Musk, Maher, “Woke Mind Virus”

by

HE haters can take shots at Elon Musk and repeat their woke-denying bullshit, but please tell me how it’s a good, approvable thing for a typical high-school student to be asked what he/she knows about George Washington, and the first thing out of his/her mouth is “he was a slave owner.” That’s the woke mind virus in a nutshell.

Don’t Count Him Out

by

Did those cruel paparazzi shots that surfaced a couple of weeks ago inspire Jack to return to his courtside seat?

If I were Jack I wouldn’t stop there. I would concurrently (a) drop 30 or 40 pounds on a Zen diet, (b) get a Hollywood Elsewhere micro-hair-plug Prague special, and (c) color my my hair so it’s dark gray, not borderline white. But that’s me.

Those perfectly tinted eyeglasses — half amber, half sunset red — are magnificent.

Read more

One Fond Memory

by

There’s a moment in Martin Scorsese‘s After Hours (’85) when Griffin Dunne‘s miserable lost soul eyeballs a graffiti drawing of a guy’s schlong getting chomped on by a shark.

That’s the one transcendent, pure-light moment in this dark, hard-to-swallow situation “comedy” about how a thirtysomething Manhattan male gets swallowed up by a predatory vortex of Soho hostility.

But After Hours isn’t really about the vortex as much as Dunne’s feelings of panic, helplessness and self-loathing. Why does this guy refuse to man up and figure his way out of a difficult but far-from-insurmountable situation? And why have we paid to watch a film about this wormy?

All the hipsters and know-it-alls swear by After Hours, but it’s not very good..it really isn’t.

In the same sense that Parasite slit its own throat when the drunken con artist mom allowed the fired maid into the home of the rich family, After Hours never even tries to sell the idea that Dunne would visit Soho to see about trying to fuck Roseanna Arquette with a lousy $20 in his pocket (just under $60 in 2023 dollars), or that the $20 would somehow fly out of the taxicab window, or that Dunne believed he was actually stuck and stranded in Soho when all he had to do was hop the turnstile and catch a subway back home.

If he was too chicken to hop the turnstile all he had to do was scrape together 90 cents, which is what a subway ride cost at the time. 90 cents!

Criterion will release a 4K and 1080p Bluray combo of After Hours on 7.11.23. Why would anyone want to pay $40 for this?

Bound By Science, Facts, Reality

by

When was the last time Chris Nolan had no choice but to explore or otherwise settle into a reality realm — a realm defined by the same terms that all sane earthlings are more or less obliged to live by? The answer, of course, is 2017’s Dunkirk. But before that, Nolan’s last RR flick (i.e., no exceptional visual augmentation) was Insomnia, which is nearly 20 years old. (It opened at the Tribeca Film Festival on 5.3.22, and commercially on 5.24.02.)

If you ignore Dunkirk, Nolan World was defined by indulgent, highly imaginative flights of visual fancy for 15 years — Batman Begins, The Prestige (HE’s 2nd least favorite Nolan film), The Dark Knight, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar (HE’s all-time unfavorite…most infuriating sound mix in motion picture history) and Tenet.

Memento (’00) is Nolan’s most satisfying reality-based film, hands down.

Dylan Mulvaney Is Fine

by

But surely he understands that reactions to the Bud Light and Maybelline promotions demonstrate that he’s triggered fierce emotion in the hinterlands. He can’t dismiss that entirely. DM is living on an isolated island, and residents of the territory surrounding that island have spoken. They can’t all be idiots.

Mulvaney is obviously free to promote whatever as long as corporate America sees an upside. More power, no skin off my backside, etc.

My understanding is that DM is biologically male and hasn’t resorted to surgical alteration…right? I further understand that Dylan regards anyone who may allude to his biological origins and/or ignores his preferred pronouns as a bad or even criminal person. But he has to understand, surely, that pretending to be a woman is different than having actually been born as a biological woman or, failing that, having been surgically altered into womanhood.

All Right, Let’s Calm Down

by

Rachel McAdams‘ performance in Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is fine as far as it goes. As Barbara Simon, the mother of Abby Ryder Fortson‘s titular character, she radiates calmness, caring, focus, fortitude. Which is all she’s been asked to do. It’s not an attention-seeking performance, and it certainly isn’t an end-of-the-year thing. A lot of people have lost their composure over this film, jumping up and down and insisting upon its greatness. To put it as mildly as possible, they’re embarassing themselves. It’s a nice little movie, but let it go.

“Apocalypse Now”: Zeigfeld vs. 4K

by

I re-watched my 4K UHD Apocalypse Now Bluray last night, and I wasn’t totally happy. I saw this 1979 classic at the Ziegfeld theatre two or three times in August and September of ’79, and the big-screen presentation (we’re thinking back almost 44 years) blows the 4K disc away. Aurally and visually, but especially in terms of sharp, punctuating fullness of sound.

Apocalypse Now was presented at the Ziegfeld within a 2:1 aspect ratio, which Vittorio Storaro insisted upon through thick and thin. The 4K disc uses what looked to me with a standard Scope a.r. of 2.39:1.

And the general sharpness of the image on that big Ziegfeld screen just isn’t replicated by the 4K. It looks “good”, of course, but not as good as it should.

As we begin to listen to The Doors’ “The End” while staring at that tropical tree line, John Densmore’s high hat could be heard loudly and crisply from a Ziegfeld side speaker. Before that moment I had never heard any high-hat sound so clean and precise. But it doesn’t sound nearly as pronounced on the 4K disc, which I listened to, by the way, with a pricey SONOS external speaker.

Remember that “here’s your mission, Captain” scene with G.D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford and that white-haired guy? When that scene abruptly ends, we’re suddenly flooded with electronic synth organ music…it just fills your soul and your chest cavity. Filled, I should say, 44 years ago. But not that much with the disc.

When Martin Sheen and the PBR guys first spot Robert Duvall and the Air Cav engaged in a surfside battle, Sheen twice says “arclight.” In the Ziegfeld the bass woofer began rumbling so hard and bad that the floor and walls began to vibrate like bombs were exploding on 54th Street…the hum in my rib cage was mesmerizing. Not so much when you’re watching the 4K.

As Duvall’s gunship helicopters take off for the attack on a Vietnamese village (“Vin Din Lop…all these gook names sound the same”), an Army bugler begins playing the cavalry charge. It was clear as a bell in the Ziegfeld — less so last night.

Read more