The Trump wall has never been anything more than a symbolic totem for the rubes — a rhetorical us-vs.-them concept, and a line-in-the-sand presentation thqt President Trump would like to put on to the tune of $5 billion, solely for the emotional benefit of his information-challenged base. Trump threw it out during the ’16 election, of course, and has continued to hail the wall in subsequent hillbilly Nuremberg rallies.

Sen. Chuck Schumer: “The President made clear that he wants a shutdown. If he sticks to his position for a $5 billion wall, he will get no wall and he will get a shutdown. We want border security, we offered high border security, but Americans know that the wall is not the way to border security, and the experts say that. This Trump shutdown, this temper tantrum that he seems to throw, will not get him his wall. The $1.3 billion that we gave him last year for border security — no wall but border security…less than 6% of [this amount] has been spent.”

You Broke My Heart is a new feature of HE Plus — a personal relationship advice and recollection column based entirely upon real episodes that have happened in my life or the lives of friends:

Zackey: There’s an issue with this woman I’ve been seeing. It sounds vapid but it’s getting in the way. Not her problem — mine.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore, far and away the best film he’s ever made (not to mention the funniest), opened exactly 20 years ago today. For me the more meaningful anniversary was a couple of months ago, or the 20th anni of the New York Film Festival debut on 10.9.98.

I had just begun my Mr. Showbiz column that month, and boy, was I delighted with Rushmore when I saw it out at the Disney lot one night! I was floating when it ended. Wes, whom I’d known since he hit town with Owen Wilson in the fall of ’94, had allowed me to read a copy of the script when I was miserably working at People, and I was pretty happy with it. But the film version represented one of the very few times in my life that a movie turned out to be significantly better than the script. (It usually works the other way around.)

At what point was I dead certain that Rushmore was a one-in-a-million bull’s-eye? It may have been when I realized that Mason Gamble‘s little-kid performance (he was seven years old during filming) was something I’d never seen in a film before. No one had ever heard a kid that age say a line like “do you say my mom gave you a hand-job?” And he meant it. It wasn’t a joke line.

There was also that scene in which Jason Schwartzman‘s Max shoots Steven McCole‘s Magnus Buchan character in the neck with a beebee gun, and the way McCole played it when he got hit — “Aarrgghhh!”, like he was really hurt, which is how I used to howl when I was shot with beebee pellets when I was nine or ten — is perfect. Has anyone ever had to deal with a hailstorm of crab apples thrown by the “enemy” (i.e., other kids in the neighborhood)? I have, and it’s very serious when this happens. It hurts, I mean.

When I posted HE’s 150 Greatest American Films list on 7.24.15, I ranked Rushmore as my #8, and I meant it. I still do.

[All of the preceding except for paragraphs #3 and #4 was previously posted on 8.23.17.]

How’s the Warner Archive Bluray of Howard Hawks‘ Thing From Another World? The four-word response is “sufficient, acceptable, no worries.” But it doesn’t deliver what I’m always hoping for, which is a Bluray “bump”.

Most of it looks as good as can be expected, I suppose — it certainly looks better than the 2005 DVD — but it didn’t blow me away. I wanted it to look as good as Warner Archives’ Out of the Past Bluray, but it doesn’t even come close to that.

I’m glad I own the Thing Bluray, but the greatest satisfaction I got from the whole package was the needle-sharp menu photo of Robert Cornthwaite, Dewey Martin, Douglas Spencer and the gang inspecting the directional stabilizer of the alien spacecraft. That’s the only image that really and truly got me off.

I’ve always been bothered by the casual cold-weather gear worn by the various Thing characters. They’re coping with brutal North Pole temps (anywhere from minus-20 to minus-50 fahrenheit) and yet they’re dressed more for standard January or February temps in Massachusetts or Maine (i.e., 20s or teens) — standard parka hoodies, overcoats, skullcaps and galoshes. For the North Pole you’d need a lot more bundling up — thermal underwear, goggles, layers upon layers of protective clothing, etc.

I’ll be seeing Clint Eastwood‘s The Mule early this evening, and I sorta kinda can’t wait. I don’t know Carmen Tse but for the sake of discussion let’s presume he/she is an actual Letterboxed person and not a plant. I love the “one of the funniest movies of the year” remark, whatever it actually means.

