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Daryl Duke and Curtis Hanson‘s The Silent Partner (’78), which I saw brand-new but haven’t re-watched since, was an excellent variation on Strangers on a Train. It was actually a remake of Think of a Number, a 1969 Danish film written and directed by Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt, and based on a novel by Danish writer Anders Bodelsen.

It delivered Elliott Gould‘s last alluring, well-written lead role before he downshifted into character parts, and Chris Plummer played a deliciously demonic bank robber and extortionist. A new Kino Lorber Bluray pops on 6.18.19.

Here’s an enjoyable Sunset Gun appreciation (12.24.16), or more precisely a discussion of the film by Goyld and Kim Morgan.

I’m also a big fan of Duke’s Payday (’72), the drama about a country-music star shitheel (Rip Torn). No Bluray or HD streaming as we speak.

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Posted by yours truly at the tail end of yesterday’s comment thread about Pete Buttigieg: “An NBC News poll says 68% of Americans are cool with a gay presidential candidate — a big change since 2006. 14% enthusiastic, 54% comfortable. Under 35s are overwhelmingly supportive — 75%. 56% of seniors are cool with the idea — up from 31% in 2006.

“The 32% of the general populace that doesn’t like the idea represents your bedrock Trumpster base — deep-red Bumblefucks, ultra-staunch conservative Christians, old-realm types who long for a Frank Capra-Jimmy Stewart-Bedford Falls world plus alpha-male homophobes and racists.

The irony, of course, is that if the old-realmers would open their eyes they’d realize that the left-Christian Pete Buttigieg is Frank Capra, Jimmy Stewart and Bedford Falls. He just has a husband at home rather than Donna Reed. Plus his campaign bio says he’s never succumbed to thoughts of suicide.

“You can say it’s worrying that 32% are opposed to a gay Prez, but then again only a relatively small percentage of Americans have even given Mayor Pete a cursory once-over. It takes the Average Joe months to catch up. Plus that 32% of naysayers could very possibly diminish over the course of the next 12 to 15 months.”

In response to this Spicerpalooza said, “The people who won’t vote for Pete because he’s gay would never vote for a Democrat anyway.”

Gray suit and a black T-shirt…cool. But with shiny white sneakers? I’ve always harbored an inexplicable animal dislike of Taron Egerton, and this cinches it. The white shoes aren’t entirely Egerton’s doing — it’s the fashion frame of reference he grew up with. I’ve long contended that Millennials (Egerton was born in November ’89) have the worst fashion sense of any generation in the history of western civilization.

I think it’s kinda great that Francis Coppola, who will turn 80 in three or four days, is really and truly planning to direct Megalopolis, which he’s been preparing for many years and almost got rolling 18 or 19 years ago.

Deadline‘s Michael Fleming reported this earlier today.

Pic is “the story of an architect’s battle to build an ideal world…a hero’s fight to realize his dream to build a city of the future,” Coppola said in ’01.

On 9.16.15 One Room With A View‘s David Brake described the lead character, Serge Catalane, as “a genius architect, controversial icon and lover of debauchery.”

Coppola to Fleming: “I plan this year to begin my longstanding ambition to make a major work utilizing all I have learned during my long career, beginning at age 16 doing theater, and that will be an epic on a grand scale, which I’ve entitled Megalopolis. It is unusual. It will be a production on a grand scale with a large cast. It makes use of all of my years of trying films in different styles and types culminating in what I think is my own voice and aspiration.”

Megalopolis is “not within the mainstream of what is produced now, but I am intending and wishing and in fact encouraged, to begin production this year,” Coppola said.

Due respect, but inspiration and the chance to deliver a profound artistic creation is usually something that passes through you, like stormy weather through Kansas. You either manage to do something with it or you don’t, but all film artists of note have peak periods in which they’re channelling Godly currents. Mostly this happens in their late 30s, 40s and 50s. There are always exceptions to the rule, of course, but it is not an expression of disrespect to say that Coppola is well past his spiritual and creative grace period, and that he’s almost certainly not going to get it back at age 80 or 81. He might, yes, but look at the odds.

Coppola’s last ambitious failure was 35 years ago — The Cotton Club. His 21st Century indie films — Youth Without Youth, Tetro, Twixt — were entirely negligible. He obviously had a monumental run in the ’70s. His last ambitious mixed-bagger was One From The Heart, which premiered 38 years ago. He’s had his day. We all know this.

I nonetheless find it wholly admirable and salutable that he’s planning to make Megalopolis soon. All power to him.

Earlier today the Toronto Globe and Mail‘s Barry Hertz tweeted an opinion about Will Smith in Disney’s Aladdin…a three-word opinion, I mean, that is certain to become a meme and live in a kind of film-twitter infamy:

“New look at Aladdin includes full performance of ‘Friend Like Me’ (including Will Smith “briefly beat-boxing”). I’m going to be honest: it is pure nightmare fuel. It just looks…unnatural. The #CinemaCon audience liked it, though. Wishful thinking, I guess.”

