Last night Gleb (Tatyana’s 19-year-old son) and I had dinner at Kathmandu (22 Rue des Boulangers, 75005 Paris). As we crossed the Seine an hour later Gleb suddenly realized he’d left a newly purchased hipster hat at the restaurant. I called and was told the hat was safe, but we had to return before closing time.

We were looking at a good 14 or 15 blocks so I called an Uber. Over the next couple of minutes three drivers said they were on their way, but all three cancelled seconds later. Every so often a Los Angeles driver might cancel but I’ve never suffered three cancellations in a row, for heaven’s sake. So we just humped it back and arrived just as they were closing. The hat was sitting exactly where Gleb had left it.

I still haven’t gotten to Antoine Fuqua‘s What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali (HBO, two parts, 165 minutes). Fuqua basically enables the three-time heavyweight champ to narrate his own story. One result, according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Caryn James, “is undeniably an exercise in image-burnishing, not that Ali’s already heroic image needs it.”

Ali’s life has always been its own burnishment, but I’d rather re-watch his YouTube clips (I’ve watched the 10.30.74 “Rumble in the Jungle” match several times) or better yet When We Were Kings. I’ve just re-watched an eloquent N.Y. Times video obit (19 minutes, posted on 6.6.16) that addresses the “what’s my name” thing perfectly. Who’s seen Fuqua’s film and what’s the reaction?

For decades the journalistic response to Martin Luther King‘s extra-marital adventuring has been “okay, that was unfortunately part of who he was but don’t go there because it will only serve racist agendas by diminishing King’s stature as a mythic civil-rights icon.”

That’s likely to remain the default attitude about a forthcoming Standpoint report by MLK and Barack Obama biographer David Garrow about recently uncovered summaries of FBI surveillance tapes of King’s private activities.

One incident, Garrow reports, involved a rape of a female parishioner by the late Logan Kearse, pastor of Baltimore’s Cornerstone Baptist church, while King “watched” — obviously a gross and repulsive tale if true.

Yes, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, convinced that King was a Communist sympathizer, did everything he could in the mid to late ’60s to threaten or compromise the civl rights leader. And yes, Standpoint is a right-leaning publication. But Garrow is a respected, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and, according to his Wiki bio, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The FBI summaries reportedly state that King enjoyed between 40 and 45 conquests. Garrow quote: “I always thought there were 10 or 12 other women, not 40 or 45.”

Garrow has reportedly stated that in the current #MeToo glare, evidence of King’s having witnessed a rape “poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible”. That almost certainly won’t happen due to the age-old “go easy on King’s shenanigans or better yet avert your eyes” guidelines. Wokesters know where their bread is buttered.

I’ve never understood the refusal in some quarters to acknowledge that nobody is pure as the driven snow, that sexuality can be a strange bird, and that outside of deliberate cruelty or causing of physical or psychological harm (which is obviously a fresh concern if you accept the story about King, Kearse and Kearse’s victim) randy behavior shouldn’t figure in any fair-minded assessment of the character and overall importance of this or that historical figure.

I’m sorry to have missed Joanna Hogg‘s The Souvenir, although it was press-screened only once before I left for France. On one hand it’s the best reviewed film of the year so far — 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, 93% on Metacritic — and it won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last January. On the other my ex-wife Maggie, attracted by the romantic heart element, called it “the most over-hyped indie movie of the year…people walked out saying ‘that was painful.'” And since opening on 5.17 in 23 theaters it’s only managed $253,152. The costars are Honor Swinton Byrne (Tilda Swinton‘s 21-year-old daughter), Tom Burke and Tilda herself. HE community reactions?

