It’s 6:30 am in Hanoi, and right now I’m listening to a nearby rooster crowing with all his heart, like his life depends on it. Hanoi is the only world-class city I’ve visited that has chickens and roosters walking around like they own the place and occasionally pissing on the sidewalk. Okay, there’s Key West but’s that a balmy tropical deal. To me Hanoi is a kind of heaven, teeming with sounds and scents and echoes of the past and maybe premonitions of the future. I know that sounds cliched but if you can’t appreciate the beauty of this, what good are you?

I’ve posted a pair of admiring riffs about Bob Nelson‘s The Confirmation (Saban, 3.18), and now its box-office fate is in the hands of the Godz. I don’t what else to say except to solicit reactions from anyone so moved or inclined. I attended the premiere last Tuesday night at Neuehouse, an elegant workspace environment on Sunset. Respect should be paid.

(l. to r.) The Confirmation director-writer Bob Nelson, costar Jaeden Lieberher abnd Clive Owen at last Tuesday night’s premiere at Neuehouse.

I missed Robert Budreau‘s Born To Be Blue during the Toronto Film Festival, and now I’ll be missing a special screening at downtown L.A.’s Regent theatre in a few days. Sorry. All you have to do is blink your eyes and you’re missing something these days. (A special New York screening is also planned.) The critically respected non-biopic (93% on Rotten Tomatoes, 66% on Metacritic) opens on Friday, 3.25.

Posted a month ago: Andrew Barker’s 9.13.15 Variety review reads in part: “In a cinematic landscape awash with hairsplittingly literal musical biopics, it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover that Robert Budreau’s Chet Baker film, Born to Be Blue (IFC Films, 3.25), is not a Chet Baker biopic at all.

I’ve never been obsessive about it, but ever since my 20s I’ve had a slight longing to own one of those red James Dean jackets and, you know, wear it with a white T-shirt, jeans and boots. But I never found one with exactly the right cut and tint. Now I’m past it but I came upon this photo the other day…yeah. I’m thinking now of that Dean project that Michael Mann wanted to direct around 1993 or so with Leonardo DiCaprio starring. (The project eventually wound up as a better-than-decent TNT biopic with James Franco in the lead — his breakout role — and Mark Rydell directing.) I’ve never mentioned this in print, but when I was working for People 20 years ago Mann did me the honor of showing me some silent test footage he’d done of DiCaprio mimicking Dean in various modes (this one, Jett Rink, Cal Trask). Leo looked a little too soft and baby-fattish but he had the Dean mannerisms and expressions down pat.

It’s Saturday morning in Hanoi at 4:50 am, which is 2:50 pm Friday by the Los Angeles clock. This after crashing at midnight or Friday morning Pacific at 10 am. Yeah, I’ve more or less acclimated. Didn’t take long. It was misting most of yesterday afternoon and evening — precipitation so faint it’s barely worth the name. Jett and Cait arrived late last night. Jett will buy his own SIM card and then it’s off to the races. We’ll be renting bicycles, not scooters. A nice long day ahead. I’ll be filing daily but I’ve no intention of keeping up the usual pace. To me a vacation is when you indulge in spiritual rest and nourishment but at the same time you get very little sleep.

You have to hand it to the producers of Genius (Summit/Roadside, 6.10) for believing in a smarthouse period drama (and a darkly lighted one at that) about the legendary Max Perkins. An HBO/Showtime thing, yes. A Netflix or Amazon streamer, okay. But it doesn’t exactly scream nultiplex. British theatre director Michael Grandage has directed an excellent cast — Colin Firth, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Dominic West, Guy Pearce, Laura Linney. The script is by the esteemed John Logan. Alas, Variety‘s Peter Debruge, filing from Berlin, called it “dull” and “dun-colored.”

The trouble began within seconds of my Seoul-to-Hanoi flight landing at 11:15 this morning. AT&T’s default partner Viettel, which is Vietnam’s largest mobile operator, wasn’t allowing me to (a) text, (b) use Skype or (c) use Google Maps. I had no such difficulties when I was here in 2012 and ’13. Puzzling. I asked around after checking in at the Art Trendy hotel in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, and I gradually learned that Viettel can’t shake hands with the iPhone 6 4G technology. (Or something like that.)

I’m afraid this is one of those times in which I couldn’t post an original HE image. Rest assured this is almost exactly what it looks like outside my hotel window. I was too consumed with cell-phone hassles to snap my own stuff.

This could’ve been a huge problem. The plan from the start has been to get around on our own (myself, Jett and Cait) without a guide, but for that we obviously need to access Google Maps. So I had to buy a Vietnamese SIM card, and now everything works. I’ll keep it in the phone until we head south on Monday morning.

