As horrific as this morning’s Saugus High School shooting was (two fatalities, three critically wounded, shooter apprehended), none of us are shocked or surprised when this kind of thing occurs. The truth (and God help us) is that school shootings are an almost routine occurence. We know this won’t be the last, and that random slaughter is more or less a facet of American life now.

Which is why the bigger gut-punch, for me, is the two-day-old news about the drowning of Venice, Italy — the worst flood there since 1966, and a harbinger of future floods to come. The eternal beauty and serenity of Venice is no longer a given, and the vibes are anything but serene with this the Sword of Damocles hovering. It’s shattering, heartbreaking.

Wash, rinse, repeat: Many world-class cities (Manhattan included) are going to be flooded in the coming decades, and it’s basically the fault of those on Donald Trump‘s side of the aisle — thoughtless industrialists, the denial brigade, China, India, cattle industry, etc. And 38% of the American electorate is down with the Trump agenda. Because they’re devoted to aggressive ignorance, and because the maintaining of Anglo Saxon dominance and pushing back against POC encroachment is paramount to them.

Thanks to Sony Pictures and the tireless p.r. team behind A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood for the nice Mr. Rogers sweater. I’ll never wear it outside my home, but it’s very warm. (I regard thick red sweaters as an east-coast Republican thing — I’m more of a black Italian sweater type of guy.) But it’s very generous of Sony to send this over along with some other Rogers items. Thanks, guys.

Over the last year I’ve been campaigning against the wearing of black sneakers with white midsoles, aka “whitesides.” Last November I announced that these grotesquely designed creations had become “the new Crocs,” and as bad as the wearing of gold-toed socks. I naturally presumed that X-factor industry types would agree with me.

But over the last couple of days I’ve noticed that Matt Damon, Christian Bale and Adam Sandler are all wearing these godforsaken things. Even Brad Pitt is wearing a variation — i.e., cream-colored sneakers with whitesides. For whatever reason these guys are refusing to acknowledge that wearing whitesides makes you look like a huge dork.

I suppose this means that I’m the clueless one, right? The guy who doesn’t get it? I think not. I’ve been to Italy a few times and I know what goes, and these shoes are an embarassment to mankind.

The last effort from Joel and Ethan Coen was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an anthology film for Netflix. But that didn’t count because it wasn’t really a single-narrative “Coen Bros. film” that opened in theatres. Within that realm, Joel and Ethan have been M.I.A. since Hail, Caesar!, which came out three years ago. Except that was a bit of a disappointment. It was fine (Josh Brolin was excellent) but at the same time a bit strained and somehow incomplete.

If you ask me the last real Coen brothers film was Inside Llewyn Davis, which was six fucking years ago.

I “liked” but didn’t love True Grit (’10) all that much. It was basically about Jeff Burly Bridges going “shnawwhhhhr-rawwwhhrr-rawwrrluurrllllh.” It certainly wasn’t an elegant, blue-ribbon, balls-to-the-wall, ars gratia artis Coen pic — it was a well-written, slow-moving western with serious authenticity, noteworthy camerawork, tip-top production design and, okay, a few noteworthy scenes.

So let’s just call the last ten years a difficult, in-and-out, up-and-down saga, but at the same time acknowledge that the Coens have enjoyed two golden periods of shining creativity and productivity.

The first golden period was a four-film run — Blood Simple (’84), Raising Arizona (’87), Miller’s Crossing (’90) and Barton Fink (’91). The Hudsucker Proxy (’94) was a weird, half-successful, half-sputtering in-betweener. The second golden period (’96 to ’09) was a nine-film run that included Fargo (’96), The Big Lebowski (’98), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (’00), The Man Who Wasn’t There (’01), Intolerable Cruelty (’03), The Ladykillers (’04), No Country for Old Men (’07), Burn After Reading (’08) and A Serious Man (’09).

My moviegoing life has been diminished by the absence of the “real” Coen Brothers. If I was a mega-millionaire I would invest in whatever they want to make.

During a chat with JLo for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, Robert Pattinson (aka “Rbatz”) said that the Twilight series (a) has always struck him as a profoundly “weird story” and (b) that “it’s strange how people responded a lot to it.” Jesus…after all these years and he still doesn’t understand the primal appeal of this franchise?

“I guess the books are very romantic, but at the same time, it’s not like The Notebook romantic,” Rbatz said. “The Notebook is very sweet and heartbreaking, but ‘Twilight’ is about this guy, and he finds the one girl he wants to be with, and he also wants to eat her. I mean, not eat her, but drink her blood or whatever.”

No, no, no…it’s not about Edward Cullen wanting to drink Bella Swan‘s blood and turning her into a fellow vampire (although the story does eventually go there). It’s about the undying love and steadfast loyalty of a hunky young guy whose feelings aren’t driven by sexual hunger but an everlasting, otherworldly urge to shelter and protect.

The Twilight series goes off the rails in Breaking Dawn, Part 1 when Edward and Bella have sex and she gets pregnant. Being dead, Edward can’t achieve a stiffie, much less produce sperm, so the whole sexual angle is fucking ridiculous.

Originally posted on 5.27.14: I’ve never been a fan of that “plink plink plink plink plink pink plink plink” Twilight Zone theme, which replaced Bernard Herrmann‘s music after the first ’59-to-’60 season.

Herrmann’s original score is wonderfully solemn and vaguely creepy, and much more affecting in a moody-undercurrent way than anything that followed. The fact that Marius Constant‘s plunk-plink-bongos score is one of the most universally-recognizable music cues of the past century doesn’t mean jack-squat. There’s nothing lower than being a widely recognized music cue. Herrmann’s score is for the connoisseurs club — no chumps allowed.

Whatever the time frame, sexual assault is without question hateful, criminal and tragic. Who isn’t repelled by the import of various allegations that Roman Polanski behaved abominably with certain younger women? True, Polanski has denied the recent rape allegation shared by Valentine Monnier, and he is apparently considering suing Le Parisien for publishing her allegation. But there have been other similar assertions, as we all know.

There’s no way to argue that the women who protested against last night’s Paris opening of Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (aka J’accuse) are emotionally in the wrong. But at the same time it is wrong to try and censor or suppress art.

We’re talking about two separate realms here — that of Polanski the artist vs. the flawed and conflicted Polanski who’s allegedly brought trauma and harm to certain women. History tells us that many noteworthy artists have been, more often than not, intemperate and unruly in their emotional relationships.. Hurt people hurt people, and I wish it were otherwise. But great or formidable cinema should never be fucked with…ever.

The voice of top Ukraine diplomat William B. Taylor, who this morning provided compelling testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on the opening day of impeachment hearings, has great snap and timbre. He speaks with crisp diction and an excellent phrasing instinct. One is concurrently left with an impression that Taylor is a man of character and conviction, and is therefore trustworthy.

But I don’t get the Walter Cronkite analogy. Okay, their voices are vaguely similar. What people are really saying, I suspect, is that Taylor sounded as polished and well-spoken and generally convincing as Cronkite did for decades on the CBS Evening News.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza: “William B. Taylor, the top US official in Ukraine, delivered a tour-de-force opening statement — packed with details about the formation of an “irregular” channel (led by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani) with Ukraine that often ran directly counter to his own regular channel and longstanding US policy in the region.

“Taylor also laid out an excruciatingly specific timeline of his interactions with, among others, National Security Adviser John Bolton, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and top Ukrainian officials. In that timeline, he repeatedly made clear that there was a not-very-quiet understanding that military aid from the US to Ukraine was being withheld unless and until the country announced an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company where Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, sat on the board.

“Most stunningly, Taylor recounted an episode that he was told about only after his September 22 closed-door testimony involving Sondland. According to Taylor, Sondland met with a top aide to Zelensky on July 26 — one day after the fateful call between Trump and Zelensky. Sondland then called Trump and informed him of the nature of the meeting and an aide to Taylor heard Trump ask of “the investigations.” Following that call, the Taylor aide asked Sondland what Trump’s thoughts were on Ukraine. Sondland replied that Trump cares more about the Biden investigation than anything else.”

The view of Jordan Searles’ N.Y. Times op-ed piece about Marriage Story (11.12) is that Robert Benton‘s Kramer vs. Kramer, to which Noah Baumbach‘s film has been compared, presents a more progressive view of how a responsibility-accepting husband-father (i.e, Dustin Hoffman‘s Ted Kramer) should behave.

Her opinion is basically that Baumbach favors Adam Driver‘s less-apologetic Charlie Barber character over Scarlett Johansson‘s Nicole Barber.

Excerpt: “Baumbach casts Laura Dern‘s point of view in a harsh light, with her feminist speeches framed like villain monologues. In the last act of the film, Nora announces that she cut a deal with Charlie’s lawyers that gives Nicole custody 55 percent of the time whenever Charlie is visiting Los Angeles. ‘I didn’t want him to be able to say he got 50-50,’ she says, gloating.

“Even though Marriage Story is ostensibly on Nicole’s side, she isn’t given the same sympathy-churning emotional beats afforded to her ex-husband. Charlie never apologizes for his behavior, though he does perform ‘Being Alive,’ from the Stephen Sondheim musical Company. In the show, the song finds the lead character at first rejecting commitment, but soon realizing that everything that makes a relationship challenging can also be fulfilling. Mr. Driver’s performance of the song is stirring, but its context feels unearned.”

HE to critic pally: “Are you sensing a shifting of the winds on Marriage Story?” Critic pally to HE: “Totally. It’s being taken down by the wokesters, and by the fact that it’s gone into the Netflix Bermuda Triangle.”

I ran a “Marriage v. Kramer” piece on 9.3.19.

Hollywood Elsewhere sincerely apologizes for missing last night’s all-media screening of Elizabeth Banks‘ Charlie’s Angels. It’s not that I didn’t want to see it…okay, maybe it is that. Maybe I subconsciously “forgot” for this reason.

Rotten Tomatoes 61% + Metacritic 56% = forget it.

“The movie is relentless, pulpy and exciting, unabashedly derivative, and — at an hour and 58 minutes — a little too much of a rousingly of-the-moment feministic but still rather standard-issue thing.

“The new Charlie’s Angels is a heavier chunk of escape than any previous Angels incarnation — if the early–2000s films were pop, this one is metal.” — from Owen Gleiberman’s apparently gently phrased review.