Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) began his bomb-defusing career under the tutelage of Sid Buckland (Freddie Jones) during the London blitz of the early 1940s. Defusing one German bomb after another was an extremely difficult task, and I would imagine that dealing with possible sudden death over and over would result in a profound bond between Buckland and Fallon.

And yet when they conferred at the very end of Juggernaut and Fallon’s life depended on his snipping the right wire (red or blue), Buckland tells Fallon to cut the blue wire, which would blow him to pieces?

I’ve never believed that. Buckland is a bitter, enraged fellow who hates the bloodless Whitehall bureaucracy, yes, and yet after he and Fallon were nearly killed in ’40 or ’41 when a bomb they were working on ignited in their vicinity, Buckland dragged the wounded Fallon out of the rubble. Because he was a human being, and presumably still is.

Which is why the climax of this 1974 Richard Lester film, though obviously suspenseful, doesn’t quite work.

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15, 16 years ago, man…time rushes along.

At best I was mixed on Slumdog Millionaire during the 2009/’10 Oscar season. I was 40% admiring and 60% annoyed, but I knew it wouldn’t do to make a fuss. So I had to sit there and take it for six damn months. In that sense it was a long Oscar season. Haven’t watched it since, will never watch it again.

Posted on 11.30.08: “How can anyone watch Slumdog and not be down with Jamal’s enormous dignity, strength of spirit and intelligence? And I understand (or think that I do) that Jamal’s life story is primarily a device that allows Boyle to dramatize the evolution of Mumbai chaos-culture over the past 15 or 20 years.

“But I just can’t believe that a kid who’s been subjected to such relentless cruelty and brutality his entire life — slapped, beaten, exploited, betrayed, booted, whipped, shat upon and made to suffer like a homeless dog day after day, year after year — would end up with this much patience and resolve and focus. Treat an actual dog like this and he’ll be incapable of showing anything but his teeth.

“Nor did I believe that the beautiful Freida Pinto‘s Latika wouldn’t be soiled and corrupted by her upbringing also, or that she’d stay emotionally loyal to and in love with Jamal through thick and thin. Things change, people grow up and move on, life is hard, get what you can, and nobody will save you but yourself. I know, I know…surrender to it, believe in love.

“But the cruelty in this film is relentless. Ugly behavior reigns during the first two acts. Except for the cop (Irfan Khan) who interrogates Jamal throughout the film, nearly every male character in Slumdog Millionaire is a cutthroat Fagin or Artful Dodger.

“And all through Slumdog I was muttering to myself how much I hate the Mumbai overload — the poverty, the crowding, the noise, the garbage landscapes, the public outhouses, the ugly high rises…the whole squalid cornucopia. I’ve never been especially interested in visiting urban India, but Slumdog settled things once and for all. If someone slips me a first-class Air India ticket from JFK to Mumbai, I’m trading it in for passage to Vietnam or China or Kampuchea or Katmandu.”

Fuck the identity police. Ambitious, high-end directors can and should make any movie they want — any subject, any viewpoint — regardless of their identity or the identity of the characters.

It is HE’s opinion that 28 Years Later director Danny Boyle is a little pussy for having said otherwise. Just like Tom Hanks was a pussy for saying in ’22 that straight guys shouldn’t play gay

Am I saying therefore that it would’ve been okay if Norman Jewison had directed a Malcom X biopic 30-plus years ago instead of Spike Lee? No — that would’ve been too much of a stretch. But that was back in the early ’90s. Identity is a much bigger, more oppressive deal now.

“Vise Grip of Authentic Identity Casting,” posted on 7.10.22: 25 days ago the world-famous Tom Hanks, an industry A-lister for 35 years and a 65 year-old boomer looking to project an acceptance of the present, was quoted saying the following to the New York Times:

“Let’s address ‘could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now?’ No, and rightly so. The whole point of Philadelphia was don’t be afraid. One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy. It’s not a crime, it’s not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity.”

Hanks’ Philadelphia character, Andy Beckett, a hotshot attorney working for a powerful Philly law firm, was professionally closeted but otherwise “out” as far as his family, nocturnal lifestyle and loft-sharing boyfriend (Antonio Banderas) were concerned. And if Jonathan Demme’s 1993 film were to be remade today, Andy would have to be played by a gay actor, Hanks seems to believe — no ifs, ands or buts. (He’d also have to be totally out, most likely.)

