The Way of Big Dough

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Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century, 12.16) will obviously dazzle — a handsome, epic-scaled, first-rate, beautifully designed action fantasy. But where are the real-deal organic elements? Jordan Ruimy: “Hate to say it, but it looks like a state-of-the-art video game.”

No organic Sam Worthington — just his Navi avatar. And the teaser cutters have decided against showing us the organic Sigourney Weaver (back from the dead), Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet and Cliff Curtis. Or will they be Navi’ed also?

Do I understand that the Navi can stay underwater as long as they want, like fish? Or do they have to hold their breath or what?

Avatar 2 has already made history as the oldest brand-new blockbuster ever. Portions of it are nearly five years old, principal photography having begun in August-September of 2017. Shooting concluded 16 months ago, in late September 2020.

I ask again — do you really want to see three more Avatar films after this one? Avatar 3, 4 and 5 will be released, respectively, on 12.20.24, 12.18.26 and 12.22.28.

Friendo: “The Avatar sequels are made for overseas.  They’ll do most of their business in Asia, India, Middle East, Europe.  Here?  I just think the novelty has worn off after…what, 13 years?”

Dearest Nancy

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Posted on 6.9.15: “Nancy Wells, my dear mom, passed Sunday night. She gave me everything — life, love, love of the arts (she turned me on to Peter Tchaikovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, John Updike, Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin…the list is infinite) and particularly love of theatre.

“She was the beating heart and balm of our family — 90% of the joy and spunk and laughter came from her, and she basically saved me and my brother and sister from my father’s alcoholic moodiness when we were young. (Not to diminish my dad’s influence too much — he gave me the writerly urge along with the barbed attitude, such as it is.) But I would have been dead without my mom’s emotional radiance and buoyancy.

“My mom loved show business, plays, films, music. She worked for NBC and BBC in the old days, acted in several plays in New Jersey (including Somserset Vaughn‘s The Constant Wife) and directed two or three plays at the Wilton Playshop. She was partnered in her own real-estate business in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

“She had been gradually slipping away for a couple of years (during my last visit in early May she didn’t even open her eyes). Now, at last, her peace is absolute.”


Right Back At Ya

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HE has always been about will and experience and egotism, about instincts and convictions and half-serious samurai values…the Nick Nolte as Ray Hicks kind, I mean. I once listened to a short speech by William S. Burroughs (delivered in Madison Square Garden) and I’ve never forgotten him saying that “some people are shits.” That goes double if not triple if you’re taking about the last four or five years…thanks, woke mafia!

HE, in short, feels like a never-ending series of “tells” (in the David Mamet sense of that term) and reviews and carvings and mood pockets, all dispensed from a moving train, and now and then (okay, semi-frequently) drawing the usual lashings and denigrations.

I’m not saying I’m incapable of being unfairly dismissive or blustery or asinine or too shoot-from-the-hip…I’ve occasionally gone there, and have been called out for said blunders (not to mention blinders) every damn time.

All that said and acknowledged, I was grateful yesterday to read the following, written by HE’s own Sasha Stone…yes, this is a humblebrag post. All I know is that it felt awfully nice to marinate in the warmth, exaggerated and emotionally biased as it may be, our being friends and all.

Has To Be Hardy

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HE has thought it all through and concluded that Tom Hardy, despite all his weird twitchy subcurrents, has to be the next James Bond. Because he’s rough stuff and perhaps even a bit of a madman. I’ll understand if the all-knowing, all-seeing 007 franchise caretaker Barbara Broccoli decides against Hardy, but he’s still meaner and more brutish than Henry Cavill, and the Bridgerton guy — Rege-Jean Page — is too flash–in–the–panny.

Copied from 5.7.22 Express story by Stefan Kiriayzis:

Free Man in Paris, On Mescaline

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Originally posted on 8.19.15: “But Tony, with his impulsiveness and selfishness…he’s locked up in that fucking head of his.” — Junior Soprano (Dominic Chianese) in “The Knight in White Satin Armor,” the 25th Sopranos episode and twelfth of season #2, originally aired on 4.2.00.

When I first heard this line I laughed, and then I asked myself to what extent it applies to Scott Foundas or myself or George Clooney or Alejandro G. Inarritu or whomever.

I like to think of myself as a free man in Paris who’s just dropped a tab of mescaline, but the unfortunate truth is that I’m probably “locked up” as much as Tony Soprano or anyone else ever was. It doesn’t feel good to admit this, but it’s probably true.

I know that I’m theoretically open to the concept of an emotional and psychological jailbreak, and that I live for that possibility on a daily basis. I could name a lot of journalists in my circle who are totally locked up (or more precisely locked down) but what would that accomplish?

I know that the line struck me as hilarious when I first heard it, and I’m chuckling at it right now.

“Elvis” Hanks Is A Huge Bear

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The sudden eruption of publicly-witnessed female sexuality in the mid ’50s…we get it. The damp, vulgar, pelvic-region kind. Which is why so many thousands of conservative-minded viewers of Elvis Presley‘s first-ever televised performance on The Milton Berle Show (4.3.56) wrote in to say how appalled and even horrified they were.

“Don’t Be A Grain Perv, Man”

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Earlier today HE commenter Patrick Juvet wrote the following: “Robert Harris knows the difference between genuine film grain and video noise, which you don’t. All of your rants against ‘digital mosquitos’ were often aimed at Sony transfers done by Grover Crisp‘s people — transfers that allowed all of the natural film grain to shine through (more than it would have in a film print ) and were praised to the skies by Mr. Harris in his reviews.”

HE reply: “Did you just say the Sony transfers ‘allowed all of the natural film grain to shine through’ and even ‘more than it would have in a film print’? Did you just say that?

“FILM GRAIN HAS NEVER SHINED THROUGH…EVER. Film grain is a visual affliction that classic-era dps were forced to finesse as best they could. It was a pestilence. If Gregg Toland could have made grain disappear by clapping his hands three times, he would have clapped his hands three times…TRUST ME!

“There has never been anything the least bit glorious or edifying or transcendent about film grain. It’s cinematic fog. (Not that there’s anything wrong with fog if you’re Fritz Lang and you’re shooting Manhunt with Walter Pidgeon. The London scenes, I mean.)

“Film grain is built into the image so it’s wrong to try and erase the stuff, but anyone who advocates for more film grain to show up on a Bluray of a classic film than the amount that was naturally visible to theatrical audiences is a grain perv…they have something psychologically wrong with them, I mean.

“And theatrical audiences of the ’30s, 40s and ’50s, by the way, weren’t clobbered with the stuff. The idea of film grain ‘shining through’ on home video more than it did in theatres is repugnant. It’s sick. You and people like you are like FOOT FETISHISTS, only it’s grain that turns you on, not the shape of women’s toes and the shade of their nail polish.”

Is Carey Fukanaga Being Ansel Elgort-ed?

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Read this story (dated May 5th) about a somewhat “close”, flirtatious but mostly hands-off relationship between director Cary Fukunaga (No Time To Die) and Hannah and Cailin Loesch, hosts of #Double Talk (aka @loeschtwins).

Over the last day or two there have been twitter conversations about whether or not Fukunaga should be punished for…well, it’s a little vague. For possibly attempting to groom the Loesch sisters into something or other…maybe a casual ménage a trois relationship….you tell me. Except nothing actually happened.

What does it mean to be Ansel Elgort-ed? It means being targeted by Twitter assassins as a sexual bad guy of some sort without any sort of hard evidence to back up the half-assed allegations. All I can say is that there seem to be some real monsters out there.