My favorite all-time western gunfight, and that includes the Wild Bunch finale. And it’s not just those magic six-shooters that are capable of firing 15 or 20 rounds without reloading. It’s also that cannon-like sound when they fire. Perhaps not as roaring rumbling thundercloud as the gunshots in Shane, but in the same basic neighborhood.

Straight superficial bullshit…hold your nose and cash the paycheck…pure posturing emptiness. Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott or Ella Balinska might be in great shape and they might have learned some cool moves from a choreographer, but when push comes to shove I don’t believe they can “take” any midsize guy (5’10” tall, 170 pounds or more) who’s in reasonably good shape. I wouldn’t be afraid if I ran into any of them in a dark alley. I don’t believe that short hardbody girls are a threat and neither do they…be honest.

I began to be friendly with the amiable Robert Forster 22 years ago, or just after I’d seen Quentin Tarantino‘s Jackie Brown. I was with People at the time, and had wrangled an interview with the 56 year-old actor because I absolutely knew (and had convinced People‘s bureau chief Jack Kelly) that Forster’s career, which had been slumping since the late ’80s, was about to take off again.

Because his low-key, straight-from-the-shoulder performance as bail bondsman Max Cherry was a perfectly assured mellow-vibe thing. Right in the pocket. It landed Forster a Best Supporting Actor nomination, and he was suddenly back in the game.

Forster worked steadily after that, and in 2011 he scored again as George Clooney‘s cranky father-in-law in The Descendants. I interviewed him right after seeing Alexander Payne‘s film at Telluride. Forster sure knew how to play pissy.

Both interviews happened at West Hollywood’s Silver Spoon cafe, which was Forster’s favorite haunt for many years. It closed on 12.31.11, and I distinctly recall Forster telling me that he was pretty broken up about this. (A seafood place, Connie and Ted’s, opened in the same spot two years later.)

And now he’s gone, dear fellow. I must have run into Forster at two or three hundred industry gatherings over the last 20-odd years. “Hey, Bob,” “Hi, Jeff,” small-talk, sound byte….”later.”

I’m very sorry that he’s left the room. Really. Only 78 — old not that old. Brain cancer.

When death comes knocking, you can hide in the cellar or duck into a closet and sometimes it’ll go away and forget about you. For a while. But if your number’s up, it’s up. Ask Warren Beatty‘s Joe Pendleton. Or Robert Redford‘s wounded cop character in that famous Twilight Zone episode, “Nothing in the Dark.”

In my book Forster made only four really good films and two pretty good ones: Medium Cool, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Don Is Dead, Jackie Browne, The Descendants, What They Had.

If you’re part of the dwindling community of physical-media buyers, every so often a Bluray comes along with such a great-looking cover that you almost want to buy it just to pick it up and fondle the darn thing. This is one such occasion. Those glowing yellows, reds, greens and browns.

The 1996 winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar is one of the best feel-good docs ever made.

I showed Kings at my Woodland Hills screening series, “Hot-Shot Movies.” I remember an older woman raising her hand and asking somewhat peevishly “why are we watching this film?” before it even began, and I remember shrugging my shoulders and saying “well, because it captures something special…one of those once-in-a-lifetime occasions in which life on the planet earth seemed truly beautiful and fair.”

I want a rockstar Democratic candidate for President. Somebody who reminds me somewhat of Bobby Kennedy…someone exceptionally bright and eloquent with that certain hard-to-define quality of extra-ness. I’m serious about the fact that I’ll die if Joe Biden gets the nomination. Okay, I’ll survive but the blood will drain from my face. And if Elizabeth Warren wins I’ll be scared shitless that Trump might beat her. I’ll wind up chewing my nails to the bone.

From “Pete Buttigieg’s Undeniable Allure,” a Walter Shapiro piece in The New Republic: “Four months before the Iowa caucuses, it is time to reckon with the reality that Pete Buttigieg probably has a better chance to be the Democratic nominee than anyone aside from Biden and the surging Warren.

“With Sanders ailing and Kamala Harris sputtering, Buttigieg has enough money to go the distance (he has raised $44 million in the last six months) and enough polling support to guarantee his place on every debate stage. Whatever happens next, this youthful candidate with a long resume (Harvard, Rhodes Scholar, McKinsey analyst, failed statewide candidate, mayor, and intelligence officer in Afghanistan) has already emerged as the political surprise of 2019.”

HE acknowledges that Warren and “Typewriter” Joe are approvable candidates if you want to relax your standards and say “okay, yeah, sure…I’d prefer to see either of them be sworn in as President on January 20, 2021…anyone but The Beast.”

