Late yesterday afternoon I was nudging my way east on Melrose Ave., between Robertson and San Vicente Blvd., waiting for a green light. For the time being I was to the right of a youngish brunette in a late-model Hundai. We were side by side within a lane and a half’s worth of road space. I saw that up ahead the right-side lane would open up after we got past a parked car, so I nudged my way forward, inching past Hundai girl.

This pissed her off. She lurched forward so that we were side by side again. She then expertly pantomined “what are you doing? You can’t elbow your way in front of me! I own the main lane and you’re only in a half-lane to my right, so I’m the dominant driver!”

I glanced at her mute performance out of the corner of my eye. Due respect but I politely ignored what she was putting out. No defiance, no eff-you-back gestures — just “oh, are you upset about something?”

A few seconds later the traffic started to move and the right lane opened up. I darted in, took the lane and gunned it across San Vicente. Within five or six seconds I was at least six to eight car lengths ahead of Hundai Girl. I’m sure this made her even more unhappy. Pardon my dust, Peggy Sue, but this is how life in the big city goes sometimes. We’re all living in a kind of Mad Max world.

10 and 2/3 years ago I excerpted a Michael Atkinson Moving Image piece about William Holden (“St. Bill of Illinois“).

Atkinson hits the nail on the head in discussing the brusque anxiety and rattled melancholia that always simmered in the characters Holden played — there, obviously, because they defined Holden himself.

“Truth be told, Holden’s character-role capacities ranged only from narcissistic American jerk to self-loathing American lug,” he wrote, “but his best movies are implicit inquisitions into that personality — like Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Blvd. and Sabrina and Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

“By the time of David Lean‘s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a big-budget production looking for a disillusioned American Everyman sickened by his own lack of heroism, David Lean needed only go to Holden.

“There was that wonderfully rough voice, often poised on the edge of cynical disillusionment. There was that physique — athletic but on the verge of dissipation. And there was that face — smooth and innocent in youth, a little weathered and circumspect in adulthood, lined with worry, regret and beleaguered wisdom as he withered. As we watched Holden age on the screen, we saw an ongoing portrait of intelligent American masculinity in progress, interrupted by his untimely accidental death in 1981 at the age of 63.

“As Holden aged, his richest vein was the bitter personification of the costs of progress and the loss of frontier — he became, almost inevitably, the angry Old Guard facing melancholy supersession by the young, by modernity, and by the press of time.”

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Sony Pictures Classics will open László Nemes‘ Sunset, which premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, on 3.22. The reviews have been mixed to mixed-positive. The general response has been that it’s no Son of Saul, but is worth seeing for the Nemes imprimatur alone.

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Adults don’t eat ketchup as a rule — only kids do. They pour ketchup on their burgers and dip their french fries in the stuff. I haven’t even looked at a bottle of ketchup since I was 14 or 15, and I’m actually proud to say that. I despise the taste of the stuff. When I was 15 or 16 I bailed on ketchup and became a burger with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise guy. I certainly don’t make a habit of hamburgers, but when I have one I always revert to the old LTM. And I never pour ketchup on steaks. I never pour it on anything. I hate the very thought of that red glop.

My first thought when I heard about Sen. Cory Booker being with Rosario Dawson was that she was acting as a kind of beard for the guy, at least while his Presidential campaign is up and running. But apparently Booker is straight (or at least bi — I’m good either way) and their relationship is for real. Buzzfeed says they’re “not just dating” but “truly, madly in love.” Fine, although it seems a tiny bit odd that Dawson is talking openly about their mutual feelings just as Booker’s presidential campaign is gearing up.

Taron Egerton is a better-than-average singer, granted, but his recent Oscar-night performance of “Tiny Dancer” simply doesn’t cut it. Because he’s offering an approximation of an “Elton voice” rather than the voice itself. It didn’t have to be this way.

Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody delivered a believable, satisfying Freddie Mercury voice, but for some reason Rocketman will not do the same. Fatal error.

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I’m sorry but when a film is chosen to close a major festival, this almost always indicates more of an agreeable crowd-pleaser than any kind of brazen, cutting-edge thing. Most of us suspected this about Danny Boyle‘s Yesterday earlier, but now we’re more certain.

