I’m glad I didn’t see this in a theatre. Because after two hours I would have been squirming, wondering if I could make it to the end without hightailing it for the bathroom.

Although I did sit through the entire thing at home. Knowing the loo was just a few steps away, that I could bolt when the pressure became overwhelming. But it didn’t. Making me wonder whether it’s psychological at the cineplex, at least some of the time.

Not that I think I missed a whole hell of a lot watching on the flat screen. Because with today’s technology and size it replicates the theatre experience. Once again, I’m watching on a 65″ LG OLED, the industry standard, and I highly recommend it, makes all the difference. The film would have been inferior on a smaller screen with less clear definition and color. As for the old days, when the tube TV ratio was different and you lost part of the image…then you had to go to the theatre, the experience at home was vastly inferior. But no longer.

I do not think “Raging Bull” was the best movie of the eighties. As talented as Scorsese is, he’s got a problem with arc. A traditional movie builds to the climax whereas too often Marty’s films are flat. They’re more like reading a book. Or a miniseries.

Which is what “Killers of the Flower Moon” should have been. I know complete series that are shorter than its three hour and twenty six minute length. Why this had to be a movie…

Oh, that’s right. Movies are an art form, of the highest visual standard, and when it comes to television…that’s second-rate.

These are the same people who can’t stop hating on technology. Things change and they can’t accept them. I blame the boomers, who think exterior makes interior. You can use Mounjaro, dress in skinny jeans, own an iPhone 15 and still be out of the loop. It’s nearly impossible to keep up with the changing society. And never forget, the mainstream media completely missed the Trump revolution of 2016, even though it was hiding in plain sight. Making one wonder why we should trust these outlets. The same ones lauding the performance of Lily Gladstone.

Which barely exists. This is not Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses.” Most of the time Gladstone is blank. Oftentimes you’re not exactly sure what is going on inside that noggin, if it’s anything at all. But she’s the star of a highly respected movie so of course she deserves awards.

As for Leo… Am I the only one who doesn’t get DiCaprio? Even though he’s pushing fifty, it’s hard for me to see him as an adult. It’s not that he’s a bad actor, but he’s far from transcendent. Like Robert De Niro.

De Niro is the star of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” He delivers an understated performance that rings wholly true. Makes me sad that he’s eighty, on the downside of his life, that we won’t get more years of him in shows. De Niro earns his accolades. As for his role as King Bill Hale in this movie… I don’t know if he shrunk or he’s just made to appear small yet powerful. Hale is a titan of society. You know, the type who gladhands and smiles and always says the right thing but in reality is solely out for himself. Too many of our esteemed executives are the same way. Candy-coated on the outside, pure evil on the inside. And it’s so great to watch De Niro try to will the situation to his benefit. The way he tries to convince DiCaprio and others to do what is good for him by saying it’s good for them.

As for the cinematography… Rich and brilliant. Only Apple would give Scorsese all this money to do it his way, and a lot of it ends up on screen.

And while you’re watching, you’re wondering how much of this is real, truth. I got the book from the library, but I couldn’t penetrate it. Then again, I very much enjoyed “The Wager,” David Grann’s new book, then again, like a Scorsese movie, it too is flat. The facts are amazing, the story well told, but it all peters out at the end, even the escape.

Anyway, you watch a movie like this and you wonder if the characters are fake or real, plot devices or based on people. Not that it hurts the enjoyment of the picture, it just made me wonder how big a story this was. This is an epic movie, which will probably win the Oscar for Best Picture, but even the way it’s presented makes the story seem trivial, or at least secondary, this is not the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, excavated from the past and now part of our national fabric. This story of Native Americans and oil is just not presented that way.

So if you’ve got Apple TV+ I highly recommend watching “Killers of the Flower Moon.” It’s flawless in execution. It delivers a story you’re unaware of, unless you read the book, and you’re edified to your benefit. And you have the good guys and bad guys of the west. But that wallop, that feeling of fullness yet emptiness at the end of a tour-de-force masterpiece, like “The Godfather,” how it ended and you stood in the theatre staring at the blank screen…this is not that.

All those great movies that take you on a ride, have you leaving your world behind to inhabit a new one, such that when you’re placed back in reality you’re stunned…”Killers of the Flower Moon” is not that.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is a combination history lesson, travelogue and old school white hat/black hat western.

I very much enjoyed watching it. I guess I just want to counteract the hosannas. Especially if you haven’t seen it. It’s an achievement, but that’s very different from the zeitgeist movie experience, that has you riveted, on the end of your seat.

