Jeffrey Wells The first story appeared today (6.3.25) in the New York Post. After a seven year-old boy was killed in a traffic accident in Gastonia, North Carolina, his parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter for having allowed the boy to walk to a nearby store with his 10-year-old brother — basically for failing to helicopter.
The second story is an HE account of an episode that happened when I was eight years old — an adventurous, six-mile hike I embarked upon with a seven-year-old girlfriend.
And how many of these films did Yahoo Entertainment’s Kelsey Weekman write about as she went along? Anyone can watch films on the Côte d’Azur in mid-May, but you also have to man up and journalistically explore cinematic meaning while plumbing the very depths of your soul.
Weekman isn’t so much a proverbial suffering scribe as an on-camera personality who does breezy lah-lah videos. (Light on the soul-plumbing.) She did, however, file a few video reports in Cannes so no harm nor foul.
My own modest tally of 22 films over 11 days paled alongside Tomris Laffly’s Herculean ordeal of catching 40 films within the same time frame, but how many of those 40 did Laffly-the-screening-slayer bang out 500-word reviews of? Screenings plus timely filings are what separate the men from the boys and the women from the girls.
Plus what about catching Directors Fortnight films deep in the bowels of the J.W. Marriott, Kelsey?
And you and your husband (what’s his story?) blew out of town before Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, easily the best of the festival, began to be shown? And you missed (or had no interest in) Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague? And you liked the grimly agonizing Sound of Falling? Good God in heaven…why?
Otherwise you should live your life, manage your affairs and achieve your goals cold sober. There’s really no other way.
I kinda like floating around on Ketamine from time to time but I wouldn’t touch Adderall or any other speed-like substances with a ten-foot pole.
Elon Musk to himself: “I can do what I want as long as I stay lucid and keep it together and, you know, maintain a respectable front.”
You may see a casual shot of Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds and David Wayne on the set of The Tender Trap (‘55). I see that also, of course, but my eyes go right to Sinatra’s elevator heels, which may or may not have added two and 1/2 to three inches. Sinatra stood between 5’7” and 5’8” just out of the shower. Wayne was also 5’7”; Reynolds stood 5’2”.
…but Netflix is probably a fitting home for Richard Liinklater’s Nouvelle Vague, which the streamer has reportedly acquired for $4 million.
It was one thing for Cannes cinephiles who saw this reverent, affectionate tribute to the French New Wave and the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless in particular…it was one thing for that crowd to go “whoopee!” But what the odds that Joe and Jane Popcorn would care, much less pay to see it theatrically?
Here’s what I wrote hours after seeing Nouvelle Vague in Cannes:
The toughest, cruelest, most unsentimental comment was posted yesterday in response to Jordan Ruimy’s story about the Netflix deal:
Nouvelle Vague is not “embarrassing fan fiction”. It’s a clever, spirited time trip…a mild-mannered, light-hearted, generally effervescent revisiting of the Breathless legend. This aside, what Doeberman wrote is reasonably accurate.
Incidentally: Returning to the NYC area after a couple of weeks in Europe always bums me out. Architectural beauty, magnificent food, excellent public transportation — NYC is way, way behind European cities in almost every regard. Welcome back to down-at-the-heels Schitzburgh.
My relatively brief stopover in Oslo began today around 5:30 pm, when my flight from Stockholm touched down. I was on the street in the center of town an hour later, and it felt cold like mid-March, not to mention windy. My teeth weren’t chattering, but they almost were. Thanks, Oslo!
In the wake of the warm Cannes weather (mid 60s) and even Connecticut’s getting-warmer-by-the-day climate, I felt plunged into a misery pit. Thank God I brought a jean jacket and a big scarf on top of the blazer I was wearing. My Airbnb host says it was warm and placid a day or so ago, and then suddenly arctic air just moved in like an advancing army.
Whatever happened to global warming?
Before catching tomorrow’s 1:10 pm flight to JFK I was going to search around for the spacious home that a good portion of Sentimental Value was shot in, but not in this damn weather! Not just cold but a bit dampish. This is sweaters-scarves-and-ski-parka weather, and it’s almost June, for Chrissake.
So I wouldn’t be totally gobsmacked if they don’t give the Palme d’Or this evening to Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. They’ll look like stubborn fools if this happens, but juries have been known to argue with consensus opinion. Just to defy it, I mean.
HE arrives in Oslo around 5:40 pm, or an hour before Cannes award ceremony begins.
I was on my train for Nice St. Augustin three hours before power the Cannes power outage.
I sat next to three empty Coke bottles in their early to mid 20s — a foxy girl and two short-haired dudes — at today’s 4K Barry Lyndon screening. Right away I knew they were trouble. Both guys got up to use the facilities right after sitting down, which is what frisky, ants-in-their-pants lowlifes always do.
And then Thierry Fremaux invited Lyndon costar Marisa Berenson to take the stage and share some recollections, which she did. And then the lights finally came down and the film began.
The Coke bottle trio couldn’t handle the unhurried 18th Century pacing along with John Alcott’s exquisitely lighted, old-school compositions. They watched about ten minutes’ worth before bailing. You insects…you miserable know-nothings.
