Whatever Peter Berg‘s Deepwater Horizon (Summit, 9.30) is going to be or amount to, this one-sheet is aimed at the Chinese.

Christians have always wanted actors playing Yeshua of Nazareth to be good looking Anglo-Saxon types, a little fashion-modelly, a good jawline, lightly tanned like a surfer, maybe a bit sweaty but always with wavy brown hair. Even Martin Scorsese adhered to this expectation. Was a full-face photographic closeup of a sexy J.C. ever used for a Passion of the Christ one-sheet? If so I can’t find it. Here, in any case, is a closeup of a handsome Argentinian actor (Rodrigo Santoro) with a strong, straight nose and damp, stringy hair and a crown of thorns, captured in a somewhat forlorn mood as he hangs from a cross on Golgotha. Which is an effective way to sell Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur (Paramount, 8.19) — a “Tale of the Christ’ from the stocky, bearded director of Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

It took John Heilemann and Mark Helperin a little more than a year to write and publish “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime” in January 2009. By March 2012 the dramatic narrative version, Jay Roach‘s Game Change, debuted on HBO. It is therefore reasonable to presume that Heilemann & Halperin’s book about the 2016 election will be out by late ’17 or early ’18, and that an HBO movie about battle between Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders will be airing by late ’19 or early ’20. There are many actors who could play all three, but on this morning’s Today show Bryan Cranston kick-started a conversation about his playing Trump. Cranston to Carson Daly: “He’s huge…this Shakespearean character…a serio-comic tragic character…who wouldn’t want to take a bite of that?” Wells to Cranston: If and when the role lands in your lap, don’t gain weight for it — wear prosthetic blubber (face, jowl, gut).

Presuming that a teaser for Damian Chazelle‘s La-La Land will in fact debut four days hence in theatres playing Woody Allen‘s Cafe Society (Amazon / Lionsgate, 7.15), I’m guessing it’ll also appear online the same day if not before…right?

Incidentally: I caught a screening of Cafe Society Saturday evening at Soho House. My initial viewing was in Cannes, where it got a few more chuckles. (Here’s my mezzo-positive review.) The Soho House screening room is heaven — easily the most luxurious, ass-friendly facility in town. I attended with HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko and producer-editor David Scott Smith. There was a lovey-dovey couple in their 40s sitting in front of us, huddling and kissing before the film began. They bailed 20 minutes before it ended. As they were ducking out I was bad-vibing them. ADD sufferers, lightweights, etc.

The heat and fire of the 2016 primary season came from the almost interchangable grass-roots support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — the angry cry of those who feel that the deck is totally stacked in favor of the corrupt elite. Hillary Clinton climbed aboard that train and obviously rode it to great success, but she didn’t tap into that primal connection that people felt for Bernie and Donald — not really.

And I just don’t see how she can run her general election campaign without stating emphatically and convincingly that the wave that propelled Bernie to so many wins (anger against an impossibly rigged system) will be an essential component in her approach to steering the country over the next four to eight years. And by this I mean she has to make Elizabeth Warren her vp — there’s really no other way.

Because Warren is the only eloquent, well-known firebrand who’s 110% invested in the Sanders message, and who arguably expresses her convictions and outrage with more persuasion than Bernie ever did. She’s the only 1% buster who matters, who not only embraces but embodies what the whole ’16 primary season was largely about.

I’ve been hating on Asian action aesthetics (i.e., John Woo blam-blammers, sword ballet flicks, martial arts anything) for roughly two decades, but over the last few years my disdain has been focused on the moronic taste buds and grotesque influence of the Chinese movie market. Particularly when combined with the popularity of videogame flicks. You could argue that adapting video games into features is a double-down strategy as fantasy tentpoles have been aping the videogame aesthetic for a good decade or so. Either way they seem a safe bet when you factor in the overseas market.

The Angry Birds Movie (5.20.16) earned a modest $105,936,416 domestic but a $337,542,301 total worldwide. The recently popped Warcraft (6.10.16) earned a modest $46,510,135 here but $383,500,000 overseas for an eye-popping worldwide total of $430,010,135. I refused to sit through it, of course, but the combined Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes tallies underline where Chinese moviegoers are at on the evolutionary scale. Remember the “Dawn of Man” sequence in 2001?

The next videogame biggie is Justin Kurzel‘s Assassin’s Creed (20th Century Fox, 12.21) with HE non-favorite Michael Fassbender (the chilly stare, the surly frown) playing the lead/cashing the check. Death to Assassin’s Creed, death to the creative visions of Kurzel/Fassbender (they made the gray, grime-gunky Macbeth together), death to the Chinese. I don’t really mean “death” — I just mean “thanks, guys, for cranking out and supporting this spreading mushroom-cloud influence upon cinema and world culture.” I’m sure all the participants will profit handily, and that swaggering Fassbender (who also produced) will be lighting his cigars with $100 bills when his participation checks begin to roll in.

