Last night I re-watched Roger Donaldson‘s Thirteen Days, a generally absorbing drama about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I hadn’t seen this New Line release since it opened in 2000. By any fair standard it’s well done, fairly gripping, decently acted, tightly edited. I didn’t miss a line or a plot turn.

Based on “The Kennedy Tapes” and told from the perspective of President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Steven Culp) and appointments secretary Kenny O’Donnell (Kevin Costner), David Self‘s screenplay covers all of the particulars, and there are many scenes that I found riveting.

My favorite episode follows a low-altitude photo reconnaissance mission over Cuba by Navy pilot William Ecker (Christopher Lawford) and another fighter jock. Prior to leaving Ecker is ordered by O’Donnell to not get shot down, as such an event would force JFK to respond militarily, which would lead to war. Ecker understands what O’Donnell is saying and agrees to play the game.

He flies and snaps photos over Cuba and is strafed all to hell by Russian and Cuban bullets. Back at a U.S. air base, Ecker insists that the holes in the wings were caused by flying sparrows. When questioned by Air Force General Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway) about whether he was fired upon, Ecker says “it was a cakewalk, sir.”

Costner was a senior producer, and he used that leverage to amplify O’Donnell’s insignificant role during this complex political drama into that of a senior player, so he’d have a meatier role to play. (Or something like that.)

After seeing the film, Kennedy’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (very well played, incidentally, by Dylan Baker) said that O’Donnell “didn’t have any role whatsoever in the missile crisis…he was a political appointments secretary to the President…that’s absurd.”

The duties performed by O’Donnell in the film, McNamara said, were closer to the role Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen played during the actual crisis. McNamara: “It was not O’Donnell who pulled us all together…it was Sorensen.”

The only thing that really doesn’t work are the knowing or haunted or alarmed “looks” that the principal sympathetic players give each other. (And which are performed to help the chumps in the audience understand the concerns that these characters had at various junctures.) In actuality nobody gave anyone a “look” about anything during this crisis, trust me, because that would have conveyed emotional distress or vulnerability to any antagonist or disloyal participant in the room who happened to notice.

Greenwood is a particular problem in this regard because all he does for the most part is roll his eyes and glare daggers and sweat bullets when the notion of military conflict of any kind is discussed. You’re watching him go through the paces and you can’t help but think “this isn’t working…Greenwood just can’t bring it.”

The poor guy does a reasonably good job of handling JFK’s dialogue, so to speak, but he’s doomed by the fact that he’s unable to exude even a fraction of Kennedy’s preternatural cool and charisma — Greenwood is a good Canadian actor as far as it goes but JFK was a glam political superstar, and Greenwood just doesn’t have it.

Plus his JFK wig is way out of whack. How the makeup and hair people blew it this badly is astonishing. We all know what Kennedy’s thick auburn hair looked like with the brushed upsweep, and the Greenwood thatch doesn’t even resemble it. It’s like “what were they thinking?”

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To go by the trailer, Martin McDonagh‘s The Banshees of Inisherin (Searchlight, 10.21) is slight but interesting.

Boilerplate: “Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as two lifelong friends (Padraic and Colm) living in a remote Irish sea-fishing village. One day Colm ends the friendship, abruptly and like that, refusing to explain why to Padraic. Long-stifled emotions rise to the surface.”

Written and directed by McDonagh, whose credits include In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

The Banshees of Inisherine will debut at the Venice Film Festival on 9.4.22.

There doesn’t seem any way around dying. Well, actually there is. Like Kevin McCarthy‘s Walter Jameson, I could get lucky by meeting an alchemist who could give me immortality with a special mixture of something or other, and I could become a kind of mummy figure, like Boris Karloff‘s Kharis. (Or Imhotep…whatever.)

The idea of being online for centuries to come seems like heaven to me, and not just that but eternally travelling around on and sampling great foods and inhaling all of that magnificence, year in and year out. Not to mention all those great Italian shoes I could wear.

