I’m catching Alex Garland’s Civil War at a 7 pm all-media screening in NYC this evening. It and Ripley will be topics #1 and #2 during tomorrow’s Misfits podcast.

World of Reel Jordan Ruimy received word earlier today that Francis Coppola’s Megalopolis will be screened at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. The scoop came from Coppola himself, but his quotes were forwarded by an audience member.

Partial solar eclipses (i.e, if you’re not in the direct path) are almost nothing. They’re just shade — like it’s gotten cloudy or a heavy thunderstorm is about to hit. I have my solar eclipse glasses with me all the same.

As I said the other day, who wants to be in Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh? Who even thinks about those towns?

Just officially announced…

Dakota Fanning was a very cute nine-year-old when she played a kidnapping victim in Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (‘04). Now 30, she’s matured into a skilled actress with appealing features — call her mid-range attractive.

As I watched her last night in Ripley (shot in ‘21 when Fanning was 27) I was thinking how some kid actors are just “wow, feel that personality and look at those eyes!” But when they grow up their genetic destiny takes them somewhere else and that knockout quality recedes.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with being a moderately attractive actress with approvable skills, but sometimes getting older doesn’t quite work out in a way that casting agents think it might when the actress is a tyke.

I’m thinking also of the differences between Caroline Kennedy when she lived in the White House vs. the somewhat horsey-faced woman she became as she got into her 30s.

Sometimes it works in the other direction. I was commonly regarded as a dorky-looking, Wayne Newton-ish kid with odd, vaguely Japanese or Keanu Reeves-like features in my early-teen years, but it all turned around when I hit my mid 20s.

I distinctly recall an attractive, sexually active female contemporary telling me when I was 18 or thereabouts that she didn’t think of me as the kind of guy who would have a girlfriend, no offense. She was just being honest in a kind of kidding way.

The casting of 20somethings as college students or even teenagers is common Hollywood practice, but 40ish guys playing characters who look, think and behave like younger, less thoughtful fellows and are therefore less believable — this is less common.

I’m thinking, of course, of the Tom Ripley situation — 47-year-old Andrew Scott playing the titular sociopath in Ripley. The eight-episode series was shot in ‘21 when Scott was 45 or thereabouts. Matt Damon was 28 when he played the same fellow in The Talented Mr. Ripley (‘99). Alain Delon was 24 when he played Ripley in Plein Sud (‘60).

I think Scott’s performance is masterful, but there’s still no hiding the fact that he seems too old to be playing a young opportunistic sociopath who’s more or less floating through life and improvising each new hustle on the fly. We tend to think of 40something guys as being past all that.

Which other older actors else have prominently portrayed characters who should have been played by 20somethings or at least 30somethings?

Robert Redford was 47 when he played the 36-year-old Roy Hobbs in The Natural…he seemed a little too old but Redford’s handsome features and athletic frame made up for that. Redford’s Hobbs is actually less of a stretch than Scott’s Ripley.

Who else?

Deep down Andrew Scott’s Ripley is terrified, of course…waiting for the guillotine to drop. He wears a mostly blank face to protect himself, but who wouldn’t under these circumstances?

Because once Ripley embarks upon his elaborate deception (i.e., pretending to be Dickie Greenleaf) he knows he’ll be unmasked sooner or later.

Because in the world of 1961 photographic capture and proof are a common fact of life, and he knows that Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) has a few snapshots of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) lying around her Atrani cottage.

Plus any fan of detective stories knows that sooner or later Inspector Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi) is going to have a major brainstorm by (a) asking Marge for Dickie snaps and (b) asking Dickie’s father to mail a photo or two, and (c) searching for photos taken of Dickie in college and (d) asking the U.S. passport agency to send a copy of Dickie’s passport photo.

Not to mention the eventual publication of Marge’s Atrani book, which Ripley knows from the get-go is going to be half photos and is sure to include a shot or two of Dickie.

The fact that Ravini doesn’t start hunting around for Dickie photos immediately upon beginning his investigation of Freddy Miles’ death…this is a King Kong-sized plotting problem.

Director Steven Zallian’s solution, of course, is to simply ignore it. He just turns off the 1961 reality light switch and calmly maintains that despite the calendar year photos are an exotic invention that average people doesn’t have access to…despite the fact that 60-odd years ago nearly every inhabitant of western civilization owned a Kodak Instamatic or an 8 mm movie camera (or had parents or rich uncles who did) and that snapshots of everyone and everything were fairly ubiquitous.

I watched episode #8 of Ripley last night, and the final few minutes are an obvious set-up for another eight episodes down the road. They’re certainly not an “ending.”

John Malkovich’s performance as the deliciously perverse Reeves Minot is a blessing.

Posted on 6.15.18: I was crashing with a married couple, Frank and Karen, in a smallish Boston apartment in the general vicinity of Symphony Hall and Hemenway Street. They had a linebacker-sized friend named Eddie who lived nearby and was also hanging out a lot. Mainly the four of us sat around in the evenings and got high. I distinctly remember not rolling joints as much as tapping the tobacco out of filtered cigarettes and then-filling the cigarette with what I recall was low-grade pot. Moderately potent, lots of stems and seeds.

One night around 10 pm or so we decided we needed a straw for sucking in hash smoke. A tiny chunk of hash placed on the burning embers of a cigarette, etc. No, I don’t remember why we didn’t just use rolled-up dollar bills. Probably because it would’ve been unsanitary.

I recall that it was fairly cold out and that we were probably broke or close to it, and so going to a market and buying a pack of straws was out. So I decided to start knocking on doors and asking Frank and Karen’s neighbors if they had a straw to spare. It wasn’t just the vaguely strange notion of a long-haired guy in jeans and boots with bloodshot eyes looking to bum a straw from strangers, but that it was too late to knock on doors and bum anything from anyone.

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Her name is Ada (@ada_akpala)…

I can’t explain why I feel more jolted and jazzed by The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars now than I did 52 years ago. I liked David Bowie’s 1972 landmark album but didn’t adore it — now I’m head over heels, can’t stop listening to it. I was actually more into Lou Reed‘s Transformer back then, although they weren’t exactly concurrent. Ziggy popped in June ’72 — Transformer arrived five months later.

I always thought glam rock and glitter rock were one and the same. They’re certainly synonymous today.