Over the decades I’ve experienced many dozens (hundreds?) of perfect moments that were so rich and serene and soul-settling — moments in which I said to myself “Jesus, this is perfect in every way.”

The dusky light and settled atmospheres, I mean…soothing meditations and moods of unusual quiet …solace and contentment…pause moments.

I’m thinking of the faint scent of sea water and the sound of crying gulls at 5 am in Cannes…the taste of a special moment after a super-heavy rainfall in Paris or during a hike in the Palm Desert outback below cloudy skies or a cappuccino detour in Venice’s Campo Santa Margherita in the late afternoon or standing on the deck of a tourist ferry as it approaches Napoli harbor just before dawn…

Here’s such a moment…13 years and one month ago (late May 2011) on a calm and sunny day in Venice, Italy…placid, a gentle breeze, the faint sound of water lapping at pilings…sitting at an outdoor table at…wait for it…Trattoria San Basilio, a fairly small (you could even call it tiny) restaurant, waterside in southern Dorsoduru…no tourists, no madding crowd…Calle del Vento, 1516, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy.

Right now I feel as strongly about this moment as Mr. Bernstein felt about the girl in the white dress on the Staten Island ferry.

Video shot on a Canon camera….the quality of iPhone videos wasn’t good enough back then…good God, I was still filing on Movable Type!

HE commenter Michael Degregorio: “It’s pathetic that Fly Me To The Moon is another ORIGINAL film, not a franchise or a sequel or a superhero flick, and people can’t stay away from it fast enough.

“People who keep saying that there needs to be more original films made…these people need to put it where the moon don’t shine.

“Every time an original film is released in theaters, people stay home and watch it on streaming, and if it went STRAIGHT to streaming they would bitch that it should have gone to a theater, but they wouldn’t have seen it there anyway.

“It’s like when the pageant question is ‘what would you like to see?’ And the answer is always ‘world peace’ because that’s expected.

“Same idea here — wish there were original films made! Sure you do, but you’ll only watch the franchise shit with your own money.”

HE commenter brenkilco: “Yeah, nobody can really open a movie anymore. The package or franchise or genre is what’s sold. Cruise can open an MI movie, but you probably couldn’t give him away in a drama. Leo and Margot and Emma, et al. — they’re never going to open anything.

“And the fact that Channing Tatum and Glen Powell are being slotted into the charming leading man niche shows how thin the bench is.”

HE commenter Regular Joe: “Cruise does open movies worldwide, but I think even that appears to be coming to an end for him.”

Definitely Hyannisport:

“When my mom got into her 80s, we had to deal with periodic medical issues. Fainting. Falls. Broken bones. Luckily, she was in good stead with the local rescue squad because she faithfully attended their crab feast fund-raisers.

“Each time, my siblings and I would move heaven and earth to get her home from whatever hospital she had landed in.

“In 2003, I tried to talk one emergency room doctor into releasing her after 11 hours.

“’I’ll let her out if she can tell me who the president is,’ the doctor said.

“We both looked at my mom, expectantly.

“’George,’ she said.

“I was thrilled; W., it was.

“’George Washington,’ she finished.

“After each episode, I’d proudly tell her internist, Dr. Simon, how we had nursed her back to health.

“‘You don’t understand,’ he said with exasperation. ‘Picture your mother hanging off a ledge, holding on by five fingers. After one of these incidents, she’s hanging on by four fingers. Another incident, three fingers. And so on. You think you’ve gotten her through and you’re starting fresh, but you’re not. It’s cumulative.’

“My mom was a stubborn old bird and she hung on with two fingers, and then one, until she was 97. We gave her morphine at the end, with a bourbon chaser.

“I know that octogenarians and nonagenarians can keep their wits about them. My mom was sharp and funny into her 90s.

“But I also know they begin losing threads of the narrative, and it’s as painful to them as it is to those who care about them.

“At some point, older people find themselves on that ledge. And, as Dr. Simon taught me, each traumatic incident you pull through just leads to another.”

— posted this morning (7.13) at 7 am.

And there’s no changing that — Scarlett Johansson and Greg Berlanti’s Rock Hudson-Doris Day NASA romcom is a total corpse. But have any HE regulars at least seen it, and do any of them agree with my take from last weekend, which is that (a) it isn’t half bad and (b) it resuscitates a smidgen of that old American pride feeling that Todd Douglas Miller‘s Apollo 11 reminded us of five years ago?

