A generic example of what constitutes an absorbing scene. The ostensible focus is a technical-industrial thing — geological science, miniature oil tankers, parts that need replacing, etc. The audience doesn’t hear a word of the dialogue, of course, because the real focus is sexual attraction — Peter Capaldi succumbing to the mermaid allure of Jenny Seagrove. The bit in which Capaldi grabs the folded white smock from Peter Reigert and then Reigert grabs it back…perfect.

“Is there no decency in this man?” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asks about Jussie Smollett after prosecutors dropped all charges against the “Empire” actor https://t.co/FTXteyXy0Z pic.twitter.com/b4s3d6Iydk

— CNN (@CNN) March 26, 2019

Remember Stanley Kubrick‘s famous assessment of 1941, which he personally conveyed to Steven Spielberg? I can’t find the exact quote but the gist was “the filmmaking chops are brilliant…it’s not funny but it’s really well made.” Well, the famous ferris-wheel-rolling-off-the-pier scene disproves even that. There’s no way the ocean is deep enough for a 100-foot-tall ferris wheel to completely disappear — to just sink into the depths like the Titanic. Right off Pacific Ocean Park the ocean depth would be…what, 30 or 40 feet? If that? All Spielberg had to do was show the ferris wheel hitting bottom and then tipping over to the side.

I don’t understand how Chicago cops could have announced last February that they had conclusive evidence against Jussie Smollett arranging to stage a racially-motivated attack with the help of two Nigerian brothers, and then a few weeks later prosecutors drop the whole thing and say “never mind”…the fuck?

I’m sorry but this feels like a fix, like some kind of back-room deal, like Chicago authorities just caved in the interest of…what, noblesse oblige?

All charges against Smollett were dropped this morning, but why? Are you telling me the evidence against him has been found to be bogus? Okay, maybe, but why were authorities convinced otherwise until this morning?

“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his [$10K] bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case,” the state’s attorney’s office said in a statement this morning.

What the hell could community service and agreeing to forfeit $10K possibly have to do with anything?

If the evidence against Smollett is conclusive, then the prosecutors should proceed with the case. Right? If the Nigerian brothers lied and the whole case was bullshit, then folding their hand would be appropriate. But the facts had been vetted. It seemed as if Smollett was guilty. The cops were persuaded.

Ancient Chinese proverb: “Fish stinks from the head.”

How many have seen Walt Disney‘s original 1941 Dumbo? I did when I was seven or eight, something like that. That endearing scene in which tearful little Dumbo longs for his mom’s embrace after she’s been locked up for being a “mad” elephant…right? Then came my second immersion when I saw Steven Spielberg‘s 1941, which opened (good God) almost 40 years ago. That scene, I mean, when Robert Stack’s General Stillwell weeps while watching the locked-up-mom scene in a Hollywood Blvd. theatre.

Disney’s almost 80-year-old animation may seem a little crude by present-day standards, and the film only runs 64 minutes, but the original Dumbo (overseen by Walt and “supervising director” Ben Sharpsteen) emotionally works.

Dumbo‘s basic theme (first articulated in Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl‘s Dumbo, the Flying Elephant, a 1938 children’s book) is that young oddballs — anyone or anything perceived as “different” — are doomed to suffer at the hands of selfish, short-sighted humans. But if the little fella has some kind of inner gift or aptitude (like flying, say) and can somehow express it, the ugliness can be stilled to some extent. Or he can at least snuggle up with mom.

Tim Burton‘s big, over-produced, annoyingly simple-minded remake sticks to the same basic idea — i.e., oddballs can find light at the end of the tunnel if they can show a little moxie.

Burton takes a small, mostly sad little story — a big-eared baby elephant that can fly is separated from his mom, and has to learn to fend for himself — and basically throws money at it while adding nearly 50 minutes to the running time — 112 minutes vs. the original’s 64.

Okay, money and a really nice compositional eye, at least during the first half. The first 55 or 60 minutes of Dumbo are largely about old-worldish production design (by Rick Heinrichs, who worked with Burton on Sleepy Hollow) and Ben Davis‘s cinematography, which is really quite handsome. Within the first hour every shot is an exquisite, carefully lighted painting.

We’re talking about a small-scaled, old-fashioned, Toby Tyler-ish realm, owned and operated by the hucksterish but good-hearted Max Medici (Danny DeVito). A big canvas circus tent, wooden bleachers, peanuts and popcorn, lions and lion tamers, strong men and fat ladies…the kind of operation celebrated in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Greatest Show on Earth (’52) and in Samuel Bronston‘s Circus World (’64).

But the second half — or when poor Dumbo’s life is darkened by Michael Keaton‘s V. A. Vandevere, a P.T. Barnum-meets-Beetlejuice figure who represents all kinds of venality, corporate greed and the seven circles of hell — the second half is just awful. The scale of Keaton’s super-circus (a Dante-esque amusement park called Dreamland) is oppressive. Watching this portion is a combination of (a) “villainy! vulgarity! greed!”, (b) “turn off the stupid spigots,” (b) “who wrote this godawful dialogue?” (answer: Ehren Kruger) and (d) “please burn it all down.”

My streaming options feel fairly flush these days — Amazon, Netflix, Criterion, Vudu. Why do I have to get all hot and bothered about Apple TV +? What matters to me is cinematic enrichment — discovering fresh currents and minerals in the stream, refining them, adding a good score, making them into films and then throwing them up on BIG screens on the way to general streaming. If Apple wants to join in that effort, great.

My take on Apple's new TV + subscription service. Big on hype, short on details. @usatodaytech pic.twitter.com/GQlEuyJcEB

— jeffersongraham (@jeffersongraham) March 26, 2019

Brie Larson’s Unicorn Store (Netflix, 4.5) “is about unicorns, but only obliquely. Mostly, it’s about a unicorn-obsessed young art student named Kit (Larson) who needs some sort of life lesson, although what this [might be] exactly remains maddeningly unclear at the end.

“In order for this pixie-dusted contemporary fable to make its point, the movie erects a magical pop-up shop just for Kit, complete with world’s most flamboyant salesman (Samuel L. Jackson, wearing tablecloth-print suits and tinsel in his afro, a la Beyonce), where Kit can arrange to adopt her very own unicorn.

“What if Kit’s childhood wish came true? Would it be the best thing that ever happened? Or in some cases, is giving a girl a pony the worst possible present? Perhaps there’s some wisdom to that, but wouldn’t it be great to find out?

“Unicorn Store spends so much time focused on Kit’s mostly-average, mostly-boring pre-unicorn life that it’s hard to understand what the universe (or the movie, at least) is trying to teach her — something about not being selfish, or the importance of not throwing bratty tantrums in your 20s, or (and this is a direct quotation, albeit one whose meaning is muddled) “we’re all looking for happiness and maybe if we’re lucky we can just buy it in a store.” — from Peter Debruge’s 9.11.17 Variety review.

Sarah Sanders: “They literally accused the President of the United States of being an agent for a foreign government. That’s equivalent to treason. That’s punishable by death in this country.” pic.twitter.com/nz5fsKTW7F

— The Hill (@thehill) March 25, 2019

A while back I hired a shifty outfit called Arrow Moving and Storage to haul some stuff (including my trusty Yamaha Majesty) from Wilton, Connecticut back to West Hollywood. I told them exactly what the items were and their size. (Arrow had moved many of the same items last summer.) There was no ambiguity about the load or their estimate — they said it would set me back $1350, give or take.

My total packed-box count was 14 instead of 10 so I knew there’d be an overage charge, but after the stuff (including a big TV and a wooden shoe rack) was loaded earlier today I was told by the local subcontracted movers that the total hit would be a hair under $2700 — $1350 paid today and another $1347 when the stuff arrives in WeHo. But add the $270 deposit I sent to Arrow a few weeks ago, and the tally is $2967.

In other words, I was charged more than double what had been estimated by an Arrow guy named “Thomas”.

In my humble judgment, Arrow’s way of doing business is, at the very least, sloppy and careless. We all understand that moving estimates can sometimes be a bit off, but when you wind up getting charged more than double the original estimate, something is seriously wrong.

I think it’s a scam — deliberately under-estimate in order to land a sale and a deposit, and then refuse to answer the phone when the movers charge much, much more due to a higher cubic-foot and weight count than originally estimated.

Published in ’92, Joe McBride‘s “Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success” revealed that the respected, Oscar-winning director of audience-friendly films about the “common man” during the ’30s and ’40s (It Happened One Night, You Can’t Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life) wasn’t exactly a champion of liberal and proletarian sentiments behind the scenes.

“Spurning his ethnic roots, ashamed of his parents, Capra lusted to be accepted by mainstream America. He was affiliated with conservative Republicans, spied on labor in the 1930s for powerful producers and collaborated surreptitiously with the McCarthyite witch hunt,” according to the Amazon summary.

“McBride presents a man seething with bitterness, rage, self-doubt and sexual anxiety with his two wives. He analyzes Capra’s reactionary idealization of small-town America and the misogynist undertones of his films. In a canvas crowded with stars like Claudette Colbert, Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, McBride convincingly paints a great director who lost his touch after the late 1940s, unable to adjust to postwar Hollywood or to function independently.”

McBride now has a second Capra book coming out — “Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra” (Vervante, 3.22). It tells the saga of what a bitch it was to research and publish “The Catastrophe of Success.”

Excerpt: “While McBride was researching and writing for more than seven years, he was fighting a pitched legal battle with his original publisher and allies of the celebrated film director. ‘Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra’ is McBride’s revealing, harrowing, often darkly comical account of that Kafkaesque but ultimately successful struggle.”

HE question for readership: Who in today’s realm is a similar Capra-esque figure? Which artists or celebrities project a certain persona on talk shows and in press-junket interviews, but when you learn a thing or two about their private lives are not that person, or at least are not believed to be so? The private George Clooney and Tom Hanks are pretty much exactly the guys they seem to be (to go by their projected personas), but there are others who are not quite the person they’re pretending to be.

Scott Walker, the Walker Brothers lead singer whose moody crooning baritone was a major reason why “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More” was such a big hit in ’66, has left the earth. He was 76.

The irony, of course, is that once Walker began releasing solo albums in ’67 he rejected all aspirations to being a mainstream pop singer. Variety‘s Jem Aswad: “While his increasingly challenging music cost him many fans, the singer never looked back excepting a Walker Brothers reunion in the mid-1970s. Walker released several albums that were individual and esoteric by any standard. In recent years he collaborated with artists ranging from arch pop combo Pulp and Seattle drone-metal outfit Sunn O))) to British avant-pop singer Bat for Lashes.”

Being a musical plebian when it comes to the avant-garde realm, I still think of Walker as the “Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine” guy. Sorry.