Yesterday morning’s high-speed journey along the A8 from Nice to Genova was brutal and tense and, by the end of the day, exhausting. 130, 140 kilometers per hour within three narrow lanes with no wiggle room or shoulders to speak of, and dozens of tight curves. I was Paul Newman at Lime Rock. The drive demanded every last ounce of focus and concentration and then some. I felt okay while it was happening (water off a duck’s ass), but our lives were on the line every second. Things ease up when you turn north at Genova and start heading toward Milano, Salo (location of the famous Pasolini debauch of ’76), Lombardy (the regional setting of Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name**) and finally Mestre, the little town outside Venice where savvy travellers park their cars. But between the A8 Red Bull anxiety drive and lugging 80 or 90 pounds of luggage over eight or nine Venice bridges in the mid afternoon, I was whipped by nightfall. I crashed early-ish (10:30 pm) and just didn’t have time to write anything.

Two or three days ago Sony Pictures Classic’s Michael Barker introduced Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson as follows: “There is a real issue of the loss of quality in film culture. In this time of acceleration of technology where there’s a new discovery or a new technology every day, a lot of people are forgetting that we are losing major film critics who have guided us to the best films. We all have endless choices and a limited amount of time, and we need help. I need help, and I’ve been at this [business] for decades. Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn are the present and future voice of film criticism. They will help you decide what to see, and make you more of an informed viewer in this age. [And] we have to fight to keep them, as well as protect film culture so that [the good] films don’t get lost.”

We were loaded down with bags, and decided on the spur that shelling out 40 euros for a water-taxi to our rental (2290 Fondamente de L’Arzere) might not be a bad idea. Our landlady had told us, I mean, that it would cost 40 euros, but she was wrong. The thugs running the water taxi service told us (a) the price is 60 euros and (b) they would only drop us off at the San Basilio vaporetto stop. It was all I could do to restrain myself from taking a poke. We refused and humped it over on foot. Not easy when you’re lugging all that weight, but I felt good for not submitting. Hundreds of baaahing tourists go along with this extortion every day but not people of character and backbone.

Whether or not Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless wins the Palme d’Or at the close of tonight’s Cannes Film Festival award ceremony, I’ll always have this gentle moment, which happened at the start of last weekend’s interview with the renowned Russian director. Tatyana, aka “SRO”, is a huge fan of Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and Elena, and had given me a letter to show to him. I did so and then, in the manner of a typical Hollywood Foreign Press member, asked Zvyagintsev to please reply into my digital recorder. Here’s what he said.

Loveless director Andrey Zvyantsev during last

Rough, abbreviated translation: “Tatyana…thank you so much for your subtle and profound perception of art in general. I feel lucky you watched my films. The despair, hopelessness, desperation, reality and profound tragedy that you felt in the Loveless trailer…is exactly what I wanted to express in my film. You said you felt goosebumps when you watched the trailer. I promise you this will continue when you see the actual film. I wish you all the best and hope to meet you in real life some day.”

gentle moment

Patrick Read Johnson‘s 5-25-77, a flawed nostalgia flick that was shot 13 years ago (actually between ’04 and ’06) but has never been released, screened in 32 theaters last Thursday night to honor the 40th anniversary of the opening of Star Wars. It will likely stream on Filmio before the end of the year, I’m told. A friend who caught a screening at the Laemmle Wilshire shares the following:

“It’s a sweet film, and I obviously respect Johnson’s passion and perseverance. Is it unwatchable? No. But it definitely feels amateurish at times. Like a clever home movie. The Star Wars thing is really only half the movie but the point is that Star Wars could be a stand-in for anything. Whatever you’re passionate about and makes you obsess. Ultimately, the story just isn’t there though. I enjoyed myself [as far as it went], and admire the film as a labor of love, but you didn’t miss anything.”

