The scourge of Batman. The curse of the cowl. Rodrigo meant to type “spiritually.”

In the summer of ’64 suburban New Jersey was hit by hundreds of millions of “periodic” cicadas. They were absolutely everywhere. I’ll never forget the sound of “singing” male cicadas, a kind of courtship whine that they create by “vibrating membranes on their abdomen.” And I’ll never forget the crunching sound when you walked upon them on hiking trails and along neighborhood sidewalks.

Nor will I ever forget a kind of makeshift cicada torture chamber built by my younger brother Tony and three of his friends. They invented a cicada guillotine with a small stone and a Gillette razor blade, and a kind of body-crushing contraption. They also invented a cicada electric chair with an electric transformer that had been used for an electric train set. They would insert positive and negative copper wires into the cicada’s body and turn on the juice. The current would make the cicada’s wings flap a thousand times a second.

I realize that children who pull the wings off flies are commonly regarded as junior-grade sociopaths, but this was different. We were living through an Egyptian plague. Those awful cicadas were a pestilence, worse than swamp mosquitoes.

George Harrison and Paul Simon, acoustic. A Saturday Night Live appearance. The lens covered in vaseline. Guessing from Simon’s hair style, this happened sometime around ’77 or ’78.

Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Greece is the fourth luxuriously quirky travel doc costarring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon…exotic climes, duelling impressions, expensive gourmet dishes, cryptic insult humor.

I loved the first installment (2010’s The Trip, mainly because of their great duelling Michael Caine impressions), enjoyed the second (The Trip To Italy) and didn’t see the third (The Trip to Spain). But I adore Greece, which I saw last night. The island scenery, to-die-for food, biting guy humor, diseased laughter, pine needles and a slight sense of gnawing reality.

Maybe the pandemic helped, but cruising through sunny, colorful Greece (which I’ve never visited) did wonders for my spirit, especially in glorious HD.

God, I miss roaming around Europe so badly. Sometimes it hurts to think about it, and other times not. But generally my heart aches.

One, Greece made me laugh out loud four or five times, and that’s highly unusual for an LQTM type.

Two, their impressions of Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier doing the “is it safe?” scene from Marathon Man melted me down like cheese, particularly Brydon’s imitation of a dentist drill.

Three, I’m not sure what to trust or distrust but interesting stuff happens in this one — Coogan gets laid, Brydon feels a touch of trepidation about his wife, Coogan’s dad dies, Brydon’s wife joins him at the end, etc.

And four, Brydon (who stands all of 5’7″) has gotten his gaping bald spot repaired (did he visit my Prague micro-plug guy?). I can’t tell you how gratifying it was not to contemplate that empty patch.

The trip follows the route of Homer’s Odyssey. It starts in Troy (which is in Turkey) and moves on to Kavala, Lesbos, Pelion, Athens, Hydra, Mani and Ithica.

Brydon mentions at the end of one meal that the tab is 300 euros. Tatyana, having been to Greece and Cyprus, says you can eat magnificent meals in that region for much, much less.

Quibble: Coogan, 54, is now silver-haired for the most part. Brydon, I have to say, uses a little too much kindness when he says that Coogan is aging well. He’s aging okay, but his hair is way too short — he needs to grow it out, Byron-style. (Or did when they were shooting last year.)

The Trip to Greece is such an upper I’m planning to watch it again tonight. How’s that for an endorsement? I’m also thinking of re-watching The Trip to Italy.

Brydon: “What would you say is the thing you’re the most proud of?” Coogan: “My seven BAFTAs.” Brydon: “For me, it would be my children.” Coogan: “Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you haven’t got any BAFTAs.” Brydon: “Though you have got children, which is interesting.”

I’d like to be able to watch the whole Trip to Greece series, which used to be purchasable on DVD. The series ran 168 minutes; last night’s feature stopped at 103.

