Month: March 2022

Kristen Stewart night at the Arlington, 15 or 20 minutes before the show began. Masks are no longer mandatory in California, but the SBIFF greeting staff was asking everyone to wear them anyway…fine. I put mine on, smiled at the ushers and walked into the cavernous theatre.

Ten minutes later I was sitting in my usual third-row aisle seat with my mask off, in line with standard protocol (masks worn standing but not sitting). A lean, white-haired provocateur in a plaid jacket (one of the swells who always wait until just before showtime to arrive) came over, did a theatrical double-take and said, “I was just wondering why everyone is wearing masks except you.”

That wasn’t true, in fact — several people sitting in our immediate vicinity (including Charlize Theron, two rows away) weren’t wearing them.

HE reply (calmly): “I’m not wearing my mask for the same reason that sitting restaurant patrons don’t wear them. Plus the CDC says they’re no longer mandatory.”

White-haired guy: “But this is a private event and the festival has asked everyone to wear them.”

HE: “Unless you’re sitting down. Or unless you’re Charlize Theron or Kristen Stewart or Roger Durling or Anne Thompson. Or unless you’re invited to the after-party.”

White-haired guy (leaning over to inspect my press badge): “But but but….”

HE: “Look, I’m not a mask dilletante. I’ve been masking for two years and I’m triple vaxxed, but the mandatory mask stuff is basically over.”

White-haired guy: “You may not be a dilletante, but you might be a jerk.”

HE: “Okay, I’m a jerk.”

The feedback is so bad that Kristen Stewart and IndieWire interviewer Anne Thompson have to avoid speaking directly into their microphones.

Stewart consequently sounds so faint and echo-y that I can’t really hear her…okay, I can hear the occasional phrase or expression. She doesn’t always speak in short, hurried, half-muttered phrases, but she often does.

Will Thompson ask about my all-time favorite Stewart performance — i.e., her ghost whisperer in Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper? That, for me, was her absolute peak achievement. I own and cherish the Criterion Bluray.

Thompson: “Your Personal Shopper character was in such an ethereal, spiritual place…it must have been hard to get into that.”

Was Stewart upset about original Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke being more or less thrown off the Twilight franchise? I can’t really hear her response.

I truly admired Stewart several weeks ago when she said she “doesn’t give a shit” about winning the Best Actress Oscar (or words to that effect). Very few contenders on her level have let go with that kind of candor. Hats off.

Thompson asks about Stewart’s starring role in David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. Asked when we might see it, Stewart goes “oh!” but then pulls back and says she’s not sure. Translation: It will debut at Cannes ‘22.

These guys (a) are unarmed, (b) have no Ukrainian friends who will give them shelter and show them around, (c) aren’t prepared for the horror and brutality that awaits, and (d) aren’t even dressed sufficiently to handle the cold.

In short they’re foolish because they’re likely to catch hell and perhaps even die, but I admire the hell out of them.

A part of me (the romantic, non-cowardly part) would like to join them. Part of me (the action junkie) wishes I had been with those Sky News guys who were fired upon by Russian snipers and almost bought it earlier today. A part of me, yes, would rather die under fire than wither away on the vine.

But a larger part of me, I’m ashamed to admit, is a coward. Would I like to somehow grow out of that and become Gary Cooper at the end of For Whom The Bell Tolls? Yes.

Sean Penn, by the way, escaped Ukraine on foot two or three days ago, walking miles to the Polish border.

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This is an attempt to evaluate the 21st Century’s Best Picture Oscar winners on pure merit alone — cinematic eloquence, high craft, emotional impact, profound metaphorical scores — but with no great weight given to those films which won because of p.c. woke political considerations (Moonlight, Parasite), and a certain amount of weight given to those that won despite attacks from your snide and snooty p.c. elite (Green Book).

