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I bailed on HBO’s Perry Mason five or six weeks ago. Right after episode #2. Too icky, muddy, smokey, gunky and grimly desaturated. Plus Matthew Rhys, the 45 year-old actor with the lined, Elmer’s Glue-All, beard-stubbled complexion, is too long of tooth to be playing a World War I veteran in 1931, particularly one who’s still trying to come into his own as an attorney.

“No way,” I told myself. “I will not sit through eight episodes of this shit. Life is too short.”

Perry Mason ended last night, and the general complaint is that it didn’t pay off, much less deliver a socko finish.

Rolling Stone‘s Alan Sepinwall: “If there’s a fictional character whose most famous gimmick, by far, is that he puts the real criminal on the witness stand and talks them into confessing, and you decide to not have him do that in your version? Well, you’d better come up with something really spectacular to do in its place. And the HBO series’ first-season finale utterly failed to do that.

The ending, says Sepinwall, is “cynical and extremely underwhelming. Previous Mason stories certainly leaned toward wish-fulfillment fantasy — tales of a man so noble, and so smart, that he needs only his wits to talk killers and other criminals into going against their own self-interest and admitting their guilt — but this feels like edgelord-style revisionism.

“It’s as if the HBO show’s writers couldn’t imagine Erle Stanley Gardner’s pure-hearted and persuasive creation existing in a more “realistic” world, so they had their guy cheat. But in not having Andrew Howard‘s Joe Ennis character take the stand at all — not even for Perry to try and fail to get him to confess — there’s no real drama at all to the season’s climax. It feels like both Mason and the show simply run out of ideas by the end, and just hope things will work out anyway.”

Peacock, the NBCUniversal streamer that launched on 7.15, has ordered 11 episodes of a weekly late-night Larry Wilmore show. Yes, once a week. Like Real Time with Bill Maher. Maher is an established brand but once-weekly isn’t how things work now. Way back in the Mr. Showbiz and Reel.com days (’98 to ’04) Hollywood Elsewhere was a twice-weekly column. I shifted into the daily bloggy-blog format in April ’06. Imagine a columnist launching a new column these days that refreshes twice weekly….nope! That said, it’s good to have Wilmore back in the saddle.

Tatiana had never seen Contagion so we watched it last night — my fourth or fifth time, but God, such a brilliant film, and so far ahead of the curve it wasn’t funny. It did fairly well financially, but it failed to catch on as a Best Picture contender. It should have. It didn’t predict the future — it knew it cold. This message appears at the very end of the credits:

“Contagion Reboot,” posted on 11.19.11: Last night Warner Bros. publicity made a spirited, gung-ho attempt to re-launch Steven Soderbergh‘s Contagion among award-season cognoscenti and to put it into “the conversation,” so to speak. They invited journos like myself to a pleasant, talent-populated soiree (Soderbergh, Benicio del Toro, Garry Shandling, Contagion producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, screenwriter Scott Burns) inside the Clarity lobby-rotunda, and followed this with a screening of the film.

The pitch was basically “this is an undeniably gripping, highly intelligent, superbly-made socio-political-scientific thriller“” — no argument from me — “so why isn’t it being mentioned a bit more in terms of awards chatter, best-of-the-year lists and so on?”

The best response I can think of is that Contagion is going on a best-of-2011 list…mine, I mean. My second response is that with Contagion having made about $75 million domestic, what’s the beef? And my third response is that it’s about a subject — social devastation caused by a pathogen — that unsettles people on a very deep level, perhaps more than they know going in, and so I’m guessing they’d rather just leave it at that and not revisit the Contagion reality any more, thanks.

I mean, I was scratching my face all through last night’s screening, and half-wondering if there was something wrong with me because of this, absurd as that sounds. I don’t mind seeing Gwynneth Paltrow die horribly, but I don’t want to go the same way…please.

On top of which Warner Bros. decided to open Contagion in early September. This conveyed to all that (a) they were going for the money (and a $75 million haul is nothing to sneeze at) and (b) the studio felt it was good enough to release in a quality-friendly portion of the calendar but that it wasn’t necessarily an awards contender or they would have opened it in late October or November or December.