But at least it got made. You get the story. But somehow, when it’s all done, you don’t feel the story, you can let it go. Because Scorsese was so busy getting the details right that the essence of moviemaking, the underlying story arc, the build and then the release, were secondary.

A great movie…

Well, I think I already described it. You’re wowed. You’ll be wowed by the visuals of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but there’s no way you’ll turn to a friend and insist they see it. It’s not quite a chore. But at times it’s a bit too paint-by-numbers. I can name numerous television series that are superior. But that’s because TV is all about story, whereas too often today’s movies are about image.

Watch it, let me know what you think.

Then again, the days of movie criticism are passé. No longer does the public analyze movies, poring over details, what they mean, what the director was trying to achieve. Actually, today’s vaunted film directors tend to be like today’s record producers. Both engineers as opposed to amorphous free spirits who try to capture the aforementioned zeitgeist.

Rick Rubin can’t twirl the dials, but he can get the artist in the head of recording transcendent music. T-Bone Burnett too. You can know how to work Pro Tools, you can get a pristine sound, but music is about more than sound.

And movies are about more than image.

Scorsese sits somewhere in between the precision cinematographer directors of today and the auteurs of the past.

But we forget the popcorn movies.

“The Sopranos” is superior to any film released in the twenty first century. And no one ever talks about the images, they talk about the story, the relationships, which reflect life.

There’s life in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but it’s subservient to image, and that’s unfortunate.

Not that I want to dismiss the film. It’s far superior to the rest of the pack. But I wish it was just a little bit more. That it captured a je ne sais quoi that’s a feature of every film classic. You can watch “Killers of the Flower Moon” but it rarely touches your heart. It’s more of a spectacle. And in a world where technology has delivered so much physical perfection we’re looking for something a bit flawed, a bit human, that makes us feel alive. That’s what resonates. The click track might make it perfect, but it also might excise the humanity of the song, and art needs to be human. I can see beneath the surface of Bill Hale in this movie, but the rest of the characters end up being more two-dimensional than three, which means we just can’t get inside them enough to truly understand them, and resonate with them, or judge them.

We seem to have lost the art of chiaroscuro analysis. Something is either good or bad, period. Shades of gray are not allowed. But it’s in the shadows that things are unclear, where life and the mind truly live. Despite the gray in so many images in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” I wish we could have seen more of this gradation in the characters.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is very good. But what we’re really looking for is greatness. And if we can’t hold our artists’ feet to the fire, if all we can do is pledge fealty to them, it’s not only their loss, but ours.

But that’s the society we now live in.

Netflix – “Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche”: https://rb.gy/kn6se3

1

By now you’re probably aware of the tragedy at Palisades Tahoe, the in-bounds avalanche that took a life.

Now the odds of dying in an avalanche are miniscule. Assuming you pay attention to the rules, assuming you have respect for the outdoors, assuming you’re in the outdoors with an abundance of snow to begin with.

Now I’ve experienced the snow move three times. Only one time was it frightening to the point where I realized my life was in danger. But instinct kicks in, you get the hell out of there, at least I did, after the other five people immediately abandoned me. No friends on a powder day? Believe me, you’ve got no friends in an avalanche.

All three of these events happened in-bounds. Two at Mammoth Mountain, in California. Now in the third case, at Snowbird, they immediately closed that side of the mountain, and then the whole damn ski area, like they did today. Yes, both Alta and Snowbird, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, are closed today. Because it doesn’t stop snowing and it doesn’t stop sliding and it’s damn dangerous.

Not that you can convince people of this. Evidence is this movie. About the slide at Alpine Meadows in 1982.

Now the odds of having an avalanche, a life-threatening avalanche, in the northeast are miniscule. Yes, it can happen on Mt. Washington. But there are no lifts there. In other words, you have to put yourself in danger.

And people are putting themselves in danger all over the west. It’s the new new thing. To go out of bounds in search of untracked powder.

Which doesn’t float my boat. Not only going out of bounds, but the powder itself.

In truth, there’s very little light powder, of the kind you see in photographs and movies. You know, the kind where you can blast through the lighter than air snow like it’s not even there. It doesn’t even happen all the time in the aforementioned Little Cottonwood Canyon, which has the lightest snow in the U.S. Conditions have to be exactly right. And when they are, it’s astounding, you can literally blow the snow off your car, but like I said, it’s rare.

And when you’re in this kind of powder it’s completely different from the “powder” of the east coast. Of even the powder in Colorado. The new snow in the east is heavy. To ski it you must lean back, whereas when it’s perfect in Little Cottonwood Canyon you ski exactly centered. As for Colorado… I’ve never seen it as light as I have in Little Cottonwood Canyon, never.