Bottom of the Barrel (5):

22. The Artist (’11)

21. Crash (’05)

20. The King’s Speech (’10)

19. Chicago (’02)

18. Slumdog Millionaire (’09)

Mezzo-Mezzo Middle Ground (10)

17. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (’03)

16. The Shape of Water (’17)

15. Argo (’12)

14. Gladiator (’00)

13. Parasite (’19)

12. Moonlight (’16)

11. A Beautiful Mind (’01)

10. Nomadland (’20)

9. Moonlight (’16)

8. Green Book (’18)

The Top Tier (7)

7. Birdman (14)

6. 12 Years A Slave (13)

5. The Departed (’06)

4. Spotlight (’15)

3. Million Dollar Baby (’04)

2. The Hurt Locker (’09)

1. No Country for Old Men (’07)

Not with a bang, but with the filming of Cliff Beasts, a flying dinosaur CG flick, in the midst of the pandemic. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I know it’s not the sort of Judd Apatow flick that I’m accustomed to.

Margot Robbie’s Wiki page says she’s (a) slated to star in Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach‘s live-action Barbie adaptation, (b) has a significant role in David O. Russell‘s still-untitled period film (aka Canterbury Glass), (c) will portray Clara Bow in Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon and (d) costar in Wes Anderson‘s Asteroid City. I’m sure she has several other irons in the fire.

The Anya Taylor Joy / Harley Quinn story, written by Doug Norrie and allegedly from a “trusted and proven source’, posted today.

It’s a very uncomfortable thing to admit that you share an opinion with the utterly loathsome Sen. Lindsay Graham, but his calling for a Russian Brutus to assassinate President Vladimir Putin is a good one.

It would be the quickest way to end the slaughter in Ukraine. Seriously.

I’m no longer suggesting that Putin should be iced by Ethan Hunt and the Mission: Impossible team or that Willem Dafoe‘s “Clark” (from Clear and Present Danger) should send a smart missile to destroy his dacha — that was an ill-considered scenario as it would be traced back to the U.S, and perhaps ignite a huge worldwide conflict.

But a Russian who’s willing to sacrifice himself (or herself) in order to blow Putin to bits — that really would be a service to humanity, as Graham stated Thursday night.

“The only people who can fix this are the Russian people,” Graham wrote. “Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.”

Roughly a week and a half ago IndieWire‘s Samantha Bergeson reported that Chris Nolan‘s Opppenheimer, which began shooting last month in New Mexico, “will be shot on a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX black-and-white analog photography.” Nobody outside of film critics, film nerds and fanatical Nolan-heads will want to to see this thing — one glance at that black-and-white head shot of Cillian Murphy tells you it’s a box-office stiff — but oh, the tantalizing prospect of black-and-white IMAX footage!

I should have paid attention to this Bullet Train trailer a day or two ago, but I didn’t want to, okay? Because I’m not a fan of lightweight power-pop director David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2). One glimpse tells you this Brad Pitt action comedy is Tarantino Lite — synthetic and stupid and aimed at the morons.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has compiled a list of (seemingly) likely titles for Cannes ’22, which will kick off two and a half months hence.

Out-of-competition titles: Elvis, Top Gun: Maverick, Bullet Train, Nope, Lightyear. Perhaps George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing (rumored to be something of a slog) will play OOC instead of competition.

The possible competition titles that I’m most excited about are Alejandro G. Innaritu‘s Bardo, Cristian Mungiu‘s R.M.N., Ruben Ostlund‘s Triangle of Sadness, James Gray‘s Armageddon Time and Kantemir Balagov‘s Monica. Here’s the general rundown:

Here’s Variety‘s Cannes projection.

This promotional prelude is being shown before all presentations at the Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival. My immediate response was “wow, this is exceptional…who did this?” It turns out that the director, writer and cinematographer is none other than SBIFF honcho Roger Durling. The painter on the beach is Hank Pitcher, who painted this year’s SBIFF poster. He’s also the narrator.

The last two lines in Durling’s short are “desire and discovery”, which immediately reminded me of a Howard Suber insight about the basic plot strategies of Some Like It Hot and The Graduate — Desire, Deception and Discovery, or “the three dees.”