If Agitated Blamers Can Calm Down and Listen…

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The Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki-like obliteration in Pacific Palisades over the last five-plus days has been so severe and traumatizing that people are probably emotionally incapable of accepting rational-sounding explanations for the fire-hydrant failures of last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Average Joes (especially the MAGA variety) don’t want to know from calm, plain–spoken assessments. They want to see heads lopped off and bouncing down the courthouse steps, and particularly those belonging to Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. It ain’t fair and they don’t care.

Meteorologist Jodi Kodesh, however, has offered a simple tutorial that explains what went wrong. It’s not complex rocket science. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported the same observations and conclusions.

What went wrong in the higher Pacific Palisades regions, Kodesh, WaPo and the WSJ say, was the sudden, massive drainage of the lower altitude trunk water line on Tuesday during the daylight hours, which in turn quickly lost pressure and couldn’t re-fill the three higher-elevation reservoirs.

The system simply couldn’t stand up to a maelstrom of this size and strength…the largely unprecedented wind-blown ferocity of the Palisades firestorm.

Even if the upper reservoirs hadn’t been drained the wildfire would have still overwhelmed.

The structure and system in place simply couldn’t stand up, to re-phrase, to the enormity of the fire…to the perfect storm of eight months of remote, bone-dry hill growth that should have been cleared…an overgrown tinderbox environment consumed by a massive inferno that tore through PP last Tuesday, starting in the mid-morning.

It’s also being claimed that there was a crucial six-and-a-half-hour delay last Tuesday on the part of Mayor Bass (who was then in Ghana) and acting mayor Marqueece Harris-Dawson in requesting federal assistance. The request allegedly wasn’t made until Tuesday at 5 pm. I’m not certain how sturdy or reliable this analysis of an alleged dereliction may be.

Then there’s the fire department budget cuts that were approved by Bass, coupled with an apparent administrative dispute between Bass and Fire Dept. chief Kristin Crowley.

Ed Norton to “Apprentice” Avoiders: “You Have Sinned A Great Sin Against The Movie Godz”

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All hail Edward Norton for praising Ali Abassi‘s under-seen and under-heralded The Apprentice in an interview with THR‘s Scott Feinberg:

Posted by yours truly one week ago (1/4/25): “Industry-ites are afraid to praise The Apprentice because they’re cowards…plain and simple. I’ve been saying for nearly eight months that it’s a truly excellent film with superb performances by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, but they’re afraid to acknowledge the quality because they don’t want to be seen as supportive of anything bearing any kind of Trump stamp, even though the film’s second half is quite condemning of the former and future president.”

HE’s Cannes review, posted eight months ago:

Richard Brody Is HE’s New Best Friend…For Now

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I knew less than 15 minutes in that I would loathe sitting through The Brutalist, for right off the top it struck me as a melancholy slog, a swamp thing…a movie populated with draggy characters and a draggier-than-fuck storyline. Lemme outta here.

Silly as this sounds, I came to believe that The Brutalist hated me as much as I was learning to hate it.

I looked at my watch and moaned…dear God, over three hours to go. I was nonetheless determined to at least make it to the halfway mark. I almost managed that.

From Richard Brody‘s “The Empty Ambition of The Brutalist”:

“The Brutalist is [fundamentally] a screenplay movie, in which stick figures held by marionette strings go through the motions of the situations and spout the lines that Corbet assigns to them—and are given a moment-to-moment simulacrum of human substance by a formidable cast of actors.

“The themes [of The Brutalist] don’t emerge in step with the action; rather, they seem to be set up backward.

“[For] The Brutalist is also a domino movie in which the last tile is placed first and everything that precedes it is arranged in order to make sure that it comes out right.”

Brody subhead: “Brady Corbet’s epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life.”

Not Bad “Havana”

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Friendo: “Regarding your recent list of the best movies released in 1990, where the hell is Havana? Havana, Jeff! Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, David Rayfiel!”

