I’d really like to see Cuba on a motorcycle or super-scooter before it turns into an extension of southern Florida. There’s a piece in the current Men’s Journal about a guy who did this a few months ago on a Triumph. Included in the article (which I read last night at LAX) is a story about Steve McQueen and a couple of friends rumbling across Cuba on bikes in ’58 or thereabouts. McQueen’s summary was included in a 1971 Sports Illustrated interview/profile piece:

“We were quite a group. An actor, a poet and a guy who was just plain nuts, or maybe we all were. Hurricane Audrey was sloshing around on the East Coast while we zipped down to Florida. Then we ran from Havana to Santiago, about 967 or so kilometers, as I recall. Batista and Castro were shooting it out down there in the Sierra Maestra, and there were uniforms everywhere. I was still a little wild in those days, particularly when I was on the juice. So what happens? I get thrown in the calabozo.

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I went to a fair amount of trouble and no small expense scoring decent seats (3) for tomorrow’s Mets vs. Giants game at Citifield, and now there’s a 100% chance of the game being rained-out. If that happens it’ll be re-scheduled for Monday or Tuesday, I’m told, but unless it’s a night game Jett and Cait won’t be able to come because of work. Plus it’s unseasonably cool now (60s) so whichever and however jackets, sweaters and scarves will be de rigeur. The whole idea has just been a huge pain in the ass. I’m sorry it came to mind. I haven’t been to a baseball game in over a decade; I should’ve kept it that way.

At least there’s next Wednesday’s matinee of Long Day’s Journey Into Night to look forward to. Thanks to the IDPR guys for helping me score tickets.

LAX departure around 11 pm, arrival at JFK at 7something, baggage carousel, Air Train, A train…I’ve done it 30 or 40 times since moving to Los Angeles in ’83. And almost every time after arriving I’ve visited some little inauspicious diner and ordered a large breakfast. There’s something restorative about this. You can’t do fruit, yogurt, granola and tea — you have to go full tristate greasy spoon and order scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries and cappucino, etc. This morning the welcome-back joint was Toasties on John Street.

You can tell Cristian Mungiu‘s Graduation (i.e., Bacalaureat) is made of strong, jolting stuff. To his everlasting and glorious credit, Mungiu is not Zack Snyder. When disturbing or traumatic things happen in his films (such as in Beyond The Hills) he never slams them into your face. He captures incidents from a distance, in the corners of frames, sudden and unforeseen. Consider what seems to be happening in this trailer at 1:10 and 1:34. Pic has been described as “a powerful and universal study about the imprecision of parenthood, the relativity of truth and the ambiguity of compromise, revealed by a father-daughter relationship.” The Romanian drama will soon play in competition in Cannes.

Hollywood Elsewhere approves of Jason Bateman‘s The Family Fang (Starz, 4.29). So does everyone else for the most part. But I have a very slight issue with Nicole Kidman‘s film-set boob scene, and more particularly the fact that she doesn’t flash. Not that I care one way or the other, but what’s the big deal about topless these days? Nobody cares. It’s one thing if biology has taken you down a peg or two but if you have a relatively nice rack where’s the harm? Why even do a boob scene in 2016 if you’re going to shoot it like Clive Donner shot Paula Prentiss in What’s New Pussycat (’65)? Julie Andrews flashed in Blake Edward‘s S.O.B. 34 years ago. If you’d rather not go there, fine, but if that’s the attitude why not shoot another kind of film-set scene that explores or reveals Nicole’s actress character?

When I think of Captain America: Civil War (Disney, 5.3), which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, I recall three things: (1) how I began to feel numbed and debilitated around the 100-minute mark (i.e., right after the Berlin airport brawl), (2) how much I loathed hanging with corporate Marvel whore Robert Downey, and (3) the only superhero character who really got my attention was Chadwick Boseman‘s Black Panther, if no other reason than the fact that he’s the new guy. All that stands out are the steel claws but I remember thinking, “Okay, he’s cool, nice outfit, whatever.”

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You can tell Justin Chadwick‘s Tulip Fever (Weinstein Co., 7.15) is a carefully honed, well-crafted thing. The cinematography by Eigl Bryld (In Bruges) is obviously handsome; ditto the production design. It’s probably safe to assume that the screenplay by Tom Stoppard, based on a book by Deborah Moggach, will have a certain rhyme. But it has Christoph Waltz once again playing a cuckold with a much younger wife. His last outing in this realm was in Water for Elephants, in which Reese Witherspoon cheated on him with Robert Pattinson. This time it’s Alicia Vikander having it off with pint-sized portrait artist Dane DeHaan (who replaced the much brawnier Matthias Schoenaerts). The Dutch locale and the portrait painting also recall The Girl With a Pearl Earring. Not to mention those ridiculous 17th Century collars that Waltz has to wear. Fairly or not, it just feels like recycled material.

I was going to catch a 2:30 showing of Sir Carol Reed‘s Trapeze (’56) at the TCM Old Tourists Watching Old Films Festival, which kicked off last night. I saw part of this 1956 film on TV decades ago but never all the way through. But Bosley Crowther’s review gave me pause — “dismally obvious and monotonous story…you never saw so much rehearsing or heard so much dull and hackneyed talk.” And then I ran this brief highlights reel and said to myself, “Okay, that’s fine, but don’t blow an afternoon over this.” One arresting shot: Burt Lancaster (who performed some of his own stunts) falling from a trapeze and bouncing off the net and onto the ground.

The N.Y. Post‘s Emily Smith is reporting that Will Ferrell has courageously abandoned the idea of playing a dementia-afflicted Ronald Reagan in Mike Rosolio‘s Reagan, a satirical comedy about Reagan’s second term. A spokesperson for Ferrell, 48, essentially told Smith that while the 48-year-old actor “had seen the script and considered signing on” to star in and produce Reagan, he’s decided to turn tail and quit the project in the face of outraged complaints about the project from the Reagan family.

Ferrell spokesperson to Smith: “The Reagan script is one of a number of scripts that had been submitted to Will Ferrell which he had considered. While it is by no means an ‘Alzheimer’s comedy’ as has been suggested, Mr. Ferrell is not pursuing this project.”

I presume I don’t need to explain that Variety‘s Justin Kroll wouldn’t have been fed the “Ferrell is doing Reagan” story if the idea hadn’t been fully vetted by Ferrell and his team. Kroll might have heard about the project on the fly, but if I know Variety procedure the story wouldn’t have run if Kroll hadn’t been assured by someone close to Ferrell (agent, manager) that Ferrell was definitely on-board.

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Rotten Tomatoes scores are always more exuberant and thumbs-uppy than Metacritic tallies when it comes to well-made films. Team Metacritic is more measured, always hangs back, never throws the confetti. But when a serious stinker comes along Rotten Tomatoes always posts a lower score. Latest example: The RT 8% rating vs. Metacritic’s 18% score on Gary Marshall‘s Mother’s Day.

As previously noted, Marshall’s last decent concoction was 1999’s Runaway Bride and his last two, Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, were groaners. So it wasn’t a tough call when I decided a couple of weeks ago blow off a Mother’s Day all-media screening in order to catch a 70mm screening of Patton on the Fox lot. Patton looked okay but a little bit dupey — that “stunning density and sharpness of 70mm” thing didn’t manifest. But I still think I made the right decision.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Embrace, flaunt, proclaim. The tanking of Quentin Tarantino‘s Grindhouse notwithstanding. There’s a suggestion (ignored in this corner) that The Nice Guys, is going to incorporate a scratchy-faded-blurpy aesthetic start to finish. Not that I’m hoping or expecting to be underwhelmed, but if it doesn’t deliver something richer than what’s being conveyed here, etc. Note: If I was lord and dictator of The Nice Guys, I wouldn’t allow face-punching. Creative challenge!

Bar exams are an easier ordeal than being subjected to up-close scrutiny on a first date. Everything you do and say, every inflection, every look, every response…everything is being examined under a microscope for possible flaws or trouble signs. You feel like Henry Fonda being questioned by those two Queens detectives (Harold J. Stone and that other guy) in The Wrong Man. After the 50th or 60th question about your background or your core values or your history with your mother, your soul just starts to wilt. I remember having a “fuck it” moment on a second or third date with a fetching blonde who had previously gone out with a name-brand director. I shouldn’t have tried, I later told myself, because I didn’t have the director’s wealth or slick resume, but I went for it anyway. We were in the Malibu Canyon area, lying in the sun near a swimming hole, and she asked me another question that might reveal a bit more about who I really was, and something just snapped inside. I didn’t care after that, and it felt great.