It’s understood that everyone in Cannes is going to bend over backwards to be open-hearted and gracious in their reactions to Megalopolis, and where is the downside in doing so? I’m not saying anything yea or nay, but among those who may have issues with Coppola’s film, who will be so cruel as to blurt out truth bombs? Turn the other cheek, consider the risk factor, judge not lest ye be judged.
If you’re capable of feeling anything above and beyond the immediate and especially if you’ve been lucky and double especially if you’re been gifted with any kind of enviable insight or ability, it’s hard to not weep with gratitude…even with all the lumps and bruises and the endless parade of shitty people and craven impulses, not to mention the crushing, soggy banality that constitutes so much of civilized life on this planet…if you’ve had any kind of “ride” it’s still a gift.
As one New Jerseyan to another, happy birthday, Jack!Criterion has a multi-disc Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Bluray package coming out on 7.2 — two 4K discs, two 1080p discs, all kinds of extras.
It will contain three versions of Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 western. The longest and most true to Peckinpah’s original vision (allegedly around 122 minutes) is called the 50th Anniversary Release. A 115-minute version, I think, and the truncated 106-minute theatrical cut will round things out. Something like that.
I saw the 106 way back when, and it’s slightly better than okay. Standard Peckinpah flourishes. Talky. Decent performances (James Coburn’s Garrett stands out, Kris Kristofferson’s Billy is okay, Bob Dylan’s “Alias” is mostly a goof). Peckinpah himself has a cameo. The film reaches for sadness, radiates a certain folklore current, a loathing of selling out and thereby losing your soul, etc. I recall R.G. Armstrong getting shot by Kristofferson, and Kris performing a sex scene with Rita Coolidge.
I wouldn’t call it a problematic film, but I can’t imagine an extra 15 minutes making a huge difference. I’m therefore not sure that the film is worth the royal Criterion treatment.
Michael Douglas on age and Joe Biden, 7:14 mark: “The people I’ve talked to say he’s sharp as a tack. We all have issues with memory as we get older [but] let’s just say that Joe’s entire cabinet would be more than happy to work wth him again [over] the next term. I cannot say that about the other candidate [as] nobody in his cabinet from 2016 wants to be involved with him.”
HE agrees with YouTube guy #1: “No smart, talented, experienced, accomplished, reasonable person…a person who puts the country first…no one with those qualities will endorse Trump in 2024.”
Ditto YouTube guy #2: “Right now it doesn’t matter if Biden is too old. I would rather have a too-old guy who will uphold the constitution than someone who actively wants to destroy it.”
…that what Bill Maher was talking about last Friday night is happening in schools? That it’s real? And that shaping the soft-clay minds of young kids on trans issues has become a mainstream public-school thing…stamped, signed and endorsed by the Democratic Party?
He really thinks all is well, and that my seconding what Maher said the night before last is…what, some kind of obsessive, fear-driven thing on my part?
Friendo sez…
I’m sorry but Hitchcock’s continuity person on North by Northwest should have been canned.
Termination error #1: Roger Thornhill’s scrawled message on the inside cover of his R.O.T. matchbook was composed within three lines, but when Eve Kendall reads it on the couch downstairs it has four lines.
Termination error #2: Several matches are missing when the message is initially written, but when Eve reads it the match supply is restored to full capacity.
Errors copied — not discovered by me.
Posted, ignored and quickly fire-walled on 8.7.21: It was a warm midsummer evening in the small town of Walton, New York, possibly ’81 but more likely ’82. I was staying that weekend with my dad, Jim Wells, at his country cabin on River Road, right alongside the West Branch of the Delaware River.
Jim was an avid fly fisherman, and when dusk fell all he had to do was put on the rubber waders and stroll into the waist-deep water, which was less than 100 feet away. I’m not exactly the Henry David Thoreau type, but I have to admit that the cabin and the surrounding woods and the other atmospheric trimmings (crickets, feeding fish, fireflies) was quite the combination as the sun was going down.
