Tag Archives: movies

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, December 16, 2025. Just two days after the demented president posted a vile, insensitive, disgusting post on the death of Rob Reiner, today I’m learning that the behind-the-scenes Drumpf chief of staff Susie Wiles scorched Grump and his present regime in a sweeping Vanity Fair profile published Thursday. This blistering account of the chaos within the Grump administration is covered in a Daily Kos piece published today entitled “Trump’s top aide exposes White House chaos – and regrets it.”

As if we didn’t know already, Wiles described Mascara Vance as a “conspiracy theorist for a decade.” The remark lands amid lingering speculation over Vance’s political transformation – from once likening the toddler in chief to Adolf Hitler – which is accurate, in my opinion – to becoming one of his staunchest defenders. Wiles suggests the shift was less ideological than opportunistic, calling it “sort of political.” Anyone could have guessed that after he was one of Grump’s most strongest critics who then executed a 180-degree turnaround when he ran for the Senate in Ohio and was backed by the odious billionaire Peter Thiel. I’m ashamed to say that Thiel is patently gay.

Responding to Wiles’ assessment of Vance being a conspiracy nut, Vance himself offered a wry caveat. He said, “Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in conspiracy theories that are true.” Yuck, yuck, yuck! So droll coming from such an insipid personality!

In her interview, Wiles is unsparing in her criticism toward Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, calling him “a right-wing absolute zealot.” Which is no surprise here!

The magazine notes that Vought was the “architect of the notorious Project 2025” which is being carried out by this lying son of a bitch who originally claimed he had no knowledge of it when he was campaigning. This is the Heritage Foundation-backed blueprint to radically reshape the federal government.

Wiles also weighed in on the despised Elon Musk and his short-lived effort to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget, an initiative that ended with Musk conceding he could cut only $150 billion by the end of 2026. And when asked about Musk’s continually erratic behavior, Wiles did not mince words.

The chief of staff said that Musk was actually microdosing when he was being erratic. In a since-deleted post, Musk originally argued that fascistic leaders like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler “didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did.”

As for Musk’s suspected drug use, Wiles confirms all of the speculation. She claims that the Tesla mogul is an “avowed ketamine [user],” echoing The New York Times‘ claim that Musk heavily used drugs while working in the White House. Not only does this current White House protect pedophiles, it also protects drug users, according to this interview with Wiles. Wiles said Musk sometimes mixes ketamine with other drugs. The liberal newspaper also notes that Musk is an avid user of ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms, and Adderall. Oye, was little Muskie high all that time while he was slashing the federal government’s supposed excess?

Her own Orange Toad of a boss wasn’t even spared in the magazine, with Wiles describing Grump as having an “alcoholic’s personality,” drawing a comparison to her father, legendary NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall, who struggled with alcoholism before getting sober.

Here I dispute Wiles’ assessment of Grump’s horrible personality, describing it as an alcoholic’s. She claims that alcoholics have “exaggerated personalities when they drink.” This is true, I won’t deny that, not that I know many alcoholics. I just feel that Grump has a cruel, vindictive, and soulless personality arising from lack of love given him when he was young. That is the assessment made years ago by his estranged niece, Mary Trump, in her psychological profile of him published years ago called Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

We all know that one of the things this idiot doesn’t do is drink. He cites his older brother Fred’s addiction to drink and his early death as the reason why he doesn’t drink. However, he does drink Diet Coke continuously. Because of this nasty habit, the president can point to a button on the Resolute Desk that summons the beverage at the press of a button.

While the media-shy Wiles made the comments to Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple, she has been one of Grump’s most loyal and influential advisers, previously managing his 2024 campaign.

Talking about her boss’s unfounded allegations of mortgage fraud against Attorney General Letitia James, Wiles concedes that Drumpf did carry out a retribution campaign against her. Here she makes a laughingly absurd remark about Trump’s thirst for vengeance, “I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.” Like always, I’d say.

Now that the interview with Wiles is on the record, the camera-shy Wiles attempted to push back against the narrative of a chaotic and frenzied White House, saying that the Vanity Fair profile was a “disingenuously framed hit piece,” arguing that key context had been omitted to paint the White House as chaotic and negative. I don’t think that if Susie Wiles sat down with this Whipple fellow to give a candid interview about what goes on in the Dump White House and then literally blows the roof off the building in the process that she can now walk back what she already said in the profile.

But don’t think Ms. Wiles has changed her MAGA roots from doing this interview. She has drunk the Dump Kool-Aid like so many gullible Americans when she insists that the administration had “already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years.” My jaw just drops from reading this hogwash. She signals out Drumpf’s “unmatched leadership and vision” and says that nothing in the story would slow the push to “Making America Great Again.” Give me a break, lady! You certainly didn’t paint a rosy picture of your boss’s regime for Americans for Vanity Fair and people reading it will just shrug their heads in agreement.

Today I did have lunch with my former colleague “Sally” and her husband “Stuart.” We met at a very chi-chi place on East 70th Street and held forth for almost 2 hours. After that, I walked to the West Side to browse in my favorite bookstore on 80th Street and Broadway. I succumbed to buying a book for only $1 this time: Susan Isaac’s Compromising Positions, a book from 1978. I think I saw the movie that the book was adapted into from 1985 that starred Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia. It was a comedy/mystery.

Talking about mystery, I saw the latest Knives Out entry on Netflix last night on the recommendation of my friend “Harold.” At the outset, I have to say I was ecstatic over the whole production: the scenery, the setting, the characters, and the marvelous acting from a rich ensemble, headed by Daniel Craig as the detective Benoit Blanc. This is the third entry in the series created by writer/ director Rian Johnson, and I aver it’s the best in my opinion.

This film is called Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and mystery it is, as Blanc is called in to a small parish to investigate the mysterious murder of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (a bellowing Josh Brolin who is unrecognizable at first in a flowing white beard and hair). This fire-and-brimstone pastor is found stabbed in the back during a Good Friday service, moments after having ducked into a small stone alcove, just off the main altar, in full view of the congregation. Soon the visiting priest, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is suspected of Brolin’s murder since he has had words with the monsignor and is opposed to the church leader’s methods of attracting parishioners. The young priest who maintains his innocence throughout, here brilliantly played by O’Connor, is brought into Blanc’s confidence to investigate the remaining flock who become the true suspects.

Here the cast is fleshed out by Glenn Close as perennial church assistant and overall factotum Martha Delacroix, the failed far-right politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), the once-popular novelist Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), the hard-driving lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), and the town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner) who is nursing his depression after his wife leaves him for someone else, and the wheelchair-bound former star cellist (Cailee Spaeny), who hopes that the thousands of dollars she’s donated to Wicks will generate a miracle cure for her chronic pain. Before long, we learn that all of them had good reason to kill the monsignor. During all of this chaos, there is even echoes of a Third Day Resurrection. Mila Kunis plays the local police chief who brings Craig into the case, as she finds herself out of her league with this mystifying murder.

I won’t give much else away, only to highly recommend the film for great writing, in which themes of faith, spirituality, and immortality are tackled. Craig and O’Connor make a very intriguing pair as they conduct their investigation into Brolin’s murder. They also spar over religion, as Blanc notes his skepticism over Catholicism, while young Father Jud tries to nudge him toward something more spiritual throughout their association.

Go see it if you have Netflix.

Good news: I’ll be here tomorrow since I discovered that only four people were going to attend the TCM meeting at the Tick Tock Diner. So I texted our organizer and said I was now not coming.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, October 31, 2025. Happy Halloween, ghosties! As you know, I was going to brave the brutal weather yesterday in seeing Psycho in concert at the David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic playing the inimitable score of Bernard Herrmann on stage. For those not familiar with Hermann’s scores, I’ll provide you some background information on this man’s illustrious career later on.

Yesterday the weather was quite rainy and windy, and I had no intention of giving up my ticket to this groundbreaking film that gave birth to the modern horror film by staying home. So I took my trusty pink umbrella, put on my blue-zippered jacket, and left the borough around 3. I was scheduled to meet my friend “Harvey” at The Smith, located on 63rd Street and Broadway, around 4:15. However, I got to the West Side earlier than scheduled, so I darted into Breads Bakery for a cup of coffee and a croissant. Yes, I could still have dinner at 4:30 or 4:45 or even later after nibbling on a croissant just several minutes before.

As I was drinking my third cup of coffee, my phone rings, and it’s Harvey who says he’s already inside The Smith having a beer at the bar. I mentioned I was directly adjacent to the restaurant and that I would come by once I was finished with my repast.

After finishing my coffee and croissant, I walked directly across the street to the restaurant and spoke to a hostess inside. I mentioned that I had a 4:30 reservation and that someone could be here already. I saw Harvey right away; there weren’t that many customers having drinks at the bar at that time, and he started coming toward me.

We were ushered then to a table where we examined the menu and exchanged stories about traveling in this terrible weather. I mentioned I couldn’t believe how my umbrella didn’t self-destruct in these blustery winds.

Dinner was quite good; it consisted of us sharing crispy calamari and my having ricotta gnocchi, while Harvey had oysters initially. I eschewed dessert, but Harvey couldn’t resist the ice cream.

After dinner, we had some time to kill so we walked further uptown and, to our surprise, discovered another Strand Bookstore on 67th Street, I believe. Thus we browsed inside for a while before deciding it was time to head back to Lincoln Center. I almost bought an old Norman Mailer book on the Used Book shelves, but thought better of it.

Now to the concert that began a little after 7:30. The young conductor of the orchestra was Stephen Mulligan and there was a principal violinist by the name of Hae-Young Ham. They appeared on stage, while a large screen loomed behind them. That’s where we watched this 1960 thriller.

We were on the Second Tier, Door 22, Row DD, seats 2 and 3. We were in the last row in the back of the theater. That is the reason, I think, that we found the sound from the orchestra not as overpowering as we thought it would be. Also, the instruments used for the score were all strings here, and a note in the program explains why Herrmann decided to go this way instead of using a full-throttle orchestra for the menacing score heard throughout the shocker. The reason he did this, according to the program, is that he wanted “to complement the black-and-white photography of the film with a black-and-white score,” thus the use of strings only without the employment of woodwinds, brass, or percussion. In fact, Harvey asked me why there weren’t other types of instruments used in this show, and I pointed out Herrmann’s philosophy as the explanation.

Anyway, it seems as the audience thoroughly enjoyed this version of the film. I’m very curious to know how many audience members had seen this film for the first time last night. As I scanned the audience, I couldn’t make out many younger folk – like those in their 20s or 30s. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

As I mentioned, Bernard Herrmann provided six scores for the temperamental director. He started with scoring Hitchcock’s 1955 principal comedy, The Trouble with Harry, 1956’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, also from 1956, 1958’s Vertigo, the espionage caper North by Northwest, from 1959, and 1963’s The Birds.

Herrmann was New York-born and bred and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx (my former childhood birthplace), New York University, and The Juilliard School. He formed his own ensemble in 1931, the New Chamber Orchestra, to explore avant-garde repertoire. In 1934, he joined the staff of CBS as an arranger and rehearsal conductor. His scores for Orson Welles’s radio shows led to an invitation to write the music for two of that director’s films, Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Thus began a 35-year record of writing musical scores for film and television that kept the composer quite busy. Herrmann died the night he finished scoring the music for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1975). In total, Herrmann composed the scores for 51 films, not to mention a good many radio productions, television shows, concert shows, and even an opera.

