I saw the story yesterday about Tom Hanks having presented the White House press corps with yet another espresso maker. (He gifted them with an expresso machine in 2004 and again in ’10 when he learned that the first unit had broken down.) Hanks included a note with the just-delivered gift that read “To the White House Press Corps — Keep up the good fight for truth, justice, and the American way…especially for the truth part.” But I ignored the story because I couldn’t figure out what a cartoon depicting raggedy-ass World War II dogfaces (an image pasted on Hanks’ note) had to do with calling Donald Trump on his bullshit. I still don’t get the connection.

Wells to Hanks: Can you help me out, brah? You’re into the lore of the noble fighting men of World War II — I get that — but what does that have to do with White House journalism? I’m not trying to be an asshole — I really and truly don’t get it.

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Whatever Kong: Skull Island turns out to be, it definitely has a disciplined running time: 115 minutes (118 minutes with closing credits). That’s only 11 minutes longer than the 1933 King Kong (104 minutes with overture) and 72 minutes shorter than Peter Jackson‘s elephantine 2005 remake, which ran 187 minutes.

“I wanted to keep it short,” director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has told Miami Herald interviewer-critic Rene Rodriguez. “I’m fascinated by how bloated movies have gotten these days. Fargo was 95 minutes. I miss the days of brevity in films. You’ve got Transformers movies that are three hours. I wanted this movie to be fun.”

“Although the film is a tentpole picture designed to prop up a huge franchise,” Rodriguez notes, “the movie is filled with artistic touches that make it feel personal and unique. There’s a genuine artistic vision here, from the plentiful improvisations (most of them by John C. Reilly) to throwaway but lovely shots, such as a dragonfly flying in front of a fleet of military helicopters, looking like it’s one of the choppers.

JVR: “My mantra while making the movie was ‘elevate beyond expectation.’ I wanted to avoid anything that felt derivative, because otherwise why would anyone go see this movie?”

What a difference between this sophisticated digital map of the all-new, better-than-before Skull Island vs. the crude, hand-drawn map that Robert Armstrong had in his breast pocket in the original King Kong (’33). The shape of it, obviously, resembles a gorilla skull profile. I’m not finding a legend but I’m guessing it’s roughly 25 miles long and maybe 13 or 14 miles wide. The location is a bit of a mystery. One link says it’s located 1800 miles southwest of Central America and due west of Ecuador/Peru while an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) places it in the Coral Sea off the east coast of Australia, south of the Solomon Islands and north of New Caledonia. (I’m inclined to go with the latter given the proximity to Vietnam.) The 1933 island was located west of Sumatra, somewhere in the southeast region of the Indian ocean.

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I’m a little bit afraid of the broad-stroke obviousness of Ken Marino‘s How To Be A Latin Lover (Patelion, 4.28). I realize, of course, that trailers always dumb movies down as much as possible, but this still feels…well, Sandleresque. The most striking thing for me is the fact that Eugenio Derbez, a huge Mexican superstar, bears a modest resemblance to director Alejandro G. Inarritu. (They were both born in Mexico City in the early ’60s, about 20 months apart.) Latin Lover‘s supporting cast includes Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe, Michael Cera, Renee Taylor, Kristen Bell, Linda Lavin, Mckenna Grace and Rob Corddry.

(l.) Mexican comic superstar Eugenio Derbez, star of How To Be A Latin Lover (r.) The Revenant/Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has reviewed Kong: Skull Island (Warner Bros., 3.10) without using the term “Apocalypse Kong.” Coined by Hollywood Elsewhere on 7.23.16, it makes perfect sense given the Vietnam War echoes, the 1973 setting and the hat-tip by Kong director Jordan Vogt-Roberts to the “Ride of the Valkyries” helicopter attack sequence in Francis Coppola’s 1979 epic.

Even more oddly, Gleiberman makes no reference to “comic beats“, which I was recently told is “definitely” a part of the mosaic.

Reel-to-reel tape player churning out Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” anthem in Apocaylpse Now.

Nearly the exact same shot in Kong: Skull Island.

Gleiberman: “A King Kong movie should, first and foremost, be a fairy tale of primeval wonder, and this one is. The surprise is that Skull Island isn’t just ten times as good as Jurassic World; it’s a rousing and smartly crafted primordial-beastie spectacular. In many ways, [it’s] a Jurassic Park movie, and if viewed that way, it’s the best since [Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original]. Skull Island is more action-based and less ambitious than either of the “King Kong” remakes: the snarky, overblown, justly reviled 1976 knockoff or Peter Jackson’s good but still not good enough 2005 retread.”

I received this coffee cup from the Middleburg Film Festival a couple of weeks ago, and I’d like to publicly say “thanks, guys…this works for me.” Aesthetically appealing, right size and shape. I wasn’t invited to attend last fall’s gathering but the legendary R.J. Millard brought me here in the fall of ’15, and I had a better-than-decent time. This year’s fest is from 10.19 thru 10.22.

Allow me to use the forthcoming release of The Shack (Summit, 3.3) to reiterate Hollywood Elsewhere’s view that (a) compassionate liberal Christians are cool (Jesuits, Franciscans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians) but (b) conservative hinterland Christians are clueless phonies and sanctimonious prigs whose core values and loyalties are aligned with whitebread Republicanism. That makes them vile in my book, especially with Donald Trump steering the ship. May the earth open up and swallow your flock, just like it did in The Ten Commandments, and may the dogs lick your blood.

In the view of Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, The Shack is partly “a queasy piece of Christian disaster porn“…”a cautious, squarely photographed bare-bones Christian psychodrama” but mainly “a theme-park ride” mixed with “a Hallmark-card therapy session hosted by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…who come off, in this case, like the featured celebrity guests on a very special episode of Oprah…the movie’s message is, ‘Have no fear! God truly is right here with you’…all that’s missing is a weekend spa treatment.”

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The night before last (Tuesday, 2.28) former Mexican president Vicente Fox tweeted this Chris Britt cartoon in response to President Trump‘s State of the Union pledge that there would be a “great, great wall” built on the Mexican border. And here I am, Mr. Lightspeed, passing it along 36 hours later.

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This 2009 Johnnie Walker ad (“The Man Who Walked Around The World”) is one of the greatest single-take pieces of cinema ever captured, hands down. Carlyle’s perfect easygoing delivery (and especially the timing), the various props appearing at exactly the right moment, the muted palette, the bagpipes. Directed by Jamie Rafn. I’m mentioning this now because the 56 year-old Carlyle looks a bit bloated in T2 Trainspotting (TriStar, 3.31), and because the film probably won’t cause much of a stir, and because this is the best time since August 2009 to salute Carlyle’s most stirring turn, his BAFTA-award performance in The Full Monty (’97) notwithstanding.

Apart from the fact that I’ve pretty much had it with whiny, wet-behind-the-ears combatants (“I don’t belong here”) in the odious tradition of Fury‘s Logan Lerman, Fernando Coimbra and Chris Roessner‘s Sand Castle might not be half bad. It has a vibe. Nicholas Hoult‘s Matt Oucre trying to get out of combat by slamming a car door on his hand…engaging! Henry Cavill (i.e., Superman) feels right as Cpt. Syerson, and the buzz cut works. Roessner’s original screenplay is based on his own experience in Iraq. Did anyone see Coimbra’s Wolf At The Door? I didn’t but I read good things. (Coimbra also directed episodes from the first season of Netflix’s Narcos.) Keep in mind that the title is singular — Sand Castle and not Castles.

Sen. Al Franken on Attorney General Jeff Sessions‘ clarifying statement about meeting with the Russian ambassador: “If you don’t remember what you talked about, then you don’t remember if you talked about the campaign. That’s contradictory. [Sessions] certainly, at the very minimum — this just makes common sense — has to recuse himself from any investigation [into this matter] at all.” So in addition to being the highest governmental expression of racist swinery, Sessions is also a proven liar. Plus he speaks with the same backporch yokel accent that various Ku Klux Klan guys used in Mississippi Burning.

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Mindhunter = Manhunter‘s darker, stranger brother. Muttered voice-over: “I’m trying to warn you…your attitude is going to bite you in the ass.” Exec produced by David Fincher and produced by Charlize Theron, Josh Donen and Cean Chaffin, Mindhunter is a ten-episode Netflix series that, like Zodiac, is set in the ’70s. Okay, 1979. It’s about a pair of FBI agents (Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany) interviewing imprisoned serial killers to try to solve ongoing cases. Which of course is precisely what Manhunter‘s Will Graham (William Petersen) and Silence of the Lamb‘s Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) did — i.e., interview Hannibal Lecter in an attempt to capture, respectively, the Tooth Fairy and Buffalo Bill. Written by showrunner Joe Penhall (The Road) with the pilot episode directed by Fincher, Mindhunter is scheduled to start streaming — wait for it — sometime in October 2017.

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