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One of the finest observations I’ve ever read about Brian Wilson is contained in a review of Love and Mercy, written bv Los Angeles magazine’s Steve Erickson. Two sentences in particular.

One in which Erickson describes Wilson’s post-Pet Sounds, Smile-era comedown in which “the celestial sounds in his head turned on him, and became the screams of angels falling from heaven.”

The second alludes to Wilson’s music-creating process: “Great artists create in circles, not lines, in the ever-bending curl of the wave rather than in its rush to the shore’s conclusion.” Great writing!

Thrice-told Brian Wilson story: I was living in an upstairs one-bedroom apartment at 948 14th Street in Santa Monica, doing nothing, working as a tree surgeon…my lost period. (I began my adventure in movie journalism the following year.) Right below me lived a guy named Eddie Roach and his wife Tricia. At the time he was working with the Beach Boys as a kind of staff or “touring” photographer. Dennis Wilson fell by two or three times and hung out a bit, and one time I was part of a small group that played touch football with him at a local high-school field. Dennis mocked me that day for being a bad hiker, which I was. (But Dennis was a dick… really. Insecure machismo, didn’t like him, felt nothing when he died.)

Anyway it was a cloudy Saturday or Sunday afternoon and I was lounging in my living room when I began to hear someone tooling around on Eddie’s piano downstairs. It sounded like the beginnings of a song. It began with a thumping, rolling boogie lead-in, complex and grabby, and then the spirited vocal: “Back home boogie, bong-dee-bong boogie…yay-hah…back home boogie, bong-dee-bong”…and then he stopped. One of the chords wasn’t quite right so he played a couple of variations over and over, and then again: “”Back home boogie, bong-dee-bong boogie yay-hah!” and so on. Then another mistake and another correction.

Then he stopped again and started laughing like a ten year-old drunk on beer: “Hah-hah, heh-heh, heh-heh!” and then right back into the song without losing a beat. Really great stuff. Who is this guy?

I grabbed my cassette recorder and went outside and walked down the steps to Eddie’s place, and I laid it down on one of the steps and started recording. I must have captured two or three minutes worth.

Then I decided to knock on Eddie’s door and pretend I needed to borrow a cup of milk or something. I had to know who the piano guy was. Eddie opened the door and I said “hey, man,” and in the rear of the living room stood a tall and overweight Brian Wilson. He was dressed in a red shirt and jeans and white sneakers, and was cranked and excited and talking about how great some idea might be, gesturing with his arms up high. Then he saw me and almost ran over to the doorway.

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Kelly Reichardt‘s Showing Up (A24, 4.7) “opened” in some fashion about a month ago. I reviewed it at the close of last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Now that it’s out and about it can’t hurt to repost.

My 5.27 review, titled “The Pigeon of Crocville,” began with a riff about Crocs. This triggered a complaint from “Bob Hightower” about the appropriateness of such an approach. HE reply: “Yes, it’s a film review that mentions how Crocs, in a certain light, seem representative of the rural northwestern Reichert universe.”

Actual review: “An awful lot of people (i.e., at least two and possibly three) wear Crocs in Kelly Reichart‘s Showing Up, and I don’t mean the Balenciaga kind. And their presence in this quiet, sluggish but not-overly-problematic film represented…well, a slight problem.

To me Crocs are just bad — bad omens, everything I hate, unsightly, bad all over. And every time I saw one of Reichart’s characters walking around in these rubber swiss-cheese loafers it gave me a bad feeling. I didn’t cringe every time, but a voice inside went “aw, shit.”

Michelle Williams wears Crocs in this thing, and yet (significantly) this didn’t interfere with my liking, relating to and even enjoying her character — “Lizzie Carr”, a 40ish figurine sculptor who lives in a rented home in the Portland area, and who is preparing for a showing of her art in a nearby storefront-slash-salon.

Lizzie regards almost everyone and everything with an air of subdued consternation or vague resentment or sardonic resignation…my general spiritual territory.

