No offense but I don’t trust Antoine fucking Fuqua — he lacks discipline, he’s popcorn, he’s cheeseball and he damn sure is no Akira Kurosawa or John Sturges. But I still feel a certain lust in my heart for The Magnificent Seven (Columbia, 9.23). Boilerplate: “With the town of Rose Creek under the deadly control of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), the desperate townspeople employ protection from seven outlaws, bounty hunters, gamblers and hired guns — Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), Josh Farraday (Chris Pratt), Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), Billy Rocks (Byung-Hun Lee…swords!), Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier). As they prepare the town for the violent showdown that they know is coming, these seven mercenaries find themselves fighting for more than money.” [Poster image captured at Ceasar’s Palace in Las Vegas by Collider‘s Steve Weintraub.]

For whatever reason the film’s URL is inactive as we speak.

Now that Karyn Kusama‘s The Invitation (Drafthouse) has opened with a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score and done pretty well and has been viewable on iTunes and Vudu for a couple of days, what’s the verdict? I didn’t say a damn thing the other day for fear of giving anyone the slightest hint of what it’s about, but…well, I can say this. It’s an expert slow-burner, and all the more impressive because it’s all about hints…about what you can sense might be happening without anything in the way of precise evidence. But when it all starts to pay off with some third-act violence, I have to say I felt a teeny bit let down. It seemed a little too familiar. But then came the finale and I thought “wow.”

I stopped watching Season #1 of Netflix’s Bloodline after four or five episodes because I couldn’t stand the company of Ben Mendehlson‘s “Danny”, a sweating, slithering, low-rent, cigarette-smoking slug. Yes, I’m aware that Mendehlson will “return” in Season #2 via flashbacks and whatnot, but unlike Game of Throne‘s Jon Snow the guy is really and truly dead. Regulars Kyle Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Jacinda Barrett and Sissy Spacek are being joined by newcomers John Leguizamo and Andrea Riseborough.

I was going to call this post “The Third Man” because the third Direct TV technician arrived today and left without doing anything because he hadn’t been told by Direct TV management to install a 4K-capable genie. He also said I’d need to make a fourth appointment for someone else to drop by and do that. “Actually, I don’t think so,” I said with a smile. “Thanks for your information but this is the absolute end of my 4K dealings with Direct TV. Go with God, have a good Sunday but this is it…I’m done.”

The first Direct TV guy was too hard to understand (thick-as-hummus Middle-Eastern accent) and then he wouldn’t let me talk to his supervisor.

The second Direct TV technician who visited three days ago (4.7) was an emotional infant who left without notice because he didn’t feel sufficiently loved and appreciated and because…what, I wasn’t radiating the right vibes? In fact I was sitting in the lotus position and listening to an Alan Watts CD when he walked in. Plus I was wearing a Mahatma Gandhi diaper and wore a look of cosmic serenity so I don’t know what else I could have done.

And then today’s guy came by and delivered zip…end of story.

I had pre-paid all the fees to the tune of over $400. I demanded and got a total refund today. I’m staying with Direct TV’s cheap-ass basic cable because it’s less than $10 a month but I will never pay for 4K TV service from these guys. The door has closed.

The opening night presentation at the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival (4.28 thru 5.1) will be “a 40th anniversary screening in collaboration with Warner Bros. Classics” of Alan Pakula‘s All The President’s Men. Who cares, right? Another theatrical screening of a movie we’ve all seen many times. Except it could be a significant deal if TCM and WB Classics are presenting a visually correct version of this 1976 classic. Because it needs correcting. Some of you might remember that ATPM cinematographer Gordon Willis complained about the most recent Bluray version in a 2011 HE interview.

Willis comment #1 about 2011 ATMP Bluray: “It’s all fucked up…all the medium tones [are wrong] and contrast is way higher than it oughta be…it’s overloaded.”

Comment #2: “All they had to do was use the most recent DVD as a reference because that’s fine. They don’t get it. They get on those fucking dials…it’s a disease. Their idea for a Bluray is to make it for guys who are watching football.”

Boston Globe editorial: “At some point, after the election, Republicans will also need to ask themselves some tough questions about how their actions and inactions made the party vulnerable to Trump. After all, a candidate spewing anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, authoritarian rhetoric didn’t come out of nowhere; the Tea Party has been strong enough long enough that someone like him shouldn’t be a surprise. Chasing short-term political gains, the GOP missed a lot of chances to fight the hateful currents that now threaten to overwhelm it.”