But what about Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein in the currently filming Maestro?

Bernstein was a gay man, and living a life not unlike Andy Beckett’s — publicly and professionally closeted, and accomodating himself to a “beard” marriage to Felicia Montealegre (whom he genuinely loved and with whom he had three kids) to further his career. But first, foremost and finally, in the words of Arthur Laurents, Bernstein was “a gay man who got married…he wasn’t conflicted about his sexual orientation at all…he was just gay.”

So if Andy Beckett was basically Leonard Bernstein and vice versa, will the authentic identity casting fascists be complaining next year that the apparently straight Cooper shouldn’t be playing the esteemed composer of West Side Story? Hanks has called this a settled issue — no more high-profile straight actors playing gay guys because “we’ve beyond that now” and the public is entitled to “demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity.”

It is HE’s view, of course, that the “authentic identity casting fascists” are insane, and that gifted actors should be allowed to play anyone they want as long as they can pull it off, and that includes Hanks as Beckett, Hugh Grant as Maurice, Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, William Hurt as the gay inmate in Kiss of the Spider Woman, Heath Ledger as Ennis del Mar and even Laurence Olivier as “the Mahdi” in Khartoum and Orson Welles as Othello. But that’s me.

…I’d rather not die this way. Flame-broiled as my fellow hot-air-balloon adventurers and I fall faster and faster towards slam-shriek-doom. Almost as bad as jumping from the World Trade Center. And yet only eight people were killed while 13 survived. It happened in a tourist region of southern Brazil — Praia Grande, a municipality in the state of Santa Catarina — when a hot-air balloon caught fire and crashed to the ground.

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“Everyone makes fun of Florida. Florida has a bad reputation. But think about it. There are 23 million people in Florida, but is it fair to judge 23 million people because of the behavior of 21 million people?” — Dave Barry during last night’s Real Time Overtime segment.

I laughed right away even though I didn’t get the joke. Can someone please explain it? Most Floridians are dismissive rightwing scumbags…don’t say gay…something like that?

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Is Barbie the supreme post-#MeToo architect of white-guy-despising or white-guy-pitying cinema? Which isn’t to say, of course, that white-male behaviors haven’t generally warranted enormous enmity and condemnation over the centuries. Too many men are dogs, animals, wolves, brutes. We all know this.

Then again when, you could also note or at least ask, have older white guys not played proverbial villains? But over the last decade or so leftist Hollywood ideology has steadily and persistently maintained that older white guys are the main bringers of toxicity, venality, ignorance, arrogance and immaturity. Call them a basic proverbial problem afflicting everyone and everything — a “theme” that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

And yet the persistence and dependability factors alone naturally reduce dramatic engagement — how could they not?

There are two major films opening later his year in which — in script form, at least — a deceptive, two-faced white guy is revealed to have behaved like a sexual scumbag, and is in fact a ground-zero shithead. You’ll know them when they open. How many have there been since ’15 or thereabouts?

A bit less than three months ago (3.26) I sent $2K and change to Tommaso, my Dorsoduro-residing Airbnb host. That was the tab for 13 days in his spacious one-bedroom apartment (8.25 thru 9.7) during the Venice Film Festival.

It was all locked in — no worries, not too pricey, friendly messages from Tommaso and his dad, Valentino, etc. And a really nice neighborhood.

Yesterday (6.19) I asked Tommaso about the two beds, and he replied as follows around midnight:

Roughly nine hours ago Airbnb told me Tommaso had cancelled the booking. My Citibank app said Airbnb had sent a full refund — the money will be liquid and usable on Tuesday, 6.24. The fuck?

Nearly three months of soothing Tomasso vibes, and suddenly I was Joe Pesci in his final Goodfellas scene…pop and flop.

Tommaso may have blown me off because somebody offered him more dough for the place. If so, that was unethical, shitty, inconsiderate, dishonorable…all of that stuff.

I immediately reserved another place on VRBO, a little smaller but close to the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop and oh, yeah..,about $900 more expensive than Tommasso’s rental.

You fucked me in the ass, Tommaso. Left me high and dry. Uncool, dude…you cost me and it hurts.

HE to vast int’l readership: Beware of Tommaso!

