I posted this Moneyball clip a little more than eight months ago, but I’m still shattered by what we didn’t know back in 2011, which was that smart, adult, middle-class, award-calibre theatrical flicks about straight white guys would become politically unpopular within a few years time. Even award season has become a dicey launch pad since movies about SWGs have become more or less verboten. They’ve certainly lost their foothold.

And none of us realized seven years ago that Chris Pratt, who would become a big star three years later in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, would never have as glorious a big-screen moment as this again.

This was Pratt’s peak — it never got any better for the guy in a God-smiling-down, spiritual-uplift sense. And nobody knew back then (and how could they?) that once Pratt became a quarter-of-an-inch-deep, big-money player in meaningless megaplex movies — i.e., the white Dwayne Johnson — that he’d be all but finished in terms of being cast in movies with scenes of this particular type — emotional guy-movie scenes that just reach out and get you. Do you feel this scene? Do you see the look on Jonah Hill‘s face as the ball sails into the right-field stands? Definitely something tingly going on.

Pratt is toast now — his attitude is too king-shit to do anything but make more Marvel flicks, dumb dinosaur movies and glitzy, worthless high-tech extravaganzas like Passengers and so on. He’ll never play a guy like Scott Hatteberg again.

There isn’t much difference between Kirk Douglas and Cyd Charisse‘s mad sports-car drive in Two Weeks In Another Town (’62) and Lana Turner‘s mad, careening drive through the Hollywood hills in The Bad and the Beautiful (’52). The bond, of course, is that both sequences were directed by Vincente Minnelli, and both films starred Kirk Douglas as a jaded film-industry pro with an occasional tendency to suffer over-the-top emotional fits.

A Warner Archives Bluray of Two Weeks in Another Town pops on 6.19. It’s not a great film — it’s actually strained and overwrought — but it captures Rome at an interesting period, the end of the heyday of a city known in the ’50s and early ’60s as the capital of La Dolce Vita — swinging, top-down, martini-inhaling, Ray-ban hedonism.

An all-but-meaningless Zogby poll posted last Friday indicates that Oprah Winfrey, who declared last February that she “definitely” won’t be running against President Donald Trump in 2020, is more likely to defeat the current White House occupant than Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

Zogby says that 53% of likely voters would choose Winfrey with 47% supporting Trump. The concern is that Trump performs better against Winfrey than any of the other candidates. Something about Winfrey appears to agitate right-leaning, red-state voters. Margin-wise Michelle Obama does better against Trump, 48% vs. 39%. An Obama-Winfrey ticket (or vice versa) would be close to unbeatable, no?

In fact, Winfrey beats Trump among nearly every sub-demo, including younger voters (aged 18-24 years old — 65%), African Americans (90%), Hispanics (63%), Asians (80%) and women (50 %). Winfrey also leads among independents (55%) and voters with no college degree (51%). My sense is that Winfrey would make an ineffective president in some respects, and yet she’s brilliant and humane and obviously aggressive and well-organized. To get Trump out I would vote for her in a New York minute. What a shame that she’s…what, too flighty or indecisive to accept the power she apparently wields?

If Winfrey wanted to really seize the day she might be able to save the U.S. of A. from a sociopathic bully-boy crime boss as president. Alas, she apparently hasn’t the inclination or the character to make a go of it.

On the other hand Trump beats Winfrey among among Walmart shoppers (54% to Winfrey’s 46%) and NASCAR fans (59% to Winfrey’s 41%)

Michelle Obama, Biden and Sanders all command support of 48% of likely voters vs. Trump’s 38% to 39%. Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are currently polling Trump in the Zogby poll.

881 likely U.S. voters were polled between 5.10 and 5.12. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 points.

Obviously 19 year-old Bechet Dumaine Allen, daughter of Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, knows nothing about the matter of her father’s innocence or guilt in the matter of Dylan Farrow. She’s just standing by her “supportive and loving” dad as any loyal daughter would. But this morning’s Facebook statement, which supports a recently posted pro-Woody essay by her uncle Moses, has probably put her in the line of fire. Bechet has almost certainly earned Dylan’s enmity, mostly likely irked Greta Gerwig and Timothee Chalamet, and may even be accused in certain circles of betraying the #MeToo movement. If Bechet had voiced a similar statement during “the terror,” she’d soon be riding in a horse-drawn cart with Georges Danton.

