Three days ago I rewatched Robert Benton‘s Places in the Heart (9.21.84). Sometimes older films hold up and sometimes they can seem a bit softer or less formidable in retrospect. Well, you can sheath that sword because the sands of time haven’t diminished Places in the Heart in the slightest. In my book it’s a truly great film. The church communion scene at the very end still turns me into mush.

Sally Field‘s “you really like me!” speech upon winning the Best Actress Oscar has been endlessly belittled, but over the last 40 years I’ll bet that few have given the film another shot and really settled into her performance. Her Edna Spalding is fairly magnificent…about as pained and stressed and rock-solid as it gets.

Director-writer Benton, who’s still with us at age 91, really knew rural, Depression-era Texas, having been born and raised in the backwater of Waxahachie (where Places in the Heart takes place) and you can feel that authority and authenticity in every scene.

Heart includes uncomfortably frank depictions of racism, and there’s no way in hell that the wokesters would allow such a film to be made today. But every frame is real and honest and humane. It’s touching, grueling, affecting…the way it really was back then, at least in Benton’s recollection.

I don’t want to hear one HE comment-threader argue this point…not one!

And the cast….good God! Field, John Malkovich, Danny Glover, Lindsay Crouse, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Lane Smith, Terry O’Quinn, Bert Remsen.

There’s a scene in which Smith urges the financially strapped Field to allow Malkovich’s “Mr. Will”, his blind brother-in-law, to stay with her as a lodger. Field’s initial response is “this isn’t a good time,” which I partly understood. At the same time I was muttering to myself, “Don’t say ‘no’ to Malkovich staying with you…please! He’s John Malkovich!”

Malkovich’s career erupted that year. His Heart performance resulted in a Best Supporting Actor nomination. He played a tough photojournalist in Roland Joffe‘s The Killing Fields. And he played Biff in a celebrated Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, costarring with Dustin Hoffman. I caught Salesman in the spring or summer of ’84, and five minutes after Malkovich came on stage I said to myself, “Jesus fuck, this guy is amazing.”

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This morning the House of Representatives approved giving Ukraine $60 billion for defense; ditto $26 billion for Israel.

The vote was 311 to 112. A majority of Republicans — 112 — voted against it and one, Representative Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, voted “present”…coward. The Dems waved Ukrainian flags, which pissed off the righties.

The measure requiring either the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner or banning the app in the United States passed 360 to 58.

N.Y. Times: “’Our adversaries are working together to undermine our Western values and demean our democracy,’ Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Saturday as the House debated the measure.

“’We cannot be afraid at this moment. We have to do what’s right. Evil is on the march. History is calling and now is the time to act.’

“’History will judge us by our actions here today,’ McCaul continued. ‘As we deliberate on this vote, you have to ask yourself this question: ‘Am I Chamberlain or Churchill?’

“For months, it had been uncertain whether Congress would approve new funding for Ukraine, even as momentum shifted in Moscow’s favor. That prompted a wave of anxiety in Kyiv and in Europe that the United States, the single biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine, would turn its back on the young democracy.”

This CNET video includes a crudely animated reconstruction of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman on the night of 6.12.94. I’m uncertain as to when it originally aired — possibly in the mid ’90s or certainly more than 20 years ago.

I had never watched this horrorshow until after the death of O.J Simpson on 4.10.24.

The key portion begins around 4:35…ghastly.

It should be noted that the animated action doesn’t square with the earwitness account of local resident Robert Heidstra, who testified that he heard a male (almost certainly Goldman) yelling “hey! hey! hey!” around the reported time of the killings, or 10:35 pm.

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NEW: The man who lit himself on fire outside of Trump’s trial in NYC has been identified as Max Azzarello.

“My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan,” his manifesto read.

“This extreme act… pic.twitter.com/xDjTgNDS6r

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 19, 2024

THIS IS HORRIBLE!

An unidentified individual has just set himself on fire outside the Trump Trial in Manhattan in front of the courthouse.

I will say this again. This is the most ridiculous form of protest you can do.

Let the trial play out. Stop listening to crazy people… pic.twitter.com/9kNaktofzp

— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) April 19, 2024

The eyes are the window of the soul…

(top) Donald J. Trump; (middle) Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus H. Christ in King of Kings (’61); (bottom) Robert Ryan as John the Baptist in same film.

…that I wish I’d been able to attend.

I liked Travolta better when he had some hair. The egg-bald-with-a-beard thing is okay, but not what I would call “preferred.”

I’m glad that David Fincher has spent several months restoring as well as upgrading certain aspects of Se7en…cool. I’m also glad that this effort has yielded a 4K Bluray that will pop on 5.3.

I’m sad that I can’t be there for today’s special TCM Classic Film Festival screening, but if a NYC screening happens between now and 5.3, perhaps Fincher will let the cool kidz know or put them on an invite list or something?

From 4.19 Bill Desowitz IndieWire piece:

I sadly understood when Vietnamese monks burned themselves to death in Saigon in the ‘60s, and I sadly understood when Norman Morrison self-immolated in front of the Pentagon in 1965.

But I don’t get why a guy has gone up in flames outside the building in which Mango Beast is being tried for illegally paying off Stormy Daniels and Susan MacDougal.

Maybe the burnt toast guy is some MAGA wacko, protesting the prosecution of his Lord and Savior by the Deep State?

If so, I’m thinking of a scene in The Godfather, Part II in which Michael Corleone is given pause over that Fidel Castro supporter who blows himself up and takes a Batista army officer with him. I have a bad feeling about this.

GRAPHIC:

Man sets himself on fire outside the courthouse at the Trump Trial in NY.

This MADNESS MUST END!

This entire sham trial is ripping our nation apart and causing mass scale, demonic chaos.

The left wants chaos. https://t.co/4NToi6rahr

— Mike Crispi (@MikeCrispiNJ) April 19, 2024

N.Y. Times update:

Okay, forget the MAGA wacko theory.

The just-revealed Cannes Film Festival poster is too shadowed and subdued…not striking or glammy enough. It’s a capture from Akira Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August (‘91). Okay, fine…and?

I’m sorry but HE represents the voice of the people…the little people, silly people…greedy, barbarous and cruel.

If Nancy Sinatra says no, perhaps her sister Tina feels the same way?

Anyone with any respect for the biological reality of Francis Albert Sinatra as he walked the earth in the early ‘50s would find the proposed casting of the too-tall, too-wide-faced Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s Frank-Ava biopic to be absurd.

World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy caught this first.

Variety’s Tatiana Siegel, posted on 4.17:

HE agrees with Nancy — the proposed Leo–JLaw casting doesn’t cut it:

I’m sorry but a very hotsy-totsy Hollywood screening of a 4K DCP restoration of Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest will happen two days hence, and I need to hear reactions from sophistos who can roll up their sleeves and evaluate the quality of the restoration like pros.

People have been waiting for a NXNW 4K restoration for many years. Talk about long-anticipated, pulse-quickening, etc.

What kind of a bump or enhancement does the new restoration offer, and in what way exactly? Be specific. Or is the restoration more in the realm of a sturdy, respectable capturing of what the currently purchasable Bluray already offers?

Those planning to attend the Saturday, 4.20 viewing at the TCL Chinese IMAX theatre (it starts at 2:45 pm) need to send reviews to HE as soon as possible.

A 4K UHD Bluray will “street” at year’s end.

44 years ago I attended a glorious Radio City Music Hall presentation of Kevin Brownlow‘s restoration of Abel Gance‘s Napoleon (’27) — a Francis Coppola-sponsored, once-in-a-lifetime cinematic happening that knocked everyone’s socks off…three 35mm projectors and a super-wide screen (those triptych sequences!), a live symphony orchestra conducted by Carmine Coppola…a magnificent trigger switch…genuinely exciting blood-pump cinema.

Many different versions of Gance’s masterpiece have been screened over the last century, and all were quite lengthy.

The world premiere version happened at the Paris Opera in April 1927, and it ran 4 hours and 10 minutes. A nine-hour version played the following month at Paris’s Apollo theatre. A six-hour, 43-minute version was sent to the U.S. in 1928. Many different cuts shown at varying film speeds were exhibited worldwide over decades. The Coppola-Brownlow version shown at RCMH in 1980 ran four hours with a longish intermission. It’s also viewable on Bluray, of course, with a running time of 333 minutes.

All to say that a brand-new Cinematheque Francaise version is premiering at next month’s Cannes Film Festival — seven hours total but shown in two parts. The first half (which will run three hours and 40 minutes) will screen on Tuesday, 5.14. HE will attend, of course.

Gance’s Napoleon is a much more vital and essential film than Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix‘s Napoleon — I can tell you this without qualification. What ever happened to the idea of streaming a much longer version on Apple?