I never dwell upon death (it’ll happen when it happens…big deal). I’m not overjoyed about this, but moving on is darkly comforting in one respect at least. It will at least spare me the anguish of having to share the earth and particularly Twitter with certain odious life forms whose names I won’t mention. Everything in the universe is perfect in this respect — the worst people in the world (Millennials included!) will eventually transform into mulch. Yes, boys and girls — we will all one day be “equal”, in the William Makepeace Thackeray sense of that term.

I guess I’ve been touched by what happened to that poor older couple in Lafayette Park yesterday, I suppose. Tagged by lightning, over and out. Now that I think of it there’s probably something to be said for an absence of warning. JFK in Dallas, John Lennon at the Dakota.

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work — I want to achieve immortality by not dying.” — Woody Allen.

Suddenly, or since the Kansas abortion vote, the projected midterm wipeout of Democrats isn’t quite as assured. Dems are still going to take it in the neck, I’m presuming, because of DEI and attempts by progressive nutter teachers and the trans community to instruct soft-clay students (10 qnd under) about the alleged oppressions of the cis heirarchy, but average voter outrage over Supreme Court’s killing of Roe v. Wade has injected fresh energy and seemingly levelled the playing field.

N.Y. Times‘ Nate Cohn, posted on 8.4: “Tuesday’s resounding victory for abortion rights supporters in Kansas offered some of the most concrete evidence yet that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has shifted the political landscape. The victory, by a 59-41 margin in a Republican stronghold, suggests Democrats will be the energized party on an issue where Republicans have usually had an enthusiasm advantage.”

I don’t see what the big deal was about the Kansas abortion vote. Even in Kansas there are very few Average Joes & Janes who aren’t in favor of allowing women to choose abortion during the first 12 to 15 weeks. I was never personally comfortable with abortions happening towards the end of the second trimester (22 to 24 weeks, which is what Roe v. Wade allowed), but who cares what I think? Women’s right to choose is paramount.

From Mathew Belloni’s “What I’m Hearing” (8.4):

Imagine if the 45 year-old Seann William Scott (aka “Stifler”) had crowed about having impaled 200 women twenty years ago, due to the blessings of having costarred in American Pie and Dude, Where’s My Car? Scott would be instantly destroyed on Twitter, reviled as an immoral beast, roasted on a spit. If his career was still going great guns Scott would become the new Armie Hammer…off with his head!

And yet American Pie costar Jennifer Coolidge, the original MILF, “has won a legion of supporters after revealing that she slept with 200 people after the 1999 movie came out,” a Daily Mail story reports.

“Coolidge, 60, is receiving wild praise on the [Twitter] after she confessed that she has had sex with hundreds of partners thanks to her infamous role as Stifler’s mom in the comedy film over two decades ago.

“People on the web have now branded the actress as a ‘true icon,’ ‘hero,’ and ‘queen,’ for the revelation, with one claiming that they want to be her when they grow up and another asking her to run for president.”

81 year old Dick Cheney, who more than earned himself a reputation as American’s very own Darth Vader and even “the devil” during the Dubya years, has said something that I agree with. A broken clock tells the right time twice daily.

Jordan Ruimy has posted a list of the leading 21st Century American directors…you know, the ones with vision and chops and cojones to spare. Obviously defined as directors who broke through and became a brand during this century.

Here are two lists — the ones that I really believe in are on top, alphabetized and boldfaced — and all the others. 25 in all.

HE preferences: Ari Aster, Sean Baker, J.C. Chandor, Damien Chazelle, Alfonso Cuaron, Robert Eggers, Tony Gilroy, Alejandro G. Inarritu, Bennett Miller, Chris Nolan (10).

Ruimy respect & acknowledgment: The crazy Safdies, Jeff Nichols, Jeremy Saulnier, Jordan Peele, David Lowery, Barry Jenkins, David Robert Mitchell, Charlie Kaufman, Shane Caruth, Craig S. Zahler, Trey Edward Shults, Greta Gerwig, Eliza Hittman, Dee Rees, Mike Mills (15).

