Who the hell drinks salt water? Who the hell sells salt water in plastic bottles with attractive packaging that suggests it’s lemon-flavored eau du mineral? More to the point, what kind of visitor would be dumb enough to buy a six-pack of this stuff without carefully reading the label?

This afternoon Trip Advisor steered us to a great little gourmet restaurant called Nu Eatery, which for my money delivered the best eats we’ve had thus far. The menu is native Vietnamese cuisine, of course. Everything we ordered was alive with subtle, melt-down flavors that weren’t quite like anything I’ve had before, and served in modest portions so we didn’t feel the least bit loaded down when we left. The place itself is small — three downstairs rooms including the kitchen but with an upstairs dining area with a balcony. And no overweight tourists in shorts and sandals! Anyone planning to hit Hoi An is strongly advised to follow our lead.

Nu Eatery is located down a small alley (10A Nguyen Thị Minh Khai) between two well-travelled streets. The chefs do their stuff in a small kitchen next to an open window.

Ladies who took care of us at Nu Eatery. The LONELY sweatshirt girl was our waitress.

I spoke briefly with producer-director Brett Ratner during last November’s Key West Film Festival, and he assured me that Warren Beatty‘s long-gestating, ’50s-era Howard Hughes film (which is more of a 20something love story between characters played by Lili Collins and Alden Ehrenreich than a film about the legendary aviation pioneer and business titan) will open this year.

Lily Collins as Marla Mabrey and Annette Bening as her mom in a still from Warren Beatty’s untitled Howard Hughes film.

And yet here we are in late March with spring and summer films starting to release trailers, and Beatty’s film still has no announced title and no announced release date.

This for a film that completed principal photography on 6.8.14 after 74 days of shooting. A year ago N.Y. Times guy Michael Cieply reported that Beatty shot pick-ups and re-shoots in late February 2015.

I don’t believe there’s even the slightest whisper of a chance that Beatty’s film might play the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and at this stage it doesn’t seem likely to open before Labor Day. Any bets on 2017? Could Terrence Malick‘s title as Hollywood’s greatest post-production procrastinator be in jeopardy?

The question isn’t what heavyweight companies have declared their opposition to Georgia’s passed-but-not-yet-signed anti-gay discrimination bill (i.e., House Bill 757), but which companies haven’t declared. Those who’ve issued statements against the bill include Disney/Marvel, Open Road, Sony, the Weinstein Company, Time Warner, Viacom, Lionsgate, 21st Century Fox, AMC Networks, Starz, Intel and — note the irony — Dow Chemical and the NFL. Faucet Craftsman’s Ron Bouchard: “When the NFL is ahead of you on human rights, you’ve got bigger problems.”

Posted from Park City on 1.27.15: “I can roll with austere minimalism as well as the next guy, and I certainly respect what Rodrigo Garcia and Emmanuel Lubezki are up to in Last Days of the Desert (Broad Green, 5.13), which is basically about the 40 days that Yeshua of Nazareth (Ewan McGregor) spent in the desert before embarking upon his calling as the Ultimate Lamb of God.

“Except it’s a little too spare — there’s not much feeling or drama in this thing, which is mostly about performances, photography and an impressive sense of stillness. 

“The focus is not so much about Yeshua’s spiritual battle with a mirror-image Satan (also played by McGregor) as it is his decision to hang with a family of desert dwellers (Ciaran Hinds, Tye Sheridan, Ayelet Zurer) and help them build a small stone abode atop a mountain peak.

“This in itself felt like a problem to me. We all understand fasting in the wasteland to attain spiritual purity, but why would a family — anyone — live in that Godforsaken inferno? No soil, no water to speak of, no grass for the goats…a situation without a thread of logic or believability.

“I was also bothered by the footwear. In each and every Bible flick ever made guys have worn standard-issue sandals — a thick hunk of foot-shaped leather with a couple of straps. But McGregor and Hinds wear a kind of burlap slip-on — call it a desert hiking loafer.

I love the term “American biographical criminal comedy.” Todd Phillips‘ film is about the real-life saga of arms dealers Efraim_Diveroli (Jonah Hill) and David Packouz (Miles Teller) who ran afoul of the law five or six years ago for selling crap-level arms to the Afghan army. Based on Guy Lawson‘s “Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History“. (The third dude, Alex Podrizki, has apparently been eliminated for the sake of narrative efficiency.) War Dogs was originally slated to open two weeks ago (3.11.16) but will now open on 8.9.16. I’m relieved that Hill reverted to his Superbad weight to play Diveroli (according to the Wiki page); otherwise his performance might not have been believable.

Garry Shandling launched in the late ’80s with It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, but he owned the ’90s by way of The Larry Sanders Show, which ran on HBO from ’92 to ’98. I lived through that landmark show. The satirical, self-regarding tone was always stinging and razor sharp and comfortable as fuck. And now Shandling’s gone — abruptly dead from a heart attack at age 66. It’s 4:30 am in Vietnam and I have to try and get at least some shut-eye, having awoken at 1 am and stayed that way for three hours (don’t ask), but this is truly sad news. From the mid-Reagan era to the late Clinton years, Shandling captured and lampooned American culture by marrying it to his own anxieties and neuroses and then tickled it just so. I loved his wit and his somewhat aloof, lonely-guy attitude about things. (Shandling had relationships but never married.) I’m among the few who really loved portions of Town and Country, the commercial disaster in which Shandling played Warren Beatty‘s BFF. (They were offscreen pals back then.) Shandling and Beatty had an appealingly loose bro vibe in that film that made me smile. I’m very sorry Shandling has left so early, but for roughly a 12-year period he held mountains in the palm of his hands.

I’m sorry but I’m not all that keen on seeing Whit Stillman‘s Love and Friendship. And I’m saying this as a Stillman fan from way back. From the moment I heard it would play Sundance ’16 I was thinking “I’m not sure I even want to stream this, much less catch it theatrically.” I ducked it, needless to add. I want Stillman to make another Barcelona or…you know, another here-and-now piece about louche, moderately well-off 30somethings (or 40somethings) kicking around in some hip urban environment and trying to attain whatever. Jane Austen adaptations…later.

The Sundance Rotten Tomato reaction was uniformly positive, but I heard a couple of meh-level assessments. Maybe I was hearing what I wanted to hear.

From Todd McCarthy’s Sundance review: “No matter who’s around, Kate Bekinsale‘s Lady Susan does most of the talking, issuing incisive views on everything in quasi-Wildean turns of phrase well ahead of their time, interrupting whenever the turn of a discussion doesn’t suit her and prone to making both self-serving remarks as well as blunt assessments of her own reduced status that are surprising in their frankness. She’s an Olympian talker, and one sometimes wishes there was someone else who could dish back at her as well as she gives. There aren’t great depths to the role, but Beckinsale excels with the long speeches and in defining her character as a very self-aware egoist.

For the last two days torrential rains had been predicted to hit the Hoi An region by Thursday noon, but all that’s happened so far (it’s now 3 am Friday — woke up and can’t sleep) has been strong winds and rough seas. Well, we had warm temps and sunshine late Wednesday, at least. We had a tasty lunch in Hoi An Thursday afternoon, and then scootered back to the hotel for a brief nap before dinner. The brief nap turned into six hours of fully-clothed, lights-on shuteye, and now it’s just me, the winds, the darkness and CNN/BBC World reports on the TV. One more full day here, and then a flight back to Hanoi Saturday morning. Update: Jett informs that heavy rain in fact arrived around 10 pm last night, when I was fast asleep.

Suede travel bag, purchased today in Hoi An for $100 U.S. Nice color, style — would sell for an easy $350 or $400 in Los Angeles.

A recently posted DVD Beaver review of Criterion’s Only Angels Have Wings Bluray (4.12) says that while the 1080p contrast is “nicely layered, the image is darker than the DVD.” Will someone please explain how a film looks better with darker, deeper shadows that obscure detail? How is that in any way desirable? I own a high-def streaming version of this 1939 Howard Hawks classic as well as a Turner Classic Movies Bluray — both look pretty great. So why should I shell out for a third version that, even with the higher resolution and classy Criterion stamp, reveals less?

DVD Beaver capture of Criterion’s Only Angels Have Wings Bluray.

Harvested from DVD version.

I’m sorry but in this Nice Guys trailer Russell Crowe is about double the size he was in Gladiator (’00) and Cinderella Man (’05). Look at him. Filming on this Shane Black period actioner began in late October 2014. Last week Crowe told the hosts of an Australian talk show, Fitzy and Wippa, that he weighed 121.6 kilos (268 pounds) “as of the first week of August last year. [Then] I did a movie called The Nice Guys so I wanted to be the physical juxtaposition of Ryan Gosling.” I’m not following — he wanted to look like Hardy to Gosling’s Laurel? Crowe (a good man in my book) is reportedly down to 215 pounds or thereabouts, but he’ll need to drop at least another 30 to bring back Maximus.