I’d like to think that at age 36, Shia Lebeouf getting sober, making amends and not looking for the usual wiggle room….I’d like to think this is a real turning point for the guy. And maybe it is. If so, it’s just a step. But a good step.

As a director, Angelina Jolie has been repeatedly drawn to stories about savage brutality visited upon innocent protagonists. Over the last 11 years she’s made four films in this vein.

They are In The Land of Blood & Honey (’11) — Serbs brutalizing Bosnian Muslims. Unbroken (’14) — Japanese soldiers brutalizing American POWs. First They Killed My Father (’17) — the fanatical Khmer Rouge brutalizing and murdering two million Cambodians in agrarian work camps.

And now her latest, an adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s short novel “Without Blood”, about a young girl who witnesses the savage murder of her father and brother by his enemies, only to confront one of the killers as a middle-aged adult.

The film, due for release in late ’23, is set in a Mexico-like country during the early to mid 20th Century.

Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli has posted an interview with Jolie (8.26). They met while she was directing Without Blood at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios. Vivarelli doesn’t note the streak of fierce brutality that runs through all four of her films. He manages, however, to fling mud at Jolie’s ex-husband, Brad Pitt, with a slimey insinuation.

“Told in a series of flashbacks, Without Blood is a…complex work about violence, war and choices,” Vivrelli explains. Jolie: “This film raises different questions. There is no clear good and bad in this film, even though there is clearly bad, horrible, horrific and criminal behavior.”

Vivarelli’s next paragraph — a parenthetical — follows a train of thought: “This interview was conducted before an FBI report from 2016 leaked last week where Jolie alleged that Pitt assaulted her on a plane ride, leading to their divorce,” he writes.

In other words, with Jolie currently focusing on a film about “bad, horrible, horrific and criminal behavior,” she’s also grappling with memories of possibly similar behavior from her ex-husband aboard a private plane back in 2016.

This is called yellow journalism.

From an 8.26 N.Y. Times editorial, “Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law“:

“Donald Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation.

“The disturbing details of his post-election misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people. The president, defeated at the polls in 2020, tried to enlist federal law enforcement authorities, state officials and administrators of the nation’s electoral system in a furious effort to remain in power. When all else failed, he roused an armed mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened lawmakers.

“Mr. Trump’s actions as a public official, like no others since the Civil War, attacked the heart of our system of government. He used the power of his office to subvert the rule of law. If we hesitate to call those actions and their perpetrator criminal, then we are saying he is above the law and giving license to future presidents to do whatever they want.

“Aside from letting Mr. Trump escape punishment, doing nothing to hold him accountable for his actions in the months leading up to Jan. 6 could set an irresistible precedent for future presidents. Why not attempt to stay in power by any means necessary or use the power of the office to enrich oneself or punish one’s enemies, knowing that the law does not apply to presidents in or out of office?

“More important, democratic government is an ideal that must constantly be made real. America is not sustained by a set of principles; it is sustained by resolute action to defend those principles.”

Asked about the Academy’s “inclusion standards,” which basically say that a given film will not be eligible for Oscars unless the cast and crew are seriously and specifically diverse (i.e., no films like Ordinary People ever again), Academy CEO Bill Kramer has been quoted by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg as follows:

“We don’t want to legislate art” — HE says bullshit. “That’s not what this is about” — ditto. “We want filmmakers to continue to make the films they want to make” — bullshit. “I’m very happy to announce that the best picture nominees from this past year all would have qualified under our inclusion standards” — terrific! “At the all-member meeting we’ll be talking more about that because that’s a big point of discussion for our members, and we want to be very clear that we don’t want this to be onerous or punitive — we want this to be collaborative” — bullshit.

The Academy’s inclusion standards are a form of institutional terror or, if you will, paranoid, watch-your-back virtue signalling. Because if you don’t support the inclusion standards 100% and with all your heart and soul, you’re either an out-and-out racist or a closeted one.

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, posted this morning (8.26): “A friend of mine called the way the Oscars featured almost all Black performers and presenters as a ‘new kind of blackface.’

“The Academy is 80% white. America is just under 60% white. America is also 95% heterosexual. Americans believe in God by about 80%. These stats are starting to shift, no doubt. GenZ tends to be the generation that is more LGBTQIA, less religious, and more ‘woke’ for sure. But we’re still talking about the minority pop, not the majority.

“The Oscars can’t draw the majority because they are singularly obsessed with their outward image, as with most of the top 1% that runs Hollywood. They have almost ceased being able to tell good stories and now much find ways to tell good stories under the thumb of fundamentalism. It is wrong to police art in this way, and I don’t care what Twitter thinks about that. It is simply the truth, proven century after century. Dogmatic art is not art — it’s propaganda.

“Executives are deathly afraid of being called out for racism. It is bad press they don’t believe they can afford with an army of Orwellian Children Spies breathing down their necks. The Oscars, and much of the films that will pass their required standards, reflect the paranoia in the white community, not the actual power in that community. In other words, how much of it is simply ‘virtue signaling,’ and how much of it is actual change? And if it is change, what is it changing exactly?

“Yes, they are trying to legislate art. All the executives at all studios who make content are legislating art. They’re forcing artists to reflect a specific ideology that serves their newfound religion and gets them off the hook. Remember, the people at the top who hold power are still the same — across all institutions of power in this country. They are, therefore, allowing marginalized groups to be presented as proof that they are prioritizing activism.”

I keep getting this feeling that Don’t Worry Darling (Warner Bros., 9.23) is that train in The Greatest Show on Earth, hurtling towards those circus animal-filled freight cars…Lyle Bettger yelling “stohhhhpp!…stohhhhpp!…can’t you see the lights?“…and then kehr-SMASSH-bong-deedee-lamp-BONG-BAAHHRR-BANG-BOOM-rowr-screeeech-aaagghh.

And it’s not so much about the film as the Florence Pugh vs. Olivia Wilde catfight…what a shit show!

First it was Pugh strangely saying she somehow resented Wilde’s on-set affair with Harry Styles**. Then refusing to reciprocate Wilde’s positive Instagram posts. And then it became clear that Don’t Worry Darling would be ducking all stateside film festivals. And then Pugh, filming the Dune sequel in Budapest, refused to talk to Variety‘s Elizabeth Wagmeister for a Wilde profile piece. And now Shia Labeouf (originally cast in the Styles role) is claiming that he was not fired by Wilde, and that it partly boiled down to some kind of conflict with Pugh. (In a text/email Wilde alluded to unsettled vibes between LaBeouf and Pugh…“You know, I think this might be a bit of a wake-up call for Miss Flo“.)

Will the huffy Pugh show up for the Venice premiere, or will she again beg off over Dune 2 duties in Budapest?

There’s so much sturm und drang surrounding Don’t Worry Darling that it’s easy to assume…dammit, no assumptions, no coasting along on gossip. Is it fair or unfair to call it a hopelessly doomed film? Unfair, I’d say. Seriously, who’s actually seen it? And what have they said?

Could Olivia Wilde be the new Ida Lupino? I sorta kinda doubt it but maybe she is. We can all smell trouble but who knows? I know nothing.

Most of us understand that the negative advance buzz on Don’t Worry Darling has become so bad that the Venice Film Festival reviews might actually turn out to be kind, given that everyone is expecting a calamity.