I can order a Region 2 Bluray of the fully restored 124-minute version of Andrej Zulawski’s Possession (‘81), which premiered last fall. I’m not, however, seeing a U.S.-friendly Bluray. (Metrograph offers a streaming option.) Which is my fault, of course. I have mixed feelings about re-watching this creepy, West Berlin-set marital breakup flick, but I won’t wimp out. Isabelle Adjani’s demonic femme fatale performance won a Best Actress trophy at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.

We’re at peace with trans activists on our payroll working somewhere else. Feel free to create your various futures elsewhere. Go with God.

From Mark Harris’s “The Day The Movies Died,” a GQ article posted on 2.10.11:

From yesterday’s HE review, “Maverick Maniacs United”:

If she were to run for the 2024 Democratic nomination, I would vote for Katie Porter in a New York minute. I think. She seems like a smart, straight-shooting liberal without the woke bullshit, but maybe I’m not paying close enough attention. She’s never struck me as the sort of politician who would say “I’m not a biologist” when asked to define what a woman is. I know she’s not the running-for-President type, but she seems frank and sturdy and honorable.

Arguably the greatest action director of Hollywood’s big-studio era, Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) didn’t hit his stride until just after his 50th birthday, or around 1938 or ’39. Walsh’s glory period happened in the 1940s and ’50s.

Here, in my opinion and in this order, are his 18 finest films:

White Heat (’49), High Sierra (’41), They Died with Their Boots On (’41), Objective, Burma! (’45), Gentleman Jim (’42), Pursued (’47), The Thief of Bagdad (’24), The Big Trail (’30), Dark Command (’40), They Drive by Night (’40), The Roaring Twenties (’39), Captain Horatio Hornblower (’51), Along the Great Divide (’51), Battle Cry (55), The Tall Men (’55), Band of Angels (’57) and What Price Glory? (’26).

The jet-fighter combat footage in The Bridges at Toko-Ri won an Oscar. Obviously primitive by even late 20th Century standards and nowhere close to the knockout aerial footage in Top Gun: Maverick.

But the aircraft carrier landing footage has a docu-realism quality, and even the third-act miniature stuff (the bridge-bombing footage, William Holden crash landing in the North Korean countryside) seems strangely acceptable. There’s something plain and palatable about it.

Dazzling as the Maverick footage is, you’re never quite sure which shots are organic (if any) and what’s digital. I know that some (most?) of the cockpit footage is “real”, but I still don’t trust it.

Some YouTube commenters have actually complained about Toko–Ri spoilers…a film that’s nearly 70 years old and they’re complaining that Illeanna Douglas has spoiled the ending! Prima donnas!

Everyone in Top Gun: Maverick (even the afflicted Val Kilmer) is attractive — lean, perfectly cut hair, great teeth, fine complexions. Tom Cruise, currently nudging 60 but 56 and 57 during filming, looks like a 48 year old who works out, eats healthily and gets facials. Jennifer Connelly, playing his Maverick character’s 40something girlfriend, has never looked more radiant. Jon Hamm, Ed Harris…all the older dudes have flat abs.

There’s just no room in this well-tended realm for the graying, heavy-set, mid-60ish Kelly McGillis, who played Cruise’s lover, Charlie, in the 1986 original. And even if she’d kept herself in shape…let’s not go there. McGillis is fine, she never would’ve made the cut, the producers liked Connelly, let it go.