LION

Dev Patel has become a true leading man and displays not just his acting skills in this film, but his new broad shouldered hunk physique that the women I know who have seen it really appreciate, and lots of guys too. But despite that appeal, the movie is stolen by Sunny Pawar, the little-boy actor in the poster above. The first half of the movie is about the main character getting lost as a boy and the trials and tragedies he witnesses and experiences. Pawar is so compelling on screen, along with the other Indian actors in that part of the film, that I could have gone on watching just them for the rest of the movie.

The second half, with Patel and Nicole Kidman doing some brilliant acting, is less compelling because it is more character study, involving a pursuit played out on a computer, so a lot less physically adventurous and more mentally. Nonetheless, as someone who lost his mother over a half century ago, when I was a young man, and has always, even as a boy, felt compelled to mine the past for clues to the present, this story of a young man searching for his roots works so well as a moving drama, I recommend bringing along more than one packet of tissues.

Especially for the almost mandatory shots at the end of the film of the real people LION is based on. That's when I just lost it, I was so moved by the reality of what I had just experienced as the movie version. So, if you want a real catharsis, the kind most dramatic true-story movies like this promise but rarely provide, go see LION immediately.

THE WAY I'M FEELING THESE DAYS

This is me preparing for a heavy scene with John Carradine, (playing my character's grandfather) toward the end of his life (and sorry I don't have a still of the scene in the same movie where I got to act with Gloria Grahame in what ended up being her last film). That's his gnarled arthritic right hand on the sheet in from of him. Turned out to be the only scene, I think, in all the movie and TV work I did, in which I actually wept tears. Which I've been doing some more of lately.

DEBBIE REYNOLDS R.I.P.

What a tragedy. A mother with a broken heart. Thanks again 2016 or whatever weasel has any say in these kinds of fates. At least she, and Carrie, are at peace, but the sadness they left behind, especially for Carrie's daughter, Debbie's granddaughter.

The first time I met Debbie Reynolds I told her how I had a crush on her, as a teenager in 1957, when her movie TAMMY came out. She gave me that squinty-yet-sparkly-eyed smile and said "That's nice dear." I felt dismissed from class by the teacher.

Whenever I ran into her at Carrie's house and Carrie would say "You remember Michael," Debbie would do that same smile in my general direction and say: "Of course, how are you dear," but I was pretty sure she had no idea who I was.

And why should she after a lifetime of co-stars and crews and casting directors and agents and audiences and fans and friends and ex-es and more. I was just happy to have been in her presence. And grateful. And now deeply saddened for her and Carrie's loved ones.

Thank God she and Carrie both will live on in their movies and books and the hearts of all those they touched with their talents.

CARRIE FISHER R.I.P.

2016 sucked from start to finish, and this is the capper. Carrie was the wittiest, hardest working, most fun person you'd ever meet. In my first fifteen years in L.A. I spent more time at her house than anyone else's. At her birthday party every year (that she threw with fellow celebrant and one of her best friends Penny Marshall), at other smaller gatherings, or just the two of us hanging out, sometimes with me sleeping over (the night she finished Postcards From The Edge I stayed up all night reading it while she slept).

We spent a New year's Eve together once and when I picked her up in my crummy little just-the-basics (you had to roll the windows up and down by hand) used Colt station wagon she reacted like she'd just seen a whimsical drunken butterfly cross her vision. We spent most of the night at a star-studded party at Alana Stewart's (Rod's ex) that I found too boring so convinced her and our table mates—Neil Simon and Terri Garr—to go to a younger Hollywood party I knew of that was over crowded and much more lively.

Carrie was pretty much up for anything when I was around her, but with a steady smart ass commentary that made me feel like my mind was porridge, she was just so quick. I cherish every moment I spent with her and especially her generosity of spirit. I brought someone with me almost every year to that birthday bash, which she always let me know she didn't appreciate, she just invited me. But I was almost always the only non-star there, so I'd often bring a friend to have someone to talk to and she'd put up with it (even though she and I would talk, usually, with the handful of friends left after everyone departed).

I am so so sorry for her daughter and her mother and brother and all her family and friends and fans, all left without her way too soon. But having seen my first wife, the mother of my two oldest children, have her heart stop for several minutes and be brought back only to spend the next six years in a coma, (which was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news of Carrie's heart stopping while still on the plane before being revived after landing), I'm glad for Carrie that this didn't drag on.

We could have so used her wit and tenacity in the years ahead. Bye-bye beautiful.

SINATRA ON FAME AND GEORGE MICHAEL

[PS: thanks to director Peter Werner for posting this first]
[PPS: Sorry the type is so small, but if you click to enlarge and squint, it's worth it]

ANOTHER TIMELY QUOTE

ANOTHER QUOTE I LIKE

[not certain of the source, but unlike a lot of quotes on the internet that don't say where the quote was first printed, this one sounds like the person quoted]