A new Deliotte survey has re-conveyed the familiar and depressing news that Zoomers and Millennials have all but abandoned the temple of cinema worship…they just don’t have the same faith in (and hunger for) movies that their elders do.

“HE to All Rapier-Tongued 17 Year-Olds,” posted on 3.17.23:

A quote attributed to Ben Affleck in Rebecca Keegan’s 3.16 THR interview mentions his 17 year-old daughter, Violet:

“I like the fact that she has this silver rapier tongue. [Then again] she lives her life largely in opposition to the work her parents have spent their lives dedicated to, where she’ll say things like, ‘I’m not sure film is really…do you think it’s a genuine art form?”

HE to Violet: “Movies have always been, at best, a haphazard art form, which is to say one that occasionally detours into art or at least an attempt at same. A half-assed, popcorn-driven, now-and-then art form. Or at least during awards season until Everything Everywhere All At Once, the equivalent of a cinematic hydrogen bomb or mass cyanide capsule, came along.

“But on the audience side of the equation, the occasional communal appreciation of movies and at least a semblance of a belief that movies can at least potentially deliver some kind of artful reflection of what it’s like to live and struggle on this planet…that communal tradition is pretty much over, and it’s been killed by your generation (GenZ) along with the Millennials.

“People have been communally watching proscenium-arch plays since the Greek and Roman eras, and feature films since 1915 or thereabouts — call it 110 years. And then you guys arrived and settled in and pretty much killed the whole togetherness aspect. Not altogether but, you know, mostly.

“Now it’s mainly about streaming content in your living rooms or on your Macbooks and iPads, but not really ‘watching’ because you’re constantly texting and multi-tasking and checking out TikTok videos whenever your attention wanders.

“So to answer your question, film used to satisfy the measurement of being an occasional art form until you guys dropped in. Commercial movie theatres used to be regarded in some quarters as churches…no longer! Now they’ve pretty much become gladiator arenas. People used to sit there for 115 minutes or longer and actually pay attention for the most part…no longer for the most part!

“Nowadays the only way to savor really good films in a theatrical environment with people who ‘get’ it and love the worshipful aspect is to attend an upscale film festival (Cannes, Telluride, Venice, Toronto, Berlin, Sundance). Have you ever attended one of these? Maybe you should think about doing this. Can’t hurt.”

(Obviously the same laments, scoldings and heartbreaks apply also to Gen Alpha, born between 2010 and 2025.)

…because I know the HE miscreants and toxic pisshounds are lying in wait, hah-hah-hah-ing like jackals in the jungle…

This is my new Macbook Pro 16-inch screensaver…chills me down on some level. A feeling of calm and perhaps even serenity. Okay, not really.

ScreenX is a panoramic film format which presents films with an expanded, dual-sided, 270-degree screens projected on the walls in a theater. It’s basically aimed at the short-attention-span apes who are reluctant to attend theatres because they love their couches and 75-inch 4K screens too much.

First introduced in 2012, ScreenX has allegedly been installed in theatres in 37 countries…news to me.

Deadline‘s Jill Goldsmith is reporting that AMC Entertainment and CJ 4DPLEX “have partnered on 65 premium ScreenX and 4DX locations worldwide”…which means what in terms of domestic venues? Where in Manhattan?

I for one am looking forward to watching Harold Pinter and David Jones‘ Betrayal (’83) in this format. I would also like to see ScreenX versions of Ace in the Hole, Anora, The Social Network, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Complete Unknown, The Apartment, Michael Clayton, Manchester By The Sea, Conclave…you get the idea. But not — repeat, fucking not — Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite.

It was…Jesus, 55 years ago when I saw Jethro Tull give a fairly great performance at the Boston Tea Party. I always admired how flute-playing lead vocalist Ian Anderson could play for long stretches with his left leg tucked up and touching his right knee, pied piper-style….it must have been grueling to balance himself like that. Long curly hair, twizzly beard, strong hearty voice..quite the iconic rock-star presentation.

And now, at age 77, the still-bearded Anderson is not only egg-bald but looks like a mixture of Donald Pleasance in Escape From New York and an aged Don Logan (“no no no no no no…no!…no!”). Old Ian seems to be in a good spiritual place, but I’m still finding this a bit difficult to handle.

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Religious cathedral music of the highest Miklos Rozsa order accompanies the Bluray menu of The Verdict. It’s a redemption tale but certainly not a “religious” one, and so this musical portion, composed by Johnny Mandel, plays only during the closing credits.

And yet a blindfolded person might presume that Mandel’s score was composed for a 1950s Biblical epic of some kind. It sounds here and there like Rozsa’s King of Kings overture.

The title of Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (11.7.63) was allegedly finalized early on, but a few working titles were considered before that. One was One Damn Thing After Another.

Kramer’s over-emphatic comedy enjoyed two full weeks of play before JFK’s murder. It nonetheless ended up with $46 million domestic, $60 million worldwide.

This appears to be a possibly fake re-issue one-sheet. Notice the “73” in the lower right-hand corner — that’s a re-issue date.

Santa Rosita was the location of “the big W”.

Mickey Rooney got the short end of the stick here; Buddy Hackett was also made to seem minor. Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle and (fat) Sid Caesar ruled.

I remember a review that questioned the suitability of using super-sized Cinerama as it provided several unwelcome close-ups of its aging cast…pink eyes, sagging cheeks and wrinkled brows.

Jonah O. Wheeler, a 22-year-old Democratic representative in the New Hampshire state legislature, recently made history by sensibly, honorably and morally standing in opposition to leftist pro-trans absolutists. Lordy lordy…an independent human being of conscience stood up in favor of women, and against hardcore trans wacko totalitarians.

This guy is a superstar waiting to happen — calm, mature, courageous, articulate, good-looking, a perfect speaking voice…he’s the new Obama from the sensible center, and he’s barely into his 20s…a Zoomer with Rasta hair. He’s not the new AOC….he’s more measured than she, and not in the last bit strident. He’s the Beatles but the Beatles of ’62, if you catch my drift.

Last Thursday, I gave a speech on the House floor in favor of legislation to enable sports, and other spaces, in certain instances, to separate based on sex. Leading up to HB148, I heard from many women who felt as though their privacy and voice had been overlooked and unheard. pic.twitter.com/wGR2PqXAdK

— Jonah Orion Wheeler (@jonahowheeler) March 25, 2025

This guy is the future of the Democratic Party. Mark my words. @jonahowheeler https://t.co/Emnd0UalPZ

— Ben Appel (@benappel) March 25, 2025

Browbeaten to death by HE commenters for not having seen this yet…

Why in the world would anyone release a small-town baseball film called Eephus? Why did the distributor, Music Box Films, agree to this? They might as well have called it Phoebus (i.e., Phoebus de Chateaupers, captain of the King’s Archers in Victor Hugo‘s The Hunchback of Notre Dame) or Platypus. Or Phlebitis.

How could the director and co-writer, Carson Lund, have possibly imagined that potential viewers might be intrigued by a title that sounds like some kind or blood or bone disease and means absolutely dead fucking nothing?

…stirred a memory of the last time I’d visited Liberty Island, which was several decades earlier. It was during the late summer of 1980…just shy of 45 years ago…Jimmy Carter in the White House!…and I was in the company of John Carpenter, Kurt Russell, Adrien Barbeau, the late Debra Hill, IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson and several Manhattan-based journo colleagues.

[I’ve posted this story once before.] During the late summer of 1980 I was part of a press contingent that was invited to watch the after-dark filming of John Carpenter‘s Escape From New York on Liberty Island.

The gang was out in force — bearded and scruffy Kurt Russell in his Snake Plissken garb, costars Season Hubley (“with” Russell at the time), Adrienne Barbeau (married to Carpenter at the time), producer Debra Hill and several others.

Thompson, working for PMK at the time, had monitored a Carpenter interview about The Fog. (One that I’d written for Films in Review.) I’m certain it was her call to invite me to the Statue of Liberty thing.

Things began with a well-catered yacht party. By the time it ended everyone had half a buzz-on. As ther party wound down some of us were preparing to leave in order to watch Carpenter and Russell shoot a scene under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

Season Hubley, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell during the shooting of Escape From New York. Carpenter looked like a spry 32 year-old at the time — today he looks like he’s pushing 85.

Russell, slightly in his cups or certainly happy, got up and addressed the throng: “We’ve had a great time, we’ve loved having you here…now go home!” And everyone laughed their pants off. It was that kind of mood, that kind of party.

Being ferried back from Liberty Island to Battery Park around 9:30 or 10 pm was magnificent. Manhattan looked like the gleaming mother ship from the finale of Close Encounters. Talk about a breathtaking sight…seared into my memory.

I wrote my piece for The Aquarian, an alternative New Jersey weekly (based in Montclair) that’s still going.

Here’s a little anecdote that will give you an idea what it was like to collaborate with my stuffy editor, whose name was Karen something-or-other. During the yacht party I overheard Barbeau say to Carpenter, “I have some whites for you, honey, if you need some,” and so I put it in the article. Karen scolded me over the phone for including such a potentially litigious anecdote. “Thank God I caught that and took it out!”, she said. “What were you thinking?”

I was thinking, Ms. Tight-Ass, that whites (i.e., Benzedrine or some derivation of) are relatively harmless prescription drugs — pep pills — and that adding this line gave the piece a little inside flavor, directing being a tough job that keeps you up into the wee hours, etc. It’s not like Barbeau said, “I’ve got some fresh heroin, honey, and some brand-new syringes from a local pharmacy.”