Cameron Crowe‘s Roadies doesn’t launch for another four and a half months (Showtime, 6.26) but it feels…well, like it came from the same well as Crowe’s autobiographical Almost Famous (’00), his last fully successful and popular film. My heart goes out to Crowe — a good guy who’s been through a kind of career nightmare over the last decade. I truly want him to find his way out of the dark forest. Exec produced by J.J. Abrams and My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman, the series will focus on the grunts and technicians — Luke Wilson, Carla Gugino, Imogen Poots, Rafe Spall, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Luis Guzman — who assemble the stage, work the laser light show, keep the parts greased and the whole rock-band caravan rolling and gassed up with good air pressure in the tires. Which reminds me: I can’t find a decent clip of that superb Jimmy Fallon scene in Almost Famous when he explains to the band why they need him — i.e., “Your manager needs a manager…if you think Mick Jagger is still going to be prancing around at 50, you’re sadly mistaken.”

I sat through Martin Scorsese‘s two-hour Vinyl pilot last night, and I’m sorry, man, but it didn’t quite cut it for me. Here and there, yes, but overall no. The greatest rock music era was not the glitter-trash early ’70s but the mythical explosion-and-transformation period between ’64 and ’68 — the arc that began with Motown, early British invasion (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, etc.), schmaltz and bubble-gum succumbing or getting swallowed or pushed aside by Bob Dylan and folk rock finessings and then the Yardbirds and the Velvet Underground and early-to-advanced psychedelia. (And don’t forget the Boxtops!)

I’m also unable to believe in a loud, crude, non-levitational guy named Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) as a kind of electric talent-spotting, trend-spotting savant. Cannavale has been playing none-too-bright New Jersey goombah types for too long to attempt this kind of transition, and I just didn’t care what happened to him or what he lucked into or what new rock group is about to restore his faith in rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t mean to sound harsh or dismissive but I didn’t like or care about anyone…fuck ’em all.

Vinyl suffers from way too much sweat, cocaine, awful clothing, booze from the bottle, shouting, guns, threats, lying and a general lack of recognizable human behavior. I don’t want or need this shit in my head. I’ll stay with it for another episode or two, but I’m not happy, I’m tellin’ ya.

“Cocaine Is Boring. Jack Daniel’s Is Boring” — posted on 11.17.15: I know a little something about the trials of a rock band (having been a mediocre drummer in my early 20s in a not-half-bad blues rock group called the Sludge Brothers) and the difficulties of creating a sound that works and recording it the right way and getting the right gigs, etc. And yet Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger‘s Vinyl, to go by this trailer and previous teasers, seems uninterested in the brick-and-mortar stuff. It looks like just another bacchanalian coke-and-booze Satyricon thing. Self-destruction (or dangerously flirting with same) by way of drugs and booze is not interesting.

With Robert Eggers‘ The Witch finally opening this coming weekend (2.19), or 13 months after its debut at the 2015 Sundance Film festival, here’s a repost: “This is easily the most unsettling and sophisticated nightmare film since The Babadook. That’s a roundabout way of saying that the dolts who pay to see the usual horror bullshit will probably avoid it to some extent. Insensitive, all-but-clueless people tend to favor insensitive, all-but-clueless movies, and I’m sorry but The Witch is mostly too good for them — too subterranean, too otherworldly, too scrupulous in its avoidance of cliches. And because it goes for chills and creeps rather than shock and gore.

This is the fate of all exceptional, extra-good horror flicks — they must suffer rejection by morons. Just ask Jennifer Kent.

This little creeper (which was projected last night at a 1.66:1 aspect ratio!) is set on an isolated farm in 17th Century New England, when the lore of witches and sorcery was at an all-time high. I was seriously impressed by the historical authenticity and the complete submission to the superstitious mythology of evil in the early 1600s and the panicky mindset of those God-fearing Puritans who completely bought the notion that demonic evil was absolutely manifest and waiting in the thicket. And I was entranced by Eggers’ slowburn strategy, which finally pays off in spades during the final 25 to 30 minutes. And I was fascinated at the allusions to sexuality as a kind of budding demon seed.

The focus is on a farming family of seven — a strong, devout father with a deep resonant voice (Ralph Ineson), a wiry, agitated, asexual mother with a mostly impenetrable accent (Kate Dickie), an intelligent and very hot mid-teen daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy), a younger brother disturbed by sensual stirrings (Harvey Scrimshaw), two toddlers (Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson) and an infant — and one of the most fearsome and persistent threats, never acted upon or spoken of but constantly flowing in the blood, is the animal energy of sex.

I’m repeating myself, yes, but Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next opened last weekend on 308 screens, and took in $930,240 for a per-screen average of $3030 — quite good for a documentary. Here, again, is the partial Where To Invade Next fact sheet that I posted on 11.11.15. And here, again, are excepts from my 9.11.15 Toronto Film Festival review:

Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next is an amusing, alpha-wavey, selectively factual love letter to the kind of European Democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders has been espousing for years. And it’s funny and illuminating and generally soothing (unless you’re a rightie). And engaging in an alpha, up-with-people sense. It’s basically an argument in favor of “we” values and policies over the “me and mine” theology that lies of the heart of the American dream.

The primary theme of Sanders’s domestic philosophy is that benefits for working Joes are far more bountiful in many European countries (France, Italy, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, Portugal), and that we should try to humanize American life by instituting some of their social policies. He’s talking higher taxes, yes, but guaranteed health care, free universities, longer vacations (up to 35 days per year in Italy), a far less predatory work environment, better school-cafeteria food, more relaxation and apparently more sex, etc.

By any semi-humane measuring stick this is a much more attractive, more dignity-affirming way of life — imperfect and fraught with the usual problems, but far preferable, it seems, to the ruggedly Darwinian, rough-and-tumble, wealth-favoring oligarchial system that Americans are currently saddled with.

Mass-market ticket-buyers have never been and never will be all that hip. If, however, you can deliver a film — particularly a self-regarding, fourth-wall-breaking, supermetahero thing — that flatters them by making them feel hipper and sharper than they actually are, you’re more than halfway home.

This, to go by reviews and Twitter, is apparently what’s happened with Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds‘ Deadpool. God help me but since I missed the Los Angeles all-media screening and couldn’t fit in a Santa Barbara viewing last weekend (partly because I didn’t give a shit and partly out of concerns that some shows might be sold out given the huge response — $135 million domestic, $260 million worldwide) I feel I have to submit today. Because it’s made so much money, I mean.

I feel like a nine-year-old kid with cavities who has to go to the dentist. I loved the Captain America films and I worshipped Peyton Reed‘s Ant-Man, but I know I’m going to hate this. Insult to injury, I have to pay to see it. My soul is wilting.

Under Marlon Brando‘s direction, filming on One-Eyed Jacks began at the end of 1958 and lasted until…I don’t know when but apparently until sometime in the late spring or early summer of ’59. Six months of shooting. A thousand takes. Almost 200 miles of shot film. A revolving door of personnel, including Rod Serling, Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick — all cut loose before the cameras rolled. And a budget that swelled from $1.8 million to $6 million. Alleged Brando quote: “If you wrote a book about what’s been happening on this movie, you could make $1,000,000.” Brando began performing his starring role in Sidney Lumet‘s The Fugitive Kind sometime in the late summer of ’59, allowing Lumet to assemble it in time for a 4.14.60 debut. Editing on One-Eyed Jacks wasn’t completed until the fall of 1960. Brando’s original cut was five hours long — what a tragedy that all that surplus footage was destroyed! Paramount eventually seized the film and recut it to 141 minutes. “Now it’s a good picture for [Paramount],” Brando reportedly said upon its 3.30.61 release, “but it’s not the picture I made…now the characters in the film are black and white, not gray and human as I planned them.”

Sasha Stone and I did our Oscar Poker chat today as I was driving back from Santa Barbara. Topic A, of course, was the five BAFTA wins by The Revenant, including Best Picture, Best Director (Alejandro G. Inarritu) and Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio). Which seems to pretty much wrap things up Oscar-wise, certainly in the wake of Inarritu’s DGA win last weekend and tonight’s ASC win by Emmanuel Lubezski.  The only way The Revenant doesn’t win the Best Picture Oscar is if Academy voters, who’ve only been voting since last Friday and have until 2.23 to finish up, decide to revolt en masse. Again, the mp3.

From Andrew Barker’s 9.13.15 Variety review: “In a cinematic landscape awash with hairsplittingly literal musical biopics, it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover that Robert Budreau’s Chet Baker film, Born to Be Blue (IFC Films, 3.25), is not a Chet Baker biopic at all.

“It is, instead, a film about a character who happens to share a name and a significant number of biographical similarities with Chet Baker, taking the legendary West Coast jazz musician’s life as though it were merely a chord chart from which to launch an improvised set of new melodies.

“Upending the conventions of the musical rise-and-fall formula while still offering a relatively straightforward three-act narrative, the film is anchored by an Ethan Hawke performance that ranks among the best of his career. It’s hard to say how much of a draw it will be commercially: Jazz purists will likely be confused, and viewers expecting anything resembling a primer on Baker’s music will be frustrated. But Budreau isn’t out to make a live-action dramatization of Baker’s Wikipedia page here; he’s trying to make a real film.”

I don’t like mingling with hotel guests or staff. If I run into one I’ll turn on the pleasant smile and say “good morning!” but if I can avoid them I will. Partly because I prefer morning solitude, and partly because the folks who stay at the Fess Parker Doubletree (I had to leave the Santa Barbara Holiday Inn two days ago) tend to be the same kind of people who go on Caribbean cruises and vacation in Cancun and Las Vegas. Middle-aged marrieds, overweight types, elderly folk, tourists with kids…later.

All to say that when I want a cup of Starbucks Instant I’d rather fill the cup with hot water from the bathroom tap than hit the breakfast lounge. It’s not the staff (they’re all gracious and obliging) as much as the riff-raff.

In any event I was up early this morning and not, for a reason I won’t go into, at the Fess Parker but at the Cabrillo Inn. Around 6:45 am I turned on the bathroom tap and waited for the hot water. And waited. It didn’t happen, never even turned warm. So I went downstairs with my day-old paper cup and my Starbucks Instant and strolled into the complimentary-breakfast room. Some 50ish guy (a tourist from Chicago, he later explained) was standing inside and giving me the once-over.

Two women were preparing things; they weren’t quite ready to serve. But all I wanted was some hot water so I asked if I could get some. In a minute or two, they said. So I nodded and waited. It wasn’t worth explaining that tap water would suffice.

The guy from Chicago thought I had overstepped. Chicago guy: “Why don’t you ask the hotel manager?” Me: “What’s he gonna do?” Chicago guy: “That’s what he’s here for.” Me: “What’s he gonna do, push the emergency hot-water button?” Chicago guy: “He could get an engineer to fix the pipes.” Me: “At ten minutes to seven on a Sunday morning? Yeah, that’s a possibility.”

Apologies for not posting sooner about Friday night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival appearance by Carol costar Rooney Mara. She sat for a moderately engaging interview with Entertainment Weekly‘s Joe McGovern, who asked some gently perceptive and knowledgable questions, and accepted the Cinema Vanguard award for her Oscar-nominated Best Supporting Actress performance in Todd Hayne‘s Carol. A taped tribute by Mara’s costar Cate Blanchett was shown at the finale, and then Haynes himself presented the award.

Rooney Mara prior to Friday night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute. (Photo shamelessly stolen from the Daily Mail.)

Carol director Todd Haynes, Rooney Mara, Santa Barbara Film festival director Roger Durling.

Mara handled the ordeal as best she could. Yes, it’s fair to use that word. Mara was a good sport. She made every effort to be gracious and responsive, and she definitely smiled from time to time. But you could sense that she regarded the tribute as a kind of gauntlet or courtoom grilling — as a rite of oppression that she had to do. Maybe all actors and filmmakers feel this way, but they hide it better or…you know, they’re not struggling with it as much.

Mara has never been one for jazzy, free-form interviews — her natural inclination is to be chaste if not solemn, and to refrain from comment unless she really has something to say. She’s certainly never submitted to the glib-ironic, casually brain-farty, red-carpet aspects of celebrityhood.

Can I be honest? Mara is not loved by some who have interviewed her previously. She’s regarded as bit of a stiff — smile-less, humorless, wrapped too tight. But that’s okay. Greta Garbo wore this hairshirt this back in the ’30s (“I vant to be alone”) and it didn’t hurt her career or lessen her allure.

Okay, yes, I noticed a few walk-outs during the Mara tribute. (I was out in the lobby for a short period.) I was chatting with a 40ish couple around 9:05 pm, and asked at one point why they were leaving. They said “Uhm, well, you know…it’s almost over.” Translation: They wanted it to be over.

Mara is who she is, and that’s okay. She doesn’t like smiling like an idiot all that much, and I don’t like doing that either…fine. She likes to wear her hair in a tight regal bun, and that aesthetic speaks for itself.