Pokemon GO is just insane right now. This is in Central Park. It's basically been HQ for Pokemon GO. pic.twitter.com/3v2VfEHzNA

— Jonathan Perez (@IGIhosT) July 11, 2016

This morning I was typing out my Ghostbusters review on the outside front porch at WeHo’s Le Pain Quotidien, and I couldn’t ignore the fact that several heavy-footed people were walking to and fro. I’m talking about fairly heavy impact sounds (“thump! boom! thump! boom!”) and especially the vibrations — those poor wooden beams shuddering from all that heavy-heel action.

I noticed this morning even 95-pound pixie women were walking this way….boom! boom! Like little grenades going off. The fact is that relatively few people walk in a light-footed way, as I try to do. I at least try to not pound my heels into the floor. I try to walk like Vaslav Nijinsky or Rudolf Nureyev.

I remember pointing this out to my younger sister when I was 11 or 12. I told her she sounded like a sumo wrestler coming down the stairs, and I demonstrated how you can glide down the stairs like Jimmy Cagney or Fred Astaire.

I realize, of course, that over half of those reading this don’t have clue #1 who Nurevev, Nijinksy, Cagney or Astaire were.

Anomalisa director-writer Charlie Kaufman to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Nick Holdsworth: ““It has gotten considerably harder for me to get things made. The early movies I made in collaboration with established directors, but since 2008 [i.e., Synecdoche, New York] I have been working to direct my own movies. At this point in the film business I am taking assignments when I get them. I need to earn a salary. I am doing what I can to make a living, but hoping to do what I would like to do.”

Kaufman to Variety‘s Will Tizard: “I think I have to have one commercial success in the indie world and I’m off. Anything that I do in this form that makes its money back or a little bit more than break even. That’s all it is. I don’t think anybody cares about anything else when they’re financing movies.”

HE to Kaufman: The titles, dude. You’ll lose 90% of your potential audience if the titles of your films seem overly referenced or smarty-pants. You don’t have to “dumb” your titles down, but they shouldn’t be aimed over the heads of people who graduated high school but skipped college.

The new Kino Bluray of William Wellman‘s The Ox-Bow Incident (’43) pops on Tuesday, 7.12. DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze is saying it’s superior to the German (i.e., Koch Media) Bluray that I bought two or three years ago. I’ve never liked the German Bluray — too light, too speckly, too grainy. Do I trade it in for Amoeba store credit and buy the Kino version? Of course I do.

From “Another Hurtin’ Sundance Cancer Drama,” filed on 1.22.16: “Chris Kelly‘s Other People (Vertical, 9.9.16) struck me as deftly written and persuasively well-acted but fraught with self-pity and a little too glum. Wading through and meditating upon cancer death will have that affect. But it’s delicate and restrained and absorbing as far as it goes. And occasionally amusing. But…I don’t know what else to say. I felt respect more than affection.

“Some in the Eccles audience were reportedly choking up; not this horse. After the show I spoke to two or three guys (i.e., writers) who were partly critical; one was outright dismissive. I later saw on Twitter that others (but not all) were putting it down.

“Relatively few will pay to see this in theatres but it’s really not half bad, especially in terms of the acting. I never pulled back or disconnected; I always felt engaged. There’s already a consensus that Molly Shannon, who plays a spirited suburban mom dying of leiomyosarcoma, will be Best Actress-nominated for a Spirit or a Gotham Award. And that the low-key, somewhat pudgy, ginger-haired Jesse Plemons scores also as her son, a gay showbiz writer grappling with more than just the immediate tragedy at hand.

I didn’t mind Paul Feig‘s Ghostbusters at first. I actually didn’t mind it for the first 80 of its 116 minutes. Then Feig throws the corporate formula switch and Ghostbusters eats itself for the last 35. It does a major swan dive into the swamp of CG overkill, and the experience numbs your soul.

Jones, McCarthy, Wiig and HE’s own Kate McKinnon.

Going in I knew Ghostbusters would be a spirited, corporatized, digitally upgraded rehash of the ’84 original. Melissa McCarthy as Dan Aykroyd, Kristen Wiig as Bill Murray, Kate McKinnon as Harold Ramis, Leslie Jones as Ernie Hudson. And it is that. A “same but newer and splashier” approach — similar set-up, similar absurd story, same determination to de-fang and de-mystify the notion of actual ghosts by turning them into Disneyworld creations.

For what it’s worth, McCarthy, Wiig, McKinnon and Jones hold their own and keep the ball in the air. I liked their company. McKinnon is the most internalized of the four, but I’d love to see her as a lead in something. (A smart lesbo or hetero romcom? I’m good either way.) Jones is a lot of fun. McCarthy and Wiig deliver their usual usual. And hunky Chris Hemsworth, as their mentally-challenged assistant, is inoffensively okay.

Variety‘s Peter Debruge has complained that Feig is too averse to potential new realms, saying that “the fault lies in the fact that this new Ghostbusters doesn’t want us to forget them, crafting its new team in the earlier team’s shadow.”

Well…of course! Movies like this are never about throwing away the roadmap and revelling in creative invention — they’re about cashing in by delivering mostly the same thing only re-stirred and re-fried with some fresh cream on top.