What does “pure nightmare fuel” mean? That Hertz was suddenly imagining an actual nightmare scenario in which the blue-skinned Smith genie is chasing him around a big cave and threatening to turn him into an animal?

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Set in a private mental institution, Robert Rossen‘s Lilith (’64) is about a young occupational therapist (Warren Beatty) who becomes obsessed with a schizophrenic patient with a laid-back vibe of scampy bohemian whatever-ness (Jean Seberg).

Rossen’s followup to The Hustler was sold as a serving of psychologically unbalanced eroticism with a little lesbo action (Seberg and another female patient) on the side.

The problem was that Lilith just laid there; it never drilled down or expanded or generated erotic steam. It mostly felt like a gloomhead variation of Frank Perry‘s David and Lisa, which had made an arthouse dent a couple of years earlier.

But oh, that aroma! These photos of Beatty and Seberg are still alluring, and I know full well that Lilith is a stiff. I’ve watched it twice, once on DVD and a second time on Bluray. The second viewing was partly about wanting to savor the back-and-white photography in 1080p, and partly about a feeling that I may have missed something the first time.

Name a film or two that seemed initially fascinating to go by the stills, trailer, ad copy and even the reviews. But when you sat down and actually watched the damn thing your spirit collapsed like a circus tent.

Sidewalk surveillance robots have been operating on San Francisco sidewalks for a couple of years now, but until yesterday morning I’d never personally encountered one. It senses your presence, checks you out and will roll out of your way if you come too close. In a phrase, cautious and deferential.

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Esquire‘s Kate Storey has written an admiring profile of Eon Productions’ Barbara Broccoli. To the manor born in 1960, Broccoli has been the prime mover and shaker behind the 007 James Bond franchise since 1995, or roughly a year before her father, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who had launched the Bond series with partner Harry Saltzman in 1962, passed away.

I’m no Cubby biographer, but I did meet and briefly chat with the guy 37 years ago on the Pinewood set of For Your Eyes Only. Like all hotshot producers Cubby was a slick operator and almost certainly tough as nails, but his natural social default was to play the amiable panda bear, an unassuming roly-poly with a disarming sense of humor.

Everyone acknowledges Barbara Broccoli but no one takes her very seriously because she and half-brother Michael Wilson are caretakers. They’re looking to keep the pistons pumping so they can continue to reap the flush-lifestyle benefits and so she can produce the occasional play — that’s it, the whole raison d’etre.

If I were Broccoli I’d do the same thing, I suppose, but the Bond films have been aggressively soul-less, less-than-meaningless exercises in aggressive macho-comic bullshit for so long it looks like up to me.

When was the last time a Bond film really connected with the culture in a viral, explosive, slam-bang way that hit a projected-values recognition button and resulted in waves of primal excitement and a double-urgent “drop what you’re doing and see this film right now”? I’ll tell you when that time was. It was 53 and 1/2 years ago when Goldfinger opened in the fall of ’64.

Posted on 10.2.15: In my humble view the best James Bond films are the first two — Terence Young‘s Dr. No (’62) and From Russia With Love (’63). These are the only ones featuring a lean and rugged Sean Connery without an obvious toupee and before he began to pack on a couple of pounds, and facing semi-believable combatants in a half-credible, real-world milieu.

After these two a sense of technological swagger and more than a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor started to penetrate the franchise with Guy Hamilton‘s Goldfinger (’64) — the last Bond film you could accept as an occasionally semi-realistic fantasy. These are the only three I re-watch on Bluray, although I don’t like Goldfinger as much as the first two.

I have a certain affection for Lewis Gilbert‘s The Spy Who Loved Me (’77) — the beginning of a brief ’70s period when the 007 series descended into light comedy. There was an effort to use a bit less gadgetry in John Glen‘s For Your Eyes Only (’81 — the only Bond film I ever paid a visit to at Pinewood) and I didn’t mind Glen’s The Living Daylights (’87). And I was amused by the return of Connery is Irvin Kershner‘s Never Say Never Again (’83). And I admit to feeling a surge of excitement when I first saw Martin Campbell‘s Casino Royale (’06)

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A single inappropriate kissing accusation won’t be much of a problem for Joe Biden, but a few more accusations could amount to a serious problem. Stories like this reenforce the default “dirty old sexist dinosaur” thing — notions that Biden may be cut from the same rogue cloth as Bill Clinton and the late George H.W. Bush, who got hit with two or three such accusations a year or so before he passed. We all know how this goes.

