…before catching an IMAX presentation of A Complete Unknown than HE’s own Perri Nemiroff interviewing the Wicked guys…bringing me down, bad for the soul.

And why isn’t she dead? And why after all these years would any film lover with even a smidgen of taste want to wade into this stupid-ass, mind-numbing franchise?

I expect A Complete Unknown to at least hold its own and perhaps even improve slightly. I already know, of course, what’s wrong with it so there won’t be any unexpected potholes.

With two or three exceptions, the films produced by Dino de Laurentiis were either lacking mediocre or groan-worthy. I’m sorry but that’s the truth. We’re nonetheless supposed to speak of Dino fondly because he was colorful…because he invested on instinct and swaggered around.

Because I didn’t fall for the sentimental Dino legend, my 2010 obit was derided.

Nobody cares very much about the cheeseball movies that have been shortlisted…baaah! None of them (and I’m including Emilia Perez and Dune sequel) are serious, top-tier bell-ringers. It’s all bunk and blather, I tell you.

Originally posted in 2008: Frank Pierson‘s King of the Gypsies is a fairly difficult film to sit through. It’s a stab at trying to give a Godfather-like treatment to gypsy culture, and there’s just no believing it.

While it “isn’t the worst film of the year,” said N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby in his 12.20.78 review, “the gypsies should sue.”

Degraded Polaroid photo of King of the Gypsies star Sterling Hayden and journalist during filming in late ’77 (or was it early ’78?) at Manhattan’s Plaza hotel.

But the film carries a special memory for me, however, as I managed an interview with star Sterling Hayden during filming in Manhattan in late ’77. Hayden, who lived in my home town of Wilton, Connecticut, and whom I knew faintly because of this, was the first “name” guy I ever sat down with for a piece.

A good actor but an even better writer, eloquent and blustery, and a “bothered” malcontent from way back, Hayden — 62 at the time — was a tall, bearded Zeus-like figure, and one of the first bohemian-minded older guys I’d had the pleasure of slightly knowing.

He liked being the ornery old rebel, and was fairly open to hanging with younger fans like myself. I visited his Wilton home two or three times to listen and learn and shoot the shit. (It helped that I knew all of his films, and had strong opinions about his best performances.) I never got high with Hayden, but I knew a couple of Wilton guys who told me they did. Hash, they said.

Hayden had some legendary problems with the bottle. He wasn’t all that different from Roger Wade, the alcoholic writer he portrayed in Robert Altman‘s The Long Goodbye. (Hayden was less bitter.) He would do rehab and fasting from time to time. I remember him saying once that fasting “is the precise opposite of debauch…the hard thing is to hold that middle ground, hold that middle ground.”

My King of the Gypsies interview with Hayden took place in a hotel room at the Plaza hotel, where filming was happening that day. It was sometime in the mid-afternoon, and I recall his downing a couple of large glasses of Johnnie Walker Red over a two-hour period. Hayden wasn’t much of a give-and-taker. He was the Great Man who’d been through it all, knew it all and had a lot to say. It was all about feeding him set-up lines and and letting nature takes its course.

He told me that producer Dino de Laurentiis had given him a copy of Lorenzo Semple, Jr.‘s script of Hurricane, in hopes that Hayden would agree to costar. When De Laurentiis asked what he thought, Hayden said (or so he told me), “I gotta tell ya — I think it’s crap!” Bristling, De Laurentiis replied, “You’re the first person who’s said that!” A day or two later Hayden talked to a De Laurentiis development guy who said, “Naahh…you’re not the first.”

The best moment of our interview happened when Hayden began speaking of his farmer role in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1900. He said that Bertolucci had let him write his own dialogue, and was proud of a line he’d written for his death scene. I knew it and said it before he did — “I’ve always loved the wind.” Hayden patted my knee and said “Hod love ya.” NTalk about a bonding moment.

Owen Gleiberman‘s “Challengers should be Oscar nominated” essay (posted a few hours ago) ends with this passage: “If a movie like Challengers is nudged aside by the Oscars, that becomes a way of devaluing it.”

Such a dismissive snub, he argues, will amount to “Oh, a dazzlingly fun movie that was popular? That’s not up to our standards.”

Gleiberman: “Over the years, the Oscars have been accused of many things, from vulgarity to irrelevance. The last thing the Oscars should leave themselves open to being accused of is snobbery.”

Due respect, no offense and full affection, but Owen has leapt onto the wrong Guadagnino horse.

Challengers is sporadically intriguing and certainly different in its approach to a well-bonered, relationship-driven sports drama, but it pales alongside Luca’s Queer, which I regard as not just masterful but a breakthrough — “one of the most fascinating, out-there films about vulnerability, transformative intimacy and emotionality that I’ve ever seen.”

To me Challengers was intriguing in a left-field sort of way, but it didn’t fulfill my idea of “crowd pleasing.” Plus Zendaya is too much of a mouseburger, and I didn’t like Mike Faist‘s alabaster skin and champagne-tinted ginger hair.

Posted on 4.16.24: Last night I saw Luca Guadagnino and Justin Kuritzkes‘ Challengers (Amazon, 4.26), and as far as “tennis pros engaged in romantic triangle” flicks go it’s fairly out there, man.

Challengers hasn’t been written and shot in my preferred style (like King Richard, my all-time favorite tennis movie) but I respect and admire the fact that Guadagnino, the director, has made a jumpy, flourishy, time-skotching, impressionistic, mostly hetero but also vaguely homoerotic film that…what’s the term, broadens your horizons? Challenges you and wakes you up? Makes a dent in your psyche?

It doesn’t do the usual thing and certainly pushes a few boundaries, but I like that for the most part. I certainly prefer films that try different strategies over ones that adhere to predictable ones.

So, putting this carefully, I didn’t love everything about it (which puts me in a minority) but I loved the verve, the effort, the invention, the ballsiness. I was irked here and there but I certainly wasn’t bored. All in all the audacity and impulsiveness of Challengers makes it Guadagnino’s best film since Call Me By Your Name. Really.

I, too, am encouraged by the trailer for 28 Years Later (Sony, 6.20.25). especially with Danny Boyle directing and a script by Alex Garland, and a cast toplining Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell and Cillian Murphy.

True, I’m not a fan of Murphy or more particularly his eyes, but I respect his acting.

I’m less enthused abour 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple, largely due to the threatening notion of Nia DaCosta (The Marvels) having directed.

Both films were reportedly shot with iPhones.

“Boots” is Rudyard Kipling poem, initially published in 1903.

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