I tried to think of something interesting to say about TomKat planning to finally get married in Italy on Saturday, 11.18, but all I could come up with was the idea of being inside their heads for five or six hours via one of those Being John Malkovich mud-tunnel transporting devices, or even being in both their heads simultaneously (weird thought), but it got too strange.
The intrigue is much higher regarding Cruise’s interest in making an indie “political drama” called Lions for Lambs, which reportedly deals with a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, presumably post-9/11. The script is by Matthew Carnahan (State of Play), and Variety’s Michael Fleming says Robert Redford is said to be “likely” to direct as well as play a role. If anyone has a copy….

…much less seen them?

I’m talking about the decline and fall of western civilization here.

If someone were to ask for a Ten Best of the ’20s, ’30s and early ’40s, off the top of my head I would list…oh, maybe 40 or 50. Generic classics like (1) F.W. Murnau‘s Sunrise, (2) William Wellman‘s The Ox-Bow Incident, (3) Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings, (4) Buster Keaton‘s The General, (5) Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis, (6) John Huston‘s The Maltese Falcon.

Plus (7) King Kong, (8) The Wizard Of Oz, (9) Bringing Up Baby, (10) Preston Sturges‘ Sullivan’s Travels and (11) The Lady Eve (12) Casablanca, (13) Gunga Din, (14) The Grapes of Wrath, (15) Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, (16) John Ford‘s The Informer, (17) Abel Gance‘s Napoleon, (18) Abbott & Costello‘s Hold That Ghost, (19) Leo McCarey‘s Duck Soup, (20) Jean Renoir‘s The Rules of the Game, (21) Sergei Eisenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin, (22) Lewis Milestone‘s All Quiet on the Western Front.

Plus (23) James Whale‘s Frankenstein and (24) The Bride of Frankenstein, (25) Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, (26) Ernst Lubitsch‘s Trouble in Paradise plus (27) My Man Godfrey, (28) Que Viva Mexico!, (29) The Twentieth Century, (30) The Philadelphia Story, (31) Sherlock, Jr., (32) Tod Browning‘s Freaks, (33) I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang, (34) Shadow of a Doubt, (35) The Public Enemy,(36) Michael Curtiz‘s Robin Hood, (37) Hawks‘ Scarface, (38) Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy, (39) Selznick/Fleming’s Gone With The Wind and (40) Hitchcock’s Rebecca and (41) Lifeboat.

I know, of course, that most under-40s regard films released in the ’80s as rather musty, and you can double or triple that assessment when it comes to films from Hollywood’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” era (from 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate until the end of that cycle when Sorcerer bombed and Star Wars became a massive hit)…and you can certainly forget about films from the late ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s (including Hud). Which leaves films from the ’20s, ’30s and early ’40s totally in the dust.

So as futile as this may sound, I’m asking which of the above 40, if any, fall under the “hazily recalled by Millennials and Zoomers” category…which of these films have made any kind of impression of any kind?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided to award a new Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design, starting with the 100th Academy Awards in 2028 (i.e., recognizing achievements in films released in 2027). The corpses of Daryl F. Zanuck, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Robert Towne, David O. Selznick, Irving Thalberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Edith Head, Ben Hecht, William Wyler and Gregg Toland have just turned in their graves…trust me.

This will be the first grunt-level or “meathead” Oscar category in the Academy’s history. For almost a full century every other category — directing, acting, screenwriting, cinematography, makeup, set design, costumes — has represented some kind of truly creative, fine-art aspiration. Even the forthcoming casting Oscar category, which will produce a winner at the 2026 Oscars, represents the kind of achievement that, if done right, truly enhances the art of cinema.

Stunts, difficult as they can be to perform well, are essentially low-rent. The only artful stunts I could point to were performed by Buster Keaton a century ago.

Today’s stunts, of course, are a different deal. They certainly don’t occupy the same station as modern dance or ballet, which have long been practiced by performers who care about creative visions and possibilities. Even trapeze artistry can be regarded as an art form. But not movie stunts. Stunt performers are fine as long as they say on their side of the fence. But they don’t deserve to stand alongside the film industry’s actual artists.

The bad guys in his instance are director David Leitch and stunt coordinator Chris O’Hara of Stunts Unlimited. They’ve been aggressively advocating for a stunt Oscar category, and now the Academy, grappling with the fact that the Oscars are a failing brand, has imperceptibly shrugged and given in.

