I re-watched my 4K UHD Apocalypse Now Bluray last night, and I wasn’t totally happy. I saw this 1979 classic at the Ziegfeld theatre two or three times in August and September of ’79, and the big-screen presentation (we’re thinking back almost 44 years) blows the 4K disc away. Aurally and visually, but especially in terms of sharp, punctuating fullness of sound.

Apocalypse Now was presented at the Ziegfeld within a 2:1 aspect ratio, which Vittorio Storaro insisted upon through thick and thin. The 4K disc uses what looked to me with a standard Scope a.r. of 2.39:1.

And the general sharpness of the image on that big Ziegfeld screen just isn’t replicated by the 4K. It looks “good”, of course, but not as good as it should.

As we begin to listen to The Doors’ “The End” while staring at that tropical tree line, John Densmore’s high hat could be heard loudly and crisply from a Ziegfeld side speaker. Before that moment I had never heard any high-hat sound so clean and precise. But it doesn’t sound nearly as pronounced on the 4K disc, which I listened to, by the way, with a pricey SONOS external speaker.

Remember that “here’s your mission, Captain” scene with G.D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford and that white-haired guy? When that scene abruptly ends, we’re suddenly flooded with electronic synth organ music…it just fills your soul and your chest cavity. Filled, I should say, 44 years ago. But not that much with the disc.

When Martin Sheen and the PBR guys first spot Robert Duvall and the Air Cav engaged in a surfside battle, Sheen twice says “arclight.” In the Ziegfeld the bass woofer began rumbling so hard and bad that the floor and walls began to vibrate like bombs were exploding on 54th Street…the hum in my rib cage was mesmerizing. Not so much when you’re watching the 4K.

As Duvall’s gunship helicopters take off for the attack on a Vietnamese village (“Vin Din Lop…all these gook names sound the same”), an Army bugler begins playing the cavalry charge. It was clear as a bell in the Ziegfeld — less so last night.

Two days ago (Wednesday, 4.26) I wrote about anticipating negative vibes from Kelly Fremon Craig‘s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. All those obsequious reviews (falsetto-voiced Scott Menzel called it “one of the best films of ’23”) got my dander up. Florid praise from a notoriously unreliable cabal of sensitive virtue-signallers will do that. I was ready to hate-vent but needed to wait, obviously, until I saw it.

Well, I saw Margaret early Thursday evening, and within minutes I knew my suspicions had been justified — the critics had overpraised it. But at the same time I realized it was a harmless and congenial thing — a mild-mannered ABC After-School Special that would never allow butter to melt in its mouth.

Based on Judy Blume’s celebrated 1970 novel, it’s just a mezzo-mezzo, no-big-deal saga about the trials and tribulations of an 11 or 12 year-old girl. Uncertainty and anxiety about God Fantasy #1 (i.e., that the Cosmic Almighty cares or is even aware of Margaret’s existence), for one thing. Not to mention moving from the comforts of New York City to a wonderbread New Jersey suburb; not to mention new girlfriends (including a socially awkward giraffe), boys with armpit hair and the twin prospects of menstruation and budding breasts.

“This?” I said to myself. “This is what inspired Scott Menzel and his congregated colleagues to shift into gush mode?”

There’s nothing to hate here, and at the same time nothing to get all that excited about. It’s not even a meal, this movie — more like a baloney and lettuce sandwich on toast with mayonnaise. It just toddles and ambles along in a nice massage-y way…fine.

Abby Ryder Fortson overacts a bit (i.e., tries too hard) as Margaret, but not to any harmful degree. Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates as her mother and Jewishy grandmother are fine. Even Benny Safdie is inoffensive.

How does it fuck things up then? It doesn’t — it’s modest and unassuming and stays within a certain perimeter. It does, however, stumble here and there.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is set in either ’70 or the very late ’60s — a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. If the fictitious suburb of Farbrook, New Jersey (where Margaret and her parents move to) bears any resemblance to my old home town of Westfield or, let’s say, Saddle Brook or Plainfield or Montclair, then it wasn’t Newark or Trenton or Rahway or East Orange. Which is to say it was most likely a middle- to upper-middle-class, mostly segregated white town. (For what it’s worth, Far Brook is the name of a private school in upscale Millburn, New Jersey.)

I’m sorry to break it to some of you but that’s how things were during the LBJ and Nixon administrations. I was there so don’t tell me. There were some POCs in Westfield but not many, and they lived in a less-flush section of town that was south of the railroad tracks.

It is therefore not honest for Margaret to cast a bearded, good-looking black guy as a home room teacher. (If a black teacher had theroetically been hired by a white school district he certainly would’ve ditched the beard, which is way too Eldridge Cleaver-ish.) And there are too many black kids in Margaret’s class. It’s just not an honest representation of how things were in whitebread towns 53 years ago. Teenagers of different feathers simply didn’t hang together for the most part. Even WASPs and Italians (i.e., “guineas”) kept their distance.

There’s a big Act Two scene in which McAdams’ bigoted parents, who opposed her marriage to the Jewish Safdie, decide to pay a sudden visit, and an argument ensues between them and Bates about which religion the ambivalent Margaret will sign up for. The dialogue has a clumsy, too-blunt quality…it doesn’t flow. And Bates, we’re told, has impulsively driven all the way up from Florida in order to confront McAdams’ parents, and not alone but with a new white-haired boyfriend. That’s a two-and-a-half-day drive!

The offshoot is that Margaret gradually divorces herself from God and religion. Plus she finally starts menstruating so all’s well on that score.

