In yesterday’s riff about Bernie Sanders, I suggested that the independent Senator from Vermont “is running a Jay Bulworth-type campaign…a guy who doesn’t care, speaking sometimes uncomfortable blunt truths and nothing but, a guy with nothing to lose and because of that he strikes a chord.” Sanders to Bill Maher last Friday night: “What the campaign is about is a very radical idea — we’re going to tell the truth.” When you look closely at the parallels between Sanders and Warren Beatty‘s philosophically reborn U.S. Senator, there actually aren’t that many. But at least there’s this: Bulworth didn’t give a damn back then and neither does Bernie right now. The latter is about bluntness and clarity and speaking truth to corporate power in a realm that has always been rank with smoke and obfuscation. Sen. Sanders’ speeches are quite conservative in terms of delivery and his phrasings are clipped and precise and bang on the money. But what he’s doing right now is about as close to what Beatty was doing in Bulworth in that obviously prophetic 1998 film…let’s try again. What Sanders is doing is as close to a Bulworth scenario as we’re ever likely to see in a real-deal political campaign.

Thanks to HE’s own Mark Frenden for whipping the poster art together in record time.

The likably bland Dick Van Patten, who was the kind of easygoing actor that 20th Century sitcoms were made for and vice versa, has passed at age 86. Due respect. In this interview clip Van Patten says that his Eight Is Enough character, Tom Bradford, is “very much like me” in that “his family comes first and his career second.” What does that mean exactly? Could this be a Dick Van Patten bromide? If you’re lucky enough to have found a job or a calling that you really love, you’ll never “leave the office” at 5:30 pm so you can head straight home to your wife and kids. The only people who quit work at 5:30 pm are (a) Clint Eastwood and (b) people who aren’t really in love with their jobs. If you love what you do you’ll almost always stay a little bit later, and that’s basically a good thing all around — good for your income, good for your disposition, good for the family because you’re happy, an inspiration to your kids, etc. And if your wife or kids are any kind of perceptive they’ll understand this is a blessing. Because many (most?) people hate their jobs, and nine…okay, eight times out of ten job-haters tend to find solace in a bottle. Or in an affair with a co-worker. Which isn’t to say job lovers don’t have affairs also — life is never that simple. Sidenote: I’ve never watched a single episode of Eight Is Enough — not once, not ever.

The Daily Mail‘s Chris Spargo and the Associated Press are reporting that the brilliant, profoundly gifted film-score composer James Horner (Titanic, Field of Dreams, Avatar, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Glory, The Rocketeer, The New World, Braveheart) apparently died this morning when his private plane crashed into the Los Padres forest in Ventura County. Update: Variety is reporting that Horner’s death is confirmed.

Composer James Horner, killed in a small-plane crash that happened around 9:30 am this morning.

“A single-engine plane registered to Oscar-winning composer James Horner has crashed in Southern California,” the story says, “and while the identity of the [pilot] who died has not been released it is believed to be the famed musician.

“Jay Cooper, an attorney for Horner, said the plane was one of several owned by the 61-year-old composer. He said no one has heard from Horner and that ‘if he wasn’t in it, he would have called.'”

I felt I’d come to know Horner pretty well through his music over the years. Emotionally, I mean. The river within. His score for Phil Alden Robinson‘s Field of Dreams (’88) was the first Horner that really got me. I wrote last year that I think Horner’s score for Ron Howard‘s A Beautiful Mind was a significant reason why that film won the Best Picture Oscar. His scores for James Cameron‘s Avatar, Titanic and Aliens are legendary. The man was a maestro, a genius, a musical seer, one of the all-time greats.

I bought a pair of Bowers & Wilkins P3 headphones in Manhattan in early May, just before flying to Paris and the Cannes Film Festival. During the latter part of the festival the slim cord that extends from the phones to the playing device (iPhone, iPad) separated in two, and the part with the male jack was lost. I naturally had to order a replacement cord, which set me back $25 or $30 with shipping. And then another part broke off. During the 6.13 memorial luncheon for my mom in Connecticut I noticed that one of the earpads had fallen off. I’ve just ordered a replacement for that, which set me back another $25 or so. Where did I get the idea that when you buy expensive headphones that they’ll be sturdy and won’t break? Who makes a cord that comes in two sections? Who designs ear pads that fall off? In my book the Bowers & Wilkins headphone designers are dilletantes.