As for Little Cottonwood Canyon, don’t confuse this with Park City and Deer Valley. The latter get much less snow and it’s heavier, because the altitude is lower and they’re not in a box canyon.

All this to say that I believe powder is overrated.

Have I gotten up at the crack of dawn for untracked runs?

Yes. It’s not a good experience. There’s a line before the lift opens. And when you get off you fight for the powder. And if you know what you’re doing you can get one completely untracked run, and then a couple of cut-up runs, and then…you ski the crud (cut-up powder) until it disappears.

Now the word is out. In the seventies in Little Cottonwood Canyon it would take nearly a day for the powder to get skied out. Well, maybe not that long, but hours. You wouldn’t continue to get completely untracked runs, but you could find a facsimile thereof. Today? It’s an hour.

As for Vail, my home mountain… Vail is so vast that it takes more than an hour, but after not much longer than that you won’t find any untracked runs. Unless you go in the trees. But you can ski good crud all day, maybe even the next day.

Which is why I no longer get up to get first tracks on powder days.

It’s not that I hate powder, I just ski it on storm days, which most people hate. As for the hard core, the very hard core is on my team, but the rest need to go out after a big dump for some kind of bragging rights, and believe me, there’s plenty of bragging in skiing.

Having said that, there are plenty of treed areas at Vail. But the vaunted Back Bowls are in most cases sans trees, which is why I avoid them on storm days, you can’t see a f*cking thing. And I’ve skied so much I have good judgment, as in this is not how I want to die, I play the odds. And if you can’t see where you’re going, the odds of getting into trouble are very high.

But there’s still that lure of untracked snow. Which is how those skiers got in trouble in Palisades Tahoe this past week.

2

Not that I want to blame these skiers. I blame the ski area.

Now that’s not what you’ve been reading. Everybody has been saying the ski patrol did all it could do. But it’s more complicated than that.

When I lived in Utah, the ski patrol and its edicts were inviolate. Cross the line, and in most cases this was a rope, and not only would they pull your ticket, they’d pull your season pass. So you’d be skiing the wide open Regulator Johnson in crud and just to your left, on the other side of the rope, it would be pristine, untouched.

But you knew the rules. And no one broke them. Occasionally a tourist, but they’d be yanked immediately and word would spread.

But something happened over the past couple of decades. Backcountry skiing became a thing. Furthermore, under the law, so much of the ski areas being on Forest Service land, you couldn’t prevent people from doing this.

Now get this straight… In most cases you have to hike to this out of bounds stuff. Sometimes from the very bottom up. Which is why despite all the hype, not that many people do it. And it’s very dangerous, and people think they’re inviolate, that they’ll survive no matter what. But statistics say otherwise. They’re dropping like flies. Because snow science is not an exact science, and so many of these bozos think they know more than the scientists anyway. And they can’t forgo that wide expanse of untracked snow.

So… This is not how I want to go. I don’t ski out of bounds. I just don’t want to take the risk. And what’s another untracked powder run anyway? I’ve had enough. But these same people who cross the lines are not silent about it, they like to brag, about where they’ve been and what they’ve done, telling you that not only was their ski experience better than yours, but they themselves are better than you!

And let’s not forget peer pressure. If you’re going with a group of guys outside the ski area boundary, it’s very hard to blow the whistle, to say no-go, you’re seen as a party pooper, a wimp. Which is why I avoid these circumstances to begin with. Worst are the weekend warriors, who despite riding a desk all week think they can ski like experts over the weekend or during a holiday. This would be like asking Mikaela Shiffrin to win World Cups only skiing two days a week. It doesn’t work that way. You need to ski every day to get a fine feel for your skis, for your edges, for the snow, in order to be able to compensate, adjust when you get in trouble. Which is also the reason you should be wary of skiing in-bounds with weekend warriors. They always want to ski the hardest slopes the second or third run. Their judgment is off, or nonexistent.

So, if you go out of bounds, be with others, wear a transceiver/avalanche beacon and pay attention to the reports, and when they say avalanche danger is high stay out. And beware when it’s lower than that. You’re alive until you’re dead, remember that.

3

So the truth is it’s been a lousy ski season so far. Well, at least until the last ten days or so. As in there hasn’t been much snow. Which hasn’t kept me off the slopes, I skied 28 out of 29 days last month, and the day off was for travel. And do you see that, how I was bragging right there? Yup. But I’m also saying that you’ve got to do it every day for that edge. Because you can get in trouble very easily on the mountain. And you want to be alert and experienced and in shape when you do.

