The late Harry Belafonte “was the little-known impetus behind ‘We Are the World,’ the all-star 1985 benefit single for African famine relief. To line up a younger generation of performers, he enlisted the music manager Ken Kragen, who got Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson to write the song and gathered dozens of other 1980s hitmakers. Modestly, Belafonte didn’t claim one of the lead vocal spots; he just joined the backup chorus. He can be spotted in the video at 4:20 and 5:55, eagerly singing along.” — from “Work, Love, Dignity and Play: 10 Key Harry Belafonte Songs,” by chief N.Y. Times music critic Jon Pareles.

Respect, hats off, proof of character.

And I’ll never want to grapple with any Viggo Mortensen specificity in this regard, and yet I’ve never been able to suppress the label of “Russian penis movie”…it is what it is. The likelihood of re-watching this thing isn’t likely.

I turn around and things that happened 20 or 30 years ago rise to the surface like air bubbles…they appear of their own volition…who am I to ignore that faint popping sound?

After visiting Jett, Cait and Sutton in West Orange last Sunday, the VW Passat suffered a seizure (call it a coughing fit) while driving back to Wilton. I was afraid of a painful financial gash, but the total tab (including an oil change) was only $418. I’ll be training down to New Rochelle Auto Care this morning to settle up and retrieve.

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Friendo to HE: “If I buy you this shirt, will you wear it in Cannes?”

HE to friendo: “Absolutely! But I’d have to wear the jacket also.”

Seriously…if WB is selling the pink Barbie jacket in a men’s size I’ll snap it up in a second.

Until proven to be a lucid, smartly-plotted, grade-A film (which it might conceivably be), I’ll be assuming that The Flash (Warner Bros., 6.16) is the same old gotterdamerung, CG-overload D.C. shite…tortured, over-emotive, anguished adolescent stuff.

“My payurants, my payurants…I lost my payurants,” etc.

I was a fanatical admirer of director Andy Muschietti‘s Mama, but I went cold on the guy after seeing his two It films. The return of Michael Keaton‘s Batman / Bruce Wayne holds no allure for me; ditto the return of Michael Shannon‘s General Zod. “Let’s get nuts”…yeah, no thanks.

Yesterday the No Hard Feelings redband trailer generated fresh energy at Cinemacon. It made me laugh several weeks ago, and it still rubs me the right way. And I adore the fact that shrieking wokesters like Scott Menzel are upset by the bawdy premise. The more alarmed Menzel is, the better.

Innocent question: What’s so stunning in this day and age about a graphically violent “ice-cold thriller” flooded with “atmospheric dread“? What else could a film about a conscience-stricken hitman be?

The Playlist‘s Gregg Ellwood on a recently-viewed Cinemacon clip of Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon: “The scenes featured hundreds (a thousand?) extras on horseback (Kingdom of Heaven vibes) and almost entirely in-camera visual effects (lots of on-the-ground explosions). There were at least three or four individual shots that anyone in the room will still remember weeks from now, which obviously a very good thing.

“The only concern is [that] Scott has allowed all the actors to speak in their native accents which in this case means Napoleon sounds American. Scott got away with it on his last film, The Last Duel, but we’re a bit concerned [that] it won’t work in this particular historical context.”

HE comment: Inauthentic foreign “accents” are usually avoided when American or British actors are playing European-continent characters (French, German, Italian, Russian). The general rule, however, is that everyone of a certain class or station has to more or less sound the same. Varying accents generally don’t work, as Valkyrie director Bryan Singer discovered when he had Tom Cruise‘s Col. Claus von Stauffenberg speak with an American accent while the mostly British cast members (i.e., Kenneth Branagh) used their own native accents.

Example: The rebellious slaves in Spartacus all spoke like working-class Americans while the Romans spoke with rarified mid-Atlantic accents.

Question for HE community: How would you play it if you were directing Napoleon? I personally wouldn’t have minded if Joaquin Phoenix and every other French character had spoken with French-accented English (i.e., Charles Boyer). The important thing is that everyone needs to sound the same. Didn’t Marlon Brando play Napoleon in Desiree with a French accent? Or am I misremembering?

This longish (over six minutes) recap scene in The Big Sleep explains what’s already happened for those who may be lost or confused. And yes, Phillip Marlowe‘s meeting in the District Attorney’s office obviously fits the very definition of what a good film isn’t supposed to do — i.e., tell rather than show. Which is why it wasn’t included in the final 1946 version.

And yet the general consensus is that The Big Sleep is one of the most convoluted, perplexing, nearly-impossible-to-follow crime films ever made (even co-screenwriter William Faulkner was unsure about who’d done what), so I actually wouldn’t have minded if this scene had been left in.

As Big Sleep aficionados know, the sexually suggestive restaurant scene between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (i.e., trading double entendres about horse racing) replaced (a) the District Attorney’s office scene plus (b) Rutledge/Bacall coming to Marlowe’s office a second time.

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