Early this afternoon Howard Hawks and I saw Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet together at the AMC Lincoln Square. It’s a slow, grim sit, all right…yes, it’s fair to call most of it “rural, less-than-hygienic Elizabethan misery porn”…but lo and behold the Globe Theatre performance finale turns on the feeling.

I actually began to melt, to be honest, and I sensed that hard-nosed Hawks was in a similar emotional place. When a powerful scene gets to you there’s no mistaking the effect. Your eyes slightly water, your throat tightens.

Especially when Jessie Buckley’s Agnes and several other serf-level patrons (i.e., huddled in the orchestra pit) offer gestures of compassion to a dying on-stage Hamlet (Noah Jupe). Yes, Zhao is looking to jerk our emotional chains, but it works. Jupe sells it and Buckley grand-slams it.

Buckley has the Best Actress Oscar in the bag…period, no contest, done.

But Lordy, what a glum, boring, miserable, mostly unsanitary, toil-and-trouble life everyone lived in 15th Century Stratford. Did anyone ever take hot baths? You can almost smell the body odor. I respect the grimy, sweaty, greasy-haired realism that Zhao was determined to convey, but my God…did the serfs have any kind of soap back then?

Friendo #1: “Buckley absolutely deserves the Oscar. Her name is already engraved. The Globe climax is far and away the best ending out of any movie this year. But does a great ending make a great movie?”

HE reply: “Honestly? I think the misery stuff is overbaked. It’s such a grim, grimey and anguished slog before that Globe theatre finale.”

Hawks to HE, Friendo #1: “It doesn’t have three great scenes and no bad ones. It has one great finale while Sentimental Value has at least three great scenes, if not four or five.”

Friendo #2: “The Globe theatre Hamlet sequence is beyond preposterous, but if you close your eyes and pretend that you know nothing about Hamlet, yes, it works in a rather fake but well-staged ‘Will showed his love and grief through his art!” Pavlovian tearjerker way.

“And yes, the Best Actress Oscar race is over.”

And here’s why: The trailer offers a moment when a young Japanese girl (Shannon Mahina Gorman) not only overcomes her initial discomfort with her pretend daddy (Brendan Fraser) but rests her head on his shoulder. And then Fraser makes a typical actor’s mistake by looking at Gorman. I hate “looks” in tender scenes of this sort.

Let it in and feel it deep down, of course, but don’t fucking act it.

Sentimental Value has no emotional actorish “looks” at all. Every moment, every conveyance feels steady and bottom-line real.

…to pod-chat with Nick Fuentes, given the anti-Semitic current that he channels and radiates?

Every so often a song will turn a lock and just…I don’t know, push some kind of hidden button in your head or heart, and a whole floodwash of feeling and memory will just pour out.

All hail the great Mark Knopfler, who turned 76 last August. Those Dire Straits years (especially the late ’70s to late ’80s) were wonderful.

The snarky, morally reactive, curiously wild comment deluge in response to Scott Lemieux’s “The Inevitable Rehabilitation of Livvy”, an 11.15 riff about Jacob Bernstein’s N.Y. Times profile of Olivia Nuzzi, is one for the ages. Wowsah! Yowsah! The site is lawyersgunsmoneyblog.

Lemieux describes the Bernstein piece as a “horny profile,” and that kicks it off. 340 comments as of 5:30 am eastern, and a fair-sized percentage are (take your pick) pithy, nauseated (as opposed to nauseating), hilarious, raw, tasty, sobering and at times head-turning.

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And neither have I. So could those who’ve seen it please inform whether or not it has (a) three great scenes and (b) no bad ones? Please. Thanks.

Jacob Bernstein‘s 11.14 N.Y. Times piece about the fallen but gifted Olivia Nuzzi (currently West Coast editor for Vanity Fair) is worth reading.

Nuzzi’s “American Canto“, which I definitely want to read, pops on 12.2.

