Maybe not, but they’re certainly Variety critic Guy Lodge and TheWrap film critic Tomris Laffly.

In a 5.16 riff about the recently posted young Robert DeNiro vs. young Al Pacino hottie competition, Esquire‘s Bria McNeal, who allegedly writes about “all things entertainment,” has stated that she’s “never seen The Godfather.”

Which is sorta kinda like Variety’s Clayton Davis having admitted a couple of years ago that he’s never seen Casablanca. Maybe he and McNeal could exchange thoughts?

The SJW whimsy type, I mean. If a movie stars or costars an actor with a somewhat blemished reputation, the ideal jury member — passionate, political-minded — is given to openly wondering whether or not she’ll see it, or, if she does, whether or not she’ll approve. (Not.)

Go, Brie Larson…go tell it on the mountain!

— from Anne Thompson’s 5.16 IndieWire piece about Depp’s comeback.

If a speculative two-day-old tweet by TheRealFella is to be given any consideration, it may be that the widely condemned Ansel Elgort, the West Side Story costar whose career was all but murdered by woke Twitter fanatics 35 months ago, is no longer regarded by the crazies as a Roman Polanski-level predator and sexual assaulter but more of “briefly a bad boyfriend” type in the realm of Aziz Ansari.

Maybe. Who knows? Either way AE deserves to be released from the industry doghouse.

I had the story more or less dead to rights in mid-June of ‘20, but the mob was consumed and they wanted Elgort’s disembowelment. All Elgort had done in the case of the mythical “Gabby” was behave like a thoughtless prick, which young men have unfortunately been guilty of for thousands of years. Ansel “ghosted” the poor girl, and we all know that stuff hurts. But that’s a long way from sexual assault.

If I were younger and prowling around, I most certainly wouldn’t be a “wokefisher.” If anything I would be a “throw-back-icky-wokesters-into-the-water” type.

I love this 5.14 Forbes article because it reveals that wokeism is a real, desirable thing in the dating-and-mating market. The article basically counsels targeted readers (i.e., mostly progressive women) to beware of fake wokesters in sheep’s clothing.

If this was an article published in Munich’s Völkischer Beobachter in the 1930s, the advice would be “beware, frauleins, of insincere believers in National Socialism…callow young men who shamefully pretend to have read ‘Mein Kampf’ in order to get into your pants.”

I don’t how or why this happened, but this morning the Cannes Film Festival ticketing software actually allowed me to reserve a seat for the one and only Killers of the Flower Moon press screening (5.20, Salle Debussy, 4:30 pm). I was right on the spot at 7 am — motivated, determined — while standing in a cafe bar inside Hall 2 of Gare de Lyon.

I can’t believe it — this is the first exceptionally welcome thing that’s happened as far as reserving seats is concerned. What a feeling! Prior to this morning my relationship with the online ticketing system has been mainly defined by trauma, lethargy, self-recrimination and a general sense of Rainer Werner Fassbinder-like despair.

I also snagged a ticket to a 5.20 11 pm screening of Todd Haynes‘ May December.

I’ll be standing in a wait line for Thursday’s press screening of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but I probably won’t succeed. Who really cares, right? It’s obvious what this film is (i.e., formula-following, Spielberg-aping, straight down the middle) and how it’ll play in Peoria and Pensacola.

It seems as if Noel Murray‘s N.Y. Times recap is the best. Between this and all the YouTube “America Decides” tutorials, I almost feel as if I’ve seen it.

A week and a half ago The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Roxborough reported (or reminded) that terms of the WGA strike bars guild writers from promoting their movies, as “the guild clearly states that members are ‘prohibited from making promotional appearances‘ while the strike continues.”

Which means that Killers of the Flower Moon screenwriter Eric Roth is likely barred from attending the big whoop-dee-doo Grand Palais Flower Moon screening on Saturday night. Or at least participating in any official promotion in Cannes (red carpet photo-op, post-screening press conference).

Which seems a shame. All that careful sculpting, honing and re-writing, and no Cannes crescendo. I’m sorry. (The same restriction applies to Asteroid City screenwriter Roman Coppola.)

Without further comment, here are excerpts from a Maxine Leonard press release about David Mamet’s “Assination”, a thriller about the time-machine killing of “President John F. Kennedy, Jr.” in 1963.

Let everyone understand that weddings are not occasions from which thoughtful film discussions are launched.

When young, neither Robert De Niro and Al Pacino were conventionally “hot.” They were good-looking (symmetrical features, soulful eyes) as far as it went, but primarily they simply were who they were. They had a certain hot-wired urgency and commitment to the emotional moment, but that’s neither here nor there in terms of hottitude.

Young De Niro was always a bit on the geeky side, especially when he smiled. He was physically beautiful in The Godfather, Part II but less so in 1900 and Taxi Driver.

Pacino’s brown cow eyes (especially in the early to mid ‘70s) made him seem more vulnerable, I suppose. But think again of his Michael Corleone cold-fish expressions in the first two Godfather films. (He transformed into a warm contemplative fish in The Godfather, Part 3.)

This morning I slept through the 6:30 am alarm. Because I’d forgotten to turn on the sound. Which was partly due to last night’s exhaustion. All my fault, of course, but reserving press screening seats has nonetheless become a mad, breathless online Darwinian scramble.

I hate this. It’s on me, of course, but I really hate this. I’ve been attending the Cannes Film Festival for over 30 years (my first was in ‘92). It was never a walk in the park, but now it’s insane. Now if you fail to aggressively sign in and reserve press tickets at the required hour like an Olympic Games Nazi (i.e., before 7 am Paris time), you’re fucked for screenings four days hence…COMPLETE, slacker!!

Not to mention the Cannes press system crashing and this morning’s “page indisponible.”

I found this Covid-inspired system infuriating last year; doubly so this year. I’ll never stop coming to France, but I’ll almost certainly never do Cannes again. Comparatively speaking Telluride is a pleasure cruise. Eff this Côte d’Azur jazz…really.