HE-posted on 11.5.23:

This is as serious as a heart attack. It’s the doddering, slurry-voiced, squinty-eyed, 80something thing.

Joe is Jimmy Carter in ‘79, and he’s really gotta step down. The Beast is at the door. Lyndon Johnson read the writing on the wall in March of ‘68 and acted accordingly. Trump will not defeat Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer.

Barring an electoral miracle, Joe Biden has almost certainly doomed us to four years of howling totalitarian saliva-spray madness…a descent into punitive, assaultive, grunt-level and relentlessly malicious chaos.

Grim up and get ready for a 48-month chapter that will almost certainly maim if not poison the fabric of our already weakened democracy.

Joe has done this to us…it’s absolutely his fault…and I feel nothing but sputtering rage about what’s likely to happen tonight…again, barring a miracle…and more crucially on Election Day a bit less than five months hence.

If the worst happens, subjecting this nation to four more years of Donald Trump will be Joe Biden’s terrible legacy. If he loses the general election, God forbid and God help us, may he suffer grievously for not wisely and prudently stepping aside and allowing a younger normie substitute (Whitmer, Newsom) to run in his place.

No matter what happens tonight and over the next few months, Biden has already risked way too much…he’s responsible for a foolish, arrogant and catastrophic error of judgment. Of this I am certain. I’m almost convulsing with anger right now.

I’ll be live-blogging reactions starting at 9 pm. The challenge will be to react as fairly and even-toned as possible.

The whole world is watching this…a certifiable sociopath and ego monster vs. a decent, withered career politician who’s done a reasonably good job over the last three and a half years, and the former seems poised to win. It’s a nightmare.

10:26 pm: A lying sociopath is winning — has won — the debate. There’s no question which man is the better person, the more decent and honorable. And it’s obviously not Trump. And yet this doesn’t seem to matter. Biden is a sensible man, a better man, and he’s not able to sell it. This is a calamity.

10:11 pm: Trump claims Biden, a reasonable and decent man, is “the worst President in American history..,if he’s re-elected we won’t have a chance.” Biden responds with the more-or-less unanimous conclusion of respected historians that Trump is the worst president ever. Biden is a much more truthful fellow, and this doesn’t seem to matter. Trump is repeatedly lying through his teeth, and this doesn’t seem to matter either.

10:08 pm: So nobody is going to ask about the Biden administration’s embrace of radical woke-ism. This seminal issue isn’t going to be even touched.

10:04 pm:

9:56: Dana Bash tries to drill Biden with a question about disaffected and disillusioned black voters? Again, Biden’s words are more substantive than those from the lying, distorting Trump. But Biden isn’t poking or jabbing, much less slugging. Half the time he looks stunned.

9:53 pm: Biden needs to withdraw from the race and thereby allow someone stronger — a sensible classic Democrat who has a semblance of vigor and mental clarity — to replace him. This is horrific.

9:40 pm: Trump totally dodges a tough question about the Capitol riot. Word salad derangement. And Biden can’t capitalize on this. He mutters, he soft-speaks, he mumph-mumphs. Biden righteously calls Trump a convicted felon, and yet he sounds mushy, hazy-brained. Trump is a diseased scoundrel but he’s presenting a better “performance.” Trump says “I did nothing wrong.” Substance-wise Biden is holding all the aces, but he’s losing the debate.

9:36 pm: Friendo: “Do you think they’ll try to replace Biden after this performance?”

9:35 pm: Where’s the adderall? Why didn’t they shoot Joe up?

9:26 pm: Biden is confirming everyone’s worst fears about his lucidity, his age, his mushy muttering. He’s calling Trump a liar and a loser, and with ample justification. But he doesn’t have any bite. His voice is slushy, wheezy. Ttump is a sociopath and a fiendish bullshitter, but he sounds crisper, sharper, more precise. Biden: “I’ve never heard so much malarkey in my life.” And he’s right! But he sounds so withered and under-energized.

9:24 pm: Friendo: “Jesus, Biden looks worse than I expected. What’s with his voice?”

9:22 pm: Trump says about Biden, “I don’t know what he’s just said. I don’t think he knows what he’s just said.”

9:20 pm: “We are not for late-term abortions…period, period.”