As for Psycho, the film “set a horror standard for generations to come,” according to our program. It also depicted frank discussions of sexual situations and even mentioned transvestism at the end of the movie, which was quite unusual for commercial films at the time. Also, this was the first time a toilet was actually flushed in a film, when the doomed heroine, Marion Crane, portrayed by Janet Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother, flushes a piece of paper down the toilet in her cabin, Cabin 1. This happens just before the shocking and infamous shower scene. If you really examine the thrusting of the knife here, you will actually see that the knife does not penetrate Leigh’s skin at all. This is so different from slasher movies today that depict the most graphic effects of being knifed by dastardly characters all the time.

Anyway, this was Halloween and you wouldn’t know it. We met Elliot’s daughter in Rockville Centre at Press 195, a sandwich and burger joint, where “Emily” paid for our lunch. She wanted to honor both Elliot’s and my upcoming birthday in November.

From lunch, we drove to see “Joseph” at the rehab center where he’s still staying and recovering from surgery on a broken hip sustained in a fall at the center. We stayed about an hour and brought him a slice of pizza and three Diet Coke bottles. He was very appreciative of that. Within 20 minutes or so, we were joined by his wife, “Mary.” This was our cue to leave.

It’s getting late here, so have a good weekend.

Oh, tomorrow Elliot and I will be attending a dinner at Beth-El, in Jersey City, a gala dedicated to Elliot’s late aunt’s estate funding of a refurbished community center opening tomorrow, so I’ll not be writing my blog on Saturday. The event starts at 7, and I don’t expect to be home before 11. I’ll see you on Sunday, November 2.

And so it went!

Here’s the auditorium early on before the film began at 7:30.

Here is the playbill from the program at Lincoln Center.

Here is a view from down below. Maybe I could be suffering from “Vertigo” by looking down.

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, October 26, 2025. It’s late here, owing to my being out with Elliot and his first girlfriend “Deborah” in Cobble Hill and us viewing a career-defining role for Ethan Hawke as fabled lyricist Lorenz “Larry” Hart in Richard Linklater-directed Blue Moon at the Cobble Hill Cinema. I thoroughly enjoyed this intimate, singular setting production of a night in the life of this famous American artist on the downslide in the early 1940s.

The film takes place in Sardi’s, a famous Manhattan bar located in the heart of Manhattan, where Hart arrives early before a celebratory party for Hart’s writing partner, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott). For Rodgers, it’s the opening night for his latest production, Oklahoma! written with composer Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). Hart tries to show how happy he is, but in realizing that the show is better than anything he wrote with Rodgers, he is quietly devastated.

Throughout the static interior of Sardi’s, Hawke as Hart fires off his lines at a breakneck pace as if words might protect him from his insecurities. I opined that the special effects guy made Hawke somewhat smaller and I was right. From reliable sources, Hart stood only at 4′ 10″ and, in this film, Hart’s diminutive size is matched by a fiery, verbose personality. Caustic, sarcastic, and trying to mask his sadness, we can see that Hart is facing the end of his run as collaborator with Rodgers for a quarter of a century. This is due to his erratic working style and his incessant drinking.

In the first half of the film, nearly all of Hart’s conversations are with Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), the trusted bartender, and Morty (Jonah Lees), a piano player hoping to be discovered by Rodgers later on. At one point, Hart reveals to Eddie his infatuation with Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), a 20-year-old ingenue whose admiration of Hart as a songwriter extraordinaire has falsely led the lyricist to believe there’s a sexual spark between them, even though it was generally known that Hart was a homosexual. At another point, Hart declares he can appreciate both sexes for their beauty.

When Scott as Rodgers arrives, the tone shifts considerably and his performance brings a quiet dignity that counteracts Hart’s volatile nature. You can sense the palpable tension between them as they reminisce about their long-term professional relationship, but old wounds are recalled in terms of Hart’s erratic nature and why Rodgers was forced to collaborate with a more steadfast and reliable writer like Hammerstein.

Cannavale shines as Hart’s confidante and Qualley shines luminously in the film as a 20-year-old starlet who wants to break into the business as a costume designer who eventually abandons Hart to go with Rodgers to his opening-night party. Hawke conveys Hart’s devastation through his downcast eyes after she leaves and you feel for him, as his personal and professional worlds appear to be skidding toward destruction. Which does happen; as it’s revealed at the end that Hart died at an early age, 48, in the same year, 1943.

I will admit that this film will not appeal to many filmgoers who hunger for more action, more special effects, and less dialogue in their films. Overall, the look of the film is that of a staged play since there is only one predominant setting – the bar. However, Hawke’s performance anchors the entire film, with everyone around him performing as “extras” in a play. But look at the many songs that Hart wrote: “Blue Moon;” “The Lady Is a Tramp;” “Manhattan;” “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered;” and “My Funny Valentine;” among many, many more, and it’s just quite amazing. The Rodgers and Hart songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz instrumentalists. That is why seeing this film offers an especially intimate portrayal of this tortured genius. And why I recommend it highly to anyone who won’t fidget without seeing a car crash or see body parts blow apart onscreen every ten minutes or so.

Well, it’s another week, folks, so have a great one.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, October 25, 2025. I know I’ve been absent from this site for the last two days and the reason being was that, on Thursday, Elliot and I were entertaining our young friend “Taylor” over meatballs and minestrone soup. He left close to 10 p.m. and yesterday, I was with my friend “Seth” seeing this crazy, madcap parody of The Parent Trap at the Orpheum Theatre called Ginger Twinsies. My friend was more impressed with it and I was less so, possibly because I have not seen either films, the latter starring Lindsay Lohan and Natasha Richardson. I’ll have to cite some reviews of it to familiarize yourselves – and myself – with the zany objectives of the one-man writer/director phenomenon, a man named Kevin Zak, behind this 80-minute lollapalooza in which I basically couldn’t hear many of the gags that richocheted off the characters’ lips (we were sitting in the last row of this theater). More of that later.

Going through some of my old blogs, I came across one I wrote exactly two years ago in which I denounced the promotion of Louisiana MAGAt Mike Johnson to the Speakership of the House. An opinion piece written then by Julian Zellzer for CNN laid out in stark terms why putting Johnson as Speaker of the House would bode badly for this country, and boy, has his prognostication proved true. Zellzner said that Johnson’s victory would be a win for MAGA and that fact, sadly, has come true in the two years since Johnson has catapulted into Americans’ consciousnesses. His positions are as far right as any could be in that he has been a staunch opponent of LGBTQ+ rights (I truly think he’s a closeted homosexual, but don’t ask me for any proof, though), an opponent of reproductive rights, and has opposed funding for Ukraine’s war against Russia. He also worked closely with the Orange Turd in opposing the certification of the 2020 election results, which certainly places him in a top Dump lapdog position. Thus Johnson’s ascendancy to House leadership has been an unmitigated disaster for this country, and the last twenty-four days of this government shutdown just proves how terribly bad he is for this country. Let’s hope and pray he is thrust aside in 2026 if this Orange Turd doesn’t suspend the midterms for whatever insane reason he chooses.

As for those reviews of Ginger Twinsies, one was written by Lane Williamson for exeunt and it was written on July 29. She comments that almost a decade ago, two creative geniuses, Josh Sharp and cocreator, Aaron Jackson, staged their own parody of The Parent Trap, a musical called Fucking Identical Twins (which I didn’t see) at the Upright Citizens Brigade (a venue no longer in existence) and that it was adapted into an independent film retitled Dicks: The Musical, which I did see but never knew it was an adaptation of that 1961 Disney film starring Hayley Mills in a dual role.

This parody that I saw yesterday “sticks closely to the 1998 remake into a canny bit of elder-Millennial nostalgia.” And forty years later, Nancy Meyers remade the film with Lohan as the title character, and Meyers herself shows up in the play last night, and both of us were saying, “Who is Nancy Meyers?” In the play, the gags come at you a mile a minute, and since we were in the back, the shouting and catcalls of the audience sometimes drowned out the dialogue for me.

In this loony version of the classic film, Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds play Annie and Hallie, one a white man, and the other a Black woman, far from twins except for their red hair and are “instantly” recognizable as opposites, but which the play capitalizes on to great effect.

The plot, as it were, concerns the twins first discovering themselves at the same summer camp, learning they were separated at birth, and where they then concoct a fantastic plan to reunite their single parents, with one living in London and the other owning a lavish vineyard in California. They switch places, where Hallie goes home to her mother in London, while Annie returns home to their father in California, there portrayed by Jimmy Ray Bennett as Martin, who uses a recurring joke to refer to Hallie as his “squirt.” This is used quite a number of times to the delight of the young audience who roared their approval in guffaws and shouts.

In standout, riotous performances are Grace Reiter in the role of Hallie’s nanny or housekeeper, no one really knows, and Philip Taratula as Meredith Blake, a rival to the twins’ getting their parents together, as she woos the twins’ father in California and is about to get married to the rich businessman. One of the reviews mentions there are many references to Harry Potter in this parody, which I missed since I barely saw these films when they first came out. When the girls eventually get together, they scheme against their potential stepmother who gives a classic bitchy stepmother type of performance. In another review for New York Theatre Guide, Austin Fimmano writes her review on July 14, 2025, in which she writes, “Ginger Twinsies is pretty much 80 straight minutes of raucous laughter. The jokes are never-ending and they’re never dull, especially when Taratula, as Meredith, is on stage. It’s a compliment to the writing and acting, but the laughter also drowns out some of the dialogue, forcing the actors to project even louder than they already were.”

So, this critic, in her last statement, reinforces what I said earlier about not being able to hear some of the dialogue. I rest my case. Anyway, this play is definitely one that would be appreciated more by people in their 30s, I’ve realized. Sadly, the play ends its run at the Orpheum tomorrow.

Tomorrow Elliot and I are venturing to Brooklyn to meet our friend “Deborah” for a film and dinner. I’m not sure if I’ll be present here later in the evening, depending on what time we get back. I’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Have a good Sunday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, August 21, 2025. Today I finally saw James Gunn’s new version of Superman at the local Midway Theatre at 3. Elliot eschewed seeing the film since the DC character is not his bag. I saw the film with my Austin Street Diner friend “Jerry.”

For those who haven’t seen it yet, I won’t give away the plot that much here. In the title role, Gunn cast David Corenswet who was seen earlier in Pearl and Twisters and he cast the star of television’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan, as Superman’s earthly squeeze, Lois Lane. In this latest incarnation of the 87-year-old superhero, there is less emphasis on the origins of Superman. It’s suggested in flashbacks and a few scenes in which his adopted parents, Ma and Pa Kent, are seen onscreen. They are the most homespun couple you will ever see on the screen and they are played by Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell as Martha Kent.

All in all, I enjoyed this newest version of Superman in that the principal character is seen more vulnerable and getting his ass kicked by many of his adversaries in the film. I believe Corenswet brings all the charm, sincerity, and strength to the role of Superman. The same goes for Rachel Brosnahan who brings a modern take on the Daily Planet’s star reporter, Lois Lane. In the film, she’s been seeing Clark Kent/Superman for three months but has her doubts about continuing the otherworldly relationship.

The film opens with an extended fight sequence pitting Superman against The Hammer of Boravia which leaves him on the ropes. This adversary comes to Metropolis looking for Superman after he has involved himself in an invasion between neighboring countries Boravia and Jarhanpur. While Superman and The Hammer square off against one another, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) works on his own plan to subvert the public perception’s of Superman in order to conquer him once and for all.

The movie gets bogged down a bit with extensive CGI usage and the emergence of another squad of heroes, the Justice Gang, fronted by Guy Gardner as Green Lantern, (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), who are brought in to pick up the pieces when Superman is sometimes injured in battles with his foes.

