“Tribute documentaries about famous folk tend to be fairly similar, especially if the subjects are still living. They mainly say that the celebrity is a pretty darn wonderful person — modest but brilliant, witty, accomplished as all get out, rich, fascinating, compassionate, loves his/her life, good with kids, pets dogs.

“Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing‘s Norman Lear: Just Another Version Of You pretty much sticks to this formula.

“I could call it a cut or two above the usual, certainly from a technical standpoint, but Lear, the 93 year-old creator-writer-producer of such legendary ’70s TV series All In the Family, Maude, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time and The Jeffersons, is never presented as anything but the most happy and wonderful fella.

“Which he may well be for the most part, but c’mon — everyone has known hurt, failure, shame, regrets. Everyone has aspects of their nature they wish they could iron out or refine. Everyone experiences nightmare flashes from time to time. Including the very wealthiest.

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I’m on a Virgin America flight as we speak with a Los Angeles touchdown in three hours (i.e., around 4 pm). I’ll be returning to NYC for a quick visit later this month but otherwise no action until the 2016 Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals. Nearly three months of staying put. A lot of movie-watching and meditation upon same, and the a.c. getting a good workout.

What does the summer slate look like? “Mostly dreadful” would be putting it mildly, but at least there’s Jason Bourne, the very well-reviewed Hell or High Water, John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder, David Ayer‘s Suicide Squad, Woody Allen‘s entirely decent Cafe Society, Richard Tanne‘s Southside With You and eight or nine others — 14 in all.

In order of release dates, the following have at least a semblance of insect antennae heat. Some seen, mostly unseen, all with a current of some kind:

Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow‘s De Palma (A24, 6.10), which I’ll be seeing tonight at a 7 pm screening.

Benoit Jacquot‘s Diary of a Chambermaid (Cohen Media Group, 6.10) — 79% RT score out of the Berlin Film Festival.

Gary Ross‘s Free State of Jones (STX, 6.24). Expectations are not high but at the least the combat sequences appear to be well handled, to judge by the trailer.

Thorsten Schutte‘s Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words (Sony Classics, 6.24).

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In a 5.31 studio-by-studio assessment of summer releases, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Stephen Galloway quoted box-office analyst Jeff Bock about Paramount Pictures’ slate: “Paramount has a lot riding on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (6.3) and Star Trek Beyond (7.22). They would ideally like to pump infinite sequels out of these properties. And then there’s Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur (8.19). God help them.”

I for one haven’t the slightest intention of even glancing at the Ninja Turtles trailer, much less sitting through it. And I can’t imagine how my life would be adversely affected if I missed the Star Trek flick. But Ben-Hur, at least, offers a certain grotesque fascination. Will it just blow chunks in every respect, given Bekmambetov’s slovenly tendencies as a director? Is there a chance of any aspect of the newbie being regarded as an improvement over William Wyler‘s 1959 version?

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Whenever Criterion re-scans a film in 4K for a fresh Bluray, I’m fairly confident that one of two things will happen. One, the result will appear fuller, richer and more visually detailed than what previous Bluray versions have delivered. (I’ve definitely noticed this with Criterion’s 4K-scanned Blurays of The Manchurian Candidate and The Graduate.) Or two, the film will look somewhat darker and will thereby obscure visual elements that were plain as day in previous versions, as Criterion did with their Only Angels Have Wings Bluray. But recently a different kind of reaction was posted by DVD Beaver‘s Gary Tooze in a review of Criterion’s 4K-scanned Dr. Strangelove Bluray, which pops on 6.28.

Essentially Tooze has said that while you might notice improvements while watching the Strangelove Bluray “in motion”, for some reason this difference isn’t evident in the frame captures. I’m sorry but that gives me concern. When I buy a new Bluray I want a clear “bump” — an unmistakable realization that I own a better-looking Bluray of a film than has ever been available before. So why, if there’s a bump contained in Criterion’s Strangelove, isn’t it noticable in the stills? Because the renderings are too subtle, apparently.

By all means let’s “reserve judgment until all the facts are in,” as Gen. Buck Turgidson said to President Merkin Muffley, but I don’t want to have to inspect a Bluray with a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass and a fine tooth comb to realize it’s an improvement. I want the quality of the thing to grab me by the lapels.

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HE to Trump-Tzu (joined HE 199 days ago, 852 comments): Something snapped yesterday. I’ve just had it, is all. I won’t provide a forum for a flaming Trumpster. Your posts are tedious, relentless. You’re not impolite but you lack finesse, and I’m just sick of reading your daily ideological spewings. And I loathe that image of Trump in a wig. I’ve announced Stalinist purges of hardcore righties from this site before, and I’ll do it again if necessary. As much as I loathe and despise the p.c. banshees, I will not provide a forum for daily Trump-praise. I’ve blocked you. Find another salon.

Posted after the first purge of conservative jackhammers in ’08: “Interesting, thoughtful, well-phrased opinions of any kind are eternally welcome here. I believe in beauty, redemption, catharsis and the daily cleansing of the soul. I live for the highs of the mind — for the next nervy retort, impertinent crack, witty turn of phrase, turnaround idea or wicked joke. And I know — we all know — that blunt-gruff reactions and persistent ideological ranting works against the flow of such things. I will not permit the infinite array of reflections about life, movies and politics that could and should appear on Hollywood Elsewhere to be suppressed or pushed aside by the relentless hammerhead barking of a small cadre of ideological Mussolinis, tough guys and hardballers.”

Greenpoint laundromat three blocks from Hotel Norman Henry.

Snapped last night off Williamsburg pedestrian pier.

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Reviewed on 5.18.15 by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Boyd van Hoeij: “The hunt for a teenage French girl who’s gone to the subcontinent to follow her possibly jihadist boyfriend turns her family into modern ‘searchers’ in Les Cowboys, the promising feature debut of celebrated French screenwriter Thomas Bidegain.

“Unlike the films he’s co-written for Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone), which often rely on Audiard’s stunning capacity to foreground grand emotional sweeps, this is a much more constructed narrative that could only be described as a writer’s film, though one with several pleasant — if shocking is your idea of pleasant, that is — surprises up its sleeve.

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Yesterday (5.30) was the 120th anniversary of the birth of legendary director Howard Hawks. I know he matters a great deal to anyone with any regard for classic 20th Century cinema, but what kind of respect does he enjoy, if any, among the Millenials? Do any of them give a shit? How many at least know his name and have seen maybe two or three of his finest films? Have they read any books about him? I think we all know the answers. I for one got off the Hawks boat after Hatari, but his output between Twentieth Century (’34) and Hatari is mostly unassailable. My favorites are the same as everyone else’s — Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, Ball of Fire, Air Force, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River, A Song Is Born, (NO to I Was a Male War Bride), The Thing from Another World, The Big Sky, (NO to Monkey Business), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Land of the Pharaohs, Rio Bravo. His greatest period was between ’34 and ’53 — a 19-year hot streak.

Here is reason #1 why hinterland bubbas are squarely behind Donald Trump. Here are reason #2 and reason #3. They’re behind this megalomaniac because he’s leading the last-gasp charge in defense of a white heirarchy that ran the show as recently as 15 or 20 years ago. That era is over and the flannel-shirters who don’t have the right kind of skills for the 21st Century economy know it, but they’re nonetheless determined to go down swinging like Bill Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates at the end of The Wild Bunch.

On 5.20 The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik wrote that “the American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history — an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power.” And he’s not wrong. And the bubbas don’t care. They feel they’ve been fucked so badly that all bets are off. They’re determined to shoot the place up before dying.

“If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right — not by Perons or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal.

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Yesterday Robert Weide‘s exacting, impeccably logical and completely reasonable response to Ronan Farrow’s latest hit piece on Woody Allen, which The Hollywood Reporter posted on 5.11 to coincide with the Cannes Film Festival debut screening of Cafe Society, finally appeared. One of the reasons it took Weide, a noted screenwriter-producer and the director of Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011), three weeks to reply was because the article was considered and squelched by both The Hollywood Reporter and The Daily Beast. (Or so Weide has allegedly claimed on his Facebook page.)

Again, the 5.30 Weide piece (“Hard Questions for Ronan Farrow — An Open Letter”). Here’s a link to Weide’s 2014 Daily Beast article on the Dylan Farrow molestation allegation.

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Ghostbusters exec producer Dan Aykroyd on Whosay.com: “As originator of the original, I saw test screening of new movie. Apart from brilliant, genuine performances from the cast both female and male, it has more laughs and more scares than the first 2 films plus Bill Murray is in it! As one of millions of man-fans and Ray Stantz, I’m paying to see that and bringing all my friends!” Impartial, persuasive, etc. Lubricated royalties recipient bending over at trough.

As of 9:30 eastern 316,097 people had signed the Change.org petition titled “Justice for Harambe.” It’s basically a statement condemning the mother of that four-year-old kid for not keeping a closer eye and thereby allowing him to slip through the fence and fall into the gorilla pit, which brought about the cruel and tragic death of poor Harimbe. The TV news cretins who sold this story as being about a poor little kid who was saved from the clutches of terrible death from a monster gorilla need to be bitch-slapped also.