The night before last I was hook, line and sinkered by Peter Weir‘s The Last Wave (’77), which I’d found on the Criterion Channel. The last viewing was in January ’79, which is when it opened stateside. I remember calling a radio talk show that month from my Sullivan Street apartment and praising The Last Wave as “a thinking man’s disaster film.” Which it is.

It’s about an Australian tax attorney (Richard Chamberlain) engaged to defend four tribal Aboroginal males (one of them played by Walkabout‘s David Gulpilil) of a strange murder that didn’t involve weapons of any kind. The victim (another Aboriginal male) may have drowned, but another explanation is that he may have been spooked or hexed to death.

But the film isn’t about the charges as much as a sense of approaching catastrophic doom on a Biblical scale, and how the defendants seem to be much more in touch with the hums and portents of nature and how Chamberlain, who’s been “seeing” apocalyptic visions of floods and frog plagues, seems to understand this more and more as the film moves on.

It’s also about how Australia’s professional-class white-man culture is not only oblivious to what may be coming, but is perhaps the cause of it on some level.

In short, The Last Wave was one of the first “black man pure-of-spirit vs. white man corroded and evil” metaphor dramas. It’s very subtle and quiet for the most part, but at the same time quite spooky.

Reports about two encouraging tests for a potential coronavirus vaccine surfaced this week. A “prototype vaccine [that] has protected monkeys from the virus” was reported yesterday (Wednesday, 5.20) in the N.Y. Times. Two days earlier (Monday, 5.18) another Times story reported that an experimental coronavirus vaccine administered by Moderna Therapeutics has shown promising early results with “a strong immune response” in “eight healthy volunteers.”

Months of expanded testing will follow, of course, but suddenly there seems to be a half-decent chance of an effective vaccine being ready for distribution by sometime early next year.

Safety is obviously an essential concern in the development of any such remedy, but what that really means is a fear of lawsuits if such a vaccine were to theoretically produce worrisome results among the most sickly portion of the population.

Wouldn’t it be great if the FDA could approve a coronavirus vaccine that would be safe for 90% or 95% of the population, but which the chronically frail and vulnerable would be advised to avoid? The above stories indicate that this kind of vaccine has probably been formulated. Unfortunately that’s not how the bureaucratic approval process works.

In a 5.21 N.Y. Times profile titled “Spike Lee and the Battlefield,” Reggie Ugwu offers fresh info about Lee’s forthcoming Da 5 Bloods (Netflix, 6.12).

The film is described as “an action-adventure tale about four black veterans who return to Vietnam more than 40 years after the war.” The 60ish veterans — Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis — are trying to (a) locate the remains of their former squad leader (Chadwick Boseman), and (b) uncover some buried loot in the same general vicinity.

From the horse’s mouth (i.e., Lee to Ugwu), the film is tagged as an “homage” to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Apocalypse Now.

Key quote: “The drama that unfolds — among the men, and between the group and their present-day Vietnamese rivals — is a modern parable about the enduring depravations of war and the false promises of American individualism.”

Ugwu reports that Lindo’s character, Paul, “is an avowed Trump supporter, [spending] much of the film in a red MAGA hat.”

Excerpt: Though Paul’s vocal defense of the president may come as a surprise to some, Lee has a long track record portraying complicated black characters without sanitizing them. Exit polls show that while the vast majority of black voters overall supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, 13 percent of black men supported Trump.

“’My mother taught me at an early age that black folks are not a monolithic group,’ Lee says. ‘In order to make the story dramatic, I said, ‘What would be the most extreme thing we could do with one of the characters?’”

“’It was a problem for me at first,’ comments Lindo, who said Trump was ‘anathema to everything that I believe in. I tried to talk Spike out of it: ‘Can we just make him a conservative?’ But I think there are some black people who are so deeply disgruntled, because of very real disenfranchisement, that they’re ready to believe someone like Trump might be able to help them.'”

The mind boggles, stalls, stumbles.

Actress Lori Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli, arrested 15 months ago for alleged complicity in the college entrance exam cheating scandal but having pled not guilty all along, have suddenly flipped. Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty…okay, we’ll pay the fines and do some time.

They were guilty all along, of course, but were somehow persuaded they’d get a better deal from prosecutors if they didn’t throw themselves upon the mercy of the court. It was always about strategy, negotiations, obstinacy vs. acceptance, etc.

