I wasn’t aware that The Silence of the Lambs (which is now 26 and 3/4 years old, having opened on 1.30.91) needed a 4K restoration. On top of which this trailer makes the colors look a bit bleachy. They’re certainly darker and warmer on the Bluray that I own. Remember that Jack Crawford is based on real-life FBI criminal profiler John Douglas, the author of the book that provided the basis for David Fincher‘s Mindhunter. For whatever reason Jonathan Demme‘s film will re-open in England on 11.3.17. I don’t see the point. Jodie Foster will probably never snag another role with as much built-in emotional resonance as Clarice Starling. (I’d honestly forgotten that Julianne Moore played the same character ten years later in Hannibal.) Foster was 28 when Lambs was filmed — she’ll turn 55 on 11.19. Director Jonathan Demme passed last April, at age 73.

“I’ll tell you what I want. I want to walk around New York City at a fairly vigorous clip. I want to love and support my wife and my sons every way I can. I want to sail into the mystic. I want to stay in touch with everyone and offer as much offer affection, trust, intellectual engagement and friendship as I reasonably can. I want to live forever. I want good health, and to me that also means good spiritual health. I want to keep most of my hair and never grow breasts or a pot belly. I want Japanese or South Korean-level wifi wherever I go. I want to read and know everything. I want to bask in love, family, friendship and the purring of my three cats until the end of time. I want several pairs of slim ass-hugging jeans. I want to be clean shaven. I want well-made shoes, preferably Italian suede or Bruno Magli or John Varvatos. I want to keep all my Blurays forever. I want fresh gourmet food but in modest portions. I want color, aromas, travel. I want challenging hiking trails in high Swiss places. I know it’s not possible, but I’d prefer to always be in the company of slender people. I want to zoom around on my Majesty and use the Mini Cooper only when it rains or when I need to buy a lot of groceries. I want mobility and adaptability and the smell of great humming, rumbling cities. I want European-style subways, buses, trains, rental cars. I want a long Norman Lloyd-type life, and I insist that my mental faculties stay electric and crackling forever. I’ll always want a couple of folly-loaded Jackery battery chargers for my iPhone 6 Plus. I want occasional bowls of plain yogurt and a constant supply of fruit and vegetables. I want beautiful scenery from time to time. I want to hang with golden retrievers and other high-affection dogs. I want to be up early and go to bed late every day of my life, and take 45-minute naps around 4 pm. And I’ll always want a 65-inch OLED along with an Oppo Bluray player with region-2 capabilities plus Amazon, Vudu, Netflix and everything else on a Roku player. And I always want little packets of strong Italian Starbucks Instant somewhere nearby. And I want to re-visit Venice, Prague, Rome, Paris, Arcos de la Frontera and Hanoi every two or three years. I don’t want to get my head chopped off but I want to visit the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iran) as well as Russia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Ukraine before long, preferably on a motorcycle or at least by train.” — An earlier version of this, a riff on a “Carlos the Jackal” quote, was posted on 11.29.14.

I’ve never heard of cats eating anything acidic, much less seen it with my own eyes. Earlier today Anya, our five-month-old Bluepoint Siamese female, ate two chunks of freshly sliced tomato. I was astonished.

The great Dennis Hooper died seven and a half years ago, and Nick Ebeling‘s Along For The Ride is…what, the 13th or 14th documentary about the guy? In 1980 I showed up for an interview with Hopper at a midtown Manhattan hotel. We were supposed to chat about Out of The Blue, Hopper’s first directorial effort since The Last Movie, which had been a total calamity. Blue was actually a fairly decent film, but Hopper didn’t come down to the lobby at the appointed time, probably because he was doing lines in his hotel room. I finally gave up and left. Ebeling’s doc is mainly about the making of The Last Movie. It’ll play during a special Dennis Hopper retrospective event at the Metrograph on 11.3 before opening in Los Angeles on 12.8.

I’m filling out my Sundance press accreditation form this weekend. This led to memories of last January’s festival, and a particularly awful time I had watching Alexander Moors‘ The Yellow Birds, an Iraq War PTSD drama. Jason Hall‘s Thank You For Your Service deals with nearly the exact same subject, but in a way that I found ten times more affecting and effective. Maybe because I didn’t have to deal with Alden Ehrenreich, whose gloomy-Rabbinical-student performance all but sank Yellow Birds.

As far as I can tell Yellow Birds never found a North American distributor. Which, if true, suggests that buyers felt the same way I did. Like me they probably sat in their Eccles seats in a state of numb submission, toughing it out and waiting for something (anything!) interesting to happen.

