I went searching for Sam Waterston‘s death eyes in this scene from the director’s cut of Oliver Stone‘s Nixon (’95), and in so doing was reminded of how good this Helms-vs.-Nixon confrontation scene really is. Perfect focused and haunted performances from Anthony Hopkins and especially Waterston — God, he’s so much better at conveying chilly remove than caring and compassion.

The eyes have it at the 9:13 mark.

Robert Connolly‘s The Dry (IFC Films), an Australian mystery thriller, opens today. A huge hit in Australia after opening last January (as of 3.23 it had become the 14th-highest-grossing Australian film of all time) and based on a same-titled 2016 book by Jane Harper, pic costars Eric Bana, Genevieve O’Reilly, Keir O’Donnell and John Polson.

On Oprah Winfrey‘s new doc series “The Me You Can’t See”, Prince Harry says that the death of his late mother, Princess Diana, was essentially caused by unscrupulous media jackals. “The ripple effect of a culture of exploitation and unethical practices ultimately took her life,” he claims.

The predatory media certainly did what it could to make Diana’s life anguished and miserable, and shame on them for that. But as I explained in August 2017, the primary cause of her death was Dodi Fayed, the millionaire asshat whom Diana had been involved with for a few weeks.

Excerpt: “I was working at People when Diana began seeing Fayed in July 1997. Two or three of us were asked to make some calls and prepare a file on the guy. Within three or four hours I’d learned that Fayed was an irresponsible playboy, didn’t pay his bills on occasion, lacked vision and maturity and basically wasn’t a man.

I was startled this morning by a snap of 20-year-old Paul Schrader in the spring of ’67, taken “in a Quonset hut at Iowa’s Writers Workshop.” “Startled” because he was nearly the spitting image of my son Dylan at roughly the same age. Almost the same brown eyes, definitely the same nose and hair. It appears to be a photo of a photo, hence the odd Rubber Soul album cover effect.

How did Anthony Quinn feel when he first saw this poster in ’61 and knew that for the rest of his life certain movie fans would associate him with the idea of seething rage and muskrat teeth? And it’s all imagined by the illustrator. There isn’t a single scene in The Guns of Navarone in which Quinn gets angry at anyone, much less flashes his teeth. During most of the film he plays it steely and sullen. The one exception is an Act Two scene when he pretends to be a coward, moaning and whimpering and crawling around on the floor in front of Nazi captors.

I can’t find the link, but I’m 96% certain that “way back when” I read a print interview with Cher that touched on her relationship with Gregg Allman, and that she told the interviewer that when she and Allman first met sometime in early ’75 “I’d never heard of him.”

The Allman Brothers Band burst onto the rock scene in ’69, and had become stone legends by late ’70. Duane’s motorcycle-accident death (10.29.71) was a huge tragedy. The Eat A Peach album (’72) was huge. They toured all over. Not knowing the Allmans was like not knowing who Elton John or Linda Ronstadt or the Eagles were.

Cher had been rich and famous since the mid ’60s, and living in her Sony and Cher Comedy Hour realm between ’71 and ’74. I’m not 100% sure about the above-referenced quote, but if Cher said it it’s worth contemplating, I think.

I’m not a big pie guy as a rule. I’ll have an occasional slice of pumpkin pie around the holidays, but that’s about it. I nonetheless ordered apple pie a la mode last night at Barney’s Beanery…an idea that hit me out of the blue. The vanilla ice cream was perfect, but I went into…well, you’d have to call it shock when I saw that the pie was covered with melted cheese.

Call me ignorant and naive, but until last night I’d never even heard of cheese-melt apple pie. I knew right away that I couldn’t even think about eating it. Or sampling it. I was gradually persuaded to take a single bite, and I couldn’t really taste the cheese. The sugared apple stuffing was overpowering.

Our waitress informed us that cheese-melt apple pie has been served by Barney’s Beanery since it opened 101 years ago.

Research: “In 1998, a reader of the Los Angeles Times complained that ‘[a column] about cheese and apple pie left me feeling like I live in the twilight zone… I have so far never encountered American friends or acquaintances who even want to try this.” When asked whether he ate pie with cheese in his home state of Mississippi, one chef said: “Oh, God no! They’d put you away in a home.”

“The idea appears to have originated in England, where all sorts of fillings were added to pies. At some point, the 17th-century trend of adding dairy-based sauces to pies morphed into a tradition of topping them with cheese. For instance, in Yorkshire, apple pie was served with Wensleydale, which is likely how the phrase ‘an apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without the squeeze’ began.

“According to The Mystic Seaport Cookbook: 350 Years of New England Cooking, New England settlers brought the idea behind these Yorkshire pies with them, but instead of Wensleydale, they began using cheddar.”

"I don't know what to do."

A 10-year-old Palestinian girl breaks down while talking to MEE after Israeli air strikes destroyed her neighbour's house, killing 8 children and 2 women#Gaza #Palestine #Israel pic.twitter.com/PWXsS032F5

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 15, 2021

In the comment thread for “Five Things” (5.14), which was all about the superhack career of Richard Donner, someone mentioned The Omen (’76) and I jumped in with the following:

“The Omen is a good creepy film of its type. The best thing about it is Jerry Goldsmith‘s score. I would have drowned Damian after realizing what he is, but that’s me. I realize, of course, that unless Gregory Peck and Lee Remick remain in a denial cocoon for years on end there’s no movie.”

Because of that posting I re-watched this 1976 film last night, and almost immediately I was scolding myself for calling it “a good creepy film of its type.” It’s not — it’s actually a very stupid film that was made in a lazy, half-assed manner with mostly awful dialogue, and was burdened by idiotic plotting.

The Omen‘s success was based upon a general audience belief in mythical religious bullshit, and it launched itself upon the lore of The Exorcist (’73), which was and is a much better film. So please accept my apology for saying what I said. I don’t know what I was thinking.

With the exception of three good scenes — the nanny hangs herself during Damian’s birthday party, the dogs in the graveyard scene with Peck and David Warner, and Warner gets his head sliced off by a flying pane of glass — The Omen is a painfully mediocre effort.

Almost every scene summons the same reaction: “Why isn’t this better…why didn’t they rewrite the dialogue?…God, this wasn’t finessed at all.”

I came to really hate the tiny, beady eyes of that young actor who played Damian — Harvey Spencer Stephens (who’s now 51 years old).

The middle-aged, warlock-eyed priest who gets impaled by a falling javelin of some sort — why did he just stand there like a screaming idiot as he watched the rod plunge toward him?

Why didn’t Peck and Remick simply fire that awful demonic nanny (Billie Whitelaw)?

Why didn’t Peck just buy a pistol and shoot that demonic Rotweiler right between the eyes, and in fact shoot all the other Rotweilers in the graveyard?

As I mentioned Friday, The Omen depends upon Peck and Remick refusing to consider the obvious during most of the running time. Refusing to reach for an umbrella, wear a raincoat or take shelter during a thunderstorm…that kind of idiocy.

During his career heyday (’45 to ’64) Peck mostly played one smart, restrained, rational-minded character after another. (His roles in Spellbound, Duel in the Sun and Moby Dick were the exceptions.) The Omen was the first time Peck was called upon to play a stuffed-shirt moron — a denialist of the first order. Okay, he starts to wake up during the final half-hour, but it’s truly painful to watch an actor known for dignity and rectitude and sensible behavior undermine the idea of intelligent assessment at every turn.

For some odd reason the footage of Rome made me almost weep with nostalgia for that city — I haven’t been there since ’17.

I could watch The Exorcist once a year for the rest of my life, but I’ll never watch another Omen film again…ever. I was truly angry at myself for wasting 111 minutes of my life.

In an interview with Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, Robert De Niro spoke about his recently injured leg. “I tore my quad** somehow,” he said. “It’s just a simple stepping over something and I just went down. The pain was excruciating and now I have to get it fixed.

“But it happens, especially when you get older. You have to be prepared for unexpected things. But it’s manageable.”

De Niro said the injury wouldn’t affect his performance as bad-guy cattleman William Hale in Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, which is currently rolling. “[Hale is] pretty much a sedentary character in a way,” he said. “I don’t move around a lot, thank God. So we’ll manage. I just have to get the procedure done and keep it straight in a certain position and let it heal.”

And so the point of this riff: Please name the most vividly etched sedentary characters in the history of cinema, starting with Jabba the Hutt and moving on down. How about Orson Welles‘ Cardinal Woolsey in A Man For All Seasons (’66)? Or the supreme Martian commander in Invaders From Mars (green head, face of a Mexican woman, communicates with lizard-like pincers or tentacles)? Maybe the iron-lung guy in The Big Lebowski? Or William Hickey‘s Don Corrado in Prizzi’s Honor.

Only full sedentary characters qualify. Sidney Greenstreet sits like an iron Buddha statue 95% of the time in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, but now and then he gets up and walks into or out of a room — that’s a disqualifier.

** Quadriceps femoris

One, presuming that Bob Wilson and his wife Julia (William Shatner, Christine White) are flying coach, it’s amazing how much breathing and leg room average folks had on flights in the early ’60s. Two, the windows have sliding plaid curtains…luxury! Three, a stewardess asks the distressed Shatner if he needs a blanket — it’s been years since I’ve seen blankets in coach (even those shitty synthetic ones). Four, before today I never realized that the gremlin was played by Nick Cravat, who was Burt Lancaster‘s lifelong friend and acrobat partner. And five, Richard Donner directed mostly big-budget features but “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” was a more effective ride than almost everything he did for the big screen (except for Lethal Weapon, his peak effort).

Unable to recall or even investigate where this remote horse ranch in the Belizean jungle was located, or the name of the couple who ran it. The guy was from Texas — I remember that much. And the howler monkeys in the high trees. And the fact that we went swimming in a lake, and under a waterfall. Fall of ’90, 30 and 1/2 years ago.