Soon after catching Julian Schabel‘s In The Hand of Dante at the Venice Film Festival 10 and 1/2 months ago, HE sent the following blurp-blurp text to a critic friend: “Nick Tosches’ semi-fictional book of the same title can’t be as vulgarly, bruisingly violent as Schnabel’s film is, not to mention gven to such wildly florid trip-outs and generally lost in its own psychedelic fantasy scenario. It starts well but within the first half-hour there’s a noticable weakening in terms of taste and discretion. Occasionally it’s just plain awful.

“Okay, Martin Scorsese’s bushy-bearded cameo is a hoot, and Al Pacino has a good scene with a very young Tosches early on. But the shootings are so plentiful and thoughtless and grotesque…beyond repulsive. I felt covered in grease.”

I’m telling you that this film really and truly stinks…coarse machismo, groan-worthy pretension, bludgeoning brutality, the awful humiliation of poor Oscar Isaac, the repulsive spectacle of the corpulent, cigarette-puffing Gerard Butler, and the terrible sullying of the vaulted reputation of the late, great Nick Tosches, which infuriated me more than anything else..

In The Hand of Dante opened furtively in a few theatres on 6.12 26. Netflicx will begin streaming it on 6.24.12.

“Schnabel’s Surreal Calamity Trip,” HE-posted on 9.4.25:

I didn’t hate each and every second of Julian Schnabel‘s In The Hand of Dante, which I caught a night or two ago, or at least I didn’t hate it altogether. But it did make me groan here and there, and it instilled anguished feelings…spasms of revulsion and disgust and disorientation. I literally said out loud “oh, God…oh, no…oh, Jesus” during a ridiculous mass-murder scene.

I certainly felt heartbroken that poor Oscar Isaac had committed to playing the dual lead role (a fictional wise-guy version of Tosches as well as the real, actual Dante Alighieri), and I felt so sickened by Gerard Butler‘s coarse, poseur-level performance as Louie, the hit man, that — BIG-ASS SPOILER WARNING! — I was overjoyed when Louie finally got plugged. “Good!” I said to myself, “and please burn in hell.”

Something is very wrong when a film by a director you’ve respected and admired for the better part of 30 years (Basquiat, Before Night Falls, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and At Eternity’s Gate are Schnabel’s best)…something is very, very wrong when his latest initially excites and delights and fills you with hope and even wonder (the first 20 or 25 minutes), and then, by the half-hour mark, makes you feel like you’ve dropped some really bad acid.

No, I haven’t read Nick Tosches’ same-titled source novel, but I know Tosche’s hipster prose style pretty well (I’m a huge fan of “Hellfire” and “Dino: Living High In the Dirty Business of Dreams“) and…how to put this?…as I watched Schnabel’s film I was saying to myself “This is wrong, man…the crude, porno-violent pistol murders are way over the top…this isn’t the Tosches I know or want to know.”

Tosches’ 2002 novel was co-adapted by Schnabel and wife Louise Kugelberg, and this fact alone is somber testimony, you bet…proof, even, that fortifying a marriage by working on a movie script together is not, in and of itself, a good idea, for the lurching between delirious madman poetry and black-and-white bullets slamming into craniums and chest cavities is my idea of godawful.

I guess I’m now obliged to finally read Tosches’ 2002 book, an allegedly trippy, semi-fictional dream saga with the same title, but how could Tosches have written such a thing? There’s no question that Schnabel and Kugelberg \have desecrated Tosches’ legacy here.

I can only tell you that walkouts began early on in the Sala Darsena, and that I was cringing and flinching and almost writhing in agony.

Butler is now 55 and way overweight, and the ridiculous “Louie” smokes like a mentally-deranged chimney. Butler reminded me a bit of Orson Welles‘ Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil (’58), not in terms of Welles’ obesity (Butler is merely bloated by way of a pig diet) but in terms of his character’s perversity…theatrical, random-ass, sub-mental, dumb-fuck cruelty.

Born and raised in Scotland, Butler’s natural accent is soft and gentle and charming, but of course he’s been speaking with a fake, tough-guy patois all these years while constantly pulling on cigarettes…what a shame.

Hannah Strong, Little White Lies:

Just days after a well-publicized $14.2 million renovation that repainted the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in “American Flag Blue,” the water has turned bright fucking green — a result of rapid algae blooms.

AI sez: Residual algae from the dormant supply lines (which sat dry during construction) bloomed quickly when reintroduced to warm weather and water. Pool maintenance experts note that the newly painted navy blue base absorbs and retains more heat, creating an ideal environment for algae to thrive. To combat the bloom, National Park Service crews are using skimmers, vacuuming the basin, and actively treating the water with hydrogen peroxide and ozone-injected nanobubbles.

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Before this morning I had never heard of Symi (Simi?) Island. Thanks to Bill Dawes, I now have a little hideaway village to add to my bucket list.

