Yesterday I shared a concern about Maria Schrader‘s She Said (Universal, 11.18), which looks like a well-honed journalistic docudrama in the tradition of Spotlight. And yet the ’22 Venice Film Festival has blown it off, it wasn’t included in the initial TIFF rundown, and who knows about Telluride?

That’s because She Said has locked itself into an exclusive premiere with Eugene Hernandez‘s New York Film Festival, or so Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, an impassioned voice of #MeToo wokester boosterism over the last five years, has suggested in a 7.29 Oscar forecast piece.

Thompson: “Another film expected to drive buzz at the NYFF is She Said, the true journalistic saga behind two New York Times reporters’ quest to nail sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, which launched the #MeToo movement and propelled the movie mogul into prison.

“Directed by Emmy-winning German filmmaker Maria Schrader (Unorthodox, I’m Your Man), the movie stars two-time Oscar-nominee Carey Mulligan (An Education, Promising Young Woman) and Emmy nominee Zoe Kazan (Olive Kitteridge). She Said could resonate with voters who voted for Best Picture winners All the President’s Men and Spotlight.”

Robert Redford, Alan Pakula and William Goldman’s classic film opened 46 and 1/3 years ago. How many Academy members who were around back then are still filling out ballots? A few, I suppose.

I would love it if She Said plays Telluride first, of course, but the NYFF has always insisted on exclusive premieres, at least as far as award-season releases are concerned.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted about Thompson’s apparent She Said slip earlier this morning.

“I’ve spent the last three months replaying and understanding the nuances and the complexities of what happened in that moment. I’m not going to try and unpack all of that right now, but I can say to all of you that there is no part of me that thinks [the slap] was the right way to behave in that moment.

“I was fogged out at that point. It’s all fuzzy.

“I’ve reached out to Chris and the message that came back is that he’s not ready to talk. And when he is, he will reach out.

“To all my fellow nominees…you know, this is a community, [and] it’s like I won because you voted for me, and it really breaks my heart to have stolen and tarnished your moment…[and] ‘I’m sorry’ really isn’t sufficient.” — Will Smith in 7.29.22 video.

HE thoughts: Okay, you’re a decent, good-hearted person, we realize that, and you’re genuinely sorry, especially as far as Chris Rock and his family and friends are concerned. Fine.

Most of us, I’m presuming, have mulled it over and said to ourselves, “Wow, that was weird but whatever.” Slaps and punches are not stupendous tragedies in and of themselves. But the venue was inappropriate, to say the least.

So here we are four months later, and yet you’ve only been drilling down and deeply examining that moment for three months, you’re saying, or since late April. So after the most emotionally intense and chaotic moment of your life, or at least since your difficult youth in West Philly, you were avoiding the process of self-examination during the first four weeks?

But now, four months later, you’ve posted a contrite video, and one of your main statements is “I’m not going to try and unpack all of that right now.” You’re not? When do you think you might get around to that? Because that’s the thing you need to share.

Without any beating around the bush you need to answer a key question — “what the hell happened deep down, and more particularly why?”

Most of us are under an impression that your emotional eruption was fed by two simmering volcanoes — your dad’s tumultuous behavior when you were a kid**, and a long-simmering Will and Jada thing that you never quite put to bed. Maybe it’s something else but whatever it is, you need to dig down and just say it.

Like a complex character delivering a big hairball speech in the third act, you need to cough it up.

** One thing I wrote after the 3.27 Oscar telecast was “you can take the man out of West Philly, but you can’t take West Philly out of the man.”

The 94th Oscars happened four months ago (3.27.22), and it feels like four years. An ABC After-School Songbird Special (not a bad film, works here and there) won the Best Picture Oscar because the Academy just couldn’t with the grim, downerish Campion. The first streamer to nab the Big Prize is soft and deaf-positive and aspirational, and I will never, ever watch it again. There was only one takeaway from the ‘22 Oscar telecast, and I don’t even have to say it. Okay, there’s one other thing — the pain of watching Penelope Cruz, whose Pedro Almodovar-guided performance came entirely from within, losing to the hard-working Jessica Chastain, whose Tammy Faye performance was (one dinner-table moment aside) largely defined by eye makeup.

…unless you’re stating this fact in the company of Type-A Millennials, in which case you are most definitely a bigot. Fair warning.