There are three other factors: (1) Contagion is an intellectual-technical chiller (as opposed to an emotional drama of some kind) and is therefore regarded as a kind of “genre” film, and that kind of distinction rarely leads to awards chatter; (2) To some extent Contagion is, let’s face it, emotionally dry or reserved, like many of Soderbergh’s films (a quality I’ve always rather enjoyed and in fact praised); and (3) It doesn’t contain one of those thematic echoes or undercurrents that Oscar-season films tend to have, nor does it deliver some basic recognizable truth.

Yes, it says that “it’s entirely possible that millions of us might suddenly die some day due to a runaway virus” but that’s not a basic recognizable truth. If it happens, that would be an anecdotal fact.

Here’s my early September review. I love Contagion. It’s going on my best-of-the-year list, no question. And I especially loved the performances by Jennifer Ehle (her bedside scene with her ailing dad is one of the few genuinely affecting emotional moments), Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould and Laurence Fisburne. And I can’t wait for the Bluray, and I wish it would be longer when it comes out in that format.

The forthcoming Hulu series Woke is about a mild-mannered African American cartoonist (“keep it light”) who becomes ultra-attuned to systemic racism after he gets beaten up by cops. Everywhere he looks and everything he hears tells him that the world is not what it seems and that “the fix is in” against people of color. Or something close to that.

This is a righteous concept, but it’s a bit out-of-time to call the series Woke because black-dude woke was a thing about…what, eight or ten years ago? We all know that since Trump’s election in late ’16 “woke” stopped alluding to hip-black-guy consciousness and became a “white progressives committed to destroying the careers of non-wokesters in order to stop the twin scourges of racism and sexism” thang…Khmer Rouge, cancel culture, Left Twitter, resurrecting the legacy of Maximilien Robespierre, the New McCarthyism in academia, etc.

So I’m sorry but Woke is out of step with the times. I’m not saying that hip African Americans embracing a “woke” perspective isn’t valid. Obviously it is. I’m saying that the term “woke” began to be co-opted by the white lunatic progressive left four years ago.

Woke arrives on Hulu on September 9. Lamorne Morris plays Keef, the lead character. Sasheer Zamata, Blake Anderson and T. Murph costar.

I had some lenses left over and the only frames that fit them are made by RayBan. I wanted bright blue frames but they aren’t available, the eyeglass guy said. All he had were lavender or greenish-yellow frames, so I went with lavender. I’ve been wearing semi-flashy socks and eyeglasses for a long time now so no biggie.

Willamette Week‘s Matthew Singer is reporting that an 8.6 film festival screening of Kindergarten Cop in Portland has been deep-sixed over concerns that the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger crime comedy is…well, I’m not entirely sure.

The cancellation has something to do with the Ivan Reitman film being (a) too friendly to cops, which is seen as a bad thing in today’s Portland protest climate, and because (b) cops are seen as negative influencers upon kids of color in schools, especially in terms of the dreaded “school-to-prison pipeline.”

The festival is called Drive-In at Zidell Yards, and it’ll run between 8.6 and 9.27. It’s being managed by the Northwest Film Center in association with the Portland Art Museum.

The only thing I remember about Kindergarten Cop is that little kid asking Schwarzenegger’s Detective John Kimble, who’s pretending to be a teacher in order to get the lowdown on some stolen drug money, if he might be suffering from a tumor, and Arnold replying “it’s not a tumor!”

The Universal release was filmed 30-plus years ago in Astoria, Oregon. NWFC had planned to show the film “for its importance in Oregon filmmaking history,” according to a release. But Cop was yanked after Portland author Lois Leveen (“The Secrets of Mary Bowser“, a novel about a female slave who becomes a Union spy) trashed the film on Twitter, claiming that it conveys a damaging message regarding children of color and “over-policing.” Or something like that.

“National reckoning on overpolicing is a weird time to revive Kindergarten Cop,” Leveen tweeted. “There’s nothing entertaining about the presence of police in schools, which feeds the ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline in which African American, Latinx and other kids of color are criminalized rather than educated. Five- and six-year-olds are handcuffed and hauled off to jail routinely in this country. And this criminalizing of children increases dramatically when cops are assigned to work in schools.”

“It’s true Kindergarten Cop is only a movie. So are Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind, but we recognize [that] films like those are not ‘good family fun’. They are relics of how pop culture feeds racist assumptions. Because despite what the movie shows, in reality schools don’t transform cops. Cops transform schools, and in an extremely detrimental way.”

