20 months after the start of principal photography (i.e., 10.14.15) and almost exactly a month before the 7.14.17 opening, Matt Reeves‘ War For The Planet of the Apes will have a peek-out screening for elite journos. Plus a little post-screening schmooze time with filmmakers. The grand conclusion to a great and terrible war between civilizations. Spoiler: Apes win. Stand-up hurrahs for Andy Serkis (“Caesar”), Woody Harrelson (Trump-like Colonel), Steve Zahn (“bad ape”), Karin Konoval, Terry Notary, et. al. Nothing especially mind-boggling or even newsy in this, but the invite art hooked me.

Late yesterday afternoon I finally saw Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman. I found it stirring from time to time, and, like everyone else, I loved the fresh company of a canny and compassionate female superhero who knows all the angles and pretty much can’t be defeated. Or shouldn’t be. I was thoroughly swimming in Gal Gadot‘s performance as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, and particularly her character’s loathing of war and a nurturing, humanist determination to rid the world of this pestilence.

I wasn’t a fan of the bluish smokey gray color scheme during the World War I section, but I enjoyed some of the humor and the general winking attitude and professional aplomb. It’s a good film of this type as far as it goes. I didn’t mind a lot of it and I loved certain portions. Really. It’s not good enough to become a Best Picture contender in the fall, but I can understand why some who are super-thrilled by the cultural connotations would want to see this happen.

Wonder Woman poster in Paris metro

I also found Wonder Woman depressingly familiar. For this is yet another D.C. Comics superhero flick, and that means submitting to the same old D.C. formula elements — a draggy origin story that goes on too long, a romantic interest (Chris Pine‘s Steve Trevor), a team of colorful allies (Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Lucy Davis), several action set pieces, a pair of formidable but vulnerable villains (Danny Huston‘s Erich Ludendorff, Elena Anaya‘s Doctor Poison) and a super-demonic uber-villain whose cover identity is only revealed at the end.

To watch one of these films is to sit in a cage or a straightjacket and wait for the usual-usual to happen. It’s stifling. You’re watching it and saying to yourself, “I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming,” etc.

From a friend: “The holiday in France is Whit Monday (white Monday) — the day after Pentecost. Pentecost is when the holy spirit (envisioned as a white dove) descended on the disciples. Remember, this is an almost all-Catholic country and Whit Monday is a national holiday.”

A 6.5 Smoking Gun post says pint-sized porn actress Lauren Kaye Scott (aka Dakota Skye) was arrested and charged with domestic battery after allegedly punching her boyfriend, Robert “Bobby” Anderson, after having sex with him.

Smoking Gun excerpt: “According to an arrest affidavit, police arrived at the Pinellas Park, Florida, residence of [Anderson], and were told that Scott had struck Anderson in the face with an open right hand, causing him to suffer a swollen lip with a cut.”

Scott “would not get off the phone after the two had sex,” Anderson allegedly told cops. Words ensued, Anderson said he asked her to leave, and Scott “became upset and hit him in the face.”

In other words, she didn’t “punch” him — she slapped him. Like angry women sometimes do. Like femme fatales have done to tough-guy actors in dozens upon dozens of Hollywood potboilers, gangster flicks and film noirs for decades.

Movies are movies and real life is real life, but what kind of pathetic wimp calls the fuzz after his girlfriend whacks him? Women will sometimes call the authorities if a guy gets rough (and well they should) but guys never do this. Ever! Just as surely as there’s no crying in baseball, a guy never calls the fuzz unless there’s been a shooting or stabbing.

There’s only one way to respond if your girlfriend slaps or punches you, and that’s to just stand there and take it like Lee Marvin did when Angie Dickinson walloped him in Point Blank — just stand there and let her go to town until she gets tired. Only chickenshit candy-asses whine and complain when this happens, much less pick up the phone and call John Law…God! Anderson needs to get in touch with that Vietnamese asshole who whined and howled when he was thrown off that United flight.