All of the main characters are acted quite well in the film. However, the film did seem overlong and too jumbled, with the over-reliance on pocket universes and other scientific mumbo-jumbo. The characters of Perry White (who is Black here) and Jimmy Olsen were underutilized as well as Superman’s adoptive parents. However, Superman’s dog, Krypto, is featured prominently in many scenes here. The CGI incarnation of the superhero’s dog seemed quite realistic, I must say.

My friend Jerry was more disillusioned with this Superman because he didn’t enjoy the overuse of CGI in the production. I can sympathize with him, but I did enjoy it overall. Here Hoult as Luther is not as humorous and clownish as he was portrayed by Gene Hackman back in 1978. He’s more ruthless and envious of Superman’s popularity which fuels his smear campaign against him throughout the movie.

All of social media and its toxicity is brought to the fore of this modern retelling of the comics legend. This is revealed as Luther carries out a misinformation campaign against Superman with the aid of social media. Also, the country of Boravia could then be compared, possibly, to Russia and Jarhanpur could be viewed as Ukraine according to today’s headlines. It is soon learned that Luther is secretly helping Boravia in its conflict against its neighboring country.

When the film ended, I called Elliot to meet us downstairs so that we could drive to Diner Bar for dinner. I lucked out in finding a spot around the corner and put in money for 40 minutes on the meter.

It was a nice day, despite the cool weather where I wore a jacket for the first time in August as well as jeans. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be warmer, with temperatures in the 80s. I prefer this to an early fall in August.

Well, it’s late here and I cannot force myself to parrot the news of the day after seeing this paean to kindness, civility, and morality, all of it sorely lacking in this country at the moment!

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, July 21, 2025. It’s late here owing to Elliot and I watching a wonderful film on Netflix, Sinners, from early 2025. We tried to watch it before, but had some trouble understanding the dialogue. We successfully watched the entire film tonight.

Set in rural Mississippi around 1932, the movie stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to their southern town to open a juke joint, in their parlance, after trying to make it in Chicago as gangsters. They recruit their cousin Sammie (a breakout role for Miles Caton) who plays a mean guitar and sings the blues. Most of the early scenes reflect the brothers’ setting up a rundown mill and turning it into a money-making endeavor. They buy the property from a bigoted white man by warning him if he ever tries to bring the Ku Klux Klan there, they will shoot dead everyone who attempts to shatter their peace.

it’s not until much later that the film descends into a confrontation between those behind the doors of the juke joint and the vampires who are outside and trying to get in. This culminates in much gore, with plenty of stabbing and shooting and blood gushing.

Before the gore fest enthusiastically begins, the film makes a statement about music and how it connects generations of humans. A prologue tells the story of mythical figures throughout history with the ability to connect their ancestors and descendants – all the world, really – through music. In one of the movie’s best sequences, Sammie’s performance at the club transcends a singular musical moment to become a culmination of all that has come before and all that will be. You see dancers from ancient cultures in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere make their way through the 1930s crowd, while a modern man suddenly appears next to Sammie to bolster his blues with the buzz of an electric guitar. When you see this, you don’t wag your head in bewilderment because you realize the connection the director Ryan Coogler is making of the universality of music here.

Even the vampires appreciate music here as well, which is a rarity seen in any other vampire horror entry. In this film, the leader of the vampires is a white man called Remmick (Jack O’Connell) who galvanizes his growing horde with Irish music and dance, and his interest in Sammie comes from the perceived power of Sammie’s musical ability. He desires to not only take Sammie’s music for his own (“I want your music,” he growls at one point, “I want your stories”) but to use it to reunite with his own heritage, something he has been robbed of because of his vampiric nature.

Some people might think it takes a long time for the horror aspects of the story to break out, but when they do, they are immensely satisfactory to all horror fans. The film works as a melange of genres and it is very worthwhile to see on Netflix.

Today was an entirely ordinary day, given that Elliot and I will be leaving – once more – for Florida on Thursday to help celebrate my son’s imminent 40th birthday by taking him on a Disney cruise over the weekend of July 25th through the 28th, his actual birthday. No, he’s not regressing. The reason for this kind of excursion is that “Joshua’s” close friend and former boss has arranged this trip with me and he’s bringing his wife and two small children on the ship. This marks my first Disney cruise, so I’m sure this particular kind of cruise will have many darling amenities.

My last blog this week will be on Wednesday then.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, July 20, 2025. Elliot and I have returned from our second minitrip, this time driving upstate, to Sullivan Country, specifically the hamlet of Phillipsport, located in the town of Mamakating, which is part of the Shawangunk Mountains Scenic Byway. We were visiting Elliot’s old girlfriend from the Lower East Side who now resides over 20 years in rural upstate. We spent about 24 hours visiting “Sue” at the former bungalow county where Elliot spent idyllic summers there over 60 years ago.

We had breakfast on the way, on Route 17, in New Jersey, at the Suburban Diner. Then we took the New England Thruway to Sullivan County and to Sue’s country abode. There she spends her days with her aging companion, Baxter, who barked his welcome at us as we walked down the grassy path to her front door.

After having bagels and cream cheese, Elliot and I took a short drive to Ellenville, the neighboring town, where we visited a local bookstore called The Common Good. Sue decided to stay home with Baxter. This time I resisted the temptation to buy another book that would just sit on the shelf. Even though I was attracted to a nonfiction book on the Christian far right and how it’s destroyed America. I forgot the name of the book and didn’t snap a picture of it, so I will now have to locate it in other bookstores under “new books.” I think this will not be such a tragedy if I can’t track it down.

Close to 7, we went out again to Wurtsboro to an Italian restaurant called Pasta D’Oro that had a very ecletic menu – everything from fish to steak au poivre. Their portions were astounding. Sue’s salad could have been easily shared among three people, let alone just one famished patron. I ordered the polpettini and the veal sorentino which was not only delicious but also bountiful. Elliot ordered nonna’s lasagna which he termed the “best he’s ever eaten.” Sue ordered the veal sorentino like me and was also very impressed with it. All of us had doggie bags brought to us. We eschewed dessert this time to have just coffee and cappuccino.

We left the restaurant after 9 and I was a little apprehensive about Elliot driving home on these dark country roads, fearing an encounter with deer or other animals along the way. Luckily, we had no such encounter last night.

When we got home, we turned on the television to watch a 1949 film based on a William Faulkner novel, Intruder in the Dust. By this time, Sue left us to retire upstairs. I stayed to watch the entire film, as Elliot left after an hour or so. The film was set in Faulkner’s own town of Oxford, Mississippi. The plot concerns the jailing of a strong, proud African-American by the name of Lucas Beauchamp who is accused of murdering a white man in small-town Mississippi in the 1940s. As the town’s white, bigoted residents prepare to lynch this innocent man, a teenage boy named Chick (Claude Jarman, Jr.) joins forces with an elderly morally leaning woman by the name of Mrs. Haversham (Elizabeth Patterson) and another Black youth whom Chick hangs out with to clear Lucas’s name and find the real killer. Of course, the true murderer turns out to be a white business partner of the murdered man.

An aside to the casting of Patterson as the elderly woman convinced of Lucas’s innocence. I thought she looked quite familiar and it turned out that Patterson portrayed Mrs. Trumble on the I Love Lucy series in the 50s. When the film ended, Eddie Mueller, the host of Noir Alley on TCM, provided this interesting tidbit on Patterson: during the latter years of her life, she maintained a residence at the famed Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, the site of all of the TCM festivals. Pretty interesting, eh?

Surprisingly, I stayed up past 1 when I trundled upstairs to sleep in the spare bedroom next to Sue’s. I managed to read and finish The Day of the Locust and was quite happy.

The next morning, we slept until past 10 and had breakfast with Sue in the dining room. We had more of the bagels that Sue bought. Then I let Sue and Elliot reminisce over 60 years of fond memories. We left around 12:30 or so.

We drove to Ellenville where we had coffee and rugelach (I had it, not Elliot!) at Cohen’s Bakery, the local bakery that attracts visitors far and wide. It was quite crowded before 1 and we had to wait on line to get our food. Elliot bought their famous pumpernickel bread.

Now we prepared ourselves to drive back to Queens, which took a long time (almost 3 hours) to do so. Elliot took the scenic route where we had a wonderful vista of the valley below. This added more time to our drive.

We finally got home about 6 since we stopped at Uncle Bill’s diner, in Flushing, to have a lite bite before getting to Forest Hills.

It’s late here owing to Elliot and my watching an intriguing horror film from 2019 called Saint Maud on Hulu. The story is set in a seaside town in the U.K. and concerns the travails of a private nurse called Maud (Morfydd Clark) who is sent to look after a dying patient, Amanda Kohl (Jennifer Ehle), an imperious “dancer, choreographer and minor celebrity,” as Maude intones in a voice-over when she arrives at her house.

Soon an instant power battle ensues between nurse and patient. You see, Maud is on a self-appointed mission to save Amanda’s soul before she loses her mortal coil. But Amanda has no religious beliefs like Maud. At one point, Amanda scoffs at her and says, “You know it’s all not true. He doesn’t exist.” This sets off Maud, naturally.

This debut feature by Rose Glass brilliantly captures Maud’s descent into religious mania amid elements of self-mutilation, rumbling noises heard on the soundtrack, insects scuttling on the wall, and even a little levitation in Maud’s dingy one-room apartment.

This film is not everyone’s cup of tea since it moves at a glacial pace, and you wonder where this movie will lead the audience. You do get your reward, but this only arrives at the last few moments of the film.

Another week is almost upon us.

Have a good week.

And so it goes!

Here is faithful Baxter lying on the floor in the living room. I think the sneakers there belong to Sue.

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, July 15, 2025. Despite fervent backlash against a movie, a fucking movie, by Dump’s red hats, Superman has soared to first place among millions of Americans who have made this film this country’s No. 1 film in terms of summer revenue. Severely criticized by bigoted MAGAts for its embrace of immigrants, the film’s more all-embracing theme of kindness and charity toward the “other” has been accepted by moviegoers everywhere. In an online article for Daily Kos by Oliver Willis entitled “Americans reject MAGA meanness as ‘Superman’ soars,” the reality of the mean and stupid embrace of xenophobia has been totally rejected by those millions of Americans who have metaphorically flown to theaters across the country to see the film. This has made the film the No. 1 movie in the United States.

The movie’s success is another humiliating loss for the MAGA movement which campaigned against the film’s proimmigrant themes. Here is a direct quote from the article: “But the film is also a resounding rejection of the bitter, cynical meanness that’s been a hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term.”

Since its release on July 11, the production has earned more than $122 million and received a rating of 83 percent from critics and 93 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. That resounding success comes on the heels of the right’s full-throated attack on the film for its being “woke” and their predicting overall failure for the film, which certainly hasn’t come true. Conservatives or the far right – “red hats,” as I call them – were angered by director James Gunn’s description of the film as an “immigrant that came from other places.” However, these idiots don’t know the origin story of the superhero as I know it since I’ve been buying Superman comics for a very long time. Of course, he’s an immigrant and is not from this Earth.

Those on the right were woefully wrong in predicting the movie’s failure, as in Fox News pundit Tami Lahren forecasting the “woke” film’s demise. This noncritic said this about the film: “The new ‘Superman’ movie went woke and will probably flop.” Boy, I wonder how this clueless host feels now since the film has literally soared since it was released?

For those who need a crash course on the history of the comics’ best-known creation, Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Superman is the sole survivor of the planet Krypton who landed in Kansas in a rocket designed by his father Jor-El and was adopted by a farm couple who pass him off as their own child, Martha and Jonathan Kent. The writer states uncategorically, “Superman is an undocumented immigrant – and he has been for all 87 years of his existence.”

The superhero is described as a “champion of the oppressed” and a champion of social justice since the very beginning of his launch.

As for the filming of this new incarnation of Superman, it was written and filmed before the Orange Ogre won the 2024 election, “but audiences can see the clear contrast between the film’s embrace of kindness and the daily meanness of the Trump administration.”

For Dump, cruelty is the point. But for Superman, that is absolutely not the way.

Thus Superman stands for truth and justice – the complete opposite of what MAGA is all about. Unfortunately, this comic book character is a fantasy, an ideal that doesn’t exist in the real world. And one must wonder why this stupid MAGA community got all ruffled over an ideal, a fantasy, anyway. Don’t they have other more serious things to worry about like losing their Medicaid, their Social Security benefits, and so on?

As for myself, I was almost ready to see Superman myself and I was looking forward to writing a review for it in this blog, but I didn’t go. My new friend from the Austin Street Diner who I’ll call “James” couldn’t commit himself to go and see it in the afternoon. So I’ll have to wait for another time. Be patient! I will get there eventually.

Tomorrow Elliot and I will be finally dining with my cousins “Rivka” and “Dillon.” We were supposed to have gotten together a little over a week ago, but we canceled owing to the severe weather forecast for that night and the extreme heat.

Have a good Wednesday.

I will also take the car out for a spin and I’m a little apprehensive since I’m driving to my comic bookstore, the site where the car was dented last Friday. I’ll be on the alert, but I have no control over what might happen to the vehicle once it’s parked. I have to believe what happened was quite rare.

Have a good Wednesday then.

Another little car trip is planned for Thursday, July 17, till Friday, July 18. We’re driving to Princeton, New Jersey, to visit “Zander” and his wife “Nalah,” as well as their two-year-old daughter “Naomi.”

So I’m not sure when I’ll see you again. If not tomorrow, then it’ll have to be either Friday or Saturday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, July 3, 2025. Elliot and I spent almost 12 hours out painting the town, as it were, beginning with having breakfast at the Ukrainian restaurant Veselka on West 9th Street and 2nd Avenue, then seeing the recently opened Jurassic World Rebirth at the Regal Theatre, on Union Square. From there, we made our way to Ninth Avenue and 43rd Street where we had dinner at an Italian restaurant, Nizza, at 5:15. What was quite marvelous about the dinner was not just the delicious food – I had the pappardelle fungi, with no appetizer, while Elliot had two appetizers – eggplant rollatini and grilled asparagus. We eschewed dessert to have something at Amy’s Bread, up on 46th Street and 9th Avenue.

Now to the play we saw, Angry Alan, starring John Krasinski in a one-man show, even though toward the end of the 85-minute production, we are treated to a young actor who portrays the title character’s son, Joe. The play is a tour de force for Krasinksi, who acted in The Office years ago and played with his real-life wife, Emily Blunt, in those Quiet Place horror films. The play is written by British playwright Penelope Skinner and is directed by Sam Gold. The theme of the play is this Midwestern character’s descent into a rabbit hole of internet hucksters who talk a good game of male victimhood at the hands of dominant women in our society. Krasinksi portrays Roger McLeod, a 45-year-old, divorced man, with a 14-year-old, and a new girlfriend, Courtney, whom we never see. He’s lost a good job working for AT&T and is now working as the dairy manager of a Kroger supermarket. Like many men his age and social status, he is struggling to pay child support and be more of a dad to his withdrawn son, Joe.

At the beginning, Roger, as played by Krasinksi, seems like any other middle-class average Joe, but as he talks about this online guru called “Angry Alan,” his tone gets progressively angrier and angrier. You see, this Angry Alan writes extensively about how women have exceeded men in today’s world and blames everything wrong with the world with something called the gynocracy (literal domination of society by women). Thus the real theme of the play is now emerging: how men can fall under the sway of the manosphere, an online community drawn together by an assortment of grievances that they broadly blame on the excesses of feminism rather than look inward to themselves. Though there are statistics thrown out in the play that are representative of the male sex these days like the shrinking share of college degrees held by men and the growing number of suicides attributed to men. These facts are irrefutable, but they have more to do with men still not being able to express their feelings more openly than women.

Krasinski’s tone throughout is unrelentingly sunny, even as Roger journeys deeper down the rabbit hole, consuming news exclusively from sources run by Angry Alan and even missing a child-support payment so he can purchase a ticket to Alan’s seminar in Detroit. Roger is proud of his “Gold Donor” status as an attendee at this seminar after sending Angry Alan more money beyond the price of admission, money that Roger probably can’t afford.

The affable tone displayed by Krasinski as Roger suddenly darkens as his son appears toward the end of the play to admit something that has consumed him for a long time. It’s Roger’s typical male reaction to his son’s confession that exposes the male toxicity that lies under Roger’s initial amiable exterior. I won’t mention what Joe tells his enraged father; I recommend you see this play just for Krasinski’s stellar acting. The play runs until August 3.

Oh, the newest installment of the Jurassic dinosaur series was just adequate. I miss the stars that populated the original series like Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill. This latest installment stars Scarlett Johansson, my fave Jonathan Bailey (he from Fellow Travelers), Mahershala Ali, and Rupert Friend as the prototypical bad guy. The film follows a group of adventurers who travel to the remote regions of the equator where most of the remaining dinosaurs now hold sway. The expedition is led by troubled mercenary Zora (Johansson), paleontologist Henry (Jonathan Bailey), and Martin (Rupert Friend) who hires the first two to acquire blood samples from three representative dinosaurs supposedly for a cure for heart disease. Also in tow is Zora’s friend Duncan (Mahershala Ali) and a family that gets caught up in the mayhem accompanying the expedition to the island.

Halfway through the film, I was able to predict which characters would be chomped into bits by the big, bad dinosaurs, so the film lacks any serious tension or suspense. I just enjoyed seeing one gay actor (Bailey) portraying a real he-man adventurer. My recommendation is that you wait to see this unimpressive Jurassic entry on a streaming service.

The big news that I was terrified of hearing was that Diaper Don’s “big, beautiful bill” was passed in the House today. I hate Dump so much that it hursts! I do hope that this signals all repugnicans’ death warrants in terms of their careers in 2026. I read that there were only two repugnicans who defected and voted no. The roll call was very tight, 218-214. I applaud Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries who delayed voting for this “death” bill by holding the floor for more than eight hours with a record-breaking speech against the bill. Kudos, Mr. Jeffries! Now Democrats have one role to play until the midterms: to denounce the effects of this terrible bill and what it will mean to average Americans across the country. An online article in today’s Daily News lays out the horrible reality of what’s in the bill: $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the uberrich, some $350 billion in “national security,” which I take it to include more fucking money for ICE, nothing else, funds to develop Diaper Don’s “Golden Dome” defensive system, $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.

“The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.”

If you think this is a big, beautiful bill after this true accounting of the effects of this bill on mostly everyone excluding the billionaire set, then you’re stupider than I thought.

How any repugnican can justify this bill without choking on their own words is beyond me!

As for tomorrow, July 4th, there is no need to celebrate in the land. What is there to celebrate? I ask. As Democrats so direly pointed out, this bill will result in lives lost. “Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would ‘rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors.'”

Even after writing this, I have to say that we have been invited anyway to our Woodmere friends, “Mary” and “Joseph,” for a barbecue tomorrow. This is scheduled for 6.

I’m not sure if I will be writing my blog tomorrow. It all depends on long we stay.

And so it went!

Here is the playbill from today’s play: Angry Alan.

And So It Goes

Today is June 14, 2025, Flag Day, and the day when millions of fed-up Americans took to the streets to rise up against an unproclaimed king, Donald J. Chump. I won’t even mention his fucking “perade” (this is how the clown in chief spelled the word on his social platform) that he threw for himself in Washington, D.C., that cost millions in taxpayer dollars. Did anyone even watch it?

So I’m back from protesting with possibly 250,000 angry New Yorkers in the intermittent rain. Unlike Los Angeles, we had no pushback from the scores of police officers assigned to the march. Everyone was courteous, friendly, and feeling a little soggy from the rain that fell from 2 through about 4:20, the time when I finally reached Madison Square Park. When the march was over, I experienced a fallen flag (it fell off its pole), a sign that slipped from my grasp (the one that said, “No kings are welcomed here!” with a picture of Dump in full military regalia goose-stepping on a missile that I cut from an article in The Week), and what I thought to be a broken umbrella. Thank God it functioned after the demonstration was over. It was very difficult to keep one sign aloft as I marched with thousands of New Yorkers down Fifth Avenue. I tried to make the best of it. I was supposed to have met up with a member from my phantom group and, as expected, I never met him. I got to Cha Cha Matcha before 1:45 and waited until about 2 before I waded into the line of protesters.

After the march, I had to grab a little lunch, so I walked into a McDonald’s on 23rd Street. I walked down to Barnes & Noble on 16th Street to use the restroom and then walked to 13th Street to buy a ticket for 1980’s Cruising at the Quad Theater. The film was scheduled to go on at 7, so I walked to the Donut Pub for a cup of coffee and an old-fashioned donut.

This is the film that drew waves of protest when it opened 45 years ago, in which Al Pacino portrays straight patrolman Steve Burns who is offered an assignment by the chief of police (Paul Sorvino) to go undercover to apprehend a sicko who is stabbing homosexuals in the S&M leather underworld. Seeing this many years later, I thought Pacino was very underwhelming and restrained as the officer who is involved with Karen Allen on the side, but undergoes some sort of metamorphosis as he is expected to perform in his novel guise as a promiscuous gay man. He cannot tell his girlfriend, Nancy (Allen) about his new, dangerous assignment. You never really see Pacino doing anything with his hookups. He was too big a star to have him shed his clothes for an on-screen sexual encounter. I’m not sure if the original film was rated X; this copy received an R rating. Overall, the film is not very satisfying, even, as a procedural or as a thriller. The cinematography is very grainy too. But it’s still a surprise that the movie was directed by William Friedkin who directed The Exorcist in 1973. He did have, however, an early iconic gay film success in The Boys in the Band from 1969. I’m glad, however, I saw this artifact from 45 years ago during Pride Month.

Now I’m tired from this exhausting day. One good thing about the weather, if you can say it, is that it wasn’t warm as it was on April 19. I could have done without the rain, though.

As you know, this day began terribly with the killings of two lawmakers in Minnesota. “This is an act of targeted political violence,” as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has indicated. A masked gunman disguised as a police officer killed the state representative and her husband and wounded a state senator and his wife. The suspect has now been identified as a 57-year-old man. Blame for this repulsive act should be directed toward the occupant in the White House whose own rhetoric is so inflammatory that he has allowed extremism in his far-right supporters to flourish and fester throughout the land! It’s time that ALL elected lawmakers take a stand against this awful trend.

Anyway, that’s enough from me on this very long day! For those who celebrate, have a great Father’s Day tomorrow.

And so it went!

Don’t you just love this sign? I talked to this woman at the end of the demonstration.

This shot was taken at the end of the march, in Madison Square Park.

Here’s some view of the size of the crowd at today’s “No Kings” protest.

This is one of the best signs I saw today at the protest.

These young women didn’t mind my taking a picture of their faces and their creative sign.

I do like the “Flush Trump” sign, don’t you?