump because of the generational age factor.

Polling will gradually indicate this, but the pecking order will become clear starting with Iowa and New Hampshire ‘20 — a whole fucking year from now. Biden is too old, too centrist, too gaffe-prone, and not part of the current political zeitgeist (older than boomers). He’s a holdover from the ‘80s and ‘90s. His last big moment was during the ‘08 primaries, and he couldn’t make it happen.

But the spitting rage junkies among the militant purist left are just getting warmed up. They are the ones who could and quite possibly MAY usher in a second Trump term — holders of the key to Trump getting re-elected in 2020.

Late yesterday afternoon I was nudging my way east on Melrose Ave., between Robertson and San Vicente Blvd., waiting for a green light. For the time being I was to the right of a youngish brunette in a late-model Hundai. We were side by side within a lane and a half’s worth of road space. I saw that up ahead the right-side lane would open up after we got past a parked car, so I nudged my way forward, inching past Hundai girl.

This pissed her off. She lurched forward so that we were side by side again. She then expertly pantomined “what are you doing? You can’t elbow your way in front of me! I own the main lane and you’re only in a half-lane to my right, so I’m the dominant driver!”

I glanced at her mute performance out of the corner of my eye. Due respect but I politely ignored what she was putting out. No defiance, no eff-you-back gestures — just “oh, are you upset about something?”

A few seconds later the traffic started to move and the right lane opened up. I darted in, took the lane and gunned it across San Vicente. Within five or six seconds I was at least six to eight car lengths ahead of Hundai Girl. I’m sure this made her even more unhappy. Pardon my dust, Peggy Sue, but this is how life in the big city goes sometimes. We’re all living in a kind of Mad Max world.

10 and 2/3 years ago I excerpted a Michael Atkinson Moving Image piece about William Holden (“St. Bill of Illinois“).

Atkinson hits the nail on the head in discussing the brusque anxiety and rattled melancholia that always simmered in the characters Holden played — there, obviously, because they defined Holden himself.

“Truth be told, Holden’s character-role capacities ranged only from narcissistic American jerk to self-loathing American lug,” he wrote, “but his best movies are implicit inquisitions into that personality — like Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Blvd. and Sabrina and Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

“By the time of David Lean‘s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a big-budget production looking for a disillusioned American Everyman sickened by his own lack of heroism, David Lean needed only go to Holden.

“There was that wonderfully rough voice, often poised on the edge of cynical disillusionment. There was that physique — athletic but on the verge of dissipation. And there was that face — smooth and innocent in youth, a little weathered and circumspect in adulthood, lined with worry, regret and beleaguered wisdom as he withered. As we watched Holden age on the screen, we saw an ongoing portrait of intelligent American masculinity in progress, interrupted by his untimely accidental death in 1981 at the age of 63.

“As Holden aged, his richest vein was the bitter personification of the costs of progress and the loss of frontier — he became, almost inevitably, the angry Old Guard facing melancholy supersession by the young, by modernity, and by the press of time.”

Sony Pictures Classics will open László Nemes‘ Sunset, which premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, on 3.22. The reviews have been mixed to mixed-positive. The general response has been that it’s no Son of Saul, but is worth seeing for the Nemes imprimatur alone.

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Adults don’t eat ketchup as a rule — only kids do. They pour ketchup on their burgers and dip their french fries in the stuff. I haven’t even looked at a bottle of ketchup since I was 14 or 15, and I’m actually proud to say that. I despise the taste of the stuff. When I was 15 or 16 I bailed on ketchup and became a burger with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise guy. I certainly don’t make a habit of hamburgers, but when I have one I always revert to the old LTM. And I never pour ketchup on steaks. I never pour it on anything. I hate the very thought of that red glop.

My first thought when I heard about Sen. Cory Booker being with Rosario Dawson was that she was acting as a kind of beard for the guy, at least while his Presidential campaign is up and running. But apparently Booker is straight (or at least bi — I’m good either way) and their relationship is for real. Buzzfeed says they’re “not just dating” but “truly, madly in love.” Fine, although it seems a tiny bit odd that Dawson is talking openly about their mutual feelings just as Booker’s presidential campaign is gearing up.