Why does it seem as if the furies are constantly swarming down upon poor Haiti? Every time you turn around the country is taking it in the neck. Earthquakes, assassinations, hurricanes, Covid 19, criminal gangs, poverty. No sooner does the populace survive and start to weakly recover from one devastating tragedy when another one comes along. The only thing that hasn’t happened to Haiti is an attack by Kaiju monsters.

1297 Haitians are confirmed dead after a 7.2 earthquake rocked the Les Cayes district of Haiti (southwest peninsula) on Saturday morning…”officials in Les Cayes believe there are only about 30 doctors for about 1 million people“…c’mon, man.

N.Y. Times: “[This is a] devastating blow to a country that is still reeling from a presidential assassination last month and that never recovered from a disastrous quake more than 11 years ago. The recovery was being conducted as a tropical storm approaches and in the throes of a political crisis since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7.

“The unsolved assassination, a leadership vacuum, severe poverty and systemic gang violence in parts of Haiti, a Caribbean nation of 11 million people, have left the government dysfunctional and ill prepared for a natural calamity.

“The main supermarket and smaller food and supply markets in Les Cayes collapsed, leaving about half a million people with dwindling supplies and worries that eventually there would be looting and fighting over basics like drinking water. The quake snapped the underground pipes of Les Cayes, causing flooding, and triggering some landslides, blocking the main road into Jeremie and complicating relief efforts there.

“Many hospitals and clinics were heavily damaged, and officials in Les Cayes believe there are only about 30 doctors for about 1 million people.

“Herve Foucand, a former senator, was using his small propeller plane to ferry people to Haiti’s capital. ‘I have 30 people in serious condition waiting for me,’ he said. ‘But I only have seven seats.'”

“Small towns surrounding Les Cayes were cut off by landslides and are believed to be even harder hit.”

Surely there are a few HE regulars who’ve seen Sian Heder‘s CODA (Apple TV+) over the last couple of days, and are willing to be honest and modify the enthusiasm levels a bit. The critics have gone apeshit for this film, and yet as agreeable and nicely handled as it is, CODA is not my idea of a a 96% Rotten Tomato score. The Metacritic community has given it a more appropriate 75% score.

As far as it goes, CODA is a pleasing, well-made family drama. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of film. It’s just not triple-A level, and that’s not a putdown — it’s merely a qualification.

Peter Rainer: “As effective as it is — and it is an effective tearjerker — it does go down the checklist of things to push your buttons on. It’s almost like a really well-designed Broadway show.”

The Telegraph‘s Tim Robey: “Sian Heder’s film [reduces] far too many of the family dynamics to the level of a bickering sitcom. The film is also obsessed to a fatuous degree with how much hilariously loud and vigorous sex her parents have. The film is way too busy playing things cute.”

“CODA especially suffers because of its release four months after Darius Marder’s tremendous Sound of Metal, a genuinely adventurous, formally experimental take on deaf issues which was also directed, written by and principally starred hearing individuals.”

Update from MSNBC’s Richard Engel: “This city is bracing for a Taliban takeover…the city has collapsed…there is no security…there are signs of looting…a woman’s hair salon is tearing down or painting over posters of women with [upscale] hair styles.”

Earlier: We always knew that when U.S. troops finally leave Afghanistan, a terrible massacre would follow. Joe Biden knew this all along, and of course is bearing the psychological burden of having decided to pull up stakes. Everyone understands the likelihood of coming carnage. Nobody wants to think about it, but there it is all the same.

The Taliban ran Afghanistan with absolute Sharia Law brutality for five years (’96 to ’01). Massacres of Afghan civilians, public whippings and executions, denying UN food supplies to starving civilians, the burning of fertile lands, cultural genocide (banning of paintings, photography, movies, music), preventing women from attending school and working in public places, and requiring women to be accompanied by a male relative and wearing a burqa at all times in public.

In October 2001, a month or so after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and routed the Taliban regime. Taliban forces fled to Pakistan. We’ve been in Afghanistan for just shy of 20 years now, knowing each and every day that we couldn’t win in the end, and that sooner or later all outside invaders retreat to their own shores. We never accomplished anything more than a stalemate situation. U.S. troop levels went way up during the first five years of the Obama administration (’10 and ’11 were the peaks) and to no end.

According to a Brown University study posted on 11.13.19, the U.S. had spent around $978 billion in Afghanistan (including expenditures earmarked for the 2020 fiscal year). The same report says the total expenditure for all anti-terrorist defense campaigns in the Middle East since ’01 comes to $6.4 trillion.

And now, with U.S. forces pulling out for good, Taliban forces are already occupying the vast majority of the country with Kabul sure to fall by sometime very soon. Life will be nothing short of hellish for Afghan women and their children.

How many tens of thousands of South Vietnamese were killed by North Vietnamese forces after Saigon fell in April ’75? How many tens of thousands of Afghan citizens will be put to death when the Taliban takeover is complete?

George Clooney‘s The Tender Bar (Amazon), a boozy proletariat community relationship flick (Manhasset) with a father-son, male-role-model current, will presumably begin streaming sometime in the mid-to-late fall season. Ben Affleck, Tye Sheridan, Chris Lloyd and Lily Rabe topline.

I’ll never touch another drop for the rest of my life, but every now and then (and I mean rarely) I’ll say to myself “I kind of miss that warm, boozy, half-in-the-bag camaraderie…stroll into a bar, bend the elbow, get a buzz-on,” etc. But not that much.

