The 1999 Penn State rape controversy that has hounded Nate Parker over the past week and a half has resulted in a cancellation of an American Film Institute screening of The Birth of a Nation on Friday, 8.26. AFI dean Jan Schuette — himself an embattled figure due to a recent AFI staff revolt — announced the yanking late Tuesday.

The AFI screening would have been followed by a discussion with Parker, the director, writer and star of the historical drama about Nat Turner’s 1831 slave revolt.   Oh, what a shitstorm that would’ve been.

The 17 year-old PSU incident, which was discussed by Parker a week and a half ago in interviews with Variety and Deadline, has all but torpedoed whatever hope BOAN had of becoming a strong award-season contender, particularly given the recent revelation that the victim in the case committed suicide four years ago.

“I have been the recipient of many different passionate points of view about the screening, and I believe it is essential that we discuss these issues together — messenger and message, gender, race and more — before we see the film,” Schuette said in a statement. “Next week, we will be scheduling a special moderated discussion so we may explore these issues together as artists and audience.”

From an 8.23 Variety story, “The Nate Parker Interview: What’s Next for The Birth of a Nation‘ by Ramin Setoodeh: “The Birth of a Nation was supposed to finally end two years of #OscarsSoWhite, but the movie might cause further ripples within the Motion Picture Academy. Some prominent members of black Hollywood are standing with Parker, but they haven’t backed him publicly yet. ‘I don’t like the timing of this,’ says one well-known black director, who asked not to be named. ‘I’m not defending his actions, but something is wrong about the way it went down.’ Another black director who knows Parker, but also requested anonymity, said: ‘It worries me that a film and a guy with so much promise gets cut down a month before his masterpiece gets released. The last two years have proven how much our stories matter to this industry, and this seems like a way to muffle a very important piece of work.’”

Last Friday night (8.19) an extended cut of John Huston‘s Beat The Devil (’53) was screened at a tech symposium called “The Reel Thing,” which is co-sponsored and partly organized (or something like that) by the Association of Moving Image Archivists. The event happened between 8.18 and 8.20 at Hollywood’s Linwood Dunn theatre.

The 2016 “Reel Thing” program page says that this new Beat The Devil, which is currently available in truncated form at 89 minutes, was “restored by Sony Pictures” — i.e., by Sony archive honcho Grover Crisp — “in collaboration with The Film Foundation to the original, uncensored version.”

Crisp reports that the extended version runs 94 minutes.

An IMDB Beat The Devil page titled “alternate versions” states the following: “There are supposedly two edits of the film. One is described as a ‘butchered’ short version; the other as longer but with better storyline and continuity. The longer version is also listed as either elusive or practically impossible to get.”

Director Martin Scorsese is currently editing Silence, which Paramount may or may not release this year. A recent cut of the film reportedly ran 195 minutes, which I’m sure Scorsese is looking to whittle down. Last weekend a startling intuition of Scorsese’s thoughts about the film flew into my head. I don’t know if he’s shared the following with his Paramount partners, but he might eventually convey something along these lines:

“I’m sitting here in the editing room with Thelma and flipping through a copy of Entertainment Weekly‘s fall movie preview issue, and you know what what I’m noticing? Silence isn’t even mentioned. As far as EW is concerned it doesn’t exist. That tells me something.

“A while back I told Roger Friedman that ‘it’s up to Paramount’ about when Silence will be released, but I’m getting a feeling, just a little inkling of a tingle of the hairs on the back of my neck, that you guys might be quietly thinking about bumping it into February or March of 2017, like you did with Shutter Island in 2010.

“Is that what you guys are thinking? You haven’t ‘dated’ it yet, and I think it’s fair of me to ask what’s going on.

“I’m not the delusional type. I know a lot of people out there are going to regard Silence, sight unseen, as a very tough sit. A three-hour historical persecution-and-torture movie set in 17th Century Japan starring…what did that guy write the other day?…a weepy, whining, constantly suffering Andrew Garfield, and without much screen time for Liam Neeson, who doesn’t even get to go all whoop-ass on the 17th Century Japanese persecutors.

“You guys have three serious Oscar ponies on your fall slate — Arrival, Allied and especially Denzel’s Fences. I’m not stupid. I’m not clueless. I can read the writing on the wall. At best you may be considering a small token qualifying release for Silence, just to get it out there before 12.31…right?

