If they did, they’d get behind Nikki Haley in Iowa and elsewhere. Because she would almost certainly prevail against Biden in the general. But it won’t happen. Because their MAGA heels are dug in for The Beast. Reminder: HE is not a Haley supporter because of her statement about pardoning that criminal sociopath.

A random, straight-from-the-shoulder discussion from earlier today (transcript):

Friendo: The biggest problem with Killers of the Flower Moon, which I’ve just watched for the fourth time, is that after all Lily has suffered and been through…after all that she doesn’t rip into Leo at the end of the film. The whole point of having the FBI involved is that we’re invested in their story so when they get the bad guy it’s satisfying. So we naturally expect some sort of catharsis from Lily. But it never comes.

HE: Correct. Lily is even gentle with dumb-ass Leo during their final scene. She gently caresses his cheek and listens to his regrets without saying shit, or saying much. Zero catharsis. Zero satisfaction.

Friendo: They set us up for a showdown at the end, which is the only reward for enduring her suffering. You need that scene…payback, revenge, retribution

HE: The idea seems to be that Lily’s spirituality doesn’t allow for any retribution or condemnation. It’s too coarse for her. She’s at one with the Spirit Gods.

Friendo: So either she’s ignorant and stupid. Or it’s bad writing.

HE: Inconclusive story strategy, I would say. Unsatisfying finale.

Friendo: Leo was in cahoots with men who killed her whole family, and then he poisoned her himself for months? Any intelligent person would flip out at a man who did that.

HE: Marty Scorsese and Eric Roth didn’t see it that way.

Vasectomy four months ago, sex five months ago…

“Now that’s what I call cutting it close” — final line, spoken by hospital orderly, in Lover Come Back (‘62).

“Tonight you WERE the father” regarding a pregnancy that began FIVE MONTHS AGO…I get it but on the other hand I don’t. I would have written “five months ago you became a full partner in the creation of a child”…something like that. Even if it didn’t actually happen, according to Keith.

And after 100-plus minutes, feeling exhausted by this extremely wordy proximity…this lavishly written deep dive into the madness of excess — ferocious, insatiable and particularly owned by Elizabeth Taylor.…good God in heaven. Surface-skimming wasn’t the half of it.

I’m not letting partner-in-crime Richard Burton off the hook, but at least his difficult Welsh upbringing and actor-of-great-promise burden (his glory years began in ‘49 and pretty much ended with Cleopatra) left him occasionally guilt-stricken.

I’ll always love the title, however, and to think it came from a condemning 1962 editorial in L’Osservatore della Domenica, the Vatican newspaper.

Three guesses who doesn’t have clue #1 about the Burton-Taylor legend, and the first two don’t count.

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Call it the Poor Things effect…Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, a feminist Frankenstein flick set in 1930s Chicago…Guillermo del Toro’s Dr. Frankenstein for Netflix…Zelda Williams and Diablo Cody’s Lisa Frankenstein. That’s it, right? Just three?

I’m sorry but I never want to watch another video of anyone doing any kind of X-treme jumping from cliffs, mountaintops, supertall bridges…no more skydiving or flying-squirrel gliding or free-falling or parachuting or bungee-jumping…I’m imaging that I’ve watched hundreds of these things and henceforth am only interested in wipe-out scenarios, which of course I’m being facetious about as I wouldn’t wish injury or tragedy upon anyone…it’s just the relentless sameness, the monotony, the repetition, the X-treme plague of it all.

From a 7.12.09 piece called “The Art of Paycheck Acting”: “The Towering Inferno was entertaining crap when it opened [in 1974], but Paul Newman and Steve McQueen are honorable and oak-solid in their starring roles. This is impressive given that neither actor has a real part to play — they were just paid to show up and go through the Irwin Allen paces. They knew it then and we know it now, but they deliver the goods anyway. That’s professionalism and star power.

“There are four ways that brand-name actors deliver straight-paycheck performances in mediocre big-studio films.

“One, they do it straight and plain and cruise by on chops and charisma, like McQueen and Newman. Two, they do it straight and plain and don’t cruise by on chops and charisma — they sink into the movie like quicksand and then suffocate. Three, they behave in an extremely mannered and actorish way as a way of telegraphing to the audience that they’re totally aware that they’re in a crap film. And four, they go beyond mannered and waaay over the top (like Jon Voight in Anaconda) and turn their performances into inspired farce.”

From a Pauline Kael New Yorker review, issue dated 12.30.74:

“In the new disaster blockbuster The Towering Inferno, each scene of a person horribly in flames is presented as a feat for our delectation. The picture practically stops for us to say, ‘Yummy, that’s a good one!’ These incendiary deaths, plus the falls from high up in the hundred-and-thirty-eight-floor tallest skyscraper in the world, are, in fact, the film’s only feats, the plot and characters being retreads from the producer Irwin Allen’s earlier Poseidon Adventure. What was left out this time was the hokey fun.

“When a picture has any kind of entertainment in it, viewers don’t much care about credibility, but when it isn’t entertaining we do. And when a turkey bores us and insults our intelligence for close to three hours, it shouldn’t preen itself on its own morality.  Inferno knocks off some two hundred people as realistically as it possibly can and then tells us that we must plan future buildings more carefully, with the fire chief (embodied here by Steve McQueen) working in collaboration with the architect (in this case, Paul Newman, who appears to be also the only engineer — in fact, the only person involved in the building’s construction or operation above the level of janitor).

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I always enjoy and often agree with N.Y. Times center-right columnist Bret Stephens, but I felt a little pissed off by what struck me as a Trump-friendly column (1.11.24), titled “The Case for Trump …by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose“.

I’m not going to re-hash the essay chapter and verse, but it’s fair to say that Bret’s opinions about wokesters (i.e., “the progressive left”) are mostly on-target.

True: “Academia, mostly liberal, became increasingly illiberal, inhospitable not just to conservatives but to anyone pushing back even modestly against progressive orthodoxy.”

True: “Trump and his supporters called this out, [and] for this they were called idiots, liars and bigots by people who think of themselves as enlightened and empathetic and hold the commanding heights in the national culture. The scorn only served to harden the sense among millions of Americans that liberal elites are self-infatuated, imperious, hysterical, and hopelessly out of touch.”

I also agree with Bret’s statement that Trump “shared the law-and-order instincts of normal Americans, including respect for the police, something the left seemed to care about on Jan. 6 but was notably less concerned about during the months of rioting, violence and semi-anarchy that followed George Floyd’s murder.”

Except it wasn’t months — the Floyd riots lasted four or five weeks, something like that.

But I really hate the way Bret has minimized, looked the other way at and otherwise normalized Trump’s sociopathic nature and his brutish, anti-democratic, flat-out criminal behavior.

Others feel this way or the Times wouldn’t have posted a follow-up dialogue between Stephens and Patrick Healy called “Three Questions for Bret Stephens About His Trump Column.”

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Hugs and condolences for the family and friends of ’70s actress Tisa Farrow, who has passed at the age of 72. I knew her only from her brief performances in Woody Allen‘s Manhattan and James Toback‘s Fingers. Her line in Manhattan — “I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor told me it was the wrong kind” — is not the sort of line that you forget. It’s kind of legendary in fact.

Ten nominees have been announced for the PGA’s Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures — American Fiction (Scott Feinberg and Clayton Davis breathe sighs of relief!), Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon (indigenous struggle), Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest.

Ten is too many — not exclusive enough. If the list was a more proper five, it would/should be Oppenheimer, The Holdovers, Poor Things, Maestro and Barbie.