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I won’t precisely say what happens at the end of No Time To Die, but it happens for two reasons — partly a dramatic one (which I respect within the realm of the plotting, James Bond‘s character arc, the emotional payoff and whatnot) but mostly for a political one.

The latter is about the producers’ belief that the curtain had to come down on Bond because his studly, smugly sexist, martini-sipping, tuxedo-wearing attitude had become an anachronism, and that this mid 20th Century character had to relinquish the reins in the woke era. Sooner or later all tropes become old hat and need to be retired. We all get that, except that this mid 20th Century character began to relinquish the sexist reins 25 years ago, and for the most part did relinguish them 15 years ago.

For that Bondian current of studly sexism is, in fact, a decades-old cliche — pretty much confined to the Sean Connery, George Lazenby and Roger Moore periods and pretty much brought to a close during the Pierce Brosnan era, and more or less absent during the time of Daniel Craig (’05 to ’21 — Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die).

And the wokesters don’t care — the Bond “thing” had to be symbolically terminated all the same.

Critics won’t say it was a political call, but it was — the last 40 minutes work dramatically on their own terms, as noted (and some will shed tears), but the finale was primarily implemented to satisfy “them.” Don’t kid yourself, and don’t let anyone blow smoke about this.

Excerpt from Matt Belloni‘s latest “What I’ve Heard”…

The two finest films I saw at last month’s Telluride Film Festival were Joe Wright‘s exquisitely made Cyrano (UA Releasing, 12.31) and Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s King Richard (Warner Bros., 11.19). As things currently stand, these are also the most deserving Best Picture contenders…no question. Here, at long last, is the Cyrano trailer:

Posted on 9.2.21: “I’ve been watching filmed adaptations of Edmund Rostand‘s Cyrano de Bergerac for decades (Jose Ferrer‘s 1950 version, Steve Martin‘s Roxanne, the 1990 Gerard Depardieu version, and Michael Lehmann‘s The Truth About Cats and Dogs). Wright’s newbie — an inventively choreographed musical, fortified by first-rate production design and wonderfully lighted cinematography — is arguably the most spiritually and poetically buoyant version of them all.

The acting is top-tier, the musical numbers are arresting, the dialogue is as good as this sort of thing gets, and it’s a truly authentic time-tunnel experience (save for the presentism in the casting, which is par for the course these days).

Peter Dinklage has absolutely hit the jackpot with his titular performance — he’ll definitely be Best Actor-nominated. The film will almost certainly end up being Best Picture-nominated, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the year-end consensus is that Cyrano is a “better” musical than Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story and Jon Chu‘s In The Heights combined.

Based on Schmidt’s 2018 stage musical of the same name (in which Dinklage and Haley Bennett costarred before moving onto the film version), Cyrano is easily Wright’s best film since Anna Karenina. Seamus McGarvey‘s exquisite cinematography reminded me of David Watkins‘ lensing of Richard Lester‘s The Three Musketeers (’73) — it’s a real trip just to watch and sink into on a visual level alone.

Kudos to Cyrano costars Kelvin Harrison Jr., Bashir Salahuddin and Ben Mendelsohn.

SPOILERS ALLUDED TO WITHIN THE FOLLOWING: Last night I watched Daniel Craig‘s last and final James Bond film, knowing full well what the storyline was and particularly what the ending would deliver.

And I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was never bored, and was seriously impressed with Cary Fukanaga‘s pacing, cutting, visual discipline and overall chops. There’s never any doubt that this is a grade-A package made by grade-A people. Plus it’s Craig’s best Bond since Casino Royale, and one of the best overall. And knowing about the ending didn’t fucking matter at all. There’s a difference between watching a film as an adult, and watching one as an infant.

The pleasure of any film is in the way it unfolds — that special-touch factor, the art of it, the timing, the polish, the undercurrent, the first-classiness of it all. How the story is told, not the story itself…right? Singer, not song.

Plus the whole plot is sitting on the film’s Wikipedia page. Al Pacino in The Insider: “The cat totally out of the bag…”

On top of which Craig doesn’t play a boorish old-school sexist. He never has really. He plays a good, decent, smart, non-arrogant fellow in No Time to Die, and when the big moment comes it’s rather sad and classically invested in. And that’s where I shed my single, solitary tear.

Let no one doubt that the ending of No Time To Die was written by people who are terrified of seeming tethered to the past (who isn’t?), and are triply terrified of wokester (especially #MeToo) wrath, and that the ending was written to make a point — i.e., we’re in a new world, and there’ll be no more of that old “shaken, not stirred” broth…that smooth, sexist, tuxedo-wearing, martini-sipping swagger. We’re ending that shit here and now.

And it’s completely foolish and stupid, by the way, for the film to say at the end of the closing credits that JAMES BOND WILL RETURN. No Time To Die is not a Marvel or a D.C. film.

Friendo to HE: “I can’t say for sure what the Bond producers will do, but there’s way too much money on the table for them to just say goodbye to James Bond. And Barbara Broccoli is on record as saying that the character won’t be a woman. Bond will be back, with a new actor (probably a Caucasian), and they’ll present it as a reboot.”

