Roughly three weeks until the 2.16 debut of Season 3 of The White Lotus…creator Mike White once again exploring the shallowness, self-absorption and occasional venality of a crew of wealthy tourists on holiday, this time in Thailand and more particularly Ko Samui — a sizable-but-not-huge island to the east of the southern Thai peninsula (i.e., Gulf of Thailand).

Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins (miserable), Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam (son of Alessandro) Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey (shallowest of all?), Natasha Rothwell, Patrick (son of Arnold) Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong and Aimee Lou Wood.

How many will die?

Wiki page: “Until the late 20th century, Ko Samui was an isolated, self-sufficient community, having little connection with the mainland of Thailand. The island was without roads until the early 1970s and the 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) journey from one side of the island to the other could involve a whole-day trek through the mountainous central jungles.

“Ko Samui’s economy now is based primarily on a successful tourist industry, as well as exports of coconut and rubber. Economic growth has brought not only prosperity but also major changes to the island’s environment and culture.”

…it’s that the final destination (be it financial, political, geographical, spiritual or what-have you) is anecdotal at best. For what truly matters, what stays in the mind and truly sticks to the ribs is the rough-and-tumble of it all…the journey, man…the journey is everything.

Epilogue: The First Architecture Biennale:

“In 1980, a retrospective of László’s work is held in Venice. The exhibition includes the community center, finally completed after a decade’s hiatus. A now-adult Zsófia, accompanied by her young adult daughter (who is the spitting image of Zsófia) and an aging László, gives a speech highlighting how the Van Buren community center was designed by László to resemble the concentration camps that imprisoned the Toths, and functions as a way of processing trauma.

“She ends by recounting what Laszlo once told her: ‘No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.’”

The Brutalist director-cowriter Brady Corbet is three months younger than my older son, Jett.

When it came to male wigs in big-budget epics of the mid 20th Century, the general rule was that men’s hair could never be thin or even thinning — it always had to be thick and wavy and perfectly combed with the application of cans and cans of hair spray. And the styling had to have a kind of high-pompadour, be-bop-bah-luah, James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause attitude.

Consider E.G. Marshall‘s breathtaking wig in this scene from Cecil B. DeMille and Anthony Quinn‘s The Buccaneer. Not to mention Charlton Heston‘s Andrew Jackson wig — white as snow like Jim Jarmusch‘s hair, but much, much thicker. But neither Marshall nor Heston could hold a candle to the black wig worn by Bonanza‘s Lorne Greene….utterly ludicrous.

Marshall played Louisiana governor William C. Claiborne. Inger Stevens played his daughter, Annette. The film went with a fictitious love story between Annette and Yul Brynner‘s Jean Lafitte. Brynner’s wig was not a wavy, high-pompadour thing, but was modestly styled and curled.

The Buccaneer‘s supervising hair stylist was Nellie Manley; she was assisted by Lenore Weaver.

Every semi-intelligent person out there believes that the origin of COVID-19, which exploded stateside in March 2020 and wasn’t fully put to bed until early ’22, came from a Wuhan Institute of Virology lab leak.

Persuasive, reasonable-sounding reporting about a suspected Wuhan lab leak began to emerge from reputable websites and print publications (including The Wall Street Journal) in May 2021. (Here are links to several HE copy-and-paste stories about same.)

So it’s not exactly a big deal that the CIA, citing a just-released analysis, is now saying it too believes in lab leak theology.

N.Y. Times reporting by Julian Barnes: “The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.

“But the agency [has] issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.

“The analysis…is based in part on a closer look at the conditions in the high security labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak, according to people familiar with the agency’s work.”

Who’s subscribing to Claude? I’m honestly interested. A friend says Claude is “the best robot for scripts, locations, shots, ideas.” I’m now fiddling around with it on a temporary free basis. The basic monthly is $20.

Matt Gaetz to Bill Maher, 3:20 mark:

Gaetz: “Our origin story goes back to Politically Incorrect, which — I’m not just kissing your ass — was one of the best shows that was on TV. Way better than your show now, but if it’s…”

Maher: “That’s so insulting. You’re saying to me that what I did 25 years ago is better than what I’ve done the last 20 years, and that’s insulting. I’m not gonna be mad at you for the rest of the interview. I just want to tell you that’s such a stupid fucking away to start a conversation. ‘You peaked 25 years ago, Bill…let’s be friends.'”

