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 granted parole 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 paroled at age 82. How would you feel about that?

Cary Joji Fukunaga‘s No Time To Die (UA Releasing, 10.8.21), allegedly the most progressive, anti-sexist, #MeToo-supporting, diverse-minded Bond film in the 59-year history of the franchise, runs 163 minutes. That’s two hours plus 43 minutes. That’s long, man.

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?

No Time To Die will have its grand Swiss premiere on Tuesday, 9.28 at the 17th Zurich Film Festival, concurrent with the Löndon premiere. The screening will begin on 9 pm at the Zurich Convention Center (1200 seats).

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.”

Here’s a copy of the agreement….Trump gave it all away.https://t.co/SiZNNB1wRJ

— QuoteDigger (@QuoteDigging) August 27, 2021

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.”

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, who only spitballs about the Oscar potential of films she’s seen and who, like many others, takes great delight in getting early peeks at expensive, highly anticipated films, has put Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune (Warner Bros., 10.22) into her top slot on Gold Derby’s Best Picture prediction list.

That’s it, I said to myself. I have no more faith in Dune than I did in Blade Runner 2049 before seeing it (less actually), and I’ve never cared for the idea of investing in dense, multi-part sagas taking place in distant exotic realms and requiring enormous reading investments, and so it is now the solemn duty of all good souls and concerned cinefiles who stand with HE to say to Anne Thompson “what you like or what you think will be Best Picture nominated means nothing to us because we don’t trust you…we may become Dune fans down the road but for the time being we’re going to search for ways to diminish Dune just to spite your enthusiasm for it.”

Thompson was invited to see it the other day at the Steve Ross theatre on the Warner Bros. lot, you see, and there was wine and cheese and whatnot served in the lobby, and it was all very lah-dee-dah.

A friend who attended the same screening says Greig Fraser‘s cinematography is quite mesmerizing and that you can coast along on that aspect to your heart’s content. But there was absolutely no following the story for this person, not having read the original 1965 Frank Herbert novel or any of the sequels (Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune,Chapterhouse: Dune) and having no recollection of the disastrous 1984 David Lynch version, and that the plotting was too complex and that it seemed as if everyone was speaking some kind of foreign tongue, and that this sense of being lost and adrift had not, to put it mildly, coagulated into anything that amounted to the Right Best Picture Stuff…at least in this person’s opinion.

Let this be a moment in award-season history…a moment in which the little people in the bleachers rose up against the Anne Thompsons of the world, sitting in their pricey mezzanine seats along the first-base and third-base lines while sipping Chardonnay and munching fine cheese-and-cracker combos while the little people cope with their soggy popcorn and hot dogs and plastic cups of beer.

The monsters behind Thursday’s suicide bombing adjacent to Kabul airport — an attack which killed 72 people including 12 U.S. servicepersons — was reportedly perpetrated by ISIS–K. (The K stands for Khorasan, the name of an ancient province that encompassed parts of modern-day Iran and Afghanistan.) The U.S. command is going to hunt these guys down…what, over the next three or four days?

President Biden: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

I’m imagining myself as an Afghan native who has worked for U.S. forces over the last several years, and has known for many months that the end is coming, and that I have to somehow arrange to get myself and my family out of the country as soon as possible. What practical minded native wouldn’t have tried to leave many months or certainly weeks ago?

Plus there are reportedly 1500 Americans remaining in Afghanistan as we speak. What were they thinking? What are they doing?

It’s so rare when a certain kind of socially realistic humor comes across from a certain kind of half-real, half-comic performance…the kind of humor that comes from a certain recognition of shared pain and social terror. You can’t help but step back and smile.

I don’t care what anyone says about the beyond brilliant Silver Linings Playbook. I was just want to take this opportunity to praise John Ortiz‘s performance in this scene [after the jump], starting at the 2:07 mark and ending at 3:17. Using the metaphor of the Alien face hugger to convey suffocating financial anxiety is one of the most perfectly conceived comic conveyances ever seen or imagined.