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Why doesn’t Greenwich Entertainment announce a distribution plan for Michael Franco‘s Dreams? Why don’t they firm up a release date, release a trailer, etc.? Franco is one of the most interesting major-league directors out there right now, and I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to just watch summer crap movies between now and the Venice Film Festival. Hubba-hubba.

I’m trying to think of an urban territory that exudes more deep-down misery than the shitty parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Dull tenement buildings, miles and miles of gloom…cornucopias of character-free, hand-me-down ugliness.

I’ve roamed around the boring, dull-as-dishwater outskirts of many European cities (Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona, Geneva, Belgrade), and while these regions are rarely what any visitor would call intriguing or delightful or agreeably colorful, none feel as culturally gutted or meaningless as downmarket Brooklyn or Queens (East Midwood, Bensonhurst, Canarsie, East Flatbush, Brownsville, South Ozone Park).

What a ghastly proposition for a resident of these nabes to stand on a streetcorner and look around and say, “Yup, this is it…I”ll be spending the rest of my life here.”

[Previously paywalled] This morning on Facebook Michael McDaniel passed along a conversation he had with AI Writer about Bill Forsyth‘s Local Hero. He asked the software which character is the actual “local hero” of the title. The AI said it was eccentric, beach-dwelling Ben (Fulton McKay)

“Wise old Ben is the only Ferness resident person who refuses to sell his land to Knox Oil and Gas. Ben is a symbol of the old way of life, and represents the values of community and tradition — a reminder that there is more to life than money, and that some things that are worth more than oil,” blah blah.

HE dispute: “Ben is an eccentric old coot who doesn’t care about anything but his own notion of basics — living in his beach hut, having enough to eat and enough firewood to keep warm with — and he certainly believes in his own theology. Ben believes, quite properly, in the stars and tides and eternity and sand granules. He’s the soul of this half-mystical film — the sardonic, good-natured fool on the beach who allegedly grasps the whole cosmic equation.

“But that little handful-of-sand trick he plays on Peter Reigert‘s MacIntyre is a tiny bit cruel. On top of which Ben is obviously complacent and calm about depriving the residents of Ferness of a huge payday that will make their lives much more comfortable and secure. Ben is not morally wrong in his priorities, but he’s also a bit of a shit. There’s certainly nothing heroic about the guy.

“Local Hero is not Ben’s story, of course, but the story of MacIntyre’s spiritual awakening. As the film begins Reigert is a brusque Houston oil executive, ‘a telex man,’ no girlfriend and no pet, skimming along and not especially bothered or moved by anything or anyone. But at the end ‘Mac’ is a changed man. For the first time in his adult life he’s begun to feel strong emotions about fundamental things, and has fallen in love with Jennifer Black‘s Stella, a married Ferness woman, and at the very end he’s rocked by heartbreak.

“Local Hero delivers one of the saddest ending of any movie, ever. But it’s moving for that.”

Facebook’s Rex Gordon: “I don’t recognize the movie that the AI watched. There is no evidence that Ben is kind or generous. He shows no traits that represent ‘the values of community’; he’s a loner who keeps himself apart from the community (the type who only has one cup for visitors. He obviously knows the stars and tides, but there’s no other evidence that he’s wise. I can’t think of a scene in which he helps anybody else, although he helps himself to more than his share of food at the cèilidh. The community hates his stubborn refusal to sell the beach. But Ben is “a reminder that there is more to life than money and things worth more than oil.”

Facebook’s Derek Davidson: “At least the AI gave a thoughtful answer. This has me thinking what does it actually mean by hero anyway? Hero to who? I assume all the town are still taking their buy out anyway to make way for the observatory? If it’s Gordon, is he hero for selling the town out? We see Mac (presumably) calling in the end. In one year, will any of those people in town even be there to return to? Gordon and Stella I assume will move away… it’s not such a happy conclusion, even if it’s not strictly an Knox Oil site.”

Upon reading last night’s 28 Years Later pan and particularly a money paragraph that called Danny Boyle‘s newbie “the filthiest, emptiest, most repellent and nihilistic film of this sort…almost certainly the most physically disgusting film of any kind that I’ve ever seen in my life”, HE commenter “Tomosophy” called this “huge praise…exactly what I want from this kind of film.”

He will therefore “definitely be seeing this in a theatre,” he added.

