Where is the conversation now with Benh Zeitlin‘s vibrant, visionary film now playing in well over a hundred theatres? What are the second- and third-wavers saying at this juncture? It’s an ongoing discussion, never static, just wondering. (Tip of the hat to Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet for asking first.)

I bought these Bruno Magli (Magli is pronounced “Mahlee”) shoes 12 years ago in Venice, Italy. They’re the highest-qualilty shoes I’ve ever owned, and easily the most uncomfortable. They feel like they’re made of wood. It would be agony to wear them more than five or six hours at a stretch. But I’d rather suffer with a pair of beautiful shoes than walk around in super-comfortable shoes that look atrocious.

Shoes that will be worn and in good shape long after I’ve left the planet

I took a nap yesterday morning, and a voice spoke to me as I slept. It was probably the same voice that spoke to Howard Beale in Network and Jean Seberg‘s Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger‘s Saint Joan and…okay, Kevin Spacey‘s John Doe in Se7en, if you want to be egalitarian and snarky and Glenn Kenny-ish about it. It was a message about the next Batman film, and it contained two urgent orders.

One, forget “Batman” — the next Batman movie should be all about Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s John Blake. Levitt’s rock-solid performance as this special-duty police officer is one of the best things about The Dark Knight Rises. JGL’s steady focus, intelligence, confidence and matter-of-factness convinced that he’s the guy from here on. Forget the brooding Bruce Wayne and Alfred and the mansion and all the rest of that mythology. It’s over and done with anyway. That couple enjoying cappucino and a salad in Florence existed only in Alfred’s head…as Alfred explained at the very beginning. Autopilot bullshit.

And secondly, the next Batman villian has to be played by Tom Cruise. I think that Cruise has crossed over into that territory. The straw that broke the camel’s back of his positive-image with the public was that report that Cruise wanted to subject his daughter Siri to a Scientology mind-control bootcamp indoctrination (a.k.a. “Sea Org”) — a call that apparently resulted (at least partly) in Katie Holmes filing for divorce. That’s when I said to myself, “This guy is a kind of monster…what kind of fiend thingks about brainwashing his kid? He’s just like Leif Erickson wanting to lead David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) out to that sand pit in Invaders From Mars.”

I’ll be attending a PBS press event at the Beverly Hilton hotel today. Several shows will be discussed from 10 am to 6 pm and then a dinner and presentation to follow. I love PBS programming plus I haven’t taken part in a TV junket in ages so this should be novel and stimulating.

A discussion of PBS 2012 Election Coverage will kick things off at 10:15 am with Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff, Raney Aronson, Maria Hinojosa and PBS senior vp John Wilson participating. Then a buffet luncheon at 12:15 pm. At 12:45 pm Ken Burns‘ The Dust Bowl, a doc about the most socially devastating weather disaster of the 1930s, will be discussed. At 2:30 pm a press conference about Half The Sky will commence with America Ferrara, Diane Lane, Meg Ryan and Nicholas Kristof. At 3:45 pm a discussion of Inventing David Geffen, a doc that will premiere on American Masters on 11.20, will happen with Geffen and filmmaker Susan Lacy participating.

And that might be it for me.

I decided sometime during eighth grade that attractive women looked hotter when they wore glasses, especially the black-rimmed kind. Then I saw that scene in How To Marry A Millionaire when David Wayne convinces Marilyn Monroe that she looks sexier wth glasses than without, and I knew just what he meant. Flash forward a few decades to Thursday, 7.19.12, when I saw Tony Gilroy‘s The Bourne Legacy and decided that Rachel Wiesz looks extra-double super-fetching because of the black-rimmed glasses she wears now and then in her role as a scientist.

Marilyn Monroe, David Wayne in How To Marry A Millionaire.

I’ve been watching Weisz for 15-plus years and it’s been “okay, fine, whatever” as far as her looks are concerned. She’s beautiful, of course, but we’ve known that for years so I don’t melt into my seat or turn into jello every time she appears on-screen. It’s almost like she’s my sister or my ex-wife or something. But when she put on those glasses in Legacy it was suddenly “whoa…wait a minute.”

But after searching online this afternoon I wasn’t able to find a single still of Weisz wearing those glasses in any scene from The Bourne Legacy…not one. That means she or her publicist either (a) told the unit photographer they didn’t want any taken with the glasses or (b) killed all glases shots upon submission. In other words, Weisz is apparently just as convinced that she looks like hell with her Bourne glasses as Monroe’s character was convinced she looked like hell with her glasses in How To Marry A Millionaire.

