Hillary Clinton presented a better, more Presidential persona — calm, factual, measured, poised — than Donald Trump last night, but Trump’s Putin-like authoritarianism (i.e., threatening to prosecute and jail Hillary if he wins) plus his hovering stage posturing and general bluster wasn’t a total loss for him. I don’t think the needle was moved at all, but Trump didn’t blow it any worse than usual. He blustered and glowered and seethed his way through it — the hulking orange ape — but the word around the internet is that he at least placated his base, and that he may have given the independent fence-sitters pause or at least stopped the general pussy-tape bleeding. Maybe.

But the coke sniffing! After sniffing all through the first debate, surely Trump would take measures, I thought, to avoid doing the same in the second. But he didn’t. Who doesn’t know from antihistamines?

What kind of person could possibly be undecided at this point? I’ll tell you what kind of person. A person who’s leaning toward Trump but is holding back for some tweedly-deedly reason. A voter like Kenneth Bone, the cartoonish fat guy with the Santa Claus sweater and the dorky moustache who asked about energy issues last night. Who dresses like that? If Bone had access to a time machine he could’ve played one of the Italian fascists in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s The Conformist. If I saw Bone walking towards me from 100 feet away I’d cross the street.

I felt irritated by Hillary’s failure to zing-zing him with more panache. She wouldn’t or couldn’t land a good impulse punch. She sounded sensible and seasoned, of course, but time and again she relied on familiar HRC talking points — the kind of thing that most people hate. No Aaron Sorkin lines. The only off-the-cuff remark I can recall: “Okay, Donald. I know you’re into big diversion tonight, anything to avoid talking about your campaign and the way it’s exploding and the way Republicans are leaving you.”

Trump’s pussy tape will never go away and it’s entirely possible that more off-camera, hot-mike comments will break in the coming days, and I think most of us understand he can’t win now. (Nate Silver claims Trump was five or six points down before the pussy tape — do the math.) What Trump is trying to do right now, many suspect, is preserve, fortify and burnish his bully-boy brand so that post-election he and Roger Ailes can launch Trump TV — the new Fox News.

Moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz did a good job — they were fast and fleet and sharp. They were determined not to repeat Lester Holt‘s handling of the first debate, and they didn’t.

Before last night’s appearance of Kenneth Bone, I had never even contemplated a real-life person having such a name. Keep in mind that Cary Grant felt insulted when Katharine Hepburn gave him a temporary fake name of “Mr. Bone” in Bringing Up Baby (’38).

That homicidal, score-settling bitch we all know and love, occupying the Eternal City, merging with the lingering spirits of Roman generals and politicians, totally laying waste, chunks and shards of glass spread over ancient cobblestones on the Appian Way.

What percentage of Americans have even a fraction of a clue about what the Russian hackers are up to? Two days ago Team Obama accused the Russkis of “stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee and a range of other institutions and prominent individuals, immediately raising the issue of whether President Obama would seek sanctions or other retaliation,” etc. Is all this a forewarning that one way or the other that the Russian government, which is known to be interesting in swaying the U.S. election in Donald Trump‘s favor just as Trump is known to be a Putin loyalist, is going to try and fuck with the 11.8 vote tally? Today’s Putin is more actively hostile to the U.S. than any Russian commie ogre of the past (Breshnev, Krushchev, Stalin).

“Zero chance I’ll quit” = Donald Trump‘s commitment to facing the howling winds and taking his upcoming electoral defeat like a man. If he’s smart (which of course he isn’t), he’ll class up tonight’s debate by politely refusing to touch anything the least bit mucky-mucky, and that means leaving poor Bill Clinton alone. On one level Trump is Richard Nixon after the revelation of the smoking-gun tape, and on another he’s St. Augustine, alive as you or me, tearing through these quarters in the utmost misery with a blanket underneath his arm and a coat of solid gold, searching for the very souls [who’ve] already have been sold.

Last night I stayed at the Trump International Hotel & Tower at Columbus Circle. Never mind how or why. The building began its existence in 1969, and has been under Trump control since ’95. For roughly 26 years (’69 to ’95) it was all offices and known as the Paramount Gulf & Western building. Paramount publicity was on the 22nd or 23rd floor, or so I recall. I attended several screenings there in the ‘early ’80s, including an early showing of Warren Beattys’ Reds. This is a very uncool place to be staying in right now. Last night I was leaving the main lobby around 8:20 pm, and five or six people were sipping champagne and chuckling and having a gay old time. I glanced at them as I telepathically said the following: “Do you even get the symbolism of staying at this joint? This is a pig hotel. Do you understand that only clueless people would even think of staying here now? Especially since yesterday?”

