More Ross Douhat: “In a primary where Biden is just an old white dude running away from his record, the party’s various moderate voters will almost certainly fracture and go to fresher candidates with cleaner pitches — to the Texan Jesus (Beto O’Rourke) or the South Bend Meritocrat (Pete Buttigieg) or the Mean Minnesotan (Amy Klobuchar) or the Racial Optimist (Cory Booker).”

Consider two N.Y. Times opinion pieces about the ongoing strategic erosion of Joe Biden‘s would-be presidential prospects — Ross Douhat‘s “The Real Joe Biden Decision” (4.2) and especially Michelle Goldberg‘s “The Wrong Time for Joe Biden” (4.1), for which the subhead states that Biden “is not a sexual predator, but he is out of touch.”

They’re a one-two punch that says “it’s all over but the shouting — Biden doesn’t have the balls to run as the moderate, behind-the-curve guy he really is deep down, and if he tries to apologize and suck up to the wokesters he’ll seem like a weak sister to his older, mostly white hinterland and suburban supporters, and so he’s basically between a rock and a hard place.”

Goldberg and Douhat are not wrong. Joe is more or less done.

Because his neck-wattled, decent-older-guy centrism will ignite all kinds of missiles and grenades from the urban forces of “the Great Awokening” (i.e., coined by Vox‘s Matthew Iglesias). And after months and months of this Biden may, Douhat suspects, wind up losing as badly as Jeb Bush did to Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries.

Plus the somewhat squishy, always-looking-to-accommodate Biden probably lacks the courage, in Douhat’s view, to run a no-apologies, straight-talking campaign that politely but firmly talks back to the wokesters and says “hold on, take it easy, you don’t have an exclusive hold on wisdom and truth and divine, heaven-sent strategy.”

Goldberg notes that while Biden is “by most accounts a man of great personal decency, if he runs for president he will have to run away from his own record. To those desperate to unseat Trump, the centrist, establishment Biden might seem like the safest choice, but it would actually be risky to pick a candidate who will need to constantly apologize for himself. Particularly when he doesn’t know how to do that very well.”

Satellifax.com is reporting that Terrence Malick‘s Radegund, Jim Jarmusch‘s The Dead Don’t Die and Pedro Almodovar‘s Dolor y Gloria are all confirmed for Cannes ’19 competition. Also, the opening night film is between Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s The Truth (Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke) and an “American film” they can’t reveal. (Thanks to Jordan Ruimy.)

While the Al Franken-ing of Joe Biden continues…

As one who’s often grappled with what shall now be called EBI syndrome, I felt obliged to post this two-day-old Facebook jotting. During my first two or three years of journalistic endeavor in the late ’70s, most of my writing sessions were EBI torture. Not all the time, but 70% or 80%. My default quote was “I hate writing, which is like digging ditches, but I love having written.” I finally pulled myself out of that sinkhole in the early ’80s, and had more or less forgotten about EBI by the early ’90s. It still hits me from time to time these days, but not too much. Every so often I’ll get stuck for three or four hours, but one way or another I’ll find my way out of it.

The Dead Don’t Die (Focus Features, 6.14) will obviously be fun, but it’s a departure and a half for Jim Jarmusch, the Godfather of east-coast, cool-cat, laid-back hipster autuerism. All I can figure is that Jarmusch decided that in the wake of Only Lovers Left Alive (which I loved) and Paterson (admired) that he wanted to make an actual hit movie for a change. The obvious template was Ruben Fleischer‘s Zombieland (’09). The cast is top-to-bottom Jarmusch types — Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver, RZA, Carol Kane, Tom Waits. Allegedly locked for next month’s Cannes Film Festival.

I’ve never wanted to watch Vox Lux. I still don’t want to watch it. Even if it was streaming for free (the Amazon rental is $5.99) I’d probably duck it. The reviews are a big factor, of course, but also because I’ve found director and former actor Brady Corbet grating or at least irksome for a long time (his performances in Funny Games, Melancholia and especially Simon Killer). Like the audiences who didn’t want to see Dumbo last weekend, I just knew I wanted to stay the hell away from Vox Lux.

I knew after reading the Venice Film Festival reviews that Vox Lux would slip under the waves and that I could avoid it without anyone saying boo. Last October or November a critic friend told me I would probably have a rough time with it — sold! I have to be honest — the “no Vox Lux in your life” factor has made me a bit happier.

But it’s so true about how so few good films seem to “open” these days. Which is why it’s such a pleasure to attend the major (and some of the middle-range) film festivals because at least they celebrate film premieres with real enthusiasm. Brief hoopla windows, granted, but more and more a commercial opening means little or no excitement, or at least effort. The only juice comes from festivals, industry premieres and special screenings at upscale industry venues (American Cinematheque, Walter Reade/Isabel Bader). I’m even looking forward to a special TCM Classic Film Festival screening of a 35mm nitrate print of The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer.

So why did Tim Burton‘s Dumbo come up short with a lousy $45 million domestic? Not because the second half is an over-produced slog to sit through but because the original animated Disney flick is nearly 80 years old. Today’s parents-of-toddlers were mostly born in the late ’70s and ’80s. The only generation for whom Dumbo signifies any kind of emotional resonance are the boomers and baby-busters.

First-weekend grosses are almost never about the quality of a film — they’re about vapors, aromas, intuitions…what the audience is sensing and whether or not the package feels like it might be a plus rather than a so-whatter.

Set in a private mental institution, Robert Rossen‘s Lilith (’64) is about a young occupational therapist (Warren Beatty) who becomes obsessed with a schizophrenic patient with a laid-back vibe of scampy bohemian whatever-ness (Jean Seberg).

Rossen’s followup to The Hustler was sold as a serving of psychologically unbalanced eroticism with a little lesbo action (Seberg and another female patient) on the side.

The problem was that Lilith just laid there; it never drilled down or expanded or generated erotic steam. It mostly felt like a gloomhead variation of Frank Perry‘s David and Lisa, which had made an arthouse dent a couple of years earlier.

But oh, that aroma! These photos of Beatty and Seberg are still alluring, and I know full well that Lilith is a stiff. I’ve watched it twice, once on DVD and a second time on Bluray. The second viewing was partly about wanting to savor the back-and-white photography in 1080p, and partly about a feeling that I may have missed something the first time.

Name a film or two that seemed initially fascinating to go by the stills, trailer, ad copy and even the reviews. But when you sat down and actually watched the damn thing your spirit collapsed like a circus tent.

Sidewalk surveillance robots have been operating on San Francisco sidewalks for a couple of years now, but until yesterday morning I’d never personally encountered one. It senses your presence, checks you out and will roll out of your way if you come too close. In a phrase, cautious and deferential.

Esquire‘s Kate Storey has written an admiring profile of Eon Productions’ Barbara Broccoli. To the manor born in 1960, Broccoli has been the prime mover and shaker behind the 007 James Bond franchise since 1995, or roughly a year before her father, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who had launched the Bond series with partner Harry Saltzman in 1962, passed away.

I’m no Cubby biographer, but I did meet and briefly chat with the guy 37 years ago on the Pinewood set of For Your Eyes Only. Like all hotshot producers Cubby was a slick operator and almost certainly tough as nails, but his natural social default was to play the amiable panda bear, an unassuming roly-poly with a disarming sense of humor.

Everyone acknowledges Barbara Broccoli but no one takes her very seriously because she and half-brother Michael Wilson are caretakers. They’re looking to keep the pistons pumping so they can continue to reap the flush-lifestyle benefits and so she can produce the occasional play — that’s it, the whole raison d’etre.

If I were Broccoli I’d do the same thing, I suppose, but the Bond films have been aggressively soul-less, less-than-meaningless exercises in aggressive macho-comic bullshit for so long it looks like up to me.

When was the last time a Bond film really connected with the culture in a viral, explosive, slam-bang way that hit a projected-values recognition button and resulted in waves of primal excitement and a double-urgent “drop what you’re doing and see this film right now”? I’ll tell you when that time was. It was 53 and 1/2 years ago when Goldfinger opened in the fall of ’64.

Posted on 10.2.15: In my humble view the best James Bond films are the first two — Terence Young‘s Dr. No (’62) and From Russia With Love (’63). These are the only ones featuring a lean and rugged Sean Connery without an obvious toupee and before he began to pack on a couple of pounds, and facing semi-believable combatants in a half-credible, real-world milieu.

After these two a sense of technological swagger and more than a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor started to penetrate the franchise with Guy Hamilton‘s Goldfinger (’64) — the last Bond film you could accept as an occasionally semi-realistic fantasy. These are the only three I re-watch on Bluray, although I don’t like Goldfinger as much as the first two.

I have a certain affection for Lewis Gilbert‘s The Spy Who Loved Me (’77) — the beginning of a brief ’70s period when the 007 series descended into light comedy. There was an effort to use a bit less gadgetry in John Glen‘s For Your Eyes Only (’81 — the only Bond film I ever paid a visit to at Pinewood) and I didn’t mind Glen’s The Living Daylights (’87). And I was amused by the return of Connery is Irvin Kershner‘s Never Say Never Again (’83). And I admit to feeling a surge of excitement when I first saw Martin Campbell‘s Casino Royale (’06)