Day: August 21, 2016

The following titles are believed to be Telluride ’16 attractions. They were posted earlier today on Jordan Ruimy‘s “Mind of a Suspicious Kind” website. (Michael’s Telluride Blog has the same titles.) I recorded an Oscar Poker podcast earlier today with Ruimy, a regular Playlist contributor. Soon to move to Boston from Montreal, Ruimy has been catching movies all year long and staying abreast of things and not ducking movies and hibernating like a bear from February through Labor Day, like another columnist I could mention. I ran these by a guy who knows stuff, and he had no arguments with these being likely Telluride entrees. He said, however, that the list doesn’t mention one major American film that is definitely going.

Arrival, d: Denis Villeneuve
Bleed For This, d: Ben Younger
The B-Side, d: Errol Morris
Defying the Nazis, d: Ken Burns
Fire at Sea, d: Gianfranco Rosi
Frantz, d: Francois Ozon
Graduation, d: Cristian Mungiu
Into the Inferno, d: Werner Herzog
Journey Through French Cinema, d: Bertrand Tavernier
La La Land, d: Damian Chazelle
Manchester By The Sea, d: Kenneth Lonergan
Maudie, d: Aisling Walsh
Moonlight, d: Barry Jenkins
Neruda, d: Pablo Larrain
Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, d: Joseph Cedar
The Red Turtle, d: Michael Dudok De Witt
Toni Erdmann, d: Maren Ade
Una, d: Benedict Andrews
Wakefield, d: Robin Swicord
Things to Come, d: Mia Hanse Love

Taken eons ago on Daytona Beach. I don’t feel good about the white loafers. I can’t explain the motive.

The Poor Cow clips that Steven Soderbergh used in The Limey were (a) desaturated, (b) fragmented, (c) sparse and (d) mostly soundless. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I get to see the full-color, all-in version of Ken Loach’s 1967 film. Along with the latest episode of The Night Of, of course.

Those are my blurry hands taking iPhone shots of Kristen Stewart during the May 2016 Personal Shopper. press conference in Cannes. I knew for sure because of the brown leather wristband.

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“If you make people laugh, it is very hard for them to see you not making them laugh. Every time I do a movie like Moneyball or Wolf of Wall Street or War Dogs, when you do interviews they all say ‘wow, this has been a major transition for you.'” — Jonah Hill speaking to Any Given Wednesday‘s Bill Simmons.

But Jonah has transitioned, completely, into the realm of serious performance-giving and profile-expanding. Yes, playing an assortment of colorful, curious and eccentric guys, for sure, but well beyond the realm of Superbad-level (or Superbad-wannabe) comedies.

You know who I thought might transition into better, more substantial films or at least out of lowbrow comedies but hasn’t? Seth Rogen. For the most part he seems determined to stay in his safe zone. If Rogen was going to “do a Jonah Hill,” he would’ve done it by now. He just keeps making these mildly middlebrow stoner comedies (I loved Pineapple Express, didn’t mind The Interview, meh Neighbors) and letting go with that Rogen laugh and living up to that famous Michael O’Donoghue-ism – “Simply making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.”

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The BFI Bluray of Ken Russell‘s Women in Love pops on Monday, 8.22. According to British Amazon I’ll receive it sometime between Wednesday, 8.24 and Friday, 8.26. Because I paid an extra $31 (24 British pounds) for priority shipping. I want a week to savor and settle in with it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this 1969 film in serious tip-top shape, having only caught it once or twice in a Manhattan rep house in the late ’70s or early ’80s.

If Women in Love had never appeared in ’69 and yet was somehow recreated by a fresh creative team and released this fall by Focus Features or Fox Searchlight, it would instantly vault into the Best Picture category. Because nobody and I mean nobody makes brainy period dramas as good as this for the theatrical market any more.

Posted on 2.4.14: Ken Russsell‘s Women in Love (’69), indisputably his greatest film, demands a meticulous high-def remastering, if for no other reason than the cinematography by Billy Williams (Gandhi, On Golden Pond).

“Women is one of the most sensual films ever made about men, women and relationships (and I’m not just talking about the nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates), and one of the most anguished in portraying the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many relationships and marriages.

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There was a brief, horrific two- or three-week period last September when it seemed as if Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, which 90% of female cognoscenti and quite a few girlymen critics adored, might become the emotional favorite and thereby nudge aside Spotlight, which was clearly the cultivated-journo favorite in the wake of Telluride-Toronto, for the Best Picture Oscar.

A ghastly sense of foreboding gripped my soul as I began to realize how strongly many people felt about Room. That anecdote about a woman weeping in the Academy lobby told me it was fait accompli. The prospect of a Room victory felt like a spear in the side. But all of that Best Picture talk went away pretty quickly, didn’t it? Because it became increasingly clear that more people were on my side of the equation, and the Room crowd realized by late October or thereabouts that their only realistic shot was Brie Larson winning the Best Actress Oscar, which of course she did.

But thank God Room was defeated. The world came to its senses! We’ll be stuck with cloying Jacob Tremblay for the next few years (Before I Wake, Shut In, The Book of Henry, Burn Your Maps, Wonder are due in ’16 and ’17) but them’s the breaks.

I was just re-reading my initial Toronto review and the horror just came whooshing right back:

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In a CNN.com article filed this morning (Sunday, 8.21) by Barbara Starr, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, said he hopes the US-led coalition can “defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria in this next year.”

Townsend quickly qualified this ambitious-sounding agenda. “Do I think ISIS will be gone from Iraq and Syria [by the end of ’17]? No. But I want them out of the cities. I want them dead or on the run in a hole somewhere in the desert, and significantly less of a threat.”

I like that, the “dead or in a hole” part. This is how a strong military commander should talk about the enemy. What Townsend said doesn’t quite have the ring of “we’re not just gonna murder those lousy ISIS bastards…we’re going to use their living guts to grease the treads of our tanks,” but he’s on the right track.