It’s conceivable that The Beast, a longtime germophobe, wasn’t infected with COVD-19 after coming into contact last weekend with President Jair Bolsonaro’s communications chief Fabio Wajngarten, who has since tested positive. If Trump or Pence are infected they’ll never admit it, of course. But as I said two or three days ago, if the Gods have a dark sense of humor…

Restored, 60 frames-per-second HD, color tinting, sound-augmented. Posted ten days ago. This kind of simulated realism of times and cultures past is a relatively new thing, and quite the unfettered window. Imagine Owen Wilson‘s Midnight in Paris character sampling 1920s Paris in this fashion, with most of the ancient artifacts eliminated. As I mentioned the other day, I’d really like a chance to re-savor classic Hollywood films at 60 fps. I know the purist argument against this, but where would be the harm to simply make 60 fps versions available?

Last month West Side Story lyricist Stephen Sondheim told 60 Minutes that he’s never liked “I Feel Pretty,” and is therefore totally fine with the number being dropped from the current Broadway show.

“I Feel Pretty” is probably my least favorite West Side Story song — to me it feels overly jubilant and forced — but I’ve never minded Sondheim’s engagingly witty lyrics. This is precisely what Sondheim dislikes. Decades back he told Diane Sawyer that Maria, a Puerto Rican “street” girl, would never say “it’s alarming how charming I feel.” Sondheim wrote this lyric, he said, because he was young and showing off. Maria, he maintained, “should speak in street poetry, not in literary poetry.”

There is obviously sound artistic reasoning behind this viewpoint. It’s dishonest and phony for a young, minimally educated Puerto Rican immigrant to express herself in the lyrical manner of 27 year-old Sondheim, a sharp, well-educated Jewish sophisticate who grew up in the San Remo. I get it.

But I’ve never minded the affectation because I vastly prefer to live and reflect in the mind of someone like Sondheim, because he’s clever and urbane knows a thing or two. There’s an artful way to write dialogue (and lyrics) for under-educated characters with somewhat limited vocabularies, and it’s certainly more authentic to do this. But I’ve never minded and in fact have always enjoyed the fantasy notion that characters who don’t know much could somehow speak from a wise and cultured perspective.

What I’m saying, I guess, is that given a choice between hanging with (a) an unusually perceptive and eloquent character who doesn’t talk like he/she would in real life and (b) an inarticulate, primitive-minded boob, I prefer the former. Happily. Because I’ve never liked being stuck in the minds of people who don’t have much of a clue.

In On The Waterfront Marlon Brando‘s Terry Malloy is a rugged, simple-minded fellow with a less-than-worldly of things, but screenwriter Budd Schulberg had him speak with a certain abbreviated, side-angle, world-weary eloquence that really works in certain scenes. When Malloy begs Eva Marie Saint‘s Edie not to leave the saloon in which they’ve been sitting and talking, he says “please don’t…I got my whole life to drink.” That’s an Iceman Cometh line, and hardly one that a lunky longshoreman and an ex-boxer would cough up. But Schulberg would, and it’s beautiful moment despite the unreality.

COVID-19 is believed to have originated with dead bat (or some other exotic animal) cuisine in an open-air market in Wuhan, China.

The MEV-1 virus in Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion also originated in China, from a virulent bat. The bat drops an infectious piece of banana into a pig sty; the banana slice is then eaten by a pig. Newly infected, the pig is taken to market and slaughtered, and a chef who’s prepared the diseased pig for gourmet customers shakes hands with Gwyneth Paltrow, the first internationally travelling person to be infected) in a high-end restaurant in China. Remember? It’s a flashback at the very end.

Around 6:20 pm I moseyed over to a nearby picnic-type area with food trucks, shaded by pine trees and decorated with strings of little white lights. Families, couples. I ordered a pasta dish and settled into the dusky mellow. The air was nice and warm. After the pasta I felt like napping. I stretched out on a bench. When I awoke 30 or 40 minutes later it was dark out. I don’t think I’ve ever done this in Los Angeles.

