Last night I joined four friendos (HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko, David Scott Smith, Russian filmmaker Nick Sarkisov and Svet’s visiting niece, Natasha Radisic) for a visit to WeHo’s Improv Cafe, which I hadn’t been to in 22 or 23 years. ($25 a person plus drinks.) The show wasn’t the usual standup stuff but Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman‘s Hollywood Babble-0n, a sitting-down-and shooting-the-shit routine that they perform with some regularity. Agreeable, good-natured, occasional hilarious.

Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman during one of their “Hollywood Babble-on” Improv routines.

(l. to r.) HE homies Natasha Radisic, Svetlana Cvetko, Nick Sarkisov, David Scott Smith.

HE regulars know that for two years (8.02 to 8.04) I wrote a twice-weekly version of the column for Smith’s Movie Poop Shoot site. He paid me a modest salary. I never liked writing for a site with the word “poop” in the URL but I sucked it in and did the job.

I was hanging in Paris in June of ’04 when Kevin called to inform that he had to cut me loose. He said I’d be paid one final month’s salary, covering July. I knew then and there I had to launch and operate HE on my own. I’d have to learn HTML coding and figure out how to sell advertising, but the internet economy was starting to bounce back and I knew it could work.

But I needed more than a month to get things rolling so I called Kevin a week later and asked for an extra month’s salary. And without blinking an eye he said “okay.” That gave me the necessary time to learn what I had to learn and attend to the dozens upon dozens of details that any start-up requires. I’ve never forgotten Smith’s generosity. Let no one say in my presence that he’s not a mensch. From one New Jersey guy to another…cheers.

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Received on 8.17 from journalist/critic Lewis Beale, who lives in North Carolina: “I know I’m late with this, but they just screened Hell and High Water here last night. Just terrific. Top-notch on every level: direction, screenplay, acting, sense of place. Great subtext about the economy and predator banks. Chris Pine [is] a real revelation — always liked him, but here he is simply sensational.

“Two great speeches: when Jeff Bridges‘ partner talks about how the white man stole the land from the Indians, and now the banks are stealing it from the white guys; and when Pine talks about how generations of his family living in poverty is like a disease. I loved how the boys’ lawyer knew what they were doing, and encouraged them to set up a trust with the bank’s own money. I loved the two diner scenes — ‘Tell me what you don’t want.’ And those capturings of West Texas and the dead towns — truly depressing.

“One small nit — how did Pine get his gunshot wound taken care of? Any hospital would have reported him immediately. No big deal, though. This is the kind of film America should make more of, instead of the fanboy shit crowding the marketplace.”

Last night I caught an 8:10 pm 3D show of Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur. Almost everything about it stinks of mediocrity — the tedious writing, the grayish color scheme, the C-grade cast delivering soap-opera performances, the low-budget vibe despite a reported $100 million having been spent. It’s like a 1987 Golan-Globus version of Ben-Hur starring Michael Dudikoff as Judah and Chuck Norris as Messala…it’s third-tier shit, shit, shit on almost every level.

Okay, the chariot-race sequence isn’t half-bad, I’ll admit. But I hate the way it was shot and cut and the sandy, desaturated color scheme. It doesn’t feel bracingly real-world and super-intense like the legendary 1959 version did — too many close-ups, too much CG, too many flying bodies and flying horses and a truly silly bit when Jack Huston‘s Judah Ben-Hur falls out of his chariot and is dragged by his horses for a good 45 seconds or so. But it delivers in a crazy, cranked-up way.

And I was impressed by an underwater sequence in which Huston is struggling to free himself from a chain looped through a leg iron around his ankle — not bad.

But otherwise, this is one of the lowest, cheesiest, scurviest, lemme-outta-here films made or distributed by a major U.S. studio, ever.

When I read about this thing being made two-plus years ago I knew right away it would be crap, and I was right. Ben-Hur is a rank embarassment, a miserable wipe-out that’s expected to reap a pathetic $12 million by Sunday night.

There were maybe 15 people in the theatre, if that. I took two four-minute breaks, once for the bathroom and a second time to buy a hot dog. I didn’t care what I might miss. I knew when the chariot race would be arriving.

Stodgy and slow-moving as it was, William Wyler’s 1959 version was a big-budgety, A-team effort with first-rate, charismatic actors working with a stiffly phrased but well-honed screenplay. It didn’t feel like a genuine visit to ancient Judea and Rome but you didn’t care because it was a pricey, gleaming, well-spoken enterprise from every angle. The newbie has none of that sturdiness, that atmosphere, that panache, that “we know what you want and what we’re doing because we’re rich, classy guys” attitude. It’s from hunger, from Goodwill.