Two days ago the highly distinguished Robert Harris, the Obi Wan Kenobi of film restorationists, a man whose authoritative word on Bluray remasterings has been radiant and ultra-trustworthy for decades…two days ago Harris went over to the dark side by more or less giving a pass to the monsters behind Criterion’s teal-poisoned Eyes Wide Shut 4K Bluray.

Harris took a look at the EWS disc and wrote the following in a Home Theatre Forum post on Thursday, 11.13: “I’ve been hearing / reading about teal ‘problems’ with Criterion’s new 4K, and after having sampled the film, I’m just not seeing it.”

Stab me in the neck with a letter opener! How could you do this, Bob? You’ve sided with the bad guys!

Possibly imaginary debate between HE and a knowledgable fellow whom for the purposes of attribution, I’ll call KF…a guy who agrees with Harris:

HE: “Bob can’t say ‘I don’t see it.’ It’s right there. Teal greens saturate. He can’t say this!”

KF: “I’m aware. Of course I see it. My point is that Kubrick’s dp should know what things should look like. How can you complete a final cut or color when you’ve passed into the next realm?”

[Insert: Top frame grab is how the envelope scene has always looked since 1999…the iron gates are vivid blue, freshly painted. Bottom frame grab is from the Criterion 4K Bluray…somber greenish teal.]

HE: “Oh, my God. You’re saying that Criterion’s teal-green tinting was supposed to be there all along and that the various versions I’ve been looking at since ’99 were wrongly calibrated? I’m having convulsions. This is deranged thinking, bruh. It breaks my heart to see Bob siding with the Criterion teal monsters. How can he say this stuff?”

KF: “Bob is saying it’s possible, especially as prints were struck on Agfa stock.

HE: “So far Bob has more or less said that the DVD Beaver frame captures and Men on Film guys who posted that comparison reel…he’s saying they’re corrupt or technically deluded or otherwise unreliable. What if a third source comes along with frame captures that convey the same thing? Is Bob going to continue with his ‘I don’t see it’ regardless?”

KF: “I’m saying that frame grabs are not the way to view much of anything.”

HE: “The people behind this Criterion 4K obscenity need to be brought to The Hague. They are criminals.”

KF: “I don’t care about frame grabs. Nor previous videos.”

HE: “I need to stop relying on my lying eyes, you’re saying.”

KF: “Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m speaking of frame grabs in general. I look at the actual moving image.”

HE: “Evil is staring Bob right in the face, and he’s saying ‘I don’t see it.’ How can Bob, the grand arbiter and ultimate authority godfather….how can he say this stuff? He’s siding with the bad guys.”

KF: “The question you’ve neglected to ask is ‘What did Kubrick want the film to look like?’ End.”

Full Harris review: “Released in July of 1999, Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick’s final work, but he may have never approved a final answer print, as he passed away in March of that year.

“Which leaves us with some unanswered questions. (a) Did Stanley have final fine cut? and (b) Was he able to perfect his color and densities to perfection? Eyes Wide Shut has been released multiple times on home video, and I don’t know if those questions have ever been accurately answered.

“Which leads me to believe that one may not be able to use a release print or answer print as reference, and presumably not an earlier incarnation of home video.

“I’ve been hearing / reading about teal ‘problems’ with Criterion’s new 4K, and after having sampled the film, I’m just not seeing it.

“Are the blues deep, rich blues? No. They do lean toward a teal.

“But the question remains, what were the intentions of the filmmakers? And a quarter of a century later, I’m aware of only one person on the crew that can adequately answer that question — director of photography Larry Smith. And we now have his answer.

“The design was always amber interiors / blue exteriors, and with that design, one is always going to get a bit of bounce, especially on whites. But I’m not only seeing zero problems here, I like what I’m seeing. I believe that Mr. Smith, who was behind the camera, has done a beautiful job, and I have no doubt that his heart and soul were in the right place to deliver something of which Mr. K would approve.”

“Grain haters need not apply.”

We all need to accept that Brady Corbet believes in immersing audiences in the thick, fetid swamp of his own elephantine imaginings. Most of The Brutalist was mute nostril agony for me. But that was nothing compared to what’s coming.

For the last year or so Corbet has been cooking up a “get the whiteys!” racial revenge horror flick…a wokey-woke Chinese immigrant version of Killers of the Flower Moon but focused on the pain and trauma inflicted by whiteys upon Chinese silver mine and railroad workers back in the 19th Century, not through murder but by way of grueling work conditions and really shitty pay.

Descendents of Asian victims to white oppressors: You put our hard-working ancestors through hell back in the mid 1800s, not to mention the anti-Asian immigrant San Francisco race riot of 1877, and now it’s time for you, ya white motherfuckers, to suffer for your heartlessness and venality.”

Aaaannnddd Corbet’s film will reportedly run for over three and a half hours!

In a 2.17.25 interview on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast, Corbet said the film will mainly take place in the 1970s (i.e., the horror stuff) but “also spans 150 years.” (the historical Chinese immigrant stuff), except the Chinese Transcontinental railroad workers mainly suffered during the 1860s, so Corbet was wrong — he meant that it reaches back a century or thereabouts.

Will the Asian retribution arrive in the form of undead ghouls?

On 12.26.24 Filmofilia‘s Allan Ford, having listened to Corbet expound during a Toronto Lightbox q & a, wrote the following: “Inspired by Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, [Corbet’s next film] promises to juxtapose the visceral terror of horror with the emotional weight of immigration narratives.

“Set against the backdrop of 1970s California, Corbet’s ‘looser style’ aims to capture the era’s rugged, sun-drenched aesthetic while delving into the Chinese immigrant experience — a story rarely explored in Western cinema.”

19th century white railroad owners were cruel vicious shits, of course, but there’s no dimissing the suspicion that Corbet intends to deliver an Asian Killers of the Flower Moon with a Tobe Hooper-like horror overlay…evilwhiteyevilwhiteyEvilwhiteyevilwhiteyEvilwhiteyevilwhiteyEvilwhiteyevilwhitey….

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I’ve been waiting for many weeks to dive into Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet (Focus Features, 11.26), and tomorrow oh dear Lordy that climactic encounter will finally occur. Sunday, 11.16 at 1pm. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, for it may toll for thee.

Is it, in fact, a fair or at least a semi-justified thing to apply “porn” terms (trauma, grief, misery) to this Elizabethan tale of the troubled marriage between William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway (Jessie Buckley)? That is the question, oh my knaves.

Until HE has really and fully settled into Hamnet, this issue can never be truly clarified.

That said, I will not be approaching Hamnet with an attitude. When entering a theatre I am always open to a transcendent experience.

Tomorrow afternoon’s screening is important. The fate and the tilt of the 2025/‘26 Best Picture Oscar race will be affected one way or the other. On the face of it I’m more into the hypothetical fantasy of Hamnet beating the agitproppy One Battle After Another than vice versa.

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Does it have three great scenes? No. It has a few interesting or striking moments (like the finale) but forget “great”. I would’ve felt somewhat better if Emma Stone had side-stepped the head-shaving altogether. Jesse Plemons’ beekeeper/kidnapper is too greasy, and Aidan Delbis (i.e., Plemons’ moronic sidekick) is a blob of anti-matter. I “liked” or, you know, “respected” the Lanthimosian lunacy as far as it went, but Bugonia is minor.

And the fact — okay, not a “fact” but a realization that not only hit me in the stomach but came close to eliciting a tear when I saw Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly in Venice several weeks ago…

The fact is that this currently streaming, faintly melancholy Netflix mood trip flick has only one great scene, or more precisely a great moment.

It’s George Clooney’s titular character not asking a question as much as voicing a plea (as well as a refrain from the opening scene) — “Can I do it again?” Who among us has never said this to themselves (or to God) each and every day since they hit their mid 40s or early 50s?