Himesh Patel plays “Jack Malik”, the only guy in the world who can recall the entire Beatles library of tunes, which leads to great fame and fortune.

Honest excerpt from official Universal-supplied synopsis: “But as his star rises, Jack risks losing Ellie — the one person who always believed in him. With the door between his old life and his new closing, Jack will need to get back to where he once belonged and prove that all you need is love.” Aaaagghh!

The fact that the trailer cutters chose to show clips of Patel singing “Yesterday”, “Let It Be” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” speaks volumes.

If this film was even half-cool, Patel/Malik would be shown singing “Girl”, “Things We Said Today”, “Norweigan Wood,” “I’m Only Sleeping”, “Cry Baby Cry”, “You Never Give Me Your Money”, “Here, There, Everywhere,” “Lovely Rita”, “Savoy Truffle”, “Got To Get You Into My Life”, “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey”, “You Know My Name — Look Up The Number” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

But no — he can only croon the sappy top-40 Beatles tunes that everyone has heard 17 million times and is sick to death of.

Yesterday will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on 5.5.19. Universal will release the musical fantasy on 6.28.19.

The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival (4.24 — 5.5) will offer a whoop-dee-doo gala presentation of the 40th anniversary of Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now at the Beacon Theatre. Great — but the people behind this are misleading audiences by calling it Apocalypse Now: Final Cut.

No new footage, nothing to do with re-editing or extra bells and whistles — it’s strictly a technical upgrade thing. “Remastered in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos from a 4K scan of the original negative,” etc.

Hollywood Elsewhere urges Coppola to remove the words “final cut” and replace them with “spit-shined.” Because that’s what this is.

Coppola statement: “Restoring Apocalypse Now: Final Cut forty years later has been a tremendous undertaking and joy that I am thrilled to be able to share with the world for the first time at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The audience will be able to see, hear and feel this film how I always hoped it could be — from the first ‘bang’ to the final whimper.”

There are many great 20th Century films that could use some spiffing up, but in my judgment Apocalypse Now is not among them. By my criteria it has always looked and sounded terrific from the very first screening at the Ziegfeld in 1979. God, the moment when I felt those Ziegfeld bass woofers in my ribs…

The only Avenger I really want to see endure is Paul Rudd‘s Ant-Man — the rest can suck it. Sick of these bloodsuckers. Over and out.

Even if the Cannes-Netflix dispute was resolved, there’s no way Scorsese’s The Irishman would play there in two months. No way in hell.

Yesterday Variety‘s Matt Donnelly reported some particulars about what a lousy year 2018 was for Megan Ellison‘s Annapurna. Three wipeouts and a total loss of around $37 million, give or take.

Why? Because Ellison is famously into quality for its own sake, and doesn’t (or didn’t, at least) believe in greenlighting possible commercial successes as much as smart, sensitive, upmarket films that will delight film festival crowds along with her enlightened, SJW, politically correct hipster colleagues and feminist friendos.

Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk earned $14 million and change, but lost between $8 million and $10 million, Donnelly reports. Karyn Kusama‘s Destroyer didn’t earn squat domestically ($1,527,853) and lost around $7 million.

The biggest calamity was Adam McKay‘s Vice, which cost $65 million to make but lost between $15 and $20 million.

Be honest — you’re the final “yes or no” person at Annapurna, and certain voices want you to greenlight an adaptation of a 1974 James Baldwin novel that, despite Jenkins’ intention to bathe it in Wong Kar Wai-styled lighting, others regard as a serious downer. It’s basically about a young black couple in Harlem who are totally in love with each other, but then the young husband gets jailed for a rape he didn’t commit and he winds up staying in the clink for the rest of the film, in part because his wife’s mother is unable to persuade a Puerto Rican woman who misidentified the husband as the culprit to recant her testimony.

In all honesty, would you greenlight Beale Street?

And would you greenlight a hardboiled police thriller with Nicole Kidman as a gray-faced zombie cop who goes from one encounter to another speaking in an affected, raspy-voiced, all-but-unintelligible Clint Eastwood whisper? A movie that was shot in order to prove that a crusty, hard-boiled undercover woman detective can be just as existentially blighted and inwardly destroyed as any male badass cop — would you say “yeah, sounds like a winner”?

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