My Spirit Sinks

…when confronted with the leading-role castings of Pedro Pascal, Adam Driver or Florence Pugh. Sorry but I’m not alone. Joe and Jane Popcorn are sulking, quietly grumbling about this trio.

I’m not instinctually repelled by Pascal like I am by, say, the dreaded Paul Mescal, but he’s definitely been in too many damn films over the last couple of years and I need a break from the guy…Jesus.

The Driver saturation effect peaked a couple of years ago. Portraying two wealthy Italian company hotshots in fairly rapid succession (Maurizio Gucci, Enzo Ferrari) darkened my brow, and then that Ceasar haircut in Megalopolis pushed me over the edge.

I don’t know when I began to flinch at the notion of Pugh, but if we had attended the same high school I don’t think we would’ve been friendly. I think my vague feelings of alienation began with Pugh’s Little Women performance, and then her feud with Olivia Wilde, and then I really, really didn’t care for her downish, pissy performance in Oppenheimer. I just don’t like her vibe.

Springsteen Flick Debuting at Telluride, and Then, Several Weeks Later, at NYFF

Variety’s Rebecca Rubin has pretty much confirmed that Scott Cooper’s Deliver Me From Nowhere, the forthcoming Bruce Springsteen feature** starring Jeremy Allen White, will have its world premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival.

The specific focus of Rubin’s 8.11 report is the official announcement of a regional “premiere” screening of Nowhere at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, 9.28.

Rubin’s giveaway is in the final sentence of her story’s second paragraph, to wit: “Deliver Me From Nowhere will host its world premiere elsewhere at an earlier date.”

Cooper’s film isn’t slotted for the 2025 Venice Film Festival (Wednesday, 8.27 through Saturday, 9.6) so that kinda narrows it down. Telluride runs from Friday, 8.29 to Monday, 9.1.

** In an attempt to reach the none-too-brights, 20th Century has retitled Cooper’s film as Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.