HE: The GOP has been winking at racist dumb-shit sentiments and aggressively soliciting votes of unwashed rurals since the dawn of Richard Nixon‘s Southern strategy. The Trump phenomenon is simply a case of the mob getting in front of the strategists, of the rural cart leading the horse.

An AVS forum for owners of the Sony 930C TVs (4K, 65″) describes a firmware/software update (PKG2.197.0010NAB) that became available on 6.1.15. Among the benefits: “Improves Lip Sync for HDMI input.” One, this is an official acknowledgment that lip-synch issues are a concern for owners of this Sony TV. And two, it only promises to “improve” lip-synch issues as opposed to solving or eliminating them. Any and all HE comment-thread bitches who have snickered at my response to this godawful problem owe me a full and complete apology. No discussion, no disputes….contrite, on your knees, head bowed.

From 2012: I’ve noticed that if you stay at a friend’s place (i.e., not sharing but using or subleasing a home/apartment that they own) they don’t want you boinking anyone. They’ll never say so in so many words, but under their roof they want you to live a monastic and fastidious life of denial, book-reading and mystic contemplation with constant dusting and cleaning on the side. They don’t want any heated activity or discharges of any kind, which they feel, trust me, will sully or stain their place on some permanent level even with the washing of sheets and the use of Glade air fresheners and a top-tier cleaning service. In their eyes a woman staying over is tantamount to a skanky, lice-ridden ho from Singapore having sex with a jungle serpent on the living-room rug. Word to wise: If someone stays over never tell the friend. Deny all accusations.

My New York MTA no-card-read turnstile routine depends on the pressure factor. If I’ve got a few minutes to kill I’ll just try another turnstile — one will eventually work. But if I’m rushed and there are folks behind me and I’ve given it three swipes, I’ll hop the turnstile. No biggie. MTA employees understand. But the card almost always reads.

That Gilligan’s Island story about three guys getting capsized by a wave, swimming to an uninhabited Micronesia island, being stranded for three days and then getting rescued after starting a fire and spelling HELP on the beach with palm fronds? It’s no HBO movie. If they’d been missing a month or two, okay, but 72 hours is chicken feed in the annals of men stranded on the open seas. How long was Tom Hanks all alone with “Wilson” in Cast Away? After their boat went down they swam “all night” to make it to the island, fine, but this was no one’s idea of a Herculean endeavor as they were wearing life preservers. JFK and his PT 109 Navy crew swam farther without life preservers and some of them had been burned or otherwise injured. Lt. William Bligh and 18 non-mutinous Bounty crew members managed a 3600-mile voyage in a 23-foot launch. And did anyone notice the size of one of the stranded sailors? Are we sure they were capsized by a rogue wave?

Shipwrecked sumo wrestler — pic taken by rescue pilot who spotted HELP spelled out on the beach with palm fronds.

“The Family Fang [is] a sharply drawn portrait of a dysfunctional, tortured artistic family that speaks affectingly to the troubled legacy that all parents inevitably bequeath to their children. Following his raucous and foul-mouthed Bad Words, director-star Jason Bateman shows marked progress and deepening maturity as a filmmaker with this cleverly structured but never arch or mechanical adaptation of Kevin Wilson’s 2011 comic novel, with Bateman and Nicole Kidman nicely inhabiting one of the more tender and persuasive brother-sister relationships in recent movie memory.” — from Justin Chang‘s Toronto Film Festival review, posted 9.14.15.

“You think we damaged you? You have kids, you’re gonna damage them. That’s what parents do. So what?”

Chris Walken‘s line is obviously meant to zing and appall, but it’s not untrue. One way or another parents are going to get it wrong, screw up, fail to show enough love…you name it. When I was nine or ten I used to have furious debates with myself about who was worse, my dad or my mom. There was no doubt in my mind that they were abusers who lacked insight and kindness, and were beyond uncool. Guess what? I still think that, but having made mistakes of my own as a dad and having gradually come to appreciate my parents as people and personalities above and beyond their parental shortcomings, I forgave them a long time ago. Sooner or later every kid has to stand up and say, “Okay, that happened but here I am now, the captain of my own ship.”