I’ve noted before that most name-brand directors, producers and actors enjoy 12-year streaks when everything is cooking and breaking their way. Some directors and actors are lucky enough to last 15 or 20 years or even longer.

Dustin Hoffman is an exception to this general rule in that (a) he enjoyed a serious 15-year hot streak from The Graduate (’67) to Tootsie (’82), and then (b) he kept things going on an in-and-out-basis for another 10 years if you ignore Ishtar (’87) and start with Rain Man (’88) and finish with Wag the Dog (’97).

So if you want to be liberal or forgiving by erasing Ishtar, Hoffman actually revelled in a 25-year hot streak, which puts him alongside Meryl Streep (40 years), Martin Scorsese (half-century), Alfred Hitchcock (23 years), Steven Soderbergh (23 years), John Ford (27 years) and John Wayne(37 years).

You also have to give Hoffman credit for delivering a pair of ace performances in 2004’s I Heart Huckabees and Meet the Fockers.

Hoffman’s initial golden streak contained 11 or 12 really good films: The Graduate (’67), Midnight Cowboy (’69), Little Big Man (’70), Straw Dogs (’71), Papillon (’73), Lenny (’74), All the President’s Men (’76), Marathon Man (’76), Straight Time (’78), Agatha (’79…decent, not great), Kramer vs. Kramer (’79), Tootsie (’82).

The mixed second streak (10 years) contained nine films: Rain Man (’88), Dick Tracy (’90), Billy Bathgate (’91), Hook (’91…REALLY BAD), Hero (’92…problematic), Outbreak (’96), Sleepers (’96), American Buffalo (’96), Mad City (’96) and Wag the Dog (’97)

I’m just going to be flat-out honest about eccentric filmmaker extraordinaire David Lynch, whose untimely passing at age 78 (four days short of his 79th birthday) was reported earlier today. But I’m going to speak in generalities.

Lynch was basically a fascinating, unconventional, gut-hunchy, marquee-brand surrealist artist who excelled as an auteur filmmaker for roughly a quarter-century (from ’77’s Eraserhead to ’01’s Mulholland Drive).

In HE parlance Lynch didn’t exactly peak for that whole 25-year stretch but he certainly flourished creatively for most of that period– Eraserhead, The Elephant Man (sturdy, compassionate period piece), Dune (not admired), Blue Velvet (arguably his only truly great theatrical film), Wild at Heart, the groundbreaking Twin Peaks TV series (’90 and ’91), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway (in my book his second best feature), The Straight Story (fourth best…spare, earnest and true) and Mulholland Drive (third best).

Yes, Lynch continued to work excitingly or at least imaginatively in the 21st Century (Inland Empire, the 2017 Twin Peaks reboot for Showtime, paintings and musical collaborations and whatnot) but if you ask me his main creative effort / handle / identity over the last 15 or so years was projecting his testy, feisty, snappy-ass personality in YouTube and TikTok videos…his John Ford cameo in Steven Spielberg’s The Fablemans was a standout for most, but for me the clips of Lynch losing his temper over this and that are wonderful. The iPhone rant, the “what is this shit about the length of a scene?” rant…all are magnificent.

So he was basically a prolific signature-level director over the last quarter of the 20th Century (face it…the ’80s were his glory years), and a sometime filmmaker but mainly a great, irascible, cranky-as-fuck personality from the late aughts until just recently.

A lifelong smoker, Lynch stated last November that emphysema had gotten the better of him. And yet his poor health was exacerbated, it seems, by the ongoing L.A. firestorms. Sometime last week Lynch evacuated one of his Los Angeles homes (he owned three on or near Mulholland Drive) due to the fires. He went downhill soon after.

I was deeply disappointed when I caught an allegedly magnificent 70mm print of John Ford‘s The Searchers last July at the Museum of the Moving Image.

“No ‘bump’ at all over the versions I’ve watched on various formats over the years,” I angrily wrote. “No bump whatsoever, fuckers! Plus some shots looked overly shadowed, and some looked a tad bleachy.”

But of course, trusting sap and sucker that I am, I’ve bought the forthcoming 4K Bluray, which looks extra-marvelous according to various reviewers. I don’t trust these whores at all, but I want the 4K to be extra-special so I’m talking the plunge.