And be exercising good judgment.

Like the day they opened the Back Bowls in Vail in December. I was on the hill, it happened around noon, but I didn’t go. Because I know. That until the snow is packed down you don’t know what you’ll hit underneath. I’ve had the bad experience, of hitting a gully and getting thrown forward out of my stopped-dead skis. I learned my lesson. I don’t want to sacrifice my entire season for one rope drop, for one untracked run.

But then it didn’t snow again. And Vail kept the Back Bowls and Blue Sky Basin open when they were nearly unskiable. The heavily tracked slopes were rocky, and that which was not heavily tracked was frozen solid. Only amateurs went back there.

But then it snowed.

So what you’ve got at these ski areas is pent-up demand. From the tourists who are there only briefly, from the locals champing at the bit. So ski areas are eager to drop the rope, open more territory.

And in truth, so much of Vail is flat. There’s very limited avalanche territory. But at Palisades Tahoe? That’s why people go there, for the challenge. And the biggest challenge, other than the cliffs you have to hike to at the very top of the ski area, is on KT22, named such because one of the founders had to kick turn twenty two times to get down. It’s just that steep.

Which yields bragging rights.

So, Palisades Tahoe was caught in a conundrum. Do they play it safe or give the people what they want, i.e. do they open up the KT22 lift and the untracked slopes beneath it.

Now I wasn’t there. I’m not a member of the ski patrol. Snow science is that, a science. However, this never happens in Little Cottonwood Canyon. People don’t die in-bounds there. Now the snow is very different, in Tahoe it’s heavy, with a high water content. But still…

I’m thinking there’s some bad judgment here. That the patrol felt pressure, whether external or internal, to open KT22.

4

That’s the deal you make. You ski in-bounds and you’re safe. They don’t guarantee it, but it’s evident nonetheless. Want to put your life at risk? Go out of bounds. But if you’re playing by the rules, the rules will save you, right?

Well, now I’m going to contradict myself. I just did some research, to find out if there’d ever been a death in an in-bounds avalanche in Little Cottonwood Canyon. And it turns out there was one as recently as 2008. And a skier even got caught in a slide on Lover’s Leap in Vail (however, they lived): https://rb.gy/283ifv

The previous in-bounds avalanche death was all the way back in 1977: https://rb.gy/yff9t7

However, the devil is in the details:

“Sunday was the first day Snowbird opened that part of the resort — the easternmost area — and crews had performed avalanche control that morning, Fields said.”

Hmm… So it seems to happen everywhere. Early in the season. So maybe in both these cases, at Palisades Tahoe and Snowbird, they felt pressure to open terrain before it was ready.

Or maybe it’s just the luck of the draw.

Or maybe you don’t want to be a guinea pig. Like I refused to be in the Back Bowls in Vail last month. Maybe there’s an inherent danger at the beginning of the season, and skier beware, but that’s not the impression one gets from the ski patrol, from the ski area itself.

5

So my friend Joe, a refugee from the music business, now lives in Tahoe. And after communicating about the avalanche last week he recommended I watch a documentary about the 1982 avalanche at Alpine Meadows, just over the hill from where last week’s avalanche took place. Yes, it used to be two different ski areas, Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows, now they’re connected via ownership and a gondola. The Squaw side gets all the press, but a lot of the locals prefer the less-crowded Alpine.

So we pulled up “Buried” and couldn’t turn it off.

And you won’t be able to either.

First you’ll get the renegade ski culture of the era. Something I’m very familiar with. It’s hard to make a living, which is why most people move on, including me, but for a while there you’re living the life, long before the health problems that accost you as you get older, back in an era where you could at least pay the bills on minimum wage.

And in truth, avalanche science has progressed since 1982. Now they don’t fire howitzers, they have Gazex systems planted at the top of the avalanche zones, that essentially trigger slides via compressed gases. Remotely.

Not that avalanche danger has been completely eradicated.

So what have we learned? A confluence of decisions led to the loss of life last week. Will there be adjustments in the process? I believe there will be. Then again, guests who fly across the country, across the world, pressure ski areas to open terrain, and if you don’t, your competitor will.

But if you want to familiarize yourself with the game, what is involved, I highly recommend this documentary, it covers all the exigencies, and the decisions, and how events like this can haunt you forever.

As for me… Life is all about risks. And sometimes you get caught on the wrong side of the line. But if you never get up close and personal to the line, if you never cross it, you don’t know where it is.

Then again, not every decision is one of life or death.

