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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On the occasion of Al Pacino‘s 83rd birthday, here, in this order, are HE’s top twelve Pacino performances:

(1) Michael Corleone, The Godfather, Part II; (2) Lowell Bergman, The Insider, (3) Tony Montana, Scarface, (4) Michael Corleone, The Godfather, (5) Lt. Vincent Hanna, Heat; (6) Tony D’Amato, Any Given Sunday (the”inches” speech); (7) Frank Keller, Sea of Love; (8) Frank Serpico, Serpico; (9) Sonny Wortzik, Dog Day Afternoon; (10) Jimmy Hoffa, The Irishman; (11) Will Dormer, Insomnia; and (12) Frank Slade, Scent of a Woman (“I’m just gettin’ warmed up!”).

Obviously Pacino’s peak decades were the ’70s and ’90s. He’s so far made only two grade-A 21st Century films, Insomnia and The Irishman.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua and lensed by the great Robert Richardson, The Equalizer 3 (Sony, 9.1.23) was mostly filmed on Italy’s Amalfi Coast in Italy with supplementary shooting in Naples and Rome.

I met and listened to the great Harry Belafonte only once. It was during a press junket round-table for Desmond Nakano‘s White Man’s Burden (Savoy, 12.1.95), a racially reversed fantasy about American prejudice and injustice.

I immediately fell in love with Belafonte’s sparkling eyes, bountiful spirit and somewhat bawdy vocabulary (i.e., lotsa fucks), and within 30 seconds I was muttering to myself that this guy should have been the star of the movie, and not so much “Thaddeus Thomas,” the powerful pillar of society whom Belafonte played in the film.

This was my first Belafonte recollection when I read of his death this morning. The second was the fact that in his late 20s and 30s the Jamaican-born Belafonte was easily one of the most handsome…indeed one of the most beautiful famous guys in the big-time showbiz orbit. He was 68 when I met him in late ’95, and in my eyes wasn’t the least bit diminished.

The third was his magnificent, made-for-Calypso singing voice — “Jamaica Farewell,” “Man Smart, Woman Smarter,” “Jump In The Line,” “Day-O”, “Matilda,” “Scarlet Ribbons.”

The fourth was his ballsy endorsement of Bernie Sanders in early 2016, which meant something given that most POCs felt that Bernie, despite having proven his liberal humanist bona fides time and again, was too much of a Vermont white guy to warrant their support.

The fifth was the fact that Belafonte was among the first big-time celebs to ally with Martin Luther King in the early ’60s, not only marching shoulder to shoulder but providing financial support.

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There’s absolutely no need or interest in another Magnificent Seven…zero. We’ve already had three — Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai (“54), John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven (’60) and Antoine Fuqua‘s mediocre remake of a remake from 2016. You know what I’d like to see remade? Howard Hawks‘ Red River (’46).

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Martin Scorsese‘s footwear during the recent Manhattan filming of a commercial with Timothee Chalamet has, in the words of Eric Clapton, caused “talk and suspicion.” It’s not the thick soles as much as the mixing of robin’s egg blue with bright burnt orange. The soles obviously aren’t a “problem” in and of themselves, but the esteemed director of Killers of the Flower Moon would have done better to have worn the same shiny black boot lace-ups that Chalamet had on.

CNN’s Don Lemon has been axed effective immediately. This was obviously not a good day for this to happen with the competing story of Tucker Carlson‘s departure nipping at Lemon’s heels or vice versa. Two major-media news headliner departures announced within an hour!

There are obviously four women who helped to push Lemon out, either directly or consequentially — (1) Nikki Haley, the 50something Republican presidential candidate whom Lemon claimed was not “in her prime”; (2) Variety‘s Tatiana Siegel, whose 4.5 article reported about the news anchor’s alleged “misogyny at CNN“; (3) Lemon’s CNN co-anchor Kaitlan Collins, who clashed with Lemon over bristly attitudes and diva fits, and (4) White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who recently refused to be interviewed by Lemon.

When I think fondly of the 2019 films that will endure and grow in esteem as the years fall by…well, we all have our favorites. But in my mind at least and in a perfect world, the films that should have won the Best Picture Oscar are not, no offense, Parasite, which did win, and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the first runner-up.

I realize, of course, that almost no HE commenters agree with me, but I still say that the Best Picture Oscar champ should have been Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman.

Failing that, the most deserving winners could or should have been, in a perfect world, the following: Kent Jones‘ Diane, Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse, Lulu Wang‘s The Farewell.

It’s absurd to mention Craig Zahler‘s Dragged Across Concrete in this context, but it’s a truly jarring, trail-blazing film that I’ll never forget. I wanted to forget Parasite after my second viewing — I didn’t dislike it, but I found it underwhelming.

The Best Documentary Oscar should have been won by A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name.

Posted on 8.18.20: A couple of decades hence young cineastes will ask their older brethren, “Explain again why a well-made but not especially overwhelming social criticism drama from Bong Joon-ho won the Best Picture Oscar instead of this obviously superior Martin Scorsese gangster epic, especially considering the fact that The Irishman didn’t have anything like that Parasite scene in which a family of con artists welcomes the one person in the world who has a motive to rat them all out, and yet they let her in during a rainstorm while they’re all drunk and dishevelled…why did everyone give that scene a pass again?”

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