HE to Friendo: “But they’ve conclusively eliminated that possibility. The only way to get around this would be inject Marvel and D.C.-styled plotting.”

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True story: “I was driving along Melrose Ave. near Doheny in late 1983. (Or was it early ’84?) I noticed that a new BMW in front of me had a framed license plate that came from a dealer in Westport, Connecticut, where I had lived only five years earlier and which is next to my home town of Wilton.

“I pulled alongside the Beemer and saw right away that the driver was Anne Baxter, who looked pretty good for being 60 or thereabouts. I rolled down my window and said, “Hey, Westport…I’m from Wilton!” And Baxter waved and smiled and cried out “Hiiiiii!” [Originally posted on 2.8.13.]

I realize that many Millennials and Zoomers have no idea who Baxter was, but eventually a generation will come along that has never heard of them. I can’t recall the name of the Westport dealership where Baxter bought her Beemer. For decades Baxter lived at 25 Knapp Street in Easton.

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“Sean Baker’s Red Rocket (aka ‘Dog Erection’) teeters on the line between mostly legitimate film festival-smarthouse cinema and relentlessly depraved and disgusting sociopath-porn.

“It’s ‘good’ in the sense that Baker isn’t afraid to show his lead character, Simon Rex‘s “Mikey Saber”, dive into gross and reprehensible behavior but most of the supporting players besides. We’re talking bottom-of-the-barrel Texas trash here. Nor does Baker feel obliged to deliver some form of moral redemption for Mikey, which I respect. Yes, Baker occasionally delivers slick chops and whatnot, and yes, Mikey has a sizable horse schlong (even when flaccid), but the scuzz factor in this film is REALLY rank. It was not a pleasant sit, but that’s the point, I realize.

“The Galaxy crowd totally hated it — a quick shattering of applause and then silence and hasty exits.” — posted from the Telluride Film Festival on 9.4.21.

The “naked Mikey wearing a huge red donut” poster is much more audience-friendly than any stand-out aspect of the film, although I should offer side props to Susanna Son, who makes an impression as “Strawberry,” Mikey’s gullible, up-for-anything girlfriend.

In Damian Chazelle‘s Babylon (Paramount, 12.25.22), Brad Pitt plays a dapper, in-some-ways-John Gilbert-resembling movie star who, shall we say, runs into some difficulty during Hollywood’s transition from silents to sound in the late 1920s to early ’30s. Margot Robbie plays Clara Bow, according to the IMDB.

Pitt was captured yesterday during a break from filming at The Ebell of Los Angeles (743 So. Lucerne Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90005), which is often used for period filming. The Ebell includes a clubhouse building and the 1,270-seat Wilshire Ebell theatre.

“Fellini Satyricon meets Day of the Locust,” posted on 7.21.19: “I’ve partially read a May 2019 draft of Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon, his theatrical follow-up to First Man. Babylon is a late 1920s Hollywood tale about a huge sea-change in the nascent film industry (i.e., the advent of sound and the up-and-down fortunes that resulted) and about who got hurt and those who survived.

“A la Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Babylon offers a blend of made-up characters and a few real-life Hollywood names of the time — Clara Bow, Anna May Wong. Paul Bern and an “obese” industry fellow who represents Fatty Arbuckle. (I’m presuming there are many others.) I’ve only read about 40% of it, and I’m certainly not going to describe except in the most general of terms. It runs 184 pages, and that ain’t hay.

“Most of Chazelle’s story (or the portion that I’ve read) is amusingly cynical and snappy, at other times mellow and humanist, and other times not so much. It takes place in the golden, gilded realms of Los Angeles during this convulsive, four or five-year period (roughly 1926 to 1931, maybe ’32) when movie dialogue tipped the scales and re-ordered the power structure. Everyone above the level of food catering had to re-assess, re-think, change their game.

“It starts out with a long, bravura sequence that will probably impress critics and audiences in the same way La-La Land‘s opening freeway dance number did. Except Babylon is darker, raunchier. The first 26 or 27 pages acquaint us with the main characters (one of whom may be played by Emma Stone) while diving into the most bacchanalian Hollywood party you’ve ever attended or read about. Cocaine, booze, exhibitionist sex, an elephant, the singing of a lesbian torch song, heroin, blowjobs, and a certain inanimate…forget it.

“Unless Chazelle embarks on a serious rewrite, the 27-minute opening of Babylon is going to seem like quite the envelope pusher. It’s basically Fellini Satyricon meets Day of the Locust meets the secret orgy sequence in Eyes Wide Shot meets the Copacabana entrance scene in Goodfellas. Plus Baz Luhrmann‘s The Great Gatsby meets The Bad and the Beautiful meets Singin’ in the Rain meets The Big Knife…that’ll do for openers.”

On 9.17 I conveyed admiration for Roger Durling’s costly amber-red Jack Nicholson glasses. 16 days later I received a poor man’s version of Durling’s costly red specs (Blubox, $125, made in Australia), and I’m very happy with them.

