Wally Pfister‘s Transcendence (Warner Bros., 4.17) opens on Friday. It looks and sounds like a reasonably intelligent sci-fier. Expensive-looking, lots of special effects, produced by Chris Nolan and Emma Thomas, etc. I wasn’t invited to last Friday afternoon’s screening but I’ll be attending tomorrow night’s all-media. Obviously there’s no buzz out there. I’m getting an idea that Transcendence is like a freshly-born, wobbly-legged zebra, still damp with placenta, and there are 10 or 15 wild dogs approaching. (I am not one of them. I have no interest in seeing this film get eaten.) A fair-minded, somewhat less-than-enthused friend says it’s “well made [but] I think it’s going to confuse people…I don’t know that the audience is going to latch onto it that strongly…it’s not that hooky an idea.”

In a 4.8 report by Thompson on Hollywood’s Valentina Valentini about a National Association of Broadcasters Convention panel, Pfister revealed that a dramatic line in the Transcendence trailer — Morgan Freeman uttering ‘It will be the end of mankind as we know it’ — wasn’t his idea. “That line is not in the movie,” Pfister told attendees at the panel, saying that WB’s marketing team put it in there. “I’d never write something like that.”

David Cronenberg‘s Maps To The Stars, based on a script by Bruce (Force Majeure) Wagner, is obviously some kind of “absurdist comedy about the entertainment business,” as producer Martin Katz has called it. It also seems a lot more engaging than Cosmopolis, Cronenberg’s Wall Street zombie flick. Cronenberg: “It’s very typical of Bruce Wagner’s writing…sort of a condensed essence of Bruce. And while it’s satirical, it’s also very powerful, emotionally, and insightful and funny. You could say it’s a Hollywood film because the characters are agents, actors and managers, but it is not a satire like The Player.”

The first three minutes of this Honest Wolf of Wall Street Trailer are somewhere between decent and not half bad, but then it hits a groove and takes off around the 3:05 mark.

Nancy Tartaglione‘s 2014 Cannes Film Festival preview piece contains a spot of dry humor: “I hear Terrence Malick’s speculated-upon Knight Of Cups with Christian Bale, Imogen Poots, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett is not yet finished.” Really? The flakiest, most whimsical director in the history of commercial cinema was shooting Cups about two years ago. If Cups is commercially released before the spring of 2015 I’ll be on the floor with amazement. I’m also wondering why there hasn’t even been speculation about Noah Baumbach‘s Untitled Public School Project (also filmed in 2012) screening in Cannes. It seems semi-logical to unveil it next month given the likelihood of Baumbach’s other in-the-can film, While We’re Young, opening later this year following what I presuming will be showings at Telluride/Venice/Toronto.”

Leonardo DiCaprio has agreed to portray a wounded, bent-on-revenge 19th Century explorer in Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu‘s The Revenant. The New Regency pic will begin filming in September for fall 2015 release by 20th Century Fox. Based on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel (which is based on a true story) yet another survival-against-great-odds film in the vein of All Is Lost and Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (with perhaps a sprinkling of Cormac McCarthy‘s Blood Meridien). The difference is that the Inarritu/DiCaprio/Punke project will basically be a payback/revenge flick. The second Webster’s definition of “revenant” is “a person who returns as a spirit after death; a ghost.” Yes, there was an obscure 2009 comedic horror film called The Revenant, but the title is probably a bad idea as the vast majority of moviegoers probably don’t know what it means. Titles can’t sound too cultured or fancy-schmancy — you have to grunt them down to reach your average Joe Schmoe. Just call it Revenge (nobody remembers the 1990 Tony Scott-Kevin Costner version) or Vengeance Is Mine (megaplex popcorn-munchers have never heard of Shohei Imamura, trust me) or something like that — plain and primitive. Yes, I know — I sound a bit like Harry Cohn here but I’m just trying to address the way things are.

Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, which will open the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, has long been presumed to be a total wash. Initially slated for release by the Weinstein Co. in November 2013, them bumped to 3.14.14, and then yanked again in favor of the Cannes slot . I’ve no interest in, much less sympathy for, a classy actress who marries for money and then realizes a few years down the road that she can barely stand the guy she married, much less feel love for him, and that she feels trapped and wants out. No sympathy at all. There’s also the highly problematic casting of Tim Roth as Prince Rainer. Consider the face of the Real McCoy — kindly expression, nice-enough features, mellow attitude. Then consider Roth’s demon-seed features — the face of a malevolent bad guy if I ever saw one. There’s no crossover, no similarity, no appeal. Roth has the face of a scowling reptile. Grace of Monaco died the day he was cast.

Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi and his wife, Princess Grace (the former Grace Kelly) on a yacht sometime around 1961 or ’62.

Tim Roth, whose rancid, pissed-off vibe and generally unappealing features killed this movie the instant he was cast. I loved Roth in Nic Jarecki’s Arbitrage, but he can’t play husbands or boyfriends or anything in that realm. He has to play feisty gargoyle characters and/or attitude monkeys. Roth was perfect in Stephen Frears’ The Hit and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Three…no, actually two days before the unveiling of the Cannes Film Festival’s roster, German helmer Fatih Akin has withdrawn The Cut, which had been submitted to the festival, “for personal reasons.” Does this have something vaguely to do with last month’s passing of Karl “Baumi” Baumgartner, the co-founder of Pandora Film, which is listed by the IMDB as one of the producers of The Cut and which is presumably distributing? Either way it doesn’t add up. Life is a vale of troubles, but when misfortunes occur you have to man up and soldier on. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I hope Akin’s situation will soon rectify or smooth out. All I know is that presumed Cannes hopefuls are dropping like flies — The Cut, Birdman, Inherent Vice.

The Cut director Fatih Akin.