“Pleasure Of His Perversity,” posted on 11.22.11: “I had a brief sitdown last Friday afternoon with A Dangerous Method director David Cronenberg. We had about twelve minutes, if that. Our last interview was a little over 30 years ago (’81) when the subject was Scanners.

“I still remember the intensity of that discussion and saying to myself as Cronenberg delivered his points, ‘Whoa, this guy doesn’t fool around…no digressions, no bullshit.’

“There’s always some kind of twisted perversity in Cronenberg’s films. Which is what most of us, I gather, look forward to when a new one is about to be shown. It’s there in A Dangerous Method, for sure, but in a spotty, paint-dabby fashion.

“Keira Knightley definitely ‘brings it’ in those shrieking, belt-whipping scenes with Michael Fassbender, but the film, it must be said, is somewhat dryer and more cerebral than anything Cronenberg had made before, and this requires, I feel, an adjustment of expectations.

“A Dangerous Method is well-acted but extremely cool, aloof, studied and intellectually driven to a fare-thee-well. You just have to be ready for that, and saying this is not a criticism.
The talkiness plays better the second time. You go in knowing what it is and accepting that, and you settle into Christopher Hampton‘s script like an easy chair.

“My strongest feelings are still about about Knightley’s highly agitated, face-twitching performance., which is fascinating but hard to roll with at times, particularly during the first 20 minutes to half-hour.

“Cronenberg told her to go for it in terms of facial tics and flaring nostrils and muscular spasms, etc. She does a jaw-jutting thing that hasn’t been seen since John Barrymore played Dr. Jekyll in the 1920 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At the same time Knightley brings a thrilling sexual intensity to the all-too-brief fucking and belt-whipping scenes with Fassbender.

“All in all Knightley is quite a handful — she throws you and pulls you in at the same time. It’s a high-wire, risk-taking thing, and Method really needs to be seen for this alone.”

The headline of Clayton Davis‘s 7.13 Variety story about the effect of the SAG-AFTRA strike upon the early fall festivals gets it wrong.

The paparazzi-enhanced Venice and Toronto film festivals might be “fucked,” as Davis’s headline states, due to the absence of actors on the red carpet, but the Telluride Film Festival is totally fine.

Telluride is much more about movies than movie stars. Make that “almost entirely.” The worst thing that will happen to Telluride if the strike isn’t settled by the Labor Day weekend will be (a) no actors at the Patron’s Brunch and (b) no actors taking part in post-screening q & a’s.

Davis’s story, in fact, includes the following passage:

“Of all the upcoming festivals, Telluride may be the least impacted by the SAG and WGA strikes. That’s because there are no press conferences and lavish step-and-repeats outside of the various venues around town.

“You could, in theory, find an A-list star walking around town and attending any of the selected movies — as long as they aren’t technically promoting them. However, per SAG-AFTRA rules shared during a call with publicists earlier this week, the studios can not foot the bill to send them to the expensive film festival, nor can actors attend studio-sponsored parties.

“Of course, the actor would not be able to introduce or participate in any of the Q&As or receive any of the three festival tributes they bestow yearly. Traditionally, the fest has favored filmmakers rather than stars for their honorees. Paid tributes in 2022 were directors Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”) and Mark Cousins, along with actress Cate Blanchett (“TÁR”).

“’Telluride will be mostly unaffected,’ one studio executive tells Variety. ‘I can’t say the same for the others.'”

No mystery why Universal has released a five-minute trailer for Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer — it opens only a week hence. But why oh why is it shown in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio when 70mm IMAX viewers will see a major portion of the film within (a) a standard IMAX 1.43:1 a.r. while non-IMAX viewers will view an image within (b) a 1.9:1 a.r., or one that’s fairly close to the Vittorio Storaro 2:1 standard.

So why are Uni marketers telling viewers they’ll be seeing a 2.39:1 experience?

@umamialex make sure you don't pick the wrong theater for #oppenheimer if you have the right kind of #imax nearby! #film #movies #cinematography ♬ original sound – Umami Alex 🎬 ♥️ 🎥

Imagine Gavin Newsom challenging President Joe Biden. Or, better yet, Biden deciding that American voters would almost certainly feel better about putting a younger, seasoned, much more lucid moderate Democrat than himself into the White House, and gracefully and honorably bowing out.