So why the meager Booksmart business? You can call it a female reboot of Superbad if you want, but it has its own story, theme and attitude. It’s very well directed by Olivia Wilde, and it doesn’t just go through the motions. It delivers what seemed to me like an authentic, connected, well-crafted portrait of Los Angeles teen culture. Is it as good as Superbad? I think it comes reasonably close. Does it offer the same kind of zeitgeist-capture that Risky Business or American Graffiti managed in their eras? In a way it does.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro: “We can’t ignore the small start of UA/Annapurna’s Booksmart, which is bound to see $7.8M over four days. The movie looked like a female Superbad, but more indie. Great reviews and solid exits, but no one is taking the time out over the holiday weekend to see it. Saturday’s $2.1M ticket sales were down 16% from Friday. Smart, R-rated, critically acclaimed teenage girl pics remain a tough sub-genre. Booksmart‘s bests plays were in big cities on the coast, especially in the west.”

Why has it underperformed? Is it because audiences generally prefer to watch guys perform this kind of rambunctious material? Or is it…what, the lesbian angle or something? (A possible factor outside the big cities, especially in the middle of the country.) Booksmart was supposed to be the film that would finally deliver serious coin to Annapurna, which needs a hit. I was suspicious of the ecstatic SXSW reviews, but this was an exception to the rule.

In Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, we’re informed that Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Rick Dalton starred in Bounty Law, a black-and-white TV series that ran from 1958 to 1963. Early on we’re shown a quick Bounty Law TV promo, with Dalton turning and staring at the camera as in “yup, that’s me and I’m definitely cool.” But he doesn’t do it quite right. He doesn’t sell that studly “I own this shit” thing. Leo basically looks like he’s waiting for Tarantino to say “cut.”

There’s a measure of irony in the obviously gifted, Oscar-winning Leo not doing this kind of thing as well the less talented, non-Oscar-winning Chuck Connors in that opening-credits blam-blam sequence for The Rifleman.

Posted on 10.31.17: “If Chuck Connors never did anything else, that look he gives the camera after firing off 12 shots from his specially modified Winchester 44-40 model 1892 would be enough. He doesn’t glare, doesn’t scowl, doesn’t smirk, doesn’t grin or suggest any kind of cockiness, and yet that look in his eyes manages to say ‘this is what I do, take it or leave it — I drill guys over and over, pretty much every week, and yet I’m even-tempered and respectable and so the law’s always on my side…pretty good deal, eh?’

“But who ever heard of a Winchester that fires 12 shots in a row? Look at it — where would 12 cartridges even fit?”

David Denby hasn’t been on the stick since ’14 (at least not in my realm), but I’ve always admired and respected his writing. You can always feel an authentic, this-is-me current underneath or within his opinions. Initially regarded as a “Paulette“, Denby was a must-read, take-it-to-the-bank film critic for four decades (Boston Phoenix, New York, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker) and a respected book author (“American Sucker“). So there was no skipping his Facebook post about the Trump miasma.

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Since opening on 5.17 or ten days ago, John Wick 3 is currently at $175,388,941 worldwide. I’d much rather see this than the allegedly-McDonald’s-flavored Aladdin. It’s playing in Paris at several venues, but I suffered through the last one (“There’s a vapor cloud of stupidity hanging over the film at every turn”). I’d go if Wick 3 was as funny as the first one, but the reviews aren’t saying this. I don’t want that dumb-ass poison surging through my system again.

Hollywood Elsewhere commenter “Django Killer” continues to annoy and harass about the playability of Region 1 vs. Region 2 Blurays in the States. The latest issue concerns a 2017 Region 2 Arrow box set of Woody Allen films (including Hannah and Her sisters, Another Woman, Shadows and Fog and Crimes and Misdemeanors).

The Amazon copy says in capital letters “NON-USA FORMAT,” but the obstinate DK has nonetheless written that it’s “no wonder so many people get exhausted pointing out your fucked-up tech mistakes [about] region coding. There is no ‘difference in data’ between Blurays of different regions.”

I haven’t been in a fistfight since I was 13 or 14 years old, but there’s a small, suppressed part of me that would LOVE to slug it out with this guy. My first fantasy was drilling him with a Winchester repeater a la Chuck Connors in The Rifleman, but that was too raw.

