…in which (a) over 95% if not 97% of ostensible movie lovers have no idea who John McCabe was, and couldn’t care less and will absolutely, positively never ask, (b) boxes of pink-colored Promising Young Woman swag has made their way around town, and (c) many people, knowing the vaccines are several weeks away from distribution for younger folk, still feel as if their souls have been drained dry.

Last night I paid $21.50 to see Nobody at the AMC Century City. I also paid $15 or $16 for a small popcorn and a hot dog. Plus $6 for parking. Call it $43 for an experience that was…well, kinda silly and, okay, somewhat “passable” if you lower your standards but certainly not in the least bit believable — not with unshaven, small-shouldered, not-tall-enough, late-50ish Bob Odenkirk in the role of a seemingly mousey dad who rapidly morphs into a version of Liam kick-ass Neeson.

Nobody actually feels like a cartoonish satire of a Neeson flick because the violent scenes are never realistic (do you believe that Odenkirk would whip five tough Russian dudes on a city bus after he stupidly empties a .38 pistol of all ammo, just to show how physically confident he is?), and because the violence becomes increasingly surreal as things move along. Sensible adults made this thing, but what did they make? Just a stupid bullshit face-puncher and ball-kicker aimed at multiplex morons…nothing more or less than that.

I wanted a Steven Soderbergh-style action flick that would try to respect reality and physics and deal semi-realistically with what a 50ish guy in reasonably good shape could manage within a John Wick-like, one-guy-vs.-the-mob vicious beatdown and shoot-em-up, and you know what happened? Director Ilya Naishuller, screenwriter Derek Kolstad and producer-star Odenkirk stepped out of the screen a la The Purple Rose of Cairo, walked over to where I was sitting (front-row, handicapped seat), took out their schlongolas and urinated right into my lap. I was too much in shock to respond.

Okay, I appreciated Naishuller’s decision to convey what a mundane, soul-draining life Odenkirk’s “Hutch” is living (before the rough stuff begins) with rapid-fire montage cutting, and I half-enjoyed the reliance on pop tunes to kind of, I don’t know, lighten the mood or something.

And I half-enjoyed Christopher Lloyd‘s hoot-level performance as Odenkirk’s ex-FBI, retirement-home-residing dad, and I was glad to run into Aleksei Serebryakov (who played a leading role in Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan) as a Russian drug lord who likes to dance and perform in front of customers at a club he owns. I was stunned when a new version of Michael Ironside showed up — “new” as in 75 pounds heavier than he was in Scanners. Connie Neilsen is okay, I guess, as Hutch’s semi-patient, non-judgmental wife.

“Yet Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick‘s Allen v. Farrow, praised in some quarters as ‘devastating,’ is a blatantly skewed narrative based on cherry-picking, distortions and evidence-free assertions (examined in my Quillette magazine review). If it does ‘cancel’ Allen for good, it will not be on its own strength but on that of a climate in which one must ‘believe survivors.’ — from Cathy Young‘s “Woody Allen is getting a raw deal: A new documentary doesn’t present a fair picture” — N.Y. Daily News, 4.2.21.

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks to American literary critic, essayist and novelist Daphne Merkin about HBO’s highly torqued documentary, Allen v. Farrow, and the dubious claims it contains:

Posted on 7.10.09: “[Michael] Jackson‘s body is still missing his brain, which coroners are temporarily keeping for testing.” — from a 7.10 N.Y. Post story about the temporary parking of Jackson’s coffin in Berry Gordy‘s Forest Lawn crypt.

“Jackson’s brain, Donovan’s Brain with Lew Ayres, The Man With Two Brains, the brain of Dr. Hans Delbruck in Young Frankenstein. I feel an idea coming on.

“A struggling Broadway musical performer in his mid 20s comes to Vegas to find work. During a visit with an L.A. friend he’s hit by an SUV on the Hollywood freeway. He’s taken to USC and declared brain-dead. A brilliant irreverent L.A. surgeon somehow gets hold of Jackson’s brain, reanimates it with Dr. Victor Frankenstein-styled lightning bolts and transplants it into the dancer’s head. The kid survives and prospers as a kind of reincarnation of Michael Jackson — a dancing genius with a gentle little voice and a thing for young lads.

“And then what? At the very least it’s a short film. Seriously…this is a fairly good idea.”

29 years after the release of Geoffrey Wright‘s Romper Stomper (’92), one of the most indelible, pared-to-the-bone, punch-kick-and-wallop flicks about hate groups ever made, I happened to re-watch an especially memorable gang-fight scene.

In this unfortunate era of #StopAsianHate, the scene feels cathartic as hell and even joyous in a certain sense. I would love to see such a scene reenacted in any present-day environment in which anti-Asian sentiment is presumed to reside.

It starts with six or seven skinheads (led by an astonishingly young and slender Russell Crowe) beating up on three or four Vietnamese guys in a family-owned pub. But word gets out immediately, and a large mob of furious Vietnamese youths arrive and beat the living crap out of the skinheads. Hate in and hate out. Bad guys pay the price. Glorious! Hashtags are well and good but, as Woody Allen said about Nazis in that MOMA-party scene in Manhattan, baseball bats really bring the point home.

I didn’t realize is was Easter Sunday today. Actually, to be honest, I kinda stopped noticing Easter when I hit my mid teens. I now regard Easter as being on the same level of importance as….I don’t know, Groundhog Day. It was a fairly big deal when I was a kid, of course. I actually played a Hebrew marketplace hustler in an Easter pageant performance at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Westfield, New Jersey. (Don’t ask.) I remember the palm fronds and the colors (violet and white) and the easter-egg hunts.

One of the reasons Geoffrey Wright‘s Romper Stomper (’92) works as well as it does — an anti-racist, anti-skinhead film that isn’t afraid to dive right into the gang mind and pretend-revel in the fevered currents — is John Clifford White‘s score.

The main theme, in particular, seems to simultaneously channel skinhead rage and, at the same time, deftly satirize it. I don’t even know what kind of brass instruments White used on these tracks — tuba? trombone? French horn? trumpet? But the sound and mood are perfect. Just a clever instrumentation of a melodic hook and obviously less than complex, but once you’ve heard the theme you’ll never forget it.

…and I’m sorry for this tiny little obit on page whatever on the N.Y. Times. I’d never seen this clipping before today. Posted last night on Facebook by film scholar, author (books on John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles) and San Francisco-based educator Joseph McBride.

…it’s probably all over, everywhere, in the back of everyone’s mind. Chloe Zhao has the Best Director Oscar in the bag, no question, but the ragtag mob wants to stop Nomadland. It’s not about how good or great Zhao and Frances McDormand‘s film is on its own terms — the mob is simply starting to resent this apparently inevitable outcome and some are snorting about it. Plus the likelihood that aside from David Strathairn‘s kindly character the various 65-and-over nomads whom Fern shares stories and philosophies with are almost certainly Trumpsters, and the film ignores that probable aspect. In my book that’s a demerit. You can hear the drumbeat, feel it…muffled drums emanating from the dense jungle mist like an echo of Max Steiner‘s score for King Kong….”stop Nomadland, stop Nomadland…everyone gather ’round and stop Nomadland.”

Wiki excerpt: “Director John Boorman chose locations that were ‘stark’. The LAX walkway down which Marvin strode originally had flower pots lining the walls. Boorman had them taken out.”

…in a present-tense context? I’m not sure but maybe it’ll come to me if I think hard. Perhaps if I ask the HE commentariat? I seem to recall that Arthur Miller’s 1953 play was an allegory about some kind of prosecutorial atmosphere that was going on in the early ’50s. Ahh, forget it. Wasn’t Miller some kind of a leftie crackpot? What did he know anyway? Why didn’t he try harder to just, you know, entertain people and give them a little respite from their troubles?

Tatiana had to watch Saving Private Ryan for a film class, so last night we streamed a 4K UHD version on Amazon.

During the last half hour I was reminded how enraged I was by the cowardly behavior of Jeremy Davies‘ Corporal Timothy Upham, and particularly by his failure to come to the rescue of Adam Goldberg‘s Private Stanley Mellish, who resultantly dies when that German with the tennis-ball haircut plunges a bayonet into his chest.

I was doubly infuriated by Upham’s subsequent inability to fire upon some nearby German troops as they’re shooting at his fellows, and particularly as that crewcut Kraut (i.e., the one who’d just killed Mellish and had earlier begged the platoon for his life) shoots poor Tom Hanks in the chest. And all through it Upham just sits there, trembling and sweating like the worst little candy-ass in the history of the U.S. military.

In the HE rewrite, Ed Burns‘s character, PFC Richard Reiben, is the one surviving guy in the platoon who spots what Upham is, and what he’s failed to do. After Hanks dies and Matt Damon is busy transforming into that stumbling old guy at the cemetery, Reiben walks up to Upham and says “you little quivering piece of shit…you’re worse than an enemy agent…I feel more respect for the Germans I just killed than I do for you…you worthless little turd, get ready to meet the Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost.”

And Upham whines and moans and begs for his life….”puhhleeze, don’t kill me…I swear I couldn’t help it…I got scared, please.” And Reiben says “you worthless fucking worm” and raises his M1 rifle and plugs him twice in the chest, and then walks over, pulls out a pistol and gives him one more in the forehead.

The way director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat dealt with Upham in the actual film was horrible — they offered a measure of sympathy to a contemptible slimey coward. My ending would be much more satisfying. If it feels good, do it.