It’s not very hip of me to say this, but I thought Steven Soderbergh‘s re-scored, dialogue-free, black-and-white version of Raiders of the Lost Ark (initially posted on 9.22.14) looked too shadowed and inky. I blew it off after a half-hour.

Yes, the combination of Steven Spielberg‘s scene-by-scene blocking and Douglas Slocombe‘s camera placements are wonderful, but we’re still left with a cavalcade of overly dark monochrome images that make you feel as if your eyesight is going.

It’s generally difficult for me to rewatch Raiders anyway because of Karen Allen, whose performance as Marion Ravenwood I literally can’t stand. If I never hear her shrieking rendition of “Indiieee!” ever again, it’ll be too soon. And there’s no way this slender, midsize woman (5’7″) could drink any brawny guy under the table.

Raiders is a great film of its type, but I honestly feel that Allen ruins it.

My favorite chapter is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, otherwise known as the Sean Connery one. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is my second favorite. It took me two viewings to realize that I hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I’m pretty much okay with Dial of Destiny.

Never mentioned this before: Sometime in April of ’81 I caught a not-fully-finished version of Raiders at the NYC Paramount building (Columbus Circle). It contained footage of Harrison Ford‘s Indiana Jones hanging on to the outside of a German submarine on the way to the island where the big finale takes place. It made no sense, of course, that Jones could hitch a ride on a sub that would naturally be travelling underwater, but that’s what I saw. Unless I’m misremembering, this footage was cut from the final release version.

Again the link to the Soderbergh version.

…to any President (JFK), Presidential candidate (RFK, Jr.) or First lady (Michelle Obama) who advocates for physical fitness. Or, you know, is swole or posts Twittervid swolefies.

JFK couldn’t do shirtless pushups because of his back issues, but now we’ve got a declared Presidential candidate with a bod like Mark Wahlberg‘s. Perhaps this is unimportant in the greater scheme, but it’s definitely poking at our boredom.

Yes, the shirtless swole brand reminds everyone of Vladimir Putin on horseback, but at least this opens the door to a possible RFK-Putin UFC cage match in ’25 (presuming Putin will still be in power two years hence), which goes hand in hand with the forthcoming Elon Musk-Mark Zuckerberg barefoot battle of the titans.

Some say that in the wake of Occasionally Wobbly Joe (who, to be fair, has kept himself trim with regular workouts) it’ll be amazing to have a swole President. RFK, Jr. would set a great example as average Americans have never been flabbier or more overweight**…dear, God, please forgive me for using the “o” word!

Susie (@SoCalSuister) on Twitter: “My eleven year old son just asked me why I was watching a video of a guy doing push-ups…’do you like him or something?’”

Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden! pic.twitter.com/ns8MdJVlmx

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 25, 2023

The famous and deeply respected Ethan Coen is the director of Drive-Away Dolls (Focus Features, 9.22), a kind of goofball, arch-attitude lesbian road comedy that the 65-year-old Coen cowrote with his wife, Tricia Cooke. Tricia has edited or co-edited many Coen brothers films over the decades. Married since 1990, Ethan and Tricia reside in Manhattan and have two children — daughter Dusty and son Buster Jacob.

In a two-day-old Collider interview with Tamera Jones, Ethan describes his wife as queer.

Forgive my ignorance but I’ve been under the impression that queer means unregenerately queer (we’re no longer allowed to use the word “gay”) without any ifs, ands or buts. I would’ve thought that a woman who’s been married to a straight guy for 33 years and who presumably resides with him, and who’s also raised two kids with him, and yet whose primary emotional or sexual allegiance is to women would be described as bisexual or bi. Or is Trish a recently avowed queer person who used to be bi until she changed her mind or something?

Sorry but I’ve never heard of a queer woman with her matrimonial and maternal particulars. Maybe someone can help me out.

I saw Dominik Moll‘s The Night of the 12th (Film Movement, 5.19) last night at the delightful New Plaza Cinema (35 W. 67th Street, NYC) — a modest but dedicated arthouse for discerning adults. I was so happy to be sitting in the front row of a theatre where I belonged, a Film Forum- or Thalia-like shoebox…whistle-clean, air-conditioned comfort, ample leg room and surrounded by older folks not eating popcorn.

The film is a mostly fascinating, vaguely haunting, Zodiac-like police investigation drama that won six Cesar awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adaptation, Best Supporting Actor, Most Promising Actor, Best Sound) last February.