Alas, I was frisky back then and accustomed to prowling. As a Manhattanite and Upper West Sider (75th and Amsterdam) my evening routine would sometimes include a 7 pm screening and then hitting a bar or strolling around or whatever. The “whatever” would sometimes involve a date with a lady of the moment or maybe even getting lucky with a stranger. It all depended on which direction the night happened to tilt.
So there we were, my dad and I, finishing dinner (maybe some freshly-caught trout along with some steamed green beans and scalloped potatoes) and washing the dishes and whatnot, and I was thinking about hitting a local tavern. I wasn’t a “sitting on the front porch and watching the fireflies” type. I wanted to get out, sniff the air, sip bourbon, listen to music.
So I announced the idea of hitting T.A.’s Place or the Riverside Tavern and maybe ordering a Jack Daniels and ginger ale on the rocks. If I’d been a little more gracious I would’ve asked Jim to join, but we weren’t especially chummy back then. Our relationship was amiable enough, if a little on the cool and curt side. Plus the idea of Jim and I laying on the charm with some local lassie seemed horrific.
I wasn’t seriously entertaining some loony fantasy that I might meet someone and luck out, not in a little one-horse town like Walton, but then again who knew? It was the early ’80s, the ’70s were still with us in spirit, I was looking and feeling pretty good back then, the AIDS era hadn’t happened yet, etc. You had to be there, I guess, but singles had just experienced (and were still experiencing to a certain degree) perhaps the greatest nookie era in world history since the days of ancient Rome.
Plus you could still buy quaaludes at the Edlich Pharmacy on First Avenue. It sounds immature to say this, but life occasionally felt like a Radley Metzger film.
Jim apparently had thoughts along the same lines, as he quickly suggested that we do T.A.’s as a team. I immediately said “uhm, that’s okay,” as in “I’m thinking about going stag and you’ll only cramp my style.” I shouldn’t have said that, and if my father is listening I want him to know that I’m sorry. It was brusque and heartless to brush him off like that.
To his credit, Jim was gracious enough to laugh it off. I heard him tell this story to friends a couple of times.
Jim had bought the River Road cabin from Pam Dawber, who was pushing 30 and costarring in Mork & Mindy at the time. It was located outside of town about three or four miles. My father would send her a check every month, and was very punctual about it. Walton was roughly a 100-minute drive from Manhattan.
“Do I have to pretend [this stuff] is cool in order to keep my liberal ID card? Sorry — can’t do that.”
“Wokeness is no longer an extension of liberalism — it’s more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite — at a certain point inclusion becomes promotion. Endlessly talking about gender to six year-olds isn’t just inappropriate — it’s what the law would call entrapment.”
It hit me yesterday that Josie Rourke, who made her bigtime feature directing debut with Mary, Queen of Scots, has been absent from the flush realm since Mary opened in late '18. There are reasons for that, of course. One is that people like me felt novocained to death, Mary being an overbearing exercise in woke presentism.
Login with Patreon to view this post
Login with Patreon to view this post
“An unexamined life is not worth living but an examined one is still no bargain” — Woody Allen line from Cafe Society.
Angsty Loner (i.e., me) to Mr. Lonelyhearts: I’m 17, a high-school junior, and miserable. Partly (mostly?) due to the fact that my hormones are raging while my experience with hetero physical intimacy has been, shall we say, limited.
Which doesn’t mean I haven’t emotionally suffered over this or that dashed relationship. I’ve eaten my heart out over…I don’t know, seven or eight girls since the third grade. Maybe more. And none of the objects of my desire have been more than semi-interested, if that.
Girls are fickle and flighty and all over the map, and at the end of the day I don’t seem to have what they want. Even temporarily, I mean. Before their mood changes.
So I know a thing or two about unrequited love or lust or, in the best of situations, a combination of the two that is casually, half-assedly or all-too-briefly reciprocated and then forgotten. One of these days or years the real thing will happen, and when it does…I’ll cross that bridge.
My current obsession is blonde and blue-eyed and a little scatterbrained. Or scatter-hearted. She likes me in spurts, and then some other guy moves in.
