Yesterday N.Y. Times/”Upshot” columnists Nate Cohn and Toni Monkovic explained why those new polls showing Bernie Sanders doing much better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton should be regarded askance. One mitigating factor, Cohn points out, is that “Sanders supporters are a big reason Clinton is doing worse in her polling against Trump. The second is that Sanders hasn’t faced any major attacks on his record. The Republicans have cheered him on against Clinton, whom they realize they’re inevitably going to face. Clinton never really attacked him, either — no big negative television ad buys, for example — in no small part because she didn’t want to alienate his supporters.”

What Cohn and Monkovic fail to mention, of course, is this: while Sanders, who is essentially an FDR-style New Dealer, would be clobbered by Trump for being a “Communist” (an actual Trump description) who will make their lives miserable with higher taxes, Clinton, whose negatives are nearly as high as Trump’s, is going to be hammered just as brutally for all of her alleged transgressions (including, of course, the email thing, for which the FBI will probably not indict her).

This morning I noticed a 5.22 tweet that claimed knowledge of how Cannes Film Festival jury chairman George Miller felt about Maren Ade‘s Toni Erdmann. The next time I run into Miller I’m going to give him…okay, not a bro hug but certainly a big smile and an upper-arm pat. It can be argued that I’m not the Erdmann hater that Miller is as I walked out on the 162-minute film at the 100-minute mark, but I couldn’t stand it any longer. I’m assured that Erdmann has a knockout ending but the only way I would re-watch it would be (a) with a gun at my head, (b) in a straightjacket, and (c) with one of those Clockwork Orange devices attached to my eyelids. My 5.13 review.

The more I meditate upon Jim Jarmusch‘s Paterson, the richer and deeper it gets. That’s usually the mark of an exceptionally good film, just as the opposite principle — an intense sugar-high movie will often dwindle upon reflection — is also true for the most part. Not always, of course, but often enough.

In traditional movie-plot terms nothing and I mean nothing happens in Paterson. No inciting incident, no conflict, no gathering of elements, no second-act pivot point, no climax. It’s all about impressions and meditation. But it’s good. It sticks, gains, expands.

This led to thoughts about other respected films in which “nothing happens.” Nothing, to amplify, in the way of the main character (a) having some specific goal, (b) interacting with or responding to contrarian characters or forces, and (c) finally taking decisive action to achieve a desired end. There are actually two categories — films in which literally nothing happens of any real consequence, and films in which very little happens. But emotional or spiritual journeys always occur.

The most interesting, view-worthy films of the last 20 or so years in which very little happens but which pay off nonetheless: Nebraska, Lost in Translation, Barcelona, Barton Fink, Shame, Hunger, Naked. There are many others. Please advise.

The standouts in which nothing really happens at all: Everybody Wants Some, Clerks, My Dinner With Andre, Dazed and Confused, Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere…what others?

Monday’s weather in Prague was abundantly warm. I wore a black shirt over a T-shirt and after a half-hour of running around I was wishing I’d left the shirt home. And then it turned cloudy, and when it started thunderstorming around 5:30 pm it was hailing for a bit. Where did I get the obviously wrong idea that it had to be at least cool if not cold for hail to happen? I’m doing the research as we speak.

Those uber-industrious Disney guys are looking to milk the Beauty and the Beast cow once more, this time as a live-action musical with Emma Watson as Belle and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as the Beast. Bill Condon is directing from a script by Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallfower). The costars are Ewan McGregor, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Stanley Tucci, Ian McKellen, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Audra McDonald, Emma Thompson. Not many remember that the dreaded Robby Benson voiced the Beast in Disney’s 1991 animated version, which made $425 million worldwide. (I took Jett and Dylan to see it when they were three and two years old.) This new Beast will make…oh, much more! But why is the teaser such a tease? A huge empty mansion, sunlight streaming, candles, paintings, a red rose. The design reminds me just a bit of Guillermo del Toro‘s Crimson Peak. Condon’s Beast opens in March 2017.

When he was Variety‘s lead film critic Justin Chang would deliver his opinions with as much tact and finesse as possible. He would sometimes pan films, of course, but in a way that might prompt a reader to say, “Well, I guess this film has certain merits as well.” “Blunt” and “direct” may have been in Chang’s toolbox, but they were rarely used. But they are now that he’s a big-dog critic at the L.A. Times.

In a sharply phrased piece about Sunday’s Cannes Film Festival awards and particularly about the shortcomings of Ken Loach‘s I, Daniel Blake and, more odiously, Xavier Dolan‘s It’s Only The End of the World, which won the festival’s Grand Prix (or second place) award, Chang has let go Sam Peckinpah-style.

“In handing Ken Loach his second Palme d’Or for I, Daniel Blake (he won the first Palme in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes the Barley), Miller’s jury, deliberately or not, wound up favoring an angry, relevant message rather than a great work of cinema. Loach inadvertently seemed to confirm as much when he noted in his acceptance speech that film is ‘exciting, it’s fun, and as you’ve seen tonight, it’s also very important.’

“Still, better for the Palme to have gone to Loach than to Quebec’s Xavier Dolan, the 27-year-old world-cinema enfant terrible who pretty much horrified the press audience by inexplicably winning the runner-up Grand Prix for It’s Only the End of the World.

“In my 11 years of attending Cannes I cannot recall a worse jury decision than this one. A badly shot, shrilly performed and all-around excruciatingly misjudged dysfunctional-family torture session that felt far longer than its 97-minute running time, World was by far the least endurable film in competition (and that includes Sean Penn’s dreadful but dreadfully entertaining The Last Face).

Palme d’Or: Ken Loach‘s I, Daniel Blake. HE comment: WHAT? Wrong call, gents. A good film, but not my idea of a really good one, and a long way from greatness. It’s a sturdy, downish Loach-wheelhouse thing about an older craftsman with a heart condition getting the humiliating run-around by the system. The award, I presume, was partly intended as a political statement on behalf of the despairing and dispossessed, and perhaps partly intended as a career achievement award for Loach, as he said his previous film would be his last, etc. Here’s an argument I had with a critic friend about Blake.

Grand Prix: Xavier Dolan, It’s Only The End Of The World. HE reaction: The jury is serious. They really thought this underwhelming pain-in-the-ass film was the second best of the fest. I’m absolutely stunned and appalled. Dolan is an impudent envelope pusher — now this tendency will be even more aggravated. Stop weeping, Xavier. Man up.

Jury Prize: American Honey, dir: Andrea Arnold. HE comment: Divided reactions among journalists/critics but I was down with this film from the get-go.

Best Director: tie between Olivier Assayas, Personal Shopper and Cristian Mungiu, Graduation/Baccalaureat. HE comment: Yes! Shopper was my #1 pick of the festival (I would have given it the Palme d’Or), Graduation was my #2. I love that the jury stood up to the press-screening booers by honoring Assayas.

Best Screenplay: Asghar Farhadi, The Salesman. HE comment: Full, absolute & total approval.

Best Actor: Shahab Hosseini, The Salesman. HE comment: Excellent choice, fully deserved. Earlier today I predicted without much certainty that Paterson‘s Adam Driver would win for Best Actor but then I added, “If it was my call I’d give the award to The Salesman‘s Shahab Hosseini.”

Best Actress: Jaclyn Jose, Ma Rosa. HE comment: I avoided the Mendoza so no comment. Jose overdid the teary, cracky-voiced emotional surprise. (Read: Sally Field, Halle Berry‘s speeches after winning their Best Actress Oscars.) “Oh, they chose me!…oh, oh, oh!…I can’t believe this is really happening!,” etc.

All hail the dismissal of Toni Erdmann, which I hated. Almost the entire press gang was predicting it would win the Palme d’Or. Egg yolk! Okay, not egg yolk but sublime satisfaction in this corner.

Three days ago the Film Society of Lincoln Center unveiled a curious poster for the 54th New York Film Festival (9.30 – 10.16). A miniature industrial-pastoral thing out of Beetlejuice. Two miniature people dolls in a little rowboat on a simulated river running through some kind of industrial refinery or whatever. The important ingredient is that the poster was designed by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The basic equation is that given the respect Weerasethakul enjoys in effete film-festival circles, his poster at the very least warrants interest and respect. To borrow from an idea in Tom Wolfe‘s The Painted Word, it’s not the art itself but the theory behind it that matters. In this instance the “theory” is not conceptual but factual and political. An endorsement by FSLC guys = dynamic, intriguing, something to talk about

Due respect to the Masters of Cinema guys but Robert Aldrich‘s The Flight of Phoenix (’65) isn’t Bluray material. It’s mainly about a crew of older guys arguing about how best to survive being stranded hundreds of miles from anywhere in the middle of the Sahara desert, and finally deciding to build a new plane out of the wreckage of a crashed one. I’ve seen it two or three times on the tube, and as best I can recall it’s nothing more than a decently framed desert-locale thing, shot in color & 1.85 by longtime Aldrich collaborator Joseph F. Biroc, who also shot It’s A Wonderful Life. I certainly don’t remember any mesmerizing visuals. Pic runs 142 minutes, but it has only one truly gripping scene: “Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger) panics when four cartridges fail to start the engine and Towns (James Stewart) wants to use one of the remaining three cartridges just to clear the engine’s cylinders. Dorfmann objects, but Towns ignores him and fires one cartridge with the ignition off. The next cartridge succeeds.” And that’s it! Nothing else pops. I didn’t even see John Moore’s 2004 remake. Did anyone?

