Burying visual information in a shroud of unnecessary darkness is not only perverse but diseased. Willfully submitting to this kind of monochrome mud makes no sense, and yet there it is…the only possible rationale for a film-noir lover to buy the new Shout! Factory Bluray of Anatole Litvak’s Sorry, Wrong Number (‘48).
Decades of resentment, irritation, alienation and suppressed rancor fell away today when I paid a visit to my dad’s gravesite. Hillside Cemetery, plot #1522. He’s not actually there but a veteran’s org planted the stone a few weeks after he passed.
I’ve been too critical of him over the years. He was no day at the beach but a decent human being as far as it went. A clever ad man, hard working, witty, thoughtful, well educated, responsible.
The axe-throwing wasn’t so bad. I didn’t want to do it due to fear of failure. But I managed a few decent throws, even a couple of bull’s-eyes.
There are two wood-handled axe sizes —I was happier with the smaller, less weighty one. I tended to lightly lob rather than throw hard.
The baked-in-Bloomfield atmosphere is emphatically lower-middle-class — the Montclair swells keep their distance and then some. But I shrugged it off. We’re all bumblefucks underneath our pretensions.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Guarkye (spell that last name!) approved in a slightly mixed way, but Variety’s Peter Debruge was 100% sold and the closing-night SXSW crowd was reportedly oogah–boogah and ape-crazy.
HE won’t be seeing Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Alex Convery’s Air until Wednesday evening so all good things in their immaculate time and proper proportion, but thank God something has come along to flush out that horrible EEAAO after-taste. It’s almost like the Beatles arriving in the wake of the JFK assassination.
Two days ago (3.16) I took a shot at listing 2023’s likeliest Best Picture contenders. Nine in all. No hopefuls or maybe-level contenders — strictly serious only, “safe bets,” no pikers, etc.
The following day Variety’s Clayton Davis ran his own ‘23 rundown, generously allowing (as he usually does) for any and all possibilities from the Clayton realm. and that’s fine. Then again including The Marvels, Spider–Man: Across The Spider–Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 speaks for itself.
…it’s no good. I’m sorry but in my book coarse, common, not-quite-there horror has never cut it. It has to be Watcher– or Midsommar or Babadook or Repulsion or Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby or Lighthouse-level or not at all.
Ixnay to Pearl, Get Out (racially-stamped, hand-me-down Ira Levin), The Black Phone, Knock at the Cabin, Nope, M3GAN, Bones and All, etc. The Menu was and is an approvable half–and–halfer, but no jumping up and down.
I’m sorry but HE knows pedigree like the back of its hand. Martin Balsam’s Arbogast: “If it doesn’t jell it isn’t aspic…”
The five above-the-line Oscars won by Milos Forman and Ken Kelsey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (‘75) need to be rescinded because watching this movie causes pain to wokesters.
One of the unprosecuted charges against Jack Nicholson’s Randall P. McMurphy was statutory rape involving a 14-year-old girl (i.e., she declined to testify). And the film portrays him as a heroic rebel figure? Unacceptable. Plus all the mental- clinic guards are Black — negative stereotyping. And what about those racist Indian jokes directed at Will Sampson’s “Chief” Bromden? Plus all the patients are white.
Attempting to hide the $130K Stormy Daniels payoff was a violation of NY campaign finance laws, and is definitely something that Orange Plague will have to answer for. HE supports any legalistic claim or prosecution that might hurt or deter Trump.
But the Stormy thing doesn’t strike me as all that dastardly or horrific. Ditto holding on to classified documents in Mar a Lago.
Inciting the Jan. 6th Capitol riot, illegally trying to overturn Georgia vote tallies…those, to me, are serious crimes. Ditto raping and slandering E. Jean Carroll.
8:15 am: No time to write about Matt Ruskin‘s Boston Strangler due to my New Jersey axe-throwing engagement (leaving in less than an hour), but last night I said the following about the hugely annoying color scheme: “A subdued palette of grayish green (or is it greenish gray?) mixed with mud, mist and slurpings of lentil soup.”
Could the dp, Ben Kutchins, be the new Bradford Young?
I tried re-watching Richard Fleischer‘s The Boston Strangler (’68) a couple of nights ago, but it’s been pulled.
Both are gone now. The redoubtable David Carr in actuality (passed on 2.12.15) and Scott because the person he was ten years ago no longer “exists”, in a certain sense. Because he went over to the woke side sometime around ’19 or ’20, and in so doing jettisoned the 2013 version — a guy I really liked and admired and lament the absence of.
Nine, ten years ago I was fine with the idea of splitting the U.S. of A. into two nations. But that was before woke Stalinism. Now I don’t feel as comfortable with the concept of living in an all-blue nation because a significant portion of the blues have become advocates of a Great Cultural Revolution a la China-in-the-’60s…scolds, fanatics, Robespierres.
“This isn’t the 1860s,” I wrote on 3.15.13. “Our borders are secure, we have nuclear weapons, and nobody’s going to invade. We can be two countries and make out just fine. Yugoslavia broke up into two or three chunks and they’re doing okay. Czechoslovakia became two nations and they’re holding it together. We could create our own Czech Republic — a Blue America — and let the ‘Slovakians’ have their own. I’m perfectly serious here. Get rid of the dumbshits and a lot of the nation’s big problems will become much more managable.”
But now I don’t know.
In a 3.15.13 riff titled “Common Knowledge,” I wrote that “the best thing that could happen all around would be to create a separate nation among the Midwestern and Southern areas of this country — just cut the yokels off and let them raise their own revenues and nurture their retro beliefs, values and prejudices. They’re just a drag on the rest of the country and the sooner Red America is cut loose, the better for the rest of us. Seriously.
In a 7.4.14 piece called “Independence From Ignorance, Stupidity, Downmarket Vibes,” I wrote that “the U.S. of A. is impossibly divided and never the twain shall meet. The right has gone totally around the bend. The urban Blues are the Czech Republic and the rural Reds are Slovakia, and I really think it’s time for the Czechs to sign a new Declaration of Independence and cut those bozos loose.”
“It’s not a rumor — many of the bumblefuck regions are where the least affluent, most downmarket, under-educated and culturally resentful U.S. citizens reside. If you can’t re-educate them the next best thing is to isolate them and let them stew in their own juices.” Alternate rationale: “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
A New York “Intelligencer” piece by Sasha Issenberg (“Maybe It’s Time For America To Split Up?“) has taken a serious look at cutting the red states loose and creating a sensible, solid-blue America that wouldn’t be hindered by racist bumblefuck obstinacy — an old HE fantasy. The difference is that Issenberg is envisioning a three-federation system — Blue, Red and Neutral.
