Jeffrey Wells It was obviously unwise of ABC News on-air correspondent Terry Moran to have tweeted a widely shared observation about chief White House rattlesnake Stephen Miller. Alas, cowardly ABC execs, fearful of being on the bad side of the Trump administration, have zotzed his ass. They could have suspended him for a month without pay…something like that. But that would’ve required balls.
For five and a half years U.S. distributors have been terrified of the mere thought of releasing (even on a streaming-only basis) Roman Polanski’s utterly brilliant An Officer and a Spy (aka J’Accuse), his Grand Prix-winning Belle Epoque drama about the heinous Alfred Dreyfus case.
Distribs feared running afoul of #MeToo activists who might have made a lot of noise about Polanski’s sullied reputation due to two or three allegations of sexual assault in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
On 4.2.20, a rep from Playtime, the film’s French distributor and rights holder, explained the Officer and a Spy situation as follows (his English being a bit lumpy):
Well, somehow or in some way a brave soldier or two has managed to arrange a two–week booking of this 2019 masterpiece at Manhattan’s Film Forum, starting on August 8th.
Although I’ve seen An Officer and a Spy three times (I own an English-subtitled Russian Bluray version), I will nonetheless proudly and excitedly attend one of the Film Forum showings, and perhaps even a second. This is a very big deal for me.
And what about select smarthouse bookings in other major cities? And a down-the-road streaming release? And a Bluray?
An Officer and a Spy is gloriously assembled and altogether glowing with genius — a perfectly realized, sharply written capturing of institutional, anti-Semitic Belle Epoque mobthink, not to mention an exquisitely composed timepiece revisiting of a bygone era, and a film that wholly respects the intelligence of (some) viewers. It is easily among the finest films of the 21st Century.
And the subtly shaded, steady-at-the-helm lead performance by Jean Dujardin is masterful — perhaps his all-time finest.
People of some experience with a semblance of wisdom understand that artists (yes, Polanski was apparently or at least to some minor extent a selfish sexual beast in the ‘70s and ‘80s) and the art they produce belong in two separate boxes. In the realm of cinema you can’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Great cinematic art is too rare of a commodity to be treated politically, carelessly or callously.
I’m sorry but for the last few months I’ve been under a distinct impression that everyone hates the obnoxiously aggressive Blake Lively for trying to destroy the life and career of poor Justin Baldoni.
So what’s going on here? “Accusations of sexual harassment” are “legally protected”? But trying to destroy a man’s career with questionable claims and agitated #MeToo hyperbole is cool?
Will someone please explain this dismissal to me in “regular guy standing on a sidewalk and eating a hot dog” terminology? Like I’m a six year old? King Henry II to Thomas Becket: “I’m an idiot then! Talk to me like I’m an idiot!”
Being a mostly rational adult, I understand and accept the rationale behind Lorelei Lee-styled money–whoring. Way of the world since time began, the nice things in life, girls just wanna, etc.
But in my heart of hearts and as unrealistic as that Picnic finale may be (i.e., Kim Novak deciding to take a flying leap with penniless William Holden), I want to believe in the unreliable, idealistic, non-transactional coupling of hearts and dreams. Teresa Wright and Dana Andrews at the finale of The Best Years of Our Lives…that kind of thing.
Money-whoring is to be expected, yes, but it’s bad for the soul.
I do, however, trust Variety’s Owen Gleiberman:
And the aging process, especially after the big six-oh, is rarely a kind or compassionate thing. But it cuts some of us a slight break.
Those favored with good genes, I mean, and who haven’t overly abused their bodies and souls with drugs and alcohol. If you at least half-resemble the person you were at age 21, you have reason to give thanks.
Consider what the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley and Mission San Fernando in particular looked like in 1873. I somehow never knew until this morning that the remains of Bob Hope, his wife Dolores and other Hopes are buried in a Mission-adjacent garden.
What the San Fernando Valley needed back then was water, but it took a visionary sociopath like Noah Cross** to make it all happen.
** Kidding — I meant to say William Mulholland.
HE to easy-lay types who recently saw and loved F1:
Please guys…please let me know who dies in F1 (6.27, Warner Bros.). You’ve all presumably seen Grand Prix so you know what happens to Yves Montand’s race-car driver. Death is built into this sport. It constantly hovers.
It can’t be Damson Idris because POCs aren’t allowed to die because the filmmakers would surely be accused and most likely found guilty of racism…they’d be tarred and feathered and run out of town.
So that leaves Pitt, but nobody (with the possible exception of Shi Joli) wants poor Brad to buy the farm so who dies? Surely not Javier Bardem or Kerry Condon.
The all-media screening happens on Tuesday, 6.24, only two days before the first commercial showings on Thursday, 6.26
There’s an earlier screening next week for “special people”.
Snapped last night inside the big Danbury AMC, prior to catching Ballerina. Obviously the people behind Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney, 7.25) have no shame. Has Pedro Pascal ever said no to anything or anyone? And the gingered Joseph Quinn, who will play the physically dissimilar George Harrison for Sam Mendes later this year…this, ladies and germs, is whoredom personified.
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.”
