I'm by my

Think your local adult nonresident daughter won't take the last roll of toilet paper... Damn right she will.

in the days of smoking in film, how many expensive takes were lost to cheap crap wooden matches

A Night to Remember is SO far superior to Cameron's bloated Apple test reel and Charlie Brackett's yawny soap opera it's really not fair. Go Kenneth More Best Titanic ever.

Putin has his cheek plugs cranked way past eleven today. Lovely.

After today's demo I'm not buying R.U.R. stock for awhile

I was just, for some reason, thinking of Willie Hamilton.

This is what your children and grands should inherit: Japanese crane books.

Pitching a new show: Worlds Fastest Tattoo Artist. Once we get past some casting glitches we're straight to pickup.

Thank you, Noah! Yes, I have a new piece up @thenation.com on Billy Wilder, the Holocaust, survivor's guilt, and confronting the limits of Zionism.

Waiting for Hail Fredonia to break out.

The bat never did get to tell his story, did he?l

BBC World is now 40 minutes into nonstop Ozzy coverage in the US. Cool. And RIP.

Too bad there's no 7 degrees of separation gag anymore; Me to model/Mom/Barbara; to artist Don Bachardy; to writer Christopher Isherwood, then WH Auden Fun.

My God, Broderick Crawford in Fellini's Il Bidone looks and carries himself exactly like Gandolfini. (First view).

Riot if you will -- I just took my best shot at playing "Mary Ann with the Shaky Hands" in an arthritic donkey's year

Want to stop the L. A. BS? Disable all mobile video service. If it doesn't stream it didn't happen and who cares?

Excellent opportunity for LAPD and LASO to put their hero cop costumes on. Fingers crossed.

Hey, World Today... You're the BBC -- it's a lorry, not a truck. We're buying the stylebook here, face it.

Two mail deliveries today, both of them with residual checks. It's morning in America!

'Gifting' is a remarkably stupid bit of language.

Watching (1925) Ben Hur. Reminds me of the most pleasure I ever got from writing childrens' faith TV -- for BBC Kids -- was in my dialog for a Roman orgy. "Some party, huh? You oughtta see the line for the vomitorium!"

You know what this Kilmar deal, the dude in El Salvador, what it needs, is cigar smoke and letters of transit.

I see the nefarious hands (and sticks) of Simon Phillips in this Who mystery. Where have you been since 1989?

Wow. No words. www.esquire.com/entertainmen...

So, it was a job, already. This looks like one of the good days for Billy and Iz.

Yes, there was an earthquake. Just not here. Don't panic, as someone once said in somewhat different circumstances.

Wow. Wheeler and Woolsey's "The Rainmakers" is their usual fairly high standard, but also some not too bad comic FX. Not a bad introduction to the boys

Soi-disant writers and authors. You really aren't squat if you can't tell the difference between 'jive' and 'jibe' Really, please (sighs).

What a Whopper is a very strange little film. I have little to say. It's late in the not uk.

Everybody starts somewhere.

Dead End is much better than I remember -- because I'm only thinking of the successor Z-movie Bowery Boy crap. Don't make my mistake. You can see the WB stars (Bogart, Sylvia Sidney, Alan Jenkins, Joel McCrea et al) enjoy the kids at work. See it, by all means.

So THAT's where they're hiding the useless damn things.

One notices Lady Bracknell has an IBM 5150 on the deskover her shoulder. I'd have taken her for an Apple customer.

Next step; one of the Gang takes the nuclear football to the car wash to get inflated with some nuclear air -- and leaves it on the bench by the birthday cards.

There should be at least triple verification for ex gf/bf communications. Theyre risky as hell.

Ooh, Space X launch from Vandenberg AFB in fifteen minutes, 50 miles north. A Sonic boom is promised, there will be lights.

You would think I'd be pretty good at Preston Sturges, but I'm not. Remember the Night. First for me -- Funny 1940 Mac Murray (and includes a Holmes throwaway). Leisen (The man who made Sturges and Billy Wilder directors (in self defense) Beloved Stanwyck. Worth catching

'Christopher Strong'; Katherine Hepburn, Colin Clive and Billie Burke in 1933 global aviatrix romance. Puts a tight mylar-type jumpsuit on Hepburn, whichshoulda gotten the director canned. It didn't BTW, the director was named Dorothy Arzner What's all the fuss? (My first Arzner view, I think)

For Christ's sake. A totally crap fall (not mine) a thoroughly enervating Oscars and a 3.9 earthquake with not a squawk from the newish warning system. Nice day. I like the Old Hollywood better.

Wambaugh was so good at nouveau cop stuff. I think D. O. Simon owes Joe for Homicide on up, too and I think I owe more. Everything, in fact that carried a badge. RIP, JW and thanks.

10 PM for Billy Liar on TCM. Not a frame I remember. Thirty years? This disconcerts.

Christmas Eve Miracle in L.A; Shelley watches Fallen Idol without complaint

Bet you folks don't get Duran Duran for New Years at YOUR local indian casino.

I really haven't watched a picture straight on since my heart surgery in 2023. I am not quite sure Jurassic World Domination Extended Version was necessarily the best venue to reawake my passion for cinema. (I lie -- saw Gojira minus1 Perfectly imperfect)

Bleary morn, my eyes decided Frenchie in Rancho Notorious was Lucille Ball being unfunny.

As expected, a KABC7 reporter just Identified a hip hop arrestee in Paris as happening in front of the GeorGES Vee hotel. No shit we Angelenos got cosmopolitan

There are approximately 112 pieces of Thonet designer pieces in Alex Trauner's Art Direction for 1963s Irma la Douce. I have time to count because these days I can't watch a Wilder-Diamond film without wall to wall tears Jonathan Coe? Patrick Kincaid? True, but new and inexplicable.