Forecast: Pessimism (Patreon)

Well, I was right. Last week's poll matchup between "Elephant" (my next review; I'm a bit behind) and Taxi Driver went 52%-48% for Alan Clarke; this week's poll matchup between Scattered Clouds and Taxi Driver saw the former beat the latter 51%-49%, which could well mean that the same exact people voted for/against Scorsese (with one person switching). Which is what I suspected/predicted. In any case, I think this is the most acclaimed Naruse film I still haven't seen; my ratings for the seven I have seen range from 70 (Floating Clouds) to 39 (Flowing), so what I'll think of Scattered Clouds is anyone's guess. It's streaming on the good ol' Criterion Channel. 

Flashback to what was probably my most annoying trait (of many) in the nerd chat group: Policing members—one of them in particular; it was not Bilge, please note, he's just telling me to chill in the >quoted text below—about posting entire fucking press releases without any notes or comments. Just "here's an email I received from a publicist." Drove me nuts. And so of course I managed to make it a Nazi thing, in accordance with Godwin's law.