Month: August 2023

TIFF Is Suddenly On The Ropes

by

Or should I say “skating on thin ice”? Or simply “in trouble”?

Anyway you slice it, Toronto Int’l Film Festival honchos have reason to feel extremely unsettled this evening. The reason is that Bell, a major TIFF sponsor since 1995, “is set to end its long-standing sponsorship of TIFF,” according to the Toronto Star‘s Robert Benzie.

Benzie excerpt: “In a blow to the Toronto International Film Festival, the telecommunications and media giant is moving on after this year’s event, sources say.”

I mean, the illuminated words “TIFF Bell Lightbox” is right on the side of the main screening facility, for Chrissake. Now the festival will have to redesign and re-mount new building logos that say just “TIFF Lightbox” without the Bell.

The following passage from Benzie’s story is probably key: “Sources say Bell, which earlier this month announced that second-quarter earnings plunged about 40 per cent from one year ago, is scrambling to find savings and sponsorships are low-hanging fruit.”

Do I hear the word “gulp”?

Strike Popcorn: Asylum “Sharknado 3” Oolah-Boolah

by

Friendo: The Asylum, the cheeesball, low-budget outfit which bears the primary responsibility for the Sharknado franchise, along with company honcho and Sharknado franchise director Anthony Ferrante, have been openly promoting the tenth anniversary of the film’s theatrical debut (7.11.13).

Friendo: “Asylum reps attended ComicCon in San Diego (7.20 to 7.23) despite many having dropped out, not giving a shit at all about the strike because both he and the company have never cared at all about unions or rights.

“It’s not widely remembered that Asylum hired a scab crew for the third Sharknado sequel. Not to mention David Hasselhoff and Michelle Bachman having crossed picket lines. In the current AMPTP-vs.-WGA negotiations majors are now acting like Asylum, which not only flaunted that scab crew while literally mocking IATSE. Ferrante has seemingly thumbed his nose at the strike left and right.

Friendo: “The WGA negotiating team has been problematic, but the AMPTP has taken a dismissive tone towards unions due to the more corporate-minded CEOs, particularly the regarding of talent, writers and actors as almost below-the-line now. That’s partly why IATSE has been so militant and supportive of above-the-line. From a brash corporate perspective everyone is below-the-line. That’s why actors walked — a rarity.

“General Hospital, a daytime soap, openly stated they’d hire scab writers in the interim.

“Streamers are not unlike Asylum in their attitudes. Asylum was just more open about it. It’s the same attitude that gets David Zaslav booed and Bob Iger ridiculed for their general hardball heartlessness.”

Read more

Cat Fight

by

Zoe Rose Bryant felt she need to take a break from Twitter/X, and then changed her mind or whatever. And then Eric Anderson said, more or less, “how can I miss you if you won’t go away?” And then ZRB got riled and Eric followed suit.

Slow news day.

Fairly Clear Cut

by

You can quibble with CNN’s Elie Honig about the ramifications of section 3 and the 14th Amendment, and about the “self-executing” aspect as well as which legal deliberative body could authoritatively declare that Donald Trump has in fact violated the section of the Constitution and is therefore ineligible to serve as U.S. President, but c’mon…the authors and supporters of the 14th Amendment (which was ratified in 1868) obviously had sociopathic rogue criminals like Trump in mind. Their intent couldn’t be clearer.

Read more

“Killers” Isn’t Playing Telluride…Finito, Forget It

by

Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/Paramount, 10.6) isn’t going to the Telluride Film Festival. A 100% reliable source has just informed me of this. So that’s it — no prestige fall festival play at all. No Telluride, Toronto or New York.

Earlier today: If Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t play the Telluride Film Festival, it’ll feel like a bit of a letdown, certainly among some of us. It’ll be like “so last May’s big Killers of the Flower Moon Cannes debut was it?”