Avalanches compact snow into the equivalent of concrete. Good luck if you get buried. It happens, but do your best to improve your odds of avoiding this situation to begin with.

I certainly am.

I’d like to talk about Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses.” We just watched the third season. I’d love to say I recommend it, but it’s not as good as what came before. Or I’m burning out on mediocrity. But one thing is for sure, Oldman is unbelievably good, fantastic, great. Yes, the role is over the top, kinda like Jamie Lee Curtis in the Christmas episode of “The Bear,” but you don’t see Oldman acting at all, he’s become the character, unlike the lauded Meryl Streep, who I see in all of her roles, as in I can’t stop seeing Meryl, no matter who she is playing.

Oldman gained notoriety in the U.S. via his appearance in the indie “Sid & Nancy,” but then gradually moved towards the mainstream without sacrificing his renegade reputation. Oldman has always been seen as somewhat dangerous, not someone who fades into the woodwork, but cuts a distinct identity. And in “Slow Horses”…

He’s overweight, got stringy hair, wears rumpled clothing, has an odor, and doesn’t give a f*ck. These people used to be our heroes. And in truth they still are. We want those who play against type, who cannot be compromised, who will not sell out. This is the rock star paradigm. You don’t want to get in bed with the Fortune 500 company, you want to criticize it, laugh at it if you pay attention to it whatsoever. You are not concerned with society’s judgment of you, you’re going your own way. And awards and chart achievements are irrelevant, you’re just doing what you want to, being who you are. And therefore we’re envious of you, bond ourselves to you, because deep down inside this is who we want to be too.

And as a result, Jackson Lamb, i.e. Gary Oldman, gains respect, draws people to him. They might judge him negatively, but they never discount him. Lamb always hews to his inner tuning fork. He always seems to be one step ahead, but he doesn’t need to tell anybody so. And he has contempt for just about everybody and everything, he’s above it all. Oldman is a hero, iconic, what we used to feature in the alternative universe of the alienated, when that was the goal, to be yourself as opposed to becoming a billionaire and lording it over us.

“Slow Horses” is not much of a commitment. Well, there are now three seasons, but it’s not a big chew. Season 3 is comprised of six episodes all under an hour. But you must watch the series to see Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb.

He looks like he hasn’t showered in weeks. He’s the opposite of the vain icons we see in the news and even in social media. He’s not putting his best foot forward, he’s just being himself. And he’s not demanding attention. And he eats, seemingly unlike anybody in Hollywood. And he’s got the belly to show for it, and it’s not a prosthetic. Oldman has thrown vanity to the wind and instead or repelling us, he’s positively magnetic.

And one thing is for sure, I could never play this role, and neither could you. This requires studying. Training. Everybody thinks they can be in pictures, and in many cases they are. If you’re famous enough, or good-looking enough, you can get a role. You might even win an award. But don’t think you’re an actor. Just like if you win a Grammy you shouldn’t think you’re a musician, although some are. Acting is a skill. That takes time to develop. And when we see excellence, we’re wowed.

I don’t understand the nearly ten dollar a month Apple TV+. There’s just not enough on it. We bought a month just to see this last season of “Slow Horses” and I can’t say I’ve found anything else that’s floated my boat, that I haven’t seen previously.

But having said that, I do recommend that you spend your money just to see Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses.” Yes, he’ll seem cartoonish, but you’ll ultimately realize he’s not two-dimensional. And he never breaks character, never winks at the audience, you have to accept him on his own terms. And he’s cynical and knows those at the top are not usually to be respected, that they’re venal and flawed. And that the game cannot be understood by most people, even though they believe otherwise. Experience delivers wisdom, not that anybody respects wisdom, never mind age, they’re too busy sticking the knife into others to get ahead.

Oldman is not chewing the scenery in “Slow Horses,” and he’s not in every scene but you can’t wait for him to come back. If you haven’t watched him in this series already, you need to know. I can’t think of a performance this year which has stuck with me to this degree. That is not based on makeup, but the actor inhabiting the role. This is it. This is what makes stars our heroes. When you do it right, you don’t have to beg for attention. You own the camera without trying, we can’t take our eyes off you. And very few are this good. We’re overwhelmed with dross. But when you’re better than the rest we know it, we’re thrilled by it, it makes us tingle, makes life worth living.

I can’t say that I want to hang out with Jackson Lamb, but I can watch him all day long. Unlike seemingly everybody else with a name these days he’s not constantly in our face, and therefore we want more, much more.

This is how you do it.

Kudos.

Tune in Saturday January 13th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

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