Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, who only spitballs about the Oscar potential of films she’s seen and who, like many others, takes great delight in getting early peeks at expensive, highly anticipated films, has put Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune (Warner Bros., 10.22) into her top slot on Gold Derby’s Best Picture prediction list.

That’s it, I said to myself. I have no more faith in Dune than I did in Blade Runner 2049 before seeing it (less actually), and I’ve never cared for the idea of investing in dense, multi-part sagas taking place in distant exotic realms and requiring enormous reading investments, and so it is now the solemn duty of all good souls and concerned cinefiles who stand with HE to say to Anne Thompson “what you like or what you think will be Best Picture nominated means nothing to us because we don’t trust you…we may become Dune fans down the road but for the time being we’re going to search for ways to diminish Dune just to spite your enthusiasm for it.”

Thompson was invited to see it the other day at the Steve Ross theatre on the Warner Bros. lot, you see, and there was wine and cheese and whatnot served in the lobby, and it was all very lah-dee-dah.

A friend who attended the same screening says Greig Fraser‘s cinematography is quite mesmerizing and that you can coast along on that aspect to your heart’s content. But there was absolutely no following the story for this person, not having read the original 1965 Frank Herbert novel or any of the sequels (Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune,Chapterhouse: Dune) and having no recollection of the disastrous 1984 David Lynch version, and that the plotting was too complex and that it seemed as if everyone was speaking some kind of foreign tongue, and that this sense of being lost and adrift had not, to put it mildly, coagulated into anything that amounted to the Right Best Picture Stuff…at least in this person’s opinion.

Let this be a moment in award-season history…a moment in which the little people in the bleachers rose up against the Anne Thompsons of the world, sitting in their pricey mezzanine seats along the first-base and third-base lines while sipping Chardonnay and munching fine cheese-and-cracker combos while the little people cope with their soggy popcorn and hot dogs and plastic cups of beer.

The monsters behind Thursday’s suicide bombing adjacent to Kabul airport — an attack which killed 72 people including 12 U.S. servicepersons — was reportedly perpetrated by ISIS–K. (The K stands for Khorasan, the name of an ancient province that encompassed parts of modern-day Iran and Afghanistan.) The U.S. command is going to hunt these guys down…what, over the next three or four days?

President Biden: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

I’m imagining myself as an Afghan native who has worked for U.S. forces over the last several years, and has known for many months that the end is coming, and that I have to somehow arrange to get myself and my family out of the country as soon as possible. What practical minded native wouldn’t have tried to leave many months or certainly weeks ago?

Plus there are reportedly 1500 Americans remaining in Afghanistan as we speak. What were they thinking? What are they doing?

It’s so rare when a certain kind of socially realistic humor comes across from a certain kind of half-real, half-comic performance…the kind of humor that comes from a certain recognition of shared pain and social terror. You can’t help but step back and smile.

I don’t care what anyone says about the beyond brilliant Silver Linings Playbook. I was just want to take this opportunity to praise John Ortiz‘s performance in this scene [after the jump], starting at the 2:07 mark and ending at 3:17. Using the metaphor of the Alien face hugger to convey suffocating financial anxiety is one of the most perfectly conceived comic conveyances ever seen or imagined.

“We’re doin’ all right, man, I can’t complain. But the pressure…it’s like…[whispers] I’m not okay, don’t tell anybody…I mean, I feel like I’m being crushed…by everything…the family, the baby, the job, the fucking dicks at work…and I mean I’m trying to do this, and then I’m suffocating…you can’t be happy all the time…it’s all right, you just do your best, you have no choice.”

But the rest of this scene works also. Ten perfect minutes. SLP premiered nine years ago in Toronto and with every subsequent performance Jennifer Lawrence has been (and I’m sorry to say this) missing, missing, missing. She’s never come close to another role even half as good and it’s not her fault…luck of the draw, inspiration is where you find it, you can’t always get what you want, etc.

George Roy Hill‘s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Jeymes Samuel‘s The Harder They Fall (Netflix, 10.22) are exercises in presentism — i.e., recreating the past according to present-day beliefs and standards.

Hill’s film, released in the summer of ’69, portrayed Butch and Sundance as cool-cat, anti-establishment heroes — i.e., flawed but lovable rogues who were into bank-robbing as a kind of irreverent hooliganism. Samuel’s film, an all-Black western, is, to go by the trailer, an ultra-violent attitude flick…a hardcore shoot-em-up that deals in ruthless blam-blam as an assertion of POC power and a general indifference to drilling anyone who stands in their way.