In order of preference, the finest films I saw at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival are as follows: Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper (the questionable ending is a slight thorn, but it obviously didn’t bother me that much), Cristian Mungiu‘s Graduation, Asghar Farhadi‘s The Salesman, David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water, Andrea Arnold‘s pagan-ish Wild Honey, Jim Jarmusch‘s quietly compelling Paterson, and Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s Aquarius, which I barely got into here but admired the more I thought about it, particularly for Sonia Braga‘s award-worthy performance as a scrappy apartment-building owner.

What is that, seven? Personal Shopper was the only home run, and to hell with the idea that a ghost story is automatically a genre sideliner and to hell with the press-screening booers. Graduation and The Salesman were the most substantial in terms of their moral/ethical questionings. All three are eligible for recognition at tonight’s big award ceremony. The only ineligible film is Hell or High Water, which was screened as a non-competitor.

Yeah, I’m pretty much resigned to the general presumption among critics that Maren Ade‘s Toni Erdmann, which I hated, will win the Palme d’Or.

If Erdmann is passed over for the Palme d’Or, Grand Prix or the Jury Prize (the last two being the festival’s second and third place film awards), this would allow for the possibility of the Best Actor prize going to Peter Simonischek. Please, God…no. His performance as the film’s titular character, a bulky, yellow-toothed creep who attempts to liberate his daughter (Sandra Huller) from a life of cautious uptight-ism with a series of passive-aggressive put-ons, is one of the most repulsive I’ve ever endured.

“Blood Father is trash, but it does capture what an accomplished and winning actor Mel Gibson can be. Just because he lost his bearings, and his career, doesn’t mean that he lost his talent. Going forward, if all he gets to do is angry-crazy Mel Gibson shtick in boilerplate thrillers like this one, it would be a shame. Blood Father looks like a throwaway, and it is, but the best way to think of it might be as an audition: a way to remind people that Gibson, if given the chance, could juice up a serious movie. At some point, he deserves to be let out of the Hollywood doghouse.” — from Owen Gleiberman’s 5.21 Cannes review.

Response: Even if the 60 year-old Gibson hadn’t torpedoed himself twice, first with those 2006 anti-Semitic rants and then with those screaming racist epithets, he’d still be past his prime today. It’s natural for big-name actors to experience a little mojo loss at this stage. The difference is that Gibson went off a cliff. Twice. Tell me how he can alter the crazy-loon thing. I don’t see how.

Even if some forgiving producer or director was determined to resuscitate his acting career, what could Gibson be cast as? He can’t play romantic smoothies or refined cultivated types, not with those ’06 and ’10 imprints. He can’t be Richard Gere or Tom Hanks or Tommy Lee Jones. I could accept him as Jeff Bridges‘ old Texas Ranger in David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water, but he’s still got those negatives to contend with. I suppose Quentin Tarantino could cast him as an ornery grizzled sort (the kind of fellow Kurt Russell played in The Hateful Eight), but Gibson can never again sell the idea that he’s a man of trust, moderation and common sense. That pooch has been screwed and his prime potency period is over anyway.

A segue is a transitional shift from one thing to another, handled with skill and finesse. But here in Prague’s Old Town (Stare Mesto) the term is spelled Segway, and every Tom, Dick and Doofus is roaming around on these things. I try to ignore the corruption metaphor (which I’ve complained about previously) but every so often I’ll give the Segway kids a dirty look. I love it when they notice this.

Yeah, Segways are “fun” but Stare Mesto (which used to feel like a medieval village with fine restaurants, pizza parlors and bars — now it’s more or less a Disneyland theme park) is a relatively small region so why not enjoy the walk? Good for your heart, your leg muscles, your soul. Typical Croc-wearing stooge: “Because walking on all those cobblestoned streets is a bit of a strain on our feet, plus we’re here to eat and drink and party.” There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between today’s sloth tourists and corpulent Romans groping wenches in an episode of I, Claudius.