Less Than Tumescent Cannes Response

by

Two days ago I forgot to post about the official 2026 Cannes Film Festival slate. In truth I couldn’t find the energy or intrigue. I kept telling myself “I need to tap out something about this” but since I’d re-posted Jordan Ruimy’s mostly accurate projections two or three times over the past couple of months, I couldn’t think of anything fresh to say. I tried but couldn’t get it up.

On one hand I feel fine about the lack of big American marquee names and a coarse, time-wasting American megaplex title or two. The cowardly Chris Nolan has always ducked Cannes, and we all know for a nearly certifiable fact that if shown on the Croisette, The Odyssey would encounter critical resistance (and perhaps even Tomahawk missiles). Likewise Steven Spielberg‘s alien flick, Disclosure Day…nuff said.

On the other hand Sasha Stone recently joked that Cannes ‘26 feels like an honorary Guy Lodge & David Ehrlich International Film Festival. A critic friend says “I agree with Sasha…for once.”

I honestly don’t feel this way. At the very least I’m very, VERY high on some of the obvious big ones, the top five being Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord (except for Sebastian Stan‘s shaved bald head), Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Fatherland, Asghar Farhadi Parallel Tales, Pedro Almodovar‘s Bitter Christmas and Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s Minotaur.

Laszlo Nemes‘ Moulin is going to be a grueling WWII Nazi torture drama. Read the synopsis…pure stomach acid. Lars Eidinger as Klaus Barbie? Say no more.

It has long been my view that director Ira Sachs lacks a certain decisive, snap-crackle-ish, go-for-broke quality. I’m not calling him weak tea — I’m calling him mild sauce. I know that The Man I Love, a Rami Malek-led musical set in 1980s New York against the enfolding of the AIDS crisis, is going to be a tough sit. Okay, I don’t know this but I fear it.

Jane Schoenbrun‘s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder)…sure, fine, let’s go.

I’m strangely intrigued by John Travolta‘s Propeller One-Way Night Coach, his directorial debut about a uyoung guy and his mother flying to Hollywood, possibly over an extended period. (I did this in a Beechcraft Bonanza in ’74 or thereabouts.)

What could Steven Soderbergh possibly say that isn’t lamentably familiar and over-saturated with John Lennon: The Last Interview?

Ron Howard‘s Avedon doc…fine.

I’m wondering which Director’s Fortnight films will wow everyone in Cannes (gloriously received!) only to fizzle upon opening in the States. What Quinzaine des cinéastes title will be this year’s The President’s Cake, which wasn’t even nominated for Best Int’l Feature and thereafter died theatrically…totally failed to catch on. (It’s now streaming.)

Whatever happened to Thomas Ngojil’s first-rate Untamable, which also played at Director’s Fortnight last year?

I’m wondering which titles are going to be the most difficult to endure. Which feminist male-hating endurance test will be this year’s Sound of Falling? If and when such a film turns up, you can bet Guy Lodge will drop to his knees with gushing, rhapsodic praise.

Which Asian film[s] will make me feel as if my soul particles are leaking out of my Wizard of Oz hourglass? Top contender: Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s All of a Sudden, which has an official runtime of 3 hours and 16 minutes. Will the incessant smoking of Parliament cigarettes be a prominent feature in this fresh effort from the helmer of Drive My Car? I can already feel my aching ass muscles. I don’t want to die while watching this film…please.

I’m disappointed, of course, about the absence of James Gray’s Paper Tiger (a possible last minute inclusion?), not to mention Ruben Ostlund’s The Entertainment System Is Down. Shot between January and May of last year, Ostlund has been preparing and talking about this film since ‘22 but he can’t finish the editing in time? Something is wrong.

I’m not looking forward to the inevitable freeze-outs. Being told, I mean, that a certain highly coveted title is “complet” at the stroke of 7 am (i.e., sign-in time). I really hate that.

I was infuriated by the difficulties I encountered in trying and finally failing to see Scarlett Johansson’s Eleanor the Great (the June Squibb film that pretty much fizzled) last May. I took an Uber all the way to Cannes le Bocca to see Spike Lee’s Highest to Lowest…couldn’t get in. Not to mention Kristen Stewart’s The Shape of Water, which I still haven’t seen. (Because I don’t want to…be honest.) Hell, I’ve never even gotten around to streaming the Johansson.

HE’s 2025 Cannes wrap-up, posted on 5.26.05.

Ghosts Are Where You Find Them

by

The most ghost-haunted city that I’ve ever visited is Savannah…hands down. You can almost see the transparent banshees swirling around the limbs of moss-covered trees in the wee hours, and there’s no ducking the lingering vibes of the Civil War past. Not to mention the wonderfully humid air in the various city parks on late summer evenings.