There are three others she’s enamored of. A cute, stocky, chubby-faced jock. A hippie-ish dude with longish hair, Brooks Brothers shirts and mocassins. And a local cop who’s 27 or 28. And then fourth-place me.
I rolled around with blondie on a bed of pine needles near the local reservoir…once. We made out at a party…once. She slapped me repeatedly at another party, which was her way of saying she wanted my attention. We’ve had some fun times.
But I’m strictly backup. So what do I do? Is there any path to salvation in this agonizing situation?
Mr. Lonelyhearts to Angsty Loner: I’m sorry but no, there isn’t. It sounds cruel to say this, but you’re just going to have to suffer through this infatuation and then eventually move on.
One reason you’re in fourth place (and not third, second or first) is that you’re probably radiating weak, squishy vibes. Probably born of low-self-esteem. If you have any moxie you’ll grow out of that but for the time being it’s your cross to bear.
High-school women are reticent as a rule, and they do hold most of the cards, and if they’re not that interested you can’t stop ’em.
The fact that she’s nursing relationships with four guys simultaneously is a red flag, of course. It means she has self-esteem issues of her own. It won’t kill you to pine for this flighty little blonde. It hurts, of course, but life is a never-ending stream of hurt and troubles. Get used to it. Pain makes you stronger if you can take it.
Three days ago I rewatched Robert Benton‘s Places in the Heart (9.21.84). Sometimes older films hold up and sometimes they can seem a bit softer or less formidable in retrospect. Well, you can sheath that sword because the sands of time haven’t diminished Places in the Heart in the slightest. In my book it’s a truly great film. The church communion scene at the very end still turns me into mush.
Sally Field‘s “you really like me!” speech upon winning the Best Actress Oscar has been endlessly belittled, but over the last 40 years I’ll bet that few have given the film another shot and really settled into her performance. Her Edna Spalding is fairly magnificent…about as pained and stressed and rock-solid as it gets.
Director-writer Benton, who’s still with us at age 91, really knew rural, Depression-era Texas, having been born and raised in the backwater of Waxahachie (where Places in the Heart takes place) and you can feel that authority and authenticity in every scene.
Heart includes uncomfortably frank depictions of racism, and there’s no way in hell that the wokesters would allow such a film to be made today. But every frame is real and honest and humane. It’s touching, grueling, affecting…the way it really was back then, at least in Benton’s recollection.
I don’t want to hear one HE comment-threader argue this point…not one!
And the cast….good God! Field, John Malkovich, Danny Glover, Lindsay Crouse, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Lane Smith, Terry O’Quinn, Bert Remsen.
There’s a scene in which Smith urges the financially strapped Field to allow Malkovich’s “Mr. Will”, his blind brother-in-law, to stay with her as a lodger. Field’s initial response is “this isn’t a good time,” which I partly understood. At the same time I was muttering to myself, “Don’t say ‘no’ to Malkovich staying with you…please! He’s John Malkovich!”
Malkovich’s career erupted that year. His Heart performance resulted in a Best Supporting Actor nomination. He played a tough photojournalist in Roland Joffe‘s The Killing Fields. And he played Biff in a celebrated Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, costarring with Dustin Hoffman. I caught Salesman in the spring or summer of ’84, and five minutes after Malkovich came on stage I said to myself, “Jesus fuck, this guy is amazing.”
<div style="background:#fff;padding:7px;"><a href="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/category/reviews/"><img src=
"https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/reviews.jpg"></a></div>
- Really Nice Ride
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall‘s Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year’s Telluride...
More » - Live-Blogging “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when...
More » - One of the Better Apes Franchise Flicks
It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes...
More »
<div style="background:#fff;padding:7px;"><a href="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/category/classic/"><img src="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/heclassic-1-e1492633312403.jpg"></div>
- The Pull of Exceptional History
The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
More » - If I Was Costner, I’d Probably Throw In The Towel
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner‘s Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
More » - Delicious, Demonic Otto Gross
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg‘s tastiest and wickedest film — intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...
More »