From a director-screenwriter friend: “Well past the expiration date, just like Kyle Newman‘s Fanboys. Rob Burnett‘s Free Enterprise already nailed this culture. A friend pointed out how the 5-25-77 protagonist’s mother pours through American Cinematographer calling people in Hollywood to get her son a job. But it should’ve been him doing the calling. Too passive a character. That’s the real problem.”

The Sgt. Pepper 50th anniversary cash grab has begun. The actual anniversary is on June 3rd, which was the actual day of release in ’67. The remixed album is available on iTunes, and the six-disc CD package is being delivered to suckers as we speak. My cynical cup runneth over, and yet somehow this instrumental, vocal-free version of “She’s Leaving Home” got to me early this morning. The absence of Paul McCartney‘s vocal track brings Mike Leander‘s instrumentation to the fore, etc. You can say “aaahh, fuck all that and especially fuck the sentimentalists for this relentless Pepper shit,” but this is very nicely done. Really.

The first Allman Brothers album hit on 11.4.69, and right away you had to give it up for vocalist and keyboard player Gregg Allman, who at age 22 had a beautiful bluesy, achey, gin-guzzly, gravel-gut voice that made him sound like some 48 year-old, self-abusing guy who’d lived through more than his share of hard times. That voice carried him for the rest of Allman’s life, and peace be to his soul for that. For that voice, along with brother Duane’s inspired guitar playing and the churning, pumping sound of the band itself, gave birth to Southern rock. As it must to all men death came yesterday to Greg Allman. He might have lived another 15 or 20 years had it not been for years and years of alcohol abuse, which of course led to liver cancer. All party animals pay the price in the end. But if the final measure is “quality, not quantity,” Gregg Allman lived a rich, abundant, at times ecstatic life. Cheers, respect, condolences, salute.

It’s time to once again bid farewell to the Cannes Film Festival and, of course, the city itself. It breaks my heart that I’ll be missing Roman Polanski‘s Based On A True Story, which screens at 8:30 am. But I made a decision to hit the road by 8 am, and I’m sticking to that.

Yesterday nearly every Cannes critic went apeshit over Benny and Josh Safdie‘s Good Time, a visceral, high-crank crime drama about a couple of low-life, bank-robbing brothers, Robert Pattinson‘s Connie and Benny Safdie‘s Nick, running around Queens. Nick is basically Lenny from Of Mice and Men, and right away I was going “oh, Jesus, I have to hang out with some stammering…I’m sorry, challenged guy for the next 100 minutes? This guy can’t put two sentences together without sweating from the mental strain.” Then it turned I didn’t have to — fine. But I was definitely stuck with Pattinson’s Connie, whose brain cell count obviously is only slightly higher than his brother’s.

The Safdie brothers know how to whip action into a lather and keep the kettle boiling, and there’s no doubt that Good Time felt like the punchiest and craziest film to play during the festival, which is why so many critics, feeling underwhelmed by a relatively weak lineup, responded with such fervor. But I can’t abide stupidity, and after 40 minutes of watching these simpletons hold up a bank and run around and ruthlessly use people to duck the heat I was praying that at least one of them would get shot or arrested. I can roll with scumbags and sociopaths, but I need a little something I can relate to or identify with. If the repulsion factor is too strong, I check out. And that’s what I did in this instance. And good riddance.

I’m sorry but I have to catch an 11:30 am bus to Nice Airport to rent a car and meet the SRO. Given this commitment, I felt it was more important to file what I could this morning rather than attend the 8:30 am of Fatih Akin‘s In The Fade, which I can see this evening at 8 pm if it’s really all that good. I can also catch Francois Ozon‘s L’amant double, which I’ve been told is somewhat similar to Swimming Pool, this evening at 7 pm. Jacqueline Bisset, Marine Vacth and Jeremie Renier costar. If that falls away there’s also a Patty Cakes screening at 7 pm. This is my tenth day of this festival, and the eleventh if you count the 5.16 train trip from Paris + the La Pizza journo gathering. I’d be lying if I said I’m not feeling an urge to disengage.

Cannes-to-Nice Airport bus schedule, departure times.