Review excerpt of same–titled book: “A Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, J.R. Moehringer” — played by Sheridan in the film — “grew up fatherless in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York, in a ramshackle house crammed with cousins and ruled by an eccentric, unkind grandfather (Chris Lloyd).

“Desperate for a paternal figure, he turns to his Uncle Charlie (Affleck), and subsequently, Uncle Charlie’s place of employment — a bar called Dickens that soon takes center stage.

Publishers Weekly: “You needn’t be a writer to appreciate the romance of the corner tavern or, for that matter, of the local dive in a suburban strip mall.

“But perhaps it does take a writer to explain the appeal of these places that ought to offend us on any number of levels…[such as] what would we do without them, and what would we do without the companionship of fellow pilgrims whose journey through life requires the assistance of a drop or two?

“More than anything else, Moehringer’s book is a homage to the culture of the local pub. That’s where young J.R. seeks out the companionship of male role models in place of his absent father, where he receives an education that has served him well in his career and where, inevitably, he looks for love, bemoans its absence and mourns its loss.

“Moehringer grew up in Manhasset, a place, he writes, that ‘believed in booze.’ At a young age, he became a regular — not a drinker, of course, for he was far too young. But while still tender of years, he was introduced to the culture, to the companionship and — yes — to the romance of it all.

“‘Everyone has a holy place, a refuge, where their heart is purer, their mind clearer, where they feel close to God or love or truth or whatever it is they happen to worship. For young J.R., that place was a gin mill on Plandome Road where his Uncle Charlie was a bartender and a patron.

“The Tender Bar‘s emotional climax comes after its native son has found success as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. On September 11, 2001, almost 50 souls who lived and loved in Moehringer’s home town of Manhasset were killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. One was a bartender we’ve met along the way. Another was one of the author’s cousins.

“Moehringer’s lovely evocation of an ordinary place filled with ordinary people gives dignity and meaning to those lost lives, and to his own.”

The other day HE commenter Manwe Sulimo asked what had happened to Channing Tatum. The 41-year-old actor hasn’t been in a noteworthy live-action film since Logan Lucky, which opened on 8.18.17.

Four years of flatlining is a long time. It would be one thing if Tatum had been out of circulation due to working on some big, classy prestige project. But his recent credits indicate more of an interest in popcorn realms.

Tatum has been delving into directing and producing over the last three or four. On 2.18.22 Dog (UA Releasing), a comedy that Tatum co-directed (along with Reid Carolin), produced and starred in, will open in some capacity.

Two months after that Tatum will be costarring with Sandra Bullock in The Lost City of D, a “cutthroat jungle adventure” from co-directors Aaron and Adam Nee. Tatum and Carolin are also producers on Spaceman, a sci-fi drama with Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano.

The present-tense bottom line is that Tatum apparently sees himself more as a behind-the-cameras creative than a leading-man actor. Cue career review assessments. For my money Tatum’s two best roles were in Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire (’11) and Magic Mike (’12).

…that last night’s Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa. was NOT played on the modest-sized, cornfield-flanked diamond that sits next to Ray Kinsella‘s (Kevin Costner‘s) Iowa farmhouse — built for the 1989 cult film, and which still stands and thrives today as a tourist attraction.

Last night’s game was played at a nearby (500 feet away) baseball field called the MLB at Field of Dreams, also cornfield-flanked but with stadium seating for 8000 people, according to both Fox Sports and The Sporting News.

In a pre-game press conference, Costner called Field of Dreams “the perfect little movie…the climax, rather than a big car chase, was ‘do you wanna have a catch?'”

Due respect but not quite. Field of Dreams was and is “a perfect little movie,” agreed, but it didn’t end with a father (Dwier Brown‘s John Kinsella) and son playing catch. If it HAD ended with the catch, Field wouldn’t be half the legendary perennial it’s become.

Field of Dreams ends, in fact, with a nighttime helicopter shot of a long stream of cars, lined up on a nearby road leading up to the Costner farmhouse. That shot of…what, 200 cars waiting to see the field and bask in those Shoeless Joe Burt Lancaster vibes…THAT’s what sold the film.

Without that line of cars, without that irrefutable evidence of what people want and need and long for in their lives, the film would’ve basically been a nice pipe dream.

Friendo: “To each his own, but every time Costner says ‘hey, dad, wanna have a catch?’, that chokes me up. That’s the film for me. The line of cars is just icing on the cake.”

HE to Friendo: “I never had a catch with my dad so it doesn’t get me as much. And in a broader sense sentiment doesn’t travel — it doesn’t expand or deepen. It always diminishes over time. Just ask John Ford and Steven Spielberg and the directors of The Bishop’s Wife and A Guy Named Joe. The only sentimental ending that never fails to get me is the Warren Beatty-Julie Christie ending of Heaven Can Wait, and for the worst of reasons.”

Friendo to HE: “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

Fred Zinneman‘s Day of the Jackal (’73) is one of my all–time favorite docu–thrillers, yet I somehow missed this Special Edition Arrow Bluray when it popped three years ago. The quality of the jacket cover is a keeper in itself — it’s rare when original Bluray art improves this significantly upon the original materials.

My first association was Charles Laughton‘s Quasimodo; my second was Pietro Annigoni‘s JFK portrait.

But you know what? Eff this effing movie and the Arrow Bluray it rode in on. Because only head-in-the-sand types pay attention to ’70s movies in the first place. Just ask the HE comment buzzards — all that matters is the streaming of agreeable, adult-angled, mezzo-mezzo longform angel food cake. Get with the program, and enough with the cranky.

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