It’s a shame, I feel, that almost no one in this country is going to pay the slightest amount of attention. It’ll eventually stream, of course, but it probably won’t attract anyone outside Francophiles and the fans of grim police procedurals, mainly because it doesn’t do the thing that most people want from such films, which is the third-act delivery of some form of justice or at least clarity.

Night is about a cold case — a prolonged and frustrating and ultimately fruitless investigation of a savage murder of a young girl in Grenoble, France…frustrating and fruitless unless you tune into the film’s forlorn wavelength, which is about something more than just whodunit.

It’s based on a fact-based 2020 novel by Pauline Guéna.

The victim is Clara (Lulu Cotton-Frapier), a beautiful, blonde-haired 21 year-old student who lives with her parents. After leaving a party in the wee hours and while walking down a moonlit street, she’s approached by a hooded wacko and set aflame — a horrible sight. The film is about two Grenoble detectives, played by Yohan (Bastien Bouillon) and Marceau (Bouli Lanners), as they interview and investigate several potential killers whom the casually promiscuous Clara had been sexual with at different times.

All of these guys are scumbags of one sort of another, and you start to wonder why she didn’t have at least one male friend or lover who wasn’t an animal. The digging goes on and on, but no paydirt.

The essence of The Night of the 12th is militant feminism mixed with intense grief. It’s saying there’s a subset of appallingly callous young men out there today…aloof, cruel, thoughtless dogs who sniff and mount out of raw instinct, and this, boiled down, is what killed poor Clara.

Last month in Cannes Martin Scorsese said that Killers of the Flower Moon wasn’t a whodunit but “a who-didn’t-do-it?”

Same with Night — Yohan concludes at the end that “all men” killed Clara, and so among the Cesar voters and the guilty-feeling industry fellows who felt an allegiance with their feminist collaborators… this water-table sentiment, an adjunct of the Roman Polanski-hating faction, is presumably what led to The Night of the 12th‘s big sweep.

By this measure Night isn’t about a “cold case” — it’s a kind of hot-flush case that points in all kinds of directions to all kinds of potential young-feral-dog killers…a limitless (in a sense) roster of bad guys.

In order to make this point about “all men” being at fault, the film necessarily can’t allow the Grenoble detectives to finally nab a single killer.

But of course, Clara’s curious attraction to bad boys and her generally impulsive nature was at the very least a significant factor in her fate. She was obviously flirting with this kind of snorting louche male for a deep-seated reason of some kind. Clara could have theoretically been a cautious or even withdrawn type, barely experienced in sex and sensuality and perhaps even prudish, and she still might have been torched by a sicko. But you’re not going to tell me that “playing with bad boys” wasn’t central factor.

Sensible women choose their lovers sensibly, and Clara didn’t roll that way. If you don’t use common sense in your romantic life, sooner or later the bad stuff will rub off.

So where did the bad-boy fetish come from? In The Limey (’99) we understood why Terrence Stamp’s daughter Jenny was attracted to dangerous men, but Clara’s dad (Matthieu Rozé) is a moderate mousey type and her mom (Charline Paul) is a diligent homemaker. So how and why did she develop the appetite?

The screenwriters (Moll and Gilles Marchand) don’t even toy with this emotional dynamic as they don’t subscribe to a belief that Clara might have flown too close to the flame. They seemingly believe that Clara was 100% innocent of any dangerous behavior by way of skunky boyfriends. I think that’s a dishonest attitude, and so I didn’t finally buy what the film was saying.

I saw the film with mostly older singles and straight couples, but there were at least two female pairs who were kind of sniffling and crushed at the end — the same emotional vibe I felt among women after a Toronto screening of Boys Don’t Cry.

If it weren’t for his raspy, croaky, strangled-cat voice and what I regard as totally fruit-loopy anti-vaccine convictions (“I’m not anti-vaccine, but I am pro-science”), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would be a guy I could and would vote for. His concern for the environment warrants respect and admiration, and he currently has a 49% favorability rating — not a dismissable statistic. But the voice is impossible. I’m sorry but c’mon.

From CBS Sunday Morning‘s David Pogue:

HE sadly notes the passing of Frederic Forrest, 86. For most of us, Forrest’s best and biggest role will always be “Chef” in Apocalypse Now (‘79), a colorful supporting character whose head was chopped off by Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz.

