Posted in the N.Y. Times letters section, 11.6.23:

“When will the Democratic Party stop sitting on its hands and do something about the dire reality of the coming presidential election?

“The most recent New York Times/Siena College poll has President Biden behind Donald Trump in five of six swing states while his approval ratings among youth and minorities — two essential demographics for the party — continue to plummet.

“There comes a time when we have to say, ‘Dad, you’ve been a wonderful father and we love you dearly, but we are taking away the car keys.’

“We can all see it: the shuffle, the drifting focus, the mental confusion during a news conference in Vietnam. Mr. Biden’s handlers keep him under close wraps now, but the gasps among the electorate are going to be frequent when he gets out on the campaign trail debate circuit.

“This is no time to nominate an octogenarian who refuses to acknowledge his visibly dwindling abilities.

“The fact that Mr. Trump is only three years younger is irrelevant. Facts, logic and even multiple criminal proceedings are nonfactors when your opponent is a cult figure whose worshipers are willing to follow him blindly into authoritarianism.

“What the Democrats need to win is vigor, freshness and the hope of positive change. This is no time to cling to gentlemanly traditions of incumbency.

“Mr. Biden should go down in history as the president who led us out of our darkest hours, but if he refuses to pass the torch to a younger generation, he will be remembered as just another aging politician who refused to let go.

“If the Democratic Party sits back idly, pleading helplessness in our moment of need, it will prove that this country has not one but two dysfunctional parties.”

—- Written by Bill Ibelle, freelance writer, Providence, R.I.

From “Trump May Not Need a Coup This Time,” an 11.6.23 Bret Stephens-Gail Collins column:

Yesterday’s Oscar Poker chat (the details are posted below) was lively, stimulating, funzie, contentious.

Sorry for posting it late but I’ve been trying to find my big, fat elephant-hide wallet, which has everything in it — cash, passport, driver’s license, all the cards, receipts, you name it. I was certain it had somehow dropped out of my overcoat while I was watching Maestro on Friday, 11.3, but Bernie the projectionist says it’s not there.

My last hope are the guys at Joe and the Juice, where I paid for a cappuccino sometime around 3 pm on Friday. Do they answer their phone? Of course not. You have to dig through their corporate website and then fill out a customer form. If they had the wallet, would they check the driver’s license and maybe try and call? Or reach out on Facebook? Of course not.

Jeff and Sasha recap portions of his 11.3 Maestro screening, a total turn-on event. They also discuss the Incredible Weeping Guy plus the (hopefully temporary) loss of Jeff’s elephant-hide wallet. Plus Anatomy of a Fall, Best Supporting Actress contenders, a fight with an old friend, political chatter and a discussion about how the identity-focused politics of Hollywood has ruined storytelling.

Underlining for emphasis: Incredible Weeping Guy was just behaving like a human being when he succumbed to Maestro, and that there’s nothing the least bit “wrong” or unwelcome or out of bounds about a guy tearing up during a screening. I’ve done it a few times myself — I’m just not as demonstrative as a rule.

Once again, the link.

0:00:00 – Jeff’s fight with his childhood friend over politics.
0:13:00 – Politics stuff — Israel/Hamas briefly.
0:14:00 – Jeff’s cat meows.
016:00 – Joe Biden and Dean Phillips
0:18:00 – Trump Derangement Syndrome
0:26:18 – Jeff on Maestro
0:28:00 – A Star is Born
0:36:00 – Nyad
0:39:00 – Grading on a curve
0:40:00 – Jeff’s friend openly weeping during Maestro
0:43:00 – Why storytelling matters
0:44:00 – The Holdovers — Alexander Payne’s film about kids left over at boarding school over Christmas
0:48:00 – The Taste of Things – a French film starring Juliette Binoche.
0:48:47 – Jeff’s friend “gasping and weeping” – what makes us cry in movies.
0:56:20 – May December – Todd Haynes’ film starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore
1:00 – Anatomy of a Fall – a French movie starring Sandra Huller about whether or not she murdered her husband.
1:20 – Most searched sex positions in New York Post article.
1:21 – Sasha’s road trip to Ohio for Thanksgiving.
1:22 – Best Actress is heating up.
1:30 – Sex in Anatomy of a Fall?
1:33 – Supporting Actress – Da’Vine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers, Penelope Cruz for Ferarri, etc.
1:33 – Outro

Marty looks fine but other two…yeesh. Maybe don’t wear white?

