Jonas Never‘s “Touch of Venice” wall mural (102 x 50 feet) was painted between November 2011 and April 2012. It’s a tribute, of course, to Orson Welles‘ Touch of Evil, which was filmed in the Venice area in 1957, or nearly 60 years ago. I did a three-hour stroll in the region on Sunday night.

I love that there’s an outfit called Carl Denham Productions paying rent in the small complex of offices on 73 Market Street.

I’ve seen two of the 12 films opening on Friday, 4.8 — Demolition (Fox Searchlight) and Louder Than Bombs (The Orchard). I’ll be attending screenings of The Boss (Universal) on Tuesday and Hardcore Henry (STX Entertainment) on Wednesday. And I don’t have a great amount of interest in five others — Before I Wake (Relativity), The Dying of the Light (First Run), The Invitation (Drafthouse), Mr. Right (Focus Worlds) and One More Time (Starz Media).

Opening the following Friday (4.15) will be Barbershop: The Next Cut (no, thanks!), Criminal (no invites yet and it opens in 12 days), The Jungle Book, John Carney‘s Sing Street, Above and Below, Colonia, Fan, Green Room, Our Last Tango, Rio, I Love You.

I saw Milos Forman‘s Oscar-winning One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest at least a couple of times when it opened in November ’75. I knew the play pretty well as I’d played Dr. Spivey in a Stamford Community Theatre production a couple of months earlier. I’d always admired Ken Kesey‘s play and particularly the metaphor of rebellion behind it, but I couldn’t quite love the film. Liked it, admired the construction and the ensemble performances, didn’t love it.

Maybe I just wasn’t all that aroused by Jack Nicholson‘s Randall P. McMurphy. I know what the consensus view is, but to me Jack seemed to be mainly playing himself while flirting with McMurphy. I would’ve loved to have seen Kirk Douglas’s 1963 Broadway stage version.

I can tell you that after those two viewings of Forman’s film I never saw it again…not once. And yet I’ve seen Nicholson’s other seminal ’70s films over and over — Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, Carnal Knowledge, The Passenger, The King of Marvin Gardens, etc. So why have I avoided Cuckoo’s Nest all these decades? Mainly, I think, because it’s essentially about terms of confinement.

McMurphy triggers a rebellion but he’s a sloppy Spartacus, and he winds up lobotomized and dead. And for what? The right to sneak prostitutes into the ward and get everyone drunk? Is McMurphy a champion of free will or isn’t he? He blows at least a couple of chances to escape Nurse Ratched’s control during the second half but he just hangs around.

I’ve just never felt much rapport with films that focus on prisoners and life sentences. That includes The Shawshank Redemption. One exception: Robert M. Young‘s Short Eyes.

As John Boorman‘s Point Blank opened on 8.30.67, I’m guessing it shot sometime in the early to mid fall of ’66. The wrap party, I’m guessing, was probably held in November or December of ’66. It happened at a place called “The Zoo” which was also known as Osko’s (333 So. La Cienega, corner of La Cienega and San Vicente, south of Third Street) around the same time. I’d like to time-machine back so I can attend. How many times in the life of the planet did Lee Marvin, Boorman (33 at the time, looked 27), Warren Oates (38 at the time, looked 30), Steve McQueen (36), Burt Reynolds (30), Keenan Wynn and probably Angie Dickinson joke around, get silly and dance the shing-a-ling at the same gathering?

(l. to r.) Lee Marvin, John Boorman, Michelle Triola.

(l. to r.) Steve McQueen, Neile McQueen, Burt Reynolds.

Warren Oates, Marvin.

This morning Jason Henschel (‏@Henschie42) asked Big Red One costar Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) to describe Lee Marvin, who starred in the same 1980 Sam Fuller war film, in seven syllables. Hamill said nothing to I stepped into the breach: Flinty deep-voiced irony. Can anyone top this?

…he would announce that he’s made some huge mistakes, that he realizes he has certain limits and blockages, that he lacks the self-awareness and general finessing skills that all politicians need to survive, and that because he’s now facing all-but-insurmountable negatives he’s decided that for the good of the Republican party to fold his candidacy, and may the best man win. If he were to do this Trump would be applauded by all sides, and he’d be on a path to a certain kind of redemption. His brand would henceforth glow in people’s minds.