The second most haunted is Dallas or more precisely Dealey Plaza, which I visited back in the mid ’80s.

New Orleans has wonderful flavor, of course, and fantastic architecture, but I never walked through any cold spots or sensed any ectoplasm.

HE Loves Fish Jelly Spoilers

by

The Fish Jelly guys (i.er., self-described “gay homosexuals Nick and Joseph“) are my new favorite film reviewing duo, largely because their reviews seem to spoil plot points. Or they have, at least, in their review of Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers, which HE will be seeing on Tuesday.

Unlike the HE whiner brigade, I love spoilers because a film plot isn’t the thing — it’s how the plot is conveyed that matters. I love watching a film fully armed with a plot rundown — that way I can concentrate on the film artistry…the mise-en-scene stuff.

No offense but Michaela Coel, Ian McKellen‘s costar in the film, has funny-looking alien eyes. It’s like they were created by Carlo Rimbaldi.

Coel privately identifies, incidentally, as an “aromantic“, a romantic orientation characterized by experiencing little to no romantic attraction.

“Dr. No” Was The Best of Binder’s Main-Title Sequences

by

Of the 16 main-title sequences that Maurice Binder created for the James Bond films, the one created for Dr. No feels the freshest and most primal. Why? It’s the least sexist (no silhouettes of female hotbods floating around) and the most atmospherically attuned as it teems with Jamaican flavor.

Binder’s throughly sexist work on For Your Eyes Only (’81) is the second best.

The third best is the one for Goldfinger (’64), which Binder didn’t handle. Robert Brownjohn did that one.

Binder died in 1991 from lung cancer. Daniel Kleinman became the new title designer for GoldenEye (’95).

Jonah Hill’s “Outcome” Mostly Delights, Enthralls

by

By my sights Apple TV has given Jonah Hill‘s Outcome, a totally original, phenomenal, way-ahead-of-the-curve black comedy by way of Herman Hesse‘s “Siddhartha“, the bum’s rush.

The Apple marketing team obviously doesn’t believe in it, no promotion to speak of, no advance build-up…oh, ye of little faith! And they couldn’t be more wrong.

An 84-minute industry-centric journey of self-discovery with wickedly funny segments here and there, Outcome is about a 50-something Hollywood superstar and former heroin addict named Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves, giving a truly in-there, scaldingly honest, low-key performance for the ages) trying to apologize his way out of a potential career scandal.

Things begin with Hawk’s crisis attorney Ira Slitz (Hill) announcing that an extortionist is looking to destroy Hawk’s rep with some kind of weird sex tape or something. The tape will go online unless the angry whomever is paid $15 million in exchange for going away and destroying all copies.

Slitz urges Hawk to contact everyone he’s ever known who might hate or strongly resent him and apologize, 12-steps-style, for whatever harm or pain he might have brought into their lives.

And so Hawk, who is occasionally capable of behaving like an egoistic asshole but who isn’t that bad if you step back and cut him a little slack, begins the apology tour with visits to (a) a former manager-agent (Martin Scorsese‘s Richie “Red” Rodriguez, now running a bowling alley), (b) a resentful ex-girlfriend (Welker White), (c) his mother Dinah (Susan Lucci) who’s now starring in a reality series, and, most importantly, (d) his two best friends going all the way back to childhood — Cameron Diaz‘s Kyle and Matt Bomer‘s Xander.

Apple’s URL announces that Outcome is a “comedy”…wrong! It couldn’t be less about hah-hah, have-a-giggly-good-time doofus humor…it’s about digging into the past and admitting shortcomings and trying to break though to the simple, elemental truth of things. Obviously not a premise for a “comedy”, but Apple marketers aren’t smart enough to grasp that.

All I can say is that I watched Outcome last night starting around 12:15 am, and I started audibly cackling and chuckling right away, and I don’t do that as a rule. (I’m an LQTM-er, for the most part.)

Quick message to Jonah Hill, sent at 2:15 am or thereabouts:

“I just finished watching it, bruh. I LOVED the Siddhartha-level humor. I was laughing my ass off at first, and then it shifts into a sadder, more earnest or melancholy vein and I loved that you didn’t feel obliged to keep the humor ball in the air.

“Fuck those stupid dumbass critics saying that it’s not funny enough.”

HE To critics: “It’s not a tee-hee-hee comedy, jerkweeds!…it’s a satirical examination of a kind of malignancy of the Malibu soul…a subdued, darkly amusing thing about a form of online cancer that we’re all dealing with today. But it’s also really funny when it wants to be.”

