Kyle MacLachlan praised this mask on Instagram this morning and I immediately concurred. It was designed and manufactured by “NYC cosplayer, bibliophibian and glitterwitch” rhaps0die“. The only problem is that the red ear straps aren’t looped or elastic — you have to tie them together. Once she works this out I’ll buy a couple, if she’s selling.

For months I’ve been pining to see The Many Saints of Newark, otherwise known as the Sopranos prequel. It was going to open on 9.25.20, but now it’s been bumped to 3.12.21. I’m very sorry to hear this.

The early word was that Many Saints would deal with the 1967 Newark race riots. Although the film deals with racial relations, I’m hearing that the Newark riots are more of a backdrop than a plot element. What is it then? Basically a portrait of the culture that Tony Soprano came from and the seminal influences that ushered him into the life of a New Jersey crime boss. I’m told it runs around around 115 minutes.

Set in Newark during the mid ’60s and early ’70s, it focuses on three characters who figure heavily in the Sopranos legend. Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), the father of Christopher Moltisanti. “Johnny Boy” Soprano (Jon Bernthal), the father of Tony Soprano and capo of the original Soprano crew who goes to jail in the mid ’60s and is released in ’71. And Livia Soprano (Vera Farmiga), Tony’s chilly and manipulative mother.

The somewhat lesser figure of Junior Soprano, brother of Johnny Boy, is played by Corey Stoll, and a pair of lookalike brothers are played by Ray Liotta. Significant secondary characters are played by Leslie Odom, Jr. and Michela De Rossi.

The late James Gandolfini played Tony Soprano in David Chase‘s legendary Sopranos series, which ran from ’99 through ’07. Michael Gandolfini, his 19 year-old son, plays Tony in the second half of The Many Saints of Newark.

I’m hearing that Michael is quite good at filling his father’s young shoes, and that he nails a lot of his dad’s mannerisms and way of talking, etc. Quite the connection.

A portion of “Down Neck,” an episode of the first season of The Sopranos, re-appears in The Many Saints of Newark. Particularly an incident in which young Tony hides in the trunk of his father’s car when his dad drives to an amusement park. Or so I’ve been told.

The word is that this is a good and interesting film, and that it has a lot of tasty period flavor and interesting character perceptions, and will strike chords among Sopranos fans.

Conversation between HE and World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, about an hour ago:

HE: A connected friend just assured me “there will definitely be an Oscar season…don’t worry about that.”
Ruimy: Okay, but Oscar eligibility rules will have to change.
HE: Allowing streaming-only features to compete, you mean?
Ruimy: And they’re going to have to have the year to end in late January or even mid February, just this one time. Because there are so many titles waiting to open. And then have the Oscars in March sometime.
HE: Plus Anne Thompson’s idea of the Oscar telecast being a kind of patriotic industry event…we can get moving again when the vaccine finally hits!…the ultimate Night of a Thousand Stars event…that makes sense.
Ruimy: Yeah, I liked Anne’s idea, but we should still give out awards for the usual categories. If we’re still in lockdown by fall then at least make it fun for movie fans and allow streaming movies to be eligible.
HE: No lockdowns after August…please!
Ruimy: Yeah, but we don’t even know how next week will look in the country. Movie theatres may still be closed by fall, don’t you think?
HE: We’re already looking at theatres closed through most of the summer. Three and a half, four months. Now you’re talking five, six months? C’mon!
Ruimy: Movie theatre are confined spaces. If someone who has COVID coughs then the people around him/her are virus toast.
HE: I just want those Open Up zombies to start experiencing their own medicine, if you catch my drift.
Ruimy: These teabag protests are going to be growing more and more every week. It’s going to become its own kind of pandemic. Especially with Trump fanning the flames. It’ll leak through all 50 states.
HE: Blue state liberals are going to defy the lockdown?
Ruimy: Bumblefucks will rise up everywhere. Fox News and other conservative media are now full-on promoting a lift to the lockdown to help prevent the destruction of Trump’s booming economy. People who have lost their jobs, businesses and those who were surviving from paycheck to paycheck will all be part of these protests. It doesn’t mean that what they’re doing is right but they’re really desperate right now. A Great Depression is coming if this continues for even another month.

Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s Hollywood (Netflix, 5.1) recreates and reimagines late ’40s and ’50s Hollywood. Talented and dynamic women, gay guys and people of color occupying significant slots in the power structure. And with gay guys not as closeted as they actually were, and one couple openly holding hands in one snippet.

But of course, re-thinking America’s ethnic and sexual history has been in fashion since Hamilton, or over the last five years. Not exactly a radical move in 2020.

The problem is that nobody looks or sounds like a charismatic presence. They look and sound like attractive actors trying to inhabit that realm. The guy playing Rock Hudson, Jake Picking, doesn’t begin to exude the same kind of charisma.