I don’t know what DK means about “no difference in coding” but I can definitely confirm that if you have a Bluray from Region 2, it won’t play on your Region 1 player from the States. I wish it were otherwise, but THIS IS HOW IT IS. I have a nifty Samsung 4K Bluray player and a Sony Bluray player, and my Region 2 Blurays (and I have about 10 of them) won’t play on either player. Several times I’ve politely asked them to open their digital gates to Region 1, but they won’t budge.

I’m going to repeat this — Region 2 Bluray discs WON’T PLAY ON EITHER OF MY TWO BLURAY PLAYERS. Which is why Amazon felt obliged to post “NON-USA FORMAT” in big-ass letters, in order to catch the attention of deranged reality-deniers like “Django Killer“.

I used to have a Sherwood Region 2 player, but it gave up the ghost. I also have 2012 Oppo Bluray player than can theoretically be programmed to play only Region 2 Bluray discs. It’s not hooked up as we speak.

Amazon quote on the Woody page: “Playback Region B/2 :This will not play on most Blu-ray players sold in North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.”

My stubborn biological system keeps insisting on long naps in the middle of the day. I just awoke from a three-hour snooze (12 noon to 3 pm) — the second such occurence since arriving in Paris the night before last. I guess you could call me a “burn the candle at both ends” type of guy, but occasionally the body demands a different deal.

System to Hollywood Elsewhere: “I don’t insist on eight hours as other bodies do. Back home in Los Angeles six or seven is good with an occasional one-hour nap, depending on the stress levels. I understand what your professional demands are, and I’m willing to work with you. And I understand that stress levels go up to level 11 during the Cannes Film Festival in terms of filing. Four or five was all we managed between 5.11 (when we did an all-night flight to Stockholm, followed by a daytime flight to Nice) and 5.24.

“But when the festival ends I insist on payback, whether you like it or not.”

I’ve been visiting the Eiffel tower off and on for decades. A year ago a pair of ten-foot-tall glass barriers were erected to protect the monument from possible terrorist attacks. The structure is safer now, but it feels like a tragedy. From 1889 to 2018 the Eiffel tower and the grounds beneath it were open and accessible to everyone — now it feels like a a place of paranoia and a metaphor for the menace that we all realize is out there and possibly preparing to strike at any time. We all want to feel safe, but it’s shattering to see this once-egalitarian atmosphere suffocated in a sense. By erecting these walls the French government has basically announced that Islamic terror has established psychological dominance. Imagine the atmosphere in Washington, D.C. if the U.S. Capitol and the White House were to be surrounded on all sides by similar barriers. This is the world we live in now, and it’s heartbreaking.

Champagne toasts and jovial back-slaps to Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite, which has won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. And to Mati Diop‘s Atlantics (aka Atlantique) for taking the Grand Prix. And the Best Director winners, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for Young Ahmed. And the co-winners of the Jury Prize — Ladj Ly for Les Misérables and Kleber Mendonca Filho‘s for Bacurau.

And Best Actor winner Antonio Banderas for his Pain and Glory performance, and Little Joe‘s Emily Beecham for roping the Best Actress prize. And Portrait of a Lady on Fire‘s Celine Sciama for tasking the Best Screenplay trophy.

And congratulations to myself for having once again failed to see the biggies. I saw a boatload of competition flicks at the festival but I couldn’t get to Parasite and Atlantic. Not out of a lack of interest, but because I couldn’t finish riffs and reviews I was writing in order to attend. Each and every year I’ve managed this. I’m brilliant at it.

“Odds of Cannes Prizes To Come, ” posted on 5.22: “I chose to write a longish review of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood rather than see Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite so I’ve nothing to say on this. I also failed to see Mati Diop‘s Atlantique and Jessica Hausner‘s Little Joe — apologies.”

I also mentioned that “I would find it stunning if the Cannes jury doesn’t honor Les Miserables with some kind of significant award come Saturday” — at least I was right about that.