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Posted from lounge chair on outdoor patio in 94-degree heat, and with shitty wifi to boot:

Four essential performances were given by the late, great Olivia de Havilland: (a) Maid Marian in Michael Curtiz’s Robin Hood (‘37) , (b) Melanie Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (‘39), (c) the disturbed victim in Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit (‘48). and (d) the vaguely gullible woman-of-means in William Wyler’s The Heiress (‘49).

There were other sturdy performances, but these four were the keepers. Have I seen every noteworthy Olivia de Havilland performance? No. The truth is that I found her virtuousness (which was always a central eiement) deflating and…I’ll leave it at that.

Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine.

She was a fine, classy, top-tier thesp, for sure, but I gradually chose to regard OdH as more of a maidly vibe or a classic chastity brand than an actress for all moods and seasons — the intrepid woman of Paris, pushing on, the never-say-die trooper, sometimes riding her bicycle and occasionally speaking with THR’s Scott Feinberg.

This may sound like a putdown, but she never conveyed even the faintest hint of eroticism…not the slightest sniff. This is what almost all leading actors and actresses do, after all — they invite you to sense the aroma. Nor could you imagine her sister, Joan Fontaine, succumbing to any such impulse. Okay, perhaps Joan occasionally thought about intimacy but that’s all. My sense is that Olivia, by the measure of her screen performances, never even did that.

OdH passed this morning (or last night) at age 104. Sweet dreams, gentle waters.

Regis Philbin, John Saxon, Olivia de Havilland — the trilogy is complete.

Early this morning Jill Blake conveyed delight after turning a daughter (or some younger person) on to To Catch A Thief, particularly in response to the younger person’s request to see a film with Cary Grant “running around.”

Being a special kind of asshole, I jumped in with an anecdotal mansplainer. I pointed out that Grant doesn’t “run” anywhere in that 1955 Alfred Hitchcock classic but “scampers” cat-like across French rooftops. For this I received a hale and hearty “fuck off!”, which needed an extra “douchebag!” to really drive the point home.

It was impossible to survey the flotsam & jetsam frolicking and lounging around the historic, all-wooden, once-transporting Hotel del Coronado yesterday and say to myself, “Life in these United States is just as layered and fascinating and distinctive — socially, fashionably, politically — as it was 100 years ago.”

We stayed last night in San Diego’s Holiday Inn Express, which is aesthetically acceptable and atmospherically fine except — except! — for the young drunks next door who were quacking like ducks and bellowing like sea lions way past bedtime hour. We called the desk three or four times, and I guess the last warning conveyed by security (“If you don’t shut up we’re going to evict your ass”) finally got through. But what an ordeal.

The same kind of bloated manatees I was observing at the Hotel Del Coronado were, like us, staying in less pricey digs back in the city. I couldn’t bring myself to part with $300 or $350 plus tax for a HDC room…I just couldn’t.

I grew up and came of age amongst proper (okay, mostly proper) citizens of Rome for the most part. But ill-mannered, crudely spoken, Jabba-sized, poorly dressed barbarians have since stormed the gates, and this, as that ancient Pelican Walter Cronkite used to say, is “how it is” these days.

I criticize no one individual. I simply report and speak the anthropological truth.

In terms of immaculate black-and-white viewing pleasure, nothing beats Carol Reed‘s Odd Man Out (47). I’ve been re-watching it every three or four years for the last couple of decades, but the Bluray versions (I happen to own an eight-year-old Region 2 Network Bluray) are just breathtaking…every glistening, perfectly lighted frame could and should be hung in an art gallery. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

Robert Krasker (1913-1971), the Australian dp, won an Oscar for his brilliant capturing of Carol Reed‘s The Third Man (’49), but his Odd Man Out cinematography is the grander achievement, I feel… more pictorially transporting on top of sadder and more poignant when you factor in everything else. Krasker was an absolute devotee of film noir and German Expressionism, and I would go so far as to call his work magical in this instance. Each and every shot is on the level of “my God, look at the snowflakes and shadows and the gentle illumination of lamplight…amazing! And look at that! And that!” And it never stops.

The Reed classics aside, Krasker’s other credits include Laurence Olivier‘s Henry V, David Lean‘s Brief Encounter, Irving Rapper‘s Another Man’s Poison, Robert Rossen‘s Alexander the Great, Peter Ustinov‘s Billy Budd and Anthony Mann‘s El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Krasker’s Third Man Oscar was historic — he was the first Australian cinematographer to be so honored.