I love the split sensibilities of the San Diego Film Critics Society. On one hand they gave their Best Picture trophy to Debra Granik‘s Leave No Trace, but their runner-up favorite is Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book. These two films — a subdued, Hollywood-averse, tension-free indie vs. a somewhat old-fashioned, Hollywood-convention-embracing, racially-stamped buddy film — don’t just represent different filmmaking approaches but separate aesthetic continents.

The SDFCS is vigorously applauded for handing its Best Actor prize to First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke. There’s no stopping Hawke now. A sizable portion of the Gold Derby gang — mostly finger-to-the-wind sheep who wouldn’t recognize a strong aesthetic conviction if it came up and bit them in the ass — have recently caved in their months-long resistance to Hawke and are now including him in their top-five Best Actor projection rosters. SAG and Academy voters are almost sure to follow.

You know what would have been really great? As in “wow, I can’t believe they had the artistic conviction to man up and actually do this” audacious? If the furniture and clothing in Raleigh Studios’ Roma exhibit were to be presented in monochrome facsimiles. If they were to somehow recreate all the clothing in black, white and silvery gray-weave, and then artfully (and I mean very carefully) paint the furniture in silvery gray, black and white with just a touch of grain. I would be down on my knees with admiration. It would be totally next-realm magnifico.

If only Lisa Taback had come to me first and said, “Jeff? We’re about to present a Roma exhibit at Raleigh — photos, props, clothing. What can we do to give it a feeling of artistic integrity…something that would deliver a snap-crackle-pop vibe…you know, something extra-level?”

Remember my ’90s idea of manufacturing real, smokable Red Apple cigarettes? And creating a pop-up Big Kahuna burger restaurant that would allow people to literally order Big Kahuna burgers?

ROMA, in living color, on the Raleigh Studios lot pic.twitter.com/YdswDvlPkl

— Scott Feinberg (@ScottFeinberg) December 10, 2018

I don’t see how any person of patience or one who appreciates real-deal authenticity can watch Roma and not think “wow.” But I’m wondering if anyone in the HE community has seen it with a nonpro. Just asking.

There’s a short film in the Jamestown Post-Journal embarassment that surfaced two days ago (Saturday,12.8). The original AP story headline: “Julia Roberts finds life (and her roles) get better with age.” Melissa McCarthy could play the editor — stressed, frazzled, over-worked. An underling mistypes the AP headline. McCarthy is initially confused, then rationalizes that “holes get better with age”…nope, doesn’t make sense, must be an error. Then one of McCarthy’s kids suffers some kind of medical emergency and she has to leave before the paper is put to bed. As she’s heading out the door she hurriedly tells an associate editor to fix the Roberts headline, but the editor mishears, thinking McCarthy has told her to “six” the headline or otherwise stand behind it.

According to a 12.5 Long Beach Press-Telegram story, the nutty-nuns-gambling-in-Las Vegas embezzlement story wasn’t as completely crazy it sounds. Former teacher Sister Lana Chang and former principal Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper pilfered the $500K over the last decade, or the sum of $50K per year. If they travelled to Vegas twice annually they spent $25K per trip; thrice annually they went through an average of $16.5K. That’s not all that exorbitant. They probably kept going back in the hope of recouping their previous losses so they could pay back the missing funds. Questions: (a) did the nuns ever come out ahead?, (b) did they ever experience a George Segal-Elliot Gould California Split finale?, (c) what were their favorite games?, (c) did either of them count cards? Adam McKay needs to direct and write; Melissa McCarthy and Michelle Yeoh as as Kreuper and Chang.

(l.) Margaret Kreuper; (r.) Lana Chang.

It means something when an LQTM type like myself laughs out loud.

Everyone presumably recalls the fat Godzilla dust-up of 2014. Director Gareth Edwards insisted that Godzilla wasn’t fat but “big-boned”…bullshit. Now the question is whether Michael Dougherty‘s fire-breathing reptile in the forthcoming Godzilla, King of the Monsters (5.31.19) will follow suit. The teaser that popped last summer didn’t suggest anything, but the new trailer makes it clear Goddy is still a fatty. In fact, he might even have put on a couple of tons since his last appearance.

The fact that Godzilla, King of the Monsters has been directed and co-written by Michael Dougherty (Trick r Treat, Krampus) should give all potential viewers pause. The Warner Bros. release is about conflict between Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and the three-headed King Ghidorah.