Will I ever make it to this region? I’ve never even been east of Belgrade. Perhaps not.

HE to Bill Dawes: Love the cheerful vibe, the small-town architecture with the pastel colors, and the radiant blue skies and Dawes’ color-coordinated hat and shirt. But none of it means dingle-diddly-squat unless the town/city has geographical specificity.

Oh, I see…far off the coast of southeastern Greece (i.e., the Dodecanese island group), not far from Rhodes (as in “the Colossus of”), much closer to Turkey than mainland Greece but nonetheless a Greek thing through and through.

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You can dismiss Dr. Zhivago for an over-reliance on romantic sentiment, none of which I will forcefully debate, but you can’t put down (a) the mutiny scene and (b) the “absurdly personal” Tom Courtenay-Omar Sharif railcar discussion.

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Afetr debuting in Toronto last September, Alice Winocour‘s Couture (Vertical) opens theatrically, so to speak, on 6.26. Vertical is a streaming outfit that dips into theatrical, dilly-dally style, for appearance’s sake. If Couture had any real combustion it wouldn’t be a Vertical film.

Sonia Moskowitz, a hotshot photographer whom I’ve known since the early ’80s, is perfectly entitled to praise Couture as a good, worthwhile film….fine. But the indications have been everywhere for months that it’s not all that hot.

HE sez: I’ve been told that Couture is half-tolerable, but let’s get real — a 61% Rotten Tomatoes rating is not a ringing endorsement, and Sonia knows this. She’s nonetheless insisting it’s a keeper because (this is a fair presumption. I think) she feels a Jolie kinship born of gender and age.

Couture is basically an “uh-oh, I’ve got cancer!” movie set in Paris. My reaction to an Angelina Jolie character becoming seriously ill is, no offense, “tough titty.” Because by any fair standard Jolie, in real llife, is a steely, vindictive, white-knuckle hardcase.

I say this because she’s managed to persuade her progressive kids to renounce their father, Brad Pitt, because he acted violently due to drinking….ONCE…roughly ten years ago. (After which he got sober.) Only a rabid hater refuses to accept human vulnerability and turn the other cheek and extend the olive branch. Jolie is not my idea of a decent, fair-minded person. She’s truly bad news.

On top of which Couture‘s distributor, Vertical, is the bottom of the barrel.

What is my recommendation, based mostly on anti-Jolie prejudice, worth? Obviously not much, but if someone offered to pay me $100 to sit through it, I’d probably decline.

My cousin Chris Recker, who was bopping around with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and a few others who floated in and around the Palo Alto / La Honda Merry Pranksters orbit in the mid ‘60s, tells me “spade” was a totally common, no-big-deal term for dudes of color. Not to mention the legend of Superspade, a celebrated psychedelic dealer whose given name was William Thomas.

They are all natural default members of the Siddhartha-satori fraternity and many of them (my granddaughter anyway) are early development artists.

All or most of this glowing spirit stuff gets squeezed out of them by the time they’re nine or ten. Not me though! I was an a rebel-anarchist artist early on, but I didn’t get constructive about it until my mid to late 20s.

Uwe Boll, director of the soon-to-open Citizen Vigilante (Quiver, 6.19), got in touch last week and suggested we could possibly do a podcast about the film. I wanted to do it right away because CV reps the first starring role that Armie Hammer has snagged since he got rolled and raw-dealed by wokesters over sexual behavior. I really want to see Armie back on the stick. But of course I told Uwe I needed to see the film first.

I was sent a link several hours later. I’m sorry but I didn’t care for it. It certainly leaves a deep imprint but…

Driven by furious anti-immigration emotions, Citizen Vigilante is coolly, crudely impactful but — this is important — it lacks the personal engagement aspect of Michael Winner‘s Death Wish as well as (sorry) basic cinematic finesse.

Hammer plays Sanders, a grim-faced vigilante who’s sick to death of immigrant street thugs and what he sees as a general decline of social decency. His hardcore reactions to immigrant hooligans results in his becoming something of a heroic public figure.

There’s no question that Boll’s film is about “enough already!” sentiments as far as the scourge of allegedly coarse ruffian immigrants is concerned. This is obviously a real thing. Angry residents of Belfast will confirm this. I don’t have an argument with a vigilante film espousing angry feelings. I do, however, have a problem with a film that isn’t very well made.

HE to Boll, sent last week: Thanks for reaching out, Uwe, and offering to possibly record a Citizen Vigilante podcast together.

It is with a heavy heart and compassion for poor Armie Hammer that I must respectfully decline to join the promotional bandwagon for Citizen Vigilante. I’m very sorry but I can’t board this train.

I was earnestly hoping that the film would convey some of the fascinating dark-knight vibe of that brilliant one-sheet with the glowing crucifix. Alas…

I feel so badly for Armie as the film is so blunt and crude and more or less brimming with hate against “the immigrant other”, and lacking in setting up a believable context and a social realism backdrop…lacking even in terms of basic screenwriting craft and rudimentary filmmaking chops.

