The initial Eternals teaser used Skeeter Davis‘s “The End of the World” as a background track, and now, in the new trailer, they’ve got Lia McHugh‘s “Sprite” saying “this is what the end of the world looks like…at least we have front-row seats.”

I’m not adopting the posture of some drooling, wild-eyed fanatic by claiming that The Eternals and the whole mythological Marvel branding machine of the last 13 years is the end of the moviegoing world as many of us have known it, but the Marvel virus has absolutely infected the realm. It is box-office manna but otherwise cancer…chemical sugar highs for pigs at the trough.

HE to all human beings and to God Herself: As payback and cure and an act of salvation it is the solemn responsibility of each and every serious film lover to band together and do what we can to turn The Eternals into another box-office shortfaller…to make it into another The Suicide Squad…to bring about a less impressive performance than Black Widow. Let’s all band together and punch a hole in the balloon…let’s send a message to Kevin Feige (who came from the same leafy New Jersey town that I went to school and suffered in for so many years)…”nothing lasts forever, friendo!”

This Al Jazeera video of Taliban cadres inside the now-abandoned Kabul presidential quarters reminds me of the 1.6 insurrectionists roaming around inside the U.S. Capitol building (or lounging around inside Nancy Pelosi‘s office) on 1.6.21. They sure do love their beards and turbans and automatic weapons, don’t they? Keep those fingers on the triggers, guys!

Bennett Miller‘s Capote cost $7 million to make, and earned just shy of $50 million worldwide. I’d forgotten that. It made $28,750,530 domestic, $21,173,549 overseas for an exact total of $49,924,079.

I was visiting Miller’s lower Manhattan loft apartment around the same time, maybe a few weeks hence, I forget exactly when. But I distinctly recall Bennett showing me some original Richard Avdeon contact sheet photos of Truman Capote, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, and for whatever reason Bennett happened to call Phillip Seymour Hoffman about something, and as he was saying goodbye he called him “Philly.”

I loved the idea of a distinguished hotshot actor being called Philly, and so I used it myself a few weeks later. I knew it was inappropriate to project an attitude of informal affection with a guy I didn’t know at all first-hand, but I couldn’t resist. I was immediately bitch-slapped, reprimanded, challenged, castigated, stomach-punched, dumped on, stabbed, karate-chopped, slashed and burned….”How dare you call him that? Who the hell do you think you are, some kind of insider?…soak yourself with gasoline and light yourself on fire!”

HE review, posted three or four weeks before the 9.30.05 opening: “I’m taken with Capote partly because it’s about a writer (Truman Capote) and the sometimes horrendously difficult process that goes into creating a first-rate piece of writing, and especially the various seductions and deceptions that all writers need to administer with skill and finesse to get a source to really cough up.

“And it’s about how this gamesmanship sometimes leads to emotional conflict and self-doubt and yet, when it pays off, a sense of tremendous satisfaction and even tranquility. I’ve been down this road, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

“I’m also convinced that Capote is exceptional on its own terms. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year so far — entertaining and also fascinating, quiet and low-key but never boring and frequently riveting, economical but fully stated, and wonderfully confident and relaxed in its own skin.

“And it delivers, in Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Capote, one of the most affecting emotional rides I’ve taken in this or any other year…a ride that’s full of undercurrents and feelings that are almost always in conflict (and which reveal conflict within Capote-the-character), and is about hurting this way and also that way and how these different woundings combine in Truman Capote to form a kind of perfect emotional storm.

“It’s finally about a writer initially playing the game but eventually the game turning around and playing him.

“Hoffman is right at the top of my list right now — he’s the guy to beat in the Best Actor category. Anyone who’s seen Capote and says he’s not in this position is averse to calling a spade a spade.

On Tuesday, 10.12, a 4K Ultra HD disc of The Guns of Navarone will be available from Sony. All hail the 60th anniversary of a classic that’s pretty great until Gregory Peck and the team reach the top of the cliff, and then the tension dissipates, the commandos start killing too many Germans, and it becomes an in-and-outer.

Three good scenes follow — interrogation with Anthony Quinn faking cowardice + the uncovering of the traitor + waiting for the elevator to make contact with the wires and explode the whole fortress. But they kill too many Germans.

I already own a 4K UHD digital version on Amazon so what’s the physical media version likely to yield? Perhaps a slightly richer resolution, but you can only uprez and refine 35mm materials so much.

Presented in 4K resolution from the original camera negative, with HDR10. A long list of extras, including a “narration-free prologue” and “a message from Carl Foreman.”

156 minutes. 4K UHD Feature Picture: 2160p Ultra High Definition, 2.35:1 4K UHD Feature Audio: English Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Compatible) | English 5.1 DTS-HD MA | English 4.0 DTS-HD MA.

“Nearly all powerful politicians are isolated, in the extreme, from reality. Cuomo had spent so much time in that rarified air, he forgot what regular people do.” — Alec Baldwin on soon-to-be-ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

But after the #MeToo movement blew up in late ’17, it had to be obvious to each and every handsy, massage-y, touchy-feely 50-and-older politician out there that icky, sexually aggressive behavior was totally over and done with. The culture was shouting over and over “don’t do this, don’t go there, things have changed” and Cuomo still ignored the signals?

Todd Field‘s masterful In The Bedroom is almost exactly 20 years old — the anniversary is on 11.23.21. Just about every scene is perfect, but there’s one that’s slightly off because of Marisa Tomei‘s over-acting. It’s a court testimony scene in which her character, the bereaved Natalie Strout, recounts the day when her estranged abusive husband (William Mapother‘s Richard Strout) killed her boyfriend (Nick Stahl‘s Frank Fowler) with a pistol.

Delivering this kind of testimony would be painful for anyone, but most people would do what they can to grim up and keep it together in front a filled courtroom. Tomei’s slow testimony plus the constant weeping and sniffling is too actorish. You’re sitting there and going “Jesus, stop selling the emotion and get on with your testimony already…give it a rest.”

But the following scene in which Tomei awkwardly attempts to apologize to Fowler’s mother (Sissy Spacek) and is decisively, violently rebuffed, is perfect.

“There are things of which I may not speak / There are dreams that cannot die / There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak / And bring a pallor into the cheek, and a mist before the eye / And the words of that fatal song / Come over me like a chill / A boy’s will is the wind’s will / And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” — “My Lost Youth,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Everyone knows that Gone Girl director David Fincher wanted Ben Affleck to wear a Yankee cap for an airport scene in the film, and that it was a big hassle to get Affleck, a devotional Boston Red Sox fan, to wear the damn thing instead of a Red Sox cap. But I’d somehow forgotten that Gone Girl was shut down for four days because of this stupid argument. What did it cost to keep everyone on salary and pay for all the stuff that a movie needs to pay for on a daily basis…how much did it cost while Affleck and Fincher were at loggerheads on this? The problem was finally solved with Affleck wearing a Mets cap instead a Yankee one.