I can’t begin to fully convey how personally delighted I am that Universal’s Jurassic World, easily one of the stupidest and most painful-to-watch event movies of all time, will hit the $1 billion mark in worldwide revenues sometime today. Deadline‘s Nancy Tartaglione is reporting that JW‘s worldwide tally had hit $981.3 million as of yesterday so do the math. Jurassic World will therefore hit $1 billion in 13 days, or four days faster than it took Universal’s Furious 7, another serving of forehead-slapping bonehead entertainment for the none-too-brights, to get there. Is there any way the Academy would consider staging a special tribute to these films during next February’s Oscar telecast? Or, failing that, is there any way Universal’s marketing department could organize a special parade down Hollywood Blvd. next week to celebrate?

Italian actress and world-renowned sex symbol Laura Antonelli is gone. She’s been found dead in her home in the outskirts of Rome at the relatively young age of 73. There’s no way to talk about the power Antonelli exerted as one of the most lusciously proportioned, bodaciously ta-ta’ed, hungered-for actresses of the early to late ’70s without sounding like a sexist dog (certainly in the eyes of the politically correct, femme-militant types). Most of the Italian-made movies she starred or co-starred in were light sexploitation junk, but during a three-year period from ’74 to ’77 Antonelli appeared in some quality-level stuff, most notably Luchino Visconti‘s L’Innocente (’76). Other standouts were Malizia, Lovers and Other Relatives, Till Marriage Do Us Part, Wifemistress and The Divine Nymph — all made when Antonelli, born in ’41, was in her early to mid 30s.

Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli in Luchino Visconti’s “L’Innocente (’76).

I distinctly recall sensing that legendary critic Andrew Sarris had gone to some effort to stifle his libidinal longings for Antonelli while reviewing her films, and how I always empathized with that effort.

Antonelli got hit with a cocaine rap of some kind in the early ’90s (when she was 50 or thereabouts) but the conviction was later overturned. I know she got fat when she hit her late 60s but I’d rather not think about that now. Antonelli was exquisite in her day. I only wish she’d made a few more good films, which might have happened if she’d learned English and tried to get into the American film community and ignite a few opportunities. We all have our prime time, our window of opportunity. The truth? Antonelli didn’t work it like she could have. She stayed in Italy and, in a sense, paid a certain price for that.

Am I the only critic-columnist willing to admit the plain truth about animated features (particularly Pixar-produced), which is that I fucking hate their energy levels…their relentlessly peppy and ultra-exaggerated mood elevations and hyper ping-ping-pinball physicality…which of course is deliberately injected so as to appeal to young kids? I can’t be the only film worshipper out there who feels this way, and yet I seem to be the only one actually saying it. Would you like to hear the truth? A significant portion of film critics feel exactly as I do but they can’t admit that because it would make them seem grouchy and out of touch and a candidate for replacement, and so they put on their 21st Century smiley face and down a few shots of Kool-Aid before seeing the next big animated Pixar feature.

Every respectful and admiring thing that I wrote last May about Inside Out was sincere, but I also had the character to admit that I didn’t like watching it very much. Which is more than can be said about a lot of the critics out there. Here’s what I said in a piece called “Inside Out: Clever, Adult-Level, Peppy, Not My Cup”:

“The praise being heaped upon Pete Docter‘s Inside Out (Disney, 6.19) is correct. It’s very fast and clever and superbly rendered. And surprisingly, even head-spinningly complex at times, which is to say adult-friendly. And rather touching at times. I was impressed, engaged and amused as far as it went, given my general loathing for animation.

I’ve just finished watching episode #1 of the second season of True Detective, and Colin Farrell‘s Detective Ray Velcoro…? C’mon, man. Self destructive, drinking, violent, a wreck, dad bod, a grotesque Russian moustache that signifies the darkest depths of hell, more drinking, burly, belching, uncontrolled everything, unshaven, unwelcome. Farrell needs to be killed or arrested. How is he working for anyone? How has he not been drummed out of the force? And who was that fat red-haired kid who’d been picked on? I hated that kid the moment I laid eyes.

David Gordon Green‘s Our Brand Is Crisis, a political dramedy with Sandra Bullock, Scoot McNairy, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Ann Dowd, Joaquim de Almeida and Zoe Kazan, is being research-screened on Tuesday evening in the Los Angeles area. It was previously screened for a test audience in Pasadena’s Old Town on Monday, 4.27. That tells me that a 2015 release date (probably sometime in October or November) is at least a distinct possibility. The Warner Bros./Participant film, produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, is an adaptation of Rachel Boynton’s 2005 documentary, which focused on the American political campaign strategies used by Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS) in the 2002 Bolivian presidential election. Green began shooting in New Orleans on 9.29.14 and presumably wrapped before year’s end.

Sandra Bullock as “Calamity” Jane Bodine in David Gordon Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis.