I’ve been way, way behind on Matthew Heineman‘s Cartel Land, a doc that’s mostly about Mexican vigilante militias (i.e. “Autodefensas“) fighting the Knights Templar drug cartel in the Michoacan region. It focuses in particular on Dr. Jose Mireles, a Michoacan-based physician who began leading the Autodefensas in 2013 after being kidnapped by the cartel and “several” family members having been murdered by same. (The doc also profiles the less interesting Tim “Nailer” Foley, leader of Arizona Border Recon.)

In any event I finally caught Cartel Land last night at a private screening in Tribeca. Totally riveting, grade-A, deserves to be nominated. My first thought was that it could easily be adapted into a compelling narrative feature. Mireles is a genuinely heroic, charismatic fellow — a kind of silver fox Emiliano Zapata with a yen for the ladies. I’m told that director Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) “likes” the notion of a dramatic adaptation.

(l. to r.) Cartel Land producer Molly Thompson, Black Mass producer John Lesher, Jake Gyllenhaal, Matthew Heineman, producer Tom Yellin at Locanda Verde — Sunday, 12.20, 7:20 pm.

Cartel Land debuted at Sundance 2015, was acquired by The Orchard last February, opened last July to a 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and was recently named as one of the 15 short-listed docs for a possible Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

You’re an executive producer who needs to decide whether to co-finance a proposed adaptation of M.L. Stedman‘s “The Light Between Oceans,” a 1920s period drama that Derek Cianfrance will direct. The basic set-up is that Tom (Michael Fassbender), a World War I veteran and lighthouse keeper, and his wife Isabel (Alicia Vikander) are living on an isolated island off the west coast of Australia. The inciting incident is the discovery of a dead man and a live baby in a boat that’s washed onto shore. Having suffered through two miscarriages and a stillbirth, Isabel decides that the baby is a “gift from God” (baby Moses found in the Nile reeds) and ignores her husband’s natural impulse to report the discovery. Reality eventually intrudes. Would you invest in this film, and why? I would run in the other direction. Who could identify with a woman so deluded or self-absorbed that she would believe she can keep an abandoned baby like a $20 bill found on the street? Who would raise a child on an isolated island without benefit of schools and the opportunity to develop social skills? I don’t even want to see this thing, despite Stedman’s 2012 book having been roundly praised.

Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander in forthcoming Focus Features release, The Light Between Oceans.

Yesterday I wrote that “an early teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens began with an older woman’s voice asking “who are you?” and Rey (Daisy Ridley) answering “I’m no one.” Correct me if I’m wrong but this dialogue isn’t heard in the actual film…right?” I was told by Correcting Jeff that this dialogue is in the film and that I need to check my hearing. Two days ago a piece by 1o9.gozmodo.com’s Charlie Jane Anders listed several bits that were in the teasers/trailers but not in the film. He claims that the aforementioned exchange is among them.

I did a 20-minute phoner yesterday afternoon with Revenant director Alejandro G. Inarritu. No mention of the “bear rape” thing as I was determined to keep things on a higher plane. We covered several areas. Toward the end I asked if he was going to appeal the recent disqualification of Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s score for Oscar consideration by the Academy’s music branch. Inarritu confirmed this. Here’s an explanation of his somewhat non-traditional approach to the score, which, as I understand it, was to use Bryce Dessner and Alva Noto‘s electronic music for subliminal atmospheric mood sprinklings while Sakamoto’s orchestral score delivered the heart-and-soul current. (Or something like that.) Again, the mp3.

(l. to r.) Forrest Goodluck, Alejandro G. Inarritu, Leonardo DiCaprio at recent Revenant premiere in Los Angeles.

Notes/questions I’d written before speaking with Inarritu: “As long as your heart is beating, as long as you’re able to breathe, you fight to the last.

“Respecting the difference between Emmanuelle Lubezski‘s Alexa 65 photography (which constitutes just under half of The Revenant‘s footage) and Robert Richardson‘s Super Panavision 80 photography for The Hateful Eight.

“How many pelts would be found on such an expedition, and how much money would each trapper get? Why winter? Why not go out in search of pelts in the spring and summer? The horse, I presume, was manufactured, along with the intestines and stomach and liver and whatnot. Did Leo wear a wetsuit under his trapper clothing?

“I don’t know that The Revenant delivers a theme that echoes my own life except in terms of the necessity of strength and persistence throughout all the difficult episodes. What I know and believe is that this is a film that has taken me where I’ve never been, and in a much more realistic and enveloping way. The Argentina portion was the final Leo & Domhnall Gleeson vs. Tom Hardy battle. That magnificent promotional book — whose idea? How long did it take? Those imitation daguerrotypes are perfect.

It’s a shame this wasn’t done quite right — no music, no high-impact CAROL beginning, the crawl starting at least 10 or 12 seconds late. If anyone has access to the original, please forward. Hilarious sidenote: Rooney Mara‘s Therese Belevet character renamed “Therese Bela Fett.”

An early teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens began with an older woman’s voice asking “who are you?” and Rey (Daisy Ridley) answering “I’m no one.” Correct me if I’m wrong but this dialogue isn’t heard in the actual film…right? Sidenote: Here‘s Carmen Tse’s LAist story (posted yesterday afternoon) about the Arclight digital meltdown freakout.

Today Hateful Eight star Kurt Russell was asked by the View gals about that gun-control discussion he and I got into two weeks ago. Here’s what he said. Russell claimed that I “ambushed” him. If that means I asked him a question that had a slight connection to the real world as opposed to the usual blah-blah suckuppy bullshit that everyone asks movie stars at press junkets, then I am definitely guilty as charged. And yet all I did was mention a N.Y. Times piece by N.R. Kleinfeld that indicated people are badly shaken by Paris and San Bernardino, and that they may not be processing arch Tarantino-style violence these days the way they did back in the Pulp Fiction/Jackie Brown days. Kurt also told the View guys that films like The Hateful Eight are “fantasy land” — wrong. All strong movies are echoes and reflections of the culture and the times. And before anyone accuses me of milking this for the umpteenth time, I’m simply responding to the View thing. In the clip Russell’s remarks start at 3:30 and end at 5:55.

Hulu’s 11.22.63 will begin streaming on 2.15.16, but does that mean the whole thing will be available, House of Cards-style? It was recently announced that the two-hour opener, directed by Kevin McDonald, will debut at Sundance ’16. Star James Franco and costars Sarah Gadon, Daniel Webber, George MacKay, Josh Duhamel and Chris Cooper will sit for a post-screening q & a.

James Franco, Sarah Gadon during a grassy knoll sequence from 11.22.63.

The song on the trailer is Bobby Vinton‘s Over and Over, “a B-side from 1962 so rare it’s never been digitized or even issued on CD or cassette before,” according to Hulu. “The master recording was unarchived and digitized by Sony records specifically for this trailer.”

Nine foreign-language features are on the short list for the 88th Academy Awards. The list will be pruned down to five nominees by three committees (based in New York, Los Angeles and London) after they watch the film between Friday, 1.8 and Sunday, 1.10, and then decide which four to cut. The Big Nine: The Brand New Testament (Belgium), d: Jaco Van Dormael; Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia), d: Ciro Guerra; A War (Denmark), d: Tobias Lindholm; The Fencer (Finland), d: Klaus Haäro; Mustang (France), d: Deniz Gamze Erguven; Labyrinth of Lies (Germany), d: Giulio Ricciarelli; Son of Saul (Hungary), d: Laszlo Nemes; Viva (Ireland), d: Paddy Breathnach; Theeb (Jordan), d: Naji Abu Nowar.

It was announced yesterday that Sundance ’16 will offer a premiere of Douglas McGrath‘s Becoming Mike Nichols, “an intimate portrait of the director, producer, and improvisational comedy icon…filmed just months before his death…McGrath documents Nichols’s early life as he opens up to his friend and director Jack O’Brien about the storied beginnings of his career.”

The bulk of the doc (which debuts exclusively on HBO on 2.22) is drawn from a two-day interview with Nichols in the summer of 2014. The film has been executive produced by, among others, critic-essayist Frank Rich.

From my 11.20.14 obit: “Some are truly gifted, and if those in that small, choice fraternity are tenacious and lucky and sometimes scrappy enough, they get to develop their gift and turn what they have inside into works that matter for people of all stripes and philosophies. And then there are those gifted types who are fortunate enough to catch a certain inspiration at the right point in their lives, which turns into a wave that carries and defines their finest work for all time to come. This was how things pretty much went for the late and great Mike Nichols.

A couple days ago a piece by N.Y. Post contributor Johnny Oleksinski lamented the absence of the spiritual undercurrent that he recalls from (choke, gag, loogie) the prequels. A ballsy thing to say and yes, I understand what he’s half-getting at but still…yeesh. The overwhelming mantra during Monday night’s post-premiere party was “definitely better than the prequels,” and already Oleksinski is trying to spark nostalgia sentiment for that godawful trilogy? It wouldn’t matter to me if holograms of Jesus, Buddha and Krishna were to issue a prequel endorsement manifesto. The presence of Jar-Jar, Hayden Christensen and Jake Lloyd automatically erase any spiritual currents, now and forever. End of discussion.

“[While] watching director J.J. Abrams’ smug revamp of one of the highest-grossing movie franchises in history, I found myself missing the loathed prequels,” Oleksinski writes. “Or, at least, thinking of them in a more positive light than before. Like an ex after midnight. Sure, they had problems — Jar Jar Binks, midi-chlorians, staid dialogue, Count Dooku. As movies they fail, often spectacularly. But the scorned prequels got one big thing right — the intangible Star Wars spirit. They oozed mythology, gravitas, nonstop momentum and unwavering earnestness — hallmarks of the series at its best. With The Force Awakens, Abrams has made a slight, self-aware, low-stakes movie [that] borrows from the original trilogy with abandon — but in all the wrong ways.”