Outcome was brilliantly written by Hill and Ezra Woods, and the handsome, fairy-tale-ish, CG-infused cinematography is by Benoit Debie.

Diaz has been absent for years but her skills are undiminished, and she looks great, by the way. She’s now 53…52 when Outcome was filmed.

Two wonderfully hilarious cameos from Van Jones and Drew Barrymore.

Feinberg Digs in With Famous Omelette Chef

by

Scott Feinberg’s 90-minute interview with Harrison Ford is interesting, substantive, good-natured. Definitely worth a listen.

But Ford speaks too softly (I was wearing my best headphones with the sound turned all the way up so don’t tell me), and it kinda makes me sad that he no longer sounds like Philadelphia detective John Book or Clear and Present Danger‘s Jack Ryan or even the aging Indiana Jones in Steven Spielberg‘s disappointing Crystal Skull, which came out 18 years ago.

The smooth depth and manly assurance of Ford’s movie-star voice has more or less evaporated. Breaks my heart.

THR/Feinberg boilerplate: Over the course of a 90-minute conversation at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, the 83-year-old Harrison Ford reflected on how depression during college led him to acting; the fateful events that resulted in him moving to Hollywood, becoming a contract player at the tail-end of the studio system, and landing his life-changing role in Star Wars; why he quickly developed a desire to escape being a “leading man” and to instead play “character parts,” and what he made of the opportunity to do so in projects such as The Mosquito Coast, 42 and Shrinking; what it is about Shrinking that he finds so challenging and rewarding; how he feels about the future of moviegoing; plus much more.”

You know going in that Feinberg will never ask tough or provocative questions — his THR brand is about tossing softballs. You know he won’t ask Ford if he has any regrets about passing on Steven Soderbergh‘s Traffic. You know he won’t ask Ford to repeat the omelette story that costarred Calista Flockhart, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. You know he won’t ask Ford if he still regularly tokes up, and if he’s as much of a “head” now as he was in the ’80s, ’90s and aughts.

I don’t understand why the “Awards Chatter” coding insists on producing that big blank space below. I can’t figure a way to eliminate it.

Are Language Police In Retreat?

by

Yesterday I listened to this 4.8.26 N.Y. Times podcast, “Language Policing and the Return of the R-Word.” It’s really worth sinking into.

The moderator is Times Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman. The panelists are the brilliant Brock Colyar (love this refresingly candid non-binary person who began life as a biomale) and Animatou Sow.

Copy: “The r-word is back. Why? The right is known for using provocative language. But lately there’s been a push to be transgressive, even on the left — from the return of certain slurs to the removal of pronouns from bios.

“To what degree is our culture abandoning political correctness — and if so, why? Plus, stick around to hear what words Aminatou and Brock would like to ban.”

John Ford’s “How Thick Was My Accent”

by

Given the likelihood that Melania Trump has smart people working for her, it’s curious that her carefully-worded, undoubtedly rehearsed statement refers to the late Jeffrey Epstein and the currently imprisoned Ghislaine Maxwell as simply “Epstein” and “Maxwell.”

Background Noise Linked to Melania’s Video Message About Jeffrey Epstein?

by

I know absolutely nothing about any of this, but much of what Michael Wolff has written in his four books about Donald Trump strikes me as reasonably real-deal and mostly compelling, and I’m at least half-persuaded that British author and historian Andrew Lownie, whose suppressed 2025 book, ‘Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York,’ contains a Jeffrey Epstein quote that compromises Melania Trump, is a respected and respectable professional.

NBC News, Oct. 22, 2025, 9:13 PM EDT, by Chloe Atkins and Dareh Gregorian:

“Author Michael Wolff has sued first lady Melania Trump, charging that she threatened a $1 billion legal action against him to stop him from reporting and writing about her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.”

AI sez: Based on reports from August to December 2025, British historian and biographer Andrew Lownie faced significant backlash and legal pressure from Melania Trump regarding his book, “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York“.

The Claim: The book, which focuses on Prince Andrew, initially alleged that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein introduced Donald Trump to Melania in the 1990s.

Retraction and Legal Threat: Following a threat of a “billion-dollar lawsuit” from Melania Trump, HarperCollins UK removed these passages from future editions, apologized, and pulped approximately 60,000 copies of the book.

Author’s Stance: Despite the retraction, Andrew Lownie stated he stood by his source and his reporting, claiming his source was reliable, though he did not want to fight the U.S. President.

Impact: The controversy caused significant issues for the book’s release, with Lownie reporting that US publisher Simon & Schuster also pulled out of distributing the book after the allegations surfaced.

Context: Melania Trump has vehemently denied this account of how she met Donald Trump, stating she met him at the Kit Kat Club in 1998.

Passage from Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York”>: