Yesterday World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy passed along a report that roughly the first 20 minutes of Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix) will be presented in black-and-white. This in itself is intriguing.

Cooper has starred, directed, co-written and co-produced the upmarket Leonard Bernstein biopic, which will almost certainly debut at the early fall festivals, allegedly runs in the vicinity of 156 minutes.

“Lenny and Felicia,” posted on 5.31.22: Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix), a biopic about legendary composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, only began shooting this month. It will almost certainly open during the early fall Oscar season of 2023, as it is obviously Oscar-bait plus and Cooper’s makeup after his direction of A Star Is Born failed to land a Best Director nomination in early ’19.

With Maestro we’re talking Best Picture (produced by Cooper, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Todd Phillips, et. al.), Best Director and Actor (Cooper), Best Actress (Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife of 27 years, the half-Chilean Felicia Cohn Montealegre), Best Original Screenplay (Cooper, Josh Singer) and so on down the line. Jeremy Strong costars as John Gruen.’

As much as I despise Donald Trump and his torrents of bullshit, he’s regarded by millions as a symbolic pushback against woke Maoism. And therein lies the essence of why MAGA nation is allegedly behind this lying animal, as poll after poll seems to indicate.

Factually and ethically speaking there’s no question that the 76 year-old Trump is a foam-at-the-mouth sociopath, and yet two nights ago CNN honcho Chris Licht gifted this beast with what boiled down to a 70-minute promotional pro-Trump event in the form of a televised New Hampshire q & a with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins.

I was flying during the Trump-Licht-Collins airing and only just caught up with the substance of it this morning (Saturday, 5.13). The 5.11 analysis piece from N.Y. Times reporters Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman is obviously valid, and there’s no basis from which to argue that Collins wasn’t fairly disputing Trump’s lies with verifiable facts.

And yet what she and the never-Trumpers are saying would seep into the political bloodstream much more deeply and effectively if there was simply a frank, sensible, fair-minded acknowledgment that woke Maoism is not fanciful fiction. As Bill Maher pointed out three months ago, it’s not only real but malicious.

Which is worse, the Trump psychosis or a fanatical reincarnation of Mao Zedong’s Great Cultural Revolution? It would be so great if there were more voices (like Maher and others from the sensible, straight-from-the-shoulder moderate camp) saying that both extremes are grotesque.

Even Steve Schmidt, whom I’ve admired and respected since he was portrayed by Woody Harrelson in Jay Roach‘s Game Change (’12) as well as for his many blistering condemnations of the looney-ass right, has posted a great essay bashing Trump and Licht, but he would be heard and agreed with by many more millions if he could just admit the obvious about hard-left derangement.

“If the challenge were to pick out CNN’s lowest moment, its most disgraceful 90 minutes, it would be easy. It is incontestably the disgrace that was aired on CNN and ordered by CNN’s CEO and chairman Chris Licht, dressed up as news. [It was] a propaganda event — a forum given to Trump voters and sycophants….national gaslighting…America’s greatest liar lying with abandon.

“CNN’s Kaitlin Collins was the person strapped to Chris Licht‘s proverbial Titanic bow, [having] been given the challenge of trying to challenge Donald Trump when he lied. But she faced an upstoppable force.

“Chris Licht didn’t do this for news. He didn’t do this to educate. He did it because he’s a profiteer, just like Rupert Murdoch…in the business of manufacturing news. What he did was incite a clearly unstable person who seeks political power for the advancement of an extremist agenda. [It] was a business decision…[an event] aimed to make money. [Licht decided] to throw Trump a propaganda rally, to stack an audience full of his sycophants, and then celebrate it as news. The event that Licht produced was evidence of American’s sickness and decay.”

— from Schmidt’s on “why CNN’s Donald Trump Town hall was an affront to journalism,” posted yesterday on 5.12.23.

Orly touchdown around 12:20 pm. The after-dusk air feels October-ish, even chilly. Something called for silence. That plus the usual fatigue. 11 pm now, and every last table…every seat at Sancerre filled with beaming, jovial slap-happies.

Jordan Ruimy’s best films of the ‘60s critics poll has concluded, and the winners are HAL, Moonwatcher the bone-tosser, Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Andrei Smyslov and the hugely disappointing Jupiter (a gas planet that you can’t even land on in the first place).

I’d just come through security and was collecting all my stuff — leather computer bag, jacket, elephant hide wallet, two laptops, shoes, scarf, belt, pocket combs. In my haste I unthinkingly scooped up what I thought was my black iPhone 12 (Max Pro).

Ten minutes later I was sitting near gate 53, and discovered I had two black iPhones in my inside vest pocket. I ran back to security and promptly found the distraught guy (gray-haired, blue T-shirt) whose phone had strangely vanished. “Sorry, man…stupid mistake…sorry,” I told him as I restored his life and sanity. He was euphoric, levitating.

James Cagney: “You’re furious after I’ve just gotten you out of jail?”

Horst Buccholz: “You got me into jail!”

Cagney: “So we’re even.”

Five years after and in the cold light of day, it must be acknowledged that Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman was never that persuasive and is, in fact, pretty much unbelievable in dramatic situational terms.

You could even apply the term “goofily plotted.”

The Focus Features release received a euphoric (i.e., over-hyped by shill critics) response when it premiered on 5.14.18 at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

I called it “Lee’s strongest since Inside Man, and before that The 25th Hour, and easily his most impassioned, hard-hitting film about the racial state of things in the U.S. of A. since Malcom X.”

The excitement was mainly due to the film’s final five minutes when Lee recalled the venality of 2017’s “Unite the Right” really in Charlottesville, which ended with the death of protestor Heather Meyer. It reminded viewers that Donald Trump‘s “very fine people on both sides” remark showed who and what he is, and made for a seriously pumped-up finale.

It opened on 8.10.18, and some of the reviews were almost laughable in their over-praise. Read A.O. Scott‘s 8.9.18 review and try not to smirk.

The truth, which I tapped out in my 5.14.18 review, is that BlacKkKlansman, despite being fact-based, is flimsy and hard to swallow. I’m not questioning the facts; I’m saying the action doesn’t “play” from an audience perspective.

“[Praising the finale] doesn’t change the fact that BlacKkKlansman is basically a police undercover caper film, based on Ron Stallworth‘s 2014 novel (“Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime”).

“Nor the fact that tonally it sometimes feels like Starsky and Hutch, or even to some extent like John Badham‘s Stakeout, especially as it involves the main cop protagonist falling in love with a girl (in this case an Afro’ed black activist, played by Laura Harrier) who shouldn’t know what he’s up to, but whom he eventually confesses to.

In this sense John David Washington‘s Stallworth is Richard Dreyfuss in the Badham film, and Adam Driver, as partner Flip Zimmerman, is Emilio Estevez.

“At times the film also reminds you of some Clarence Williams III‘s scenes from The Mod Squad.

“Set in 1972, pic isn’t literally about Stallworth joining the Ku Klux Klan but a stealthy undercover investigation of the Klan, initiated when he was the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

“After initial correspondence with the Klan, Stallworth received a call in which he was asked if he wants to ‘join our cause.’ Stallworth answered affirmatively, and in so doing launched an audacious, fraught-with-peril undercover inquiry.

Right away you’re telling yourself, “Yes, I know this actually happened and that Lee is using the facts in Stallworth’s book, but it made no sense for Fallworth to be heavily involved in this operation.” And it just feels crazy as you’re watching one silly incident after another.

Problem #1 is that throughout the film Stallworth talks to KKK members on the phone (including wizard David Duke, played by Topher Grace) and so Zimmerman, pretending to be the Real McCoy, has to sound like Stallworth as much as possible.

“Except this is a dicey game that’s unlikely to fool anyone. Early on a local KKK leader tells Stallworth that his voice sounds different, as it obviously is.

“If I was Stallworth’s supervisor I would tell him he’ll make a mistake sooner or later and that he’s too much of red flag, and that the smart move is for Zimmerman to carry the ball alone.

“Problem #2 comes when a KKK member spots ‘a black guy’ (i.e., Stallworth) behind the wheel of a car that’s following as he drives with Zimmerman. Brilliant tactical maneuvering, Stallworth!