.@nytdavidbrooks says @realDonaldTrump will be known as the greatest loser in American politics in 100 years. #MTP pic.twitter.com/jkebfbPe0G

— Meet the Press (@meetthepress) April 3, 2016

Like almost everyone else, I became a fan of jazz saxophonist Gato Barbieri through his music for Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Last Tango in Paris, and particularly the moody composition that plays during the opening main titles. I’ve never forgotten that score…never. Nor Barbieri himself. I bought the soundtrack album way back when, and…okay, I’m going to be really honest and admit that I never listened to his stuff off iTunes, but mainly because I’m not a jazz buff. (Sorry.) Respect for Mr. Barbieri, a native Argentinian, upon news of his death. He was 83, man.

New Yorker critic Richard Brody has again written about how great Ishtar is. He was inspired by a 3.30 screening of the financially ruinous 1987 comedy at Pleasantville’s Jacob Burns Film Center, after which director-writer Elaine May, who’s been in movie jail for the last 28 and 1/2 years because of Ishtar‘s failure, spoke a bit.

Five or so years ago Brody called Ishtar “one of the most original, audacious, and inventive movies — and funniest comedies — of modern times. It isn’t just a movie worth rescuing for a few choice bits; it’s a thoroughgoing, beginning-to-end masterwork.”

All right, that’s just horseshit. Over-cranked, over-exuberant, not trustworthy. And yet Ishtar, on the whole, is worth seeing. Here’s how I explained it in January 2010:

(1) “The general…well, at least marginal view that Ishtar is better than its rep and is actually hilarious in portions”;

At the end of David Grubin‘s LBJ, the landmark 1991 documentary about the tragic story of Lyndon Johnson, historian Ronnie Dugger says that Johnson “was just interesting as hell. I mean, you know, compared to most people who kind of go through life vainly, making their dreadful moral points of condemning this or hoping for that or scratching the back of their head, Lyndon really moved. He was moving all the time. The few times I was with him, it was…he was just fun to be around.

“And you liked him. You liked him. I liked him when I was with him more than I did when I was thinking about him…heh-heh.”

It struck me last night that the dual worlds of politics and the film industry are overflowing with people of this type. Slick operators who are quite likable and charming and have really gotten around and seen the world and learned about human behavior first-hand — people you always enjoy talking to, hanging with and are always waving to at parties — but when you take a couple of steps back and seriously consider what they do, what they’ve done and what they’re actually about, you can’t help but go “hmmmm.”

I went to see To Kill A Mockingbird at the Aero last night. 53 and 1/2 years after its initial release, Robert Mulligan, Alan Pakula and Horton Foote‘s Oscar-winner is still three things — (a) a great children’s POV drama that doesn’t pussyfoot around when it comes to the darker side of human nature, (b) a poised liberal fable about measured, compassionate humanism (as embodied by Gregory Peck‘s Atticus Finch) vs. vile backwater racism, and (c) a very moving film that still gets you in the gut.

It was screened in 35mm, and once again the celluloid experience disappointed me. The detail wasn’t all that sharp, and the monochrome tint (grayish, half-sepia, murky swamp) shifted from reel to reel. The Universal Bluray is a much richer, smoother and more needle-sharp rendering.

For whatever reason the producers decided against filming exteriors in some authentic-looking small town and chose to shoot the whole thing on the Universal back lot. And so the first shot of Maycomb, Alabma (a stand-in for Harper Lee’s Monroeville) still looks absurd with the smoggy air and the mountains of Burbank visible in the near distance.

The first-wavers saw Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some! last night. Responses are requested. Key portions from my 3.29 review: (1) “The good news is that [it’s] cool, smart, fresh, atypical…a refreshingly unusual jocks-on-a-college-campus comedy, which is to say something quieter and more oblique and introspective and curious about what makes this or that guy tick”; (2) “The bad news is that it’s mostly about a bunch of baseball-star jocks sharing a fraternity house”; (3) “It’s a little too much of a laid-back, easy-time mood trip for its own good…[nobody] pursues anything wth any real hunger or urgency”; (4) “I was frowning as much as smiling through this thing [but] I really love that Linklater couldn’t care less about satisfying the submentals who want a certain kind of hormonal college sex romp, and that Everybody Wants Some! takes its time and plays its cards in a nicely unhurried way.”