Scott Galloway to Anderson Cooper, roughly two weeks ago:

“The best trade of 2024 was Elon Musk putting $250 million dollars into Trump campaign. Since then the value of Elon’s company and his stake in the company is up by about $140 billion dollars. That’s about a 5600 percent return, and it has nothing to do with the company. Nothing to do with their operating margins, their innovation, their sales.

“It’s based on a general assumption that America has become a full kleptocracy like Russia…a general assumption that the deepest pocketed customer in the history of our modern economy is effectively now pay-to-play, and [that it] will shuffle contracts, money and impose regulatory punishment on competitors…companies that have not invested in the Republican party or in Trump’s inaugural pageant…this is evidenced by the fact that very few of these techbro executives invested in the inaugural fund for Biden, but they are all doing it for Trump.

“We have gone full kleptocrat, and if you don’t think that this hurts everyone…this raises prices, and [it hurts] the little guy and the companies that don’t want to engage in this kind of pay-for-play…it hurts them. It will increase prices and weaken our democracy. There is absolutely no difference between this and how Putin became [one of] the wealthiest men in the world.”

Henry Gondorff to Johnny Hooker: “Feds took their end without a beef, and it really stunk, kid.”

I realize, of course, that ChatGPT can be induced to provide a negative shithead assessment of Hollywood Elsewhere’s 20 years of output, but I’m happy to keep it on this level. After signing in with ChatGPT 10 minutes ago, I asked for a review and this is what resulted. If any pissheads out there attempt to post a negative ChatGPT review in the comment section, I will (a) instantly delete it and (b) instantly give the person who attempted this an immediate heave-ho.

In the motion picture realm there are two kinds of closing-credits songs that, placement-wise, deserve to be called great. It happens when the film in question blends with a well-known song and produces a higher synthesis on both ends…the song acquires added depth, meaning and flotation and so does the film. Sound + vision.

The first equation is a song that reflects the mood or theme of the film in question, or which seems to have been sired in the soul of the main protagonist.

A special alchemy happens when Brian Wilson‘s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” is heard over the closing credits of Hal Ashby and Warren Beatty‘s Shampoo (’75), with lyrics that hairdresser George Roundy (Beatty) is clearly thinking during that final hilltop scene with Felicia (Julie Christie). In this context it’s as much George’s song as Brian Wilson’s.

The second kind is when a song has relatively little to do with what the film and the main character have been about, thematically or spiritually. And yet the song truly enhances the after-vibe, and I mean sort of miraculously or even transcendently. The fact that it doesn’t reflect the film’s plot or theme or main character means nothing — it just sounds perfect in a nice, groovy, settled-down way, and you just love the filmmakers for having brilliantly chosen it for this purpose.

Shawn Colvin‘s haunting 1995 cover of “Viva Las Vegas” is heard over the closing credits for The Big Lebowski, and it’s one of the very best ingredients in that 1998 Joel and Ethan Coen film bar none.

In my head it’s arguably Colvin’s greatest recorded performance (yes, better than 1997’s “Sunny Came Home“…singing, tempo, complex arrangement, reverb guitars) and yet it’s not on any of her albums, and the only way way you can own it is by buying a certain “Twin Peaks soundtrack album — Music From the Limited Event Series.” You can’t buy Colvin’s track individually on iTunes, and it’s not included on The Big Lebowski soundtrack.

On top of which there’s no mention of “Leaving Las Vegas” on Colvin’s Wikipedia page, nor was it mentioned in Robert Wilonsky’s Dallas Observer profile (4.5.01).

Please name other brilliant blendings of well-known songs with closing credit sequences — either kind will do.

My God….I was almost shocked by how ineffective and annoying Steven Soderbergh‘s Presence is, and I’m saying that as one who’s generally admired or at least been okay with Soderbergh’s “bauble” flicks.

A friend calls it “the very definition of a B-minus movie.”

It’s obviously wokey in the use of Ryan (West Mulholland), a sickening psycho white kid villain…standard evil toxic paleface syndrome, par for the course. This plus a mostly Asian family of four coping with Mulholland’s initially subtle creepitude…the teenage daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) grappling with his casual-but-aggressive sexuality, and her older brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) triggered by Mulholland at the finale.

I’m sorry but David Koepp’s screenplay is just a flat-out slog to wade through. I don’t know the right term for the exact polar opposite of “sharp and engaging with an interesting subtext”, but that’s what Koepp’s dialogue is. The story also kinda blows.

I had read the Wiki synopsis a couple of times before last night’s viewing, mainly because of shitty sound mixes that sometimes obscure key plot details. I would’ve been completely lost in the thicket if I hadn’t done this.

I’d read a few reviews and found it interesting that no one even mentioned that Presence is basically about a three-quarters Asian-American family, albeit with an overweight, bearded, all-but-hairless Anglo dad named Chris (Chris Sullivan) with a worry-wart personality.

Apparently even a cursory mention of the ethnicity factor (which is obviously anecdotal) makes one a racist MAGA xenophobe, and therefore subject to termination.

Presence is set in a bland environment — a nice older home in a typical suburban town that could be fucking anywhere. It was actually shot in Cranford, New Jersey, which isn’t that far from HE’s hometown of Westfield.

Peter Andrews‘ wide-angle cinematography “lies” in the manner of online real-estate photography, which always tries to make everything look bigger and more spacious with wide-angle or spherical lenses.

And the shadowed under-lighting feels oppressive. The upstairs bedrooms have a fair amount of sunlight but the downstairs rooms appear to have been coated with a blend of turkey gravy and black bean soup. Why does it look so fucking morose?

Pretty Chloe is obviously the most sympathetic character, but she’s dull. Hell, they’re all dull. Right away I said to myself, “These people are an absolute drag to hang with…they exude misery and neuroticism and anxiety and emotional avoidance with every line, every furtive glance or gesture.

Even the protective, flitting-around, good-guy ghost is is a bit dull.

Overweight Chris brings in a similarly proportioned medium, played by Natalie Woodlams-Torr, who immediately senses the presence, and also discerns that “something bad” might happen in the near future.

Chloe shrieks early on when she sees that some books and notebooks have been moved off the bed onto a desk, but when dad asks if she’s cool, she immediately lies. Why?

Tyler is an insensitive, judgmental dick who sees nothing beyond or beneath his own macho arrogance, but at the very last second and after the ghost has woken him from drugged stupor, Tyler suddenly becomes an idiotic superhero avenger…I can say no more but in my eighth-row seat I went “what the FUCK?”

Plus Tyler’s lack of basic decency is off-putting. Right after meeting Chloe for the first time, psycho Ryan indicates to Tyler that she’s hot and he’d like to fuck her, and Tyler is seemingly “whatever” about this. This is how older brothers respond to sexual invasiveness concerning their sisters?

It turns out that laid-back, blonde-haired Ryan is a drink-spiking fiend who’s not only a threat to Chloe but was also…uhm, involved with her late friend Nadia. (Saying no more.) I was muttering to myself, “This is the best plot driver that Koepp and Soderbergh could come up with? A sinister white kid who dopes his victims and has a thing for plastic wrap?”

HE to hip filmmakers: The villain or the serial killer or the corrupt, ethically-challenged guy doesn’t have to be a white male. Creativity and imagination can and should allow for a little diversity in this matter. Go with a gun-toting lesbian on occasion. Or a Glenn Close-resembling Kentucky yokel. Or (gasp!) a black dude. Or a Latino fat-ass. Or an Islamic jihadist. Or a Proud Boys nutter who happens to be a person of color or, let’s say, a Russian gopnik.

I suffered through a nightmare early this morning. So bad it woke me up, left me with stomach acid.

Detectives knocked on the door of my parents’ Wilton home (which they sold in ‘94), and at 9:30 pm or 10 pm yet. If someone knocks on the door at that hour, you know it’s trouble.

I answered, let them in. The feeling in my chest was terrible…purely about doom The detectives were inquiring about two separate murders. They were maintaining a certain professional cool, but the evidence, they calmly stated, was pointing in my direction.

Even before I opened the door, I knew I was a dead man.

Three detectives — two polite, studiously casual, mellow-as-a-cucumber dudes plus a ginger woman detective (half Rebecca Keegan, half Jessica Chastain) who was giving me a look that would grow hair on a rock. Her eyes weren’t glaring as much as burning a hole.

Obviously a typical nightmare metaphor scenario…a metaphor for something I feel haunted by or am currently fearful of.