What say ye, Sasha Stone? Is Lucy Flores, the former Democratic nominee for Nevada lieutenant governor, doing this on behalf of one of Joe’s rivals? What maneuverings led to her decision to speak out?

Sasha Sez: “He kissed the back of her head. She was made ‘uncomfortable’ and only to a mass hysteria-afflicted mob would this be a big deal. What they don’t realize is that all this shows is just how easy we are to break, how easily undone we are and that our standards are so ridiculously high no one will pass muster. Also, it turns out that the woman in this article is a major Bernie Sanders supporter – she wants to help knock Joe out. What SHE doesn’t realize is that Bernie is next to be accused. It is just too easy now and so no one will be immune.”

I’ve been sitting on a San Francisco-bound flight for the last four hours. Seat 28C, aisle. I feel like I’m in American-International’s adaptation of The Premature Burial, which starred Ray Milland. Can’t relax, stretch or sleep. Gogoinflight internet used to charge $29 and then $39 for full-flight service. Now these greedy pricks are charging $49, and for shitty wifi at that. Thumbs up!

What…this again? Liam Neeson apologizing again for that late ’70s racial-rage episode that he confessed to and apologized for after his remarks blew up on social media around seven weeks ago?

He’s probably been running into some serious casting shunnings over the last few weeks, hence his new re-apology.

On 2.5 I wrote that “public candor about private failings is not a wise policy in our current situation. You can’t say ‘I once succumbed to an urge to practice witchcraft back in the ’70s.’ To the Cotton Mather crowd that’s like saying you might put a hex on someone tomorrow.”

Neeson’s unfortunate recollection was part of an Independent interview that posted on 2.4.19.

Neeson said that he’d briefly succumbed to a surge of racially-focused rage after learning that a friend has been raped by a black dude. Neeson was in his mid to late 20s at the time. He maintained that his furious reaction was more generically tribal than anti-black — that he would have felt the same gut-level animosity “if she had said an Irish or a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian [had raped her]…[it] would have had the same effect.”

That explanation apparently didn’t cut it with the International League of Retroactive Racial-Attitude Correction, Fault-Finding and Stern Admonishment. And so Neeson is back on the p.c. carpet, kneeling and begging and weeping….”please, please, please.”

“Over the last several weeks, I have reflected on and spoken to a variety of people who were hurt by my impulsive recounting of a brutal rape of a dear female friend nearly 40 years ago and my unacceptable thoughts and actions at that time in response to this crime,” he said in a statement.

“The horror of what happened to my friend ignited irrational thoughts that do not represent the person I am. In trying to explain those feelings today, I missed the point and hurt many people at a time when language is so often weaponized and an entire community of innocent people are targeted in acts of rage.

“What I failed to realize is that this is not about justifying my anger all those years ago, it is also about the impact my words have today. I was wrong to do what I did. I recognize that, although the comments I made do not reflect, in any way, my true feelings nor me, they were hurtful and divisive. I profoundly apologize.”

I am so sick to death of hearing mature people of consequence apologize to the Cotton Mathers and Robespierre Committees for having done something wrong (i.e., behaved in a cruel manner or wrote something appalling or hair-trigger that doesn’t pass muster by current p.c. standards) when they were in their teens or 20s.

Almost everyone has one or two things in their immature past that they wish they hadn’t done. So here’s a one-size-fits-all apology that the next celebrity or politician can repeat when they get into trouble.

“Dear P.C. Commissars: I am truly sorry for having retroactively transgressed against or otherwise offended current p.c. values when I was in my teens or 20s. If I could return to that offense-giving moment via time machine, I would certainly not make the same error. I wish that my teenaged or 20something self could have summoned the wisdom and maturity that I now possess, but unfortunately it rarely works that way. Young hormonal types often do, say or write stupid things. I wish it were otherwise.

“But I also wish to say that as embarassed and mortified as I am by this decades-old error or shortcoming, the sum total of my regret and shame can’t begin to compare to the loathing and contempt that I hold for you and yours — the admonishing, politically correct, shrieking banshees of our time.

“In my humble judgment the group-think, finger-wagging, potentially-career-ruining admonishments and oppressions that you and and your fellow accusers occasionally issue about decades-old missteps are just as regrettable and perhaps even worse than the bad things that I was guilty of when young.

“I’m truly sorry for and ashamed of my youthful failings, but you guys, no offense, are hooded ogres, and if I could tie your hands and dunk you in a lake I would. Peace.”

Beto O’Rourke is hereby strongly advised to never again apologize for something bad he did in his youth. Explanations and regrets are obviously necessary and appropriate, but begging on your knees really doesn’t make it…”oh, please forgive me, I’m so very sorry, I was such a terrible flawed person before,” etc. Because people like me are SICK OF HEARING THIS SHIT.