Clark Gable was in his late teens when this photo was taken with his dad around ’19 or ’20. He’s almost freakish looking. Baby Huey-ish, over-fed or even chubby. Imagine if Gable’s head was shaved and he was wearing a Dan Aykroyd conehead. I’m fairly sure he had his ears surgically pinned back when he began to happen as an actor in the mid to late ’20s. And yet by the mid ’30s Gable was a huge matinee idol. It just goes to show that sometimes actors don’t really become their iconic selves until they hit 30 or 35 even, and have acquired a few creases and character lines.

Please post photos of actors or actresses who really didn’t look attractive or have that X-factor thing in their mid to late teens, but grew into it later on.

On 6.5.12 I posted about a chat I had with Jackson Browne way back when. (It was actually a four-way — Browne, myself and a couple of pretty ladies.) It was at some kind of political fundraiser that Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were attending. (Or so I recall.) It was at the Mondrian on Sunset, around late ’94 or early ’95. And I was very favorably impressed by Browne’s manner and focus.

When you collar a celebrity at a party, it’s understood that you’ll have his/her attention for maybe two or three minutes, and then someone else will move in. Browne was different in that we were talking about something political, and he didn’t respond to others trying to wheedle in on the conversation. We all stayed focused and just hung in there for 20 or 25 minutes, which is an eternity at a party.

I liked how Browne seemed to think in long sentences, and how he stayed with a thought (his or someone else’s) and how he tried to develop it and push it along, and how he really seemed to listen and engage and make an effort to stay away from the usual chit-chat. Yes, he may have been persisting in the conversation because he liked the ladies. But one can usually sniff out hounds and their personalities, and my sense was that Browne wasn’t one.

For years I’d been a fan of Browne’s songs like everyone else, but after that night I knew first-hand that he was genuine and grounded as far as it went, and that he really disliked being glib or skirting or going “yeah, yeah, uh-huh” without really listening.

I can’t recall if it was a post-Oscar party, but it might have been. The subject may have been the Gingrich revolution and the piece I had just written Hollywood conservativbes for Los Angeles magazine, which was eventually called “Right Face“.

Pete Hammond says Barbra Streisand is like Browne in this respect. Engage her in a good political discussion and she’ll stick with it.

Tatiana and I attended last night’s 6 pm screening of George Clooney and William Monahan‘s The Tender Bar (Amazon, 12.17 theatrical, 1.7 streaming) at the DGA. Then we hit the after-party at the Sunset Tower hotel.

Set in Manhasset and Connecticut in the ’70s and ’80s, the movie is a warm, occasionally jarring family affair about the usual dysfunctions and obstacles…nurtured in a bar, romantic yearnings, toil and trouble, struggling to be a writer, etc.

Tye Sheridan‘s performance was the best element for me; Ben Affleck delivers an “amiable boozy uncle with a distinctive Long Island accent” performance that might result in a Best Supporting Actor nom. This, at least, was the general consensus at the Sunset Tower.

Tatiana says The Tender Bar is going to emotionally connect like Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast has. Sid Ganis wasn’t at the screening or the party so I couldn’t check about this, but if Tatiana likes a film, attention should be paid.

The food, drink and company were all wonderful, and we were especially delighted by a three-song performance by Jackson Browne, which included one of the all-time favorite songs of my life, “These Days.”

Yesterday (10.1) Tatiana received her U.S. passport in the mail. Less than a month ago (9.5) she received her renewed Russian passport. On 8.20 she became a U.S. citizen. And roughly eight months ago, after receiving several union vouchers on various shoots, she received her SAG/AFTRA membership card. That made a difference. Except for a down period last summer (late May to mid July) she’s been working vigorously on films, TV shows, commercials and music videos. Especially recently. Boom time. So there’s some positive energy in this house.

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My admiration of Peter Weir‘s The Year of Living Dangerously (MGA/UA, 12.16.82) was immediate and unqualified. Probably the sexiest film ever about a wet-behind-the-ears journalist in an exotic, tinder-box situation — an adult-level thing, a gradually inevitable love story, a feeling of engagement on all levels, highly emotional toward the end.

Apart from the cardinal sin of having been made by white guys (which of course makes it a racist film…right, asshats?), The Year of Living Dangerously is easily among the greatest Asian-set moral and ethical dramas of its type. Where does it rank alongside Phillip Noyce‘s The Quiet American, Francis Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now, Joshua Logan‘s Sayonara, Oliver Stone‘s Platoon, etc.?

My last viewing was on laser disc in the early ’90s (I think) but I haven’t re-watched it since. Which is odd. I don’t like admitting this, but the reason I’ve stayed away is Linda Hunt‘s “Billy Kwan” character. The notion of Billy, a wise and perceptive man about town if there ever was one, suddenly succumbing to despair and offing himself over the excesses of Sukarno-influenced corruption has always struck me as crudely manipulative and un-earned. That hectoring little voice with the deep register, that haughty judgmental moralizing, that glare of outrage…bullshit.

But otherwise a haunting watch with a great Maurice Jarre score**, and certainly with a grand romantic ending.

Yes, Virginia — big studios actually supported and promoted this kind of film from time to time. Not often but it happened.

** I thought for sure the composer was Vangelis, but I was wrong.