I’m sorry to report that Gregor Jordan‘s Dirt Music (Samuel Goldwyn, sometime in July) got roughed up last September by Toronto Film Festival critics. And yet Tim Winton’s 2002 source novel, an Australian road romance between a free-spirited woman named Georgie Jutland and a poacher named Luther Fox, is widely respected and won a slew of literary prizes.

Garrett Hedlund and Kelly Macdonald play Luther and Georgie. At the very least Sam Chiplin‘s cinematography seems appealing. We all understand that some books simply don’t translate to the screen, and sometimes they’re not adapted in quite the right way.

Either way you can’t help but wonder what might have happened if the original Dirt Music team — director Philip Noyce, costars Heath Ledger and Rachel Weisz, and screenwriters Justin Monjo and John Collee — had made their version a decade or so ago.

Phillip Noyce (l.) discussing Dirt Music with Tim Winton (center) and Justin Monjo. Sydney, June 2004. 

Noyce had been working on a Dirt Music flick even before Winton’s novel became an Australian best-seller in ’02. He had the option to make a film version for roughly 11 years, from before publication until sometime in 2012. Noyce had wanted Rachel Weisz to play Georgie — she wound up being attached to the project for several years. In February ’07, with the project very much alive and ready to roll, Noyce ran into his leading man.

“One morning, walking with my coffee in Sydney, a Range Rover pulled up at a pedestrian crossing,” Noyce recalls. “Down came the window, and there was Heath Ledger. We agreed on the spot to shoot the film in Western Australia eight months later with Rachel.”

But the usual delays occured, and then Ledger died of an accidental overdose on 1.22.08. He was 28 years old.

“And I could never find the same spark for making the film with anyone else,” Noyce laments. “Not with Colin Farrell nor with Russell Crowe. No one could be the Luther Fox that Health showed me that morning in Sydney.”

In November 2011 Noyce asked Chris Hemsworth to play Luther for a shoot that would have begun in March 2013. That didn’t pan out either. Noyce’s option expired.

Along came Gregor Jordan. Jack Thorne (The Eddy) was engaged to write a new script. In August 2018 Hedlund and Macdonald were announced as the costars. Filming eventually happened in Kimberley, Western Australia, as well as Perth and Esperance.

Nervous Nellie blogger addressing the possibility of an all-streaming Oscar season (in comment thread): “When Damien Chazelle’s The Eddy hit, no one cared. It didn’t even cause a minor ripple. That seemed odd to me. We know Netflix built their house out of bricks and with Lisa Taback pushing the films they might reign supreme. But what will the competition be, and what will people care about, and why would anyone bother caring? My prediction is that it will go either way — either an uplifting musical like West Side Story might revive lethargy or something dark, political and angry might. I’m just wondering how bad it’s going to get, and how I’m going to make a living this year.”

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond: “I can only use the Emmy season so far as an example and it seems to be ‘business as usual’ this year. Print pubs are likely to be hit hardest as Netflix has announced it is going digital in terms of ads. I don’t get involved on the sales end, but if the studios can get content released, I am sure the usual hullabaloo will follow in all its forms. Content, as always is KING. That is the one potential factor separating Emmy season from Oscar this year. But assuming the movies are there (they really need just ten decent Oscar pics), the industry will find a way.”

HE: Some Nervous Nellies were asking this morning if the Oscar season will happen later this year, along with the show itself in early ’21. I took a deep breath.

Jordan Ruimy: Maybe, but the big titles are probably going to be streamed.

HE: Maybe so. Maybe it’ll have to be an all-streaming year this one time. Or maybe theatres will start to creep back in July and more in the fall. Maybe we’ll actually get to watch Mank and the other biggies on the big screen under certain conditions.

Here’s the answer either way: The Oscars are happening in early ’21, period. Because this is a DO OR DIE, “RALLY ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS” MOMENT….not just for exhibition but for all aspects of the industry…production, distribution, marketing, SAG, the below-the-line guilds, blogaroos. This is not a time to lay down and curl into a fetal position and die. Pearl Harbor has happened. Are we going to put Rosie the Riveter into those factories or not?

The Academy might have to extend the 2020 deadline to 1.31.21 or the end of February (2.28) or even March 31st, but THEY’RE GOING TO HAPPEN. The Oscars used to happen in April back in the ’60s. It would simply be a matter of going back to an April air date this one year. BIG DEAL. If there’s a problem out there and among us, it isn’t excitable behavior. It’s covid lethargy or, worse, covid depression. Maybe what we all need is a little fire and brimstone…a little Elmer Gantry.

Ruimy: Yeah, but again — will movies be released theatrically? If not, which studios are willing to send their Oscar titles straight to VOD?

HE: And don’t forget that 5.22 Carolyn Kormann New Yorker story about a fast-tracked virus vaccine, and particularly this passage: “Stephane Bancel, the C.E.O. of Moderna, said last week that, pending the results of the Phase III efficacy trial this summer, the vaccine could be ready for approval and licensing as soon as the fall.”

Ruimy: Vaccinating 330 million Americans is going to take months. The weakest and most vulnerable will get it first.

HE: Theatrical may not ignite until early next year….who knows? Or maybe in the fall. Remember that the first theatrical openings are happening in July.

Ruimy: We need L.A. and NYC to reopen their theatres. A theatre in Iowa or Tennessee screening UNHINGED doesn’t really count as a legitimate reopening of theatres. I can’t see Newsom and Cuomo fast-tracking the opening of movie theatres by July. They are taking their sweet-ass time, in no rush whatsoever.

HE: What’s wrong with Oscar contenders streaming, just this one year? What’s wrong with just sucking it up and DOING THAT as a one-time-only thing?

Ruimy: Nothing at all, but in the meantime we should all embrace the fact that streaming will be the go-to spot for this year’s best movies.

Journo pally: “Last night I watched William Wyler‘s final film — The Liberation of L.B. Jones (’70). It’s about a staid, small-town, African-American funeral home owner (Roscoe Lee Browne) who wants to divorce his hot wife (Lola Falana) because she’s having an affair with a white cop (Anthony Zerbe).

“The powers-that-be in the small Southern town want the whole thing to go away, and put pressure on Browne’s character to drop the suit. He refuses, with tragic results.

“It’s hard to imagine what Wyler was thinking when he decided to take on this project, but what emerged was a lurid, violent melodrama that’s somewhere between a blaxploitation film and a civil rights message pic (Yaphet Kotto also pops up as a black avenger). It’s a mess — a fascinating one, the kind you can’t take your eyes off, but still a mess.

“Wyler is one of the great directors of the old Hollywood system, a man who made a number of undying classics, and won a ton of awards. Yet his final film might be the worst movie he ever made. How many other major directors have ended their careers with a stinker?

“Lee Majors and Barbara Hershey play a white couple related to Lee J. Cobb, who’s sort of the film’s super-villain, and they’re supposed to be the white liberal conscience of the film, but are basically given nothing to do. And the film features two stereotypical racist white cops — Zerbe and Arch Johnson — who could have come out of any Fred Williamson flick. The craft is fine, although nothing special. Competent. But far from Wyler’s best.”

Wiki excerpt: “The screenplay by Jesse Hill Ford and Stirling Silliphant is based on Ford’s 1965 novel ‘The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones’. The novel, in turn, was based on events that happened in a Southern town where Ford lived. Post-publication he was verbally attacked for writing about same. The motion picture’s release added to the controversy, especially in Humboldt, Tennessee, where Ford lived.”

It must feel a bit disappointing to Jon Stewart that Irresistible, his second effort as a director-writer hyphenate, will open online because of the pandemic. After all that blood, sweat, passion, refining and tweaking. Pic is an upmarket political satire with a title that doesn’t exactly say “upmarket political satire”. The suggestion is that it’s Welcome to Mooseport meets Primary Colors…maybe. Steve Carell, Rose Byrne, Chris Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, Will Sasso.