I can’t say that Lizzie (or any other character in Showing Up) is involved in an actual story. For Reichart is naturally adhering to her familiar scheme of avoiding narrative propulsion like the plague. She’s into women and laid-back men and mulchy atmospheres and odd, low-energy behavior and whatnot. There are no second-act pivots in a Reichart film because there are no first, second or third acts, or at least not the kind that I recognize.

The only thing resembling a story in Showing Up is the plight of a wounded pigeon. The poor bird is mauled by Lizzie’s Calico cat, and left with a broken wing. Lizzie and her landlord, Jo Tran (Hong Chau), put the pigeon in a shoe box and take turns looking after it. During Lizzie’s art show at the close of the film, the pigeon is unwrapped and set free and off it goes into the wild blue yonder.

The Portland-set Showing Up is, of course, concurrently set in deep Wokeville. To an anti-wokester like myself, it’s like watching a film set in Communist East Germany in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s. The very notion of a film about Wokeville women and the inconsequential, low-energy men in their lives (ex-husbands, beardos, dads, brothers, laid-back co-workers)…a social satire set in this organic, unhurried, arts-and-craftsy environment could be an opportunity for something alive and biting. But not with Reichardt at the helm.

Showing Up has been described as a comedy, although it didn’t strike me as such. It has a vagueiy slouchy observational attitude. Every 10 or 15 minutes it elicits a subdued titter.

This is because the focus is entirely on vaguely morose Lizzie, whose general outlook is not, shall we say, bursting with optimistic expectation. She’s in a kind of a downish place start to finish. This is partly due to Tran’s lazy reluctance to fix the hot-water heater.

One of the best moments happens when Lizzie, fuming over her inability to take a hot shower, beats up a couple of plants in Tran’s small front-yard garden. Please…more or this! But that’s the end of it.

That’s all I have to say about Showing Up. It’s not bad by Reichardt standards…oh, wait, I’ve already said that.

…the pitchforkers will sulk and scowl all the more.

Instagram photo credit: David Geimer.

There’s a moment in Martin Scorsese‘s After Hours (’85) when Griffin Dunne‘s miserable lost soul eyeballs a graffiti drawing of a guy’s schlong getting chomped on by a shark.

That’s the one transcendent, pure-light moment in this dark, hard-to-swallow situation “comedy” about how a thirtysomething Manhattan male gets swallowed up by a predatory vortex of Soho hostility.

But After Hours isn’t really about the vortex as much as Dunne’s feelings of panic, helplessness and self-loathing. Why does this guy refuse to man up and figure his way out of a difficult but far-from-insurmountable situation? And why have we paid to watch a film about this wormy?

All the hipsters and know-it-alls swear by After Hours, but it’s not very good..it really isn’t.

In the same sense that Parasite slit its own throat when the drunken con artist mom allowed the fired maid into the home of the rich family, After Hours never even tries to sell the idea that Dunne would visit Soho to see about trying to fuck Roseanna Arquette with a lousy $20 in his pocket (just under $60 in 2023 dollars), or that the $20 would somehow fly out of the taxicab window, or that Dunne believed he was actually stuck and stranded in Soho when all he had to do was hop the turnstile and catch a subway back home.

If he was too chicken to hop the turnstile all he had to do was scrape together 90 cents, which is what a subway ride cost at the time. 90 cents!

Criterion will release a 4K and 1080p Bluray combo of After Hours on 7.11.23. Why would anyone want to pay $40 for this?

I re-watched my 4K UHD Apocalypse Now Bluray last night, and I wasn’t totally happy. I saw this 1979 classic at the Ziegfeld theatre two or three times in August and September of ’79, and the big-screen presentation (we’re thinking back almost 44 years) blows the 4K disc away. Aurally and visually, but especially in terms of sharp, punctuating fullness of sound.

