Apart from rousing receptions given to Taylor Swift and Hillary Clinton and apart from Hulu’s curious $17,500,999.69 cent purchase of Palm Springs, “the reception to [Sundance ’20] movies was much colder.

“As Sundance crawls into its closing days, a majority of the 100-something titles that screened in the snowy theaters of Park City are still actively seeking distribution.

“Many agreed that the narrative features that played were not as strong as they had been in other years, nor as powerful as they need to be to break through the hurdle of getting moviegoers to buy a theater ticket.” — From Brent Lang and Ramin Setoodeh‘s “Taylor and Hillary Were Rock Stars at Sundance, but What About the Movies?”:

In other words, the festival for the most part didn’t cut it, and most of the films shown over the last 10 days probably won’t charm Joe and Jane Popcorn when they start streaming or, in certain rare instances, playing theatrically.

Like I’ve said a few times, Sundance has more or less woked itself into a corner, and now it’s pretty much stuck with that brand or identity badge and can’t hope to free itself. The wokeness has been strident and persistent. The die is cast.

F9 (aka F9: The Fast Saga, Universal, 5.22) is the work of the devil, by which I mean one of the most shallow and aesthetically reprehensible hack directors on the face of the planet — Justin Lin.

You can smell the bullshit right away with a brief montage of Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto) and Michelle Rodriguez (Letty Ortiz) living on a green, serene, tree-shaded country farm and showering their young son with gentle TLC. FORMULA WHORES!

And then along comes John Cena as Jokob Toretto, Dom‘s bad bruthaahh! And over they go, tumbling into space, falling and landing without hurting themselves.

If I was Diesel, Rodriguez, Cena, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, Helen Mirren or Charlize Theron, would I appear in this thing for the sake of a stinking paycheck? I hate to say it but I probably would. Money is money, bills are bills, etc. That doesn’t change the fact that if Bob Dylan of 1964 could foresee the the Fast & Furious films, his response would be “can you find me a hole to get sick in?”

The best gig of my life has been writing Hollywood Elsewhere for the last 15 and 1/2 years. The second best was tapping out two columns per week for Mr. Showbiz, Reel.com and Kevin Smith‘s Movie Poop Shoot (’98 to ’04). General entertainment journalism for major publications (Entertainment Weekly, People, Los Angeles Times, N.Y. Times), which I did from ’78 to ’98 with a five year-break between ’85 and ’90, ranks third. But my fourth all-time favorite job was driving for Checker Cab in Boston. Seriously. The only non-writing gig I ever really liked.

Posted just under three years ago: The gig only lasted eight or nine months. I was canned for driving a regular customer off the meter up in Revere. But God, I felt so connected and throbbing and all the other cliches. Buzzing around one of the greatest cities in the world each night, learning something new every day, meals on the fly, incidents and accidents, hints and allegations.

At the end of every shift I was so revved that it always took a good hour to crash when I got home, which was usually around 1:30 or 2 am. And every night I had a new story to tell my girlfriend, Sherry McCoy, with whom I was sharing a nice little pad at 81 Park Drive.

Back then the Checker garage was on Lansdowne Street, or right next to Fenway Park. I remember to this day my Motorola two-way radio with the cord-attached mike. One of the dispatchers was called Tiny (a tall, white-haired fat guy); there was another older gent with a kindly face and gentle voice. After I had gained a little seniority I was given a slick new Checker cab (#50), which I always kept whistle-clean. At the end of every shift I had a new story to tell.

Story #1: A youngish woman who got into the back seat near Boston Garden found a full wallet with no ID or anything — $400 and change, which was a fortune back then. We split the dough 50-50 — luckiest score of my young life.

Story #2: An attractive, slender, frosty-haired woman in her mid to late 40s started chatting about this and that, and before you knew it were were flirting and talking about erotic chemistry and whatnot. As I was dropping her off she opened the cash slot and we gently kissed goodbye. We never got out of the cab, never shook hands — all in the eyes. I saw her on Newbury Street three or four months later…”Yo!”

I’ve no idea how much jail time, if any, Harvey Weinstein will wind up serving for the multiple alleged instances of rape and sexual assault he’s currently being prosecuted for. But after yesterday’s grotesque anatomical testimony by alleged sexual assault victim Jessica Mann, Weinstein has certainly gotten a taste of the sexual humiliation that he’s been accused of handing out during his heyday.

Mann, who alleges that Weinstein raped and sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions in 2013, claimed that the first time she saw Harvey buck naked she thought he was (a) “deformed and intersex,” (b) didn’t appear to have testicles, and (c) seemed to have a vagina. She added that he “smelled like shit” and “had a lot of blackheads” on his back. Her description, put bluntly, is that of a deformed and repugnant Uriah Heep.

Mann’s testimony suggests that Harvey may have had an undescended testicle or two, or a condition that resembles what Adolf Hitler reportedly suffered from. I know something about this as I had to have surgery when I was 10 years old to correct a one-ball condition. Without this I wouldn’t be able to have children, my parents were told.

In “Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute”, historians Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie wrote that “Hitler [was] believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended testicle and a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the under side of the penis.”

Life and biology are unfair and some of us are dealt bad cards. The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of people on this planet, perhaps millions, who are regarded as ugly. I myself have never used that word — a decision that came from watching Charles Laughton‘s performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (’39) when I was eight or nine.

But most or many people do use it. They regard certain people, fearfully, as deformed or abnormal or otherwise grotesque. Cruel or unfair as this sounds, these unfortunate people arguably have an obligation to prevent others from contemplating or, God forbid, being physically intimate with their biological misfortune. It follows that they should never even think about attempting sexual congress with other people. Better that way.

Think of all the anguish and bruisings that could have been avoided if Harvey had decided that he had no choice but to be sexually inactive in a normal social sense. Without a sex drive he’d probably still be a swaggering film industry hotshot of some kind. All he had to do was accept his biological fate and conclude that onanism, prostitutes and love dolls were his only allowable outlets.

But no — he had to have his way with actresses. And thereby ruined not only his own life but left many of his alleged victims permanently bruised and/or traumatized.

Two strategic words for Democrats: Play dirtier.

To go by frame captures provided by DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze, the Criterion teal monsters are back, and this time they’ve desecrated Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Teorema. Once again, natural or subdued blues have apparently been rendered with a garish teal-green tint. Look at the images. A year and a half ago I asked Tooze if there might be something off about the color tuning on his 4K Bluray players or 4K TV, and his emphatic reply was “I’ve been doing this 18 years, and it’s not me.”

So what is wrong with Criterion? This is vandalism, plain and simple. This is organizational derangement. This has happened three times previously with teal-tinted Blurays of John Schlesinger‘s Midnight Cowboy, Ron Shelton‘s Bull Durham and Brian DePalma‘s Sisters. And nobody has complained except for Tooze (half-heartedly), myself and a handful of thread commenters. And now Teorema.

Struggling Paramount needs the revenues from John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place, Part II (3.20) so let’s leave it alone. I’ll sit through it, of course, although I couldn’t care less. “Lee Abbott”, the dad character played by director-screenwriter Krasinki in the 2018 original, is back for more via some flashback scenes. So which Abbott family member dies this time — Emily Blunt‘s Evelyn, Noah Jupe‘s Marcus or Millicent Simmonds‘ Regan?

“The motion to call witnesses and consider evidence is not agreed to…” Despite Trump’s obvious and overwhelming guilt. Every Republican except Mitt Romney and the completely reprehensible Susan Collins.

Sen Chuck Schumer: “A tragedy on a very large scale…America will remember this day [in which Senate Republicans] turned away from proof and went along with a sham trial….Trump’s [forthcoming] acquittal will have no value.”

I hadn’t paid much attention to Dan and Sammy Harkham‘s recently re-opened Fairfax Cinema. It used to be the notorious Cinefamily, of course, which was shuttered in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations. The 163-seat Fairfax, which has an outdoor patio, bookstore, cafe and “art space”, opened its doors on 12.25.19. But until last night, I hadn’t given it much thought.

I was returning from an acutely painful viewing of Reed Morano‘s The Rhythm Section when I saw the brightly lighted marquee. My first thought was “can’t be real.” Who would program a double bill of The Misfits and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed with a straight face?

Then I wondered if it had been dressed for a currently-shooting film set in the ’70s. It resembled the marquee of the small-town theatre playing Samson and Delilah in George Pal‘s War of the Worlds (’53). It certainly looks out-of-time. Except for QT’s New Beverly, Glendale’s Alex and Santa Monica’s Aero, classic-style theatre marquees have all but disappeared.

Then I realized it was for real. I would never buy a ticket, of course. I own The Misfits on Bluray and have seen it three or four times. I can’t imagine how the Fairfax Cinema can possibly survive playing half-century old (and older) films, but I like that a theatre is at least giving it the old college try. Adds to the local cultural atmosphere and all.

Paragraphs #2,#3 and #4 in Timothy Egan’s “Bernie Can’t Win” piece are pretty good also:

“That’s the thing about class loathing: it feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

“Sanders has passion going for him. He has authenticity. He certainly has consistency: His bumper-sticker sloganeering hasn’t changed for half a century. He was, ‘even as a young man, an old man,’ as Time magazine said.

“But he cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades against walled estates.”

With the “no” votes of Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) now stated and confirmed, there will be no witnesses heard from in the Senate impeachment “trial” of Donald J. Trump, and thereby acquittal of The Beast will happen either late tonight or sometime tomorrow. Everyone knew Trump would skate in the Senate, but for the Republicans to refuse to hear witnesses (and particularly John Bolton)….well, forget it. One can only hope that the Republican cowards who pushed this through will pay a price at the ballot box. Maybe.

New Yorker cartoon by Teresa Burns Parkhurst.