The Hanoi atmosphere was all milky and foggy as I flew in. It’s now 6:05 pm on Friday (4:05 am in Los Angeles) with the smell of scooter exhaust and street grime mixed with the aroma of spicy hot noodles with steamed chicken and fish. The Old Quarter is no one’s idea of antiseptic but that’s part of the charm. It takes character to appreciate such a neighborhood. (No Club Med luxury queens.) My fifth-floor hotel room is small but acceptable. Dusk is just starting to settle in. I have a list of several Hanoi street food joints that we’ll be hitting tomorrow and Sunday. We’ll be dining at Club Ly on Sunday evening.

Ditto.

Yes, again. More devastating destruction caused by good-guy superheroes duking it out with a demonic baddie, it seems. I’m starting to get really sick of Michael Fassbender‘s general vibe and his glaring, teeth-clenching “don’t fuck with Magneto” expression in particular when all he’s basically doing here is pocketing a paycheck. Am I the only one? Best line: Evan Peters (Quicksilver) saying to his mother, “You wanted me to get out of the house more, right?”

Less than an hour after my Los Angeles-to-Seoul flight landed I was ordering a cappuccino and a heated tomato-and-mozzarella sandwich in a little airport cafe called Paris Baguette. But first I had to wait in a line of about nine or ten people, and the first thing I noticed was a medium-sized, brillo-haired, slightly heavyish American woman of about 50 rummaging through her handbag in order to find her wallet and pay the cashier.

She kept digging and somewhat frantically, like a determined raccoon sifting through a tipped-over garbage can or like George the terrier looking for that intercostal clavicle in Bringing Up Baby.

Everyone in line, trust me, was quietly exhaling and rolling their eyes without, you know, actually rolling them for fear of seeming rude and impatient. Brillo Lady finally found her light-gray wallet but it took at least 90 seconds. I know because I got my watch out around the 45-second mark and timed her. My unspoken words: “How long does it take to find your wallet, lady? Have you ever heard of putting your wallet and keys into a zippered side pocket and putting everything else in a big heap in the main part of the bag?”

I’ve rarely slept for more than a couple of hours on any flight. Okay, I’ve gotten three on a couple of NY-to-Paris flights and once I did four or five hours after taking two (2) Ambien. But last night’s 12 and 1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles to Seoul was a corker. I slept for just under seven (7) hours, and right now I feel rested and ready. How did I manage it? A tab and a half of Percocet, that’s how. I might bag a few more zees on my five-hour flight to Hanoi, which leaves at 8:10 am. It’s Friday over here — 6:40 am in Seoul, 4:40 am in Hanoi. 2:40 pm on Thursday in Los Angeles.

Artist’s rendering of grand entrance to Inchon Int’l airport, which is roughly 7 or 8 miles west of Seoul.

I’m struggling to tap out a half-assed review of Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special (Warner Bros., 3.18), which I saw on the Warner Bros. lot yesterday afternoon. Struggling because my flight to Seoul is leaving pretty soon. I’m as much of a fan of Nichols and his two standout films, Take Shelter and Mud, as the next guy, but Midnight Special (Warner Bros., 3.18) definitely underwhelms.

It’s a grim, grubby paranoid road-chase thing — a kind of shitkicker film about peeling rubber and hiding out in shitty motels and dodging the authorities — mixed in with doses of Starman, E.T. and Close Encounters.

It doesn’t tell you very much but bit by bit you gradually piece it together, but for my money it felt like too much work for too little payoff. I actually found Nichols’ story irritating. When it ended I was muttering to myself, “That’s it?” As I driving back over the hill I was saying to myself, “You can’t hit a homer every time at bat.”

Nichols’ script is about an eight-year-old alien (Jaeden Lieberher) who’s trying to reunite with an alien community that’s been keeping tabs on our affairs and behavior.  Like the Trafalmadoreans did in Slaughterhouse Five and Michael Rennie‘s alien fellows did in The Day The Earth Stood Still.  

The action is about the kid’s father (Michael Shannon), mother (Kirsten Dunst) and the father’s friend/accomplice (Joel Edgerton) trying like hell to deliver the kid to a rendezvous point somewhere in a rural southern backwater. Naturally there’s an army of government guys trying to catch them. With the exception, that is, of a sympathetic good-guy scientist (Adam Driver) who gradually decides he wants to help, etc.

I respected Nichols’ small-scale, minimal-tech approach but overall the film is really not all that interesting. It’s one of those films that make you ask “is something cool going to happen here  or what?” I began to lose patience around the 45-minute mark. It has one good scene (a kind of meteoric bombardment of a gas-station complex) but it’s basically telling an annoying, one-note story. But critics like Nichols and so nearly everyone has given this thing a pass. I’m telling you straight that it’s pretty much a  moderate burn. An interesting, indie-styled burn but a burn nonetheless.