A fascinating hypothesis from sex & intimacy expert Shan Boodram to Bill Maher at 2:23 mark: “If somebody said to me ‘if there are 100 men that you are physically attracted to, how many of those would you have sex with?'”

Imagined HE response: The initial answer is “the wealthy funny ones who seem to have a soul.” The second answer is “you know going in that most men won’t stand up to any kind of serious emotional or psychological scrutiny…one way or another 75% to 80% will disqualify themselves by just talking…by focusing mostly on themselves or failing to be sufficiently gracious or show sufficient respect to the woman or whatever.”

To borrow from Lawrence Kasdan‘s Body Heat, “With grade-A, quality-level, creme de la creme women there are 50 different ways you can fuck up, and if you can think of 35 of them in advance you’re a genius.”

Of the remaining 20% or 25% of the men who seem smart and palatable and emotionally secure with a little dough in the bank, half will eliminate themselves with some kind of obsessive quirk thing…a pet rhesus monkey, being a workaholic, smart-phone obsessed, being a sports fanatic or a terrible dresser or…whatever, wearing plaid pants.

Maher response: “Great question for a woman. And here’s a bit: I’ve never known a woman who hasn’t shared some version of this story. ’I met a promising guy…’oh, he’s cute, seems hopeful, doesn’t look like a psycho’, and then he opened his mouth and I lost interest’. Every woman has a version of that story, and no men [do].”
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Here’s the full hour-long discussion.

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Artist Hank Willis Thomas obviously isn’t stupid. He knew that “The Embrace,” his recently unveiled Martin Luther King-Coretta Scott King sculpture, would be derided by the meat-and-potatoes crowd as an image of four hands and arms gripping a giant brown schlong or resting upon a huge turd.

Literalists are always voicing the same beef — “this work of art isn’t literal enough!”

Then again why did he create a 19-ton sculpture that looks like four hands and arms gripping a giant schlong, etc.? HWT knows the game. He knows that the proletariat masses always have the final say.

At 70 Liam Neeson seems too far along to play a certain legendary shamus in Neil Jordan’s forthcoming Marlowe. (Open Road, 2.15).

In two previous films Phillip Marlowe (described by novelist-creator Raymond Chandler as early 30ish in the mid 1930s) has been depicted as spiffily middle-aged. Humphrey Bogart was a fit 45 when he made Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (‘46). The dashing James Garner was 40 or 41 (but looked younger) when he made Marlowe (‘69).

Robert Mitchum, on the other hand, seemed a little too creased and weathered when he made Farewell, My Lovely (‘75) in his late 50s, and more so when he returned as Marlowe in Michael Winner’s Big Sleep remake (‘78)

This said, Neeson appears to have been digitally de-aged in Marlowe. That or my eyes deceive.

I didn’t say what this bespectacled neckbeard says I said. I didn’t say that the only people who swear by EEAAO are those “who go to the movies.” I said this infuriating film has no friends outside the hermetic realm of Millennials and Zoomers.

…as to actually write about Glen Powell having over-exerted himself during the celebrated Top Gun: Maverick beach football scene? And then having the audacity to call it “breaking news”? Can you imagine?

Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike — that Hollywood Elsewhere would never, ever write such a thing.

Some kind of Jeff Bridges career reel was presumably shown during last weekend’s Critics Choice awards, prior to Bridges accepting his Life Achievement trophy. I didn’t see it, but I’m going to assume that the CC montage didn’t get it right.

Bridges’ most robust career phase was a 13-year stretch between Peter Bogdanovich‘s The Last Picture Show (’71) and Hal Ashby‘s 8 Million Ways To Die (’84). These were the super-quality years — the rest of his career enjoyed an occasional highlight (’98’s The Big Lewbowski, ’09’s Crazy Heart, etc.) but yard by yard and dollars to donuts, the ’70s and early ’80s delivered the most hey-hey.