I was hoping for Armie’s sake that Citizen Vigilante would be at least semi-tolerable or decent enough. But it basically struck me as an anti-immigrant, anti-insect, kill-em-all riff on Michael Winner’s original Death Wish, and while it has a certain aggressive hardcore tabloid vibe, all I mainly felt was embarassment for poor Armie, whose career, I thought, was in recovery mode.

I thought Armie had presented a persuasive case that his career was unfairly killed over the sexual cannibal thing, and that he was gradually putting things back together, image-wise.

But Citizen Vigilante, no offense, does him no favors. The third-act scene in which Armie cold-bloodedly murders an entire family of Middle Easterners (and some of the teenage son’s bros) crosses the decency line. Armie plays it rigid and frosty as a social vengeance figure, but why was he told to perform a superfluous sex scene? My heart breaks for the poor guy.

Due respect but I can’t get involved. I’m very sorry. I know how tremendously difficult it is to shoot and edit even a problematic film. Best to you, Uwe, and let’s stay in touch. I hope things work out for Citizen Vigilante financially.

Boll’s reply to HE “Dear Jeff: Okay but as the filmmaker I see this subject totally differently. I make political movies that hurt because the put a finger in the wound. Germany had 2467 rapes in the year 2000…in 2024 statistics showed a total of 13,320 cases of rape and sexual assault — an increase of 9.3% compared to the previous year.

“Of the 11,329 suspects identified in such crimes, 6,892 were German citizens and just over a third, 4,437, were non-German suspects. The same with knife stabbings…same or similar numbers prevail all over France and in the UK.

“In a fiction film we can be more radical than in a documentary, and my film is the only one shot in Europe that is bringing up migrant crimes as a subject. If I had made a film about five neo-Nazis raping a migrant girl it would [do quite well] in Germany. But now my movie is banned instead because I made a movie about the reality.

“The woke left in Europe ignores the facts, which is that Islamic culture has no tolerance for gays, LGBTQ or other callings.

“In the very end we will have two choices: reduce Islamic migrants or not, and if not (because they’re birthing per average 4 kids) they will take over in around 30 years and then will start killing everybody who is not a convert to Islam.

“I will happily have a very frank discussion with you about these facts, but I’m also okay with not [doing this]. Of course I disagree also as the writer and director that the filmmaking is bad.

“But still all the best and let’s stay in contact. I suspect you’ll like my film Run with Amanda Plummer…it’s on Paramount+, Showtime etc.”

“What I do know is there are people in the United States Senate who are not saints…I can tell you that.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders, six days ago.

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In the early ‘80s I worked as a part-time projectionist at South Norwalk’s Sono theatre. I was licensed and everything. I knew from editing and tape-splicing, aperture plates, “eight at the gate”…all that good stuff.

I always tried to keep a film in perfect focus, of course, but if a focus adjustment was requested it took seconds to manually implement. One, two…done.

I caught Disclosure Day last Thursday afternoon at my local Westport AMC. But during the pre-feature, pre-Nicole Kidman trailers the focus was distinctly, unmistakably blurry…not horrifically but slightly. I was on my feet and off to the lobby within seconds to politely complain; the other 30 or so patrons sat there like sheep or more precisely potted plants.

With projectionists a distant memory I knew that manual re-focusing was out, but I figured some kind of automated tech re-set might solve it.

But the manager didn’t know how to do this. He put in a call to AMC tech management for instructions. I went back to my seat and waited three, four minutes — no change. Back to the lobby…”the fuck, dude?” The manager hadn’t gotten through, he said. He offered a refund; I said I just wanted to watch focused images. The sheep sat through five or six additional blurry trailers.

And then Disclosure Day began and the focus was finally right. Thank you.

Above and beyond the woke bullshit Lupita-as-Helen of Troy factor, I’m probably going to vaguely dislike The Odyssey. This dark, out-of-focus snap of Tom “Telemachus” Holland in convo with Robert “Antinous” Pattinson is triggering.

I’ve never been a die-hard sports hound or an NBA fan and I hadn’t watched any of the previous four games in the Knicks-Spurs series, but I watched the entirety of game #5 last night and good effing God, what a ride, what a nail-biter, what a stunning, rousing fourth-quarter turnaround.

Jett’s first-quarter advisory: “The Knicks are always a fourth-quarter, come-from-behind team. They’re always sloppy at first, and then they rally in the fourth. That’s their pattern.”

I won’t bore the readership with any pedestrian play-by-play recollections, but I sure as hell got to know the 29-year-old Jalen Brunson last night; ditto the Spurs’ Victor Wembenyana, 22. I tried all through the game to remember his last name without stumbling; I finally gave up and defaulted to “Wemby.”