Yesterday afternoon (7.20) Variety‘s Matt Donnelly reported that under the cloud of a possibly enduring SAG/AFTRA strike, Warner Bros. is “strongly considering” bumping Dune: Part Two out of its 11.3.23 release date and opening it sometime in ’24.

Ditto James Wan‘s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (12.20) and Blitz the Ambassador‘s The Color Purple (12.25).

The apparent concern is that Joe and Jane Popcorn will either be unaware of these films or wont be motivated to see them unless the actors promote them via the usual media outlets.

Forgive me for sounding ignorant or for living on my own cloud or desert island, but if I want to see a film it’s NEVER because this or that actor has visited the Jimmy Kimmel Show or done the usual round of junket interviews. It’s because of good reviews or advance screenings or general online buzz.

I realize there’s a whole community of none-too-brights out there who will never see a given film UNLESS the star has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel or done junket interviews, but it seems strange nonetheless.

Before last night’s AMC Lincoln Square Oppenheimer screening the Dune: Part Two trailer played on the big IMAX screen, and it was obvious that the crowd is excited about seeing it. Timothee Chalamet interviews won’t matter one way or the other.

An “industry player” has told Donnelly that the success of The Color Purple “would hinge on a robust awards campaign.” Those who want to see The Color Purple because of its own merits are already convinced, just as I’m convinced that The Color Purple will never ring my bell and that I would’t see it with a gun jammed against my rib cage,

I just don’t want to see Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Sony, 11.22) bumped into ’24…please.

During her 7.18 Oppenheimer screening in Burbank Sasha Stone was hugely bothered by a pair of 20something women who took out their phones around the half-hour mark and were pretty much texting all through it. They didn’t even turn down the brightness levels on their screens.

The first thing I texted Sasha when my Oppie screening ended last night at 10:20 pm was “as much as I condemn phone-surfing during a film and especially during a major blue-chip immersion like Oppenheimer, I understand why those women were texting.”

An unmistakably grade–A experience, Oppenheimer could be re-titled Oppenheimer: Interiors as it’s almost all super-smart dialogue, super-smart dialogue and more super-smart dialogue inside rooms (university classrooms, Los Alamos conference rooms, hallways, hotel rooms, dining rooms, the Oval Office).

Okay, the historic New Mexico test explosion of the first atom bomb (7.16.45. 5:29 am) happens under an open-air nightscape and there are several other moments that happen outdoors, but still…

The likely truth is that if you’re not at least half in love with the Oppie legend going in — if you haven’t done your homework by having seen The Day After Trinity (free on YouTube) and if you haven’t read “American Prometheus” — your Oppenheimer experience may (emphasis on this word) feel like a big fat Alaskan grizzly bear sitting in your lap, or certainly right next to you.

It feels (and is) long and demanding, and at three hours is certainly a proverbial tough sit. And yet it’s undeniably a first–rate, grand–vision, smart–person movie that absolutely surges with the spirit of semi-tortured genius (I was reminded of similar-toned portions of A Beautiful Mind) and is highly charged in every respect and is even emotionally engrossing during the persecution-of-Oppie finale (kudos to the “junior Senator from Massachusetts” for voting against the venal Robert Downey Jr.!!).

And I adored viewing this Christopher Nolan film on that tall-as-an-apartment-building, super-sized IMAX screen (I was sitting third-row center), but I’m afraid I’ll need to re-watch it at home with subtitles as I fully understood roughly half of the dialogue, certainly no more than two-thirds. That or I’m simply too fucking dumb to keep up with all the density and complexity.

Not to mention the fact that my poor right knee was aching and moaning in pain as I had no place to shift or maneuver within that tight IMAX seating area, and my knee massages began around the 45-minute mark and never stopped…one of the most challenging IMAX screenings I’ve ever endured.

At the one-hour mark I looked at my watch and said to myself, “oh, dear Lord, this is so brilliant and dense and tightly woven and sharply focused to a fare-thee-well, and God help me but there’s another two hours to go!”

And man, the Ludwig Goransson score is really loud in portions, and certainly during the final act. It throttles and hammers you into submission.

HE to friendo: “You didn’t feel a tiny little ‘yay!’ surge when it’s mentioned that JFK voted against Downey? I did.”

Friendo to HE: “Naah, that was just a little fun grace note of JFK nostalgia.”