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For decades I’ve harbored fond memories of The President’s Analyst (’67), a half-annoying, half-hippieish, half-psychedelic social satire that starred the smooth James Coburn and a comfortably laid-back Godfrey Cambridge.

So when I gave Analyst a re-watch the other night, I was surprised to discover that much of it (roughly 60%) isn’t especially good…unfunny, broadly played, overly brittle, vaguely irritating, shallow in a Man From U.N.C.L.E.-ish or Our Man Flint-y way. I was soon looking at my watch and figuring “okay, not as good as I remembered.”

But then it does a switch-up and becomes a whole different film…it goes all hippie-dippie-ish and rock-and-rolly and free love-celebrating, and is generally invested in a kind of “spread the joy and transcendence of LSD” attitude. And then it dives into a surreal but amusing plotline about the malevolence of TPC (The Phone Company) and the robots behind this malignant entity. It ends with Coburn and Cambridge shooting it out with TPC droids….hilarious!

Rarely has a mezzo-mezzo mainstream film (green-lighted by Paramount’s Robert Evans) completely uncorked itself and gone all loopy-doopey like The President’s Analyst did. I ended up up chuckling and mostly loving it. The last 40%, I mean.

The big switch happens right around the one-hour mark. It starts when Coburn’s Dr. Sidney Schaefer, running from would-be assassins of an international cast, ducks into the legendary Cafe Wha? on McDougal Street and hooks up with a rock band led by “Eve of Destruction“‘s Barry McGuire (89 and still with us!). Schaefer quickly becomes a splendor-in-the-grass lover of the attractive, hippie-chicky Snow White (Jill Banner).

From the moment that McGuire and Banner slip into the narrative and invite Coburn to join them on their magic travels, The President’s Analyst becomes a mid ’60s “turn on, tune in and drop out” mood piece…a capturing of what a lot of people were feeling and delving into and experimenting with in ’66 and ’67.

In this sense Analyst is almost as much of a mid ’60s cultural capturing as John Boorman‘s Catch Us If You Can (’65) and Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blow-Up (’66).

And yet that first hour…whoa. And the one-sheet slogans were hideous.

Poor, pixie-sized Banner was Marlon Brando‘s off-and-on girlfriend from roughly ’68 until her car-crash death in 1982, when she was only 35. She got slammed by a truck on the Ventura Freeway.

The career of Ted Flicker, director-writer of The President’s Analyst, went flat after someone slipped the Analyst script to J. Edgar Hoover‘s FBI, thereby tipping them off to the fact that Analyst would sharply satirize the bureau as well as the CIA. This led to Flicker and Evans being surveilled and harassed. The industry quickly got scared and dropped Flicker like a bad habit for a while. He later co-created Barney Miller. David Ewing‘s Ted Flicker: A Life in Three Acts screened in 2007 at the Santa Fe Film Festival. Flicker passed in 2014 at age 84.

Unless the text of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel has been significantly departed from, Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet (Focus Features, 11.27), co-written by O’Farrell and Zhao, is basically a hard-knocks feminist saga about Agnes Shakespeare (Jessie Buckley) coping with the indignities of 16th Century married life and the pitalls of dealng with a flaky, wistful husband.

It’s especially about the tragic death of Agnes’s 11-year-old son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), from the plague in 1596.

And what of Hamnet’s dad, otherwise known as Agnes’s illustrious playwright hubby William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal)? Does he figure in the plot? Sure, of course he does…O’Farrell wouldn’t have written the book and the award-contending movie would’t be coming out if it wasn’t for The Bard’s towering reputation. But Will is a kind of secondary character in this thing. The movie is mainly about the angst of Agnes.

Hamnet is therefore a feminist wokey thang…co-written and directed by a woman…do the math. Wokey movies generally focus upon or celebrate (a) women, (b) LGBTQs and (c) POCs while portraying straight white guys as bad or weak apples. I haven’t seen Hamnet, but unless O’Farrell’s book has been totally thrown out the window, the film almost certainly qualifies in this regard. Agnes is Mother Courage, and Will is one weak, needy, selfish twat.

And yet three years after Hamnet’s passing, Will wrote Hamlet, a tragedy about an indecisive Danish prince whose name was fairly interchangable with that of Will’s late son.

Hamnet will probably debut at the Venice Film Festival, or a good three months before it opens.

Here are excerpts from online commentary about O’Farrell’s book — source #1 is from the Amazon “Hamnet” page, and source #2 is The-Bibliofile,com’s Hamnet page.

(a) “O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’ is a work of historical fiction, with a lot of emphasis on the word fiction. And is largely told with a focus on Agnes…Agnes and Anne being commonly interchangeable names at the time.”