“Problem #3 happens when Zimmerman is told by a suspicious klan member to submit to a lie-detector test, and so Stallworth, knowing that Zimmerman’s in a tough spot, runs up to the KKK member’s house and throws a rock through a window. It just seems nuts for Stallworth to have done that, given the likelihood that the klan might wonder why a black guy happened to be nearby.

“Problem #4 occurs when the same looney-tunes KKK member looks up Stallworth’s address in the phone book and pays him a visit. Stallworth answers the door and invents a falsehood, but for a couple of minutes he and the KKK member eyeball each other.

“Problem #5 happens when a Colorado Springs police supervisor insanely orders Stallworth to provide security for David Duke during a visit to their city. Before you know it Stallworth is in the same room as the same KKK member who knocked on his door, his identity protected only by a pair of shades. And then he takes them off before posing for a Polaroid photo. It’s just crazy — no undercover cop would behave this way.

“All this aside, BlacKkKlansman is semi-edgy and half-involving as far as it goes, and occasionally quite funny from time to time. It’s a reasonably good film, and I love that Lee shoots Trump between the eyes at the end, but people calling it ‘great’ need to calm down.”

If I were bald and “in the market” I would naturally adopt a positive attitude. I would tell myself that I’m the new Yul Brynner, and that I’m just as much of a boudoir conquistador as Brynner was when he was putting it to Marlene Dietrich in the 1950s.

But if I were gay or a woman of a certain age, I would definitely steer clear of baldies as a general rule. Not a prejudice but a matter of personal taste. There’s nothing “wrong” with baldfellas, of course. Like Hedy Lamarr’s “Delilah”, I just happen to prefer a healthy head of hair, natural or Prague-fortified.

The subject arose after reading that Paulina Porizkova is happily entwined with Will & Grace exec producer & writer Jeff Greenstein. (The six-foot-seven-inch Greenstein also created State of Georgia.) Finding genuine love is always a blessing. HE wishes both parties all the best.

This is not a negative post. From a sexual standpoint I just feel vaguely creeped out by the Mr. Clean/Jeff Bezos look. Remember that ’80s line about bald guys looking like “dicks with ears”?

That aside I mean “none harm,” as Sir Thomas More once said. No offense, to each his own, life is short, etc.

HE: “One wonders if the all-white** Oppenheimer (Universal, 7,21) will be excluded according to the Oscars’ about-to-take-effect diversity/inclusion rules. They’ll probably be okay given the last two rules, but they definitely don’t pass the first set of rules with that mostly all-Anglo cast.”

Friendo: “I’m sure Oppenheimer will slip through because nothing won’t pass from a major studio.”

HE: “Major studio releases can sidestep the diversity/representation standards because of their sizable economic footprint?”

** As we all know, the term “all-white” generally refers to a seeming absence of African Americans, at least in a visually prominent sense. Technically speaking Oppenheimer‘s cast includes Skyler Pierce and a trio of Middle-Eastern cast members — the Oscar-winning Rami Malek (son of Egyptian parents), Aamir Yusuf and Yaser Al-Nyrabeah.

Six months hence “Anyone Who Had A Heart” will be 60 years old. Composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Dionne Warwick recorded the melancholy love song in one take at Manhattan’s Bell Sound Studios (237 West 54th Street). The session happened a week or two before JFK’s murder. And then along came Elvis Costello‘s collaboration with Bacharach in the late ’90s, and I’m sorry but his version of “Anyone Who Had A Heart” just blew Warwick’s away.

HE’s hand-held iPhone footage, captured around 10:15 pm on a Saturday evening (1.23.16) at Park City’s Eccles Theatre — the Sundance Film Festival launch of Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea.

Casey Affleck was asked by an audience member how playing Lee Chandler had affected him personally, and one of his first reactions was “that’s a good question” — which meant he was unsure about how to best answer it.

Amazon/Roadside wouldn’t open the film for another ten months (11.18.16), but when you’ve got an absolute winner nobody worries about starting too early. Everyone knows it works, and they can’t wait to share it.

Manchester opened a year before the first stirrings of the woke plague, and today, seven and one-third years later, early ’16 seems like such a tranquil or even a magical moment. We didn’t know what we had until it all began to slip away.

From a just-posted discussion between Oliver Stone and Vulture‘s Olivia Nuzzi: