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Consider this highly perceptive Marlon Brando-as-Terry Malloy analysis by talk-radio guy Lee Habeeb, who’s a staunch rightie as well as a worsbipper of many good cinematic things. Plus he resides in Oxford, Mississippi.

“Those Were Miserable-Looking Human Beings,’ posted on 3.13.25:

I’m sorry but I’ve been watching this every so often for a good 15 or 20 years…something about Elia Kazan‘s words and way of speaking melts me down.

Perfect summary: “That one person should need so much from another person in the way of tenderness and all that…and we all do, don’t we? We all marry or hopefully marry or hopefully hook up with some lady who’s gonna make us feel that we’re okay or we’re better and all that…we search for it and want it and crave it, and sometimes it happens and sometimes it happens for a while. And something in that basic story is what stirs people. Not the social-political thing so much as the human element.”

Sincere message to all the Facebook friendos who’ve been sending along good wishes…it’s always nice when this happens.

Message from ex-Manhattan girlfriend, received this morning: “Happy XX Birthday. I’ve actually kinda forgotten how old you are and even, for that matter, where you geographically might be now. But wherever that is, I hope you’re well and celebrating.”

HE reply: “Thanks, [name]! Happy birthday to you also, being another Scorpio.

“Have you guys seen Sentimental Value, by the way? Renate Reinsve plays [you] in your mid 30s.

“Rather than resort to standard fiction, let’s just say that age-wise I’m still being born. Go ahead and laugh, but I often…okay, I sometimes feel close to or even imbued with the Obi Wan Kenobi-ness of it all…a John Lennon universe, which is to say a realm that is age-less, time-less, and occasionally radiating ‘oh, such loveliness,’ as Paddy Chayefsky once put it.

“That loveliness dissolves into anxiety and defensivness, of course, whenever I read the thoughts of certain progressive HE commenters, battery-acid scolds, alarmists and shriekers. But Chayefsky also described this head-space as the ecstatic embrace of ‘what the Hindus call prana.'”

Ex-Manhattan girlfriend reply: “I have not seen Sentimental Value. Interesting comment. Now I have to see it, of course.”

Jeff Sneider: “Happy Birthday, Jeff! I’ll spare you any jokes, but rest assured that those of us with taste know you’re a real one. A daily read. I’ve read every word. Big respect. Enjoy the day, Monsieur Motherfucker.”

Prana is a Sanskrit word meaning “life force” or “vital energy” that is believed to pervade the universe and animate all living things. It is considered a vital principle in Hinduism and is closely associated with breath, as breathing is a primary way to take in this energy. Practices like yoga and meditation, particularly the art of pranayama, focus on controlling and expanding one’s awareness of prana to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

Any film that ends, flippantly or sincerely or ironically, with the total obliteration of humanity is obviously selling a misanthropic view of things. We get it, we get it…conscience- free human beings are basically destructive cockroaches and better off exterminated.

But at least give Yorgos Lanthimos‘s Bugonia a measure of credit for sticking to its nihilistic doomsday guns and not copping out like Kathryn Bigelow‘s A House of Dynamite, which is too chicken to show the obliteration of a major city (i.e., Chicago) and doesn’t even end like Sidney Lumet‘s Fail Safe (’64), which only suggested the nuclear destruction of New York City with zoomed-in freeze frames.

Venice Film Festival review, posted on 8.28:

I saw Yorgos Lanthimos‘s Bugonia at 11 this morning, just after Jay Kelly. I guess you could call it an extreme hoot — a bloody, ultra-violent rant about nutters, aliens and environmental destruction, and is fittingly strange and crazy for the eccentric kidnapping saga that it is.

I completely agree with and support what the film says about the ecological ruination of the planet and how thoughtless humans pretty much deserve extermination.

Emma Stone is fine and fierce as a corporate snap-dragon, and Jesse Plemons, playing one of her two kidnappers, certainly commits to his character’s greasy grubbiness and his none-too-bright delusions and theories. Aidan Delbis‘s fat simpleton with the big curly Afro is irksome, of course. All such characters are.

Why, I wondered, did Plemons’ beekeeper, deranged though he was, decide upon this mentally handicapped fool for a close friendo?

Jerskin Fendrix‘s pounding musical score is certainly striking.

I didn’t much like Bugonia but I respected the aliveness. And ah-delia-delia-delia-delia-delia that’s all she wrote.

No Milan footage? The Devil Wears Prada 2 guys were shooting there in October, and HE was there only a few weeks earlier so what gives?

Miranda Priestly‘s red, gold-studded pumps look great, but that hand-on-the-hip gesture in the elevator says one thing: “Okay, here we go again.”

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is basically about the internet elbowing aside print — Priestly’s Runway being on the financial ropes with Emily Blunt, 42, now a major Priestly competitor with an online fashion presence of some kind…app, website, something. I don’t know where 43-year-old Anne Hathaway fits in.

During last Wednesday night’s viewing of Sentimental Value I noticed with a certain degree of surprise that a jazzy clarinet version of Alex North‘s love theme from Spartacus is on the soundtrack. It chimes in within the first half-hour or so. I spent some time searching for it on YouTube…unsuccessful. Has anyone recognized the track? Or who the jazz-combo performers are?

Why this Spartacus melody in particular? Director Joachim Trier wouldn’t use it for some banal thematic motive (Renate Reinsve‘s Nora also needs to break free, something like that)…too on-the-nose. But it did seem curious that he chose this anthem in particular.

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…have HE’s approval.

Pensylvania governor Josh Shapiro describing JD Vance’s politics as “bullshit” is analagous to Howard Beale telling his UBS newscast viewers that he’d simply “run out of bullshit.”

It was the right word to use both times.

Shapiro: “Excuse me for getting emotional about [this], but when I see hungry people in my state, who are hungry because of JD Vance‘s bullshit politics, that makes me angry…America deserves better than JD Vance.”

Initially posted in…I forget. Definitely re-posted on 2.14.21:

The following true-life encounters occured during the Santa Barbara Film Festival. The first happened in 2020; the second in ’15 or ’16. It follows that most of what happens during my annual SB visits is uneventful; we only pass along the stand-out stuff.

Story #1: I was in the checkout line at Ralph’s on Carillo. A giggly party girl and her friends were buying four huge bottles of something alcoholic. Either the booze was pale yellow or the bottles were tinted that way. Didn’t see a label or sticker.

I asked the checkout guy, “What is that stuff?”

“Bocca,” he said.

“Bocca?” I repeated. I thought it might be some exotic liqueur. “Never heard of it.”

Actually I had in The French Connection — Tony Lobianco’s Brooklyn-based heroin dealer was named Sal Bocca. Roy Schieder: “Our friend’s name is Bocca. Salvatore Bocca. They call him Sal. He’s a real sweetheart.”

The girl and her pallies paid for the Bocca, and the guy packed the bottles in ordinary paper bags, which struck me as insufficient given their size and weight.

“How do you spell that?” I asked. The checkout guy ignored my request, but he looked at me sideways. “You never heard of Vocca?”

“No,” I insisted while offering a half-shrug of apology. Ping. “Oh, you mean vodka?”

“Yeah, man…vocca.”

“Oh, sorry. I misunderstood. Sorry.“

In fact, the checkout guy, who was (and undoubtedly still is) of Latin descent and spoke with a slight accent, was pronouncing his vees like bees. I learned that in Spanish class when I was 15. When you say “vamonos,” for example, the vee is pronounced as a blend of vee and bee.

Which partially explains the confusion. But vodka is pronounced “vahdkuh” and this guy was delivering too much of an “oh” sound. So just between us, it was mostly his fault. I’ve been saying the word “vodka” my entire life so don’t tell me.

Story #2: I was staying for a night (Saturday) at the Cabrillo Inn. I awoke around 6:30 am. I naturally wanted my usual cup of morning mud. There was no coffee-pot heater in the room so hot tap water would have to suffice. I turned on the faucet and waited. And waited. Didn’t happen — never even turned warm.

So I dressed and went downstairs with my day-old paper cup and my Starbucks Instant and strolled into the complimentary-breakfast room.

Some 50ish guy (a tourist from Chicago, he later explained) was standing inside and giving me the once-over. Two women were preparing things; they weren’t quite ready to serve. All I wanted was some hot water so I asked for that. In a minute or two, they said. I nodded and waited.

The Man From Windy City thought I had somehow overstepped.

Chicago guy: “Why don’t you ask the hotel manager?”
Me: “What’s he gonna do?”
Chicago guy: “That’s what he’s here for.”
Me: “What’s he gonna do, push the emergency hot-water button?”
Chicago guy: “He could get an engineer to fix the pipes.”
Me: “At ten minutes to seven on a Sunday morning? Yeah, that’s a possibility.”

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