“Kamala Harris would be the first woman president, the first black woman president and the first Asian president. But I don’t vote for who will be the first. I vote for who will win, and for whatever reason Harris has never been popular.

“You can count the number of delegates she won in the 2020 primaries on one hand. As long as that hand has no fingers.

“In three years as vice-president she’s been quieter than an electric car. And like an electric car, your MAGA uncle can’t explain why she fills him with homicidal rage. Sometimes life isn’t fair, and it’s not fair that she isn’t popular.” Alas…

I’ll tell you two reasons why Harris isn’t popular. One, that cackle. And two, those word–salad statements that she’s shared in interviews.

I can’t quite decide who I hate more — Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It’s just that I’ve despised Trump for so many years. My Biden hate, on the other hand, is fresh and vivid and visceral.

Author of “Battle For The Soul“, Edward-Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter for CNN, covering politics and the Biden administration:

“Part of the dynamic here ie that the Obama-Biden relationship is much more complicated than people often understand it to be. They are friendly [but] they are are not friends.

“One person close to the situation said to me a couple of years ago, ‘Neither one of these [men] really has friends, and they’re really not friends with each other.’ They have not been in contact over the last couple of years as people might think. They’ve talked a couple of times.

“Barack Obama has forever been skeptical about Joe Biden‘s chances as a presidential candidate. [Biden has written in his book that] Obama was not encouraging. Obama is not prone to getting involved here. And every time people have reached out to him and said ‘save us, Barack Obama,’ his response has basically been ‘I’m going to stay right here…I’m not saying anything.'”

Not trying to personally persuade Biden to drop out is one thing, but Obama staying silent while pally George Clooney says, with Obama’s consent, what Obama believes to be true is another.

The looming existential threat of Donald Trump‘s likely victory hasn’t gone away. Every sensible person on the planet realizes that Joe’s cognitive diminishment, which is in and out depending on the moment, has only one way to go and that’s downhill.

Every American voter knows this also, and yet Obama would rather let Trump win than stand up and plead for a more hopeful outcome. That’s cowardly. That’s smug. That’s shameful.

I don’t understand the sudden, mystifying enthusiasm for Jean Negulesco’s Daddy Long Legs, a 1955 Fred Astaire–Leslie Caron musical. I’ve always respected and half-admired this romantic fantasy flick…oh, wait.

It is my unfortunate duty to report that the horror factor in Oz Perkins Longlegs is highly effective for the first…oh, 50 or 55 minutes. Very chilling stuff, in no small part due to Maika Monroe’s riveting performance as a psychic, Clarice Starling-like FBI agent.

But once a certain satanic Marc Bolan fan is arrested and the “trance-inducing doll meets crazy mama” plotting kicks in, it all falls apart. The fucking thing doesn’t add up, makes no sense, isn’t crazy enough, and has nothing going on underneath.

I saw Longlegs with a large crowd at the AMC Lincoln Square, and when the lights came up after the closing credits you could feel the flat vibes. The crowd seemed disgruntled, murmuring “huh?” and “the fuck was that?”

Screen Anarchy ‘s J. Hurtado, Bloody Disgusting’s Meagan Navarro and /Film’s Bill Bria are all apparently delusional or at the very least dishonest.

Edward Douglas:

Jeff Sneider:

Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley’s Sing Sing is an honest, explorational, open-hearted acting exercise film.

It’s intimate and earnest and straight-dealing and “affecting” if you’re inclined to go there, but for me it felt very, very boring. After an hour’s worth, I mean. I sat there and waited and waited and waited…

Because it’s just about a prison situation. Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through The Arts program, which is absolutely a good idea and a good thing, Lord knows. But there’s no story, no story tension, nothing to hold you, nothing that pulls you in. It’s just about watching guys act or try to act. Very good, straight-from-the-heart acting and hats off to Colman Domingo, but all you can do is sit there and be patient as you watch it and go “uh-huh.”

I made it to the end, and all I can say is “thank God I’m not doing time in Sing Sing prison.” Because this film certainly makes you feel as if you’re locked up, I can tell you. Thank God I have a certain amount of discipline and energy and a willingness to work hard and not give in to the usual vices and pitfalls, or else I might have become a criminal of some kind…who knows?

This is a very respectable MINOR FILM. I felt respect and a certain limited affection for the incarcerated characters, but thank God it ended when it did because I was starting to moan and groan a little bit.