(b) “Most people who know anything about Shakespeare know that his son Hamnet died, and Hamnet’s death was a deciding, changing factor in Shakespeare’s life, for good or ill. They also know that his married years with Anne/Agnes were largely spent apart from each other, and seem to have deteriorated for reasons unknown to time. We know she was a few years older than he. We also know she was almost certainly pregnant with their first child at the time of their marriage.”

(c) “‘Hamnet’ imagines Agnes as a child of nature — also a psychic and, in a way, according to the views of the times, a witch. She’s clearly smitten by Will, but as a result of this attachment and their marriage she gives up much of her own free thinking, and her own lifestyle, and other things that make her happy, all for love of this man. Well, what woman of the late 16th century did not do this? If you were a woman of this era, no matter how much you loved the man you married (or even if you didn’t love him at all), marriage meant the [spiritual] death of the woman. ‘Hamnet’ is an incredible exploration of that, emotionally.”

(d) “It is an introspection of a woman NO ONE knows, and he — Will — is a supporting character — and yet, brilliantly, at the same time, he is the main character. Because the planets circled him, not her. He’s portrayed as self-absorbed and troubled and needy — and at least in my own imagination, I can see him being all of those things.

(e) “The character of William Shakespeare in this book is humanized and made smaller. I understand why O’Farrell might want to do that, to avoid writing yet another tribute to the greatness of the towering figure of William Shakespeare. But this aspect of the book wasn’t entirely satisfying to me. Unlike his portrayal in the book, ultimately, Shakespeare wasn’t just a guy who became financially comfortable writing plays. Instead, he wrote masterpieces and a lot of them.

(f) “There’s very little in the book indicating that Will is or was a brilliant person. Instead, he’s depicted as a disappointment to his parents, an absent father, a weakling and kind of an unmotivated loser in general, all of which made it hard for me to view this as a story that was about Shakespeare at all.

(g) “I understand this wasn’t intended to be an origin story about William Shakespeare, but I also can’t imagine that this useless lump of a man described here would become the mythological creature that he is.”

“Give me libirum or give me meth” — Leonard Frey‘s Harold in William Friedkin and Mart Crowley‘s The Boys in the Band (’68).

I was completely taken and fascinated with R. Scott Gemmill‘s The Pitt during the first nine episodes, but in episode #10 something happened that really pissed me off — something that felt a teeny bit wokey by way of anti-white-male bias. It made me pull back emotionally.

I’m speaking about Patrick Ball‘s Dr. Frank Langdon, a brilliant, highly-stressed, wrapped-too-tight E.R. doctor, having illegally and unethically used librium — a chill drug — to take the edge off.

Technically known as chlordiazepoxide, librium, according to WebMD, “produces a calming effect on the brain and nerves, which helps to reduce anxiety symptoms and promote relaxation.”

It was obviously not cool and a blatant violation of the Hippocratic Oath for Langdon to have occasionally dosed himself. But in the greater scheme of things, taking librium isn’t that different from popping an occasional valium. It didn’t strike me as that big of a deal.

Did Langdon need to face up to a potential health issue or worse? Yes, but aside from making him detour into stridency or excitability, taking lithium wasn’t interfering with his abilities or duties. Not as dramatized, at least. It would have been far worse if Langdon had been drinking, say, or taking morphine as a stress-alleviator. Langdon is a first-rate physician. He was just moderately medicating.

If I was a fellow doctor in this situation and I’d discovered what Langdon was up to, my first and only response would have been to speak with him after-hours. I would say “Frank,this really has to stop and not only that, you have to seek counsel from an outside doctor, or perhaps even from a psychologist. But it has to stop, and on a provable basis. You can’t jeopardize your career like this.”

I would add the following: “If you don’t take immediate steps to remedy this situation I’m definitely going to report this matter to our supervisor (Noah Wyle‘s Dr.’Robby’ Robinavitch). I don’t want to torpedo you, Frank — you’re too good of a doctor to just be thrown over the side by a mistake. But this has to stop now.”

So what happens? Langdon’s adverse relationship with a rookie female doctor quickly turns petty and vindictive, and the shit hits the fan.

Isa Briones‘ Dr. Trinity Santos, an assertive feminist firebrand who’s only been working in “the Pitt” for a few hours, gets wise to Langdon’s behavior. She and Langdon have already developed a dislike for each other, partly because he’s been overly critical and scolding of some of her judgment calls. So not long after she discovers his librium problem, she tattle-tales to Dr. Robby. And then Robby, ignoring the fact that Langdon is one of the two or three best physicians he has in the E.R., angrily tells Langdon to “go home”. No warnings, no scoldings….just “fuck you, you’re done.”

