Never accept ecstatic reactions from a South by Southwest crowd about any kind of geeky, sci-fi, gamer or comic-book movie at face value. SXSW devotees are whores for fanboy stuff. Take their expressions of wondrous delight and slice them in half if not by two-thirds, and that’ll be the likely reality of things when the film opens commercially.

Robert Aldrich‘s The Legend of Lylah Clare (’68) is one of the worst inside-Hollywood movies of all time. And yet it has Ernest Borgnine‘s flamboyant Barney Sheean, a vulgar studio boss who despises the idea of making “films.” In Act One he yells at his studio executive son (Michael Murphy), “I don’t want to make films — I want to make movies. What do you think we’re making here, art?”

Tonight at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival, Steven Spielberg made an audience cheer by proudly trumpeting the Barney Sheean ethos. As he introduced his latest film, Ready Player One (Warner Bros., 3.29), Spielberg proclaimed, “This is not a film we’ve made — this is a movie!

Steven Spielberg! #sxswpic.twitter.com/hiXJjQoXt7

— Monica Castillo (@mcastimovies) March 12, 2018

Michael Caine is the latest coward to throw Woody Allen under the bus. The 84-year-old actor won an Academy Award for his role in Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters and the facts are the facts, but that’s water under the bridge, Caine feels.

“I can’t come to terms with [the allegation],” Caine has told The Guardian‘s Michael Hogan “because I loved Woody and had a wonderful time with him. I even introduced him to Mia [Farrow]. I don’t regret working with him, which I did in complete innocence. But I wouldn’t work with him again, no.”

Caine worked for Allen in “in complete innocence” in 1985, or seven years before the alleged incident with Dylan Farrow happened? The nature of which Allen had never been accused of before and has never been accused of since?

The main subject of the Hogan interview is My Generation, about Caine’s journey through 1960s London. Caine is the narrator, co-producer and “star” as it were. Variety‘s Jay Weissberg gave it a mostly positive review during last September’s Venice Film Festival.

I’ve posted this photo twice since the birth of Hollywood Elsewhere in August ’04. It was taken on a great blue-sky day in Italy nearly 18 years ago, somewhere south of Siena during a leisurely drive to Rome. I can recall the aroma and the summery air and the pastoral vibe like it happened yesterday. To this day I’m not sure what kind of flowers are dotting the landscape but I always refer to them as poppies (which I’m sure they’re not) when I show this to friends. I’ve tried to find this estate a couple of times since, but no dice. If this image rings a bell for anyone and they know the address or can provide a Google capture, please get in touch.

Snapped sometime in late May of 2000

There’s a new Bluray of Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s Downfall (’04) out this month. The last Bluray version was released ten years ago, by the Momentum guys in England.

I’ve been a devout Downfall fan since catching it in Toronto 13 and 1/2 years ago; I interviewed producer Bernd Eichinger and the great Bruno Ganz in Los Angeles when they came to town several weeks later. It’s a legendary war film — tense, well-written, highly charged in all respects.

Of course, the reason Downfall is regarded as the biggest film of Hirschbiegel, Ganz and Eichinger’s career is not because of the dedication and artistry that went into its making, but the Hitler YouTube parody-rant phenomenon that was inspired by a single conference-room scene. Hitler parodies began…what, in ’06 or ’07 and now number over 1500 and perhaps over 2000 or even higher.

Given the fact that Downfall would be remembered only by cineastes today if the parodies had never taken off, wouldn’t you think that the producers of the two Blurays would have acknowledged this by including a short, good-natured essay on the influence of the parodies? To simply acknowledge the basic, irrefutable facts? Nope — neither Bluray even alludes to them. Which strikes me, no offense, as insane.

Death of Stalin costar Jason Isaacs, quoted by The Guardian‘s Rachel Cooke in a 3.11 interview: “I’m just a dude who forgets to take out the rubbish. I’ve had a good year or two, but there have been other times [that weren’t so hot]. I’ve been to Sundance with eight films, and only one of them came out.

Death of Stalin costar Jason Isaccs (r.) and Deadline‘s Pete Hammond (l.) following a Stalin screening at the WGA theatre a few days ago.

“When I was in Peter Pan [he played Mr. Darling and Captain Hook in PJ Hogan’s 2003 film], it was going to be gigantic. I was told it would change my life. Be careful, they said — make sure you’ve got the right people in place. Then it came out, and it was a catastrophic flop. It killed my film career stone dead for a while.

“It was a great lesson — just have a great time and do the best you can. Sometimes I wish I was more famous; you have more choices as an actor when you are. But I tend to ask: how can I be grateful for the things I’ve got, rather than for the things I haven’t got? Moaning is a waste of life.”

Watching this SNL-Mueller thing last night made me feel all the better about having posted a 28-point Seth Abramson thread about Trump-Russia Collusion on 2.28.18. All of it in the public record, and all of it (as far as I know) non-disputable or at the very least highly suspicious, and yet Mueller is “saying” on SNL that he’s “only half-in on collusion”?

In my book N.Y. Times columnist Bari Weiss attained sainthood the night before last by ripping into militant offense-taking by the p.c. authoritarian left. She laid it all down on Real Time With Bill Maher, which I didn’t see until last night.

“It’s [partly] the narcissism of small differences,” she began. “Anyone who departs from woke orthodoxy gets a lot more heat than people on the actual right. I also think that offense-taking is being weaponized. It is a route now to political power…a way of smearing [a person’s] reputation and making them a liability…it’s a way of taking [people] down a peg.

We’re living through an era of what Weiss calls “the Digital Stain…what people are trying to do is take even the most well-intentioned and anodyne comment and intentionally torque it and then throw it out through the echo chamber of social media in order to ruin people’s reputations.”

Weiss won my initial respect with a 1.16 piece called “Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.” What’s up with Aziz, by the way? Is he still hiding out or…?