…but he could really turn on the warmth and humanity when called upon, and he had the kindest and gentlest eyes of all the classic marquee-brand actors of his generation. Which is why I’m disappointed with the Kino jacket art for a forthcoming 4K Bluray of 12 Angry Men. I’m sorry but those Fonda peepers are nowhere to be found. They belong to someone else.

I’m delighted with my Criterion Bluray version, and can’t imagine how a 4K bump (out on 3.28.23) could make that much of a difference. I sound like a broken record but still.

There’s something terribly somber and sobering in the idea of the David Crosby dynamo being silent and still, above and beyond the fact of a life having run its course and come to a natural end. I don’t like finality as a rule. I prefer the idea of fluidity, of a beating pulse and the constant search for action and opportunity. I don’t like it when a store closes and is all emptied out and boarded up with “for lease” signs pasted on the windows. Keep it going, sweep the floors, stock the shelves, pay the bills. All things must pass, of course, but not now…later.

Incidentally: On 1.19.23 NPR’s David Westervelt posted a Crosby tribute piece, and in the fifth paragraph he wrote the following: “Crosby, Stills & Nash at times would soar with electric jams. But their foundation was a unique California sound built on harmonies, acoustic guitars and a dose of self-awareness often missing in rock lyrics. Exactly where in LA’s Laurel Canyon Crosby, Stills & Nash first sang together is still debated, lost in a smoky haze.”

Actually, it’s not debated. In A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name (’19), Crosby says the very first time they sang together and knew they really had something was in Joni Mitchell‘s kitchen, inside her modest-sized home at 8217 Lookout Mountain. Crosby says this to the camera while standing in front of Michell’s former pad. Who has ever claimed otherwise?

“Whenever it’s a damp, drizzly November in my soul…whenever some pain-in-the-ass HE commenter (Renaissance, Vic Lizzy, Jeremy Fassler) posts something prickly or ugly…whenever I feel like stepping into the street and knocking people’s hats off, then it’s high time to pop an Oxy and stream a comfort flick…Charley Varrick, Fear Strikes Out or any black-and-white VistaVision title, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Horse Soldiers….that line of country.”

Thanks again to Mark Frenden, HE’s go-to guy for any kind of visual tweak or manipulation….fast turnaround, never fails. I realize that I need to be weathered up to fit in…working on it.

Many of us believed that that Banshees of Inisherin costar Kerry Condon was an Oscar shoo-in for Best Supporting Actress. She was and is the heart and soul of Martin McDonagh‘s metaphorical dysfunction drama — no one disputes this. But then the Golden Globes gave their Best Supporting Actress prize to Wakanda Forever‘s Angela Bassett as (be honest) a make-up gesture for the HFPA’s racist history in terms of membership. And then last night the insufferably woke Critics Choice voters went for Bassett also.

So now Academy voters undoubtedly FEEL OBLIGED to award Bassett also. If they give their Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Condon instead Twitter may detect a very slight after-aroma of racism, so they have to give it Bassett…even though we all agree that her banal, quarter-of-an-inch-deep Wakanda performance doesn’t deliver a fraction of the soul and substance that Condon provided.

Bassett is 64 and has been plugging away since the early ’90s, so her supporters are calling it a career tribute award now. It’s a rigged game. Life is unfair. The actress who gave the best supporting performance probably won’t win.

Friendo: You’re not allowed to criticize the idea of Angela Bassett winning an Oscar for a histrionic performance in a stupid superhero flick. I was thinking about saying “it’s great Bassett is finally winning an award but too bad it’s in a superhero movie”, but then I realized I’d get attacked for it. You can’t attack religious symbols.

HE: As I said last night, Sunday night’s Critics Choice awards show felt like some kind of Twilight Zone experience. Voting the woke party line (sacralization of race, gender, sexuality plus focusing on emotional core issues over an instance of morbid self-destructive obesity) means NOTHING in this context. It’s Maoism.

Friendo: Wokeism is a cult, that’s for sure. Look at what Cate Blanchett said last night…”the patriarchal notion of competition for a top award” or whatever she said.

HE: I thought Cate was more of a circumspect type.

Friendo: I just mean that actresses like Blanchett at this point are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They feel obliged to suggest they don’t want to win if they’re already at the top and are white. They feel a bit guilty so they’re saying ‘let’s get rid of the awards…everybody should get a certificate of merit.’ They’re almost there now. Merit has gone out the window.

HE: Oh, I see. Cate feels obliged to project a certain blithe spirit…a vague sense of guilt about this, and so she’s saying “I don’t need to win”. She’s not hungry for it, clearly. It’s unseemly to project hunger or ambition. Maybe this means Michelle Yeoh will take the Oscar now.

Friendo: She felt guilty about the possibility of beating Michelle Yeoh at her moment of near-triumph, and so rather than beating a woman of color with a decades-long narrative she probably doesn’t want to win.

HE: That’s what she was saying — you’re right. From a racial or tribal perspective, white artists defeating artists of color is not a good look.

Friendo: Exactly.

HE: Under our current Maoism defeating a person of color flirts with a morally unsavory narrative.

Friendo: Be honest — does anyone honestly think Angela Bassett should win for that Wakanda performance role? Equity mindsets mean that artists of color can never really rise on their own merit. Awards have to be gifted to them by whites.

HE: It’s totally ridiculous that Bassett has beaten Kerry Condon twice so far…c’mon!

Friendo: No intelligent human could argue even half-heartedly that Bassett’s performance is superior to Condon’s.

Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in New York City on Wednesday, 11.16.77. That very day I caught an afternoon show at Manhattan’s Ziegfeld theatre, and the instant that John Williams‘ music delivered the big crashing crescendo, concurrent with the appearance of the faded-yellow sandstorm vista in the Sonoran desert, the Ziegfeld’s massive sub-woofer speakers delivered a rib-vibrating whomp. Actually a combination of a whomp and a whoom. It was wonderful.

The shooting of When Harry Met Sally happened in mid to late ’88, when Billy Crystal was just turning 40 and Meg Ryan was 28 or thereabouts. Aline Brosh McKenna‘s Your Place or Mine is from the same romantic hymn book, except the would-be lovers are in their mid 40s — Ashton Kutcher is 44 and Reese Witherspoon is 46. Working from her own script, McKenna is making her directorial debut. She previously wrote The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses and Morning Glory. She knows how to make this kind of material work. The film opens on Netflix on 2.10.23.

After arguing with Ari Aster about the length of his latest film (three or four hours? Two and a half?), A24 has decided to release the anxious, mondo bizarro, wimpy-sounding Beau Is Afraid on 4.21.23. I’m sorry but this WTF pre-Cannes release date tells us damn near everything.

It tells us first and foremost that Beau Is Afraid is a problem film. Obviously. No distributor releases an epic-lengthed, major-league auteur film in late-April unless they’re totally confused and off-balance and scared shitless about what it is or how to sell it.

If A24 had any balls they would open Beau Is An Old, Terrified, Mommy-Traumatized Candy-Ass on the Cote d’Azur, but no — they’re too chickenshit! Afraid of what the international critical community (especially the Brits) might say!

Aster wanted to release a four-hour version, remember. Imagine watching a four-fucking-hour version of this trailer. You know Beau is going to be a slog….you know it.

It would be one thing if this surreal, memory-injected old man’s psychological horror film was 110 or 120 minutes, but you know that at 179 minutes Hollywood Elsewhere is going to be flailing around on the floor and howling and hyperventilating and possibly shrieking. David Ehrlich will probably call Beau is Afraid a perverse masterpiece but he’ll bend over for almost anything nervy or provocative. Amy Ryan will probably receive the NYFC’s Best Supporting Actress trophy.

It’s either Ari Aster‘s Synecdoche (a tip of the hat to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy for coming up with this brilliant analogy) or an angry, terrified old man’s Wizard of Oz saga, complete with a wicked-ass witch (his own mom, played by Amy Ryan). Every character in this film (except for the kid version of Joaquin) is some kind of smooth ghoulish predator.

Beau Is Afraid (formerly Disappointment Blvd.) is probably going to have its big debut at South by Southwest, a festival that is committed before-the-fact to giving a warm, giddy embrace to any oddball film that premieres there. I’m not kidding about that alternate title: Beau Is An Old, Terrified, Mommy-Traumatized Candy-Ass. HE to A24: Seriously, give this some thought.

Initial texted comments: “So Phoenix is wearing balding, old-fart, liver-spots makeup throughout the whole thing? What happened to Beau being some kind of dynamic entrepeneur or whatever? Now we know why A24 was unhappy with the length.”

At one point Aster described Beau is Afraid on the IMDB page as “a sickly, domestic melodrama in the vein of Douglas Sirk.” That settles it — Glenn Kenny and Richard Brody are going to do cartwheels in the lobby. These two are Maynard G. Krebs in reverse. When Maynard heard the “w” word, he went “work!” When Kenny and Brody hear the name of Hollywood’s most celebrated German-born director of lavish ’50s soap operas, they go “Sirk!” except they mean it lovingly.

You can never trust trailers but my God, the new Renfield trailer looks magnificent! Could the film itself be as good? Could this be the definitive vampire comedy that will unseat Love at First Bite and present one of Nicolas Cage‘s greatest-all-time performances?

If the film turns out as good as the trailer I’m seriously in favor of Cage being Oscar-nominated for Best Actor…trhe campaign would become a career tribute thing, and he could win. Look at him, for God’s sake! Listen to that enunciation! The crescendo of his career!

Directed by Chris McKay and written by Ryan Ridley (based on an story by Robert Kirkman), Renfield is about a toxic, dysfunctional relationship between Renfield, the apprentice vampire played by Dwight Frye in Tod Browning‘s original 1931 Dracula and played in Renfield by Nicholas Hoult. Awkwafina plays Renfield’s traffic-cop girlfriend.

Universal will open Renfield on 4.14.23. Possibly the first excellent film of 2023!

Condemn and cancel the following persons for creating this obviously deranged and predatory serving of erotic titillation — a scene that more or less gives a pass to all would-be rapists and gun fetishists: Robert Redford (alive), director George Roy Hill (passed in 2002), screenwriter William Goldman (died in 2018), actress Katharine Ross (because she went along with it!). Who else?

From D.C. maven Jester Bell (aka Theresa Campagna):

YouTube commenter #1 (Masked Panther): “The joker is supposed to be a respected dangerous lunatic. Not some pregnant man. So sad the direction D.C. is going / allowing.”

YouTube commenter #2 (Harley Quinn): “If this doesn’t show how dead DC is then [I don’t know] what will.”