Apologies for the squinting.

The HD video that I have on the phone looks much better than the cruddy, splotchy quality of the YouTube version, which is what’s showing here. If I were smarter about tech stuff…maybe I’ll figure it out.

Friendo: “Andrew Sullivan said the other day that the pro-trans-kid mob includes all of liberal-progressive culture and the Democratic Party, not to mention 95 percent of HE’s readers, as well as other ‘enlightened’ forces that are doing their utmost to usher in Donald Trump’s 10-year reign of tyranny.

“What all these people are literally blind about is that they think the issue is ‘trans rights,’ or respecting the dignity and souls of people who are trans…etc.

“That’s not what the issue is about. At all.

“I utterly respect, and would fight for, the dignity, the rights and the souls of trans people. And why wouldn’t I? I’m not a bigot.

“The issue here is about whether parents, in a sane society, have the right to have autonomy over their children. The obvious answer is ‘yes, they do.’ And the reason they need that right is that children aren’t old enough to make crucial life decisions by themselves.

“Rejecting that obvious fact is the insanity of this movement.”

Poor Ava Gardner had recently turned 36 when the filming of On The Beach began in January of ‘59. She looked at least 45…more than a bit puffy, the ravages of a fast life. Stanley Kramer’s apocalyptic drama opened 11 months later, and it lost money, you bet — $700,000 in the red. Educated folk gave it a tumble; Joe and Jane Popcorn mostly said “no thanks”. The fertilizer line is still a howler.

Of all the films allegedly destined to play at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the only one I’m exceptionally interested in is Ali Abassa‘s The Apprentice. Co-written by Gabriel Sherman and Abassa. Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump and Martin Donovan as Fred Trump.

…but not his granddaughter Sydney…no offense. There’s much, much more to the feminine mystique than the mere possession of a nice rack.

An excerpt from Bernard Girard‘s Dead Heat on a Merry Go-Round (66) in which James Coburn‘s Eli Kotch is speaking to Camilla Sparv‘s Inga Knudson, his love interest:

Coburn: “Bean Sweeney? Did you ever read him?”
Sparv: “Who?”
Coburn: “Bean Sweeney! Fantastic. The first time I read him, I couldn’t write for six weeks. Beautiful man. Said it all.”

Before global warming March in the tristate area tended to prompt morose meditations — more wintry than springy, damp, occasionally mild but just as often a climate best ignored. Daydreams of South Beach, Key West, Turks & Caicos.

But within the last few days the air has become warmish, standing on the Westport train station platform feels less miserable and trees are starting to think about sprouting leaves.

I’ve never seen Big Jim McClain (‘52 — John Wayne vs. Hawaiian Communists) but the term “treason trail” has recently become a mental irritant. James Arness and Nancy Olson costarred.

Robert Downey, Jr.’s bordering-on-bizarre evening wear (maroon tuxedoes, broadly flared suit pants, heavy-soled shoes) should be cause for alarm among decent Americans everywhere.

Some have been saying over the last 48 hours that if Kevin Costner‘s two-part Horizon: An American Saga is deemed Best Picture-worthy, guild and Academy members will have to either vote for Part One (which is opening on 6.28.24) or Part Two (opening on 8.16.24)j, but they can’t vote for Horizon as a single long film with two parts. One or the other.

What are they talking about? Of course they can vote for Horizon as a single entity!

The unified Lawrence of Arabia that we all know is a 227-minute, two-part film separated by an intermission.

After Part One ended at the two-hour mark, the music swelled, the word “Intermission” appeared, the film came to a stop and the lights came up. And then, 15 minutes later, Part Two began and ended 107 minutes later. That’s how it was shown. A lot of industry people voted for it in early ’63, and Lawrence would up winning the Best Picture Oscar.

But let’s imagine that instead of showing Lawrence in one big nearly-four-hour package (including intermission), Lean and Columbia Pictures decided to release Part One in early October of ’62 — a two-hour, World War I-era film about T.E. Lawrence, titling it Lawrence: Cairo to Aqaba. And then in early December they released Part Two, an 107-minute film called Lawrence: Despair and Downfall.

Lean and Columbia explain that they simply felt that the film could be better appreciated in two separate viewings. It’s still the same 227-minute movie — they just decided to show Part One and Part Two separated by two months rather than 15 minutes.

What kind of idiot would say “oh, no…you can’t do that! You can’t show Part One and Part Two eight weeks apart. If you show these films as a pair on a single evening, separated by a 15-minute intermission, fine, But if you can’t show two separate parts and expect us to vote on them as a single film experience….no way!”

What’s the difference between this and how Costner is planning to unveil Horizon, as a two-parter separated by several weeks between openings? Who would prefer it if Costner announced that both parts of Horizon will screen as a single experience, except it will last nearly five hours or maybe longer with an intermission? That sounds like a sore ass to me. I would rather see it in two separate viewing experiences.