They dragged me into a theatre and strapped me down with a formidable leather harness. The idea was to force me to watch Shang-Chi: Legend Of The Ten Fiddles…er, Peacock Feathers…Rings, I mean. Just as the lights were dimming, a bulky, snarly guy came over, pulled out a loaded Glock and said “if you close your eyes even once or start humming so you can’t hear the dialogue, I will fire a hot slug into the back of your head, asshole…I’m not kidding.” Me: “Don’t bother with the threats — just shoot me now…just do it, asswipe.”

Pedro Almodovar‘s films are almost always sublime. Especially when focusing on woman and motherhood.

Madres paralelas (Sony Classics, 12.24) focuses on two mothers, Janis and Ana (Penelope Cruz, Milena Smit), who give birth the same day in the same hospital. They’ve both become pregnant unintentionally. Janis, somewhat older, is happy and into it. Ana, quite young, is afraid and anxious. The film follows their parallel child-rearing lives over the first two years.

Pedro’s only serious miss was I’m So Excited (’13) — every gifted artist drops the ball at one time or another.

Pedro’s next is a feature-length adaptation of A Manual for Cleaning Women, based on Lucia Berlin‘s short story collection, set to be his first English-language feature.

…that offering proof of vaccination and proof of recent negative testing should be a requirement for press and public attending their festival. Ahead of the curve!

There are those who continue to insist that Soggy Bottom, the alleged title of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Hollywood-in-the-’70s drama, is just a placeholder. The real title, which may or may not have more of a poetic ring than Soggy Bottom, will be announced down the road, they say.

But if it is just a place-holder, why did Anderson register the title with the WGA on 7.16.21? [Thanks to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy for forwarding the screen capture.] Was it because PTA hadn’t yet decided on the real title so what the hell?

What could Soggy Bottom even mean? Some kind of half-assed metaphor for the culture of the entertainment industry?

I may as well be honest and confess right now that I really, really don’t like the idea of watching Benny Safdie playing an L.A. politician based on closeted L.A. City Council member Joel Wachs. Of all the people Anderson could’ve hired to play this character, he gets a fellow director film bruh? Why? I’m generally anti-Safdie since watching the exhausting, anxiety-ridden Uncut Gems, and I didn’t care at all for Safdie’s Lennie Small-like performance in Good Time (’17).

The Hand of the Dog signifies a pair of Netflix films that (a) sound alike, (b) are debuting at the Venice Film festival on the same day (9.2), and (c) are opening within a couple of weeks of each other stateside.

Set to debut in Venice at 4:30 pm on 9.2, Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog will hit theatres on 11.17 and begin streaming on Netflix on 12.1. Screening that same day in Venice at 7:15, 7:30 and 8:30 pm, Paolo Sorrentino‘s The Hand of God will open theatrically on 11.17 and begin Netflix streaming on 12.1.

Adam McKay‘s Don’t Look Up, by the way, will hit theatres on 12.10 and begin Netflix streaming on 12.24.

If you’re up to something shady, the first rule (duhhh) is don’t leave any retrievable record or evidence of any kind — don’t discuss it in a text or email, don’t discuss it on the phone, don’t write anything down, don’t allow yourself to be recorded…keep it on the down low.

Example: There exists no letter written by Vito Corleone on letterhead stationary, and addressed to one Luca Brasi, stating the following: “Dear Luca — This will formalize my request that you immediately fly out to Los Angeles, drive into Beverly Hills and cut off the head of Khartoum, a black race horse that belongs to Jack Woltz, a studio chief. You then need to put the horses’s head into the bed of the studio chief while he’s sleeping. — cordially & warmest regards, Vito Corleone — p.s. Tom Hagen, who is fully involved in this horse murder, tells me that Woltz is an early riser so act accordingly.”

Do the mild-mannered voters in this state realize that if Gavin Newsom is recalled and some rightie like Larry Elder becomes governor, that Elder could appoint a Republican Senator to the U.S. Senate if, God forbid, Sen. Diane Feinstein‘s health were to fail, and thereby tip the balance of power? I dropped my ballot off today — no recall, Newsom stays, don’t be silly.

If they’d used Laurence Harvey crazy-eyes ad art in ’62, audiences would have expected some kind of Hammer horror film. Nowadays people understand weirdness…they know that schizo wacko and subdued freak-outs are commonplace among average people, but they wouldn’t have been able to accept this in the JFK era. The only people who had done acid in ’62 were Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Cary Grant and a few others.

Remember Next Goal Wins, the Taika Watiti-directed sports drama, based on the same-titled documentary from 2014, about Dutch-American football coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) turning the low-rated American Samoa national team into groovers and hot-shots?

Principal photography began in November 2019 (a year before the Trump-Biden election) and wrapped in January 2020 (ten months before same). Then the pandemic hit in March and the train ground to a halt. Then along came 2021 and the glorious vaccines, and the train still didn’t move. It now appears that Next Goal Wins will open sometime in ’22, probably in the late winter or spring.

The only films that Searchlight has coming out this year are Michael Showalter‘s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch and Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley.

Next Goal Wins costars Elisabeth Moss and…uhm, Armie Hammer.

I like a good come-from-behind sports film as much as the next guy. What’s the problem?

If you’re an Everly Brothers fan and you know the big ’50s tunes (’57’s “Bye Bye Love” to ’60’s “Cathy’s Clown”), you immediately think of the velvety harmonies. And you always say to yourself “one of them, a tenor, sang the melody, and the other sang the high parts.”

The tenor, for those who don’t know or never cared, was Don Everly, the dark-haired older brother who died yesterday (Saturday, 8.21) at age 84. The soprano with the lighter-colored hair and the pouty baby face was Phil Everly, who passed in 2014.

Don was a lifelong liberal who supported Hilary Clinton in ’16; Phil was an arch-conservative who almost certainly voted against Obama and probably would’ve voted for Trump. Yeesh.

But in 90% of today’s obits, it’s never plainly stated that Don was the dark-haired melody guy. Even though hundreds of thousands are muttering to themselves “was Don the deeper voiced guy or the higher-voiced one?” That’s because many obit writers are careless and asleep at the wheel. You also have to dig and dig to see which Everly was a sensible liberal and which one wasn’t. I guarantee that Don Everly was not a rabid wokester.

All the Everly Brothers songs except one were about girlfriends — longing, heartache or some other form of mild consternation. The one slight standout was “Cathy’s Clown,” which about humiliation and bitterness.

I’ve seen most of the significant Robin Hood features except one: Ken Annakin‘s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (’52), produced by Walt Disney and starring Richard Todd, Joan Rice, Peter Finch (!), James Robertson Justice, etc.

It was reasonably well reviewed, reasonably profitable and — this is important — shot in three–strip Technicolor. It’s therefore odd that Disney has never produced a Bluray version or even an HD streamer.

Disney issued a Laserdisc in ’92, a VHS tape in ’94 (the Walt Disney’s Studio Film Collection) and a limited Disney Movie Club DVD in July ’06. All versions were mastered boxy — either 1.33:1 or 1.37:1.

There’s no question that the all-time best is still Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn‘s The Adventures of Robin Hood (’38), and the absolute, all-time reprehensible worst is the most recent — Otto Bathurst‘s Robin Hood (’18) with Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornan, et. al.

I’ve got Kevin Costner‘s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (’91) tied with Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood (’10) for second place. Mel Brooks‘ Robin Hood: Men In Tights (’91) ranks third. I’ve never seen Douglas Fairbanks‘ 1922 silent version.