Is Kamala Harris charismatic and razzle-dazzly enough to serve as the nation’s 47th president? She doesn’t need to be. What matters is that she’s a decent, ethically grounded, steady-as-she-goes and obviously intelligent politician.

Harris can memorize and repeat the necessary talking points and can project sincerity and conviction as far as it goes, but she isn’t much for thinking on her feet and verbally tap-dancing like some wowser wordsmith…she’s no Bill Clinton, no improvisational dynamo…generating occasional breakthrough moments and special political poetry seems to elude her for the most part.

Harris was pretty good during tonight’s CNN Town Hall but she’ll never be gifted at this stuff. We all understand this, I think. But you know what else?

Within the personality and basic approach of a hard-working, carefully constructed operator, she comes off as a serious, sensible, focused, practical–minded and fundamentally moral person who isn’t into fooling around or playing games or lowering the colloquial so the rubes can have a little fun…she is who she is, and Lord knows she’s a much better human being than Donald Trump, who is clearly dangerous and insane.

I’m going to repeat this: Harris is a much better person than Trump — more sensible, more mature, a believer in regulated thought. The woke thing burns within her and that’s unfortunate, but at heart she sees life in steady, practical terms. She’s no Gavin Newsom-level orator, but she won’t generate storms of madness and chaos.

“It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican…don’t pay it!”

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In the wake of news about Harvey Weinstein facing eradication by cancer, Paul Schrader was recently admonished for posting that given the fact that the upper reaches of the film industry was a poon paradise when Harvey was young and trying to hustle his way in…perhaps a little context is in order, Schrader said.

It wasn’t a club atmosphere that necessarily looked the other way at rape and sexual assault (although sexual criminality no doubt infected the quiet corridors of power back then) but an atmospehere in which wealthy, over-40 industry dudes had the license and wherewithal to dip their wicks without fear of being sentenced to a career gallows…a long-ago time in which picking flowers in the garden of eros wasn’t necessarily regarded as evil and assaultive and deserving of severe punishment.

You had to be there, I guess, but the late ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s constituted the greatest era for nookie since the heyday of the Roman empire.

Harvey’s problem was that he wasn’t at all attractive and knew it, and that he was fairly enraged that life and circumstance had dealt him such shitty sexual cards. This made him very angry, and somehow that anger made him go a bit nuts in a certain way. He got it into his head that women he was helping career-wise owed him a boink or two — obviously a crude, gangsterish attitude. Harvey tried to finagle and muscle and bully his way into their pants, and now he’s paid the price.

Michael Keaton “Beetlejuice” says don’t vote for Trump! pic.twitter.com/kpGBNbhiyz

— Tim Burton Daily (@TimBurtonDaily) October 22, 2024

I’ve posted this Times Square photo before. Snapped sometime prior to the 6.3.55 opening date of The Seven Year Itch, it’s about old, working-class, overall-wearing guys regarding a super-powerful, unreachable, untouchable sexual icon…zero opportunity…their youth and vitality gone with the wind.

Itch was the second of five ’50s films directed by the once-great Billy Wilder during his house-director phase, so-called because these films represented a creative hibernation for Wilder…a retreat from his usual cynical characters and stories, acid-tinged dialogue, third-act emotional turnarounds, etc.

The house phase also included Sabrina (’54), The Spirit of St. Louis (’57), Love in the Afternoon (’57) and Witness for the Prosecution (’57). Wilder finally returned to form in ’59 with Some Like It Hot.

The house phase began in the wake of the success of Wilder’s Stalag 17 (’53). It’s been speculated it may have partly been prompted by the failure of Wilder’s bitterly caustic Ace in the Hole (’51).

Wilder called The Seven Year Itch “a nothing picture because the picture should be done today without censorship…unless Tom Ewell, left alone in New York while the wife and kid are away for the summer, has an affair with Marilyn Monroe there’s nothing. But you couldn’t do that in those days, so I was just straitjacketed. It just didn’t come off one bit, and there’s nothing I can say about it except I wish I hadn’t made it. I wish I had the property now.”

What’s behind Scott Feinberg‘s bizarre insistence upon listing Tim Fehlbaum‘s September 5 as the most likely Best Picture contender of them all? It’s a good film but not top-of-the-list good. I’m not irked or angry or fuming. I’m not slapping my forehead. I just honestly don’t get it.

I’m somewhat interested in catching My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Cohen Media Group, 10.25), a two-hour “virtual essay” fom director-writer Mark Cousins.

The reason for the “somewhat” is that I’ve been spooked by a portion of the trailer, specifically Cousins’ decision to use an image of a young, pale, rather plain-looking Asian woman early on. The instant she appeared I muttered to myself “who the hell is this, and what could she possibly have to do with the late Alfred or anything Hitchcockian or whatever?” Right away I sensed something was off, some kind of loose screw.

Kevin Maher’s London Times review, posted last July, has also given me pause.

“Any new film from the whispering cineaste and critical savant Mark Cousins is worth celebrating,” Maher wrote. “And this deep dive into the complete 52-title oeuvre of Alfred Hitchcock is worth it alone for Cousins’s analysis of the first cut in Rope, the opening doors of Spellbound and Hitch’s penchant for omniscient overhead shots.

“The central storytelling device, however, is that it’s narrated by Hitchcock (actually the impressionist Alistair McGowan) from beyond the grave. This is amusing for at least five minutes, until McGowan’s impersonation slips into a phlegmy Admiral Ackbar from Return of the Jedi and you start to crave the comforting tones that Cousins normally brings to his material.

“He has one of the most singular, soothing and mellifluous voices in non-fiction filmmaking today; that he would sacrifice that for a cheap one-note gag from Saturday night telly, beaten to death over two hours, is baffling.”

The inane recording studio chit-chat before the Swingin’ Blue Jeans kick into gear with “Hippy Hippy Shake“…somehow it all works better this way.

I’m genuinely embarassed to admit I have a curious soft spot for this puerile, super-synthetic tune. Originally written and recorded by 17-year-old Chan Romero in ’59. It charted at No. 3 in Australia. The Beatles recorded a crude, garage-bandy version sometime in mid’ 63. The flashier, superior Swingin’ Blue Jeans version was recorded in December ’63, and wound up charting stateside in early ’64.

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Where is she now?

“In Paris. She’s a member of a bizarre, sado-masochistic sexual order…whips, chains, hot candles, that sort of thing.”

Three Chris Walken scenes from Paul Mazursky‘s Next Stop, Greenwich Village. Hot candles begins at 1:18. Abortion anecdote at 2:08. Ezra Pound at 2:08.

HE interview with Sofia Coppola, discussing the excellent Somewhere (2010) but also this and that. Early on Coppola mentions my resemblance to Walken.

A recent Emerson College poll, conducted between 10.14 and 10.16, has shown that among undecided voters (dumbshits, none-too-brights, slowboats) who decided on their presidential pick within the last couple of weeks, 60 percent voted for Harris while 36 percent decided in favor of Bloated Orange Fatass.

Why is this election (only two weeks left) looking like such a squeaker? Give me a sensible centrist candidate who hates wokesters and is dedicated to rolling back DEI, and I’ll vote for him/her at the drop of a hat.

But how rock stupid do you have to be to say “I think it’ll be better all around if we return the absolute worst president in U.S. history — a criminal authoritarian sociopath — to the White House”? The man is an animal, and his cult members are cool with that.

Speaking of elderly singers losing their vocal game, here’s a study in Frank Sinatra contrasts — the Pal Joey version of “Bewitched“, recorded at age 41 and easily one of Sinatra’s greatest vocal performances (especially starting at the 2:30 mark), and then shoot forward to an episode that happened in ’92 when a weakened 78-year-old Sinatra, three years younger than today’s Joni Mitchell and less diminished than she seemed the other night as he was singing standing up and holding his own solo. Yes, I’ve posted this before but it’s a great story.