…due to job demands, here’s a reaction from HE’s own “bentrane”:

“I know you’re not a fan of High and Low, which I think is easily one of Akira Kurosawa‘s best films. That said, Spike Lee’s version has some pluses, but overall, it’s just okay. 

“Although I was never bored, it’s too long, and it takes too much time to get to the main story.

“It also lacks the moral clarity of the original. In this version Denzel seems to put up the kidnap money for his chauffeur’s son not because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, but more because he’s afraid of what social media will say about him if he doesn’t ante up.

“The film also doesn’t know when to end. Like the original, Highest2Lowest has a scene in which Denzel meets the kidnapper in jail, and their respective social standings and issues come to the fore. That was the end of High and Low, and it was a powerful one.

“But instead of ending it there, Spike had to add a totally unnecessary audition sequence in his apartment, which adds nothing to the film.

“Pluses: the cinematography; the soundtrack; the subway sequence; the very New York feel; the acting. But they’re not enough to overcome a bloated running time and a messy script.

“I’m giving it 2 1/2 stars out of four.

“And the wonderful State Farm joke, which had the audience roaring with laughter, won’t be understood  by anyone outside the U.S.”

I firmly believe that John Clifford White‘s musical theme for Romper Stomper is one of the best of its kind, ever. Because you can immediately sense the downhead mood of racist skinheads, and because the instrumentation is incredibly spare and economical.

It’s just as effective in terms of vibe-summoning as Max Steiner‘s Skull Island music is for King Kong.

It proves that White is just as gifted of a film composer as any of the classic-era greats. He’s certainly just as talented as Bill Conti, whose Broadcast News theme summons the vibe of that whipsmart James L. Brooks film in a perfect, spot-on way.

Nearly everyone agrees that rich assholes who pay big fees to kill African lions are despicable. I certainly feel this way. I also feel that Wilton deer hunters are cruel sadistic scum.

Two years ago 110 deer were killed in Wilton. Out of a total population of how many? Deer vibes are blessings…the mere sight of these gentle creatures ushers calm, grace and beauty into our souls.

According to Connecticut officials, 76 local deer were killed in ’23 by archery, 20 by shotgun or rifle, 10 by muzzleloader, three by cropkill and one via roadkill.

Does anyone recall the feeling in their hearts when Bambi’s mother was killed?

I would really and truly love it if two or three bow-and-arrow hunters from Wilton could be hunted down by some wealthy, Count Zaroff-type eccentric….see how you like it, fuckers.

An 8.12 Variety story by Jazz Tangcay reported that Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (‘98) was the first battle film to use an accidental shot with small globs of splattered blood on the camera lens in the finished film.

I’m not disputing this claim, but I’ve watched Ryan at least four or five times (twice theatrically, two or three times on Bluray) and I don’t remember any such globs or blood splatters sticking to the lens.

The first time I noticed this kind of unintended effect was in Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (‘06).

At first I figured I had forgotten the Saving Private Ryan lens splatter, but I went searching for either a YouTube clip or a frame capture of same, and found nothing…zip.

Does anyone recall such a moment in Spielberg’s film, and if so can the splatter effect be specifically described? And have they seen a video clip or frame capture that proves it actually happened?

Australian film critic David Stratton, justly admired for being a devotional Film Catholic and a Roger Ebert-like TV critic and (occasional) evangelist, has died at age 85.

Stratton was best known for the Australian film review show, At The Movies, which he co-hosted with Margaret Pomeranz for 28 years. He also reviewed for The Weekend Australian for over 30 years.

Did Stratton fully deserve Geoffrey Wright’s wine splash in the face at the Venice Film Festival for panning Romper Stomper? In my opinion, yes. Stratton didn’t even rate Wright’s film, citing pic’s depiction of racist violence and its potential to incite further unrest….what a pedestrian!

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In their just-published Esquire chit-chat (8.13), which is about promoting One Battle After Another (Warner Bros., 9.25), Leonardo DiCaprio says this to director Paul Thomas Anderson: “You’re considered a very art-house director. Would you call it that? What do you call it?”

Anderson: “Well, there’s no need to be insulting.”

DiCaprio: “No, what’s the term? You don’t do incredibly commercial movies, let’s put it that way. You are a writer, director. You have your own vision. What’s the term?”

Anderson: “Box-office challenged?”

HE translation: “Let’s face it — since Inherent Vice I’ve been red ink. Especially now in the case of One Battle After Another, which has dodged Venice and Telluride and is expected to more or less flop when it opens in late September. It cost a big pile of dough and, die-hard PTA mavens aside, nobody’s especially interested. Jordan Ruimy has declared it all but D.O.A. You can smell the lethargy in the social media chat threads.”

Anderson also delivers the best quote, which addresses the film’s theme as well as a general observation about getting older:

They also descend into nostalgia about beepers.

All I’m asking or hoping for is that the audience will be spared the default #MeToo trope, to wit: “The white middle-aged guy is odious, venal and reprehensible.”

Please don’t sink us into that fetid swamp yet again. Anything but that. Puhleeze.

Here’s Armond White’s full review of An Officer and a Spy, but I love his use of the term “dismissible embarassments” in the first sentence.

We all have stand-out, less-than-becoming physical traits of one kind or another. Myself included.

Way back when a girlfriend joked that I had “bird legs”…not my thighs as much as my calves. She wasn’t wrong. They’re also called stork legs. I was born with them…couldn’t do much about that. Still can’t.

You know who else had bird legs and didn’t feel good about it, and didn’t want to wear swimming trunks before movie cameras out of shame? Paul Newman. He admitted this once in an interview about The Drowning Pool (‘75), for which he was obliged to wade into a large Louisiana lake (or the Gulf of Mexico) during an Act Two scene.

The late Israeli actress Dalia Lavi clearly had bird legs.

So for myself, Newman and Lavi, a common trait was acknowledged.

In one of my 2024 Poor Things riffs I wrote that Emma Stone had “large, slender, shovel-like feet.” Was I blaming her for this? Of course not —just observing a physical fact. No biggie. Join the Greta Garbo club.

It’s a universal rule that actors and actresses and foot close-ups are a must-to-avoid. Directors never go there. Nobody wants to be tagged for having funny-looking or less-than-attractive feet, which applies 98% of the time. Man-peds…no!

If anyone ever comes up and says, “You’re no one to talk…you have bird legs, for God’s sake!”, my response will be “yup…guilty.”

Comment thread from “When Priggish Moral Standards Were At An All-Time High“, originally posted on 8.11.24:

The Rotten Tomatoes verdict on Scarlet Johansson‘s Eleanor The Great (Sony Picures Classics, 9.26) is “okay, it feels fairly conventional as a ‘what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive’ story, and it certainly could’ve been better, but it’s at least worth the price for June Squibb‘s lead performance. Not a winnning success, but not a failure either.”