If I feel burned again after watching it later this month, there will be hell to pay.

From my 7.21 review:: “Immediately my eyes were telling me that the 70mm restoration is some kind of reverent con job, and that ticket-buying schmoes like myself were being gaslit.

“’This?’, I was angrily saying to myself. ‘Where’s the enhancement? Where’s the extra-exacting detail that a ‘straight from the original VisaVision negative’ 70mm print would presumably yield?”

“The MOMI theatre is seemingly a technically first-rate operation with a nice big screen, but what a fuming experience I had. I was ready to hit someone.

“Technically sophisticated friendo who knows his stuff: ‘In order to present a film print properly — especially 70mm — more things must come together than you might imagine in your worst nightmare.’

“Thanks, powers-that-be! Thanks for lying right through your teeth!”

…that the percentage of really good films he’s starred in has been fairly low. Hanks has said this plain and straight.

It’s a basic creative and biological law that only about 10% of your films are going to be regarded as serious creme de la creme…if that. Most big stars (the smart ones) are given a window of a solid dozen years or so in which they have the power, agency and wherewithal to bring their game and show what they’re worth creatively. We all want to be rich, but the real stars care about making their mark.

Most name-brand directors, producers and actors enjoy 12-year streaks when everything is cooking and breaking their way. Some directors and actors are lucky enough to last 15 or 20 years or even longer. Your task, should you choose to accept it (and I know I’ve posted about this before), is to list any number of Hollywood heavyweights and when their 12-year hot streaks (or better) happened.

I’m not talking about the ability to work or get work — I’m talking about the years of serious heat and the best years falling into place.

Cary Grant peaked from the late ‘30s to late ‘50s.

James Cagney between Public Enemy and White Heat — call it 20.

James Stewart between Destry Rides Again and Anatomy of a Murder — 20.

Clark Gable’s hottest years were between It Happened One Night (‘34) and The Hucksters (‘47).

Humphrey Bogart happened between High Sierra / The Maltese Falcon (‘41) and The Harder They Fall (‘56) — a 15-year run.

Robert Redford peaked between Butch Cassidy (‘69) and Brubaker and Ordinary People (‘80) — 11 to 12 years.

Elizabeth Taylor had 15 years — 1950 (Father of the Bride) to 1966 (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf).

Jean Arthur — mid ’30s to early ’50s (Shane) — call it 15 years.

Katharine Hepburn — early ’30s to early ’80s (On Golden Pond).

Meryl Streep — 1979 (The Seduction of Joe Tynan) to today…40 years and counting.

Martin Scorsese is the king of long-lasting directors — Mean Streets (’73) to Killers of the Flower Moon (’22)…a half-century!

John Huston had about 15 years — 1941 (The Maltese Falcon) to 1956 (Moby Dick).

Alfred Hitchcock had 23 years — ’40 (Rebecca) to ’63 (The Birds).

Steven Soderbergh‘s had 23 years so far — 1989 (sex, lies and videotape) to 2012 (Magic Mike) and he’s obviously still kicking.

John Ford enjoyed 27 good years — ’35 (The Informer) to ’62 (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

John Wayne had an amazing 37 years — 1939 (Stagecoach) to 1976 (The Shootist).

George Clooney‘s peak period lasted almost 20 years.

Tony Curtis‘s hot streak was relatively brief — 1957 (Sweet Smell of Success) to 1968 (The Boston Strangler).

Kirk Douglas had about 15 years — Champion (’49) to Seven Days in May (’64).

Richard Burton — 1953 (The Robe) to 1977 (Equus) — almost 25.

In the current Club Random podcast with Bob Zemeckis, Bill Maher confesses to having melted down during the Omaha Beach cemetery scene in Saving Private Ryan…the moment when the old-geezer version of Matt Damon collapses at the sight of Cpt. Miller’s (Tom Hanks) gravestone…because the actor who played old Damon, Harrison Young, strongly resembled Maher’s late father, who had passed three or four years before Ryan opened in ’98.

Posted in mid-April of 2018: Last weekend I watched a 4K streaming version of Steven Spielberg‘s Saving Private Ryan. There’s no question that this 1998 WWII drama is one of the most brutally realistic and emotionally affecting war films ever made, and is certainly among Beardo’s finest. And yet I found myself flinching at the occasionally forced or unlikely moments, at the too-broad “acting” and emotional button-pushings. It kept ringing my phony gong. “Jeez, I don’t know if I even like this movie any more,” I said to myself. “Even the Omaha Beach landing sequence is starting to bother me.”

I had the same kind of reaction when I rewatched Close Encounters of the Third Kind in ’07, or 30 years after it opened. The bottom line is that Spielberg’s sentimental or overly theatrical instincts aren’t aging any better than John Ford‘s similar tendencies.

The greatest offense comes from Harrison Young‘s awful over-acting as the 75-year-old Ryan. His face is stricken with guilt as he shuffles through the Omaha Beach cemetery, and he walks like a 90-year-old afflicted with rheumatism. In ’87 I visited this same cemetery with my father, who’d fought against the Japanese during WWII. He was quietly shaken, he later said, but he held it in because that’s what former Marines do under these circumstances. They show respect by behaving in a disciplined, soldier-like way. They don’t moan and weep and flail around like some acting-class student.

I almost lost it when the teary-eyed Young collapsed upon the grave of Cpt. Miller (Tom Hanks). “Oh, for God’s sake!” I said out loud. “Show a little dignity…be a man!” Kathleen Byron‘s performance as white-haired Mrs. Ryan is almost as bad. All she does is eyeball her doddering, bent-over husband. The whole family, in fact, is staring at the old coot like he’s about to keel over from a heart attack.

Then comes one of the most dishonest cuts in motion picture history, going from a close-up of Young’s eyes to the D-Day landing craft carrying the Ryan squad — Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel — as they approach Omaha beach. Matt Damon‘s Ryan (Young’s 21-year-old counterpart) won’t meet them for another couple of days, when they’re inland a few miles.

I don’t believe that loaded-down soldiers drowned after being dropped by landing craft into 15 feet of water. That might have occured in real life, but I didn’t believe this in Saving Private Ryan — it just seemed absurd. I didn’t believe that bullet wounds would cause the water off Omaha Beach to turn red with blood — in fact Spielberg’s crew poured 40 barrels of fake blood into the water to achieve this effect. The basic effect is one of Hollywood exaggeration blended with historical, real-life horror.

Then comes Hanks’ big zone-out moment when he hits the beach. He’s an Army captain in the thick of battle with machine-gun bullets whizzing by and guys getting drilled and blown apart, and he chooses this moment to go “Ohhh, I can’t think or move…it’s too much…I’m so upset by war and its carnage that I need to go catatonic for a couple of minutes…don’t mind me…I’ll come back to life after this sequence is over.” I’m sitting there going “get it together, man! You wouldn’t do this in a Samuel Fuller or Howard Hawks film…you’re only zoning out because Spielberg likes the idea of spacing out and turning the sound down.”

Burly, bellowing Ward Bond never got the girl, and certainly never had the slightest chance of scoring with anyone in the sexual realm of Gene Tierney.

On top of which Tobacco Road, a 1940 John Ford film that I’ve never even seen, was shot in black-and-white. So what is this?

I spoke a couple of times to Herbert Ross when I was a Cannon press kit writer. It was in the fall of 1987 when his Mikhail Baryshnikov film, Dancers, was being prepared for release. During our second chat I was asking him about something I wanted to put into the Dancers press kit, and somehow I miscommunicated my intention. Ross got the idea I was trying to debate him.

“Look, this isn’t that kind of conversation!,” he said sternly, almost shouting. I immediately backpedaled and grovelled. “No, no, Mr. Ross…I apologize, that’s not what I meant,” etc. I cooled him down but after I hung up, I said to myself, “Jesus God, that is one fierce hombre! He was ready to take my head off!”

Of course, any director who’s elbowed his or her way into mainstream Hollywood and maintained power in that realm over any period of time has to be tough as nails.

“All strong directors are sons of bitches,” John Ford allegedly said to screenwriter Nunnally Johnson sometime in the late ’40s or early ’50s. His point was that Johnson, in Ford’s view, was too much of a nice, thoughtful, fair-minded guy to cut it as a director. Directors basically can’t be too mellow or gentle or accommodating. They need to try and be reasonable and constructive about the usual problems, but they also need to be tough, pugnacious and manipulative mo’fos in order to get what they want. And if they’re too deferential, they won’t last.”