If someone is really good — brilliant, amazing — at a tough and demanding job, the fair-minded thing is to give him or her a chance to man up and fix a personal problem. If he/she fails to correct it, then you lower the boom. It would be one thing if Langdon’s librium-chipping was causing medical mistakes or jeopardizing the well-being of patients, but that’s not the case.

So now I don’t like Dr, Robby any more. Noah Wyle‘s performance is awesome and he’ll almost certainly win an Emmy, but I don’t like how Dr. Robby reacted. In my mind he threw a good man under the bus for insufficient cause.

And I really don’t like Isa Briones. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. When Briones/Santos confides her concern about Langdon’s unethical behavior to Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), the latter says “I don’t want to hear about it…I don’t want to know this!” And then she adds, rather angrily, “You’re trouble.”

“…that wherever I am and whatever stupid shit I’m doing that you’re back at my home, rooting for me. (pause) It’s all going to be all right, Sammy…comparatively.”

Guys who talk and think like Mark Ruffalo‘s Terry character (my younger brother bore certain resemblances) don’t tend to live long lives, much less nourishing ones.

You need to start figuring things out by your 30th birthday if not sooner, and if you’re still floundering around at age 35 you may as well admit it — you’re in fairly big trouble.

The power of this scene comes from the obvious fact that poor Laura Linney is putting this grim scenario together in her head as Ruffalo (pushing 30 when You Can Count On Me was filmed) is rambling and rationalizing.

The truth? I was almost Terry. I came thatclose, and then I began to pull it together between age 26 and 27. I nearly went into the sinkhole.

Eight days ago (Saturday, 4.13) I was trying to figure out ways to reduce the crap and clutter on my decade-old Macbook Pro, which has less RAM than my 2019 laptop and is all gummed up.

I had this dumbshit idea, you see, that erasing the music, photo and video files that were sitting on the laptop would accomplish this task.

Why didn’t I simply say to myself “uhm, wait…if you delete these mp3 items from your Apple music library on this computer all your music files will be wiped off your Cloud-based library…all your songs and albums will be gone from all your devices.”

I’ll tell you why I didn’t say this. It’s because I’m a doofus on tech stuff.

Anyway, I deleted the mp3s and realized the next morning that all the music was indeed absent from my Apple music library. Just under 4000 songs, roughly 1200 album portions. Plus there was a ton of music library stuff from burned CDs and old Napster files from…Jesus, a quarter-century ago.

I was told by a couple of senior Apple reps that there was no easy remedy…that the music might simply be gone for good. Then a Genius Bar guy explained after some study that I could at least download purchased song files from my iTunes app, which I began doing on Wednesday….relief. This simple remedy hadn’t been mentioned by those senior Apple tech adviser bozos. The term “iTunes app” never so much as passed through their lips.

A day later I was cleaning out the same Macbook Pro when I realized that the “deleted” music files were still sitting in my trash bin app. It was simply a matter of selecting “all”, going to “actions” and reinstalling the files in the Apple music depository.

As we speak everything (3819 items) is back on the phone and in the Cloud, of course. And I have the option, of course, of downloading new albums and whatnot from my Apple music Library subscription service.

…because I’d be able to follow it this time with subtitles.. But forking over $20 bills for an Amazon rental feels excessive.

I know what this film basically is — cerebral dialogue, icy vibes, convoluted twist-plotting, more cerebral dialogue. I know this sounds dilletante-ish but I didn’t find my first viewing intriguing enough to pay this much for a re-match…sorry. Get that rental down to $4.99 and we’ll be in business.

The Wiki synopsis is up!

Lunatic race-conscious review…sorry but this woman is a total woke psycho:

@jstoobs Sinners spoiler free review #film #tv #horror #tiktokfilmtvcompetition ♬ original sound – stoobs

“Socially awake,” he contends…Jesus:

@popculturebrain Review: Sinners — there are simply aren't enoughs superlatives to throw at this movie. #sinners #michaelbjordan #ryancoogler #moviereview #tiktokfilmtvcompetition #movies ♬ original sound – Alex | Pop Culture Brain

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HE deeply mourns the death of actor Nicky Katt, who only made it to age 54 so some ill wind or unlucky incident took him down. No cause of death has been reported. I’m very sorry.

Rest assured that Katt’s acclaimed performance as “Stacy the low-rent hitman” in Steven Soderbergh;’s The Limey (’99) will live forever in the annals of cinema.