HE to friendo: “In my eyes, Havana is a solid, respectable, midrange redemption tale — a flawed character (Redford’s Jack Weil) puts aside selfish tendencies and winds up doing a selfless, noble thing for a woman he loves (Lena Olin‘s Bobby Durán) but can’t have. It left an agreeable taste in my mouth. I loved Rayfiel’s dialogue, shared with Judith Rascoe.

“But over the last 35 years I’ve never rented or streamed Havana, and that means something. My criteria was ‘which 1990 films are still really living in my head 35 years later?’ I remember it with earnest, moderate affection, but not a lot of fervor. It’s a romantic film, obviously, but afflicted with a tone of resignation.”

Too Much To Take In

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The last time I felt this shattered and emotionally affected by the word “gone” was over a half-century ago when ABC’s Jim McKay reported that every last Israeli athlete hostage had been killed. The Palisades fire deaths have been relatively minimal, thank fortune, but this time the word “gone” refers to the Hiroshima-level destruction of an entire town…thousands of blackened homes, destroyed lives. This was written Thursday (I think) by Holly Korbonski.

What Happened to Poor Michael Schlesinger

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The first rule of obit etiquette is to never reveal what may have caused the demise of a recently dear and departed. But as I liked and greatly respected Michael Schlesinger, who occasionally shared comments on HE, I asked the other day what had happened.

“Mike had been laid up in the hospital for a while,” a colleague explained. “He checked in feeling weak overall, was admitted, given a room, and then just kept feeling weak. They couldn’t tell him why for quite some time.

“Eventually they diagnosed a cardiac condition. But then it was also discovered he had cancer, and that’s what finally took him out. It’s double awful that he had such a physically painful death, and that he went out without really understanding what had happened to him.

“He was an unfailingly standup guy who did a lot of wonderful work. For years he waved the flag of Budd Boetticher, even as generations of idiot Sony executives asked ‘Budd WHO?’ Eventually he got heard, and the Criterion Budd box is a testament to his perseverance.

“Last night I put on the Criterion Bluray of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and played his wonderful commentary, just to hear his voice.”

Misheard “Soul Man” Lyrics

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This is exactly how the words have always sounded to me…and how they sounded to me five minutes ago when I listened to Sam and Dave’s r&b classic.

“Comin’ to ya on a death road / Good lovin’ I got a ton-load / and when you get it, you got somethin’ / So don’t worry ‘cause I’m comin’

“I’m a soul man / I’m a soul man / I’m a soul man / I’m a soul man.

“Got what I got the hard way / And I’ll make ya nervous each and every day / So huh-honey, don’t you fret / ‘Cause you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.“

Listen To This Guy Anytime

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Even in the company of Tucker Carlson.

0:00: How Close Are We to Nuclear War?
12:08: Why Don’t We Know All the Details of 9/11?
25:23: The Nuclear War Chain Reaction
33:29: Warcrimes in Serbia?
37:05: Why Hollywood Exiled Oliver Stone
40:33: The Economic War Between the US and Russia
50:11: Is There Hope for Hollywood?
57:37: The Rapid Advance of Nuclear Weapon Technology
1:12:02: The Shadowy Acts of NATO
1:17:07: The Origins of War Profiteering
1:26:01: How the Democrat Party Became the Party of War
1:32:50: How History Is Rewritten

Rewatchable Ensemble….Over and Over

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My absolute favorite Best Supporting Actor performance — hands down, no question — is Karren Karagulian‘s Toros in Anora. His signature line, spoken in the 24-hour diner just before they learn that Mark Eydelshteyn‘s Vanya is in a private room at HQ, is “I’m so fucked…sooo fucked!”

Yura Borisov gave my favorite male supporting performance that is actually in serious contention.

I’ll always think of Vache Tovmasyan‘s Garnick as the vanilla vomit guy…sorry.