I enjoyed the company of the con artists in The Sting because…well, the story happened in fabled times (i.e., the Great Depression) and because Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Ray Walston, Harold Gould, Eileen Brennan and the other guys in the crew had that schwing and because they were looking to get revenge for the death of Luther Coleman. But I don’t like con artists as a rule, and certainly not in a 2015 context. Greedy sociopaths who create or build nothing…takers. How are they different from the serpents who are living high off the hog on the froth of today’s 1% economy? On top of which I haven’t liked Will Smith since his performance in Six Degrees of Separation (’93). He’s always struck me as aggressively hollow.

”Ready or not, Jupiter Ascending is being released, and it’s hardly the first time a studio has given reluctant birth to a theatrical feature that, in a rational universe, would never have been put in production, let alone seen the light of day. Heaping derision on such a woeful debut may be tantamount to shooting fossils in a tar pit. Yet this lumbering industrial enterprise, which was written and directed by the Wachowski siblings, Andy and Lana, is bad enough to be granted landmark status. Jupiter Ascending, in humdrum 3-D, may not be the last of its kind, but in the history of Hollywood’s decline it’s a monument to the decades-long folly of depending on grandiose visual effects to carry the day in the absence of coherent storytelling and simple humanity.” — from Joe Morgenstern‘s Wall Street Journal review.

“In a movie riddled with unintentional humor, Eddie Redmayne spurs the most uproarious laughs,” writes The Washington Post‘s Stephanie Merry. “With the exception of a goofy conversation featuring Sean Bean (‘Bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty,’ he explains with utter conviction), nearly all the awkward tittering comes at the expense of Redmayne’s portrayal of Balem Abrasax.

I’ve paid almost no attention to Sam Taylor Johnson, E.L. James and Kelly Marcel‘s Fifty Shades of Grey (Universal, 2.13), which I’ll be catching next Monday night. And I definitely don’t give a hoot about the chemistry (or lack of) between costars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. But Jezebel‘s Madeleine Davies and particularly Defamer‘s Kelly Conaboy have been paying attention, and apparently Dornan and Johnson were far from a match made in heaven. They couldn’t stand the sight or smell of each other during shooting, and apparently this attitude continued through the Fifty Shades press tour.

And what of it, right? Nobody cares if the actors can pretend well enough. Kim Basinger once said that kissing Mickey Rourke during filming of 9 1/2 Weeks was “like kissing an ash tray.” Joel McCrea reportedly despised Sullivan’s Travels costar Veronica Lake. Charlton Heston had zero chemistry with his El Cid costar Sophia Loren, particularly when he had to deal with her “pizza breath” during love scenes. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes felt little attraction or affection for each other during shooting of Romeo + Juliet. Ditto Tony Curtis vs. Marilyn Monroe while filming Some Like It Hot…”like kissing Hitler.”

NBC anchor Brian Williams is under fire and possibly in danger of being whacked by NBC News for having told a whopper about having been in a helicopter in Iraq that was shot down by ground fire 12 years ago. Yesterday Williams admitted that he had actually been in an aircraft that was following one that got hit. “The fog of memory over 12 years made me conflate the two, and I apologize,” Wlliams said on a Facebook posting.

Update: Former chief warrant officer Rich Krell, who was piloting the Chinook helicopter that Brian Williams was riding in back in 2003, says their chopper was, in fact, hit by small arms fire. “Mr. Williams was on board my aircraft [and] we took small arms fire,” Krell told CNN’s Jake Tapper. Bullets “struck the belly up in the forward cabin area and one or two other side hits, but [they] didn’t cause any major damage, just some minor damage to electronic components.” Could Krell’s comments save Williams’ ass?

Back to previously filed story: In 2.4 piece calling for Williams’ head, the Baltimore Sun‘s David Zurawik noted that “nowhere in his ‘admission’ does Williams say what he actually did: lied. Instead he says something ‘screwed up’ in his ‘mind.’ And it ’caused’ him to ‘conflate one aircraft with another.’ And this guy is the face of your news division?”

“If credibility means anything to NBC News, Brian Williams will no longer be managing editor and anchor of the evening newscast by the end of the day Friday,” Zurawik wrote.

Elvis Presley launched his legendary career in part as a symbol of rock n’ roll rebelliousness against the sexual repression and conformity of the mid-Eisenhower era. But by 1970 Presley had evolved into a conservative, largely clueless yokel hypocrite who wanted to do something to stop the scourge of non-prescription drug use (i.e, pot and hallucinogens) among the nation’s youth. On 12.21.70 Presley paid a visit to President Richard Nixon at the White House. Presley had hand-written Nixon a six-page letter requesting a visit and suggesting that he be made a “Federal Agent-at-Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Six and a half years later Presley died of prescription drug abuse and an overdose of peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches.

(l.) Michael Shannon as 35 year-old Elvis Presley, (r.) Kevin Spacey as Richard M. Nixon in Liza Johnson‘s currently shooting Elvis & Nixon.

Today a still from Liza Johnson‘s currently shooting Elvis & Nixon — an almost certain attraction at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival — was released. Pic began shooting in New Orleans on 1.12.15. It costars Kevin Spacey as Nixon and Michael Shannon as The King. Cassian Elwes and Holly Wiersma are producing with Autumn Pictures’ David Hansen and Johnny Mac financing and executive producing alongside Byron Wetzel, Robert Ogden Barnum and Jerry Schilling.

Sony Pictures management in Japan has given the shove to co-chairman Amy Pascal, apparently for the costly Sony hack scandal. Evidently Sony brass felt that a symbolic change had to happen in order to send a message that….what, studio chiefs need to be luckier? Or more cautious in approving politically-tricky comedies that wind up costing management tens of millions? One could argue that if the despotic ruler of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg‘s The Interview hadn’t precisely been Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, the whole mess might not have happened. Maybe. Or perhaps Sony’s Tokyo-based owners felt that Pascal should have been more guarded or measured in her emails? Or that the episode caused, in their eyes, a general loss of corporate face that could only be countered with the installing of new leadership? Something in this realm.

Amy Pascal will continue as Sony co-chairman until May.

When well-ensconced studio chiefs leave their posts they often launch a production company with an exclusive distribution deal for the studio that discharged them, and that’s what Pascal will be doing — starting a production “venture” based on the Culver City lot, with Sony distributing whatever she produces. Pascal will be well paid, stretch her creative legs, help launch a few features (presumably with a significant percentage to be made by or be about women) and so on for at least four years. Everyone will be happy.

You’d think that a drama directed by the widely respected Jonathan Demme, written by Diablo Cody and starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline would at least theoretically warrant an award-season release. Except TriStar, which is not exactly known as a distributor of prestige-level, award-worthy cinema, is opening Demme’s Ricki and the Flash, on Friday, August 7th — a date that more or less confirms that Ricki is not an awards conversation-type deal. TriStar would surely give it a post-Labor Day release, or better yet one in October or November, if it was. In a 2.4 post, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley notes that the 8.7.15 release date “is a little bit odd“, adding that “sometimes early August releases work out for awards season, sometimes not.” Mostly not, he means. Wells to Tapley: If you were TriStar and you had a Jonathan Demme movie that you suspect will attract award-season acclaim, would you release it on August 7th? Wouldn’t you at least open it in Venice or Telluride or Toronto? TriStar obviously has a different kind of game plan. Ricki and the Flash is the first high-pedigree, seemingly interesting 2015 film to be…I don’t want to say dumped but that release date has certainly lowered expectations all around.

Meryl Streep as a long-of-tooth rock star in Jonathan Deme’s Ricki and the Flash.