Last week a disparate community of tough female film critics and outraged femme-nazi types (Mary Sue, Jezebel) were howling about David Edelstein‘s 6.1 Wonder Woman review for phrases and terms within the review they felt were leering or sexist. Honestly? They seemed to have a point.

In a mea culpa piece that ran on Tuesday, 6.6, Edelstein said he’d been misunderstood or at the very least tarred and feathered with too hasty a brush. He also admitted to having used imprecise or poorly chosen language. Which imperfect writers occasionally do.

The bottom line is that Wonder Woman was and is a very big deal for women everywhere, and particularly in the wake of its huge financial success ($254 million worldwide thus far), and so anyone throwing shade in a way that sounded even a tad sexist was sure to catch hell. This Edelstein did, and in spades. The harridans didn’t disagree with him or reprimand him for incorrect attitudes or callous phrases — they wanted him seized, dragged into the street and clubbed to death.

I’ve tasted this wild-dog behavior myself and probably will again. Surround, bite, tear open stomach and anal cavity, pull out intestines and other organs, consume. It’s a terrible thing to experience, but this is the fucking realm I live in.

Edelstein: “In the context of this spate of comic-book movies (which I consider a blight, but that’s another subject) I underestimated how much a superheroine at the center of a woman-directed film would mean to many people, and descriptions I considered lively and complimentary would come across as demeaning. Moreover, if Wonder Woman will empower women at this moment in history — in which reproductive rights are imperiled, and an admitted groper is working to undo decades of gains for women — then some of the criticisms of my review are just. I reserve the right to think that this is not, overall, a very good movie. But it is an important one.”

From Ryan Lizza‘s New Yorker piece, “How Climate Change Saved Steve Bannon’s Job,” dated 6.2:

“Just as [Steve] Bannon seemed to reach a low point in his relationship with Trump, [Jared] Kushner’s role in the Russia probe emerged as the most important piece of White House intrigue. Kushner, though he didn’t have the title, was the Trump campaign’s de-facto campaign manager. He was at Trump’s side through the eras of Roger Stone, Carter Page and Paul Manafort. And more important, as we learned last Friday, Kushner was working closely with Flynn, during the transition, on his dealings with the Russians, and he has attracted a similar level of interest from the F.B.I.

“The second change since Bannon’s low point was that a decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate accord finally needed to be made. It was the most important fight pitting Bannon against Jared and Ivanka yet. And it played to all of Bannon’s strengths. The first Trump adviser described Kushner and Ivanka as ‘more or less Trump’s conscience,’ and as ‘more pragmatic, a little less ideological,’ or perhaps ‘multi-ideological.’ Bannon, he said, ‘speaks to Trump’s id.’

“A third Trump adviser, more closely aligned with the Bannon faction, was less charitable. ‘I think Jared and Ivanka are concerned with being accepted in the right places, they care about what the beautiful people think,’ he said. ‘They care about being well received in the Upper West Side cocktail parties. They view Steve as a man with dirty fingernails, with some weird, crazy, extremist philosophy they don’t think is in the best interest of the President.

“With all respect to them, they don’t understand how Trump got elected. They don’t understand the forces behind it, they don’t understand the dynamics of the situation, and they certainly don’t understand his appeal and the people who voted for him ** — they can’t understand it.” He added, “They would like the President to be more like George Bush: one-dimensional, predictable, neocon, mainstream.”

** rural and rust-belt dumbshits, marginally educated if that, Fox News-watching, the dregs of 21st Century society.

A couple of months ago there was an odd kerfuffle about the armpits of Wonder Woman‘s Gal Gadot having been shaved. Feminists actually felt it was some kind of betrayal or undermining of the Wonder Woman metaphor. But when have hairy armpits of any heroic movie figure ever been shown? 50-plus years ago some rolled their eyes over Jeffrey Hunter’s armpits having been shaved for his performance as Yeshua in Nicholas Ray‘s King of Kings.