But they’re not Mick Jagger candidates, and they never will be. Only Mayor Pete fills that bill. Definitely the only magic-medicine guy out there. On top of which he’s not a woke fanatic (and that’s a huge plus).

But garden-variety homophobes and especially the African-American variety (there’s a real mental blockage against gays in the black community) don’t quite see it that way. And they don’t much care for Warren either. And so we’re still stuck with Droolin’ Joe. And that is such a drag when you consider the kind of transformative Democratic candidates who have run before.

“These are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election,” a certain Presidential candidate said 51 and 1/2 years ago. But what are Biden and Warren if not, in a positive sense, ordinary? As in “okay, good people, obviously better than Trump and I’ll definitely vote for one or the other but I have to be honest — neither of them quicken my pulse.”

From Frank Bruni‘s “The Agonizing Imperfection of Pete Buttigieg,” posted on 10.8: “If I dreamed up an ideal Democratic opponent for President Trump in 2020, I’d locate that candidate in the industrial Midwest. That’s where Hillary Clinton lost the last election, and it’s where the next one could very well be decided.

Last month I mentioned something I’d heard about award-season calculations inside the Netflix compound. It crossed my radar screen just before Telluride, and it came from a trusted colleague who gets around. The rumble was that Netflix was placing most of its award-season hopes upon Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, which has an emotionally relatable story, a well-honed screenplay and dynamic, heartfelt performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson.

“Not that Netflix doesn’t respect or believe in Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman,” I wrote, “but that they’re unsure how well a sprawling Lawrence of Arabia-sized gangster film will play with Academy and guild members.”

I didn’t immediately recall this observation after being floored by The Irishman last Friday. It actually didn’t hit me until today, to be honest, but I was fairly taken aback once I started thinking about it. How could anyone who’d seen Scorsese’s masterwork believe that Marriage Story, which I totally fell for during Telluride and regard as one of the best of the year so far…how could anyone conclude that Noah Baumbach‘s film had a slightly better shot at Best Picture than the Scorsese?

The thinking, I was told in late August, was that Marriage Story delivers a stronger emotional current than The Irishman, and that emotion always wins the day at the Oscars. That’s true, but the last half-hour of The Irishman delivers a current that feels like melancholy, hand-of-fate heroin, and which sinks right into your bloodstream and stirs you deep down. There’s nothing in Marriage Story, due respect, that comes close to this . It’s a very fine film, but it’s coming from a different place, and generating a different kind of vibe.

On top of which Marriage Story ain’t Kramer vs. Kramer. It’ll be respected and saluted all around, but I’m sensing that the emotional reception…well, we’ll see. Right now Driver and Johansson are in the best shape of all the senior Marriage Story contributors.

I somehow can’t accept that the great Ang Lee, a serious filmmaker and two-time Oscar-winner, has made a problematic action film. Despite, I realize, ample evidence that says I’m in denial — namely a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 41% plus an even-worse Metacritic tally of 33%. I swear to God you can feel the resignation wafting out of Paramount publicity right now, and yet Hollywood Elsewhere wants to like it…really! My soft spot for Gemini Man is a serious admiration for high-frame-rate cinematography. I didn’t attend the 10.2 Grove screening, and I can’t be at Monday’s all-media because of a conflict. My only shot is the Sunday evening premiere. I understand that Gemini Man has issues, but maybe on some level they aren’t so bad.

There are three kinds of people in this world, as defined by the words “Moulin Rouge.” The first kind are typical average Joes with disposable income who say “yeah, Moulin Rouge…the next time we go to Paris let’s pay a visit…I hear it’s a lot of fun.” The second kind are people who saw the 18 year-old Baz Luhrman musical version with Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor, in part because they’d heard of the dance number scored to “Lady Marmalade.” The third kind (and there are very few of us left) say “oh, wow….John Huston’s 1952 film with Jose Ferrer as Toulouse Lautrec, which is noteworthy for Oswald Morris‘s misty, rose-tinted, somewhat subdued color cinematography!”

The Technicolor execs back in Hollywood didn’t like Huston’s idea because the colors wouldn’t be strong and vivid enough. Huston wanted the film “to look as if Lautrec had painted it,” or words to that effect. Huston and Morris collaborated on two other color experiment films — Moby Dick (’56), for which they created a grayish black-and-white color, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (’67), which they tinted with a sickly mixture of pink and gold.

In a video attached to Marc Malkin‘s 10.3 Variety piece about A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Tom Hanks offers the following observation about the late Fred Rogers, whom Hanks plays in the film:

“I do not have the skill that Fred had, which was to meet somebody and make it seem as though as if they’re the most important person in the world. Everybody that we met at KQED…they all said that ‘when you talked to Fred, you felt as though you were the most important person in the world.'”

Excuse me, but Hanks is talking about an elementary Hollywood skill that all successful actors are highly efficient at using for their personal benefit. It’s probably the second most essential skill in the game of creating a successful acting career, after knowing how to act. Many of them do it like absolute samurai pros.

I’ve been the recipient of this special kind of attention hundreds of times. Mostly from actors but sometimes from directors or producers. They look right into your soul and convey that you’re a special, fascinating, world-class person, and that your thoughts on whatever topic are truly spellbinding.

You know it’s an act, of course, but you can’t help feeling charmed and flattered.

Hanks is one of the absolute Zen masters of this routine. He’s one of the most likable human beings on the planet, and once you’ve sat in a hotel room with him for 15 or 20 minutes you become a lifetime convert.

Warren Beatty is another Yoda-like figure in this regard. I’ve never felt so enthralled and alpha-vibey as I did after Beatty and I had one of our first serious discussions back in…oh, ’92 or thereabouts. All he said was “how are ya?”, but the way he said it made me feel like some kind of inner lightbulb had been switched on. Even though I knew he was just turning it on like a gardener turns on a sprinkler system. Because he’s so good at it.

Read the 10.3 N.Y. Times story, written by Julia Jacobs, about Robert De Niro and his ex-Canal Productions employee Chase Robinson suing each other over mutual dissatisfaction with work behaviors, and then consider the following HE assessments:

(1) Let me explain something. When you work for someone directly or personally, you’ll find out soon enough who they really are. And they’ll find out soon enough who you really are. And this familiarity will breed contempt. And then you’re stuck with each other until (a) you mutually build or create your way past this state of mutual loathing and/or disrespect, or (b) until someone quits or is fired. That’s life.

(2) Naturally Chase has accused De Niro of belittling behavior on his part — asking her to “button his shirts, prod him awake in his hotel room, doing his laundry and vacuuming — making her effectively an ‘office wife’ even as she was promoted…not to mention berating her, often while intoxicated, calling her names including ‘bitch’ and ‘brat’”…not to mention “gratuitous unwanted physical contact” (i.e., playing the #MeToo card).

(3) DeNiro seemingly resented what he regarded as Chase’s casual, profligate, laissez-faire attitude about her job. DeNiro seems to feel that she basically didn’t work hard enough. Too extravagant, too entitled, too many perks, too many extras. She loafed around, slacked off. Business-expense-wise, she spent waaaay too much money on pricey Italian restaurants, handbags, Ubers and whatnot.

(4) Chase was probably bored by her tasks. She felt resentful about an equal-status male employee being paid more. She undoubtedly resented the requests for back-scratchings and listening to DeNiro pee while talking to her. Too much information but here goes anyway (and De Niro should take note): If nature calls while I’m speaking to someone on the phone, I always sit down.

(5) Chase basically overplayed her profligate hand, her entitled approach to the job, and De Niro eventually asked himself, “Why am I paying her all this money and giving her this extravagant lifestyle? For what?”

(6) And what about that special N.Y. Times photo portrait of Chase that accompanies the article [after the jump]? Nice tasteful lighting. Nice green background. Nice antique-looking chair. Nice tasteful dress.

(7) And what about this recording, which happened in 2012? DeNiro was hugely pissed off, obviously — didn’t like her haughty attitude, declining to return his calls, etc. He was apparently on the verge of firing her, and yet their relationship recovered and she continued to work for him for another five years…odd.

When I first saw it 39 years ago, I immediately decided that John Irvin‘s The Dogs of War was a great (if not the greatest) mercenary war flick, and my opinion hasn’t changed since.

But until today, I hadn’t realized (or paid sufficient attention to the fact) that there’s a 118-minute international cut along with the 104-minute version that I saw way back when. This is why I’ve bought the Eureka Entertainment Bluray (streeting on 10.14), which has both versions.

Tough, minimalist performances by Christopher Walken (whose facial features were quite lean and beautiful back then), Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely, Hugh Millais and Paul Freeman.

Based on the same-titled Frederick Forsyth novel; script by Gary DeVore, George Malko and uncredited Michael Cimino. Cinematography by the great Jack Cardiff.

The Dogs of War is streamable via Amazon Prime, but who wants the shorter version?