It’s the end of the world! Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have tested positive for COVID-19. Why, I’m asking myself, would this horrible dead-bat Chinese virus pick on the ultimate Mr. Nice Guy? How come Sean Hannity doesn’t have it? Why not Trump? We all need to watch Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. Or, better yet, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Another Disney CG fakeathon about the natural wild elements — fake rapids, fake tigers, fake-sounding dialogue. Boilerplate: “Set during the early 20th century” — i.e., around the time of the original African Queen, during the early years of World War I — “a riverboat captain named Frank takes a scientist and her brother on a mission into a jungle to find the Tree of Life which is believed to possess healing powers. All the while, the trio must fight against dangerous wild animals and a competing German expedition.”

I for one love that Peter Jackson is out of narrative filmmaking these days and focusing on documentaries. He’s done an excellent job in this realm, and I’m definitely looking forward to the Beatles Get Back doc in September. I’ve been off the narrative Jackson boat for so long it was looking like up to me — The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the overlong King Kong, The Lovely Bones, the three Hobbit films. They all felt like chores — each one an oppressive sit in its own way.

All Trump cares about is the stock market, and right now he’s obviously freaking about the big COV-19 downturn. If the economy tanks he’s a dead man and knows it. That’s why he’s going on the air tonight. To try and restore his electoral prospects.

CNN's Jim Acosta: "What do you say to Americans who are concerned that you're not taking this seriously enough and that some of your statements don't match what your health experts are saying?"

President Trump: "That’s CNN. Fake news." pic.twitter.com/c9T3ZhRIcP

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 11, 2020

“Last night was obviously not a good night for our campaign, from a delegate point of view. We lost in the biggest state up for grabs yesterday, the state of Michigan. We lost in Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho. On the other hand we won in North Dakota and we lead in the latest vote count in the state of Washington — the second largest state contested yesterday.

“We are, however, winning the generational debate, and I say to the Democratic establishment that in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country, and you must speak to the issues [that] concern them. You cannot simply be satisfied from winning the votes of people who are older.

“While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability. I cannot tell you how many people our campaign has spoken to, who have said and I quote, ‘I like what your campaign stands for, and I agree with that also, but I’m gonna vote for Joe Biden, because I think he’s the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump.

“Tragically we have a President today who is a pathological liar, and who is running a corrupt administration. He clearly does not understand the Constitution of the United States and think that he is a President who is above the law. In my view he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot. He must be defeated [next November] and I will do everything in my power to make that happen.”

My 3.9 flight to Austin meant missing the Los Angeles all-media for The Hunt. I’ll post a review of this Craig Zobel-Damon Lindelof collaboration after catching it locally tomorrow night. Here’s a response from veteran movie guy and L.A. Times contributor Lewis Beale:

“I just saw this supposedly controversial movie. The main costars are Betty Gilpin and Hillary Swank. It’s basically a straight-to-video exploitation picture — very bloody — given a thin veneer of relevance with some political content. Featuring a bunch of TV actors and other folk — Sturgill Simpson as a rapper! — who obviously did it for the paycheck (a small one, since most are onscreen for only a short period before they’re knocked off).

“It’s about how a bad joke on the part of some wokester liberals about killing Trumpsters metastasizes into a ‘thing’ with deplorable conspiracy types. This forces the liberals to act on their joke and hunt the rightwingers a la The Most Dangerous Game.

“I found it watchable but nothing more, aided in no small part by a 90-minute running time. It portrays both sides of the political equation as jerks, but any controversial content is basically non-existent. The reviews will most likely be brutal.”

From Peter Debruge’s Variety review:

“A gory, hard-R exploitation movie masquerading as political satire, one that takes unseemly delight in dispatching yahoos on both ends of the spectrum via shotgun, crossbow, hand grenade and all manner of hastily improvised weapons.

“The words ‘trigger warning’ may not have been invented with The Hunt in mind, but they’ve seldom seemed more apt in describing a film that stops just shy of fomenting civil war as it pits Left against Right, Blue (bloods) against Red (necks) in a bloody battle royale that reduces both sides to ridiculous caricatures.

“As the umpteenth variation on Richard Connell’s ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ The Hunt is [nonetheless] one of the most effective executions yet (it surpasses the Cannes-laureled Bacarau, but drags along too much baggage to best last year’s Ready or Not).

“Regardless of one’s personal political affiliations, it’s hard not to root for the victims here, and one quickly distinguishes herself from the pack of Deliverance-style caricatures: Crystal May Creesy (Gilpin), a MacGyver-skilled veteran who served in Afghanistan and whose distrust of any and everyone makes her uniquely suited for a final showdown with Athena.