After attending last night’s Paul Simon concert at the Hollywood Bowl, journalist Joel Stein tweeted that “The Boxer“, a 1969 tune from Bridge Over Troubled Water, presented a problem for the delicate ears of his nine-year-old son.

The song “isn’t too smooth with the way [Simon] desperately works in his confession that he had sex with prostitutes,” Stein tweeted. “Thanks, Paul Simon, for not playing it at my 9 year-old son’s first rock concert.” Perhaps Simon didn’t play “The Boxer” last night, but why wouldn’t he have? Simon did two or three nights ago [scroll to 11:30 mark on below video] and sang the lyric in question, “I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there” — i.e., with “the whores on Seventh Avenue.”

Imagine a nine-year-old boy being raised by a dad who wants to protect him from a mild little lyric like Simon’s. I was leafing through nudie mags when I was eight and feasting my eyes on bodacious ta-ta’s. Stein’s son is in for a rough patch when he hits his teen years. His dad is a pearl-clutcher.

HE nemesis Nick Schager, who declared last October that Bong Joon-ho‘s Okja was 2017’s third best film and James Gray‘s The Lost City of Z the fifth best (outrageous opinions), has posted a lowbrow assessment of Ari Aster‘s Hereditary — i.e., not wild or crazy or gorey enough. Something tells me that mainstream (i.e., grunt-level) horror fans will be saying the same thing when it opens, following in the path of The Verge’s Tasha Robinson.

Schager: “As a lifelong horror junkie, I readily confess that my own calloused constitution for the grisly and the macabre is greater than most, sometimes to a fault. Still, no matter that nor the rapturous praise that’s preceded its premiere, Aster’s maiden feature employs meticulous design and lots of screaming to drum up only so-so suspense, convinced that creeping pans through constricting architecture and random suggestions of paranormal activity will put one on edge—or, at least, keep one engaged until the final five minutes, when all hell breaks loose. By the time that mayhem arrives, however, you’ll be forgiven for having lost interest in this patchwork-quilt concoction of ghoulish cliches and Toni Collette freak-outs.”

HE review, posted on 5.22.18: “Either you get what serious, classy, smarthouse horror films are up to, or you don’t. Either you understand that when a certain scare switch is flipped by way of hint, suggestion or implication (such as that little-ping moment in Rosemary’s Baby when Mia Farrow reads the journal of a recently-deceased victim of Roman and Minnie Castevet and comes upon the phrase “I can no longer associate myself…”), it connects with convulsive, deep-rooted terrors that are far more disturbing than anything you might find in It.

You know that some cable or streaming broadcaster is going to rush in and attempt to acquire Racist Rosanne and re-launch the show ASAP. I don’t know who but someone will; maybe two or three. It’s obviously a hot-button show, and a good 30% of the country swears by her bullshit. The hoo-hah happened after Rosanne tweeted an offensive description of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarett, to wit: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Rosanne is a Trumpster, and Trumpism is about pushing back against the Wily Pathan. This is partly why the show is popular. Rosanne lives in blue territory but she’s “one of them” — a rural bumblefuck. ABC execs are cut from a different cloth. When has a huge hit show been so quickly and abruptly cancelled? This is pretty much without precedent.

I know I’m expected to be a Marvel hater, but I’m totally tuned into this July 6th release. I loved the original Ant-Man, and I fully expect to have a great time with the newbie. By the way: Michelle Pfeiffer has a role as Janet van Dyne — wife of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), mother of Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and the original Wasp. Lost in the “quantum realm” years ago during a mission with Pym years ago, but presumably returning. Where could Janet’s head be after being all alone in some nebulous micro-realm for God knows how many years?