Now the couple will plead guilty and accept relatively modest penalties. Laughlin will serve two months in jail, pay a $150K fine, perform 100 hours of community service and submit to two years of probation. Her husband, apparently the more aggressively contentious in the eyes of prosecutors, will serve five months in the joint, pay a $250K fine, serve 250 hours of community service and submit to two years of probation.

The first note was written by Cary Grant to Sophia Loren, sometime in ’57 or ’58. North by Northwest told us that the matchbook note was also written by Grant (in the person of “Roger O. Thornhill“) to Eva Marie Saint (aka “Eve Kendall“). I’m no handwriting expert but there are rough similarities between them. The Sophia note is obviously more elegant and flourishy and was almost certainly written on a desk or flat surface of some kind; the matchbook note was written on the fly. Opinions?

Earlier today I noticed some surging Twitter tributes for Edgar Wright‘s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which opened in August 2010. The nostalgia faucets were gushing all over the sidewalk. I was living in Brooklyn a decade ago, and one of my Scott Pilgrim recollections is that it prompted a brief suicide fantasy. God, that movie! And oh Lordy, the joy when the domestic gross topped out at $31 million ($47 million worldwide) after the film itself cost $85 million, not to mention the marketing.

An hour ago I re-read my 8.12.10 Scott Pilgrim review (“Pilgrim Reckoning“) and realized it was one of my better cranky pans of that era. So here it is, take it or leave:

Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) is obviously a nervy, fairly bright and moderately gifted director — seriously, no jive — and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, even though it seems to be putting out a kind of aesthetic nerve gas, is some kind of cool-ass, smarty-pants, richly stylized…uhm, waste of time?

It’s kind of nifty if you want to feel connected to a movie that under-30 moviegoers are apparently responding to. It’s empty and strained and regimented, but…you know, cool and funny and clever, heh-heh. It has wit and vigor and smart music, and it gradually makes you want to run outside and take an elevator to the top of a tall building and jump off.

Did I just say that? I mean that it’s a masterpiece of its kind. That sounds facile, doesn’t it? I think I might actually mean that Scott Pilgrim is a seminal and semi-vital thing to experience right now. My kids set me straight on this. Call me unstable or impressionable but I’ve also come to think that Michael Cera might be a fresh permutation of a new kind of messianic Movie God — a candy-assed Gary Cooper for the 21st Century.

No, seriously, it’s not too bad. I mean, you know…just kill me.

I was sustained, at times, by the meaning of the seven ex-boyfriends. They’re metaphors for the bad or unresolved stuff in Mary Elizabeth Winstead‘s life. If you’re going to really love and care for someone, you have to accept and try to deal with everything in their heads and their pasts, and not just the intoxicating easy stuff. Scott has to defeat these guys in the same way that any boyfriend or husband has to defeat or at least quell the disturbances in his girlfriend’s or wife’s head. That’s how I took it, at least.

I’m not doubting that Cera has been a Scott Pilgrim graphic novel fan for years, but the movie, I think, came out of his wanting to transform into a tougher, studlier guy in movies by becoming a kind of ninja warrior fighting the ex-boyfriends in a Matrix-y videogame way. I really don’t think it was anything more than that. Seriously.

“No offense, Michael, but the world thinks you’re a wuss,” Cera’s agent said one day on the phone. “They see you as a slender reed, a worthless piece of shit girlyman with a deer-in-the-headlights expression and a little peep-peep voice. Somehow we need to toughen you up, and having you fight a bunch of guys, even if it’s in a fantasy realm, is certainly one way to do that.”

I’m sorry to have taken my time with The Eddy, the eight-episode, Paris-based Netflix miniseries that began streaming on 5.8. I’m actually still taking my time as I’ve only seen the first two episodes, which were directed by Damien Chazelle, the hotshot helmer of La La Land, Whiplash and the (presumably) forthcoming Babylon. (Three other directors — Houda Benyamina, Laïla Marrakchi and Alan Poul — directed the remaining six episodes.) Chazelle also executive produces.

But even within the realm of episode #1 and #2, I was slow to get into it. Because The Eddy, by design, is slow to get into itself. It slips and slides and shuffles into its own rhythm and razzmatazz, adopting a pace and an attitude that feels casual, unhurried and catch-as-catch-can. Which is cool once you understand what The Eddy is up to.