Amy Nicholson repeated: “As charming as the film is in its best moments, it’s hard not to be frustrated as it backpedals from the book’s awareness that not all wrongs are righted. Sometimes, our heroines might stay buddies with bullies. Sometimes they might run from conflict and never explain themselves. Sometimes, they might even hurt people without making amends. Sometimes frank talk is more impactful than an idealized fantasy.”

Once he found his groove in ’94 or thereabouts, the antics of Jerry Springer never failed to lower the conversation and degrade the sordid remnants of American lower-middle-class culture. All during the ’90s, aughts and 20teens I never once sat down and watched The Jerry Springer Show…24 years of the scurviest, most genetically deprived low-life behavior ever seen on American television. (The low-rent stuff didn’t begin until ’94.) Yes, I occasionally watched Springer clips on YouTube but only when I was in a slovenly mood. The reigning trash TV pioneer passed earlier today.

…who doesn’t kowtow to the bumblefuck mouth-breathers would obviously be better than Orange Plague, right?

In their heart of hearts the MAGA faithful know Trump can’t win, of course, and most of us are pleased about this almost certain fact. But what a gross and depraved spectacle a Trump ’24 candidacy would be, and what a low-rent, soul-depleting conversation we’ll all be having when he squares off against Joe Biden — an animalistic, saliva-spewing sociopath vs. a mellow, steady-as-she-goes octogenarian whom many center-lefties aren’t that thrilled about serving a second term.

Biden’s second term would begin on 1.20.25 (when he’ll be 82) and end on 1.20.29 (when he’ll be 86).

I know that Vivek Ramaswamy can’t possibly beat Trump in the Republican primaries or delegate race, in large part because the mostly rural, racist Republican community won’t vote for anyone whose last name they can’t spell or pronounce, but he’s obviously a better, smarter, more forward-looking fellow than Trump has ever been, and we could all look forward to a more stimulating, issue-driven 2024 Presidential race than if he were to somehow prevail. I love Vivek’s anti-woke determinations, and I’ve long admired super-brainy Millennial moderate righties as a rule (Konstantin Kisin, even Rishi Sunak).

I would still hold my nose, shrug my shoulders and vote for Biden, but it would be great to have a whipsmart rightwing candidate instead of a spray-tan animal brain.

I really don’t care about this. I stopped re-watching E.T. decades ago. Too many viewings. The greatest aspect is John Williams’ score.

So far I’ve only managed to trudge through episodes #2 and #3 of Alice Birch‘s Dead Ringers (Amazon, 4.21), an expanded, feminized remounting of David Cronenberg’s 1988 feature.

Jeremy Irons played twin Toronto gynecologists in the 35 year-old original; Rachel Weisz does the same this time, playing both the prim and proper Beverly Mantle (cautiously mannered, hair-bunned, lesbian) and her twin sister Eliot (louche, profane, hair-trigger, straight).

At first Beverly and Eliot are depicted as brilliant, bristling partners in business and visionary birthing (“we’re both extraordinary”), and then, inevitably…you know what happens.

Cronenberg’s feature was definitely a perverse rogue-male thing; the Amazon series is also perverse but informed by boundary-pushing 21st Century womanhood top to bottom.

I can’t say I’m feeling especially won over. You can detect the diseased dynamic between the twins immediately, and right away it brings on feelings of fatigue. Portions of the piecemeal narrative feel hazily plotted and puzzle-boxy. Jody Lee Lipes and Laura Merians Gonçalves‘ cinematography is too under-lighted — everything has a chilly, grayish-blue tint, and I was very quickly annoyed by this.

For my money Birch’s Dead Ringers doesn’t so much mesmerize or disturb or guide you into some weird nether realm as vacuum you dry. With the exception of a killer dinner-table argument scene, that is, which I quite enjoyed.

All six episodes have been written by women (and two by Birch). Sean Durkin directed episodes #1 and #2, and co-directed episode 6 with Lauren Wolkstein; the other three episodes were directed by Wolkstein, Karena Evans and Karyn Kusama.

I shouldn’t say any more. Except that I really don’t want to sit through episodes #3 through #6. Okay, I’ll watch them but not with any haste or dispatch.

I caught a series of four or five short naps…five minutes, 20 minutes, five again… napping as I went along. I tried to keep the shut-eye to a minimum by catching a 15-minute snooze before it began, but the Denis Villeneuve “sandman” effect was too much to withstand.

I’ve tried to make it clear over the years that I’m not receptive to any sort of romantic relationship film featuring Seth Rogen as an interested hetero party.

Obviously Platonic, a streaming comedy series from Nick Stoller and Francesca Delbanco, is looking at the possibility of a non-platonic thing between Rogen and costar Rose Byrne. At the very, very least it’s looking at this possibility, and for my money this is nearly as potentially upsetting as Pedro Almodovar‘s Bears of the West.

Platonic will premiere on Apple TV+ on 5.24.23.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that “Long, Long Time,” the third episode in HBO’s (now Max’s) The Last Of Us, was a traumatic thing for many of us. The episode aired on 1.29.23.

It took me several days to recover from the bear sex scenes between the 50ish Murray Bartlett and the dreaded Nick Offerman. I’m not kidding. I kept seeing Offerman coming out of that bathroom with a towel around his waist. Freaked me the fuck out.

I’m mentioning this because I’m getting a strong whiff of Long Long Time from the new trailer for Pedro Almodovar‘s Strange Way of Life, a 30-minute short.

HE to Pedro: Please tell me you haven’t filmed what I’m deeply afraid of sitting through.