Contrast my Ross anecdote with his analysis of The Last of Sheila (’73), which he produced and directed between early ’72 and early ’73: “If you have a group of people on a ship, the ship becomes a metaphor for existence,” he said. “You can’t help it. It’s not a symbol one strives for, but it does happen. It’s not a picture about film people, it’s about people…I’ll tell you what this picture is about. It’s about civilization and barbarism. You cannot make up for the absence of civilization.”

Set on a yacht off the Cote d’Azur, Sheila is about venal, barbaric behavior, sure, but “not about film people”? Not about talented but necessarily opportunistic scrappers who are invaruably shrewd, manipulative, gregarious, clever, hungry and deceptive? Of course it is!James Coburn‘s producer character certainly meets the standard. The whole film, really, radiates the way things felt back then (pre-Watergate Nixon administration)…a certain jaded, opportunistic, defiantly anti-spiritual mindset.

Sheila is a darkly playful parlor game about seven dodgy, flinty, cynical people playing ruthless mind games with each other. It’s a glamorous vacation film, quite cynical and entirely cerebral. There’s no trusting the emotional moments, of course, because the players are such gifted liars so it doesn’t exactly radiate depth. But thanks to Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, it’s very sharply written.

The irony for me is that a character who seems like the least malicious and easily the most mild-mannered, sensible-sounding fellow on board — Richard Benjamin‘s Tom Parkman, a screenwriter — turns out to be the worst of them.

On-screen, I mean. Off-screen, the worst may have been costar Raquel Welch.

According to an 11.12.72 Chicago Tribune piece titled “Raquel Plans Suit Against Director”, there were also complaints about Welch’s behavior.

Welch announced she was suing director Herbert Ross for assault and battery as a result of an incident in her dressing room. She claimed she had to flee to London during the shoot “to escape physical harm”. Warner Bros. later issued a statement supporting Ross and criticizing Welch for her “public utterances”.

Excerpt: “Shooting the monastery sequence just off Cannes proved to be troublesome for Welch. Gale force winds and rain disrupted the night shoot, and Welch was reluctant to leave her Venice hotel for fear of getting stuck in the storm.”

Mason said that Welch “was the most selfish, ill-mannered, inconsiderate actress that I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with”.

McShane: “Raquel Welch isn’t the most friendly creature. She seems to set out with the impression that no one is going to like her.”

From an AFI catalogue: “An 11.22.72 Variety article reported that the film was made for a little over $2,000,000.

“During production actress Raquel Welch, who portrayed ‘Alice Wood,’ took a brief leave from the film to promote her 1972 film Kansas City Bomber. As her absence necessitated a change in the shooting schedule, according to the article, James Mason reportedly called her departure ‘inconsiderate.’ Her public rebuttal and subsequent criticism of the film, as well as Warner Bros.’ disapproval of her comments, were widely reported in the press.

“An 11.15.72 Variety news item reported that production was temporarily shut down due to threats by Black September, the Palestinian terrorist organization, which took offense at the number of participants in the film who were Jewish.”

I am in friendly but fervent opposition to anyone on ANY campus who picks up a microphone and says they feel “actively victimized” by ANYthing except by real, actual, legitimate threats (i.e., possibly being raped, harmed in some physical way or killed).

Sensible, real-world, non-woke opinions are not threats. They simply represent an aspect of the normal rough and tumble of political dispute, which is par for the course if you (ahem) live off-campus.

The phrase “actively victimized” is a woke cliche used by people who fetishize the threat of victimization in order to display their woke bonafides.

Life IS hard and sometimes even scary. It’s not a walk in the park, certainly in the case of woke wimps and candy-asses. It IS a good idea to toughen your hide and maybe wear a helmet. I despise campus wussies and their litany of complaints about everything that doesn’t look, sound or feel “right” or “safe” to them.

Imagine the settlers in a John Ford western going up to Scar, the hostile Comanche chief in The Searchers, and saying “your war paint is not cool…you guys are making us feel actively victimized, and we really don’t feel safe…waaah.”

MGM’s 2011 Bluray of John Ford’s The Horse Soldiers (‘59) has a perfectly satisfactory 1.66 aspect ratio, but leave it to Kino Lorber to fuck things up by slicing off the tops and bottoms of the image for its 4K Bluray version, which came out a couple of years ago and which I just bought. Bastards. Presenting this profoundly handsome film within a 1.85 aspect ratio is an act of pure malice. Zero respect, nothing but condemnation.