We’re now almost three months into the 2021 Oscar year. A bit more than seven months between now and 12.31.21. Time moves along, doesn’t it?

What films released since 3.1.21 could conceivably warrant awards attention? Okay, unfair question for this time of year — none. Which films released since 3.1.21 could be called, without reservation, very good and an honor to their makers? If you ask me, Above Suspicion totally qualifies in that regard. Some would claim that Zack Snyder’s Justice League is also quite the achievement. (Apart from the glorious 1.37:1 aspect ratio I couldn’t stand it, but that’s me.) What am I forgetting?

Airplane! is not one of HE’s favorite 1980 films. Just because everyone laughed and it made a lot of money ($171 million or $580 million in 2021 currency) and was the last mainstream movie in which a suave jet-pilot character, played by famous TV actor Peter Graves, conveyed a sexual interest in a young boy…that doesn’t make it great or classic or anything in between. It was just a highly successful goof-off parody film…nothing more. Never forget that the mere act of making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.

Nor will I buy into the long-established counterview that Michael Cimino‘s Heaven’s Gate is some kind of masterpiece. Visually it’s very handsome and impressive, but it also is, was and always will be one of the most grueling sits of my life.

And I’m no fan of Dressed to Kill either — it reeks of sexual loathing and disdain for poor Angie Dickinson‘s character, and I hate that scene in which she’s followed around inside the Metropolitan Museum by a good-looking asshole smoothie who hasn’t the balls to say anything to her, and is therefore worthless. I was around 17 or 18 when I learned the wisdom of “he who hesitates, masturbates.”

HE’s top 1980 features (in this order):

1. The Empire Strikes Back (magnificent from start to finish)
2. Raging Bull (a great film except for the odd closing tribute to Haig Manoogian, which has nothing to do with Jake La Motta and therefore leaves you with a “what? reaction — this is why RB is in the second slot)
3. Ordinary People
4. Atlantic City (sublime Burt Lancaster, and he was only 66 when the film was shot.)
5. The Elephant Man
6. Coal Miner’s Daughter (Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones and Levon Helm are aces)
7. Breaker Morant (lean, grave and masterful)
8. Used Cars (brilliant Preston Sturges film)
9. The Stunt Man
10. Diva
11. American Gigolo (has improved with age)
12. The Shining (when you consider what Stanley Kubrick‘s adaptation could have been, you can’t help but sigh with a certain air of regret — it’s a very rigid, almost constipated film)
13. Somewhere in Time (i.e., the version with the original uncut crane-and tracking shot that ends the film)
14. Kagemusha
15. Stir Crazy

I’ve watched these YouTube clips from J.C. Chandor‘s Margin Call at least a dozen times and possibly more than that. They radiate serious grip — a magnificent feeling of real-world psychological tension and unspoken currents — the kind of thing that I live for (or used to live for) when I went to screenings and public showings.

Margin Call premiered at Sundance in January ’11 (I attended the first press screening at the Holiday Cinemas), and by the time it opened the following October Chandor was well branded as a leading young light — a serious-focus, auteur-level helmer who, it was presumed, would make moviegoing for educated over-35s a slightly less draining experience.

This presumption was happily fulfilled with the brilliant All Is Lost (’13), containing Robert Redford‘s greatest performance, and A Most Violent Year (’14), an excellent Queens-based noir about a family business.

In July 2014 Chandor was hired to direct Deepwater Horizon, but by January 2015 he’d left the project over creative differences (i.e., head-butting arguments with Mark Wahlberg). And then, four years later, came Triple Frontier, a Netflix thing which I found fully realistic and satisfying except for the finale when the thieves decide to give a significant portion of the dough to Ben Affleck‘s calorically-challenged daughter. If it was my call, she’d get Affleck’s share and no more.

Last August Chandor, one of the true good guys of cinema and a reach-for-the-sky craftsman and visionary, was hired to direct Kraven, The Hunter with Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing the titular character. The release date — 1.13.23 — tells you everything.

We all have to earn money and keep the lamps burning, but the idea of Chandor directing Kraven is, no offense, shattering.

I saw Jules Dassin and Mark Hellinger‘s The Naked City (’48) back in the early ’80s, or so I recall. I would’ve gotten around to a re-viewing sooner or later, but now I’m revved after catching Bruce Goldstein‘s “Uncovering The Naked City,” a 23-minute doc that explores the various locations and strategies that went into filming this hard-boiled New York cop movie, shot entirely on location. Now I’m locking into watching Criterion’s HD version this weekend.

Enterprising photographer Stanley Kubrick, 19 at the time, was spotted hanging around the Naked City set.

Hellinger, who narrates the film (and I wish they’d forgotten about any narration at all — it makes it feel hokey now), died of of a heart attack on 12.21.47 at age 44. (Who keels over at age 44?) The Naked City opened the following March.

Film historian William Park has argued that, despite Weegee‘s work on the film and its title coming from Weegee’s 1945 photo book, the film owes its visual style more to Italian neorealism rather than Weegee’s photographic work.