Last weekend I watched Richard Attenborugh, William Goldman and Joseph E. Levine‘s A Bridge Too Far (’77), which I hadn’t seen since it opened 43 years ago. I was surprised to discover that despite its somewhat lackluster reputation (certainly among the critics of the day) that it plays half decently.

As ambitious in its attempt to capture the failure of Operation Market Garden as the 1944 Allied military campaign itself, A Bridge Too Far was an all-star WWII epic in the tradition of The Longest Day. Both are based on books by Cornelius Ryan.

The difference is that ABTF explores a downish note of defeat and disillusion and mismanagement rather than hard-won victory, and as such can be seen as the first military fuckup movie in a long series of such films, the kind in which the good guys (i.e., our side) get their asses flanked and kicked and shot all to hell, and are left wondering “what the hell happened?”

The Outpost, Lone Survivor, Hamburger Hill, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, In The Valley of Elah, Platoon, We Were Soldiers — all of these films owe a debt to A Bridge Too Far, just as Attenborough’s film owes a debt in return to Lewis Milestone‘s somewhat glum and bitter Pork Chop Hill and you tell-me-what-else.

American forces engage the enemy for shaky or questionable or dubious reasons and the troops involved get pounded all to hell and nearly wiped out. Those who survive are left shattered, exhausted, gutted. “Well, we fucked up but at least we learned something…or did we?”

There are so many famous faces in A Bridge Too Far — James Caan, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, a cigar-chomping Elliott Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Maximilian Schell (as a thoughtful and humane German officer), Hardy Krüger, Laurence Olivier, a baby-faced Ryan O’Neal, Liv Ullmann, etc. There’s no escaping a presumption that these performances are entirely about the paycheck, and so it’s hard if not impossible to invest in the various stories and vignettes.

And yet I was taken by Redford’s action cameo as Maj. Julian Cook, famed for leading a crazy military crossing of the Waal river during Operation Market Garden. And I related to Connery’s Major General Roy Urquhart, and Caan’s Staff Sergeant Eddie Dohun (based on Charles Dohun). And two or three others.

You have to give Attenborough credit for managing such a vast army of actors and extras along with hundreds of planes, tanks, trucks, jeeps…no miniatures and obviously no CG. Not a bad film. It doesn’t meet anyone’s definition of “great” but is certainly approvable.

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The moment has come for Get Out champion Bob Strauss to weigh in on the recent Kanye West fruit-loop thing. This is a dire situation, and as far as I can discern Strauss is the only man in Hollywood who can speak to it with any authority. The night before last Kanye referenced Get Out when he claimed that wife Kim Kardashian was en route to Wyoming to “lock me up” on Monday night. (This was a day after the South Carolina Harriet Tubman meltdown…right?) Quote: “Kim was trying to fly to Wyoming with a doctor to lock me up like on the movie Get Out because I cried about saving my daughter’s life yesterday. Everybody knows the movie Get Out is about me.”

Politically speaking the great Charlie Chaplin was a left-leaning humanitarian and a self-described peacemonger who became entangled in the raw end of the anti-Communist fervor of the late 1940s, and out of this conflict he eventually left this country for Switzerland — an exile given the boot.

In ’47 Chaplin angrily denounced the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in response Representative John E. Rankin, who helped establish HUAC, declared in June 1947 that Chaplin’s “very life in Hollywood is detrimental to the moral fabric of America…[if he is deported] his loathsome pictures can be kept from before the eyes of the American youth…he should be deported and gotten rid of at once.”

Chaplin’s delivery of the final speech in The Great Dictator (’40) is too agitated, too shrill. He should have dialed it down a couple of notches. And yet portions of the speech are a close match with a certain John Lennon song that some are saying should replace Francis Scott Key‘s “The Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem.

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The general consensus is that Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost is still the top-streaming movie after three weeks of exposure. If you go by iTunes and Google Play rankings, that is, as reported by Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson.

On the other hand FandangoNow says that Trolls: World Tour was the #1 flick last weekend, followed by The Outpost. The Numbers also has Lurie’s film behind Trolls.

Mendelson: “The Outpost is technically the top movie on iTunes, while Google Play seems to [also] give the advantage to The Outpost.

“Over at Netflix NFLX +1.9%, it looks like a day-to-day battle between The Old Guard (which is allegedly on track to nab 74 million viewers in its first month) and Fatal Affair. The Charlize Theron comic book superhero movie is allegedly topping worldwide, while the 90s throwback thriller starring Nia Long and Omar Epps has been #1 since premiering on Thursday.”

(l. to r.) Caleb Landry Jones, Rod Lurie, Scott Eastwood during filming of The Outpost.

Speaker Pelosi to Mika Breszinski on Morning Joe this morning: Orange Plague “will be leaving” the White House “following the 2020 election, whether he knows it or not. There is a process. It has nothing to do with a certain occupant of the White House [who] doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there.”

Fumigating is what people do to get rid of insects. Just so we’re clear on that.

BREAKING: Speaker Pelosi slams Trump: “Whether he knows it yet, or not, he will be leaving.” @morningmika pic.twitter.com/BqbV6kEUmr

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) July 20, 2020

“But it’s gonna happen. Either way, he’s goin’. I told you before, we tried everything to help him, you know that. He brought this on himself. And it’s landing on us.” — Joe Pesci in The Irishman, starting ar 1:37.

Warner Bros. hasn’t once again bumped the release date for Chris Nolan‘s Tenet — it’s taken the allegedly mind-blowing, time-game thriller off the release calendar entirely.

Rather than shift the release for a third time (the previous dates were 7.17 and then 8.12) WB distribution is basically saying “this is infuriating and borderline ridiculous…we don’t know when we can open Nolan’s brilliant film but we’re also getting tired of setting new dates only to see them fall by the wayside. This country has become an international joke as far as battling COVD-19 is concerned, but at least we can open it in Europe before too long.”

When will Tenet open domestically? Sometime in mid to late October or more likely November? Sometime before 12.31.20? “We will share a new 2020 release date imminently for Tenet,” WB chairman Toby Emmerich said in a statement.

Things couldn’t be much worse for moviegoers and U.S. exhibitors in particular, already cut off at the knees by the pandemic and recently praying for late summer re-openings. But arrogant under-40 asshats (along with southerners and rural bumblefucks nationwide) said “no” by continuing to party at bars and cafes and spreading COVID-19 willy nilly.

Exhibitors are dying and the country’s economy is suspended in a medically induced coma, and these guys are socializing like there’s no tomorrow…could their behavior be any more loathsome or despicable?

Those who want to see Tenet sooner rather than later might want to fly to Europe, as it seems likely to open there first. “We are not treating Tenet like a traditional global day-and-date release, and our upcoming marketing and distribution plans will reflect that,” Emmerich explained.

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I realize that the anger over Trump and Barr’s militarized goons detaining protestors has given a new impetus to the Oregon street protests, but what kept these protests going before the goon troops arrived?

The coast-to-coast incendies of late May and early June have obviously chilled. BLM-ers in major cities across the nation have decided to downshift for the time being and take a breather.

But not in Portland. Or, to go by today’s reporting, Seattle. So what needs to happen before somebody calls a time out? Or is this a new and permanent way of life?

Do Portland protestors want some sort of no-confidence election? Mass resignations from local white officials? Resignations of the entire Portland police force so the city can be Camden-ized?

Demonstrators marching recently in Portland. [Photo credit: Dave Killen/The Oregonian, via Associated Press.]

NOW: Rioters are looting an Amazon store in Seattle
pic.twitter.com/Eb3IWBgX78

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 19, 2020

Two days ago N.Y. Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel noted that the Portland street demonstrations, ignited by the Minneapolis murder of George Floyd on 5.25, have been happening for 50 days straight. (53 as of today.) Warzel wrote about the stress of being in constant combat, and of likely PTSD down the road. Will the Portland actions still be going after 75 days? 100?

Posted on 6.3.20: “Terrible convulsive traumas have sadly happened to this country from time to time. But they’ve never been long-term. A few days or a week, and then everyone began to gradually emerge and resume basic routines.

“JFK was shot on Friday, 11.22.63 and buried on Monday, 11.25. Four days of emotional gloom and devastation. And on Tuesday, 11.26, the world slowly started again. The grief never went away, of course, but the wheels of commerce and culture began to turn.

“John Lennon was murdered on 12.8.80. The shockwaves of anguish were devastating. Everyone wept. But after a few days or a week, the clouds began to dissipate.

“The Los Angeles Rodney King riots lasted for six days (4.29.92 to 5.4.92). The aftermath seeped and simmered. Nobody ever forgot what happened. But on the seventh day the world began to move on.

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Pretzels are junk, of course, but I lived for the damn things when I was a kid. (Along with red licorice, ice pops, Hershey bars and hot mashed potatoes.) Every now and then I’ll buy a small bag for old times’ sake, but they aren’t as liberally salted as they used to be. Without proper salting they taste dull. That all changed two or three days ago when I bought a bag of Good Health pretzels — gluten-free and sea-salted. My first thought was “my God, these are wonderful.” One bite and I was suddenly ten years old again. Not to mention free of gluten, wheat, egg, dairy, soy, cholesterol.