Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson is calling In The Heights “the first real heartbreaker of the summer.”

And that statement was based upon estimates of “a frankly mediocre $5 million Friday” and “an over/under $15 million weekend launch.” Except Variety is now reporting that Heights earned a piddly $4.9 million on Friday with an expected weekend tally of “just under $13 million“…I’m sorry but there’s a word for this, and the word is “bust.”

Compare this to woke media hypesters projecting at least $20 million and, per Mendelson, “even a $25-$35 million launch on par with Crazy Rich Asians.”

Mendelson’s dagger in the chest: “Film Twitter convinced themselves that In the Heights was The Force Awakens, but general audiences viewed it as Terminator: Dark Fate.

“In the Heights sold itself as a celebration of Hispanic-American culture but had little else to offer (no stars, no high concept, no IP, etc.) to those who those who didn’t view such a noble sentiment as automatically ‘worth seeing in theaters.'”

Are you reading this, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson?

Did the ticket-buying public consider my 6.8 review and a certain sentence in particular and decide to blow it off or at least wait and see? The sentence in question read, “No question about it — In The Heights is one of the best films I’ve ever felt vaguely suffocated by.”

Mendelson: “Barring incredible legs (which is still possible), the $55 million In the Heights could be another example of audiences acting in opposition to online media narratives.” Otherwise known as the “whatever Eric Kohn is urging us to do, we’re doing the opposite” syndrome.

Mendelson: “We say we want Widows, but audiences show up for Venom, Halloween and The Grinch. Film Twitter championed Birds of Prey, but audiences showed up for Joker. Film Twitter decried Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody, while both films from ‘problematic’ directors, won multiple Oscars and grossed $322 million (the biggest-grossing Best Picture winner in a decade) and $905 million (the biggest-grossing straight drama ever) respectively.

“Meanwhile, during that 2019 Oscar season, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston’s ‘problematic’ The Upside earned $108 million domestic from a $20 million debut. Conversely, alt-right trolls didn’t stop Captain Marvel from topping $1.128 billion, a lesson that came too late for Disney’s Star Wars trilogy.

In the matter of the stunning, inexplicable suicide of Anthony Bourdain, it has long been my belief…okay, my strong suspicion that Bourdain was tragically triggered by the behavior of his turbulent girlfriend, Asia Argento.

I’m sorry but there was just too much sensual and philosophical and person-to-person pleasure in Bourdain’s life…he was seemingly all but smothered by the stuff, perhaps not by the reality but certainly the appearance of one orgasmic Zen delight after another…not to mention the charge of travelling from one place to another on a near-constant basis.

Of all the people who’ve ever offed themselves, Bourdain has to be the least likely of all time. And hanging himself just doesn’t make sense without some kind of emotional trigger, without some kind of brief drop into despair…some kind of cause-and-effect.

It is my belief that in the parallel realm of the last scene in Vertigo, Asia Argento was Scotty Ferguson and Anthony Bourdain was Judy Barton.

How do I mean that? I mean that Asia unwittingly (or carelessly) pushed Anthony over the cliff as surely as that shadowed nun in Vertigo scared Judy Barton into fearfully leaping out of that San Juan Batista bell tower.

Did Scotty kill Judy? No, he did not. She leapt out of her own sense of panic, clearly of her own accord — but Scotty was damn sure part of the reason why her life ended so suddenly and tragically.

And you’d better believe that without Asia Argento in his life, Anthony Bourdain might well be with us today.

To what extent does Roadrunner, Morgan Neville‘s just-premiered doc about Bourdain’s life, get into the whole Asia Argento mishegoss, or at least fiddle around with the possibility that Argento’s influence served as a fatal trigger in Bourdain’s psyche?

According to early Roadrunner reviews as well as a heads-up from a friendo, Neville “barely” goes there. Which sounds to me like he glances at the Argento factor without getting into it. He takes a snapshot or two and then moves on.

Here are some notes and thoughts I assembled this morning…partly from past HE posts, partly not:

So Roadrunner doesn’t get into the whole Asia Argento flagrant-infidelity-in-Rome thing? Various reports stated that she was fucking Hugo Clement, a younger journalist, just before Bourdain hung himself. It seemed to many of us that this may have tipped the secretly depressed Bourdain into nihilist despair and self-destruction. Maybe.

And the film more or less ignores the whole paying-off-Jimmy-Bennett thing?

And therefore the film barely ponders the distinct possibility that Bourdain’s suicide was significantly influenced by Argento’s messy (i.e., human) appetites and messy (i.e., human) life?

All along I’ve been naturally assuming that when the former Bruce Jenner transitioned into being Caitlyn Jenner, that she had simply grown her hair out to a traditional female length. Right?

I’m sorry but when Jimmy Kimmel used the term “Caitlyn Jenner wig” I was thrown. I realize that what Kimmel said could be construed as transphobic but…

At 5:25 Kimmel mentions Caitlyn’s Thursday visit on The View, during which the California gubernatorial candidate refused to admit that ex-president Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election. Trump did “some good things,” Jenner claimed, adding that she wants to be a “disrupter” in the state capitol like Trump was.

Good fucking God Almighty.

Kimmel’s reply: “Are we sure that isn’t Donald Trump in a Caitlyn Jenner wig?” Also: “She’s just trying to get attention. Caitlyn Jenner has a better chance of being the next Batman than she does governor of California. She knows little to nothing about anything, really.”

This is a couple of days old, but John Whorter and Megyn Kelly are standing behind English teacher Dana Stangel-Plowe after quitting her job at Dwight Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey because of a strict enforcement of critical race theory.

Stangel-Plowe is claiming critical race theory lessons make white students feel like ‘oppressors’ In a resignation letter published by the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, sh claimed that “the school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood.

“As a result, students arrive in my classroom accepting this theory as fact: People born with less melanin in their skin are oppressors, and people born with more melanin in their skin are oppressed.”

What a colossal, shattering embarassment for Jeffrey Toobin. Author, columnist, New Yorker contributor, CNN’s top legal analyst since ’02. And of course, a notorious monkey spanker. 28 years as a distinguished, top-tier journalist, trashed in a matter of seconds.

It would appear, however, that Toobin has begun his public rehab process with CNN’s approval. Being interviewed by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “CNN Newsroom” is the first salvo.

Toobin has obviously been punished, and will continue to suffer for months if not years to come. Am I allowed to say that not every crime deserves the death penalty? I am? Okay, good — not every crime deserves the death penalty.

It’s humiliating enough for a woman to be conducting Toobin’s first interview after he was caught masturbating on a work zoom, but to make her, *not him*, detail the ordeal for an audience is disgraceful. pic.twitter.com/DhdaYJtuIa

— Natalie Johnson (@nataliejohnsonn) June 11, 2021

It would appear that Antoine Fuqua‘s Infinite (6.10) stinks. Certainly to go by David Rooney‘s Hollywood Reporter review.

Opening line: “It’s an intriguing idea in theory to hitch the reincarnation beliefs of Eastern religions to a futuristic scenario of gifted souls with perfect recall of their past lives, split into good and evil factions at war over humanity’s survival”…okay, stop right there.

Any scenario that insists on clear-cut delineations between good and evil is horseshit from the get-go. For the most part there are few absolute moral black or white extremes in any realm — except for the pure rancid evil of Donald Trump and the fact-denying wackazoids who would trash American Democracy for an authoritarian whitebread dictatorship defined by decades-old cultural values. Almost everything on the face of the planet is defined by varying shades of gray.

Rooney: “But Infinite is a soulless grind. Juiced up with a succession of CG-enhanced accelerated chases and fight action interspersed with numbing bursts of high-concept geek speak, Antoine Fuqua’s sci-fi thriller isn’t helped by a lead performance from Mark Wahlberg at his most inexpressive.

“His character is basically a charisma void with a permanently furrowed brow suggesting brain strain. It’s no surprise Paramount shunted this thrice-delayed theatrical release to its streaming platform.”

This two-day-old Lorraine interview with Anthony Hopkins took me back to the whole soul-draining, otherworldly disappointment of the Steven Soderbergh Oscars — easily the most bizarre, tilt-level Academy Awards telecast in human history.

Not to mention that awful, mind-warping post-Oscar assessment video by Variety wokesters Elizabeth Wagmeister, Clayton Davis, Angelique Jackson and Jenelle Riley.

The best response was posted by HE’s “Deydou“:

“Wagmeister, Davis, Jackson, Riley… you could add many more of these so-called columnists, entertainment journalists and Oscar bloggers who know nothing about movies or care about performances. They’re only interested in writing about what descent is this or that actor, and pushing for awards because of this or that origin.

“Who will remember these ignoramuses who ridicule themselves to please those Twitter hyenas that don’t represent anyone in real life? They should be ashamed of themselves. As should be every hypocrite who did their ‘who will win and who should win?’ before the Oscar and always put Boseman’s name in the ‘should win’.

“Chadwick Boseman wasn’t robbed nor snubbed and Hopkins’s win wasn’t shocking at all. Boseman gave one of the best performances of the year in a so-so movie. Hopkins is one of the GOAT giving one of the best performances of all time in an excellent movie that most people loved.

“There was no competition. Hopkins doesn’t even play in the same league than the other four. The Best Actor Oscar is not supposed to be a consolation prize or a race prize. Hopkins has no responsibility in Boseman’s shocking death. He doesn’t have to apologize for being a old white male. Boseman‘s Ma Rainey performance was great but he was not as good as Hopkins, nor was he overdue.

“R.I.P. Chadwick. As a great artist and and great man, I’m sure from where you are, you know Hopkins deserved it.”

Checking out of Placencia’s Cozy Corner hotel at 7:30 am tomorrow (Thursday), and then returning the SUV near Belize int’l airport between 10:30 and 10:45 am. The Belize-to-Houston flight departs at 12:50 pm. LAX touchdown expected around 7:25 pm.

We should allow for extra breathing room by leaving at 7 am…right?

The broadly satiric tone conveyed in the trailer for Michael Showalter‘s The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Searchlight, 9.17) comes as a surprise. I wasn’t expecting a goofy comedy, but that’s what it seems to be. A certain subsection of urban blues will love it, I presume; perhaps even your rural bumblefucks will derive a few chuckles.

Jessica Chastain obviously has a Best Actress nomination in the bag, and perhaps Andrew Garfield‘s Jim Bakker will also become an award-season contender. But right away my attention went to Cherry Jones as Tammy Faye’s disapproving mom and especially Vincent D’Onofrio as Jerry Falwell.

The Guess Who was a happening band there for a while. HE favorite: “No Sugar Tonight.”

The below quote appears at the very beginning of Mark Harris‘s “Mike Nichols: A Life,” which was published four months ago.

I’m a bit puzzled by the line “disaster can reorder our lives in wonderful ways, and then you go on to the next thing.”

I’ve never considered the idea of a disaster being any kind of wonderful experience. The only wonderful thing about getting hit in the side of the head by a waffle iron is what happens in the aftermath — you’re forced to either sink or swim when it happens. According to romantic Nietzschean principles, it makes you stronger by toughening your resolve and determination, or else you drop to your knees and lose your confidence or whatever.

I know that after a certain point in life most people (as in 98% or 99%) aren’t that interested in do-or-die scenarios. But they happen all the same.

Two and one-third years ago I raved about S. Craig Zahler‘s Dragged Across Concrete. This morning I happened to re-read my 3.21.19 review, and I’m wondering how it may have settled into HE community consciousness since then.

Was it an intense flash-in-the-pan thing, or has it acquired some kind of cult status? Has anyone watched it more than once, recommended it to friends, argued about it, found it wanting the second time, etc.?

I called it “a dead fucking brilliant exercise in slow-burn, element-by-element, ultra-violent urban action melodrama. It’s longish (158 minutes) and methodical and about as riveting as this kind of step-by-step ensemble crime film gets. It may be the best rightwing (if morally corrupted) urban action flick since Man on Fire.

“It takes its time, you bet, but once the disparate characters and plot threads start falling into place and it all starts to pay off like a slot machine, watch out.

“Concrete offers the best snarly-tough-guy performance from Mel Gibson in ages, another excellent turn from Vince Vaughn (his best since that True Detective criminal he played during season #2) and a serious pop-through turn by Tory Kittles, who looks like a slightly older Jussie Smollett.

“It’s like a politically conservative Jackie Brown without the mellow, likably laid-back lead performances from Robert Forster and Pam Grier, although Gibson and Vaughn are kind of brusquely charming in their roguishly rightwing, fuck-all deadpan way. Like Jackie Brown it waits and waits and reflects and reflects and then talks and talks and talks some more, and then finally, around the 100-minute mark, wham.

“It’s basically a talkfest thing that waits until Act Three to bring out the hardware and spill the vino. At 154 minutes, Jackie Brown is only four minutes shorter.

In the Heights has a curious exchange that’s been bothering me.

A 50ish female character named Daniella (Daphne Rubin-Vega) is moving out of her Washington Heights apartment and has hired movers. But when an overweight mover addresses her as “ma’am,” she barks at him for not addressing her as “Senorita.” He quickly apologizes and says “uhm, sorry’ ma’am…I mean Senorita.”

Like the film itself, Daniella is driven by cultural pride and, one gathers, a certain amount of resentment of Anglo culture, and so her irritation is understood. But my reaction was “whoa, sensitive enough?” The term “ma’am” is, of course, not a slur. In every English-speaking territory throughout the world it conveys deference and respect, and there’s really no debate about this. So why bite the guy’s head off?