In my view, a 5.26 Variety story by Elsa Keslassy (“‘The French Dispatch’ to World Premiere at Cannes“) buries the lead.

Everyone has known been assuming over the past year that Wes Anderson‘s film, originally slated to play at last year’s cancelled fest, would return this year. Keslassy devotes the first five paragraphs to Dispatch…okay, all right, got it.

The surprise (revealed in paragraph #6) is that Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater will also play there. That’s a significant vote of approval by Cannes honcho Thierry Fremaux.

Up until this moment I’ve been a little iffy about the Stillwater potential (Matt Damon‘s apparent miscasting plus his character’s swallowed, guttural, working-class patois) but now I feel more hope. Even if it’s more or less a riff on the dramatically beaten-to-death Amanda Knox story.

Misheard rock lyrics is a popular meme. No less than three fellows (Gavin Edwards, Martin Toseland, Charles Grosvenor) have written books about this topic. Everyone understands that rock lyrics occasionally invite misinterpretation, and nobody accuses anyone of being an asshat if they insist that the key line in “Blinded by The Light” is not “revved up like a deuce” but “revved up like a douche,” as in fucking douchebag. That’s on Manfred Mann,** of course, and not “Blinded” author Bruce Springsteen.

But if you mishear dialogue spoken by a French actress (Camille Cottin) in the Stillwater trailer, you’re deaf and clueless. At the :43 mark, she says a quiet line to Matt Damon‘s character — a beefy, burly, cap-wearing 40something bumblefuck type -— and is apparently referring to his incarcerated daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin). The line she says to Damon is “the father of duhkat?…he left in six” something-or-other.

You’re also an asshole if you mishear movie dialogue spoken by a British actress of Asian descent in the new Eternals trailer. Despite the unmistakable fact that Gemma Chan absolutely does not say “beautiful, isn’t it?” but says “Eefrent…isn’t it?” Or possibly “Steefrent…isn’t it?”

Look at the teaser again — Chan’s line comes at the :29 mark.

When you say “beautiful” you have to get that first syllable right — sounds like “byew” or “byoo.” The second and third syllables are pronounced either “tihful” or “teefull.” There is no way on God’s green earth that Chan says “byooteefull.”

As predicted, the crazy fever (weakness, fatigue, muscle ache plus a general inability to sleep or eat or do anything but lie on the couch and suffer) began to loosen its grip early this afternoon. I’m still weak, but the worst is apparently over.

I’ve been through this shit before, and the HE flu always lasts 36 to 48 hours. This, motherfuckers, is what “German genes” is all about.

When I told a doctor earlier today that my flu battles never exceeded 48 hours, she said “well, that’s highly impressive…you’ve quite the immune system.” Given my age, you mean? “I’ve treated patients in their 20s who’ve stayed under for three or four days or even a week,” she replied.

Let’s suppose that New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance manage to persuade a jury that Donald Trump and his minions were guilty of elaborate tax fraud…guilty. So after the appeal process has been exhausted, what’s the potential penalty? Are we talking orange jumpsuits or what? News analysts don’t want to speculate because to do so would erode their posture of impartiality. But c’mon…every reasonable person wants that fat fuck sociopath behind bars. He’s dirty, he constantly lies (Barack Obama called him “a bullshitter”) and he’s the boss of a crime family

If a studio-backed genre film becomes a hit, a sequel inevitably results. But the sequel is almost always less impactful than the original (anomalies like The Godfather, Part II aside) and the brand is thereafter mitigated. And then comes the idea for a second sequel and it’s like “oh, God…leave it alone.” But the suits know that Part 3 will perform decently, even if the general audience reaction to Part 2 is “not bad but a little meh.” And the principals can’t resist the idea of more fat paychecks and profit participations. And so we, the audience, are stuck with Part 3 whether we want it or not.

…of even the slightest exertion…of summoning the strength and discipline to tap out a thought or two…it’s exhausting to even consider. It’s draining to even think about sitting up. I slept restlessly all day yesterday and into the night — the kind of feverish sleep that isn’t really sleep. It’s bad. Hot cup of Thera-flu an hour ago…weak, sweating (which is good)…it’ll “break” later today, I suspect.

Four years ago I switched webhosts, signed up with Austin’s WP Engine. To save disc/cloud space the guy who did the transfer migrated a good portion of my JPEGs to Amazon Web Services. But uploading these images from AWS to Siteground has taken a fair amount of time, and so far it’s been a day and a half. Honestly? The migration has been agony. I can’t seem to manage the “pull” myself. The process is dragging on and on. Between this and the fever, I’m in hell.

Aching muscles, feverish feeling, faintly damp forehead, can’t stay awake, couch-napping for the last couple of hours, etc. If I hadn’t been double-vaxxed, I’d be worried. I’ve been through this before. I’ll be out of it by tomorrow morning, perhaps sooner. Maybe.