Either Tomosophy was being flagrantly insincere or was flaunting his perversity for egoistic reasons…showing off for the commentariat. Or he’s simply one sick fuck. Because 99% of moviegoers (i.e., the sane ones) don’t want to wallow in miserableism, which is definitely what 28 Years Later is selling.

I’m the kind of guy who can laugh joyously at lines like “I wish I was in hell with my back broken” but being dragged through the malevolent and very bloody predations of Boyle’s film….forget it.

Two famous quotes apply: (a) “I’m a human being, goddamit…my life has value!” (Peter Finch in Network) and (b) “I’m not an animal” (Albert Brooks in Lost in America).

Like the headline implies, people may pay for escapism but they sometimes wind up neck deep in the grim.

Moviegoers are not interested in what willful auteur-level directors like Boyle are composing or assembling, much less what his actors are feeling or conveying unless the actor in question happens to be someone on the level of Ralph Fiennes.

Moviegoers, boiled down, are interested in what they’re feeling, and what I was feeling last night was profound disgust. And I don’t care what film critics who are filing from the planet Pluto (guys like Bob Strauss) are saying. For I am King Solomon…the ultimate arbiter, the one-man jury, inspector of the final product, giver or denier of the HE seal of approval.

A performance or a movie, in other words, is not about some idea or theme or cultural undercurrent propelling the filmmakers, but about how I fucking feel as I contemplate the finality of it. And what I wanted to do last night was throw up in a bucket.

…but all I experienced were the dry heaves.

Bill McCuddy to HE after seeing Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Anthony Dod Mantle’s 28 Years Later:

“Terence Malick has made a zombie movie under the name Danny Boyle. This is a thinking man’s running dead movie. When I say Malick I mean it’s beautifully shot and deals with family, survival and death by way of a poignant, non-zombie subplot. It has a little Children of Men vibe going on to but you may not want to reveal that.

“Ralph Fiennes arrives at the three-quarter mark…a nice bump.

“And Aaron Taylor Johnson fans eager to see the ‘maybe James Bond’ may be disappointed to learn he’s not really in the film all that much.

“The story is mainly about ATJ’s son (Alfie Williams) and wife (a sickly Jodie Comer) departing a semi-safe island compound in search of Ralph Fiennes, playing a doctor of sorts. It’s never really clear why anyone would risk leaving said compound but you kinda have to go with that.

“I liked it and am recommending, but I don’t know how commercial it will be. It’s smaller than even the first film — a walking road picture with mother and son. Plenty of blood and manic action. In some ways this is the best of the franchise. But it’s not a blockbuster. It’s just good. Will that be enough?”

HE to McCuddy after catching this well-made if godforsaken film early Thursday evening:

“What’s wrong with you? What do you mean you ‘liked it’? I wasn’t expecting all that much, but I was somewhere between appalled and truly, deeply repelled. I remember being positive on 28 Days Later way back in ‘02, although my all-time favorite zombie flick is still Dawn of the Dead. But this…! The instant judgment is ‘artistically honorable but mostly indigestible.’”

McCuddy to HE: “I should have known when Perri Nemiroff liked it you’d hate it.”

HE to McCuddy: “I HATED, HATED, HATED this film.  I hated the futility and hopelessness, the blood and gore and goo-glop-slime, the sickening grunge, the stench, the puddles, the cheap shock cuts, the yelling, the all-but-impenetrable accents, the obese corpses, the vomiting, the cancer, the rage, the fury, and the worms, flies, rats and insects…the brutal slam cuts, the incessant howling, the tower of skulls, the endless supply of arrows…the sudden, left-field use of subtitles when a small crew of soldiers appears when subtitles were clearly required throughout most of the film…the relentless, all-but-vomitous spewing and spraying of blood, blood, blood and slithery, odious, Chicago stockyard pig organs…arrows, chest shots, head shots….guts, guts, guts.

“28 Years Later is probably the most skin-crawling, the least engaging…let me start over…the filthiest, emptiest, most repellent and nihilistic film of this sort and…oh, hell and damnation and repulsion…almost certainly the most physically disgusting film of any kind that I’ve ever seen in my life.

”Yes, it is partially redeemed toward the end by Fiennes, whose dialogue is actually understandable (as always, his elocutionary skills are admirable) and who has a delightful moment when he recalls a famous Hamlet line…but let’s not get too carried away.”