Tonight the Santa Barbara Film Festival will honor five outstanding directors — Whiplash‘s Damian Chazelle, Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater, Foxcatcher‘s Bennett Miller, Citizenfour‘s Laura Poitras and The Imitation Game‘s Morten Tyldum. Moderator Scott Feinberg will, of course, be expected to avoid any questions that won’t be kissy-face in nature, but if he wanted to conduct a Mike Wallace-style interview, what would his questions be? Tyldum would be asked for his opinion on the Weinstein Co.’s “Honor The Man, Honor The Film” Phase Two campaign. Miller would be asked if his next film will be another creepy downer. Poitras would be asked to comment about some people’s opinion that it would have been somehow more noble for Edward Snowden to surrender to U.S. authorities and do a couple of decades in jail. Advance warning: I’m going to ask Chazelle to put on Ed Douglas’s “Yo, Whiplash!” hat so I can snap a photo.

Niki Caro‘s McFarland USA (Disney, 2.20), which screens this Saturday at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, has been given a mixed-respectful review by Variety‘s Justin Chang. In keeping with the politically correct view that white guys are a drag and ethnics are more planted and soulful, Chang complains that the film, a Hoosiers-like tale of a downmarket Latino track team winning big, “is treated as a Kevin Costner vehicle first and foremost.” Pic “earns points for its big-hearted portrait of life in an impoverished California farming town, but with its overriding emphasis on how Coach Costner fits into that world, it never sheds its outsider perspective, ultimately emerging a well-intentioned mix of compassion and condescension.

“Not unlike The Blind Side, McFarland, USA is likely to generate some criticism for being the umpteenth film about a white guy productively intervening in the lives of underprivileged minority youth — a charge that has less to do with the facts of Jim White’s genuinely inspiring legacy than with the particular dramatic emphasis that Caro has given them here. Pic “feels at once mildly progressive and unavoidably retrograde. It presents brief, obligatory snapshots of how the other half lives without ever seeming deeply invested, or even particularly interested, in what it’s showing us.

The first screening of Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups, apparently another “stream-of-consciousness”, tossing-high-the-lettuce-leaves experience with a dessicated Hollywood slant, will happen at the Berlinale this Sunday at 7 pm, or 10 am Los Angeles time. The first tweets should begin to circulate in the early afternoon. Knight of Cups is a kind of time-capsule film as it was mainly shot in 2012. Last year Malick’s editor Billy Weber told The Playlist that Cups is “less experimental and less dialogue-free than To The Wonder“…okay. On 1.29 producer-financier Ken Kao offered a brief synopsis to the Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock: “Christian Bale plays Rick, who is a screenwriter and filmmaker living in California. From the outside, it looks like he has everything. Inside, he’s empty in a lot of ways, and this is his journey of figuring out a way to fill the void.” Or, in other words, a plot-free, head-trippy variation on the well-worn theme about vacant or corroded Hollywood — an idea first hatched by Budd Schulberg in What Makes Sammy Run? (’41) and then in Robert Aldrich and Clifford Odets‘ The Big Knife (’55).

Terrence Malick, Christian Bale during the 2012 filming of Knight of Cups.

I wanted to watch Keira Knightley do the When Harry Met Sally orgasm scene, but I had to sit through a lot of bullshit besides. It’s part of Jason Bell’s “British Invasion” short film in Vanity Fair‘s Hollywood issue. Tom Hiddleston and Felicity Jones doing Beatty and Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde…not good enough. James Corden doing Bill Clinton…nope. And Judi Dench, no offense, doesn’t really nail “I’ll have what she’s having.” Basically a bust.

The coolest…okay, the most striking aspect of Mark Seal‘s Vanity Fair piece about the Sony hack is Sean McCabe‘s Photoshopped image of Seth Rogen, Amy Pascal, Michael Lynton and James Franco outside the Sony gates. The article includes a few intriguing quotes and anecdotes, but it’s essentially a boilerplate recap of a story that everyone followed as it happened, and it doesn’t really deliver anything new or fresh or wowser. Seal went out there and did some good dutiful reporting, and the piece is smoothly written. But when I came to the end I went, “Wait…that’s it?”