There’s no talking to women about how they look really good in a certain way if they themselves haven’t come to this conclusion first, so this is the end of it. The only men that women will even think about trusting as far as what to wear or what attitude to project or how to wear their hair or whatever are gay guys, or more particularly gay hair stylists or fashion designers. The opinion of straight guys means absolutely zip.

Rachel Weisz, director-writer Tony Gilroy during filming The Bourne Legacy.

Because of the dominance and dictatorship of the National Rifle Association, “we have laws no one wants — not cops, not the military, not even most gun owners themselves — except the NRA,” writes The Daily Beast‘s Michael Tomasky.

“Democrats went gun-shy in the 2000s. By 2008, Barack Obama had little to say about gun control, even trying to disavow his signature on a 1996 document signed by some Illinois legislators backing a ban on all handguns. In 2009, there were 65 pro-gun Democrats on Capitol Hill. The lobby owns the GOP, well, lock, stock, and barrel.

“Earlier this year, the Indiana state house passed — with NRA backing — a bill spelling out when citizens could kill police officers. Some prominent military leaders wanted military personnel to be able to discuss gun safety with troops as a way of trying to stem military suicides, many of which are committed with personally owned guns. The NRA was having none of it.

“And so it’s no surprise that Obama and Mitt Romney (who once supported waiting periods and the assault weapons ban) produced mealy-mouthed statements on Friday that didn’t even include the word ‘gun’. Many Democrats from urban districts will continue to oppose the NRA. But the party will continue to quake, shooting after shooting after shooting, bodies upon bodies upon bodies.

“So this will happen again. And again, and again. In fact, as I said above, we are likely headed for a day in this country like the following. At a movie theater, in a mall, at a commuter rail platform, in a restaurant — some glory-seeker opens fire. Most people duck and scatter, but a decent percentage of them produce their pieces. The gunman goes down like Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, but, since ‘most people’ aren’t marksmen, maybe a few other people do too, and maybe, oh, a three year old.

“But hey. There’s always a spoilage factor. Rights are sacred. From their cold, dead hands…”

Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi said in a 7.19 “Democracy Now!” interview that Average Joes were screwed by the Libor scandal because lower interest rates almost certainly led to major cuts in state and local government spending.

“If you live in a town that had a budget crisis, that had to lay off firemen or teachers or policemen, or couldn’t provide services or textbooks in their schools, you know, that might be due to this,” Taibbi said. “Basically, every city and town in America, to say nothing of the rest of the world, has investments that are pegged to Libor.”

Sixteen gangsta banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup, are facing possible prosecution for allegedly rigging the Libor, a defining kingshit interest rate that banks agree to and use to lend money to each other. Hundreds of trillions of dollars in loans and derivatives were set by Libor. It is believed that its manipulation possibly cost some cities and states many, many millions.

Every couple of years Hollywood Elsewhere enforces a Stalinist purge of the most belligerent and infuriating right-wingers, who hang around this place like rats. The first big one was in ’08, and then another one happened in September ’09. I’m thinking about another purge today because of some truly appalling rightwing, NRA-supporting sentiments heard in the wake of last night’s massacre in Aurora. I’m asking for readers to please identify those righties whom they feel have given the greatest offense. The whackings will happen this weekend.

Written by Andy Borowitz and posted this afternoon on The New Yorker‘s website.

Yesterday I wrote that the new digital 4K version of Lawrence of Arabia that I saw in Cannes last May “looked as beautiful as ever, but it didn’t look as sharp and precise as I wanted it to look. The lenses and cameras used by dp Freddie Young in 1961 and ’62 couldn’t deliver the clarity and detail that you can see in films shot with the digital Red camera.”

Which is true, but I saw the digitally restored version again at the Academy last night, and for whatever reason it looked slightly but significantly better than it did in Cannes. It was like like perfect 70mm candy. What I saw made me feel high, in a sense. It’s never looked more luscious.

A special huzzah for Sony”s Grover Crisp, who’s been working on the digital Lawrence upgrade for two years. I was shocked to realize that Crisp’s name doesn’t appear in the restoration credits at the end along with Robert Harris‘s and all the others. “Grover, your name isn’t in the credits…why?,” I asked him in the upstairs lobby. Crisp said he’s not big on taking credit and that seeing how well the film has turned out is satisfying enough. What a guy.

Before the screening I was told that the famous “lost” balcony scene between Jack Hawkins and Peter O’Toole — the one that begins right after Hawkins notices the blood streaks leaking through Lawrence’s military jacket and then leads him outdoors and says “tell me what happened” — will probably be included as an extra on the Bluray.