“If you see only one film about 17th century French landscape gardening [next] year, it probably ought to be A Little Chaos, a heaving bouquet of a picture. Kate Winslet stars as a fictional character in 1682 called Sabine de Barra, who is hired by the landscape architect André le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts) to gaze, longingly, at his perfect stubble and mane of lustrous hair. It’s an indulgently actorly piece, but in a thoroughly pleasant way. Director Alan Rickman costars as a very droll Louis XIV, who likes to take a turn through the palace grounds and throw off his wig after a long morning’s kinging. The film is powdered up to the nines, with a wig count in Madness of King George vicinity and a lot of sporting cleavage. ” — from Tim Robey‘s Daily Telegraph review, filed on 9.11.14 from Toronto.

The image below is the cover of a Christmas card from a couple I know. Two things hit me yesterday when I opened the envelope. One, this is pretty good face-pasting, at least by greeting-card standards. And two, I’ve never wanted to see Billy Wilder‘s The Seven Year Itch (’55), and I’ll probably steer clear for the rest of my life. Reason #1: I don’t want to hang with Tom Ewell, who never did it for me. Reason #2: I hate movies about paunchy, schlubby guys getting tempted and teased all through the story but never quite getting there. I just don’t like that. There must be hundreds if not thousands of films that people have heard of and been told are respectable or very good or even pantheon-level, but they’ve never seen them and probably never will, and all for reasons that make as much sense as mine.

Irish Heartbeat might be my favorite Van Morrison album, but Moondance ranks a close second. It’s not on my iPhone so yesterday I decided I’d buy it…what the hell. Then I happened to watch about half of Howard Hawks‘ To Have and Have Not last night, and I was reminded how much Hawks seemed to love music and musical sequences in his films, judging by the sheer number of them over the decades. (I’m thinking especially of Ball of Fire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and that sappy sing-along jailhouse scene in Rio Bravo). And I began to wonder what the reaction would be if Morrison and his Moondance-era band were to time-travel back to Fort-de-France in Martinique in 1945 and play some of their tunes at one of the bars there, and if Hawks, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall happened to saunter in and listen. Albums don’t get much more mellow and soothing than Moondance, but it came out 25 years after To Have and Have Not and you never know. My guesses are that (a) Bogart, something of an upper-crust, old-school, wise guy know-it-all, would have scoffed at Morrison’s “wah-wah-wah-waaahah” singing style, but that (b) Hawks might have found a place in his head for it, and that (c) Bacall would’ve totally loved it. Especially “Caravan and “Into The Mystic.” If drunken Walter Brennan had stumbled in and listened he probably would have winced and shaken his head and stuumbled right back out again. I understand that Hoagy Carmichael could sometimes be a cranky, obnoxious shit so he probably wouldn’ve joined Brennan.

I don’t have any special inside track on Sundance ’15, but Rupert Goold‘s True Story, a true-life drama about a bizarre relationship between a discredited N.Y. Times journalist (Jonah Hill) and a family murderer (James Franco), is certainly at the top of my list thus far. Based on a memoir by ex-Times reporter Michael Finkel. Costarring Felicity Jones. Coproduced by New Regency Pictures and Brad Pitt‘s Plan B Entertainment.

President Obama‘s decision to recognize Cuba and attempt another, less belligerent approach to “that imprisoned island,” as JFK described it 52 years ago, is a good move. I’ve never visited Cuba and within a year or two I’ll probably be able to without much difficulty. For the sake of his likely 2016 Presidential run and because he’ll need to appeal to hinterland yahoos, Jeb Bush was obliged yesterday to sound like a hardline enemy of the dictatorial socialists who’ve been running things in Havana since early 1959. But Bush surely knows, and as anyone who understands why Communism toppled in Europe and Russia between ’89 and ’91 will tell you, when a population starts to get a taste for Western comforts, lifestyles and technology, Democratic change is all but inevitable.

Flag of Cuba that’s been hanging above my desk for over a dozen years.

Paramount has reportedly kibboshed plans by the Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse chain and by Cleveland’s Capitol Theatre to show Team America: World Police in place of the now-cancelling bookings of The Interview. A Deadline report says that Paramount “won’t be offering” Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 2004 satire (which focuses on Kim Jong-Un’s dad, the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il) to Drafthouse or anyone else. Which means, I gather, that they’re not “offering” a DCP of the film. Are they also forbidding Drafthouse and others from projecting the Bluray? If I were in Austin or Cleveland I might be inclined to buy a ticket to a Team America Bluray presentation as a general endorsement of showing political satires on U.S. screens.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has apparently decided to dump The Interview every which way (no theatrical, VOD, DVD/Bluray or foreign…nothing) in order to recoup their investment through an insurance claim, or so TheWrap‘s Todd Cunningham indicated yesterday. (“One media report suggested that a total write-off was required to qualify,” etc.) If this was in fact Sony’s bottom-line rationale, this is typical corporate behavior. In caving like cowards, Sony essentially said “to hell with free speech and the example that this capitulation to cyber-terrorists sets, not to mention what this does to our relations with talent in this town…all we care about is the fucking dough.”

22 months ago I wrote a piece about Sony Pictures Entertainment’s response to the “pro-torture” attacks upon Zero Dark Thirty by the Stalinist left. In the view of L.A. Times reporters Steven Zeitchik and Nicole Sperling, Sony publicists figured that controversy might somehow diminish or scare away interest in the film so they more or less threw ZDT under the bus in terms of the torture argument…but at the same time the film did generate an excellent domestic return (i.e., $95 million and change).

“This is what corporations do,” I wrote on 2.20.13, “and I don’t mean this as a criticism of the Sony guys. It’s just a statement of behavioral fact as explained by Joel Bakan‘s ‘The Corporation.’

I understand, of course, that many if not most of those who glance at this week-old Elizabeth Warren rant won’t hit play and listen to her words about Citigroup. That was my response when I first clicked on it…”yeah, yeah, Warren again.” But you know what? That kind of attitude makes me part of the problem. So I listened again this morning, and I’m asking two things of the “Ready for Hillary” crowd. One, are you aware of any facts that argue with what Warren is saying here? And two, can you envision Hillary Clinton ever making a similar speech?

From “The Birdcage,” Mark Harris‘s 12.16 Grantland piece about the all-but-total domination of Hollywood by comic-book franchise geek superhero mythology: “Over the 25 years that followed Star Wars, franchises went from being a part of the business to a big part of the business. Big, but not defining: Even as late as 1999, for instance, only four of the year’s 35 top grossers were sequels.

“That’s not where we are anymore. In 2014, franchises are not a big part of the movie business. They are not the biggest part of the movie business. They are the movie business. Period. Twelve of the year’s 14 highest grossers are, or will spawn, sequels. (The sole exceptions — assuming they remain exceptions, which is iffy — are Big Hero 6 and Maleficent.)

“Almost everything else that comes out of Hollywood is either an accident, a penance (people who run the studios do like to have a reason to go to the Oscars), a modestly budgeted bone thrown to an audience perceived as niche (black people, women, adults), an appeasement (movie stars are still important and they must occasionally be placated with something interesting to do so they’ll be cooperative about doing the big stuff), or a necessity (sometimes, unfortunately, it is required that a studio take a chance on something new in order to initiate a franchise).

Yesterday I spoke with veteran film editor William Goldenberg on behalf of his work on The Imitation Game, which is so smooth and fleet and seamless that I didn’t quite notice it. In this respect great editing is sometimes like great film music — the less it stands out the better it might be. And yet everyone noticed and admired Goldenberg’s cutting of Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, the result being that he was Oscar-nominated for both and thereby competed against himself. He won for Argo but if you ask me his work on Zero Dark Thirty was more mesmerizing or musical or whatever. (In that invisible sort of way.) Goldenberg’s cutting of Michael Mann‘s Heat (’95) and particularly the big bank-robbery scene in downtown Los Angeles is also the stuff of legend. He’s now cutting Concussion, a football injury drama with Will Smith that’s currently shooting. We talked about (a) the relationship between music and editing, (b) why certain editing jobs stand out as opposed to others, regardless of quality, (c) different styles of action editing and Walter Murch‘s rule about no more than 14 set-ups per minute, (d) why the poison-apple scene in The Imitation Game was left on the cutting room floor, and (e) the general aesthetic about cutting being generally a lot faster these days than it used to be. Again, the mp3.

Editor William Goldenberg accepting Best Editing Oscar for his work on Argo.

During my interview yesterday with Birdman director Alejandro G. Inarritu we briefly discussed the Interview situation. AGI asked if I’d seen Mads Burgger‘s The Red Chapel, a 2009 mock-doc about the repressions of North Korea, and I went “uhm…nope.” From the Wikipage: “It chronicles the visit of Brügger and Danish comedians Jacob Nossell and Simon Jul to North Korea under the pretense of a small theatre troupe on a cultural exchange. The entire trip is a ruse: the trio are actually trying to get a chance to portray the absurdity of the pantomime life they are forced to lead in the DPRK.” Here’s a 12.17.14 piece about it by Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn.

Deadline‘s Dominic Patten is reporting that in the wake of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s decision to cancel The Interview‘s 12.25 theatrical opening, they “will not be putting the now shuttered pic out on VOD, DVD or any other platform — at least not any time soon.” Patten has quoted a Sony Pictures spokesperson saying that SPE “has no further release plans for the film.” If this is in fact SPE’s firm decision, whatever minimal respect I had for Sony management, given the enormous trauma they’ve been going through over the last couple of weeks, is now out the window. They don’t even have the courage to release The Interview on VOD. These guys are doing an excellent job at persuading everyone that they have no souls, no courage, no investment in what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re not movie people, just empty bottom-line corporates. Good God, how can they look in the mirror?