View from 20th floor of Trump International Hotel & Tower, looking northwest.

There’s an art to making good movies about nothing. The common thread in the best of them (Michelangelo Antonioni‘s early ’60s films are the ultimate expression of this form) is a sense that something is churning even if nothing is really “happening” in terms of decision, desires, events or consequences. L’Avventura, L’eclisse and La Notte say to viewers in a thousand small but significant ways, “Are you sensing what’s wrong here?…are you feeling the absence of something?”

Mike Mills‘ 20th Century Women (A24, 12.25) is about an absence of strong interest in what you’re seeing on-screen. I got through it, but I never felt caught up or swept along or anything along those lines.

But please, don’t let me stop you. One of the blogaroonies thinks it’s a charmer, and that Annette Bening may end up as a Best Actress contender. So far 20th Century Women has racked up an 88% and a 74% from Rotten Tomates and Metacritic, respectively.

It’s basically a lefty, leafy period piece, set in 1979 Santa Barbara, about a thoughtful, laid-back, somewhat fickle character based on Mills’ mom (Bening). Dorothea is a 50ish independent-minded divorcee who smokes too much, rents out rooms, holds down a drafting job and tries to get through to her son (the Mills stand-in, played by Lucas Jade Zumann, who’s supposed to be 15 but looks physically closer to 13) as he makes his way through early puberty.

Uproxx’s Mike Ryan has observed that Dorothea is like Frances McDormand‘s Elaine Miller, the headstrong mother of William Miller, in Cameron Crowe‘s Almost Famous, except that 20th Century Women is told almost entirely from Dorothea’s viewpoint and not the kid’s. That’s fairly close to the mark.

The characters and situations are semi-diverting as far as they go, but nobody ever really does anything and nothing ever heats up. The film muses, meditates, dithers, meanders, piddles along, Mills’ screenplay is all character study. It has no story, no tension, no arc, no pivot point, no climax and no conflict to speak of. Just a lot of semi-interesting dialogue, and a few better-than-decent scenes and performances (especially from Bening, who’s landed her best-written role since The Kids Are All Right).

It’s partly the fault of the setting. Santa Barbara is a great place to chill and enjoy, but nothing interesting ever happens there except for Roger Durling‘s annual Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival. It’s like what Orson Welles said about Switzerland in The Third Man — a tidy and bucolic little country from which the only noteworthy contribution has been the cuckoo clock.

A friend “appreciated” the meditative tone of 20th Century Women. “I liked the connection between the small moments and the historical aspects,” he writes.  “But otherwise I agree [with your viewpoint]. Bening is a knockout but what else is new? I love how she dresses and acts like Amelia Earhart, and the large crumbling house and the various characters. It has stuck with me. As flawed as it is.”

Tate Taylor‘s The Girl on the Train opened yesterday in 3144 locations, and will end up with something like $26 or $27 million (a per-screen average of around $8500) by Sunday night. This is mainly about the popularity of Paula Hawkins’ book (11 million copies worldwide) overcoming the mostly shitty reviews (45% and 47% from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively). Here’s my 10.3 pan. I’m an admirer of the New Yorker illustration (Adrian Tomine) that accompanies Anthony Lane’s review. Some HE readers attended, I’m presuming.

This black-and-white video, posted last night by Megyn Kelly, was taped by Robert De Niro some time ago, but the timing seems especially apt in the wake of last night’s crotch-grab hot mike Billy Bush video.

Swaggering, big-dog alpha men — connected, financially fortified, honeyed — tend to talk crudely about basic urges and attitudes in private. With a smirk. Guys with less-than-elegant educations and backgrounds, I mean. Not writers and directors as much as bulldog producers, agents, executive producers, etc. I’ve witnessed their behavior in private sanctums, within the quiet corridors.

This is one of the things I hate about guys who lug golf clubs around…their yaw-haw chortlings, the smug entitlement. Introspective X-factor types (including guys like Jimmy Carter) may have occasional thoughts along these lines, but big dogs boast and chuckle about them. It gives them comfort to let their hair down, goad each other.