9:15 pm: Biden looks astounded, a bit stunned. His energy is lacking. Half-sentences, half-stammering. Friendo: “Are you watching this mess?”

9:11 pm: Biden’s voice sounds soft, muffled, old-guy ish. An unmistakable absence of vigor. As much as I despise Trump, he sounds better…sharper, more decisive, more engaged. I wish it were otherwise.

…they would have had Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn play supporting players, and made the four-legged “Frodo” (played by the identical Nico and Schnitzel) the front-and-center star.

Imagine a major studio producing a $67 million franchise horror flick prequel and making it mostly or primarily about a cat….a fucking cat! Talk about a pure-genius move!

Silent, Stealthy Frodo vs. The Spider Monsters would have elevated A Quiet Place: Day One into the realm of major blockbuster art…a mind-blower that everyone would have to see and which would have easily become a Best Picture nominee.

The almost universal reaction to Edward Dmytryk‘s Walk on the Wild Side (’62) was that the black cat in the opening credit sequence was a far, far more compelling and fascinating character than the humans played by Laurence Harvey, Capucine. Jane Fonda, Anne Baxter and Barbara Stanwyck.

My immediate reaction during last night’s AMC Empire all-media screening was “this cat is Clint Eastwood…way beyond cool…no offense but my money’s on this guy and not the emotionally hamstrung, vaguely tiresome humans.”

I’m simply saying that as sufficient and approvable as Nyong’o and Quinn’s performances seemed last night, I identified more strongly with Frodo. Because he/she didn’t react with shock and tearful emotionality to those big brown spider monsters, and because this impassivity made him/her ten if not fifteen times more interesting. Plus the rooting factor would have been much greater because we know that left to their own devices, cats are much better at survival than humans….quieter, faster, able to hide better, never betrayed by emotion, etc.

I’m not putting down Nyong’o and Quinn. They’re excellent actors and very effective at inviting us into their emotional worlds. But they can’t compete with Frodo.

I’m not saying that A Quiet Place: Day One should have been entirely about Frodo, mind. Nyong’o and Quinn should have been given a certain amount of screen time, but as secondary or peripheral figures.

…until tomorrow morning (Thursday, 9.27, 9 am) but I can at least disclose that it’s easily the best of the three, and I don’t mean the scariest — I mean the most arthousey, the least popcorned and bullshitty, the most inventively shot and staged, the most gently intimate and most adult-angled (no kids!).

And it costars perhaps the coolest cat in film history — the smartest, most well-behaved, most street-wise feline since that black cat stole the show in 1962’s A Walk on the Wild Side. (The Day One cat is mostly white, and his real name is Frodo.)

All hail director-cowriter Michael Sarnoski (Pig).

And “booo!” to John Krasinski.

HE–posted on 2.10.21:

…are things likely to be in midtown Manhattan?Just asking.

The other day (a little after dinner hour) I was slowly making my way around a Whole Foods or Fresh Farm parking lot, and I happened to drift into a one-way lane that was against the directional arrow. Speed-wise I was driving like an 88 year-old…nudge, nudge, putter, putter…and figured “okay, this won’t hurt anyone…it’s just a parking lot”.

But then along came a pink-faced, silver-haired fellow in a Volvo wagon with an overweight woman riding shotgun, and when he saw me inching my way forward in the wrong direction he went into Samuel Fuller Shock Corridor mode…an expression of major sputtering outrage. His window was halfway down and I could actually hear this 70something dingleberry going “haaayyyy!!!”

My reaction was to pretend I hadn’t seen or heard him. In actuality I was rolling my eyes and muttering to myself, “C’mon, man…it’s not like this is Planes, Trains and Automobiles and I’m John Candy in a devil costume, driving on the wrong side of the highway….’you’re going the wrong way! You’re going to kill somebody!’ And it’s not To Live and Die in L.A. with me speeding down a major highway against traffic and causing trucks to jacknife. It’s a parking lot, for God’s sake, and I’m going roughly 5 mph…get past it.”

The Volvo wagon outrage guy couldn’t do that. He had to turn up the outrage…”heaaayyyy!!!” I have news for guys like this — hay is for horses.

…I decided a few days ago that I had to buy a new 4K Bluray player (a Panasonic DP-UB420-K) when my two-year-old Sony 4K UHD player appeared to be dying.

