The Aero was totally packed for Saturday night’s (2.22) screening of Elem Kimov‘s Come and See. A strange, surreal, odd-behavior film during the first half, and a devastating antiwar horror film during the last 50 to 60 minutes. Brutal, savage, compassionate art — a landmark effort.

Commendable 4K restoration, 1.37:1, excellent sound — couldn’t have looked better.

L.A. Times critic Justin Chang was there; ditto Peter Rainer and Paul Merryman, producer of Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, which will soon debut at South by Southwest. I discussed it earlier today with Lurie briefly. I also kicked it around with my son Dylan, who’s watched it two or three times.

Lurie: “The last time I met Roger Ebert he asked me to recommend a film that I’d assumed he’d never seen. I gave him Come and See. A few weeks later he wrote about it in his Great Films series. That ending shot of the lead protagonist, Florya (Aleksei Kravchenko), shooting the framed Hitler photo is what I think inspired that shot of the killing of Hitler in Inglourious Basterds.”

Lurie believes that Come and See “is maybe the best war film I’ve ever seen, certainly once the invasion of Belarus begins.”

Born in October of ’69 and somewhere around nine or ten years old (older?) during filming, Kravchenko is now 50. I’m not exactly certain when principal photography started and ended, but I think it began sometime in ’77.

Last summer Richard Dreyfuss sat for a Vanity Fair interview and didn’t talk about John Badham‘s Stakeout, which is arguably the most entertaining throwaway flick Dreyfuss ever starred in. Now he’s sat for another interview, this time with CBS Sunday Morning‘s Ben Mankiewicz, and again no one mentions the Badham film.

“Stealth Date Movie,” posted on 7.17.08:

“I know I give the impression of disliking popcorn movies for the most part, but nobody loves good crap as much as I when it’s really done right. I was thinking last night about John Badham‘s Stakeout, which I saw and loved 21 years ago at the Cinerama Dome, and wondering why no-big-deal caper movies like this don’t happen more often.

“The reason Stakeout works, of course, is that it’s not some throwaway buddy-cop movie about trying to catch an escaped fugitive. It’s a movie about a thoughtful 40ish policeman suddenly and surprisingly falling in love (i.e., Richard Dreyfuss + Madeline Stowe), and his knowing without question that the girl in the house across the street is vitally important to know, be with, care for and protect.

“The trick is that Stakeout is disguised as as an amiable jerkoff buddy-cop thing. Plus it’s one of the best films ever about voyeurism, second only to Rear Window.

“‘Stealth’ is what genre filmmakers never seem to get, or don’t have the talent to follow through upon. The way to make a run-of-the-mill genre film special is to pay attention to the undercurrent and shape it so it’s about something personal and intimate — any kind of heart issue, including creative ambition or career or whatever — while adhering to genre conventions.

“98% of genre filmmakers (fantasy, crime, you-name-it) always seem to think in terms of elements. They think success of failure is defined by stars, plot, fights, car chases, FX. They never seem to realize that while these things work as selling points, they don’t matter to all that much to anyone (except for the under-20 morons) and are actually profoundly secondary.

“Movies that really work are always about characters trying to connect with some fundamental emotion or goal. If you get that part right, then you can add in the genre conventions any old way and you’re off to the races.”

Six months before Bernie Sanders and his new wife, Mary Jane O’Meara Sanders, spent a 10-day April honeymoon in the Soviet Union, my then-wife Maggie and I were honeymooning in Prague, which at the time was celebrating the 60th anniversary of the 1917 Soviet revolution.

The city was packed with Communist party delegates and officials, and it was awfully hard to find a hotel room. There were relatively few western tourists, the smell of soft coal was in the air, there was no English spoken (Maggie knew a little German), and there were few street lights compared to Western cities — a seriously different realm.

All to say there was nothing especially curious or bizarre about honeymooning in Eastern Bloc countries of the late ’80s. (We also visited East Germany.). Maggie and I wanted to honeymoon in a realm that was free of western corporate signage. I’m glad we did this. It was bracing, exotic.

“Now you listen to me, I’m an advertising man, not a red herring….and I can hear colors.”

Having written three or four times about Cary Grant’s therapueutic LSD experiments in the late ’50s and early ’60s, I find it hilarious…okay, amusing and intriguing…that James Lapine, Tom Kitt and Michael Korie are about to present Flying Over Sunset, a stage musical about Cary Grant, Claire Booth Luce and Aldous Huxley dropping acid together inside a Malibu home in 1957. Previews will begin at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont on 3.12; the show opens on 4.16.

Grant will be played by Tony Yazbeck (a half reasonable look-alike), Luce by Carmen Cusack and Huxley by Harry Hadden-Paton.

Problem #1: In the below video Yazbeck is wearing an undercut with the usual whitewalls — i.e., super-short hair around the ears that exposes scalp. Cary Grant never, ever wore an undercut. His thick black hair was always cut with a little length around the ears. After casting Yazbeck why didn’t the producers tell him to grow his hair out a bit? No one is expecting Yazbeck to look or sound exactly like Grant (his voice is way too thin and high-pitched to even attempt an imitation) but why alienate viewers by contending that Grant wore a Hitler Youth?

Problem #2: Yazbeck looks like a handsome cross between Oscar Isaac and a dapper Palestinian. (Yazbeck is “a common family name and surname of Palestanian origin,” according to Wikipedia.) Am I allowed to sat that Yazbeck’s nose is clearly larger than Grant’s? This is another example of “woke” casting. Are you telling me that if there was a new musical about, say, a Palestinian surgeon that producers would hire a guy who looks and sound typically English? Not in this day and age — they’d find an actor who looks Middle Easternish. So why didn’t Lapine hire an actor who looks like he might’ve actually been born to Anglo Saxon parents in early 20th Century Britain?

Problem #3: The “trip” in the show happens in 1957, and yet Grant’s first trip happened under professional supervision in 1958. (This, at least, is what’s reported in “Cary in the Sky With Diamonds,” a 2010 Vanity Fair article by Judy Balaban and Cari Beauchamp.) Obviously a minor detail, but on the other hand why fudge it?

Huxley, Grant, Luce.

Lesson #1 of “Three lessons for PleaseNotBernie“, written by N.Y. Times columnist Ross Douhat: “You need candidates who aren’t actually winning primaries to drop out.

“The fatal conceit of establishment politicians facing an insurgency is that because the insurgent has obvious weaknesses, they should hang around and hang around, piling up third-place finishes and minor delegate hauls, in the hopes of gaining…something. What they are actually likely to gain is blame, irrelevance or both; just ask those noted influencers Jeb Bush and John Kasich.

“So if you are, say, Amy Klobuchar, the fact that you have a solid case for your own electability is not a reason to stick around for Super Tuesday if you finish behind Pete Buttigieg in South Carolina as well as in Nevada. If you’re Buttigieg, your strong Iowan and New Hampshire performances aren’t a reason to stay in if it’s clear you can’t compete nationally with Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden. If you’re Biden, if you lose South Carolina, you should drop out the next day. And so on.

“None of this means that simply consolidating the field will stop Bernie; he might well win a head-to-head race, too. But giving him five or six opponents in every contest makes the solidity of his core support an insurmountable advantage. And if you can narrow the field.”

We all know there’s no real chance to stop Bernie. But there might be a sliver of a possibility if Biden, Klobuchar and Warren quit after the South Carolina primary.

Nicole Wallace: “[What you’re describing] sounds like political suicide.”
James Carville: “It is. If you don’t win the Senate back, you don’t get anything. Nothin’ is gonna change. If you don’t push yourself to be a majoritarian party…[especially] if you have 55% of the voters available to you, then you’re making a real mistake.”

From Jeremy Faasler:

So are Democrats really serious about running a candidate against Donald Trump who…

1. Will be 79 years old on Election Day and would turn 80 in his first year of office.
2. Had a heart attack that drastically reduced his life expectancy.
3. Has never passed any significant legislation during his 30 years in office. [HE comment: I thought Sanders had passed two or three bills…no?]
4. May cause several of the moderate House Democrats we elected in 2018 to lose this year.
5. Refused to pay child support for much of his 30s.
6. Wrote [an essay] saying “a woman fantasizes about being raped by three men simultaneously” and blaming cervical cancer on a lack of female orgasms.
7. Complains nonstop about a “Democratic establishment” even though he’s been in Congress for 30 years and is part of that establishment.
8. Supported Fidel Castro and said he wanted to “throw up” when he heard JFK criticize him. [HE question: In what year? Who recorded or documented this quote?]
9. Went to a rally for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas where they chanted “Death to America” and “The Yankee will die.” [HE: Where was the rally? Who reported or reecorded those “death to America” comments?]
10. Honeymooned in the Soviet Union. [HE to Fassler: My ex-wife and I honeymooned in Communist Czechoslovakia in 1987 — no biggie.]
11. Is married to a woman with a history of shady business dealings.
12. Refuses to speak to [reporters for] local papers in his home state of Vermont.
13. Supported a controversial bill that moved toxic waste to poor Latino communities in Texas.
14. Voted for a bill allowing undocumented immigrants to be detained indefinitely pending deportation.
15. Voted against Senator Ted Kennedy’s immigration bill in 2006.
16. Voted against the Brady Bill and received support from the NRA in his initial runs for Congress.
17. Voted against Amber Alerts.
18. Has alienated colleagues in the House and Senate who would otherwise have been his allies.
19. Called Planned Parenthood “the establishment.”
20. Has a campaign staff whose most prominent surrogates either voted for Jill Stein or refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
21. Refuses to release either his medical records or his tax returns.
22. Tried to convince superdelegates to give him the Democratic nomination despite losing elected delegates in a landslide.
23. Allowed his supporters to disrupt the convention of the first female presidential nominee.
24. Did only 43 events for Hillary Clinton after she won the nomination – by contrast, Hillary did more than 100 events for Barack Obama in 2008.
25. Disdains identity politics, saying that it’s “not enough to say ‘I’m a woman, vote for me.’” [HE comment: Bernie’s right about that.]
26. Has an army of supporters who frequently bully, dox and harass anyone who criticizes him (i.e., Bernie Bros).
27. Frequently campaigns against more moderate Democrats in favor of far-left candidates—who usually go on to lose their primaries by wide margins.
28. Was helped by Russia during the 2016 election and is being helped by them again today.
29. Has fired staffers within 24 hours of their hiring because of their racist posts. [HE comment: Isn’t that usually regarded as an appropriate response?]
30. Yells at network executives who don’t give him more positive coverage.
31. Disdained Barack Obama in private and tried to run against him in 2012.
32. Refuses to join the party he’s running to be the leader of.
33. Most importantly: Sanders has no idea how to get any of his proposals enacted into law.

I will naturally vote for and speak admiringly of Bernie Sanders whenever I’m able to muster enthusiasm (which may be infrequently), but only the willfully blind believe he has any kind of realistic shot against The Beast.

No exaggeration, dead serious — this is one of the DARKEST TRAGEDIES to ever befall this once-great nation. I’m gut-struck, destroyed. Why can’t I find a heroin dealer when I really need one? Or at least somebody with a few Percocets to spare.

A rancid, ill-informed, foam-at-the-mouth animal — easily the most toxic, dangerous, sociopathic, press-hating, would-be totalitarian to occupy the Oval Office in our nation’s history — is going to be re-elected on 11.3.20. And the second-term anguish will be even worse. Fuhgedaboudit.

The environment weeps. People who long for a semblance of pragmatic sanity and practical compassion in government weep. Downballot Democrats are doing more than weeping — they’re panicking. My heart is shattered, broken.

And the Bernie faithful, God help us and for the noblest and most aspirational of reasons, are the orchestrators — the agents of this coming horror, this ruination, this destruction. Damn, damn.

“I’m really worried about our ability to defeat Donald Trump if [Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg] are our final two choices. If we have to choose between somebody who wants to burn things down in a way that I think a lot of American just don’t identify with, and somebody else who thinks he can just buy this with a personal fortune of a billionaire…I don’t think either of those choices is going to make it possible for us to bring American together and defeat this President.

“That’s why I’m offering a different approach. I think most of us agree that we can do a lot better than the President we have now, and that we have to change things in this country before it’s too late.”

HE to Pete: It breaks my heart to admit this, but it’s already too late. We’re all locked into a kind of electoral penitentiary right now, and our jailers, I regret to say, are purist progressives, Millennials, Bernie Bros and to a large extent African American voters (particularly the older homophobes). We’re basically fucked because of these guys, and partly because fellows like Kid Notorious think moderate progressives like yourself are the problem and not Bernie. It’s pretty close to a hopeless situation.

Donald Trump and Vladmir Putin couldn’t be more delighted. Stick a fork in me.

According to Ben Brantley‘s 2.20 N.Y. Times review, Ivo Van Hove‘s radical re-think of West Side Story — a stage revival currently playing at the Broadway theatre — is “attention–splintering.”

Titled “Sharks vs. Jets vs. Video,” the subhead states that the non-period-specific production boats “new choreography, a ravishing orchestra and smothering visual effects.”

The “s” word refers to huge video screens that complement and/or challenge the live-action, human-scaled activity.

“I fail to detect a natural rhyme or reason for the way video is used here,” Brantley states. “There are a lot of split screens and a lot of frankly clichéd, commercial-style images of characters running and brooding. I don’t think van Hove is commenting on our fragmented 21st-century attention spans, [but] the fact that our focus is repeatedly splintered obviates much chance for emotional concentration and, consequently, the possibilities for being truly moved.”

Another complaint is that it’s hard to tell the previously pale-faced Jets from the Puerto Rican Sharks. Now, says Brantley, “both gangs appear to be multiracial melting pots. Could this be van Hove’s point, that prejudice exists only in the mind’s eye? Maybe, but once these boys and girls start to rumble, you’ll wish they were wearing team uniforms.”

Oh, and “I Feel Pretty” has been deep-sixed.

Maybe Brantley has a point or two; maybe his opinions are outliers. But at the very least this new show appears to be reflective of the here-and-now — rougher, punchier, franker, more jagged-edged. A reinterpretation with fresh blood in its veins.

And it leads me to wonder how Steven Spielberg’s period-specific film (mid ’50s) will impress today’s audiences. I somehow doubt that Spielberg’s version will be anywhere near as nervy and provocative as Van Hove’s show.

I’m sorry but I keep sensing that Spielberg’s film will somehow underwhelm, especially if it features dp Janusz Kamiński‘s default desaturated color scheme with milky shafts of intense light piercing through, etc.

What would the U.S. of A. feel like on a day-to-day basis if our Democratic system had been effectively dismantled and we were living under a tyrannical despot spouting lies and disinformation on a daily basis? I’ll tell you what it would feel like. It would feel like right here, right now.

“The outcome of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial was precisely that he is above the law, that whatever he says is the law, that we should wait to see what he says and then adapt the law to that….that is precisely what tyrants over the centuries and authoritarians over the last century have always said. Our founding document, the Constitution, is basically a design about how to prevent someone from becoming a tyrant…[the idea] of three parts of the government balancing each other out. But what happened in the impeachment trial was exactly the opposite. The Congress gave way, and then Justice Roberts also gave way [by waving away notions of evidence and testimony]. So basically what we saw was a trial that wasn’t a trial.” — Timothy Snyder, author of “The Road to Unfreedom.”

Team Trump is naturally delighted and relieved that Bernie Sanders will be the nominee. As recently reported by intelligence sources Putin, who wants the gullible, useful-idiot Trump to have another term, is happy about this also. Down-ballot Republicans are also reportedly elated about Bernie.

God help us but it’s all falling into place for the right. Trump is naturally biding his time and keeping silent about Bernie’s ascendancy. But when he gives the order after Democratic voters have locked Bernie in solid, it’ll be a massacre..

Nate Silver has reminded that Sanders has never been “punched” by the rightwing fear and hate machine. Just wait.

I can’t believe this is happening. Well, I can but this feeling of gathering horror and the numbing of the community spirit is horrible. We’re still in February and we’re already fucked. The Bataan death march begins today in Nevada.

I meant to tweet “dooming us all to 2nd Trump term.”

How progressive. https://t.co/jmoALtx6Ra

— Kim Masters (@kimmasters) February 22, 2020

In a chat with The Wall Street Journal‘s Tunku Varadarajan, Clint Eastwood has distanced himself from Donald Trump and allied himself with Michael Bloomberg.

Excerpt: “’The politics [have] gotten so ornery,’ Eastwood says. He approves of ‘certain things that Trump’s done’ but wishes the president would act ‘in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level.’ As he drives me back to my hotel, he expresses an affinity for another former mayor: ‘The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there.'”

Will Team Bloomberg make a political ad about this endorsement? Probably within 24 hours. Less?