Forrest had starring roles in One From The Heart (‘81) and Hammett (‘82) — neither took off.

Jordan Ruimy reports that a pair of special Barbie screenings happened last night on both coasts, but the idea was fans-only — no critics or smart-asses or possible contrarians of any kind. So where are the tweets calling Greta Gerwig’s latest an absolutely blazing pink cinematic orgasm?

Were it not for the crazy-ass ending of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney, 6.30), I would be standing with the half-and-halfers, saying “yeah, not great but not bad” and so on.

But the mescaline-fueled ending is so wackazoid that it kicks the entire film up to another level. So if you factor this in Indy 5 becomes a “yeah, okay…not half bad!” instead of just a “whatevs, passable, good enough.”

Guaranteed — you haver never seen a crazier ending of a major tentpole film in your life.

Here’s the most relevant portion of my 5.19.23 review, filed from Cannes:

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a mega-budget serving of silly, rousing, formulaic, high-energy, fuck-all Hollywood wankery. If you pay to see it with that understanding in mind, it’s “fun” as far it goes, largely, I would say, because it also feels oddly classy…a well-ordered, deliciously well-cut exercise in which Mangold does a better-than-decent job of imitating Spielberg’s psychology, discipline, camera placements, cutting style, easy-to-follow plotting and generally pleasing performances.

The pans that broke last night were written by soreheads. It is what it is, and it delivers the hand-me-down goods in a way that very few will find bothersome or underwhelming.

In his 5.18 review, Irish Times critic Donald Clarke writes that “nobody with a brain in their heads will compare Dial of Destiny favorably to the first three films.” He’s right about that, but it’s definitely better than 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That may not sound like much, I realize, but at least it has this distinction.

The plot is basically another “Indiana Jones vs. frosty, cold-blooded Nazi fiends in search of a priceless archeological artifact” thing. Ford is steady, restrained and solemnly earnest in a gruff (okay, grumpy-ass) sort of way. Mads Mikkelsen is the chief German baddy-waddy, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is Indy’s younger half & partner in adventure and derring-do, Ethann Isidore is the new “Short Round” (the spunky Temple of Doom character, played by a young Ke Huy Quan) and so on.

One minor HE complaint: Waller-Bridge’s feisty-grifter character, Helena Shaw, is said to be the daughter of Toby Jones‘ Basil Shaw. There is, of course, no way on God’s good, green, chromosonal earth that the short, pudgy, gnome-like Jones (who stands 5’5″) could be the biological dad of the leggy, wafer-thin PWB (who stands just under 5’10”). No way in hell. I bought the crazy ending in a “is this really happening?” sort of way, but not this.

This isn’t bullshit or hot air — an actual armed rebellion against Vladimir Putin’s leadership of Russia, led by mercenary leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, is happening as we speak.

Putin has vowed “decisive actions” to suppress Prigozhin’s coup, whose forces have “claimed control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and are moving north toward Moscow,” according to N.Y. Times reporters Victoria Kim and Anton Troianovski.

In a brief address to the nation, Putin called Prigozhin’s rebellion “treasonous” and “a stab in the back of our country and our people.” Prigozhin — a longtime Putin ally and fierce critic of Moscow’s military leadership, who has helped lead Russia’s assault on eastern Ukraine — rejected the treason charge of treason and said, in an audio message, that his forces were “patriots of our motherland.”

In short (and please correct if I’m wrong), Prigozhin believes that Putin’s waging of the war in Ukraine hasn’t been savage enough. My reasoning is telling me that if his coup succeeds (which at the very least will be dramatically satisfying) things will get a lot tougher for Ukraine.

N.Y. Times: “’We’re blockading the city of Rostov and going to Moscow,’ Mr. Prigozhin said in a video that surfaced early Saturday, verified by The New York Times, showing him in the company of armed men in the courtyard of the headquarters, asking for the chief of the General Staff of the Russian military and the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu.”

Peter Boghossian, 56, is a sensible-minded American philosopher and pedagogist. He was a philosophy professor at Portland State University for a decade. As an academic who despises faith-based fanaticism (his focus is atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism and the Socratic method), Boghossian is not only deeply appalled by wokesters but also by faith-driven Republicans and evangelicals. At the very, very least, the man embodies “parrhesia” — he isn’t cowed by the Stalinists, and has the balls to say what he truly and sensibly believes.