Has Francis Coppola‘s The Conversation ever looked bad? Not to my knowledge. I’ve seen it four or five times, and it’s always looked fine. That said, it might be nice to catch one of the shows at the Nuart. Except I’ve never “liked” the Nuart. It’s shaped like a bowling alley with a too-small screen where the bowling pins would be.

…is only a motion away.

I thought after the spread of Omicron that the dates of Cannes ’22 might be up in the air. But apparently they’re intending to hold it between Tuesday, 5.16 and Saturday, 5.28. I haven’t been there since 2019 but I’m looking to attend this one. So I’m sending off my credential request and sniffing around for lodging, preferably someplace small and cramped and appropriate for hand-to-mouth journalists on a budget. No balcony views, single beds, tiny kitchens, etc.

It was decided early on that Kristen Stewart‘s Princess Diana in Spencer would be campaigned for Best Actress, and I mean before anyone had seen Pablo Larrain‘s film. Once I saw it in Telluride I knew for a fact that it stunk, and was basically a dream-trip, loony-tune Diary of a Mad Princess. Knowing all the while that Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper is easily her best movie ever.

Did Stewart’s “people” even consider promoting her Personal Shopper performance for Best Actress? Of course not. Because your empty-Coke-bottle Academy members never vote for a lead character in a scary movie.

So I feel rather badly for Stewart — she knocked it out of the park almost six years ago and nobody gave enough of a shit. She does a decent job as crazy Diana in the mediocre, mostly-painful-to-sit-through Spencer and people are going “oh, she’s so wonderful!” Because she’s playing the tragic princess.

For me, Personal Shopper deliver the biggest high of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. It left me breathless and even a trembling a bit.

“Assayas taps a wellspring of thought on forms of communication [while drawing] parallels between 19th century drawing room seances and Skype calls. In Personal Shopper, death is just another form of alienation, a physical remove from a person we once knew. Words themselves come under close scrutiny, and Assayas asks if we can ever truly connect with another person if we’re not standing right in front of them and communing fully with the senses. The incessant buzz of a smartphone becomes an attention-grabbing scream from out of the ether.” — Little White Lies’ David Jenkins.

From “The January 6th Criminal Case Against Donald Trump,” posted by The New Yorker‘s David Rhode on 1.5.22…

Not to mention the Beatles’ “Come and Get It” and their 1964 hit, “Lies”. Please name other songs played by artists or bands who never played them.

Colorizing black-and-white movies is a heinous practice as a rule, except in the case of certain films. Some day a skillfully colorized King Kong could be a keeper. Colorizations are still far from the mark, but they’re getting there. The idea in colorizing a 1933 film is to make the color look primitive, almost like the old two-color process. Kind of a glowing amber-brownish tint. Look at that grayish, slightly blue sky behind the Empire State Building…not bad!