The Bogdanovich and Ashby aside, the best of Bridges’ 13-year run included John Huston‘s Fat City (’72), Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero (’73), John Frankenheimer‘s The Iceman Cometh (’73), Frank Perry‘s Rancho Deluxe (’75), Bob Rafelson‘s Stay Hungry (’76), Ivan Passer‘s Cutter’s Way (’81) and Taylor Hackford‘s Against All Odds (’84).

If you ask me Hero and Hungry are the most exciting and infectious.

Fuck Starman — I hated Bridges’ stoned alien dumbbell expression.

Fuck Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Fuck the overpraise, I mean, It’s just a Clint Eastwood caper flick, for Chrissakes. Bridges had a death scene — big deal.

Hated Fearless for the most part. I found Bridges’ performance pointlessly brooding, intensely self-absorbed and non-communicative. Wake the fuck up, will you? You were spared from death & given a second lease and all you can do is live in your zone and stare into the distance?

In a 1.15.23 Variety piece about epic film disasters (or the kind of woeful misfires that only talented directors are capable of making), Owen Gleiberman delivers a perfect description:

“You sit down to watch a movie by a director whose work you love. He’s swinging for the fences. His ambition is on full display and so, in fits and spurts, is his talent. Yet something else is on display too: a lack of judgment that starts out like a worm, wriggling through the proceedings, before growing and metastasizing until it’s eating everything in its path.”

Besides Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon, Gleiberman’s examples include Francis Ford Coppola‘s One from the Heart, Steven Spielberg‘s 1941, Martin Scorsese‘s New York, New York, David Lynch‘s Wild at Heart, Steven Soderbergh‘s Kafka, Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Zabriskie Point, Baz Luhrmann‘s Australia.

HE feels that Oliver Stone‘s most calamitous, worm-consumed film by far is Heaven & Earth.

Director-writer friendo (three days ago): “Many of us in the comedy community are happy for the Velma backlash as Mindy Kaling is considered the ultimate example of a woke comedian. An HBO Max wokey Scooby-Doo failure warming the cockles on my heart.”

Critical Drinker (3:12): Velma “may actually be one of the most repulsive, creatively bankrupt, nasty, mean-spirited and reprehensibly terrible things I’v=ve ever watched in my entire life.”

Last night I finally streamed Romain Gavras‘ Athena, a dynamically shot urban warfare flick that’s almost entirely consumed by fury, racism, urgency, constant shouting, explosions, flames and velocity. It’s another film in the vein of Ladj Ly‘s brilliant Les Miserables (’19), or, if you will, another example of “cinema de banlieue”, the first of which was Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (’95). But I quickly tuned out of Athena — too loud and unyielding, too relentless, too ferocious, too much of an onslaught. First-rate tech — excellent cinematography and choreography — but I began to feel bored with 10 or 15 minutes. I stuck in out to the end, but I needed dramatic nourishment so I re-watched Emily the Criminal (my second time). Hit the spot.

…with a man and a woman realizing that death is imminent and about to enfold them, and that they’re powerless to stop it? Not a solitary figure, mind, but a couple — romantically linked, father and daughter, anything along those lines.

Last night I was watching the end of Kurt Neumann‘s Rocketship X-M (’50), and that concludes with Lloyd Bridges and Osa Massen staring out of a porthole window as their rocketship plummets to a crash landing.

There’s Mimi Leder‘s Deep Impact ’98), in which TV anchor Tea Leoni and estranged father Maximillian Schell stand on a beach as a half-mile-high tidal wave approaches at 1000 mph.

The last few seconds of Arthur Penn‘s Bonnie and Clyde (’67), just before the posse start firing as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway gaze at each other for the last time.

Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (’59), of course, with two emotionally entwined couples (Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson) facing either slow radiation death or suicide.

Paul Greengrass‘s United 93 doesn’t count as none of the doomed passengers are portrayed as emotionally linked, or at least none with dialogue.

Which others?