Forget righties or independents — very few Democrats are enthusiastic about a second Biden administration. We all know this. He’s obviously too old for the job (81 at the start of his second term, 85 at its conclusion) and can barely converse with interviewers…he gurgles and mutters and can’t even remember “LGBTQ”.

It would be different if he was the Joe Biden of 2008 or even ’12. But he’s not. And who wants Kamala Harris stepping in if, God forbid, something bad were to happen?

I respect and admire many things about Biden except for his blind, blanket approval of trans stuff and other woke initiatives. But I would feel much, MUCH better about Newsom running against Trump than Trump vs. Biden. Who wouldn’t?

I realize that very few will actually watch this interview, by which I mean actually listen to Newsom’s mannner and verbal agility and debating skills.

He’s obviously not that different than Biden politically and philosophically. Biden is as spry and disciplined and mentally focused as his 80-year-old constitution allows, but I really think it’s time for him to accept or at least acknowledge biological reality and admit that he’s past the point of true vigor and mental acuity and all-around effectiveness.

It’s not a felony to be too old for a very demanding job —- just a fact

Initially posted on 7.5.15: My young life was shaped or defined by three events or more precisely adventures. They happened when I was two, eight and sixteen years old.

Event #1: It was a late summer evening, and my now-departed mother (her name was Nancy) and I were roaming up and down the more-than-a-century-old boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey. One of the evening’s highlights (in my mind at least) was the famous Asbury Park merry-go-round.

After going on a ride and eating some cotton candy we made our way south (or was it north?). At least a mile, maybe two. Then I somehow slipped my mother’s grasp and disappeared. Gone.

For the first time in my life I had decided that it would be more exciting and fulfilling to go on a solo boardwalk adventure rather than stay with mom.

Nancy freaked, of course. She found a couple of uniformed cops and asked for their help. They all looked, searched, asked all the merchants…no luck. The trio finally made their way back to the merry-go-round and there I was — staring, bedazzled.

This incident put the fear of God into both my parents. From then on they decided I had to be kept on a short leash and monitored extra carefully. The result is that I began to feel that my life was being lived in a gulag, a police state. Rules, repression, “no”, time to go to bed at dusk, “because I said so,” “you’re too young,” etc.

Event #2: A vaguely similar incident happened six years later. In no way traumatic but it confirmed a pattern.

It was a hot Saturday morning when I convinced my seven year-old girlfriend, also named Nancy, to go on a little adventure. The idea was to stroll from Harrison Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey (our homes were 100 feet apart) to my paternal grandparents’ home in Rahway — a distance of roughly six miles. I’d never walked it before but had a rough idea of how to get there.

We arrived at my grandparents’ home on West Meadow Avenue three or four hours later. My surprised grandmother made us a sandwich and called my parents; my mom or dad (I forget which) drove over, took us back.

If I’d been the parent I would have said to myself, “Well, my son is obviously fearless or at least not intimidated by the unknown, and doesn’t lack for initiative or a sense of adventure…qualities that will almost certainly serve him well later in life. I’ll have to tell him to be more careful, of course, but he mainly needs to be hugged and approved of and encouraged to climb new mountains.”

Instead…gulag!

Event #3: In eleventh grade I began tapping out a one-page, two-sided satirical news sheet and passing it around among my friends. Silly, sophomoric, sometimes off-color stuff about school episodes, relationships and sexual stirrings. Definitely juvenile but enterprising. One of the news sheets was snagged by a vice-principal at the school, and a day or two my father and I were hauled into his office and warned about the horrors of my having passed around pornographic material.

An enlightened, forward-thinking reaction from my father would have been something along the lines of “well, that newsletter was pretty crude and immature, but my son’s urge to publish a newsletter and be heard is obviously strong. I just need to encourage him to channel this in a legit way. Maybe urge him to try for a journalism degree.”

Instead…shame, anger, storm clouds.

Friendo: “I too have now seen MI:7 twice. One of the things that jumped out at me was that maybe, just maybe the AI ‘Entity’ had evolved to the point where it surmised that war is unnecessary (like the computer in John Badham‘s War Games) and therefore in the beginning sequence in the Russian submarine it’s trying to kill itself and bury the sub.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the payoff in the sequel.