A woman you’ve just met can find you extremely handsome or fetching or fuckable, but you can’t be of the same opinion. You’ve been looking at yourself for too long, and you’re all too aware of the fears and anxieties and unsettling undercurrents that lie beneath those facial features. I applaud anyone who would say they’re completely pleased or at least at peace with their face because it conveys a good attitude — accept yourself and your life thus far without guilt or judgment, and keep the door open for better chapters around the corner. This is how I see myself, and so I completely get what Isabelle Huppert was saying when she said there’s “nothing” about her appearance that bothers her. She’s lying, of course, but in a healthy way.

History has noted a fair number of female criminals and desperadoes (Bonnie Parker, Ma Barker, Belle Starr, Ulrike Meinhof, Sandra Avila Beltran, Phoolan Devi, Griselda Blanco, Shashikala Patankar, Seema Parihar) over the decades, but has there ever been an upscale, John Robie-styled female thief of any kind? More to the point, has there ever been a gang of women thieves? Or a female gang of any kind who joined forces to commit a major crime?

I’m just asking.

Lord knows there have been dozens of male gangs who’ve attempted this or that robbery, but to my knowledge women have never done this, not even once. If this presumption is in fact true, the natural question is “why not?” There have been loner lady outlaws over the decades, as noted, so why has there never been a gang of them? Update: Apologies — I’d overlooked Forty Elephants.

Conclusion: It would seem that in today’s context, no offense, that Ocean’s 8 is a masturbatory, patriarchal-pushback, Hollywood wish-fulfillment fantasy from the get-go, completely divorced from human behavior as observed and recorded by 20th or 21st Century journalists, historians and crime novelists. If I’m wrong, please inform.

I’ve been encouraged by the complaints about Solo‘s overly-dark cinematography, which of course is the doing of Bradford Young, the most somber and pea-soupy cinematographer on the planet. In other words, popular opinion seems to be catching up to mine, and from here on people will be “on” to Young…good! It needs to be understood that Young’s murky palettes are markedly different than the pitch-black shadow stylings of the late Gordon Willis, the legendary “prince of darkness” whose work I’ve long admired.

Last night I gave Hail Caesar! another shot. Having expressed my initial disappointment 2 and 1/3 years ago and moved past that like any sane person, I thought I might somehow see this period Hollywood “comedy” (i.e., one that’s actually funny in only one or two scenes) in a more approving light.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. As well-made, well-acted and handsomely designed as it obviously is, I still felt irked and underwhelmed. My re-viewing wasn’t boring. It’s still diverting in several portions (Channing Tatum‘s dance number, Aldren Ehrenreich‘s “would that it twuhhh” scene with Ralph Fiennes) but it feels oddly thin and scattershot.

Has anyone watched it again and felt differently?

I’m still hugely peeved at the Coen’s aspect-ratio wrongo. Two or three clips are screened within the film, and they’re all presented in CinemaScope-like widescreen, which of course didn’t appear until 1953 with The Robe and didn’t really kick in on a mainstream basis until ’54. Hail Caesar is happening in ’50 or ’51, given the obvious allusion to Quo Vadis. The fact is that all movies were shot and projected at 1.37 back then so we’re talking an aspect-ratio boner of stunning proportions. Unforgivable.

From my 2.3.16 review: The smarty-pants dialogue has verve and flair. The attitudes, haircuts, costumes and production design are all aces. Pic has many elements, in fact, that are sharp and zippy and loads of fun, but something is missing. Yes, if you ease up on your Coen Bros. expectations Hail, Caesar! is agreeable enough. It’s not slop and far from a trainwreck, but at best it’s a 6.5 or 7. Amusing here and there but never consistently funny in a follow-through, momentum-building sort of way.

Remember the inspired “Wheezy Joe” bit in Intolerable Cruelty (i.e., the gun mistaken for an inhaler)? There’s nothing in Caesar that comes close to that. If you ask me Inside Llewyn Davis — by any yardstick a downish, somber-attitude film — is funnier in its own studied way. John Goodman‘s back-seat performance as a junkie musician was a stone classic; ditto that “where’s his scrotum?” scene plus the moment when the amiable G.I. folk singer slurps the cereal milk. There are no bits or performances in Hail, Caesar! that deliver on this level.

Hail, Casear! is about real-life MGM general manager and vp Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) and how he deals with the kidnapping of Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a Robert Taylor-like star during the filming of a Quo Vadis-like Biblical epic called Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ.