…in which the habit of moviegoing is at its lowest ebb ever, and certainly nowhere near the semi-regular thing it used to be even in the ’90s and early aughts, and amongst those few intrepid souls who still occasionally flirt with the idea of seeing a film in a theatre, the vast majority don’t have clue #1 who this guy is or what film it’s from or anything. And if you lament this state of affairs (as I am now), you’ll be dismissed as a grumpy, out-of-it asshole who has lost touch with 2021 film culture, if you want to call what’s happening in theatres and in the streaming world “film culture,” and that you’re living inside some cranky membrane.
On the day that Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks opened (3.30.61), a 35mm print was sent to the Kennedy mansion in Palm Beach (1095 North Ocean Drive). JFK flew down from Washington that morning, arriving around 11:30 am. He joined his father (Joseph P. Kennedy), Peter Lawford and Bing Crosby for some golf that afternoon. They all had dinner and then watched Brando's film in the private screening room, which had been installed by Kennedy Sr., a Hollywood mogul in the 20s and 30s, after buying the home in 1933.
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“I just wanted to tell you, Joe, how much fun your Wilder book is. I was expecting the usual sequential, chapter-by-chapter approach, and I got that from your very thorough recounting of his youth in Germany. (And you went to Germany for some first-hand digging — respect!)
“But once the Hollywood adventure begins, you start weaving in and out. You don’t abandon a steady, linear, through-line approach, but you don’t exactly stick to it either. The narrative starts hopping around, and I loved that! In your journey with Billy Wilder you become Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time.
“And I love, love, LOVE that possibly accurate story about the waitress being paid to have it off with the square and virginal Charles Lindbergh in that Long Island hotel on the night before his flight, and then, at the end of the film, the same waitress being part of the crowd during Lindy’s triumphant victory parade in Manhattan, and hedoesn’tseeherwaving! What a great ending! I love the young vanity mirror woman who is actually in the film, but the waitress story would have been ten times better.
“I agree about Gary Cooper’s hesitant (wussy?) manner as he got older, and that he was way too old to pay Audrey Hepburn‘s lover in Love in the Afternoon. But what about that Wilder quote that “I got Coop the week he suddenly got old.” Cary Grant would have been a much better fit. Coop looked like he was at least 65 if not 70 in that film.
“I’m still reading, but I’m hoping for fresh anecdotes and stories about the making of One Two Three. In my estimation the amazing velocity and chutzpah in the last half of that 1961 film represents one of Cagney’s greatest performances by far, right up there with Public Enemy and George M. Cohan and Cody Jarrett. Plus I loved the strident, back-and-forth, give-and-take energy between Cagney and Horst Buccholz…what was it exactly that HB said or did to piss Cagney off so much?
“I’m presuming that at one point you’ll offer thoughts about how and why Wilder succumbed to ‘50s conventionality by deciding to become a proficient ‘house director’ between ‘53 and ‘58. He just went along with the flow of things, took this and that job, tried to be Lubitsch in this or that way, etc. But the fact is that after the making and release of 1953’s Stalag 17 and before the writing and shooting of Some Like It Hot in ‘58, Billy Wilder took a four and a half-year breather from the burden of being ‘Billy Wilder.’ For lack of a better or fairer term, he became Paycheck Billy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
I’ve cracked the Dune code. I’ve figured it out. I finally know what it is. Dune is a “mood piece” that puts you into “a trance”, but it would help if you get really effing ripped before seeing the damn thing. Toke up, suck it down, bring your own brownies and gummies.
I began to sense this when a friend who recently saw it said he was a fan of “epically scaled movies, even flawed ones or those that are hard to follow [as Dune] has a number of distinct characters weaving in and out.” What Dune viewers need to do, in other words, is get themselves into a place in which “flaws” don’t especially matter and “following the action” isn’t all that vital. (Whuht?)
You just have submit to Dune, go with it, and see past ALL THAT FUCKING SAND. And you have to see it on a big screen — no watching Dune on iPads or laptops. You have to go big or nothing. You are little, microscopic …not even a granule of sand. Dune is the whole effing desert and it will fill your soul with wonder.
Then I talked to another guy who’s seen Dune and claims he “went into something of a trance and was mesmerized from beginning to end. Seeing it a big screen was fabulous, and I might well see it again sometime just for the immersive pleasure.” In other words, Dune tripped this guy out. Imagine if he’d dropped two Bliss gummies a half-hour before sitting down.
Third person: “Dune‘s not bad. It just makes no sense. But that’s okay — it’s a mood piece. Good to see if you’re really stoned.”
At first 2001: A Space Odyssey failed to “make sense” or add up for certain snooty people (i.e., critics, rationalists). It was derided for being a “shaggy God story”. And then what happened? Younger people started going to it ripped or even tripping, and suddenly the spaciness of it became the all of it. 2001 became a cult stoner movie, and then the marketing guys finally caught on and they changed their slogan to “the ultimate trip.”
This, I’m sensing more and more, is what Dune is or could be. If you meet it halfway by being ripped out of your gourd, you can climb onto its back like a huge sand worm and ride the whirlwind. The next time Warner Bros. has an on-the-lot screening, they need to forego the wine and cheese and pass out edibles instead.
Late last night the U.S. military announced that it had drone-struck an ISIS-K planner behind the recent suicide bombing near Kabul Airport, thereby turning him instant hamburger. BBC.com: “A Reaper drone, launched from the Middle East, struck the militant while he was in a car with another ISIS member, killing them both, an official told Reuters news agency.”
Capt Bill Urban of Central Command: “The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties.”
Most of your ISIS-K fanatics are believed to be in hiding in this province, which lies east of Kabul.
This may have been a surgically precise response and the ISIS-K target may well have well been the Osama bin Laden behind the suicide bombing, but as many as 169 people, including 13 U.S. troops, were killed in Thursday’s attack. To my way of thinking that means at least 169 ISIS-K guys had to die, and preferably double that. Two doesn’t get it.
Incidentally: Apparently Donald Trump wasn’t mistaking ISIS-K for “ISIS-X”, as he called it. He was imagining or speculating that ISIS-X would be the next iteration after ISIS_K has had its heyday.
All I said in yesterday's riff about Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson putting Dune at the top of her Gold Derby slate of Best Picture contenders...all I said was that (a) I've been seriously dreading sitting through Denis Villeneueve's film for many months now, being no fan of dense, multi-part sci-fi sagas taking place in distant exotic realms and blah blah, and that (b) this prejudice coupled with a friend's dismissive reaction to Dune resulted in my not trusting Thompson's vote of approval, especially given the fact that (c) Thompson saw it at a lah-lah Warner Bros. lot screening augmented by wine, cheese and crackers.
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Remember Jared Gilman, the bespectacled 10 year old in Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom (’12). Well, he’s 21 or 22 now, and he looks like a slightly fleshy Sean Lennon, and he’s playing the Cyrano role in Scott Coffey‘s high-school remake of Cyrano de Bergerac, titled It Takes Three.
The question, of course, is why in the world would Gilman’s character want to help a flagrantly shallow Nowhere Man (David Gridley) seduce a sensible, thoughtful, introspective woman of quality (Aurora Perrineau). Why would anyone want to be a party to that? To what end? I took one look at Gridley and immediately hated his guts.
Creased and silver-haired Sirhan Sirhan, the former Palestinian militant who murdered U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on 6.5.68 and thereby brought about the election of Richard Nixon and the terrible Vietnam War carnage that followed, was grantedparole today.
AP report: “Two of RFK’s sons spoke in favor of Sirhan Sirhan’s release and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars.
“The decision was a major victory for the 77-year-old prisoner, although it does not assure his release.
“The ruling by the two-person panel at Sirhan’s 16th parole hearing will be reviewed over the next 90 days by the California Parole Board’s staff. Then it will be sent to governor Gavin Newsom, who will have 30 days to decide whether to grant it, reverse it or modify it.”
If you were Newsom, would you approve Sirhan’s release? Be honest.
“Sirhan’s lawyer, Angela Berry, argued that the board should base its decision on who Sirhan is today.
“Prosecutors declined to participate or oppose his release under a policy by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, a former police officer who took office last year after running on a reform platform.
“Gascon, who said he idolized the Kennedys and mourned RFK’s assassination, believes the prosecutors’ role ends at sentencing and they should not influence decisions to release prisoners.”
HE viewpoint: I’m not sure how to respond to the possibility of Sirhan being set free. It seems odd, to say the least. But if (and I say, “if”) someone were to approach Sirhan after he gets out and shoot him in the back of the head, my reaction would be “well, that’s harsh but it’s also biblical retribution…an eye for an eye, a bullet in the brain for a bullet in the brain.”
I wouldn’t applaud his murder should it happen, but if it were to occur I couldn’t honestly condemn it. Imagine if Lee Harvey Oswald had lived and been convicted and jailed, and was now being paroledatage82. How wouldyoufeelabout that?
The next Bond film needs to run at least three hours, and it needs to include an overture, an intermission and exit music. And it needs to open with reserved seat engagements in New York, Los Angeles and London. Seriously — this would make it into something more than just another Bond flick.
The lengthiest Bond film before Die was Spectre (’15) at 2 hours and 28 minutes — 17 minutes shorter. Casino Royale (’06) was four minutes shorter than Spectre — 144 minutes. Skyfall (’12) was one minute shorter at 2 hours and 23 minutes. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (’69) was one minute shorter than Skyfall, and License to Kill (’89) was a whopping 2 hours and 13 minutes — ten minutes shorter than Skyfall.
Dr. No (’62), the first Bond film, ran 109 minutes, or 54 minutes shorter than No Time To Die. From Russia With Love (’63) ran six minutes longer — 115 minutes. Goldfinger (’64) ran 110 minutes. What were they thinking?
Liz Cheney calls Trump’s deal w/ Taliban a “surrender.”
“We completely undercut the Afghan nat’l gov., we absolutely emboldened the Taliban … and that led us to the catastrophe today.”
Michael Moore/Substack on “The Miracle of Kabul”: “What’s happening in Kabul right now is a miracle. President Biden has saved the lives of over 100,000 Americans and Afghans after the Taliban won the war and Kabul fell. Yet he has been pilloried by pundits and armchair generals, and his approval rating has fallen.
“On this day of chaos, misery and suicide bombings, I want you to hear why President Biden has made a bold, courageous and smart move and why he deserves our thanks.”
It doesn’t really start until the 16-minute mark, and really the 23-minute mark. I have to say that Moore is way too generous in his descriptions of the Taliban. These guys are medieval hillbillies who will make life miserable for Afghan women.
Moore: “Everybody saying this is a bad idea to withdraw. Biden said ‘no, we’re leaving and that’s that.’ And he would not walk it back.”