I apologize for not catching Wonder Woman yesterday. I was all set to attend a 4:30 pm showing at the Savoy multiplex (Via Bergamo, 25, 00198) but the day fell apart when I was called on the carpet for (a) having exhibited bad taste in the choice of a former girlfriend and (b) more specifically because I foolishly failed to delete photos of same from one of my laptops. I’ll try again today. But in the meantime, now that a fair portion of HE community has seen Wonder Woman, the consensus is that it’s….what, pretty good but not great? That’s what I’m getting from over here.

Donald Trump‘s announcement of withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord is, of course, appalling and destructive. Time and again, day after mind-blowing day, the man reveals his ongoing bestiality and his small, miserable focus on shoring up support among the American dumbshit class.

I feel a certain amount of shame, yes, that I come from a country stupid enough to elect a man like Trump to the highest office in the land, even as I know that this latest horror is temporary (i.e., a four-year blip) in the grand scheme of things.

At the very least Trump will be gone by January 2021, but the damage to the planet, not to mention the United States’ standing as a leading, well-engaged player on the world stage, will not be marginal. It will be, in fact, substantial.

Trump is a stone villain — a manifestly despicable human being whose arrogant interests and worldviews are lowering the bar into the mud. Each and every day we need to remind ourselves who voted for this malignant asshole, and act accordingly on behalf of common-sense humanity.

From Todd Stern‘s 6.1 opinion piece in the Washington Post, “Trump Just Betrayed The World“: “Trump’s decision will be seen as…self-centered, callous, hollow, cruel. The ravages of climate change have been on display in recent years in the superstorms, floods, rising sea levels, droughts, fires and deadly heat waves that will only get worse as the carbon index mounts. Vulnerable countries will look at the United States, the richest power on Earth, the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, and think — even if they do not say — how dare you?”

From 6.1 N.Y. Times editorial, “Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord“: “Perhaps most astonishing of all, a chief executive who touts himself as a shrewd businessman, and who ran on a promise of jobs for the middle class and making America great again, seems blind to the damage this will do to America’s own economic interests. The world’s gradual transition from fossil fuels has opened up a huge global market, estimated to be $6 trillion by 2030, for renewable fuels like wind and solar, for electric cars, for advanced batteries and other technologies.”

I should be hunkering down and drilling into something or other, but right now things are a little too blissful with the summerish Roman weather, the new apartment and fresh pasta cooking on the stove, etc. I’ll be catching Wonder Woman tomorrow afternoon at the Cityplex Trianon (Via Muzio Scevola, 99, 00181 Roma), and I’m telling you right now it’d better be good. It’s now 7:45 pm and cooling down — heading outside for a longish walk.

Don’t kid yourself, Chloe Moretz — the basic premise of Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs is that the classic Snow White image would be severely compromised if she turned out to be corpulent. The third act will deliver the standard bromide about true beauty lying within, I’m sure, but look at the trailer, for God’s sake. The dorky dwarves under the bed nearly faint when rail-thin Snow undresses, and then moan with displeasure when it turns out her slim bod is illusory. Is the trailer saying that fat is ugly? No — that it’s disappointing, at least initially. And yet the p.c., Moretz-endorsed line is that traditional physical allure is meaningless. Sure thing.

Talk to any comedian — there’s no such thing as “a joke.” There’s only slap-in-the-face reality and the clever spinning of some painful, humiliating experience by way of wit, audacity and imagination. Jokes are always about ghastly things of one kind or another, and in this light there’s no such thing as going “too far,” even in a political satirical sense. I feel that Kathy Griffin‘s severed Trump head appropriately addressed one of the most malevolent gargoyles in American governmental history in tit-for-tat terms. It expressed what I feel about that bloated orange pig, and it provided a satisfying emotional fantasy. But why is dead Trump bleeding from the scalp?