It was nearly three years ago (1.9.14) when I tried to explain one of the most important rules for famous guys attending public events, which is to never wear orthopedic old-man shoes. I was derided for saying this, of course, but you can’t explain this aesthetic to deplorable-shoe types. Either you get the importance of wearing elegant shoes in public or you don’t. Wear your grandpa shoes all you want when you’re at home or shuffling around the mall, but never in front of the paying public.

I’m mentioning this again because a certain famous guy was recently photographed in a pair of black senior-citizen sneakers during a post-screening q & a. People in the audience listened to him discuss this and that, I’m sure, but they also had a good 30 to 40 minutes to just sit there and contemplate those ugly-ass shoes. Those people will never forget this.

My original point was that all self-respecting actors, celebrities and X-factor types need to tough it out and wear cool Italian shoes for lah-lah events, no matter what.

I’ve walked around the streets of Rome, Milan, Venice, Sienna and Florence on warm evenings, and white-haired Italian guys never, ever wear comfort shoes. They would rather be stricken with a heart attack and collapse on the street than wear those clunky things. When you’re hanging with the swells you have to look classy and elegant, even if it hurts. Even if it shortens your life.

You can laugh but a man’s choice of footwear usually says a lot about him, particularly about how he sees himself. Once the public realizes that you’re more into comfort clunkers than looking good, it’s the beginning of the end.

The mighty campaign of Hillary Clinton is going to barely squeak to a victory next Tuesday (Nate Silver says she has a 64% likelihood of winning vs. 36% for Donald Trump). But Florida is currently tipping in Trump’s favor, 52.9% to 47.1%, and so is North Carolina, 52.1% to 47.9% for Trump. N.Y. Times pollster Nate Cohn says the same thing — a close race but with Clinton slightly ahead.

Over the last two or three days journos have received invites to almost every award-season film that hasn’t yet screened — Denzel Washington‘s Fences, Ben Affleck‘s Live by Night, Stephen Gaghan‘s Gold, Robert Zemeckis‘s Allied, Theodore Melfi‘s Hidden Figures, Taylor Hackford‘s The Comedian, Juan Antonio Bayona‘s A Monster Calls. (Invites to the Bayona actually came in a bit earlier.) All of these will be seen before 11.17, which is convenient given that Hollywood Elsewhere leaves that day for the Key West Film Festival. The only logistical hang-up is the closing-night screening of Peter Berg‘s Patriot’s Day — maybe CBS Films will allow some of us see it a little early. Right now the only December hold-outs are Martin Scorsese‘s Silence (which, I’m guessing, will probably screen right before Thanksgiving — 11.21 or 11.22), John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder and Morten Tyldum‘s Passengers.

The Bleecker Street guys will soon host a couple of events (a party, a luncheon) for Matt Ross‘s Captain Fantastic, which everyone spoke highly of when it opened on 7.8.16. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 1.23.16, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and then opened theatrically a few weeks later. I didn’t review it until late July:

“This is one of the most complex and provocative dramas about parenting and passed-along values that I’ve seen in a dog’s age. I didn’t love it, partly because it unfolds in such an exotic and woolly realm (I don’t hold with killing deer or living without deodorant or applications of Aqua Velva) and partly because the last 10 or 12 minutes seem more fanciful than grounded, but I admired it. I certainly found it intriguing. It warrrants a thumbs-up.

Ross’s fascinating scheme is to acquaint us with an unorthodox good guy like Viggo Mortensen‘s Ben Cash — a brilliant, willful, Noam Chomsky-worshipping father of six, an Allie Fox type who’s highly independent, disciplined and obstinate. And then show us that he can also be a selfish prick and even a tyrant. But one who also has the decency to recognize his faults and the humility to pull back when life has told him to do so. But he’s still bull-headed. But he cares. He even shaves his beard off at the end.

With his wife in failing health, Ben and his six kids — three older teens named Bodevan (George MacKay), Kielry (Samantha Isler) and Vespyr (Annalise Basso), the tweener-aged Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton) and Zaja (Shree Crooks) and a little towhead named Nai (Charlie Shotwell) — have been living for ten years like survivalists in a Pacific Northwest forest, hand-to-mouthing it like Swiss Family Robinson, killing game and growing vegetables while immersing themselves in martial-arts training, Esperanto lessons and campfire sing-alongs.

Billy Wilder‘s One, Two, Three (’61), one of my all-time favorite comfort films, has disappeared from Amazon streaming. Fans were never permitted to purchase a streaming copy — only rent one. But now that’s over. Which means, I presume, that a Bluray will hit the market sometime before long. But there’s no news of one. I love watching this 1961 film late at night, starting around 10:30 or 11 pm. Relaxing, soothing, like a glass of warm milk.

I don’t have issues with Christianity. I have issues with right-wing hinterland Christians, and particularly those who haven’t the backbone to oppose Donald Trump. The Romans may not have thrown Christians to the lions in ancient times (as famously depicted in Cecil B. DeMille‘s Sign of the Cross and Chester Erskine‘s Androcles and the Lion) and if they did do this it was terribly wrong. People should be free to worship freely, and having your throat torn open by a lion with bad breath is a ghastly way to die. That said, I understand why the Romans were so motivated.

I always liked Bill Simmons as a columnist, especially when he deigned to talk about movies and cultural matters. As a writer he has a relaxed guy vibe, a certain swagger and authority, but I never watched Any Given Wednesday more than once or twice because Simmons doesn’t exude that swagger thing on camera. My impression, in fact, was that his default thing was to be too much on the mild side. A grinning, laid-back, non-confrontational kiss-ass approach. Simmons is obviously a smart fellow but his voice is a little too high pitched. That on top of his slip-on sneakers (he should’ve worn cowboy boots or brown suede Bruno Maglis), those too-narrow shoulders, those flannel shirts and his glistening, close-cropped silver hair….later. One look at those grayish-blue eyes and you knew butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And now HBO has pulled the plug on Any Given Wednesday because of shitty ratings. The last episode will air on Wednesday, 11.9.

Spencer Ackerman‘s 11.3 Guardian story about the FBI having more or less become a pro-Trump rogue operation committed to sabotaging Hillary Clinton with misleading innuendo and bad smoke (“The FBI Is Trumpland”) was an eye-opener.

Hillary has one option when she takes office in January — all the bad FBI eggs have to be either fired or demoted and sent to regional offices in Bumblefuck territories. They’re finished. Tear off their stripes, break their sabres in two. And FBI director James Comey has to be axed also.

“Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election,” Ackerman’s story reads.

“Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.

“‘The FBI is Trumpland,’ said one current agent.

“This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.

“The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.” The agent called the bureau ‘Trumplandia’ with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected.”

I had slight forebodings about whether Jeff Nichols‘ Loving (Focus Features, 11.4), a dramatization of the once-controversial interracial marriage between Mildred and Richard Loving would amount to anything more than a rote retelling. Well, the film is better than I expected. A warm, measured, adult-level thing. I wasn’t doing handstands in the lobby but I was telling myself “hmmm, okay, not bad.”

On the other hand the cricket mafia has given Loving a 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a 77% on Metacritic.

Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga in Jeff Nichols’ Loving.

Loving is a bit slowish and less fact-specific than I would have preferred, and there’s the usual emphasis on emotional rapport and interplay and fine, nicely underplayed performances, my favorite being Ruth Negga‘s as Mildred. And at 123 minutes it feels maybe 15 minutes too long. And if you’re at all familiar with the facts or if you happened to catch Nancy Buirski‘s The Loving Story, a 2012 HBO doc, it’ll be hard to avoid a feeling of being narratively tied down.

But Loving is a compassionate, plain-spoken, better-than-decent film that will amost certainly pick up some award-season acclaim, particularly some Best Actress talk for Ms. Negga’s kindly, sad-eyed wife and mom.

As opposed to offering glancing impressions or hors d’oeuvres-like samplings, this La La Land trailer (which I ignored yesterday) comes very close to compressing the full experience of this amazing, spirit-lifting, near-perfect film. I’ve seen it twice and I’m at least good for another two or three viewings before Oscar night. I still say that Manchester By The Sea is richer, heavier and more formidable, but La La Land got better the second time I saw it (at the Savannah Film Festival) and that means something. The only problem I have is that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone‘s singing voices aren’t what they could or should be. But it’s not that much of a problem.

I’m only just getting around to watching Bill Maher‘s “Whiny Little Bitch” show, which was performed last night (Wednesday, 11.2) at Largo while live-streaming on Facebook Live. (I was at the Paramount preview event last night.) I’m not all that worried about the election — it’ll be tighter than expected but Hillary will win — but Maher makes me feel better about…well, everything.