I’ve no idea why the Powerhouse/Indicator Bluray of Ishtar has been cancelled, but I do know this is the second time that the release of an Ishtar Bluray has been blocked, as the same thing happened in 2012.

Tatiana and I are embroiled in an argument about a requested Airbnb refund for a booked-and-paid-for lakeside “villa” on Lake Peten in Guatemala. We didn’t flake out and change our minds on a whim — we were unable to visit Guatemala at all because of an idiotic, Covid-related decision by the Belizean border authorities that stated tourists with a rental car could enter Guatemala but not return to Belize.

We obviously couldn’t enter Guatemala under this condition, although we’d been told that the border situation was in flux and that we might somehow be able to wriggle through and visit Guatamela anyway, especially given that Tatiana and I are double-vaxxed. So we didn’t formally cancel until the last minute.

We’d been corresponding all along with our Airbnb hostess, Amabely, who was nothing but polite and considerate. We told her early on (i.e., last month) about the ridiculous Belizean regulation and that it would prevent our staying in her rental if the situation didn’t change. In one of her letters to us, Amabely said that under these circumstances (a) “I understand your hesitance to travel” and that (b) “you may cancel your reservation if you desire, now or last minute.”

The original reservation dates were for Sunday, June 6th and Monday, June 7. Early on (before we arrived in Belize on June 1st) we asked Amabely if we could shift the dates to Monday, June 7, and Tuesday, June 8. She told us this was not a problem at all.

We waited and waited on formally canceling because we were told in Belize that the Belize-Guatemala border situation was opening up and that Belize might soon relax their restrictive policy. And so we waited because we wanted very much to visit Guatemala, Flores, Lake Peten and Tikal. We wrote several times to Amabely about this frustrating situation. She was entirely understanding of the particulars and fully sympathetic in every message she sent us.

It was our fault for not FORMALLY changing the dates of our reservation via Airbnb software, but we knew that Amabely understood the problem and would roll with the situation if we were forced to cancel due to the bizarre Belize-Guatamela border policy. Again — she had told us “you may cancel your reservation if you desire, now or last minute.”

And then, all of a sudden and out of the friggin’ blue, Amabely and her husband Oswaldo decided to stiff us, using an Airbnb reservation timing technicality to do so. But why, we asked ourselves, would Amabely abruptly reverse herself after being so kind and understanding about our travel uncertainty for many weeks? We could only conclude that Oswaldo had stepped in and was declining the refund out of pure greed.

If NPR’s Terry Gross is nominally on-board with the Wuhan lab-leak theory, you know that other cautious liberal types are giving it serious consideration.

Gross has interviewed Katherine Eban, author of a 6.3.21 Vanity Fair piece titled “The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins.”

Yesterday Joe Rogan discussed a related issue. The episode is titled “Fauci, Gain-of-Function Research, and Wuhan Lab Funding.”

“If I were you I would be careful about professing too much affection for the Beatles’ White Album. It obviously doesn’t sound like something anyone would want to be associated with right now. Then again the Beatles did refuse to play to segregated audiences in ’64, and they played a lot with the late Billy Preston during the Get Back period.” — HE reply to “filmklassik“, posted this morning in “Doll’s House” thread.

My initial reaction to Rita Moreno walking back her initial statement of support for Lin-Manuel Miranda and his failure to depict Afro-latino characters in In The Heights was “okay, but what is there to say?

She got pounced on by the wokester wolves for saying “can’t they leave this alone for a while?”, and when a pouncing happens there’s only one response…”oh dear God, I’m so sorry!!! My bad!!!”

Walk-backs of this sort are par for the course. They happen routinely, and they’re a series of rituals that no one believes. The cowards of late say nothing. They’re all afraid of the mob. SNL = total crickets.

The whole thing comes down to one word, as it did, in a sense, during the McCarthy era in the early to mid ’50s. That word is employment.

We’re living through an era of total Orwellian terror.

With one fell swoop, Disney and Peter Jackson have all but destroyed serious Beatle fan interest in Peter Jackson‘s endlessly delayed The Beatles: Get Back doc…they’ve blown the allure to smithereens by expanding it (i.e., watering it down) into a six-hour thing on Disney +.

The obvious strategy should have been to release the originally planned two-hour feature version in theatres — people would’ve loved to see this communally with popcorn! En masse! — and then follow this up a month or two later with a three-part, six-hour version (three docs lasting two hours each) on Disney +. But nooooo…

The Beatles: Get Back was originally slated to open theatrically on 9.4.20 in the U.S. and Canada, with overseas territories to follow. On 6.12.20 it was pushed back to 8.27.21…they should’ve stuck to that!

It was announced today (6.17.21) that The Beatles: Get Back “will be released as a three-part documentary series on Disney+ on 11.25, 11.26 and 11.27, with each episode being about two hours in length.”

Published in Entertainment Weekly in late May ‘92, filed by yours truly during the Cannes Film Festival (my very first…29 years ago!):

Or The White Album with all the weak tracks removed, and in this order:

(Side One) “Back in the U.S.S.R”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Yer Blues,” “Cry Baby Cry,” “Mother Nature’s Son,” “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide (‘Cept For Me and My Monkey)” “Blackbird.” (7)

(Side Two) “Martha, My Dear,” “Birthday,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” “I Will,” “Savoy Truffle,” “Long, Long, Long.” (7)

I’ve just finished watching Morgan Neville‘s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (Focus Features, 7.16), and I have to say something plain and clear and straight.

One, the first 80 to 90 minutes are just okay. At times they almost feel a bit boring. But two, during the final 30 or 40 minutes the film dives into the “what happened during the final few weeks of Bourdain’s life, and why did he fucking hang himself?” section, and by the end the viewer has been left with a clear impression that Bourdain’s relationship with the notoriously edgy and prickly Asia Argento was a giddy, obsessive thing that intensified Bourdain’s hot plate and jarred his sense of emotional equilibrium.

I’m not saying the film convinced me that Argento “killed” him in some way — Bourdain sadly did that all to himself — but she definitely shook him up and rattled his composure and brought him to the edge of a cliff.

Bourdain was a moody, free-associating, nakedly honest fellow with a tendency to occasionally fall into caves of depression, and he swan-dove into the Argento relationship without the slightest sense of measured, step-by-step gradualism. Frank Sinatra once sang “let’s take it nice and easy…it’s gonna be so easy.” Bourdain definitely didn’t do that with Argento.

There’s a stocky guy from Bourdain’s camera crew who tells Neville that Anthony was “a lifelong addictive personality, addicted to another person [i.e., Argento]. He didn’t understand he would drive someone away if he didn’t stop talking about [how great she was]…you could see her pulling back and he just wouldn’t stop.”

So in a way Bourdain was kind of smothering Argento, and so just before his death she performed that public affair in Rome with Hugo Clement (which is definitely mentioned in the film) in order to say to Bourdain “back off, don’t smother me, let me be free” but in so doing SHE LED HIM RIGHT TO THE EDGE OF THE FUCKING CLIFF and then left him there. She didn’t push him — Bourdain jumped of his own accord. But had it not been for his relationship with her, Bourdain might well be alive today. This is definitely what the film leaves you with.

The thing I wanted to make clear when I began this piece is that Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn and Collider‘s Matt Goldberg were dead fucking wrong to write that there’s something unseemly about Neville trying to solve the riddle of why Bourdain killed himself during the last 30 to 40 minutes.

It’s the only portion of Roadrunner that really holds you. The rest of it is just mildly okay….it glides along, bobs and weaves, laughs and basks, covers this, covers that, blah blah.

But the section that asks “what went wrong and why is this cool, fascinating guy dead?” is grave and powerful.

Kohn wrote with a straight face that “by all indications, Argento brought Bourdain to a new plane of happiness in his final months, when he hired her to direct an episode [of Parts Unknown] in Hong Kong shortly before his death…it also gave him a renewed sense of purpose as he became a public voice in the #MeToo scandal with Argento’s revelations about being raped by Harvey Weinstein.”

That is partly true but mostly horseshit — that is NOT what the film claims. There are rumblings that Argento didn’t handle the directing of that Hong Kong episode like a pro, and we learn that when Zach Zamboni, Bourdain’s longtime cameraman, criticized Argento’s choices or work ethic or whatever that Bourdain fired him on the spot. It’s clear, yes, that while Bourdain was a solid partner and supporter of Argento, his feelings for her were obsessive…he was head over heels in love to the point that he seemed to lose sight of his traditional sense of cool.

Goldberg wrote that “a suicide is not a crime to be solved” — except a documentary about a man’s life demands that all questions be asked and all dark corners probed. If he killed himself you obviously have to go there, and not in some brief, glancing, chickenshit way. Goldberg says that such an inquiry “cannot comfort, and it cannot illuminate” — wrong. Roadrunner does illuminate to a certain degree, and what it says is perfectly clear — the allegedly oddball Argento was a negative trigger influence in the final weeks of Bourdain’s life, and if anyone has reason to feel at least somewhat guilty about his suicide, it’s her. You’d better fucking believe it.