Jeffrey Wells

I know this expression. I’ve worn it myself a few times. It says “I’ve been practicing this hard-ass glare in my Bedminster bathroom since this morning.”

Borrowed from the N.Y. Post…thanks.

Merch for sale!

From 8.25 comment thread [8:05 am]:

He clearly rehearsed and refined the glare and achieved a certain “don’t tread on me” theatricality.

He’s an animal but you have to give the devil his due — he’s been performing in front of cameras for decades and knows what works and what doesn’t in terms of conveying that tough mafia boss persona.

What wasn’t intended but came through anyway: the man looks cornered, like a defiant rat. James Cagney’s Cody Jarrett on top of that huge oil refinery tank — “Come and get me!”

A possibly wiser way to go would have been to flash that big, beaming, pasted-on smile that he uses when posing with fans and allies. That would have said “they can book me but they can’t deter me or quash my spirit.”

He’s well past “playing it smart”, of course. His basic psychology took over a long time ago.

Rudy Giuliani’s Fulton County Jail booking was just a warm-up act. For sometime Thursday afternoon (8.24) the just-like-any-other-ne’er-do-well processing of Lex Luthor (275 pounds and counting) will be at hand…same mug shot, same everything.

..,in the matter of Netflix’s basic strategy when it comes to theatrical vs. streaming. This dispute appears of a World of Reel post about David Fincher’s The Killer, which I won’t be seeing for some time as I won’t be in Venice.

Okay, I am judging somewhat. I’m sharing a certain observational concern about the ahistorical S&M (B&D?) lipstick labeling on Vanessa Kirby’s neck.

This just-released teaser poster for Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (Apple/Sony, 11.22) is obviously aimed at the you-go-girl crowd. Oh, to have been an irreverent queen of France, guided by whim and smothered in early 19th Century luxury!, etc.

But the lipstick also tells me that Scott’s film may be tilting a bit more toward the aesthetic styling of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and less in the highly scrupulous manner of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.

Or maybe the marketing has nothing to do with the film at all. Who knows?

The Duellists-era Ridley was a classicist, but maybe he’s decided to adapt to new ways of thinking?

What was the Anti-Defamation League doing when Schnozzgate first broke…sleeping? On vacation?

Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/Paramount, 10.6) isn’t going to the Telluride Film Festival. A 100% reliable source has just informed me of this. So that’s it — no prestige fall festival play at all. No Telluride, Toronto or New York.

Earlier today: If Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t play the Telluride Film Festival, it’ll feel like a bit of a letdown, certainly among some of us. It’ll be like “so last May’s big Killers of the Flower Moon Cannes debut was it?”

This keenly anticipated, hugely expensive, epic-length Martin Scorsese film should benefit from at least one high-profile domestic festival screening between now and 10.6 (i.e., Telluride). If Killers sidesteps Julie Huntsinger’s Rocky Mountain gathering, it’s going to just…what, quietly slip into its two-week October theatrical run? No big domestic festival push for poor Lily Gladstone, the heir apparent for Best Supporting Actress?

Killers is a highly commendable period drama. Emotional impact-wise it may be a somewhat modest, middle-range effort at the end of the day, but the chops top to bottom — acting, production design, cinematography, musical score — are first-rate. I for one believed every minute of it…every last frame. It certainly deserves a big stateside festival push before the 10.6 theatrical opening.

Laurence Olivier’s Marcus Licinius Crassus to John Dall’s Marcus Glabrus, leader of the garrison of Rome, in Spartacus:

“But the public tribute is impossible. Leave tonight by unfrequented streets…without fanfare, without even a drum…sneak out.”

Go to 2:40 mark

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No, not his treatment of Tippi Hedren. His failure, I mean, to respect the Lakota Sioux’s sacred Paha Sapa (Black Hills) in South Dakota. He did so by callously and obliviously staging the thrilling climax of North by Northwest atop the shamefully chiselled and misappropriated Mount Rushmore. Never forget that the British-born Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t have cared less. Sic semper auteurists!

I don’t feel like posting any more today. It’s 4 pm, and I wish I was experiencing the non-hurricane that’s currently soaking Los Angeles.

Against my better judgment I’ve decided to give Oppenheimer a second viewing at 6 pm. I’m almost sure I won’t like like it any better (it’s a very smart, well-crafted film but I wasn’t enraptured) but let’s see what happens.

The people who brought the Bullet Train pollution — director David Leitch, screenwriter Zak Olkewicz, producers Kelly McCormick, Antoine Fuqua and Leitch again — are walking cancer cells…pure poison. Motive-wise I’m excusing the cast (a paycheck is a paycheck) but they were all reprehensible regardless.

From HE’s 8.22 Bullet Train review: