The night before last Tatyana and I visited Robata Jinya, a well-liked Japanese noodle restaurant on West Third Street near Crescent Heights. We walked in without a reservation, but it was nine-something and there were open tables here and there. I sidled up to the hostess but she was entirely focused on a 20something Asian guy who was yapping and yapping and yapping. She was determined to meet his needs before dealing with me…fine. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

The Asian guy, apparently a “me, me, me” type, wouldn’t stop talking about whatever. I was eyeballing this sociopath and telepathically conveying the following: “What are you doing, talking about your childhood or something? Or about your car payments or a Dodger game you attended a few days ago? There are other people here besides you, asshole…people who want to sit down and eat…right? If you want a table, say so and maybe the hostess can help you out.”

But he kept on going. Yap, yap, yappity-yap, yap…what is this guy’s basic malfunction?

After two or three minutes of watching him go on and on, the hostess finally led The Yapper and his date to the rear of the restaurant, but she didn’t return for another two or three minutes. How long does it take to lead a couple to a table, hand them a couple of menus and say ‘here you are…enjoy!” Presumably the Asian guy had made a reservation but wasn’t satisfied with this or that table and/or was complaining that none of them were quite right.

By the time the hostess returned we had decided that Robata Jinya was an unpleasant place due to the combination of loudly conversing diners plus pounding EDM playing on the speakers. This is a trait of under-35 bars and restaurants and more precisely their patrons. Under-35s enjoy aural oppression….they like having to shout their thoughts to each other despite sitting only 30 inches apart. On top of which the air conditioning was aggressively pumping cold air despite the fact that it wasn’t even warm outside, much less hot.

So we said “thanks anyway” and went next door to the quieter, less expensive, much less crowded Tasty Noodle House. It seemed cool at first, but then the waitress, whose English was a bit labored and hard to understand, started making trouble by pointing to my orange valet ticket, which I’d been given by the Robata Jinya valet guy. She seemed to be saying that I had the wrong ticket, or that I’d given my car to the wrong people or something in that realm.

“Are you saying we can’t eat here because of the valet ticket?” No, she said, smiling but pointing again to the ticket and saying something about chicken wings. The basic message, I later discerned, was that if we had parked in the Tasty Noodles lot we could have eaten free chicken wings. But I didn’t want any fucking chicken wings. HE to waitress: “Okay but could you possibly drop the subject and just, you know, let us order?”

I found the conversation so frustrating that I got up and left. Tatyana stayed and talked with her a bit. Then she came out and explained the chicken wings thing. “But I didn’t want any chicken wings,” I protested. “I hate chicken wings. Why did she keep harping on that? Chicken wings, chicken wings, parking lot, parking lot.”

You were being rude to her, Tatyana said. “Excuse me but the waitress wouldn’t stop beating me over the head with this,” I replied. “She was like a travelling salesman selling vacuum cleaners.”

We eventually went back inside and started over. Once the chicken wings had been forgotten, everything was fine. Well, almost. When I ordered some dumplings the waitress said “crispy or soft?” Crispy? There are no crispy dumplings, I said. It turned out she meant pan-fried.

Yeah, I know — Larry David. But the combination of the “me, me, me” guy and the chicken wings was awfully rough.

I twice saw William Friedkin‘s Cruising, a loose, ironed-out adaptation of Gerald Walker’s crime thriller — once at an early press screening, later with ticket buyers. Both times my reaction was “reasonably well-handled and exotically interesting from time to time (I liked the nocturnal Central Park scene between Al Pacino and Richard Cox), but who was Pacino’s character deep down, and what was the thing with Cox’s disapproving father because the voices aren’t the same?”

Something was missing. It never felt solid. More of an odd detour flick than anything else. And I didn’t get the final scene at all (Karen Allen trying on leather gear, tugboat chug-chugging up the Hudson River).

But this morning I thought to myself, “Okay, it’s been 39 years and re-watching it will only set me back $2.99…maybe I’ll have another look.”

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“The challenge in a series like BBC One’s Years and Years (HBO, 6.24) is not kicking out at the predictable backlash from Trumpers, climate deniers, racists and fascists — for numerous reasons they are not the target audience — but in taking what everybody else has been feeling in the past few years and turning it into compelling drama rather than a soap-box lecture.

“And that’s what producer-writer Russell T. Davies gets most right most of the time, even when his rage — and it’s his and everybody else’s sense of outrage that he’s tapping into — necessitates that he lean into themes that validate progressive, rational and empathetic concerns.

“He’s preaching to the choir here — Years and Years very clearly being a WTF? reaction to Trump and the American drift. But Davies has managed to package it in a wildly entertaining, moving and, yes, sometimes funny look at a world gone mad.” — from a 6.21 review by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Goodman.

Herewith a Bergdorf Goodman encounter with Donald Trump, sometime in late ’95 or early ’96 when the future President was 49 or 50. Written by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and currently in the 6.24.19 issue of New York magazine and also in “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal” (St. Martin’s Press, 7.2.19):

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Best trailer yet…agreed?

Nine days ago World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy passed along scuttlebutt that both Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in Manhattan and Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Two days ago Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman passed along the same info.

For me the head-turner in Friedman’s story (i.e., what I hadn’t read before) is that the 2019 Venice Film Festival “will not have” Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman. Where did that come from?

If Friedman is correct this is a shocker. Who bypasses the Venice Film Festival? I know nothing at all but “no Venice” sounds to me like “no Telluride” and “no Toronto” in the same breath. Could this be true?

If so the likely world premiere destination would be the New York Film Festival, which is run by Scorsese’s friend and colleague Kent Jones (who also distinguished himself early this year as the director of Diane). On top of which much of The Irishman was shot in the New York City area, and the story more or less happens in the New York-to-Boston corridor.

HE to Jones: Will I have to fly to NYC to attend the world premiere of The Irishman at the NYFF? I usually go there anyway but I need to know in advance so I can find the right Airbnb and figure out out the best airfare, etc.

Michael Fleming reported this morning that Jill Soloway (Transparent, Afternoon Delight) will direct Red Sonja, replacing the departed and generally discredited Bryan Singer. Sounds like a plan.

In a 10.13.18 N.Y. Times profile of Soloway called “They Live in Public — Jill Soloway is building a gender-free empire“, writer Penelope Green stated for the record that “for the last few years, Mx. Soloway has identified as non-binary and prefers the third-person plural pronoun.” One presumes that in some way, shape or form Soloway’s Red Sonja will reflect this mindset or persuasion.

The last time Red Sonja occupied big screens was 34 years ago, when Brigitte Neilsen played the role. Richard Fleischer directed.

Honest question, no attitude implied: Within the last five years how many HE readers have written a letter or otherwise addressed a non-binary person as “Mx.”? It sounds like you’re saying the person in question has something to do with Mexico. That or he/she represents some sort of mixed gender (Neil Diamond‘s “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You”). I wish I knew a non-binary person well enough to write them a parchment letter so I could seriously and earnestly type “Mx.” for the very first time in my life (apart from this posting).

How many times has Eric Kohn addressed a non-binary pally as “Mx.” whomever? Or Kyle Buchanan? HE to J.J. Abrams — Yo, bruh, have you ever signed a formal letter on Bad Robot stationery that was addressed to a non-binary colleague or collaborator?

Seriously, I love the “Mx.” but at the same time I’m kind of scratching my head. I just need to acclimate.

Yesterday Facebook’s Tom Brueggemann attempted to paint Pauline Kael with a racist brush. His weapon was a paragraph from Kael’s March 1966 McCall’s review of Stuart Burge and Laurence Olivier‘s Othello.

My first thought was “it’s very easy to accuse someone of racial insensitivity or clumsy phrasing a half-century later.”

Obviously no white actor today would even think of trying to portray an African or Moorish character, but Kael, hardly beholden to rube attitudes, was thinking beyond the usual confines.

She was merely saying that Olivier, a burning furnace beneath the surface, was conveying a certain unhinged madness or mania that prominent black actors of the mid ’60s, in her view, had been or would be reluctant to wade into.

If Jerry Schatzberg‘s Street Smart (’87) were to be remade today, I wonder if any black actor would dive into Morgan Freeman‘s “Fast Black” character with as much relish? Freeman was amazing in that film, but also quite scary. Not concluding — just thinking out loud.

Paul Schrader‘s response to Brueggemann: “A valid observation. Sorry if it’s not p.c. enough for you.”

At least read Kael’s entire review before forming a judgment.

What percentage of regular-ass Netflix viewers have even heard of the original, 52-year-old Point Blank? Which wasn’t just a great revenge flick but a major genre game-changer by way of merging shootings and beatings with an impressionistic art-film aesthetic? 1% or 2%, if that. It’s okay, I suppose, if you’re using the title for a nine-year-old French-produced thriller, but it seems to me that in the good old U.S. of A. the Netflix guys are tredding on hallowed ground.