Unbelievable. 3 people on Fox panel calling another panelist “bigot” for stating basic facts about Monkey Pox. If you’re going to have a “conservative” network maybe don’t have em based in NYC pic.twitter.com/R44md79NEU

— Nuance Bro (@NuanceBro) July 27, 2022

I’m not saying there’s a pat “lesson” to be derived from watching Julian Higgins‘ God’s Country, a violent, slow-burn, Straw Dogs-ian melodrama about an angry woke woman (Thandiwe Newton) getting into a territorial blood feud with a pair of yokel hunters who might as well be Trump supporters. But if you insist on a boiled-down message it would be something along the lines of “don’t fuck with the bumblefucks, but if you do fuck with them, you’d better be ready to go full Sam Peckinpah.”

God’s Country, a Sundance film that I saw and reviewed last January, opens on 9.16.

… but at the same time I wouldn’t call it a good one. Because it suggests that Volodymir and Olena Zelensky have social aspirations. Which they’re allowed to have, of course, but it doesn’t feel right. Not in the midst of so much death and devastation. A bit unseemly.

You can feel the warmth…it’s there. And I love Alexandre Desplat‘s score, and the voice of Ewan McGregor giving life and spirit to Jiminy Cricket.

In a 7.28 q & a with Variety‘s Brent Lang, TIFF honcho Cameron Bailey says that Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans “is different from a typical Spielberg blockbuster, but it is just as easily impactful in terms of the emotional effect it’s going to have on people. If you love movies, this is going to be a very powerful film for you to watch.”

Which is almost precisely what a research-screening tipster told me yesterday afternoon: “Anyone who grew up watching movies will be a sure bet to love this. I think [even] Millennials will love it. It’s a film-critic-friendly movie. It’s made for people of the film faith. I enjoyed it tremendously, and this is so rare.”

The teenaged Spielberg (i.e., “Sammy Fabelman”) is played by Gabriel LaBelle. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano plays Sammy’s parents. Seth Rogen plays “Uncle Benny,” who, I’m told, isn’t precisely blood-related but we’ll let that slide. Jeannie Berlin plays Williams’ mom. Julia Butters is Sammy’s sister, Anne.

There’s a vague physical resemblance between the glistening, shimmering Marilyn Monroe of 60 and 70 years ago and the exquisitely coiffed, gowned and made-up Ana de Armas, even though the latter doesn’t really “look” like Norma Jean Baker, an unloved and abused daughter of average Midwestern Anglo-Saxon parents. Ana looks like a beautiful Cuban-born actress trying to do her best and mostly pulling it off, which is fine as far as it goes. Here’s hoping that Blonde, directed by Andrew Dominik and expected to be a difficult sit in some respects, shows up at Telluride after debuting in Venice.

.

As World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy pointed out this morning, several hot titles are missing from the just-announced Toronto Film Festival slate — Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Bardo, Todd Field’s TAR, Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, Paul Schrader’s The Master Gardener and Noah Baumbach’s White Noise.

The media chorus is saying “TIFF is back!” and that’s fine if they want to adopt that attitude, but these six films represent major auteur-level måterial. It’s possible they’ll be announced as TIFF titles down the road, but to me it’s a sign that TIFF has come down two or three notches, esteem-wise.

Non-Attributable Insider: “I think Hollywood has realized it can skip TIFF by doing Venice and Telluride. European/world audience with one, Oscar voters with the other. TIFF is still great for a commercial release like Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. But these are increasingly moving online, right?”

I’m also feeling twinges of concern about Maria Schrader‘s She Said. The trailer, released a couple of weeks ago, convinced me that She Said is a #MeToo-stamped Spotlight, and yet the ’22 Venice Film Festival has blown it off and it’s not in the TIFF rundown either. Something feels “off.”

Do you believe that Olivia Wilde‘s Don’t Worry, Darling, which stars Harry Styles, isn’t playing TIFF because another, modestly scaled Styles film, My Policeman, is also playing TIFF and certain parties don’t want the media’s attention split in two directions? Seems like a weird call.

The following 2022 Toronto Film Festival titles seem more intriguing than most, according to HE standards:

Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans, Peter Farrelly‘s The Greatest Beer Run Ever, Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Nicholas Stoller‘s Bros, Florian Zeller‘s The Son, Sam Mendes‘ Empire of Light, Ruben Östlund‘s Triangle of Sadness (saw it in Cannes), Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale, Jafar Panahi‘s No Bears, Mia Hansen-Love‘s One Fine Morning and that’s about it — ten films.

I’m also cautiously intrigued by the prospect of seeing Gabe Polsky‘s Butcher’s Crossing, Alice Winocour‘s Paris Memories, Catherine Hardwicke‘s Prisoner’s Daughter, Joanna Hogg‘s The Eternal Daughter, Sarah Polley‘s Women Talking and Sebastián Lelio‘s The Wonder.