This was the very first video sent to me by Tatiana during her Mexico-and-Cuba trip. It’s still my favorite. I’d really like to go there. Buena Vista Social Club, etc.

Having scored an early copy of Prince Harry’s “Spare” (Random House, 1.10), The Guardian‘s Martin Pengelly has posted a tale about Harry’s elder brother, Prince William, knocking him to the floor during verbal fisticuffs over Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle.

Brothers are allowed to slap each other around if they want to, and nobody should have anything to say about it. It’s between them.

I should add, however, that while I’ve never had any feelings or opinions about William up until now, reading that he bashed chickenshit Harry fills me with (I’m perfectly serious) newfound respect.

Harry has written that following the slapdown, his first telephone call was to his therapist. What a pathetic candy-ass! His therapist!

Purely from memory, but my memory’s pretty good when it comes to Paddy Chayefsky….a post-coital scene between the late Diana Rigg and the late George C. Scott, from Chayefsky and Arthur Hiller‘s The Hospital (’71):

Rigg: “I love you, Herb, and want to marry you and have children. And of course, you love me. I mean, you ravaged me three times.”

Scott: “Three times?”

Rigg: “You were as puffed up as a toad about it. Punched a slight hole in your crusade for universal impotence, didn’t it?”

Scott: “Diana, I raped you last night in a suicidal rage. Where did we get love and children out of that?”

Rigg: “For heaven’s sake, Herb. I ought to know whether a man loves me or not. Last night you screamed it, bellowed it, shouted it from an open window.”

Scott: “Well, I think those were more feelings of gratitude than anything else.”

Rigg: “Gratitude for what?”

Scott: “Well, my God, for resurrecting feelings of life inside me that I thought dead!”

Rigg: “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Herb…what do you think love is?”

Scott: “All right, I love you! I’m not about to argue with so relentless a romantic.”

You can never trust trailers but my God, the new Renfield trailer looks magnificent! Could the film itself be as good? Could this be the definitive vampire comedy that will unseat Love at First Bite and present one of Nicolas Cage‘s greatest-all-time performances?

If the film turns out as good as the trailer I’m seriously in favor of Cage being Oscar-nominated for Best Actor…trhe campaign would become a career tribute thing, and he could win. Look at him, for God’s sake! Listen to that enunciation! The crescendo of his career!

Directed by Chris McKay and written by Ryan Ridley (based on an story by Robert Kirkman), Renfield is about a toxic, dysfunctional relationship between Renfield, the apprentice vampire played by Dwight Frye in Tod Browning‘s original 1931 Dracula and played in Renfield by Nicholas Hoult. Awkwafina plays Renfield’s traffic-cop girlfriend.

Universal will open Renfield on 4.14.23. Possibly the first excellent film of 2023!

Condemn and cancel the following persons for creating this obviously deranged and predatory serving of erotic titillation — a scene that more or less gives a pass to all would-be rapists and gun fetishists: Robert Redford (alive), director George Roy Hill (passed in 2002), screenwriter William Goldman (died in 2018), actress Katharine Ross (because she went along with it!). Who else?

From D.C. maven Jester Bell (aka Theresa Campagna):

YouTube commenter #1 (Masked Panther): “The joker is supposed to be a respected dangerous lunatic. Not some pregnant man. So sad the direction D.C. is going / allowing.”

YouTube commenter #2 (Harley Quinn): “If this doesn’t show how dead DC is then [I don’t know] what will.”

A forerunner of North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock‘s Saboteur (’42) is about an innocent man (Robert Cummings‘ “Barry Kane”) suspected of arson, espionage and manslaughter, and is on the run from the bulls as he darts from one location to another.

Early on the handcuffed Kane shows up at a mountain cabin occupied by “Phillip Martin” (Vaughan Glaser), a blind but kindly and obviously wise and well educated older fellow. (Phillip’s distant European cousin was the blind, bearded hermit who showed kindness to Boris Karloff‘s Frankenstein monster in The Bride of Frankenstein.)

Phillip’s niece Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane) shows up, spots Kane’s cuffs and concludes he’s the alleged arsonist the cops are after. She takes Phillip aside and warns him about the “dangerous” Kane.

Phillip patiently explains to Pat that his blindness has left him with heightened perceptions, and not just in terms of touch, hearing and a sensitivity to aromas. He knew Kane was wearing handcuffs from the get-go, he tells her, because he could hear their slight clinking, but more importantly he can sense when a person is innocent or good of heart, and he knows without question that Kane is no saboteur.

In fact, several people whom Barry encounters during the first half of Saboteur not only believe in his innocence but help him to elude capture — the mother of a deceased burn victim, a cheerful truck driver, a troupe of circus performers.

Saboteur was shot between December 1941 and February 1942. Roughly two months after finishing principal photography, the big premiere happened in Washington, D.C. on 4.22.42. It opened in New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on 5.8.42. Here’s Bosley Crowther’s review.