In my heart of hearts I’d like to impose a Mississippi Burning payback fantasy upon Orange Plague, Mitch McConnell, Stephen Mnuchin and Senate Republicans who won’t budge on restoring the $600-per-week pandemic benefits. An angry crowd breaking through locked doors and beating these loathsome pricks…not killing them**, but delivering severe pain, boot-kicks, gashes, bruises, swellings, black eyes, blood trickling, etc.

Just a fantasy but if it actually happened? I wouldn’t condemn it. No one would. Some of us would cheer.

From Paul Krugman‘s “The Unemployed Stare Into the Abyss — Republicans Look Away,” an 8.3 N.Y. Times column about how “the cruelty and ignorance of Trump and his allies are creating another gratuitous disaster“:

“Around 1000 Americans are dying from COVID-19 each day…ten times the rate in the European Union. Thanks to our failure to control the pandemic, we’re still suffering from Great Depression levels of unemployment. [And] yet enhanced unemployment benefits, a crucial lifeline for tens of millions of Americans, have expired. And negotiations over how — or even whether — to restore aid appear to be stalled.”

“House Democrats passed a bill specifically designed to deal with this mess two and a half months ago. The Trump Administration and Senate Republicans had plenty of time to propose an alternative. Instead, they didn’t even focus on the issue until days before the benefits ended. And even now, they’re refusing to offer anything that might significantly alleviate workers’ plight. This is an astonishing failure of governance — right up there with the mishandling of the pandemic itself.”

“The policy proposals being floated by White House aides and advisers are almost surreal in their disconnect from reality. Cutting payroll taxes on workers who can’t work? Letting businesspeople deduct the full cost of three-martini lunches they can’t eat? Above all, Republicans seem obsessed with the idea that unemployment benefits are making workers lazy and unwilling to accept jobs.”

** “After all we’re not murderers, despite what this undertaker thinks.” — Vito Corleone, The Godfather.

JFK would have had to present himself as a tough Cold Warrior in the ‘64 presidential race against Barry Goldwater. And after winning he’d find it difficult to disengage from Vietnam with the hawks breathing down his neck. He might withdraw or he might not, but if he began a phased withdrawal he’d have to take the blame for America demonstrating weakness and lack of resolve in standing up to Asian communism.

He’d eventually push through the Civil Rights bill and perhaps also the Voting Rights Act, but would he be as aggressive as Johnson was in establishing various liberal domestic programs? Dylan, the Beatles and the British Invasion, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, the New Left and the counter-culture would happen either way, and all this would manifest in a need for pitched conflict with a senior establishment figure, and who better than the President?

It wouldn’t be easy or pretty or without conflict. Then again strange detours might’ve happened. JFK might have quietly dropped a tab of mellow Orange Wedge (provided by Timothy Leary) during June of ’67 while listening to “Sgt. Pepper” on headphones. But 14 months later he’d have to grapple with Mayor Richard Daley‘s Chicago police riot during the Democratic National Convention in August ’68. And then — horror of horrors — his old nemesis Richard Nixon would return to run against JFK’s Democratic successor, his brother Bobby, only for the dynasty to collapse following the malice of Sirhan Sirhan.

The worst part is that JFK’s second and final term would end in January ‘69, right in the thick of late ‘60s chaos and upheaval and a spreading miasma of social disorder (SDS, Weathermen, tear gas in Harvard Square) and with Nixon victorious. What a terrible finale for an administration that began on 1.20.61 with so much hope and vigor.

Just as Abraham Lincoln’s murder saved him from the fierce conflicts of the Reconstruction era that led to Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, JFK’s death in Dallas saved him from the chaos and conflict of the mid to late ‘60s. [Originally posted this morning as a comment under “Obviously Time Travel“.]

Yesterday (8.2) I was slammed by some extra-sensitive readers for writing the following in my “Bad Ellen Vibes” piece:

“My attitude is that if you’re unlucky enough to be working for a difficult, bullying boss or supervisor, or one who could certainly stand to improve his/her people skills…if you’re in a bad situation like this you need to suck it in, man up and accept this unfortunate energy as the price of working on a popular TV show. You’re there to get paid and forge relationships and move ahead with your career. Hang tough, keep your head down, do the job, and land a better job when the opportunity arises.”