The recent decision of former Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers to include Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester by the Sea on his list of the ten greatest 21st century films has greatly impressed Sasha Stone. Because this suggests a serious headwind for a Best Picture Oscar, or so she suspects. “Travers, Joe Morgenstern and Kenneth Turan are really your best critics in terms of sussing out what Academy voters might value,’ Stone explains. “With The Birth of a Nation mostly sidelined, can Manchester by the Sea become the first Sundance opener to win Best Picture? We’ve seen Cannes openers deliver winners (The Artist, No Country for Old Men), Toronto (The Hurt Locker) and Telluride (Spotlight, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave, Argo, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire) but so far, nothing from Sundance. Boyhood looked like it might be that movie. The Birth of a Nation looked like it might be that movie.”

In the wake of the December 1962 opening of Lawrence of Arabia, some lightweight comic called it “four hours of sand.” Last night I watched the new Criterion Bluray of Hiroshi Teshigahara‘s Woman in the Dunes (’64). This, trust me, is the ultimate, ultra-definitive sand movie. Two hours and 27 minutes of the stuff. Lots of bugs, putrid water in wooden buckets, a fascinating clink-clank score by Toru Takemitsu, a certain amount of nudity and sex, luscious black-and-white cinematography by Hiroshi Segawa, and all tied together with a story that has something to do with Sisyphus, frustration, claustrophobia and escaping from whatever your daily grind may be. I had this horrible feeling of little particles of sand all over my bod. Sand and bugs, sand and bugs. Sand in my hair, in my ear canal, under my fingernails, inside my socks…Jesus! I honestly took a shower after watching it. Woman in the Dunes is indisputably an austere arthouse landmark. It has my respect for all the things it does perfectly or at least precisely, but I’ll never watch it again — guaranteed.

Based on a poll of 177 film critics, BBC.com has posted a roster of the 100 greatest films of the 21st Century. Because the BBC polled only scholastically correct, impressively credentialed dweeb types (and didn’t reach out to any unconventional clear-light samurai jazzmen like myself), their top 10 reflects a certain ivory-tower dweeb aesthetic. Here they are along with my comments:

1. David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive (HE comment: trippy, striking, noteworthy but calm down); 2. Wong Kar Wai‘s In the Mood for Love (HE comment: The praise is almost entirely about Chris Doyle‘s cinematography); 3. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood (HE comment: Deserved); 4. Hayao Miyazaki‘s Spirited Away (HE comment: Not my cup but if you say so); 5. Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood (HE comment: Respectable, somewhat moving time-passage stunt film — overpraised during Oscar campaign). 6. Michel Gondry‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (HE comment: The older it gets, the less it seems to be — you don’t have to be a Gondry loyalist to be in love with this film, but it helps); 7. Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life (HE comment: Lubezki-captured dream-trip aesthetic totally devalued in hindsight by To The Wonder and Knight of Cups — Malick has eaten his own tail); 8. Edward Yang‘s Yi Yi: A One and a Two (HE comment: Never saw it); 9. Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation (HE comment: Brilliant); 10. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country for Old Men (HE comment: Ditto).

I posted a similar thing last April — a rundown of the best films of the second decade of the 21st Century along with a summary of the best of the first decade.

Character actor Steven Hill (“Dan Briggs” in the original Mission Impossible series, “Adam Schiff” in Law and Order) has died at age 94. Hill’s performances were always sturdy. He always had a kind of melancholy, world-weary thing going on. For me the performance that stood out above all (and the one I instantly thought of when I heard of his death) was that outdoor park bench scene with Tom Cruise in Sydney Pollack‘s The Firm. Hill played FBI honcho F. Denton Voyles, and he made the following line stick: “I’m telling you that your life as you know it is over.” Hill, a strict follower of Judaism who killed his stage career by refusing to work Friday nights due to religious ritual, was 70 or 71 when The Firm was made. He never made another film after that. Honestly? If I was a theatrical or movie producer and an actor I liked told me “no work on Friday nights,” I wouldn’t hire him — simple as that.

Damian Chazelle‘s Los Angeles-based, ’50s-styled musical (debuting in Venice followed by Telluride and Toronto bows) should be titled La-La Land. The hyphen acknowledges that the two “La’s” are eternally bonded. The absence of a hyphen, on the other hand, suggests that one of the “La” guys might conceivably lose interest one day and move to Las Vegas or Vancouver. It’s just wrong, okay? Second thought: What if La La Land was Evita — an opera sans dialogue? I’m presuming it’ll follow the standard MGM ’50s musical style — dialogue, dancing and occasonally breaking into song with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone doing their best. Third thought: It’s nice that Chazelle has created a lulling, soothing, magic hour-meets-starlight Los Angeles because the actual look of the place is not that. Not even slightly, I mean.

I like the bit with Gosling dancing with the older black woman on the pier — classic.