“I also enjoyed the nod to Silence of the Lambs when Tom Cruise calls out Haley Atwell‘s “Grace” for trying to compensate for her “orphaned background with fine clothes and blah blah”, sort of like Anthony Hopkins‘ Hannibal Lecter chiding Clarice Starling about ‘your good bag and your cheap shoes…you look like a rube…a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.’

“And I know you loved that moment when Cruise and his motorcycle leapt over a wall in a field, just like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.

“After it ended I polled a few audience members and they were mostly happy, although some said they weren’t sure they needed to see the sequel. ‘That’s a lot of hoo-hah for a key’, one guy told me. ‘They got it. Now what…they’ll have to go and find the lock?”

The great Milan Kundera (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting“, “Immortality”) died yesterday at age 94.

As a highly influential, world-renowned, Czech-born writer who moved to Paris in ’75, Kundera’s peak influence years were in the ’70s and especially the ’80s, which is when Philip Kaufman‘s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (’88) was released.

Having read and adored Kundera’s 1984 novel I was vaguely…actually more than vaguely disappointed with Kaufman’s film. There was so much more to the book than what Kaufman and co-scenarist Jean-Claude Carrière chose to focus upon. (I felt the same way about Kaufman’s The Right Stuff (’83) — Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book was ten times more interesting and engaging.)

The only thing I liked about Kaufman’s Unbearable Lightness were the performances by Daniel Day Lewis and the newly arrived Juliette Binoche, who was only 23 or 24 during filming.

I’ve always regarded Kundera’s prose style as immaculate and elegant. Pared to the bone, nothing extraneous or superfluous but with a certain oxygenated quality…a feeling of aliveness. In my estimation his writing has always existed in the same realm as Joseph Conrad‘s.

Along with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Jerzy Kosinski, Jim Harrison**, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, William Safire and Russell Baker, Kundera has long been a major influence upon my own meager scrawlings.

Kundera was apparently a hound in his actual life (and so his semi-fictional characters followed suit), and I’m sorry but I really worshipped that special erotic current that sometimes permeated.

Kundera was something of a chauvinist, okay, but those sensual and sexual atmospheres were…I don’t know what to call them except cultured and tingly and fascinating on several levels. But it was all subordinate to those wonderfully honed sentences and that curiously magnetic sense of impermanence and vague anxiety and unsuppressible delight in the here-and-now.

I’ve just read a brief obit by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Roxborough, an apparently obedient wokester who ends his article by noting that “Kundera’s depiction of personal, amoral behavior and sexual politics as a metaphor for the inherent absurdities of life in Czechoslovakia under communism drew widespread praise but also criticism, particularly from feminists who detected an inherent misogyny in his work.

“Kundera himself rarely gave interviews, and none of his books after ‘Unbearable Lightness’ achieved similar international success or acclaim.” Here’s the kicker: “[Kundera’s] final novel, perhaps fittingly titled ‘The Festival of Insignificance’, was published in 2015.”

As an occasional writer of none-too-flattering or too-honest obits, I was immediately disgusted by Roxborough’s final sentence.

Imagine Roxborough writing something similar if, God forbid, the great Clint Eastwood were to pass tomorrow — “None of Eastwood’s films over the last 15 years achieved the success or acclaim that he managed during the ’90s and early aughts — Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino. He hasn’t been a director of serious consequence since the beginning of the Obama administration, and perhaps it’s fitting to acknowledge that.”

Did Roxborough skim Daniel Lewis’s N.Y. Times obit before writing his own?

I don’t want to sound rash or overly condemning, but it seems to me that Roxborough is some kind of grovelling woke toady….”do you see who I am, #MeToo vanguard feminists? Do you see how I diminished Kundera-the-chauvinist in my final sentence? Do you guys approve of this? Do I get a gold star?”

And right in the middle of the Austrian dangling train car scene, arguably the biggest wowser super-climax in the whole damn 27-year-old franchise, a 40something beefalo who’d almost certainly been gulping a 36-ounce soft drink, bolted out of his seat to run to the bathroom. He ran back in just when the last car has fallen and everyone was safe. Brilliant timing!