Today a “Page Six” story by Eileen Reslen quoted a 3.20.20 tweet by TV writer Ben Simeon, to wit:

“A new staff member was told ‘every day [Ellen DeGeneres] picks someone different to really hate. It’s not your fault, just suck it up for the day and she’ll be mean to someone else the next day. They didn’t believe it but it ended up being entirely true.”

I really do think that the HE comment-threaders who put me down yesterday need to apologize, preferably sooner rather than later.

I respect stunt professionals, and certainly admire their agility and bravery. But the only stunts that really make the grade are those that don’t look like stunts. The ones that look sloppy and accidental, I mean. The more skillfully “performed” a stunt is, the less believable it is. The stunts in Paul Feig‘s 2016 Ghostbusters exemplify this “fine but who cares?” aesthetic.

And forget car stunts. I know it’s extremely difficult to roll a car or drive it off a seaside pier or whatever, but flashy car stunts have been happening in action films for over a half-century now. The birth of serious stunt driving began 52 years ago with Peter Yates‘ Bullitt. I can’t even watch them any more.

What made Steve McQueen‘s Bullitt car chase through the hills of San Francisco seem so exciting and realistic? The sounds, for one thing — the roar of the muffler-free engines, the crashing sounds when the car chasses slammed into pavement after leaping through the air. Not to mention those metal hubcaps that kept flying off the tires of the bad-guy car. There must have been similar car chases in action films in which the hubcaps went flying, but I can’t recall a single one.

Respect and admiration for British director Alan Parker, who’s left us at age 76.

A graduate of the British TV commercial industry, Parker was a first-rate shooter and cutter — he knew how to make films look sharp and polished and feel just right. And he definitely understood the power of great music wedded to handsome, well-cut visuals (Evita, The Commitments, Fame, Pink Floyd — The Wall, Bugsy Malone) And he knew how to create atmospheres of dread and doom (Angel Heart, Mississippi Burning, Midnight Express).

The rap against Parker for many years was that he was a slick salesman who didn’t have much to say. That consensus began to change in the late ’80s when he got his act into gear and crafted four fairly mesmerizing knockouts over the span of eight years. Those films were, in order of excellence, (a) Evita (’96), (b) Angel Heart (’87), (c) Mississippi Burning (’88) and (d) The Commitments (’91).

Parker also made some films that I couldn’t stand — Shoot The Moon, Birdy, Come See The Paradise, Angela’s Ashes. The Life of David Gale. But let’s focus on the good stuff.

Posted on 2.28.18: Is Ava DuVernay‘s Selma a more accurate history lesson than the one provided by Mississippi Burning? Is it more organically truthful? Did it deliver an identity current that translated into a better-than-decent domestic haul of $52,076,908?

Yes to all, but Mississippi Burning is a better film despite all the bullshit it sold. (And let’s not forget that Selma sold some bullshit of its own.)

The key thing is that Mississippi Burning delivered an emotionally satisfying payoff that audiences bought into, and which resulted in earnings of $86 million if you adjust for inflation.

Here’s how I put it on 11.29.14: “Alan Parker‘s Mississippi Burning gets an awful lot wrong about the way things really were in Mississippi in 1964. African Americans did a lot more than sing hymns and watch their churches burn, and we all know that Parker and screenwriter Chris Gerolmo mangled the history of the FBI’s hunt for the killers of three Civil Rights workers (Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman).

“Their coup de grace was having a pair of FBI agents, played by Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, turn into Dirty Harry-style vigilantes in Act Three, bringing the guilty yokels to justice by playing rough games and faking them out. Pauline Kael called it ‘a Charles Bronson movie.’

“And I’ve never cared that much. Very few have, I suspect. I’ve always had a soft spot for Mississippi Burning for various reasons — the polish of it, Hackman’s performance (particularly his scenes with Frances McDormand), Peter Biziou‘s cinematography, Gerry Hambling‘s editing, the percussive rumble of Trevor Jones‘ music, da coolness. But especially Parker and Gerolmo’s bullshit plot. Because the lies they came up with are emotionally comfortable, and that’s always the bottom line.

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