I was wrong — the Sony remote was apparently dying, except it wasn’t because the “fresh” batteries I had put into the remote weren’t fresh. (My bad, my dopey.) The Sony was fine and all is well — it’s downstairs in the living room as we speak.

The point is that when the Panasonic DP-UB420-K arrived I knew it was probably shit because it didn’t weigh anything. I lifted the box and it weighed as much a set of cloth dinner napkins. I don’t buy or use any electronic device that doesn’t feel substantial from a weight perspective — it has to feel at least a little bit hefty. I don’t care if that makes me sound like an old fart — I won’t buy anything that doesn’t feel at least a bit heavyish.The Sony 4K feels great in this regard — it weighs as much as a small micro-wave unit for the kitchen.

I immediately went down to Whole Foods to return the Panasonic. Within minutes the refund notification ($265) was in my inbox. Take this featherweight 4K UHD Bluray player and shove it!

A Cialis heart attack is an intense burning sensation mixed with a feeling of serious nausea. I popped a Cialis pill the night before last, and yesterday I was struck by a Cialis chest-pain episode along with near-vomiting.

It happened on a patch of grass near a service station where my car was being worked on. I was talking to Sasha Stone when the sensation hit. I was barely able to breathe.

I’ve never had heart trouble, and every day I take Atorvastatin (cholestoral-lowering medication), Lisinopril (blood-pressure medication), Naproxen, Magnesium and Prevagen.

Harvard health excerpt: “ED pills are safe for healthy hearts, but all men with cardiovascular disease should take special precautions, and some cannot use them under any circumstances. The problem is their effect on arteries. All arteries, not just those in the penis, generate nitric oxide, so any artery can widen in response to Viagra, Levitra, or Cialis, causing blood pressure to drop temporarily by 5-8 mmHg, even in healthy men.

“Organic nitrates are drugs that widen arteries by increasing their supply of nitric oxide; that’s how they open the partially blocked coronary arteries in patients with angina. But because nitrates and ED pills both act on nitric oxide, the drugs don’t mix; healthy volunteers given Viagra followed an hour later by nitroglycerin see their blood pressures drop by 25–51 mm Hg, a potentially dangerous amount.

“All experts agree that men who are taking nitrates cannot use ED pills; this includes all preparations of nitroglycerin (short-acting, under-the-tongue tablets or sprays), long-acting nitrates (isosorbide dinitrate or Isordil, Sorbitrate, and others, and isosorbide mononitrate, Imdur, ISMO, and others), nitroglycerin patches and pastes, and amyl nitrite or amyl nitrate (so-called poppers, which some men use for sexual stimulation).”

In IndieWire‘s “The 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time,” Bill Desowitz (aka BD) writes the following about Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals (’66):

“Before The Wild Bunch, there was Brooks’ marvelous ode to friendship, loyalty, and disillusionment: A prestigious film that earned two Oscar nominations for Brooks (director and adapted script) and cinematographer Conrad Hall. While it lacked the stylistic bravado and fatalistic doom of the legendary Sam Peckinpah Western, Brooks’ crack at the genre was action-packed (with a sequence aboard a fast-moving train) and philosophically insightful (with lots of sarcastic quips).

“Oil baron Ralph Bellamy hires four soldiers of fortune to rescue his kidnapped wife (Claudia Cardinale) from revolutionary leader-turned-bandit Jack Palance: Planner Lee Marvin, dynamite handler Burt Lancaster, wrangler Robert Ryan, and archer Woody Strode. Turns out Marvin and Lancaster were friends with Palance, and, sure enough, nothing is what it seems. Filmed mostly on location in Death Valley and near Lake Mead in Nevada, the 87-day shoot required lots of efficient planning and day-for-night shooting by Hall and his crew.”

How the hell does “a marvelous ode to friendship, loyalty, and disillusionment” end up in 97th place on a list of 100 great westerns? Oh, and Palance’s Jesus Razq is not a “revolutionary leader-turned-bandit” — he’s a scrappy guerilla fighter. Taking what he and his small army need to survive, but no banditry at all.

A few days I called The Professionals one of three best films of 1966:

Four years ago I posted HE’s list of the 22 greatest westerns, to wit:

…to the point that I’ve memorized most of them.

Maher: “When the French cooked Joan of Arc, she was still pink in the middle.”