Written or co-written by Jack Thorne, it’s about a Belleville/Oberkampf jazz club owner named Elliott (Andre Holland) and the friends, fragments, tangents and pressures of his life — debts, uncertainties, his daughter (Amandla Sternberg), the resident jazz band’s diva-like singer (Joanna Kulig), his business partner (Tahar Rahim), bad guys, business permits, sudden tragedy, etc.

Toward the end of episode #2 it finally hit me. In a certain unannounced sense The Eddy is an atmospheric musical — a drama of friends and families in Paris that’s punctuated with spirit-lifting jazz sequences. (The original music was composed by by Glen Ballard and Randy Kerber.) It’s a film that says over and over that “life can be hard and cruel, but music will save your soul.”

Which also means, not incidentally, that the French-speaking Chazelle is recharging his on-screen love affair with jazz, which began with Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (’09) and continued with Whiplash (’14) and La La Land (’16).

This is how it feels to me. This plus a tangled mystery about finding the killers of Farid, the business partner. Plus the constant savorings of the Oberkampf and Belleville districts.

Boilerplate: Elliott, a semi-retired jazz pianist, and Farid run The Eddy together — Elliott handling talent, Farid doing the books. Things begin with Elliott’s daughter Julie (Sternberg) hitting town. The club is financially struggling (what else?). Elliott is trying to arrange a record deal for the house band. The singer is the moody, no-day-at-the-beach Maya (Kulig) with whom Elliott has been romantically entwined, and the pianist is Kerber.

The main complication is Farid’s murder, along with the fact that Paris detectives think Elliott might be the culprit.

Apparently each episode focuses on a different character — Elliott, Maja, Julie, etc. — with the storylines intersecting.

To repeat myself, the main thing in The Eddy is the music. It’s completely worth it for this element alone. It made me feel like I’d really been somewhere.

Alfred Hitchcock made a brilliant decision when he and Vertigo screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor were plotting the opening scene. After the beat cop falls to his death, it appears that Detective Scotty Ferguson (James Stewart) hasn’t a chance. Hanging from a flimsy rain gutter, no way to pull himself up…forget it. Beyond that, what are the odds Ferguson could continue to hold on until a police rescue team shows up, which could take at least five or ten minutes if not longer?

And so the rascally Hitchcock solves the problem by doing a quick fade-to-black. And in the next scene Ferguson is alive and well and hanging out in Barbara Bel Geddes‘ apartment. What?

Before this no director had ever left a movie star in this kind of jeopardy without depicting or promising a rescue of some kind. Hitchcock decided to ignore the rules by leaving Ferguson (and, in a sense, the audience) hanging from that gutter for the rest of the film. No other name-brand director at the time would’ve attempted such a strategy, and as far as I can recall no director had done anything like this since. Am I wrong?

I hate this kind of credibility-defying, pushed-to-the-limit thrill sequence. Harold Lloyd used to make comedies out of such situations, but Vertical Limit director Martin Campbell and screenwriters Robert King and Terry Hayes played it straight. The apparent idea was to out-do a similar opening sequence in Renny Harlin‘s Cliffhanger (’92), but it’s one CG bullshit stunt after another.

Boilerplate: Tragedy strikes a family of three — Peter Garrett (Chris O’Donnell), his sister Annie (Robin Tunney) and their father, Royce (Stuart Wilson) — as they scale a sheer cliff in Monument Valley. After two falling amateurs leave the family dangling, Royce forces Peter to cut him loose to save Peter and Annie from a horrible, howling, skull-shattering demise.

I have to admit that when the climbers whose carelessness started all the trouble…when these two fall to their deaths, it’s hard not to raise your fist and shout “yes!”

Vertical Limit opened 19 and 1/2 years ago. Call it 20. Doesn’t seem that long, does it?

O’Donnell, 29 or 30 during filming, was still recovering (at least in his own head) from Batman and Robin (’97). Even with the financial success of Vertical Limit ($215M worldwide), O’Donnell took a four-year hiatus. He returned to features in Bill Condon‘s Kinsey (’04) but was pretty much a TV guy after that. He’s now in his late 40s and starring in NCIS: Los Angeles.

