I’ve been moaning and groaning for weeks about the seemingly unfortunate fate of Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu, which I praised several weeks ago during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

The greatest foodie flick of the 21st Century and a hit waiting to happen among over-35 viewers, this Cannes award-winner (i.e., Best Director) was hit with a waffle iron when it was acquired by IFC Films and Sapan Studios earlier this summer.

The instant I heard this I went “oh, God…no.”

As I wrote on 6.28 (“What A Bummer for The Pot au Feu), I’ve long believed that an IFC Films distribution deal is almost tantamount to a kiss of death, as IFC Films seems to specialize in acquiring exciting, critically hailed titles only to bury them.

Will The Pot au Feu show up in Telluride? One can only hope, but I’ve been developing a theory that cash-poor IFC Films (which is based in Manhattan) might be reluctant to offer The Pot au Feu at Telluride and Toronto because they’re too cheap to pay for air fare and hotel rooms for a modest Pot au Feu entourage (i.e., no actors due to the SAFG/AFTRA strike).

I might be wrong, but my intuition tells me these guys REALLY have no discretionary income.

I was thrown even further today when The Pot au Feu didn’t even appear on the New York Film Festival lineup. Right in their home town. Infuriating.

There’s no question that The Pot au Feu is one of the best-directed, most audience-friendly films out there, and yet none of the early fall festivals seem to be playing it. NYFF hasn’t announced its slate of premieres (to be unveiled sometime around 8.24 or 8.25), but why the hell would they leave it off their prime list? Tran Anh Hung won the Best Director prize last May on the Cote d’Azur. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich called it “some kind of masterpiece.” Variety‘s Guy Lodge praised it to the heavens.

All I can figure is that IFC Films’ management is not offering it to the festivals for some totally perverse reason. Or a candy-assed one. They’re specialists at suffocating films by not promoting them, I realize, but…

Friendo: It has a shot at Telluride.
HE: Based on what intel?
Friendo: Based purely based on Julie Huntsinger‘s tastes.
HE: Just tell me — am I crazy?
Friendo: The Pot au Feu is not the type of highbrow movie that NYFF programmers tend to screen. I never expected it to show up. I’ve been saying all along it’s a perfect fit for Telluride.
HE: What the fuck is going on?
Friendo: I’m surprised it’s not at TIFF but Cameron Bailey has destroyed that festival by insisting on world premieres. Due to this policy, there’s a lot of stuff missing this year from the TIFF line-up.
HE: When you say “highbrow NYFF pick,” you mean “a film that Dennis Lim likes.”
Friendo: Precisely. Slow arthouse cinema. Film Comment-level stuff.

Monday’s Sasha-and-Jeff Substack chat was all over the map. Recalling the late William Friedkin, of course, and The Exorcist in particular. The Barbie Oscar prognosis. The annual competition for woke identity politics awards, formerly known as the Oscars.

HE sez: The factors that go into a good podcast discussion are hard to pin down, but the key thing is not giving a flying fuck how it comes off or how brilliant you may or may not sound. Sometimes I feel right on-target, and other times I feel like I’m squishing around.

Again, the link.

The late Abraham Zapruder was a good fellow and family man who, through sheer happenstance and an odd quirk of fate, captured the most famous home movie footage of all time.

But in my heart of hearts I can’t help regretting that Zapruder was the one who happened to be filming from that Dealey Plaza slope on 11.22.63. In my heart of hearts I wish that a more devotional movie nerd had been standing there instead of unexceptional, penny-pinching Abe.

8mm home movie cameras were the default choice for tens of millions of families in the mid 20th Century, but the 8mm images were jumpy and hazy and basically looked like shit compared to 16mm, and Abraham Zapruder KNEW that.

Did Zapruder care about the difference in quality? Above and beyond being a decent man who loved his family, I’ll tell you one thing Abe cared about. Like most responsible-minded fathers and business owners, he cared about SAVING MONEY.

You know who cared much more about visual values and cinematic quality? 17 year old Steven Spielberg, a fledgling filmmaker who in late ‘63 was living in Arizona with his family (and who shot his first feature, Firelight, the following year).

If only Spielberg had somehow made his way to Dallas (a school trip? a special family adventure?) and shot the assassination footage in 16mm color instead of Zapruder with his boilerplate 8mm family-man camera!

On top of which Zapruder’s amateurish eye for framing was atrocious. He allowed the Kennedy limo to sink to the very bottom of the developed image during the low 300 cycle of frames (the final 15 or 20 before the explosive head shot). 85% to 90% of these frames captured almost nothing but green grass and a few spectators.

The truth is that unexceptional, well-meaning Abe almost managed to eliminate JFK and Jackie plus John and Nellie Connolly altogether, but they clung to the bottom of the frame for dear life.

So Zapruder earned two failing grades — one for using a vagueiy shitty 8mm camera when he could have bought and used a vastly superior, professional-grade 16mm device, and the second for exhibiting piss-poor visual framing instincts.

I know this article sounds a bit silly, but imagine what the JFK assassination community would have had to work with if a serious cinema worshipper, a devotional, Gregg Toland-like crazy man with a 16mm Arriflex or Bell & Howell, had been standing in Abe’s shoes.