The window of a westbound New Jersey Transit train, covered in grease and slime…you can hardly see through it. The maintenance of Metro North trains is much more disciplined. Don’t even mention European trains in the same breath.

I’m still really angry at those Cannes critics who dismissed or otherwise pooh-poohed Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Black Flies. It’s nothing phenomenal or earth-shattering, but is bruisingly efficient and sufficiently good for what it is — a jarring, hard-hitting, you-are-there NYC paramedic trauma film.

Black Flies occupies the same general atmospheric turf as Martin Scorsese‘s Bringing Out The Dead (’99), which of course was critically praised because critics know they’re obliged to give any Scorsese film the benefit of the doubt and then some.

If Scorsese had never made Bringing Out The Dead but had produced and/or collaborated to some extent on Black Flies, Cannes critics — almost all of them fickle, posturing snobs — would have been much more supportive.

I don’t know if Alberto Barbera will invite Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance to the 2023 Venice Film Festival or if Woody will choose to premiere it at the San Sebastian gathering…

But given an apparent consensus that Allen’s latest is a respectable, noteworthy film and possibly his best since Match Point, and possibly his last film (who knows?), I’m very sorry for the domestic political quagmire in this country…a political reality that will most likely prevent Coup de Chance from playing the domestic early fall film festivals (Telluride, Toronto, New York).

The Cannes board allegedly said no to Thierry Fremaux about potentially debuting Coup de Chance in Cannes for the same reason…no berth for a filmmaker whom the #MeToo scolds have been labelling as persona non grata for several years now.

Even the most enlightened film programmers — those who believe in simply screening the best available choices of the moment, and who aren’t beholden to woke Stalinism — have no realistic choice in the matter, politically speaking. I feel for their situation as it’s a very difficult call all around. I feel very badly for everyone caught in this mishegoss.

The recently unveiled French-language trailer announces that Coup de Chance is opening in French-language territories on 9.27.23. As we speak no U.S. distributor has found the balls to release the film stateside. It goes without saying I would love to see Coup de Chance play Telluride ’23, but of course it won’t.

Finessed synopsis: “Fanny (Lou de Laage) and Jean (Melvil Poupaud) are an ideal couple: financially flush and professionally fulfilled, they live in a magnificent apartment in [one of] the high-end districts of Paris and seem to be as in love as [they were on] the first day they met.

”But when Fanny crosses, by chance, Alain (Niels Schneider), a former high school friend, she is immediately hooked. They see each other again, and, very quickly, get closer and closer…”

A couple of months ago I reported about an early April screening of Coup de Chance in Manhattan. Resturateur Keith McNally and columnist Roger Friedman raved.

Coup de Chance dp Vittorio Storaro quoted by Jordan Ruimy’s World of Reel by way of Italy’s quotidiano.net:

“I am scandalized and indignant that Cannes has chosen not to present [Woody’s] latest film, all because of the accusations made by his wife Mia Farrow and her daughter Dylan. Need I remind everyone that Woody has already been acquitted of these charges twice? This #MeToo obsession continues [to our general misfortune]. Yes, it is bringing real systemic issues to light, but it’s also doing a lot of unjust damage. It’s a witch hunt that goes beyond the bounds of common sense.”

Big 6.12 announcement: The Golden Globe awards will continue, but no longer under the aegis of the long-belittled, self-satirizing, now-disbanded Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

The Golden Globes brand has been bought by Todd Boehly‘s Eldridge Industries and Penske Media’s Dick Clark Productions. The slip-slidey HFPA no-accounts will continue to collect salaries for the next two or three years, but have essentially been shown the door.

And yet, from the perspective of Joe and Jane Popcorn, nothing will really change. The Globes will continue to serve as a warm-up awards show for the Oscars, and the award recipients will continue to enjoy a certain award-season heat. The only difference is that the show will henceforth be produced by a fresh gang of hustlers.

From a 5.10.21 HE piece called “Golden Globes Castle Is Collapsing“: “Nobody loved the HFPA dilletantes before — they were ‘tolerated’ in a shoulder-shrugging, eye-rolling sense of that term, and now distributors and talent are saying ‘okay, fuck these guys…even with the announced reforms they aren’t woke enough, not by 2021 standards, and now, trust us, they’re about to understand the cost of their terrible folly.’”

I love Brooks Barnes‘ opening paragraph from his 6.12 N.Y. Times article about same:

More from the 5.10.21 piece:

From a 1.8.23 HE piece about the ongoing Golden Globe collapse:

For their latest Oscar Poker chit-chat, Jeff and Sasha wade in the waters of The Idol, Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance and its almost certain exclusion from domestic film festivals, Sasha’s late reaction to Air, the still unexplained French Connection / William Friedkin censorship thing, the Kate Hepburn and Arnold Schwarzenegger docs, etc. We recorded a few hours before the announcement of the tragic motorcycle death of Treat Williams…condolences.

Again, the link.