Kate Winslet

Back in the mid-forties Hollywood made a great black-and-white weepie of a James M. Cain novel, Mildred Pierce. Joan Crawford won a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Actress. Now a miniseries starring Kate Winslet has me riveted on Sunday evenings, with mixed results. The black-and-white weepie was 111 minutes long and did not stick to the book. This one is in color, is six hours long, and is faithful to the author. Kate Winslet is a far better actress than our steel-chinned Joan, the sets are perfect as are the period clothes, but it’s the 1930s atmosphere that I find simply sublime. Yet I prefer the golden oldie; don’t ask me why. Winslet is far sexier than la Crawford, and in this modern version she gives the goods away rather a lot—unlike Joan, who gave them away in real life but played very hard to get in the film—yet by being a better actress and much sexier, Kate’s less of a presence than the one-dimensional Joan. Go figure. Perhaps there’s too much detail, too much emotion, whereas la Crawford got the job done with a stony-faced pose and little else. I suppose less is always more, but try and teach that to the moderns, people who have never understood the eloquence of the unspoken and the meaning of understatement.

The good news is that a certain Jeffrey Epstein, friend of Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, may still be in the soup. I certainly hope so. Epstein lives down the street from me on 71st Street in the Bagel, which makes it very uncomfortable for a sensitive soul like myself. I cannot walk by his house without having a panic attack, and if you believe that, you’ll believe that Epstein is simply a pervert and not a grotesque child molester. The good news is that court papers filed on March 21 say that the US Attorney’s Office violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by signing a non-prosecution agreement with the sex offender without notifying his victims. Gotcha, you bum. I wrote of this long ago. The fix was in because of Bill Clinton and other such whores who managed to get him a soft sentence and—as it looks now—an invalid agreement because the victims’ rights were violated.

I sure hope so. Nothing would make my upcoming holidays onboard Bushido more pleasant than to know Epstein will go back to jail. Mind you, I doubt it. He will pay off the victims and probably be on the Riviera this summer. If Gaddafi’s murderous family can come and go as they please while beating people up and receiving doctorates to boot, why can’t a little ole child molester pay his way to the Côte d’Azur?

Further good news is that my boy John Taki came in fourth in the Milan-to-Turin bike race, a fantastic achievement and a far greater one than his old man ever achieved. Bravo, J. T., but when you come back home don’t walk down 71st Street. There’s a horrid child molester lurking.