Who’s missing?

Joker: Folie a Deux alludes to the idea of madness shared by lovers or good friends…shared psychosis, shared delusional disorder (SDD). Joker + Lady Gaga as…who knows? Harley Quinn or someone else. Three weeks ago (7.12) World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted a possible outline of the basic plot…maybe.

Joker: Folie à Deux
10.04.24 pic.twitter.com/obp7T9lBFL

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) August 4, 2022

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…controls the relationship. Each and every time I’ve been submissively, ecstatically, head-over heels in love, it’s been agony. The women love the worship at first, but eventually they don’t respect it, and they’ll put you through hell as a form of discipline or punishment.

I was deeply in love (or deeply obsessed) with a very sexy woman around nine years ago, and I remember saying to her at one point, “You know what our relationship is about? Your moods. When your mood is cool, we’re cool. But when your mood goes somewhere else, it’s a briar patch.”

Every relationship levels out and loses the euphoria fumes sooner or later, and once that phase kicks in you’re in trouble. “Don’t worship me,” these women have more or less said to me. “Worship yourself, and if it’s real I’ll tune into it and become a fan. But don’t fucking worship me because most of the time I’m nothing but trouble, and if you want that you’ve come to the right place.”

Love less, be cool, feel your center, be Bhagavad Gita, be yourself. And if she doesn’t like that, fine.

Yesterday I posted about a photo of Malia Obama and a gangbanger cosplay companion, and titled it “Will You Look At This Guy?” The usual HE comment-thread bullshit prevailed, mainly accusing me of being grumpy and out of touch, etc. Bobby Peru wrote that “there’s nothing wrong with how [this guy] looks or what he is wearing, and to call him a ‘gangbanger’ is a cliche and says more about you than him. You really, really don’t want to be in this modern world (or with the people in it) anymore, do you?”

I responded within the thread, but for the sake of emphasis here’s HE’s front-page reply to Peru and the other piss-sprayers out there:

Don’t try to crap a crapper, Bobby Peru. I’ve been all around this great big world for decades and I’ve seen all kinds of garb. Life is choices and this guy is definitely projecting an allegiance with the mindset of Los Pelones. The Mexican mafia thing is his adoption or creation, not mine.

Whatever his actual social background or scholastic aspirations or core convictions or deep-down identity**, he’s saying that the sartorial guise of certain inner-city Latino dudes — shaved head, sandals, baggy pants, ugly K-Mart hoodie…his idea is to project a support of or a basic agreement with big-city youths who dress like this all the time.

It’s a bottom-of-the-social-barrel aesthetic — a form of play-acting or cosplay…and truly, deeply repellent.

Certain Zoomer dudes have been too sartorially consistent for this statement to be accidental.

There are all kinds of creative ways to convey a sense of style or to project some kind of flair or attitude or personality, and yet this guy is saying “I have seen low-rent, shaved-head Latino high-school youths on the bus in shitty areas of Miami or St. Louis or Oakland or East Los Angeles…guys with that shaved head thing, man…a shaved head and a K-Mart bargain basement mark-down aesthetic…the absolute ugliest threads ever worn in the history of human culture.

“And I’m choosing this K-Mart ugliness because it means something to me…I relate to the mindset and lifestyles of the social flotsam, the empty Coke bottles, dudes without a fucking clue or much of a developed mentality…obviously I have something on the ball or I wouldn’t be hanging with Malia but nonetheless I feel this kinship with the dregs of society…guys with shaved heads and tats and machismo but not much edge or taste…that’s me. I feel it, I get it, I embrace it.”

** His name is Dawit Eklund, and he’s 33 — 9 years older than Malia. Excerpt: “Eklund is the son of retired State Department officer Jon Eklund, 72, who worked at several US embassies in Africa and his Ethiopian wife Yeshi, 66. Dawit is co-founder of Washington, D.C.-based record label 1432 R, which specializes in Ethiopian music.”