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I regard Billy Wilder‘s Witness for the Prosecution as a comfort movie. I’ll watch the Bluray ever now and then, mainly to savor Charles Laughton‘s performance as Sir Wilfrid Robarts. (“I am surprised, my Lord, that the testament did not leap from her hands when she swore on it!”) Now Ben Affleck wants to direct and star in a new version…please. Everybody knows the twist so what’s the point? I’ll summarize for those who don’t know this 1957 film: a brilliant defense attorney gets faked out by his client. If you ask me Gregory Hoblit‘s Primal Fear (’96) did this just as well if not better than Witness for the Prosecution. It’s 20 years old and getting dustier by the minute — why not remake that? Or come up with some new variation on this rather old and familiar theme.

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It’s pretty easy to mold a humiliating likeness of a naked Presidential candidate. I’m hardly a Donald Trump supporter and yes, the guy could obviously stand to lose 20 or 30 pounds. (No more Kentucky Fried Chicken or taco bowls.) But what 70 year-old looks good naked? Yes, he deserves to be slapped down and voted down, but this is below the belt. What if somebody were to erect a nude statue of Hillary Clinton in Union Square? You know what the reaction would be.

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The heavy militarization of domestic police forces defines their attitude toward the citizenry. Being armed to the teeth and ready to engage with overwhelming power seems unnecessarily paranoid as well as an expression of institutional racism. Then again this is something people were beginning to talk about two years ago (i.e., during the Ferguson “unrest”), and so this doc (Vanish, 9.30), well shot and well researched as it appears to be, seems to be chasing the conversation rather than defining it.

“By all that is right, fair and profound, a film that wins the Best Picture Oscar should pass the ‘wow!’ test. Agreed, many past winners haven’t lived up to this standard. Time and again Academy voters have rewarded films that comfort or affirm basic truths or remind us, movingly, how things are. Or how we’d like them to be. But Best Picture winners should do more. They should turn heads, open doors, make history, raise a few eyebrows and rock the rafters on some level or another. They should make you say ‘Wow, I just saw something!’ And they should at least make you want to watch them a second time, if not a third or fourth.” — from one of my 2014 Birdman essays.

I’ve experienced four serious head-turners so far this year — Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester by the Sea, Cristian Mungiu‘s Graduation, Asghar Farhadi‘s The Salesman and Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper. I’ve been delighted by or have otherwise greatly admired David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water, Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash, Robert Eggers‘ The Witch and Gavin Hood‘s Eye in the Sky. But there’s a difference between high and peak voltage levels.

What unseen fall or holiday films seem to be generating that special anticipatory aroma? Answer: Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight and Denzel Washington‘s Fences. Maybe. And that’s it.

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Yesterday I was sent a 2006 draft of Jay Cocks‘ screenplay of Silence, which is based upon the novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo. The script is 111 pages, which indicates something close to a two-hour film. Director Martin Scorsese has been editing his movie of Silence, which is due for release sometime later this year via Paramount. And yet I heard the other day that a recent cut ran about three hours, and that Scorsese is trying to whittle it down. (Variety‘s Kris Tapley has tweeted it runs 195 minutes.)

A New York journalist confides that a guy he knows claims to have attended a recent Silence research screening. The guy felt disappointed that Liam Neeson, portraying Father Cristovao Ferreira, doesn’t have very much screen time (he probably wanted Neeson to draw a samurai sword and deliver a little whoop-ass), and that the whole thing is pretty much on Andrew Garfield‘s shoulders, and that Garfield, the guy said, is too wimpy and whiny. That’s not my idea of an intelligent observation. Garfield’s character, Father Sebastiao Rodrigues, isn’t supposed to be Dwayne Johnson in Fast 8. He’s supposed to be a wimpy, whiny Jesuit priest facing violent persecution at the hands of militants in 17th Century Japan.

I have no rational explanation why I never got around to installing a system-flushing program like CCleaner (there are many that offer the same basic service), but for whatever idiotic reason I never did. But recently all three units (2 Macbook Pros with solid-state drives, a Macbook Air) began acting all slow and gummy and covered in maple syrup, and I was getting really sick of this. So I complained to Stan’s Tech Garage, and they installed CCleaner on all three, and now things are much faster. I’ll be running the system check every two weeks — easy.