“We’re doin’ all right, man, I can’t complain. But the pressure…it’s like…[whispers] I’m not okay, don’t tell anybody…I mean, I feel like I’m being crushed…by everything…the family, the baby, the job, the fucking dicks at work…and I mean I’m trying to do this, and then I’m suffocating…you can’t be happy all the time…it’s all right, you just do your best, you have no choice.”

But the rest of this scene works also. Ten perfect minutes. SLP premiered nine years ago in Toronto and with every subsequent performance Jennifer Lawrence has been (and I’m sorry to say this) missing, missing, missing. She’s never come close to another role even half as good and it’s not her fault…luck of the draw, inspiration is where you find it, you can’t always get what you want, etc.

George Roy Hill‘s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Jeymes Samuel‘s The Harder They Fall (Netflix, 10.22) are exercises in presentism — i.e., recreating the past according to present-day beliefs and standards.

Hill’s film, released in the summer of ’69, portrayed Butch and Sundance as cool-cat, anti-establishment heroes — i.e., flawed but lovable rogues who were into bank-robbing as a kind of irreverent hooliganism. Samuel’s film, an all-Black western, is, to go by the trailer, an ultra-violent attitude flick…a hardcore shoot-em-up that deals in ruthless blam-blam as an assertion of POC power and a general indifference to drilling anyone who stands in their way.

Hill and Samuel’s westerns are joined at the hip in the sense that they both depict train hold-ups.

The Butch Cassidy robberies (there are two) are about character-driven humor, especially in the playful relationship between Butch and Woodcock, an employee of E.H. Harriman, and casual slapstick foolery.

Not so much with the trailer for The Harder They Fall. The first significant activity is Regina King‘s “Trudy Smith” stopping a train and then casually murdering the train engineer (played by David Hight) because he’s an ornery cuss, and also, one gathers, because he’s white and has to pay for the historic toxicity of Anglo-Saxon behavior.

Fair question: The engineer is just mouthing off at Trudy — did he really need to die for this? The answer is “she felt like plugging him and that’s that…don’t you bother yourself whether it was necessary or not…our Black desperados get to drill holes in anyone they feel like drilling, and if you don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.”

Imagine if Woodcock had gotten mouthy with Butch and told him he was an immoral, train-robbing fiend, and Butch had taken offense, pulled out his six-shooter and shot Woodcock right between the eyes. The audience-comfort factor would’ve flown right out the window. Therein lies the difference between George Roy Hill and Jeymes Samuel slash Boaz Yakin.

The first 25 seconds of the new Spencer teaser is pure British royalty porn — immense wealth, bucks-up brands, perfect luggage, servants with heads bowed, perfect servings of soup or dessert or whatever.

Cut to poor, pint-sized Diana (the 5’5″ Kristen Stewart**) and the anguish she’s going through, knowing that her marriage to the snooty Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) is a total sham. Worse than that, when they finally get divorced she’ll only have a lousy $22 million settlement to fall back upon. Plus an extra $600,000 per year plus free Kensington Palace office space plus life-long access to the private royal jets, etc.

Will someone out there please comprehend and share in this woman’s terrible pain?

All this said, HE approves of Lou Reed‘s “A Perfect Day.”

Spencer will debut at the Venice Film Festival on 9.3.21. Neon will open it theatrically on 11.5.21.

** 10 inches shorter than Elizabeth Debicki.

I don’t care what these Cinemacon guys are saying — Robert Eggers‘ The Northman (out in the spring of ’22) is a 10th Century Viking revenge saga, and is sure to be intense in the usual Eggers way. But as far as I can discern it’s not some bloody-ass, tons-of-blood, piles-of-bodies Braveheart deal. It’s about a Nordic prince looking to avenge his father’s death, yes, okay, but calm down, will ya?