I know nothing but my wild guess is that Katt’s unfortunate failure to match, must less top, this one great performance over the last 26 years might have been a factor in his demise. I’m guessing that the poor guy died of a broken heart. He was 28 or 29 when The Limey was filmed.

All screen villains are perverse or flamboyant in one way or another, but it’s fairly rare to run into one with with a truly twisted or offbeat attitude. In an off-handed, no-big-deal, between-the-lines sort of way, I mean. Not a “comedic” figure, but a dour, compromised soul whose bizarre manner, obsessions and quirks makes him/her a bit laughable or at least amusing to some extent.

Stacy was one such figure. Fairly sullen and hostile and always ready to clip someone if the money is right, but there was something about his smart-ass manner that suggested a less-than-fully-malicious fellow. Something vaguely nihilistic in a laid-back way.

About halfway through The Limey Katt delivered an improvised bad-attitude riff while he and Joe Dallesandro watched a TV show being shot. “Why don’t they make shows about people’s daily lives?,” Katt/Stacy said. “That you’d be interested in watching, y’know? Sick Old Man or Skinny Little Weakling. Big Fat Guy…wouldn’t you watch a show called Big Fat Guy? I’d watch that fucking show.”

Katt was lucky that The Limey was shot in ’98 or ’99 because today you’re not allowed to say “big fat guy” in a movie as this would constitute fat-shaming, and anyone deemed guilty of writing or saying this would be eternally banished from the film industry and forced to move to somewhere in the hinterland to work in fast food.

Jonathan Tropper‘s Your Friends and Neighbors is, first and foremost, darkly comedic in a dry, deadpan sort of way…a sardonic, amoral, noir-inflected, upper-middle-class, nine-episode Apple series about…well, thievery and nihilism and living on the existential edge of self-destruction, or something like that.

The flush life of a hedge-fund guy (Jon Hamm‘s “Coop”) swiftly falls apart after being canned by his shithead boss (Corbin Bernsen), and then it gets a bit gloomier. And then worse once Coop decides to become John Robie as a way to maintain financial stability.

And Tropper’s dialgoue is really, really delicious. During the first significant conversation scene (Coop and Olivia Munn‘s “Sam” at a bar) I sat up in my chair and went “wow…the repartee is as good in a wise-but-fatigued 2025 way as Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck‘s initial ping-pong seduction scene in Billy Wilder‘s Double Indemnity.

You just have to figure a way to not judge Coop because he doesn’t feel all that badly about becoming a jewel thief. His attitude is basically “they won’t miss it…they’re filthy rich as well as, no offense, assholes, and I should know because I’m an asshole too, or at least I was before losing my job.”

The entire first episode sits below.

My current preferences for the ’28 Democratic race are Rahm Emanuel (tough, brilliant, street-fighter), Gavin Newsom (tap-dancing former wokey) and Pete Buttigeig (smartest and most compassionate of them all).

Amanpour and Company‘s Walter Isaacson: “A lot of people, including a lot of Democrats, have said that the Democratic brand has become somewhat toxic. Is there some truth to that, and if so, why?”

Rahm Emanuel: “I would take the word ‘somewhat’ out. [The brand] is toxic. No caveats or disclaimers. There are two words that define the Democratic party for the public — ‘weak‘ and ‘woke.’ And neither one is favorable, and that’s been a process of the Democrats being seen as weak in a time in which people prefer strength, and woke being not just woke on the cultural left issues but focused almost entirely [on that] and drowning out everything else you want to say.”

In a cryptic conversation with Alec Leamas (Richard Burton), “Control” (Cyril Cusack) brings up Hans-Dieter Mundt (Peter van Eyck), head of East German intelligence.

Control: “And how do you feel about him?”
Leamas: “Feel?”
Control: “Yes.”
Leamas: “He’s a bastard.”
Control: “Quite.”

Another fascinating Cusack riff:

Control: “Fiedler, my dear Alec, is the lynchpin of our plan. Fiedler’s the only man who’s a match for Mundt, and, uhm… he hates his guts. Fiedler’s a Jew, of course, and Mundt’s quite the other thing.”

I’ve watched The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (’65) several times. Mainly for Oswald Morris’s black-and-white cinematography (the Criterion Bluray is wonderfully rendered in this respect) and especially for the pleasures of Oskar Werner’s performance as the brilliant Fiedler.

Richard Burton is good, of course, but playing the dour, sardonic and scowling Leamas requires him to be relentlessly draining. (He’s such a pill that he even turns down Werner’s offer of free recreational sex with an East German woman.) I actually hate that moment when Burton laughs at Claire Bloom when she confesses to being a devoted commie. She may be naive but at least she deeply cares, and Burton can only snicker at her conviction.