This keenly anticipated, hugely expensive, epic-length Martin Scorsese film should benefit from at least one high-profile domestic festival screening between now and 10.6 (i.e., Telluride). If Killers sidesteps Julie Huntsinger’s Rocky Mountain gathering, it’s going to just…what, quietly slip into its two-week October theatrical run? No big domestic festival push for poor Lily Gladstone, the heir apparent for Best Supporting Actress?

Killers is a highly commendable period drama. Emotional impact-wise it may be a somewhat modest, middle-range effort at the end of the day, but the chops top to bottom — acting, production design, cinematography, musical score — are first-rate. I for one believed every minute of it…every last frame. It certainly deserves a big stateside festival push before the 10.6 theatrical opening.

Laurence Olivier’s Marcus Licinius Crassus to John Dall’s Marcus Glabrus, leader of the garrison of Rome, in Spartacus:

“But the public tribute is impossible. Leave tonight by unfrequented streets…without fanfare, without even a drum…sneak out.”

Go to 2:40 mark

:

“Disarming and Alarming”

by

Vigorous arguments! An exceptional episode…rough and tumble…not an easy schmoozer…”ooohh, not the right answer!”…”I think you’re running to be his vice-president”…”wow.”…”you’re such a personable guy, you’re so smart, but unless you soften on Trump, at least half the country…[the ones] who know that he’s an obnoxious criminal…they’re never going to accept you as the guy who can unite us…I can’t accept you as that.”

Maher to looney-tune lefties: “If you expect me to get on the crazy train with you, and if I don’t then I lose my liberal card….fuck you….you’re changing what liberalism is, not me.”

Telluride Likelies I’m Most Interested In

by

The Telluride ’23 films (as posted by Jordan Ruimy) that HE is the most revved about are underlined and boldfaced. What titles am I underestimating, or lacking sufficient enthusiasm for?

Update: Nobody’s really up on these titles, no familiarity, wait-and-see mode.

The Holdovers (d: Alexander Payne)
Saltburn (d: Emerald Fennell)
Poor Things (d: Yorgos Lanthimos)
The Royal Hotel (d: Kitty Green)
All Of Us Strangers (d: Andrew Haigh)
Rustin (d: =George C. Wolfe)
Wildcat (d: Ethan Hawke)
Nyad (d: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin)

Fingernails (d: Christos Nikou)
The Bikeriders (d: Jeff Nichols)
El Conde (d: Pablo Larrain)
Janet Planet (d: Annie Baker)
The Promised Land
The Pigeon Tunnel (d: Errol Morris)
Daddio (d: Christy Hall) — the correct spelling is Daddy-o. ScriptShadow review.
They Shot the Piano Player (d: Trueba & Mariscal)
The American Buffalo (Ken Burns)

Cannes titles (8), Berlin (1):

The Zone of Interest (d: Jonathan Glazer) — good but don’t really need to see it again.
Anatomy of a Fall (d: Justine Trier)
Fallen Leaves (d: Aki Kaurismaki)
Perfect Days (d: Wim Wenders)
The Pot-au-Feu (d: Tran Anh Hung) — old times’ sake, pure enjoymeht factor.
The Settlers (d: Felipe Galvez)
Occupied City (d: Steve McQueen) — saw it, fairly good.
Orlando, My Political Biography

Zero Festival Bookings So Far of Scorsese’s “Killers” Is Puzzling

by

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is “hearing” from certain wise guys that not only will Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon have its big North American premiere at Telluride two weeks hence, but that Scorsese will be celebrated with a special career tribute.

It is odd, I must say, that after all the hoopla surrounding Flower Moon‘s big Cannes premiere three months ago (5.20.23) and with Scorsese’s 1920s epic slated to open theatrically on Friday, 10.6.23 via Apple and Paramount, followed by the streaming debut several weeks later…it does seem odd that no domestic fall festival screenings have been announced for Toronto or New York…

Flower Moon has to generate some kind of festival heat, right? It can’t just hide out and cool its heels between now and 10.6. We’re now in film festival mode. The engines have started. To quote William S. Burroughs, “We are here to go.”