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HE to knowledgable friendo: “This Eyes Wide Shut argument has been nothing if not a surreal experience. On one side, Larry Smith, Lee Kline and their allies have been saying ‘this film wasn’t properly color-timed in ‘99, and now we’ve finally saved the day.’ On the other side the rational, non-fanatical contingent with an unfortunate tendency to trust their lying eyes (i.e., people like me) have been saying ‘what the hell have these teal vandals done?'”

“All I know is that when I saw Lee ‘teal maestro’ Kline listed as one of two mastering supervisors, I experienced an inner ‘aha!'”

Do readers understand that Smith and Kline are reprehensible monsters? They don’t like subdued grays — they prefer flaming greens.

Journalist: “Are you comfortable, President Trump or Mayor-Elect Mamdani, with the teal-saturating of Criterion’s Bluray of Eyes Wide Shut?”

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I’m definitely hot to see and am eagerly looking forward to Josh Safdie‘s Marty Supreme (12.25), of course. But that aspect aside, which end-of-the-year film do I want to see the least?

HE’s four most dreaded are, in this order, (a) Paul Feig‘s The Housemaid (12.19), (b) James L. Brooks‘ Ella McCay (12.12), (c) Jon M. Chu‘s Wicked: For Good (11.21) and (d) James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash (12.19)?

I know for a damn fact that each of these four films is going to deliver some degree of serious pain, angst, frustration or pique. Avatar especially, but I have to sit through them anyway so fuck me.

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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