How can the Sundance guys approve films like The Yellow Birds and yet turn down well-made genre flicks, which they’ve been known to do from time to time? It just reenforces the idea that the term “Sundance film” is not a myth. John Cooper and Trevor Groth are known for preferring a certain kind of solemn, squishy, angsty, social-issue, ahead-of-the-curve, relationshippy black-gay-transgender politically correct film.

If Sundance had been going in ’73 and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero had been submitted, they would’ve turned it down because it’s got too many car chases and is about rednecks smuggling moonshine.

The Yellow Birds is about the investigation of the death of an Iraq War combatant named “Murph” (i.e., Daniel Murphy, played by Tye Sheridan), but more precisely about evasions and suppressions on the part of Murph’s PTSD-aflicted comrade, John Bartie (Ehrenreich), when he returns home.

Murph’s mom Maureen (Jennifer Aniston) naturally wants to know what happened, and Bartie’s mom Amy (Toni Collette) is seriously concerned about her son’s totally withdrawn, zombie-like manner. There’s also a Sergeant Sterling (Jack Huston) with his own buried trauma issues, and a CID investigator (Jason Patric) with a persistent interest in what happened between Murph and John.

The Yellow Birds has moments of visual beauty but is otherwise disappointing — it doesn’t connect or sink in. And the ending is seriously weak tea.

After it ended I ran into a Los Angeles guy who runs a film series, and so I briefly shared my reservations about the film and Ehrenreich in particular. He said he “liked” The Yellow Birds and so did the people he was sitting with, and that Ehrenreich’s ability to reanimate Han Solo wasn’t an issue as far as Yellow Birds is concerned.

This morning Jordan Ruimy sent along a straw poll about the “best current film directors.” Reddit was the principal launch site for the poll. Out of 24,469 votes cast as of 12:45 pm Pacific the highest rated director is…Denis Villeneuve? 1442 votes or 5.88% of the total. Weird. I was under the impression (a) that Blade Runner 2049 is admired but far from universally loved, (b) that some were as annoyed by Arrival as I was, and (c) that many viewers felt that Emily Blunt picking up some strange Latino guy in a bar and bringing him home in Sicario made no sense at all.

Villeneuve is admired — I get that — but there’s a dissenting community out there. Nonetheless Reddit readers have spoken — bow down to the new King Shit.

I’ll allow that Villeneueve is an accomplished, well-respected helmer, but should he really rate higher than (my personal preferences among the straw poll names, numbering 30 or thereabouts but not in this order) Roman Polanski, Michael Haneke, Martin Scorsese, Kathryn Bigelow (despite Detroit), James Cameron, the Coen brothers, Fernando Meirelles, Walter Salles, Tony Gilroy, Pawel Pawlikowksi, David O. Russell, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Alexander Payne, Alfonso Cuaron, David Fincher, Kenneth Lonergan, Steven Soderbergh, Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo del Toro, Matt Reeves, Bennett Miller, Cristian Mungiu, Darren Aronofsky, Phillip Noyce, Wes Anderson, Steve McQueen, Christopher Nolan, Asghar Farhadi and Cary Fukunaga?

The poll is kind of weird in a few ways. One, why aren’t the names listed alphabetically? Two, where is Call Me By Your Name‘s Luca Guadagnino? (After A Bigger Splash and with everyone waiting with bated breath for his two-and-a half-hour Suspiria remake, it’s derelict to not include him.) Three, if you’re dead you obviously can’t be among the best “current” film directors so why is Abbas Kiarostami included?

My cream-of-the-croppers again, but this time in order of preference:

1. Asghar Farhadi. 2. Luca Guadagnino. 3. Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu. 4. Cristian Mungiu. 5. Darren Aronofsky. 6. Joel and Ethan Coen. 7. David Fincher, 8. Martin Scorsese, 9. Kathryn Bigelow (despite Detroit), 10. Chris Nolan, 11. James Cameron, 12. Alfonso Cuaron, 13. Pawel Pawlikowski, 14. David O. Russell, 15. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 16. Guillermo del Toro, 17. Matt Reeves, 18. Bennett Miller, 19. Roman Polanski, 20. Michael Haneke, 21. Steve McQueen, 22. Wes Anderson, 23. Steven Soderbergh, 24. Tony Gilroy, 25. Phillip Noyce, 26. Fernando Meirelles, 27. Cary Fukunaga, 28. Kenneth Lonergan, 29. Michael Haneke, 30. Walter Salles.