Apocalypse Now was presented at the Ziegfeld within a 2:1 aspect ratio, which Vittorio Storaro insisted upon through thick and thin. The 4K disc uses what looked to me with a standard Scope a.r. of 2.39:1.

And the general sharpness of the image on that big Ziegfeld screen just isn’t replicated by the 4K. It looks “good”, of course, but not as good as it should.

As we begin to listen to The Doors’ “The End” while staring at that tropical tree line, John Densmore’s high hat could be heard loudly and crisply from a Ziegfeld side speaker. Before that moment I had never heard any high-hat sound so clean and precise. But it doesn’t sound nearly as pronounced on the 4K disc, which I listened to, by the way, with a pricey SONOS external speaker.

Remember that “here’s your mission, Captain” scene with G.D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford and that white-haired guy? When that scene abruptly ends, we’re suddenly flooded with electronic synth organ music…it just fills your soul and your chest cavity. Filled, I should say, 44 years ago. But not that much with the disc.

When Martin Sheen and the PBR guys first spot Robert Duvall and the Air Cav engaged in a surfside battle, Sheen twice says “arclight.” In the Ziegfeld the bass woofer began rumbling so hard and bad that the floor and walls began to vibrate like bombs were exploding on 54th Street…the hum in my rib cage was mesmerizing. Not so much when you’re watching the 4K.

As Duvall’s gunship helicopters take off for the attack on a Vietnamese village (“Vin Din Lop…all these gook names sound the same”), an Army bugler begins playing the cavalry charge. It was clear as a bell in the Ziegfeld — less so last night.

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Friendo: “This never would’ve happened if Logan Roy was still with us.“

Theories as to why Tucker Carlson has suddenly left Fox News? One presumes that it has something to do with the recent Fox-Dominion settlement, but what exactly could have been the trigger?

Wildcat theory: Carlson might conceivably throw his hat into the 2024 Presidential race.

Here was the end of what turned out to be Tucker Carlson's final Fox News show last Friday. Certainly no indication that he didn't expect to be on the air tonight. In fact Tucker's final words are, "we'll be back on Monday." pic.twitter.com/F9R5MpWHDK

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 24, 2023

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Director-star and series co-creator Bill Hader is directing all eight episodes of Barry‘s final season, and the calibre of understated black comedy is fairly astonishing. Hader’s directing instincts are easily the equal of Steven Soderbergh‘s — he tones it down in every scene, and makes it work just so. The witness protection conference hit scene is hilarious and mesmerizing.

During last night’s Barry episode (“you’re charming“) we all saw Guillermo del Toro play “El Toro”, some kind of dandified, cane-toting, soft-spoken bad guy who visits Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Cristobal (Michael Irby) to discuss Barry’s forthcoming murder. Toro has arranged for a queasy-looking character (Fred Armisen) to perform the hit during a witness protection meeting between Barry and various law officials.

It was just a cameo role, but it was very cool to see GDT delivering lines from a place of quiet confidence and with a dry understated manner. “Holy shit…there he is!” I said to Jett and Cait. I immediately wrote GDT a congratulatory note. And yet…

Guillermo was playing an allegedly fearsome criminal, the kind of sociopath who wouldn’t blink an eye at hiring a hitman. The emphasis, of course, was on dry humor with GDT talking about the difference between a podcast and TikTok exposure, but honestly? The undercurrent of menace wasn’t there. Because Guillermo couldn’t bury his humanity. He’s one of the gentlest and most compassionate people in the film industry, and simply couldn’t manage to “become” a sociopath. But at least he gave it a shot. File this under “hoot-level cameo.”

In yesterday’s “Strange Architecture” piece” I criticized the odd decision of Ben-Hur‘s production designer to build a large, visually obstructive island in the middle of the Jerusalem chariot-race stadium. The result was that a significant portion of the crowd was only able to see half the racetrack and therefore half the action.

This triggered a bizarre response from “Brenkilco,” who claimed that “they only built half the track with stands on one side,” and that “a lot of fancy editing was employed but the chariots were always racing down the same straightaway.” This “illusion,” he said, “concealed the fact that there was nothing on the other side.”

Poppycock, I replied, but I couldn’t find any smoking gun photos that proved that the racetrack was completely whole with two sides. And then “SlashMC” came to the rescue with two such photos. It makes you wonder which HE commenters besides “Brenkilco” are just talking out of their ass half the time. Thanks ever much to SlashMC.

As you’re approaching Stockholm Arlanda airport you’ll notice that it’s waaay out in the country. No sprawling suburbs or congested business strips nearby — just mile upon square mile of birch and pine trees, like you’re flying into Savannah.

Arlanda is 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Stockholm — most major city airports are 5 or 10 miles from downtown.

Arlanda is an unusually attractive environment. Not oversized, mellow vibe, nice place to hang.

Plus (and I wouldn’t want this to be taken the wrong way) it’s also somewhat pleasant to be around all those attractive Swedish people with their Nordic features, blonde hair (although black hair is equally plentiful) and relatively trim physiques.

If you’ve done any travelling over the last 10 or 15 years you know that mordibly obese people are fairly ubiquitious in U.S. airports, but there are almost none here. So it’s like another world in more ways than one. Fascinated and intrigued, I started roaming around the airport in search of Jabbas, and I’m telling you honestly that I may have spotted one or two at most. No judgment, just saying.

My original Arlanda post appeared four years ago — 5.12.19. I’m reposting because I love the top airport photo with the dark Cecil B. DeMille clouds.

We are living in the age of the male blanc dangereux, or, if you will, the homme fatale.

If there’s one thing the mainstream media and entertainment industry agree upon without hesitation, it’s that 40-plus white guys have enjoyed too much power for too long and need to be brought down.

The view is that too many of these ayeholes are anti-woke or not woke enough and therefore bad news, and that they need to ride in the back of the bus for a while and learn how it felt for marginalized people for too many decades.

Aside from your basic wokequake and #MeToo factors, I wonder if this viewpoint was in some way triggered by (or is perhaps a delayed reaction to) the ’90s femme fatale wave. All of those films about scheming, black-hearted women with ravenous sexual appetites, blah blah. What intelligent woman wasn’t quietly furious about (or at least hugely irritated by) these films, one after another after another?

The first crop of femme fatales, of course, arose with the film noirs of the late ’40s to mid ’50s. Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Ava Gardner in The Killers, Lizabeth Scott in Dead Reckoning, etc.

The second manifestation happened 25 years later with Lawrence Kasdan‘s Body Heat (’80) and particularly Kathleen Turner‘s greedy and conniving Matty Walker. This wasn’t exactly followed up upon by Stephen Frears‘ Dangerous Liasons (’88) and Harold Becker‘s Sea of Love (’89) but the notion of selfish, cunning and possibly dangerous women was certainly underlined by these films.

The ’90s wave, sparked by the perverse imaginings of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, pretty much began with the one-two punch of Curtis Hanson‘s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (’92) and Paul Verhoeven‘s Basic Instinct (’92). It more or less ended with Roger Kumble‘s Cruel Intentions (’99).

Call it a vogue that lasted seven years or a bit less.

The headliners were (1) Basic Instinct, (2) Barbet Schroeder‘s Single White Female (’92), (3) Katt Shea‘s Poison Ivy, (4) Philip Noyce, Ezsterhas and Ira Levin‘s Sliver (’93), (5) Nic Kazan‘s Dream Lover (’93 — earned a grand total of somewhere between $256,264 and $316,809, (6) Alan Shapiro‘s The Crush (’93), (7) Uli Edel‘s Body of Evidence (’93), (8) William Friedkin‘s Jade (’95), (9) Gus Van Sant‘s To Die For (’95) and Cruel Intentions — an even 10.

What am I missing? Basic Instinct 2 (’06) doesn’t count — it arrived way past the end of the cycle.