Tunney was enjoying a career spurt at the time. She’s now 47, hanging in there, playing poker.

How many of us have dreamt of finding a huge amount of cash in a bag or suitcase somewhere? With no papers or ID or anything to indicate whose money it is…no clues at all.

Please read this short N.Y. Post story and tell me if you agree with what was done when roughly $1 million in untracable bills (and with no security cam footage being taken) was found on a rural road in Virginia’s Caroline County.

The same approximate thing happened to me when I driving for Checker Cab in Boston in ’72 or thereabouts. Somewhere near Mass General a young woman who’d flagged me down climbed into the back and excitedly announced that a wallet was lying on the floor. With cash in it. It came to a little over $400 ** but with no cards, photos or identifying paper of any kind. Not a single scrap of vague information to go by. So we split it 50/50, and it was glorious because there was no basis for feeling guilty. Manna from heaven.

** In ’72 $400 was worth roughly $2,453.48 in 2020 dollars.

Former Today host Matt Lauer has posted a Mediaite essay about Ronan Farrow‘s passing along a rape allegation in “Catch and Kill” and more particularly about Ben Smith’s anti-Farrow N.Y. Times piece (5.17), “Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?”

Lauer (whom I’m not especially comfortable quoting) has posted his essay for roughly the same reason that Robert Kennedy announced his Presidential candidacy in the wake of Eugene McCarthy‘s surprise showing in the ’68 New Hampshire primary — because perceptions have changed and right now the winds are relatively calm from Lauer’s POV.

Lauer isn’t denying he was a manipulative, predatory hound during his Today heyday, but he does state the following: “On October 9, 2019, I was falsely accused of rape. The allegation came from Brooke Nevils, the same woman whose complaint resulted in my termination at NBC. It was made public as part of the promotional rollout for a new book by Ronan Farrow. This accusation was one of the worst and most consequential things to ever happen in my life. It was devastating for my family, and outrageously it was used to sell books.

“At no time did Brooke Nevils ever use the words ‘assault’ or ‘rape’ in regards to any accusation against me while filing her complaint with NBC in November of 2017.”

When a baseball game is delayed due to weather, the implication is that ticket holders should hang around as the wait will be relatively brief. But if a game is postponed, it means collect your stuff and head for the parking lot. Delay and postpone are technically synonymous, but the former means a presumably brief stall while a postponement sounds like someone has either thrown in the towel or is seriously thinking about it. Hence the title of this post.

HE to Academy: In this, the spring of our solitude and COVID discontent, the coming Oscar season is something we really need to celebrate and put our hearts into, now more than any other time in the Academy’s 93-year history. Especially with things starting to open up a bit and with the recent ruling that streaming-only films are Oscar-eligible.

We all need to adapt and stand up and gather round and support each other as best we can under the circumstances. It is our absolute responsibility to the industry and to ourselves to celebrate and champion and promote the hell out of the best movies being released by whatever means, now and forever, under any circumstances but especially in this, our time of industry need.

I am saying this because of a completely unacceptable Variety story by Marc Malkin that claims that “the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is considering postponing the big night, according to multiple sources.”

Postponed until when? Delaying for a couple months, maybe, but otherwise no, no, no, no…NO! That is totally out of the question.

Malkin: “The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, say definitive plans are far from being concrete at this juncture. The telecast is currently set for Feb. 28, 2021, on ABC.

“’It’s likely they’ll be postponed,’ one of the sources familiar with the matter told Variety.”

Malkin: “However, that person cautioned that the details, including potential new dates, have not been fully discussed or formally proposed yet. Another source says the date is currently unchanged at ABC.

“When new temporary rule changes for Oscar eligibility were announced in April because of COVID-19, Academy president David Rubin told Variety it was too soon to know how the 2021 Oscar telecast could change in the wake of the pandemic.

“’It’s impossible to know what the landscape will be,’ he said. ‘We know we want to celebrate film but we do not know exactly what form it will take.'”

HE to Academy: If and when COVID seriously inferferes until, say, mid-fall, one option would be to extend the 2020 Academy year until 1.31.21 or even 2.28.21. And then hold the Oscars in April, like they used to do in the early ’60s. Just this one year.

Malkin: “It’s unclear if postponing the Oscars will also mean that the Academy will allow films released after the year-end deadline to qualify for the 2021 Oscars.”