Hill and Samuel’s westerns are joined at the hip in the sense that they both depict train hold-ups.

The Butch Cassidy robberies (there are two) are about character-driven humor, especially in the playful relationship between Butch and Woodcock, an employee of E.H. Harriman, and casual slapstick foolery.

Not so much with the trailer for The Harder They Fall. The first significant activity is Regina King‘s “Trudy Smith” stopping a train and then casually murdering the train engineer (played by David Hight) because he’s an ornery cuss, and also, one gathers, because he’s white and has to pay for the historic toxicity of Anglo-Saxon behavior.

Fair question: The engineer is just mouthing off at Trudy — did he really need to die for this? The answer is “she felt like plugging him and that’s that…don’t you bother yourself whether it was necessary or not…our Black desperados get to drill holes in anyone they feel like drilling, and if you don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.”

Imagine if Woodcock had gotten mouthy with Butch and told him he was an immoral, train-robbing fiend, and Butch had taken offense, pulled out his six-shooter and shot Woodcock right between the eyes. The audience-comfort factor would’ve flown right out the window. Therein lies the difference between George Roy Hill and Jeymes Samuel slash Boaz Yakin.

The first 25 seconds of the new Spencer teaser is pure British royalty porn — immense wealth, bucks-up brands, perfect luggage, servants with heads bowed, perfect servings of soup or dessert or whatever.

Cut to poor, pint-sized Diana (the 5’5″ Kristen Stewart**) and the anguish she’s going through, knowing that her marriage to the snooty Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) is a total sham. Worse than that, when they finally get divorced she’ll only have a lousy $22 million settlement to fall back upon. Plus an extra $600,000 per year plus free Kensington Palace office space plus life-long access to the private royal jets, etc.

Will someone out there please comprehend and share in this woman’s terrible pain?

All this said, HE approves of Lou Reed‘s “A Perfect Day.”

Spencer will debut at the Venice Film Festival on 9.3.21. Neon will open it theatrically on 11.5.21.

** 10 inches shorter than Elizabeth Debicki.

I don’t care what these Cinemacon guys are saying — Robert Eggers‘ The Northman (out in the spring of ’22) is a 10th Century Viking revenge saga, and is sure to be intense in the usual Eggers way. But as far as I can discern it’s not some bloody-ass, tons-of-blood, piles-of-bodies Braveheart deal. It’s about a Nordic prince looking to avenge his father’s death, yes, okay, but calm down, will ya?

Last night or early today critic Guy Lodge posted a dry little remark on Twitter, which is that he’s “scared to have an opinion on Ted Lasso so safest just to keep not watching it.”

What caught my attention had nothing to do with Ted Lasso but what Lodge was unintentionally alluding to. By casually confessing in a subdued offhand way that he was scared to post a potentially unpopular opinion, Lodge was acknowledging in a roundabout fashion that “scared” is a slight thing.

He wasn’t saying that he’s scared of the woke-terror mob or that this is something he contends with from time to time, but that it might be, heh-heh.

So yes, Guy was “joking”, but there’s nothing more revealing about human nature than a joke.

Jokes are never just about “hah-hah” — deep down they’re always about fear, poking exposed nerves, humiliation and rage. They’re about “uh-oh” or “I actually despise myself at times” or “this is rather terrifying” or “dear God, save me from the firing squad.”

Being a serious critic and top-tier Variety stringer, Lodge would never admit that there are times when he’s afraid to post a dicey or nervy opinion. “Scared” is not a word that critics are allowed to have in their vocabulary or their psyche. But the fact that Lodge faintly chuckled about it tells you everything.

Critics are all about craft and personal cred — their writing skills, seasoned insights, industry knowledge and straight-from-the-shoulder judgments.

It follows that no serious critic will ever admit to being afraid to convey the “wrong” viewpoint, or to vaguely allude to something that they shouldn’t vaguely allude to. At the same time they all know what not to say, and they’re very, very careful not to trip any wires or step on any land mines.

The bottom line is that they’re all vaguely terrified these days of the woke comintern. Just look at what happened to poor Dennis Harvey — say the wrong thing or say it the wrong way, and your employer might throw you under the bus in order to curry favor with this or that big-name actress who was unhappy with a sentence or two.

Critics aren’t stupid. Every time they write a review it’s like walking on a tightwire and knowing full well that all it takes is one wrong phrase or one inelegant clause or parenthetical and they’ll soon be dodging sniper fire and even possibly be out of a job.

The promotional campaign for FX’s forthcoming Impeachment: American Crime Story (9.7, ten episodes), which focuses on the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal and is co-produced by Lewinsky, is heating up.

I’ve tapped out two or three riffs on the series. All that’s left is to watch it and decide what’s what.

There’s never been much doubt about Clinton’s in-office behavior and character in the ’80s and ’90s. In his hormonal heyday he was a total hound. And I think we all understand that the series will almost certainly get out the wooden paddle and leave serious welts. Apart from telling a good story and possibly delivering strong performances, the basic idea or goal appears to be punitive.

If on the other hand the series appears to be dealing straight cards without an agenda, I’ll be among the first to stand up and say that.

Does Clinton deserve to be slapped around by a docudrama that seems to have been informed by a prosecutorial #MeToo perspective? Well, he certainly made his own bed during his Arkansas governorship (’79 to ’81, ’83 to ’92) and his two terms as U.S. President (’93 to ’01), and now this particular chicken (based on Jeffrey Toobin’s “A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President“) has come home to roost.

A fair portrayal of this sordid saga would certainly own up to the fact that it usually takes two to tango in these situations, but I suspect (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that the series is going to contend that it takes one — a powerful manipulator with the ability to persuade less powerful persons to give him what he wants.

I’ve suspected from the get-go that the film is going to portray Lewinsky as a gullible and vulnerable innocent who was emotionally exploited and manipulated in this situation, when in fact she seems to have gone for it big-time because she knew (or certainly had reason to presume) she would get something out of the relationship.

In March 2019 Lewinsky wrote in Vanity Fair that she considered the Clinton affair to have been “a gross abuse of power”, adding that Clinton “was my boss…he was the most powerful man on the planet”.

I’m peering into a crystal ball and flash-forwarding to a theatrical showing of Steven Spielberg‘s The Fablemans, which began shooting last month.

I’m sitting in my favorite front-row seat and watching a solo scene with Gabriel LaBelle, whose “Sammy” character is based on the mid-teenaged Spielberg, a fledgling, naturally gifted filmmaker living with his family in early ’60s Arizona.

As Sammy enters his bedroom we see hazy, grayish milky streams of Arizona sunlight pouring through the partially curtained windows. And I’m thinking, “Wait a minute, this seems familiar.”

I can’t put my finger on it but I’ve seen several films with interior scenes that resemble this one.

I know that as a devoted filmgoer my life would seem…well, not “impossibly empty” but certainly diminished without grayish, alien-spaceship milky sunlight streaming through windows in the films that I see. I’ve adored this kind of cinematography for so many years. I loved it in Lincoln and I’ll love it next year when The Fablemans opens.

Thank God for small favors — at least The Fablemans isn’t being shot by Bradford Young.

Yesterday World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported that Joe Wright‘s Cyrano (UA Releasing, 12.25), an adaptation of Erica Schmidt’s Goodspeed Opera House slash Terris Theatre production in 2018, will be at Telluride next week.

As he did onstage, the great Peter Dinklage will play the lead, except in this version (as in the 2018 musical play) Cyrano’s romantic handicap is not a big nose but dwarfism.

The musically-augmented feature costars Haley Bennett, Ben Mendelsohn, Brian Tyree Henry and Kelvin Harrison Jr.

I have no dog in this. I’m just repeating what J.R. seems to believe and going “okay, fine, whatever.” JR says it’s been “half-assedly” confirmed by a person associated with the film, so I guess what I’m doing is half-assedly passing along the news. I’ve seen a text message from this source that agrees with and/or doesn’t deny the news.

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t feel Charles-and-Diana’ed out? Season #4 of The Crown (which I found rather good) has taken us through the whole, drawn-out decline of their relationship saga, chapter and verse. And now we have to endure Jackie, Part 2 — a feature-length study of Too-Short Diana’s emotional and psychological strain during a royal weekend in the country in which the decision to divorce is finalized. I don’t feel the fascination.