HE to Facebook contributor Scott Myers: Very nice photo, Scott, and yet (please don’t take this the wrong way) damn near every western tourist who’s ever visited Athens has waxed rhapsodic about the exact same nightscape vista.

The Parthenon temple took 11 years to build and several years more to “decorate,” whatever that meant. Roughly 448 BC to 437 BC. Well over four hundred years before the birth of Yeshua of Nazareth.

How many hundreds of thousands…how many tens of millions of visitors have expressed the exact same enthusiasm after enjoying a nice dinner on their Athens hotel rooftop or hotel-room-adjacent balcony?

No offense —- I’m sure it’s very cool to gaze upon. But in purely photographic (as opposed to historic or emotional) terms the photo is mainly of a flood-lighted rectangular white blob.

Candle-lit balcony dinner or no candle-lit balcony dinner, I would prefer to stay at one of those smaller places that are several hundred yards (perhaps a mile or so?) closer to the Acropolis. Some appear to be only a hop, skip and a jump from this fabled site.

My point is that an evening photo of the Parthenon from one of these smaller but closer establishments would allow Facebook viewers to appreciate a few minor architectural specifics…details that might appear to be, no offense, less blobby.

Did Elvis Presley, possibly accompanied by Priscilla and Lisa Marie or by some of his Memphis mafia security team…did Elvis ever savor the same view? Probably not as Elvis liked to keep his life familiar and local. He also liked short ribs as well as peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.

You know who would have stayed at a less touristy hotel and probably taken a more interesting (i.e., more architecturally tantalizing) photo? I hate to say this but Hannibal Lecter, a well-educated fellow with a vast knowledge of history, a cultivated man who appreciated the finer things in life…the cannibalism thing aside, Hannibal the psychiatrist is HE’s bro in this regard.

But I’m sure your hotel dinner was great. Better than strolling around town and exposing yourself to possible danger while finding a nice, highly recommended place to eat on your own, right?

Did you guys order a Greek salad with feta cheese? Or are you more surf-and-turf types?

Happy birthday, Rebecca!

This is as serious as a heart attack. It’s the doddering, slurry-voiced, squinty-eyed, 80something thing. Joe is Jimmy Carter in ‘79, and he’s really gotta step down. The Beast is at the door. Lyndon Johnson read the writing on the wall in March of ‘68 and acted accordingly. Trump will not defeat Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer.

Yesterday the always-candid Jeff Sneider dismissed or back-handed Maestro on a generational basis. I naturally took offense, having been swept off my feet by Bradley Cooper’s rapturous biopic.

HE reply #1:

“How many major Best Picture contenders have you urinated upon? You pissed on Poor Things, you’re pissing on Maestro. Have you pissed on The Holdovers? I don’t think so but I’m asking.

“Juan Antonio Bayona is an excellent filmmaker, but he’s never come close to matching the impact of The Orphanage, his big debut effort. I’ll see Society of the Snow (a shitty title) this weekend.”

HE reply #2:

“And you’re playing an age-ist card? People in your somewhat younger age bracket will be less supportive of Maestro. than GenX-ers and boomers, you’re saying? The older and mid-range Millennials at the after-party, you mean?

“First of all, what is WRONG with them? Are they on shallow pills? Maestro is cinema with a capital C — it’s dealing cards from a Citizen Kane–like deck. And your party pallies didn’t respond because….what, it doesn’t reflect older and mid-range Millennial attitudes? Because it channels elite-social-class attitudes from a bygone era (‘40s through ‘80s)? Because, as I said in yesterday’s Maestro vs.Oppenheimer review, “it hasn’t a woke bone in its entire body”?

“If this is the case (and I’m not saying that it necessarily is — I’m just speculating) you guys need to consider the possibility that you’re genetic mutants.”

There are only two…okay, maybe three powerhouse performances in the Best Supporting Actress ranks right now. The top slot is absolutely owned by Da’Vine Joy Randolph‘s bereaved, drinking-too-much cook in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.

Almost in the same realm as Randolph is Penelope Cruz‘s fuming and resentful Laura Ferrari in Michael Mann‘s Ferrari — she has a single scene in which she completely owns and rules.

I still haven’t seen Jodie Foster‘s performance as the…best friendo or girlfriend of Annette Bening‘s titular character in Nyad. You could also throw in Viola Davis‘s mother-of-Michael Jordan performance in Ben Affleck‘s Air. You could even throw in Rachel McAdams‘ caring, supportive mom performance in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Due respect but you can almpst certainly forget Julianne Moore in May December, America Ferrera in Barbie (that great third-act rant), Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer.

I haven’t yet seen Vanessa Kirby in Napoleon (HE’s NYC screening of Ridley Scott‘s film happens on 11.14) or Danielle Brooks in The Color Purple.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1902 — 1967) and Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990) were well-born, well-educated Jewish geniuses of the 20th Century and internationally famous giants in their respective fields (physics and music)..men who rocked their realms and left indelible cultural impressions while unmistakably shaping and changing the 20th Century in historic terms…in short household names, known to every school kid who ever cracked open a book.

Gifted, mercurial and selfish (as many if not most creative-genius types tend to be), both men led dramatic and to some extent conflicted personal lives (and certainly a professionally turbulent one in Oppie’s case). They both smoked like chimneys, causing Oppenheimer to die of throat cancer and Lenny to die of lung failure and a heart attack. And now, as fate would have it, both men are the subjects of major, highly praised motion pictures in 2023, and both directed by gifted and intense and highly exacting auteurs (Chris Nolan and Bradley Cooper) — Universal’s Oppenheimer and Netflix’s Maestro (11.22).

Both films are intense and rich and brilliant, but in my heart and mind there is no comparison in terms of the viewing pleasure and emotional upheaval factor — no contest at all.

Maestro lifts you up and fills your heart and sends you plunging into baptismal waters, and in the final act really melts you down emotionally and symphonically and leaves you devastated and knocked flat by way of a pair of world-class performances — Cooper’s, of course, but especially from the truly astounding, heart-melting Carey Mulligan. Maestro is a knockout and a tantalizer that opens doors and allows floodgates of feeling to pour into your heart and chest cavity and which really excites and seizes and gets you deep down.

Oh, and that stupid prosthetic nose thing that so many idiots were talking about last summer? Cooper’s Bernstein schnozz is totally fine and an absolute non-issue.

On the other end of the emotional scale is Oppenheimer — a film which, for all its concentrated IMAXed brilliance, feels cerebral and instructive, chilly and compressed and rather airless and tiring…altogether a rather forced deck of cards that puts you in a hard leather saddle upon a galloping steed and yet ultimately feels like a nag with a bad leg. Nolan takes you to Planet Oppenheimer, all right, while surfing a tragic wave, but at the same time it’s a real bear to get through, a three-hour endurance test while Maestro is a more-more-more, take-me-with-you experience.

During my first Oppenheimer viewing I looked at my watch and was utterly crestallen when I realized there was another two full hours to go…dear God, no!…while I never even thought about the running time when I was watching Maestro.

I’m sorry but I felt much closer to the Lenny genius than the Oppie genius…both fascinating super-fellows of the Hebrew persuasion, and more power to them. It’s just that the Oppie flick made me feel like an exhausted student in an airless, under-heated, claustrophobic classroom while the Lenny trip made me simultaneously ache for poor Felicia Montealegre (Mulligan) while feeling (especially in the third act starting with the Thanksgiving Day Snoopy argument) like I had wings on my heels** and for all the energy expenditure not once does Cooper say “God help me but I adore cock” and not once does Mulligan say “God help us but you adore cock.”

And that scene when Lenny gently flat-out lies to his daughter (Maya Hawke) about whether or not certain rumors she’s been hearing are true or not…that look on his face as the lie settles into his soul…devastating! And that’s just one of the standout moments in a film filled with them.

On top of which there isn’t a single woke bone in Maestro’s body.

** Yes, a line stolen from Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I saw Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro yesterday afternoon at Dolby 88, starting around 4 pm. 130-something minutes later I came out positively elated and humming…floating on a cloud. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year (right up there with Poor Things and The Holdovers, and may even possibly be the El Supremo), and is easily the most stylistically audacious film of the year.

It’s arty, man…fully and delightfully so. It uses “glancing, elliptical storytelling,” as a friend describes it. And, as I’ve noted, it leaves out loads of biographical material. No working on West Side Story, no composing the On the Waterfront score, no Radical Chic Black Panther party with Tom Wolfe taking notes.

Maestro is basically Scenes From An Unusual Marriage — Bradley Cooper‘s Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan‘s Felicia Montealegre. Theirs is a real marriage as well as a kind of beard marriage with Lenny and Felicia siring and raising three happy kids under flush circmstances, but with Lenny mainly behaving like a happy gay guy, which he is outside the immediate homestead.

No miserable gay stuff, no Montgomery Clift-like conflicts. Lenny simply adores cock alongside his primary, lifelong passion for music (conducting, composing, teaching). At first Felicia is okay with this arrangement, but eventually she’s not. It starts to rankle and wound. It worsens.

Who knew how the film would play? So I went in expecting to possibly be underwhelmed or even appalled. Glenn Kenny has called it “weak tea”, after all, and there’s a male critic I won’t name who’s called it “terrible.” It’s generally been approved across the board, but it’s also fending off a small number of haters. Suffice that I sat down with guarded expectations.

So it started and almost right away I was watching a black-and-white sequence with a young Cooper bounding out of bed in 1943 and running straight into Carnegie Hall…running to the turbulent and percussive opening bars of Bernstein’s On The Waterfront score, and I was saying to myself “okay, wait…this is pretty good.”

15 or 20 minutes later I was watching a black-and-white dance rehearsal of 1945’s On The Town (three white-uniformed sailors performing vigorous ballet) and then Cooper became one of the sailors, and I was saying “hold on, this is really good.”

And around the 90-minute mark a mild-mannered writer I came with — sitting right next to me, a middle-aged straight guy, mature and not given to drinking, drug-taking or wacked emotional spillage — this dude was weeping over a scene that I won’t describe. And I’ll tell you this — before yesterday I hadn’t sat next to a weeping guy at a screening in my entire life. This means something,

So does this: If you feel as if you’re over-hearing intimate dialogue in a movie rather than listening to dialogue that’s been written and performed, you’re experiencing a different kind of film.

Plus roughly 90% of Maestro is framed within a 1.37 aspect ratio, and roughly a third or maybe 40% of that 90% is in monochrome. Only the very beginning and the very end are presented in what looked to me like a standard Academy aspect ratio (or 1.85).

I wasn’t just delighted with Maestro — I was levitating.

The first thing I did after the 4 pm screening ended was call a friend who knows the “it’s terrible” guy and suggest that he might want to think about submitting to some form of professional therapy. Then again Time critic Stephanie Zacharek is as high on Maestro as I am, I’ve been told, and right how it’s got an 84% Rotten Tomatoes rating, which is obviously pretty good.

Right now all I want to do is see Maestro again in a screening situation. I wouldn’t mind seeing it in a theatre, but Dolby 88 has an excellent sound system and I’d like to keep it on this level for a while.

Maestro will hit theatres on Wednesday, 11.22 (eyeball to eyeball with Napoleon and the 60th anniversary of JFK’s murder). It will begin streaming on Netflix just before Christmas — on Wednesday, 12.20.