Posted by The Ringer on 12.17:

I’ve no problem watching a film on the Macbook Pro with earphones, but every so often I’ll “mirror” a film so I can see it on the Sony SONY XBR-65X930C, which I bought in April 2016. I use a “Mirror for Samsung TV” app, which has worked pretty well. Because I use a Samsung 4K Bluray player as the principal mirroring device.

Except last night, just as I was firing up the app for another mirroring, the sound quit on me. The problem didn’t originate with any of the hooked-up devices (Roku player, Samsung 4K Bluray, Oppo Bluray, cable TV) — something just shut off within the TV itself. Bing! Thank you, Sony, and thanks also to God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and all living things.

So I spent an hour or so trying the usual remedies…nothing. I tried reading the basic manual, I went into chat rooms, this and that.

Then I called three or four Sony tech support numbers, only one of which offered a human being — a carefully mannered fellow who spoke with what sounded to me like a kind of speech impediment. (He had trouble with certain vowels.) The first thing out of his mouth was “we don’t assist people with TVs manufactured in 2015,” which translates as “if you want our help your TV has to be newer.” I said I fully realize that I’m an unworthy, low-rent customer for owning a TV made three years ago and therefore out of warranty, but that I’d be glad to pay for his technical assistance. He tried to fob me off with an offer of emailed instructions, but I asked him to please show a little basic humanity and help over the phone.

What I didn’t want to hear from this guy was “go to settings and do a basic factory reset.” Because with the slow-as-molasses software downloads and installations and my having to input all the device passwords this effort would consume at least a couple of hours of my time. But that’s what he said.

Me: “Are you really sure that a basic factory reset is the only way to fix this audio problem?” Sony tech guy: “Yes.” Me: “How long have you been doing this job?” Sony tech guy: “Six years.” Me: “So I presume you’ve spoken to a few Sony TV owners who’ve experienced the same problem?” Sony tech guy: “Yes.” Me: “And each and every time you’ve told them to do a basic factory reset??” Sony tech guy: “Yes.” In other words, this guy was and is a lazy, manual-reading toad.

I initiated a hard factory reset an hour ago. The software downloading process is taking forever, and there’s all the username and password loading for the connected devices yet to come. Update: Everything is up and working again, but I doubt if I’m going to “mirror” anything again. Not. at least, with that “Mirror for Samsung TV” app.

“Who Cares?” is a track off Paul McCartney‘s Egypt Station album, which popped on 9.7.18. The basic message of Brantley Gutierrez and Ryan Heffington‘s “Who Cares?” video (shot on 65mm film) is that bullying really sucks. But most of us understand that.

The dialogue exchange at the beginning is the most interesting part. McCartney, playing a graying, gentle-mannered hypnotist called “Dr. Lorenz” (no first name?), asks a frazzled-looking Emma Stone about her emotions of the moment. She answers yes to all the antsy negatives. Then Dr. Lorenz mentions the power of suggestion. He turns on his early 20th Century swirling hypnosis device and suddenly we’re swimming in an animated, candy-coated Ken Russell fantasy video, straight out of The Boy Friend or Tommy.

Stone is totally unrecognizable in her flaming-orange-hair kabuki makeup. McCartney needs to dial back on the large shocks of silver hair — he needs to go back to little sprigs of gray around his ears and side temples, but no gray on top. If he insists on showing his age I would suggest that he go with dyed dark-gray hair mixed with silvery-white sprigs. Sounds weird, I know, but it works for some.

William Shatner didn’t say the name “Maximilien Robespierre” but he did say the #MeToo movement has become “hysterical” and likened it to the French Revolution.

That’s it for Shatner, right? But what measures should be taken? Should he be shunned, shut down, subjected to a harsh backside paddling? Or should we just treat him like a drooling old guy and ignore him to death? Whatever the comintern wants to do is okay with me. I’m all ears — I just follow orders.

Shatner: ‘In 2018 we have the #MeToo movement, which I think is great, that these hidden forces are exposed and not to be allowed and women have equal rights. I’ve got three daughters [aged 60, 57 and 54], I’m all for that.”

Letter to friend about Woody Allen-Christina Engelhardt thing: “Last night a Facebook guy mentioned Christina’s interview about Woody and she having had a long-term consensual thing in the ’70s and ’80s, and is so doing called Allen’s behavior ‘ugly.’ Perhaps a bit selfish and exploitive to some extent but hardly cruel or demonic. Remember that Christina stayed in that relationship for seven or eight years and that she isn’t condemning Allen or expressing regrets now. Did Allen behave like an opportunistic libertine? Yeah, but to my knowledge he didn’t do anything of a criminal or horrid nature. The ’70s and ’80s exuded a different climate — there was a different sexual ethos in the wind. It used to be okay to be semi-open about stuff like this, but no longer.”

Poor Penny Marshall has passed at age 76. She was a highly significant actress-turned-director who had her hand in and mattered a great deal for roughly 30 years, give or take. As a director Marshall was a respected craftsperson who understood emotion and knew how to deliver it in just the right way when the script and the casting were right. By any measure she was pitching cultural fastballs right into the mitt of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and she counted as a producer into the mid aughts.

Marshall’s first TV series breakthrough gig was playing Jack Klugman‘s secretary, Myrna Turner, on the ABC sitcom of The Odd Couple (’79 to ’75). Then she and Cindy Williams became costars in their own right when Laverne and Shirley became a hit series from ’76 to ’83. Marshall collected three Golden Globe noms for Best Actress during that seven-year run.

She mattered even more when she became a director, initially with the so-so Jumpin’ Jack Flash (’86) but especially with the triple sockaroonie Big (’88), which was pretty much her peak achievement, in part because it was the first woman-directed film to gross more than $100 million.

Marshall also did herself proud with the Oscar-nominated Awakenings (’90) and the seminal A League of Their Own (’92).

She also directed Renaissance Man (’94), The Preacher’s Wife (’96), and Riding in Cars with Boys (’01). Marshall also produced Cinderella Man (’05), which I admired, and Bewitched (’05), which I hated with a passion.

I have two chances to catch Dial Code Santa Claus at the Alama Drafthouse Brooklyn — on Wednesday, 12.19 or Sunday, 12.23. But on both days they’re showing it only once at 10 pm, obviously because they think it’ll appeal more to a midnight crowd. That view isn’t shared by the programmers at Hollywood’s American Cinematheque, which is screening it on 12.19 at 7:30 pm.

From the Alamo press release: “Dial Code Santa Claus (’89) actually pre-dated Home Alone, annihilating a generation of French kids weaned on action-packed Christmastime gems such as Gremlins and Die Hard. It disturbed critics and the moviegoing public with its uncompromising look beneath the surface of the beloved holiday. From there, the film went on to worldwide distribution except in the U.S., where it had yet to see an official release until now.

“The French-made film had its North American Premiere this year at Fantastic Fest, where it thrilled audiences and critics alike,” blah blah.

I’ll probably wind up hating it, but I feel strangely attracted to the idea of catching it anyway.

After two days of getting grilled by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee about Hillary Clinton and the Steele dossier, former FBI director James Comey yesterday shared some nail-hard truths during an impromptu presser: “People who know better, including Republican members of this body, have to [find] the courage to stand up and speak the truth. Not be cowed by mean tweets or fear of their base. There is a truth and they’re not telling it. Their silence is shameful. I hope they overcome [this]. They [surely] realize some day they’ll have to explain to their grandchildren what they did today.”

There’s a divergence between the trailer for Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (Annapurna, 3.19) and the Wikipedia synopsis, to wit: “Bernadette hates people, she hates leaving the house, and more than anything, she hates the other parents at her daughter Bee’s school. When she disappears, it’s Bee’s mission to find out where she’s disappeared to and what really happened to her.”

Does anyone detect anything in the trailer that suggests that Cate Blanchett‘s Bernadette hates anyone, or that she suffers from agoraphobia? There are hints of edge and attitude, but that’s all. I haven’t seen Linklater’s film, but it feels as if the trailer editors have tried to make the film seem as alpha and swoony and effervescent as possible.

In short, it seems as if the trailer is lying. Almost, I’m sensing, on the level of that famous upbeat Shining trailer of 2007. This obviously isn’t an assessment of the actual film, but of the marketing.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? costars Billy Crudup, Emma Nelson, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and James Urbaniak.

It’s been two and a half years since I saw Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some. I was initially of two minds — more or less okay with it but also a wee bit irritated. It’s basically an intelligent college fraternity hang movie that doesn’t do the usual horndog thing and occasionally exudes depth and angularity. Will I stream it some night when I’m bored? Probably not.

But maybe I’m an outlier. Maybe a lot more people have streamed Everybody Wants Some than went to see it in theatres. (It topped out domestically at $3,400,278.) Who didn’t catch it theatrically but has streamed it sometime over the last 30 months? It was released eight months before Donald Trump’s election, remember. And a year and a half before the launching of #MeToo. Different currents, different pollen.

Posted on 3.29.16: The good news is that Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some! is cool, smart, fresh, atypical. It’s a period campus ramble-on, set in the climes of Texas State University in 1980, and more particularly a situational thing that feels enjoyably realistic and familiar in at least a couple of hundred different ways.

The bad news is that it’s mostly about a bunch of baseball-star jocks sharing a fraternity house, and athletes, I feel, are always often a drag to hang with because they’re mostly a bunch of pea-brains — hormonal, relentlessly competitive, single-minded, somewhat conservative, egoistic, and lacking in curiosity. I’m sorry but I’ve been around the track a couple of hundred times and that’s my opinion. Are there exceptions to the rule? Yes, of course.

Then again Everybody Wants Some! is a refreshingly unusual jocks-on-a-college-campus comedy, which is to say something quieter and more oblique and introspective and curious about what makes this or that guy tick. It spends a whole lotta time answering that last line of inquiry.

Yes, it’s frequently amusing but I’m not even sure if it’s fair to use the word “comedy.” It dispenses a steady torrent of little laugh sliders that make you chortle or grin or guffaw, but it never strains to be “funny.” Either you’re paying attention and enjoying the observational servings or you’re not.

Hollywood Elsewhere approves of eight of the Academy’s nine shortlisted foreign film contenders — Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War (Poland), Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra‘s Birds of Passage (Columbia), Gustav Moller‘s The Guilty (Denmark), Florian_Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s Never Look Away (Germany), Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s Shoplifters (Japan), Nadine Labaki‘s Capernaum (Lebanon), Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma (Mexico), and Lee Chang-dong‘s Burning (South Korea).

It’s not that I disapprove of Sergey Dvortsevoy‘s Ayka (Kazakhstan), which is ninth on the list — I just haven’t seen it.

HE strongly disapproves, however, of the Academy having blown off Lukas Dhont‘s Girl (Netflix). Winner of Un Certain Regard performance award and the Camera d’Or prize, Girl is the most finely assembled and emotionally affecting drama about a transgender person I’ve ever seen.

In his review of Vice, Variety‘s Owen Glieberman complains that Adam McKay‘s film never answers the big question, which is “who is Dick Cheney? How did he get to be the singular domineering bureaucrat-scoundrel he is? What is it that makes this scheming man tick?”

Gleiberman hasn’t been paying close attention. There’s one simple answer, not just about Cheney but all conservatives. The answer is ice-cold fear.

Fear of the dark and terrible unknown. Fear of the beast. Cheney needs to keep that bugger away from this doorstep. He woke up one day and felt the hot breath of the grizzly bear and saw that huge, terrible claw about to come down and rip half of his face off, and Cheney screamed and said “no! I won’t be destroyed! I will instead become the bear and I will snarl and smite others, and they will bow down and show obeisance before my power, and that will make me safer. Me and my fellow grizzlies. It’s a kill-or-be-killed world out there, and you simply have to decide which kind of animal you are.”

HE to Gleiberman: Now you know.

Another way of examining Cheney is that he became the bear to hold onto Lynne Vincent, a young Wyoming girl who became his wife.

N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott: “The way Vice tells it, Dick Cheney, who would go on to become the most powerful vice president in American history, started out as a young man in a hurry to nowhere in particular. After washing out of Yale, he retreated to his home state of Wyoming, pursuing his interests in booze and cigarettes and working as a utility-company lineman on the side. Dick was saved from ruin — or at least from the kind of drab destiny unlikely to result in a biopic — by the stern intervention of his fiancée, Lynne Vincent, who told her wayward beau that they were finished unless he pulled himself together.

“Her reading of the romantic riot act would have far-reaching consequences. In that pivotal moment, Dick (Christian Bale) looks Lynne (Amy Adams) in the eye and swears he’ll never disappoint her again. The thesis of this film, written and directed by Adam McKay, is that Dick kept his promise. And that everyone else — including his daughter Mary (Alison Pill), thousands of American soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and just about everyone on the planet with a care for justice, democracy or simple human decency — paid the price.”