…for allowing me to step up and rent this Venice Film Festival crib….all paid for and locked down…myself + Jordan Ruimy…just south of Campo Santa Margherita, and close to a vaporetto stop…Monday, 8.25 through Sunday, 9.7.

A new Deliotte survey has re-conveyed the familiar and depressing news that Zoomers and Millennials have all but abandoned the temple of cinema worship…they just don’t have the same faith in (and hunger for) movies that their elders do.

“HE to All Rapier-Tongued 17 Year-Olds,” posted on 3.17.23:

A quote attributed to Ben Affleck in Rebecca Keegan’s 3.16 THR interview mentions his 17 year-old daughter, Violet:

“I like the fact that she has this silver rapier tongue. [Then again] she lives her life largely in opposition to the work her parents have spent their lives dedicated to, where she’ll say things like, ‘I’m not sure film is really…do you think it’s a genuine art form?”

HE to Violet: “Movies have always been, at best, a haphazard art form, which is to say one that occasionally detours into art or at least an attempt at same. A half-assed, popcorn-driven, now-and-then art form. Or at least during awards season until Everything Everywhere All At Once, the equivalent of a cinematic hydrogen bomb or mass cyanide capsule, came along.

“But on the audience side of the equation, the occasional communal appreciation of movies and least a semblance of a belief that movies can at least potentially deliver some kind of artful reflection of what it’s like to live and struggle on this planet…that communal tradition is pretty much over, and it’s been killed by your generation (GenZ) along with the Millennials.

“People have been communally watching proscenium-arch plays since the Greek and Roman eras, and feature films since 1915 or thereabouts — call it 110 years. And then you guys arrived and settled in and pretty much killed the whole togetherness aspect. Not altogether but, you know, mostly.

“Now it’s mainly about streaming content in your living rooms or on your Macbooks and iPads, but not really ‘watching’ because you’re constantly texting and multi-tasking and checking out TikTok videos whenever your attention wanders.

“So to answer your question, film used to satisfy the measurement of being an occasional art form until you guys dropped in. Commercial movie theatres used to be regarded in some quarters as churches…no longer! Now they’ve pretty much become gladiator arenas. People used to sit there for 115 minutes or longer and actually pay attention for the most part…no longer for the most part!

“Nowadays the only way to savor really good films in a theatrical environment with people who ‘get’ it and love the worshipful aspect is to attend an upscale film festival (Cannes, Telluride, Venice, Toronto, Berlin, Sundance). Have you ever attended one of these? Maybe you should think about doing this. Can’t hurt.”

(Obviously the same laments, scoldings and heartbreaks apply also to Gen Alpha, born between 2010 and 2025.)

Unless a major hair-and-beard coloring job is in the offing, we may as well accept the fact that Matt Damon‘s Odysseus is going to look a bit moondoggy-ish in Chris Nolan‘s The Odyssey (Universal, 7.17.26). But give Damon credit, at least, for having gotten himself into shape. Look at those arms! Those flat abs!

…because I know the HE miscreants and toxic pisshounds are lying in wait, hah-hah-hah-ing like jackals in the jungle…

This is my new Macbook Pro 16-inch screensaver…chills me down on some level. A feeling of calm and perhaps even serenity. Okay, not really.

ScreenX is a panoramic film format which presents films with an expanded, dual-sided, 270-degree screens projected on the walls in a theater. It’s basically aimed at the short-attention-span apes who are reluctant to attend theatres because they love their couches and 75-inch 4K screens too much.

First introduced in 2012, ScreenX has allegedly been installed in theatres in 37 countries…news to me.

Deadline‘s Jill Goldsmith is reporting that AMC Entertainment and CJ 4DPLEX “have partnered on 65 premium ScreenX and 4DX locations worldwide”…which means what in terms of domestic venues? Where in Manhattan?

I for one am looking forward to watching Harold Pinter and David Jones‘ Betrayal (’83) in this format. I would also like to see ScreenX versions of Ace in the Hole, Anora, The Social Network, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Complete Unknown, The Apartment, Michael Clayton, Manchester By The Sea, Conclave…you get the idea. But not — repeat, fucking not — Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite.

It was…Jesus, 55 years ago when I saw Jethro Tull give a fairly great performance at the Boston Tea Party. I always admired how flute-playing lead vocalist Ian Anderson could play for long stretches with his left leg tucked up and touching his right knee, pied piper-style….it must have been grueling to balance himself like that. Long curly hair, twizzly beard, strong hearty voice..quite the iconic rock-star presentation.

And now, at age 77, the still-bearded Anderson is not only egg-bald but looks like a mixture of Donald Pleasance in Escape From New York and an aged Don Logan (“no no no no no no…no!…no!”). Old Ian seems to be in a good spiritual place, but I’m still finding this a bit difficult to handle.

Religious cathedral music of the highest Miklos Rozsa order accompanies the Bluray menu of The Verdict. It’s a redemption tale but certainly not a “religious” one, and so this musical portion, composed by Johnny Mandel, plays only during the closing credits.

And yet a blindfolded person might presume that Mandel’s score was composed for a 1950s Biblical epic of some kind. It sounds here and there like Rozsa’s King of Kings overture.

The title of Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (11.7.63) was allegedly finalized early on, but a few working titles were considered before that. One was One Damn Thing After Another.

Kramer’s over-emphatic comedy enjoyed two full weeks of play before JFK’s murder. It nonetheless ended up with $46 million domestic, $60 million worldwide.

This appears to be a possibly fake re-issue one-sheet. Notice the “73” in the lower right-hand corner — that’s a re-issue date.

Santa Rosita was the location of “the big W”.

Mickey Rooney got the short end of the stick here; Buddy Hackett was also made to seem minor. Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle and (fat) Sid Caesar ruled.

I remember a review that questioned the suitability of using super-sized Cinerama as it provided several unwelcome close-ups of its aging cast…pink eyes, sagging cheeks and wrinkled brows.