The cultural mix of Los Angeles used to be whites, Hispanics, blacks, Asians. Over the last 15 or 20 years it’s become more and more Iranian, at least in my neck of the woods, and yet somehow I’m doubting that the lifestyle aesthetic of wealthy “Persians” — ostentatious bling, flashy cars, hijabs, atrocious taste in architecture, conspicuous consumption — will be included in La La Land, which seems to be about recreating sound-stagey, Arthur Freed-style Los Angeles from the ’50s.

Ten days ago I complained about IFC Films not having decided on a release date for Oliver Assayas‘ Personal Shopper. Today I wrote the following to IFC Films honcho Jonathan Sehring plus their publicity staff:

“If you ask me Personal Shopper is a knockout — an artful, unusual, arguably groundbreaking Kristen Stewart spooker.  Unless there’s something wrong with me it seems (and please tell me if you think I’m wrong) like an obvious Halloween attraction. You guys have had it since Cannes, where Assayas won the Best Director trophy (shared with Cristian Mungiu). It’s won rave reviews from key critics, has landed a NYFF berth, and is opening in England and other European territories (UK, France, Belgium) at the end of ’16. And you still haven’t given it a U.S. release date.

“This is the first Kristen Stewart film with a supernatural atmosphere since the Twilight saga, and it’s at least five times better than all the Twilight films put together, and yet you seem unsure about its potential. If you were going to release Personal Shopper in late October you surely would have announced that by now. Halloween is only ten weeks away so I guess we know the answer.

“You’re presumably uncertain because it drew a divided critical response in Cannes. For me this is one of the best films of the year so far (it’s my second favorite after Manchester by the Sea), and yet you haven’t settled on a damn release date. Two months ago I was told that you were thinking of bumping it into the late winter or spring of ’17. If you’re going to bail on a fall release, would you at least confirm this?

Yesterday afternoon I asked occasional Awards Daily contributor Jordan Ruimy, who mainly files for The Playlist while writing his own online column, to join me for an Oscar Poker session. Jordan, who will soon move with his wife from Montreal to Boston, attended Sundance last January (he shared my condo) and also did Cannes, and he’ll be in Toronto. Plus he knows his stuff. We talked about the fall season in general, but the two hottest conversational topics were (a) why has IFC Films refused to firm a release date for Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper? and (b) will Paramount even release Martin Scorsese‘s Silence this year? Again, the mp3.

Who wouldn’t want to tag along on Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson‘s first date on a summer’s day in 1989 Chicago, when they were respectively 28 and 25? With an assurance that nothing too heavy or difficult will happen, and that the chatter will always feel right and real? Richard Tanne‘s Southside With You (Roadside, 8.26) is smart and centered. Likable, interesting, holds your attention, no sweat. I’ve seen it twice and could go again. Everyone will like the intelligent, open, glide-along vibe.

Barack (Parker Sawyers) is an obviously bright, mild-mannered preppy bro, working at Michelle’s Chicago law firm for the summer, smoking too much, more than a little bothered about his deceased dad’s “incomplete” life and less than resolved about what he wants to do after finishing Harvard Law. “Maybe” politics, he says.

Michelle (Tika Sumpter, who also produced) is more mature and focused but also wrapped a little too tight, at first guarded to the point of almost being brittle, and yet open and spirited when the mood shifts. She gradually relaxes but when things start she’s against the idea of going on a “date” with a “smooth-talking brother” because she doesn’t want her associates to chuckle about her getting cozy with the “cute” black guy, etc.

It all happens in Chicago’s South Side, a primarily black district that is referred to a couple of times as “the garden.” Barack picks her up around 1 pm in his shitty little car with a hole in the floorboard. They exchange the usual personal histories, preferences, etc. (He likes pie, she likes chocolate ice cream.) They catch an exhibition of black painter Ernie Barnes. They attend a community center meeting where Barack delivers an impromptu speech about acting in a less hostile fashion toward white Chicago establishment politicians who don’t seem to care about funding a community center. They go for beers, talk some more, and then catch a showing of Spike Lee‘s Do The Right Thing.

Which leads to the only socially awkward moment of their non-date, when Michelle runs into an older white attorney from her law firm, apparently a senior member, under the marquee, and then Barack returns from the bathroom and she’s mortified…busted! But the older white guy brightens and grins at the sight of Barack and it’s all easy and cool. Except, that is, for senior whitey’s opinion of the ending of Do The Right Thing (i.e., why did Mookie succumb to self-destructiveness by throwing the trash can through the window of the pizzeria?). Michelle is guarded and pissed again, so Barack stops at a Baskin-Robbins and buys her a chocolate cone. It ends with a kiss and a nice feeling as they return to their homes. Over and out.