The coolest scene in Terminator Genysis (Paramount, 7.1), I’m presuming, will be the fight between old Arnold and young Arnold…if the the CG delivers the right kind of finessed “realism.” A voice is telling me it might not be good enough, that it might look too hard-drivey. In some ways the CG in this trailer is obviously more ambitious and flamboyant than what James Cameron‘s Terminator 2: Judgment Day delivered 24 years ago, but honestly? Compared to the “never seen this before” impact of the FX in the ’91 film, this seems like more of the same stuff you’d see in any CG-driven futuristic action film.

Every time Michael Caine “disappears” into a role, he doesn’t disappear at all. Each and every time he seems to play the same guy delivering the same kind of lines with the same deliberate pacing. Especially in all those Chris Nolan films he costarred in. Caine is right up there with Chris Walken as one of most imitated actors of our time, and for good reason. But I’m getting an idea from this trailer for Paolo Sorrentino‘s Youth (a.k.a. The Early Years) that the same old Caine has been disinvited. Maybe. Obviously not enough footage to fully assess, but I’m so sick of Caine’s Nolan persona and I so miss the way he was in Phillip Noyce‘s The Quiet American…let’s see what happens.

Youth is expected to be among the competitors at next month’s Cannes Film Festival.

For the last four or five years I’ve been waking myself up with Starbucks Instant, easily the equal of the finest fresh-brewed coffees and hands down the greatest tasting instant I’ve ever known. Particularly those packets of Dark Italian Roast and French Roast. I routinely take them to France because you can’t buy them there. But you can buy them in any Starbucks outlet in any state, and you used to be able to buy them in my local West Hollywood Pavilions, both on the regular coffee shelves and on mini-shelves in the independent Starbucks cafe within the store.

But starting about three weeks ago, those wood-colored cardboard containers of Italian and French Roast, which offer 12 plastic packets for $9.95, began to disappear, and in their place I began to notice these icky white-and-violet containers offering 8 packets for $6.99. I recoiled in disgust. These newbies seem designed for girly-girls. The prices are roughly proportional but why discontinue my old favorites? They’ve been a staple of my life. Why are you taking them away from me, Pavilions? Or are the Starbucks guys at fault?

Emmanuelle Bercot’s La Tete Haute, a Boyhood-resembling “dramatic comedy” (according to Allocine) about the life of a maladjusted kid from ages 6 to 18, has been chosen to open the 68th Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, 5.13. The French-produced film, which 5000 journalists are now investigating in an attempt to discern Thierry Fremaux‘s reason for picking it, will be the first female-directed film to open Cannes in 28 years, or since Diane Kurys’ A Man in Love kicked things off in ’87.

As Variety‘s Justin Chang has noted, most opening-night films have been announced before April, and if you ask me it’s always a bit of an “uh-oh” when a first-nighter is finalized this late in the game. Wong Kar Wai‘s My Blueberry Nights, a total Cannes flop when it opened the ’07 festival, and Fernando Mierelles‘ Blindness, which underwhelmed almost everyone when it opened the following year’s festival, were announced in April.

We all understand size advantages, but the fact remains that if the ant-sized Scott Lang isn’t careful (or is unlucky or whatever) a semi-agile bad guy could squash him without breaking stride. In the delusional superhero realm, and I mean even for an overweight, flip-flop-wearing ComicCon loyalist with toenail fungus, that kind of vulnerability sounds like a problem. I’m presuming that Lang (Paul Rudd) will, like the comic-book character, maintain normal-size strength in his shrunken condition (which makes no fucking sense, by the way) but he can still end up as a micro-stain on the sole of someone’s shoe or sandal or Target-bought sneaker. Ant-Man pops on 7.17.