Yesterday I expressed profound skepticism about a recently-posted mini-rave of Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some (Paramount, 4.1) by New Yorker film critic Richard Brody. Well, another guy who’s seen it says Brody isn’t wrong. He says the trailer is totally misleading, and that the film is actually quite subtle, even though they’re selling it like Wet Hot American Summer. So subtle, in fact, that he suspects general audiences will probably reject it because it’s not hah-hah “funny” in the traditional sense. That’s why the trailer comes off so flat, as if the jokes aren’t landing. He says there “aren’t any gags in the movie, really…it’s just observational and really heartfelt, like Boyhood.” He says it’s not Dazed and Confused 2, and that it’s basically (a) about guys at a specific age — past adolescence, not yet adults — and how they relate to each other when girls aren’t around, and (b) an insightful thing about bonding and competitiveness.

Liza Johnson‘s Elvis & Nixon (Bleecker, 4.22) doesn’t open for another five or six weeks but L.A. junket screenings must be happening within three or four, right? I don’t even know when or where the junket will take place but Hollywood Elsewhere is on the Elvis & Nixon case, champing at the very bit.

I’ve posted two riffs about hugely annoying public laughter — one about a year ago (“Good and Bad Laughter,” 3.16.15) and another the previous summer (“Monkey Obeisance“, 7.11.14). In the year-old piece I listed several kinds of public laughter, and in my judgment the worst is “overly energetic, looking-to-please social laughter, which is not about ‘funny’ as much as making the joke-teller feel respected and/or appreciated.” You could also described this as “ass-kissing monkey obeisance knee-slapping laughter.” The guy upstairs (i.e., the one who moved in after the death of the gay guy who used to cackle at a friend’s jokes each and every morning at 7 am, rain or shine)…the guy upstairs is a gross offender. He’s a shriek-laugher. Over and over and over, giggling like a fucking hyena. And at 8 am yet! This morning I was looking up and laser-drilling a hole in the ceiling and saying to this guy with my telepathic powers, “You loser…the louder you shriek, the more socially anxious and desperate you sound. Show a little dignity and restrain yourself. Oh, right…you don’t know about restraint, do you? Your parents never taught you that one. Sorry.”

“Low information voters” isn’t some abstract concept taken from a political science lecture given at Brandeis back in the mid ’80s. Low-information voters are real — they have names, faces, histories and rationales. And they don’t want to know from Bernie. Kiese Laymon‘s Wiki profile: “An American writer, editor and associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Vassar College. The author of “Long Division” and “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America”, Laymon’s work deals with American racism, feminism, family, masculinity, geography, hip-hop and Southern black life.

There’s a delusional Christian film opening next week called Miracles From Heaven (Screen Gems, 3.16). Yes, I know — using the above adjective implies there are Christian films that aren’t delusional. Jennifer Garner plays the lead role (i.e., a mom whose faith in God is invigorated when her sick daughter is cured after falling from a tree), and is now giving the film nationwide attention with a Vanity Fair cover story by Krista Smith. The question is “why?…why would a more-or-less liberal Hollywood mom and an estranged wife of Ben Affleck in good standing…why would she star in a film aimed at Orange County and Bible-belt yokels?”

Garner was raised in rural West Virginia, check. She’s a devout Methodist, check. But starring in a Christian flick feels to me like a kind of cultural betrayal. Is she a Los Angeles girl or isn’t she? Was making this film a result of some kind of ideological, faith-driven decision on Garner’s part? Or was she off-balance because of her marital troubles with Affleck and lunged toward a Christian film as a kind of therapy? Did she need the money or something?

Yesterday afternoon Mashable‘s Josh Dickey posted about Amazon’s 90-day theatrical window thing. It’s widely believed that Netflix shot itself in the foot Academy-wise by going day-and-date with Beasts of No Nation, but Amazon will be dodging that shitstorm, most significantly in the case of Kenneth Lonergan‘s awards-baity Manchester by The Sea, which they acquired at Sundance for $10 million.

(l. to r.) Manchester by the Sea costars Lucas Hedges, Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler.

(l. to r.) Amazon’s Ted Hope, Roy Price, Bob Berney.

Dickey: “In a new (but very old) strategy that could give it a leg up over other streamers breaking into Hollywood, Amazon is preparing to allow a 90-day window between movie theaters and Prime streaming for many of its upcoming films, allowing for more robust and mainstream cinema runs, Mashable has learned.”

Except Amazon’s Scott Foundas told me about the theatrical window intention six weeks ago on a Park City shuttle bus. Remember, also, that the 90-day thing had been revealed in a February 2nd Deadline interview between Mike Fleming and WME Global head Graham Taylor, who brokered the Manchester deal along with the sale of The Birth of a Nation to Fox Searchlight.

New Yorker film critic Richard Brody can be a fascinating and sometimes persuasive counter-puncher, especially if his views synch with mine. But he’s way too dweeby and idiosyncratic to be trusted with a first-out-of-the-gate appraisal of an unseen film. I’ll trust Owen Gleiberman, Todd McCarthy, Michael Phillips, A.O. Scott or James Verniere with such a piece, but Brody is too left-field.

In a post dated 3.14, Brody says that Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some (Paramount/Annapurna, 4.1) is “a hearty and joyous look back at life at a Texas college in 1980, as seen from within the bouncy bubble of the varsity baseball team, the weekend before the start of classes.

This trailer tells you that Jacob Bernstein and Nick Hooker‘s Everything Is Copy (HBO, 3.21), a doc about the late Nora Ephron, is chummy, admiring, familial — one of those valentine portraits that occasionally turn up in the wake of a celebrated person’s passing. (Jacob is the son of Ephron and ex-husband Carl Bernstein.) But Variety‘s Nick Schrager says it’s better than that.

“Anything but a morose tale of a bright light snuffed out far too soon, Bernstein’s documentary is an inspiring heartstring-tugger,” he wrote after the doc screened at last September’s NY Film Festival. “Buoyed by proficient nonfiction techniques, it nimbly captures, in both words and images, the spirit of Ephron: a larger-than-life force of nature whose triumphs were born from her unapologetic embrace of ambition, and from her shrewd recognition that honesty, whether sweet or scathing, always goes down better with a dose of humor.”

Here’s most of what I wrote after Ephron passed on 6.26.12:

Damian Chazelle‘s La-La Land was recently research-screened in Pasadena. I heard (a) “diverting and lightly enjoyable,” (b) “a cute little love letter to old movies, old musicals, and the city of LA” and that (c) Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, the singing-and-dancing leads, are both “really great.” Now TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider is reporting that La-La Land is being given an award-season slot on 12.2.16 instead of a previously slated 7.15.16 debut.

In other words, they’re figuring that likely critical and industry approval plus an easy Golden Globes nomination for Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical will give the film a better launch than if they just open it in mid-July and hope for the best.

The conventional wisdom is that La-La Land wouldn’t have had a chance against Sony’s Ghostbusters if it had stuck to the 7.15 opening. But of course these films aren’t really competing. La-La Land will appeal to cultured sophistos, fans of old musicals, cineastes, educated types; Ghostbusters is aimed squarely at the animal trade.

This morning I rsvped to a last-minute Brigade invitation to see Gavin Hood‘s Eye in the Sky (Bleecker, 3.11). It happens tomorrow at noon. Right away the publicist replied as follows: “Thanks, Jeffrey — noted. Will keep you posted on confirmation ASAP!” Two minutes later I wrote back: “What does that mean? You’ll…what, let me know if I can attend? It’s a little nickle-and-dime lunch-hour screening.” Publicist: “Correct, we’ve made note of your RSVP and should have word on confirmations by EOD today.” Me: “Can’t wait to find out!”

Seriously, who says “hey, would you like to attend a last-minute screening at noon tomorrow?” and then when you rsvp they turn around and say “okay, cool…we’ll let you know later on if we have a seat for you!”

Update: I’ve been told I’ve made the cut and that they have a seat for me at tomorrow’s noon screening. How flattering!

No biggie…just a moment during yesterday’s afternoon barbeque:

From 3.7.16 TPM piece, “Lust for Destruction,” by Josh Marshall: “A large segment of the American right is animated by a belief that ‘their’ world, their America is being taken away from them — this includes everything from declining white racial dominance, having to choose whether you want to hear the phone tree message in English or Spanish, changing cultural mores. The whole package. This is the essence of Donald Trump‘s campaign, the most visible and literal part of his appeal — beating back the external threat, the harsh anti-immigrant policies, Muslim bans, flirting with white supremacists, etc.

“Trump is the master of GOP dominance politics — the intrinsic appeal of power and the ability to dominate others. All of this has an intrinsic appeal to America’s authoritarian right, especially in a climate of perceived threat, which has been growing over the last two decades — something political scientists are now catching on to.

“The phenomenon of the imperiled, resentment right is something you’re well familiar with if you’re a close observer of American politics. Back in December we saw this show up in the demographic data in the unprecedented rising mortality rates of middle-aged whites from chronic substance abuse, overdose and suicide. And as the Washington Post‘s Jeff Guo noted last week, the states where middle-aged whites are dying fastest heavily correlate with the states where Trump has had his highest margins.

“Think about that for a second. Trump’s message and policy agenda hits every dimension of threat and change.