Hollywood exec producer Janet Mock: “We turned to the past for direction, uncovering buried history to spin an aspirational tale of what ifs: What if a band of outsiders were given a chance to tell their own story? What if the person with greenlight power was a woman? The screenwriter a black man? What if the heroine was a woman of color? The matinee idol openly gay? And what if they were all invited into the room where the decisions are made, entering fully and unapologetically themselves to leave victorious and vaunted, their place in history cemented.”

Hats off to “HotPockets4All” for the primary image — I added the Shatner CU.

The theoretical essence of the Open Up tea-bag movement (please correct me if I have it wrong) is something along the lines of “better to risk death or even die (while helping others to do same) than submit to a severely shuttered, economically smothered way of life that amounts to a kind of living death.”

Is that more or less it? Because it feels like a plot element from The Omega Man.

For decades the consensus has been that The Thing With Two Heads (’72) is a mild hoot and worth seeing at least once. I’ve never had the slightest urge (my favorite Ray Milland-Roger Corman collaborations are The Man With The X-Ray Eyes and The Premature Burial) but now I’m thinking about it. The current winter of our discontent allows all sorts of bats into the belfry.

The problem if that it’s apparently not streamable and paying 20-plus for a DVD (not even a Bluray?) is a bridge too far.

More or less based on Stanley Kramer‘s The Defiant Ones (’58), the majority view is that TTWTH wasn’t funny or creepy enough. The director was Lee Frost. The screenwriters were Frost, Wes Bishop and James Gordon White.

…the below photo (posted as part of a 2.25 story called “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”) was an attempt at humor. A publicist friend tweeted or messaged me on Facebook to say, “Okay, you need to calm down” or words to that effect. And I replied, “Just having a little fun” or words to that effect. Seven weeks.

At best I was mixed on Slumdog Millionaire during the 2009/’10 Oscar season. I was 40% admiring and 60% annoyed, but I knew it wouldn’t do to make a fuss. So I had to sit there and take it for six damn months. In that sense it was a long Oscar season. Haven’t watched it since, will never watch it again.

Posted on 11.30.08: “How can anyone watch Slumdog and not be down with Jamal’s enormous dignity, strength of spirit and intelligence? And I understand (or think that I do) that Jamal’s life story is primarily a device that allows Boyle to dramatize the evolution of Mumbai chaos-culture over the past 15 or 20 years.

“But I just can’t believe that a kid who’s been subjected to such relentless cruelty and brutality his entire life — slapped, beaten, exploited, betrayed, booted, whipped, shat upon and made to suffer like a homeless dog day after day, year after year — would end up with this much patience and resolve and focus. Treat an actual dog like this and he’ll be incapable of showing anything but his teeth.

“Nor did I believe that the beautiful Freida Pinto‘s Latika wouldn’t be soiled and corrupted by her upbringing also, or that she’d stay emotionally loyal to and in love with Jamal through thick and thin. Things change, people grow up and move on, life is hard, get what you can, and nobody will save you but yourself. I know, I know…surrender to it, believe in love.

“But the cruelty in this film is relentless. Ugly behavior reigns during the first two acts. Except for the cop (Irfan Khan) who interrogates Jamal throughout the film, nearly every male character in Slumdog Millionaire is a cutthroat Fagin or Artful Dodger.

“And all through Slumdog I was muttering to myself how much I hate the Mumbai overload — the poverty, the crowding, the noise, the garbage landscapes, the public outhouses, the ugly high rises…the whole squalid cornucopia. I’ve never been especially interested in visiting urban India, but Slumdog settled things once and for all. If someone slips me a first-class Air India ticket from JFK to Mumbai, I’m trading it in for passage to Vietnam or China or Kampuchea or Katmandu.”

Johnny McQueen is a wounded, bleeding, half-delirious figure throughout Carol Reed’s classic 1947 film — after the robbery he’s never fully “there” and thereafter lies near the door of death, which constantly sings and beckons to him…”come to me, release your burdens, let me comfort you with my shroud”. And so Mason’s whole performance isn’t a tour de force but a fever-dream thing, and pretty much one-note — be honest. Poor rumpled Johnny is never strong or even conscious enough to say “I should do this” or “but I can’t do that.” He’s limp tissue, an invalid, a half-cognizant lamb waiting for the slaughter. His loyal girlfriend does him a favor at the end. Not a problematic performance as the sadness and resignation are constant and seeping, but certainly a limited one.

“Somehow, in their own way, the Rolling Stones split the difference, by performing ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ (They could have said, a la Bono, ‘Donald Trump stole this song, and we’re stealing it back,’ but did not.) It was easy to focus on the practical aspects of what they were doing: Were they playing together, or recorded sequentially? Why did Ronnie Wood’s licks appear to be live but Charlie Watts’ air-drumming not so much so? Certain elements of that conjoined performance may remain a mystery, until they’re explained to us. But it was kind of delightful, regardless — even as it imparted the slightly unnerving message that what we want — the old normal — probably isn’t what we’re going to get.” — from Chris Willman’s Variety review, filed just before midnight.