Here’s the newest and spiffiest Telluride rundown from World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy. There are two or three titles that he hasn’t been able to nail down, but there are fairly safe bets. I remain heartbroken that Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho isn’t included; ditto The Many Saints of Newark. I mentioned yesterday that I’m jubilant about Dune not playing there. I’ve placed an HE after films of special interest.

It’s a five-day festival this time (9.2 through 9.6) but really four and a half — I usually average about three films per day (you can’t just see them — you also have to write about them) and occasionally four. Out of 30 films I might get around to seeing 16 or 18, depending on the breaks. One of the big titles is screening two or three times over the next few days for hotshot media types. I asked yesterday if I could please attend one of the showings — the rep couldn’t even be bothered to politely decline. Classy.

“C’mon C’mon” (Mike Mills) / HE
“The Power of Dog” (Jane Campion) / HE
“Spencer” (Pablo Larrain) / HE (although I can sense it’s going to be a slog)
“King Richard” (Reinaldo Marcus Green) / HE
“The Card Counter” (Paul Schrader) / HE
“The Hand of God” (Paolo Sorrentino) / HE
“The Lost Daughter” (Maggie Gyllenhaal) / HE
“The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” (Will Sharpe)
“Encounter” (Michael Pearce)
“The French Dispatch” (Wes Anderson) / HE
“The Velvet Underground” (Todd Haynes)…allegedly too enthralled with John Cale.
“Vortex” (Gaspar Noe)
“Passing” (Rebecca Hall) / HE (although the premise is flat-out unbelievable)
“Flee” (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
”Red Rocket” (Sean Baker) / HE
“Bergman Island” (Mia Hansen-Love)
“A Hero” (Asghar Farhadi) / HE
“Petite Maman” (Celine Sciamma)
“Becoming Cousteau” (Liz Garbus) / HE
“The Rescue” (E. Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin)
“A Chiara” (Jonas Carpignano)
“The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation” (Avi Mograbi)
“Prayers for the Stolen” (Tatiana Huezo)
“Unclenching the Fists” (Kira Kovalenko)
“Julia” (Cohen/West)
“Muhammad Ali” (Ken Burns)…this can wait.
“Three Minutes – A Lengthening” (Bianca Stigter)

And all I can do is drop to my knees, shed a tear and say “Jesus, Mary and Joseph in heaven…THANK GOD!”

A 67 or 68-year-old woman, identified in court papers as “J.C.”, has filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against Bob Dylan, alleging that the singer-songwriter sexually abused her in 1965, when she was 12 years old and Dylan was 24.

The suit alleges that Dylan gave her drugs and alcohol 56 years ago, and established an emotional connection that allowed him to sexually abuse her for a six-week period between April and May 1965. It alleges that Dylan used threats of physical violence, “leaving her emotionally scarred and psychologically damaged to this day.” Some of the abuse is alleged to have occurred at the Hotel Chelsea in New York.

A schedule of Dylan’s professional engagements posted earlier today by Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman indicates Dylan was touring in England between 4.26.65 and 6.2.65. If verified, the claim about sexual abuse of “J.C.” in May ’65 in New York City seems questionable.

Variety‘s Gene Maddaus: “The woman filed suit under New York’s Child Victims Act, the 2019 law that opened a two-year period during which the ordinary statute of limitations was suspended for claims of child sexual abuse.

“The deadline to file such suit fell on Saturday, 8.14, and the suit against Dylan was filed on the evening of Friday, 8.13.

“The suit alleges claims of assault, battery, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The claim was filed by attorneys Daniel Isaacs and Peter Gleason.”

My honest view of the forthcoming K cover for their Citizen Kane 4K disc (11.23.21) is that it’s kinda dull. It certainly isn’t what any honest designer would call “oh, wow.”

Serious question: Which other films could be represented by a single letter on a Bluray cover? Besides Costa Gavras‘ Z, I mean. If Criterion wanted to go minimalist with a North by Northwest 4K disc, they could use a NXNW…right? They could go with a big M for a Manchurian Candidate jacket cover, I suppose. Or a big R for a Raider of the Lost Ark cover.

But you know what? Fuck this idea. You could decide to single-letter anything. It’s a lame concept.

The first minimalist one-letter logo was the trapezoid N for NBC, which was used between ’76 and ’79.

Before Geena Davis was cast as catcher and assistant manager Dorothy “Dottie” Hinson in A League of Their Own, Debra Winger had the role. In an 8.13 Telegraph interview, Winger says that she trained hard and took the part seriously, but decided to quit when director Penny Marshall cast Madonna as centerfielder Mae “All the Way” Mordabito.

Winger interpreted the Madonna casting as a sign that Marshall intended to make an insubstantial “Elvis film.”

If you ask me Winger was being a bit harsh in her assessment of the then-30-year-old pop singer and sometime actress. I had seen Madonna in the original B’way production of David Mamet‘s Speed-The-Plow in ’88, and while it was obvious that she wasn’t a gifted actress she wasn’t half bad. Another way of putting it is that Madonna held her own as well as she could. She certainly didn’t embarass herself of let down her costars, Joe Mantegna and Ron Silver.

Based on this performance alone, Madonna deserved at least a modicum of respect from Winger.

Winger’s final assessment of League: “As entertaining as [the final film] was, you don’t walk away going ‘Wow, those women did that.’ You kind of go ‘Is that true?’”

Three or four thoughts come to mind in the wake of Variety‘s Joe Otterson reporting that a series adaptation of Field of Dreams has been ordered straight-to-series at Peacock, with Michael Schur serving as writer and executive producer.

Question #1: What is the difference between shameless and shameful? Or do both equally apply in this instance?

Question #2: The notion of expanding a perfectly made film (i.e., one with a beginning, middle and an end within the span of 107 minutes) into a series is hideous, of course. By this I mean conceptually hideous. On a line-by-line, scene-by-scene, episode=by-episode basis, the hideousness of such a series could potentially be off the charts.

Question 3: Phil Alden Robinson‘s 1989 original (based on W.P. kinsella‘s “Shoeless Joe”) imagined the return of several great players from baseball’s early days — Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Buck Weaver, Chick Gandil (but not Ty Cobb!). As long as we’re digging in for a series, how about bringing back a more recent roster of legendary players — Willie Mays, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Maury Wills, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Stan Musial, Roger Maris, Hoyt Wilhelm, Curt Flood, Warren Spahn, et. al.?

Question #4: And what about the creation of two cornfield ghost teams so they could play each other? Or four teams? Or a whole league’s worth? Wouldn’t every dead baseball player worth his salt want to get in on this?

Otterson reports that Schur’s Peaccock series will “reimagine the mixture of family, baseball, Iowa and magic that makes the movie so enduring and beloved.”

Now that you mention it, let’s digitally de-age and reconstitute Burt Lancaster‘s Moonlight Graham back to his late 20s or early 30s, move him to Dyersville, have him play on a regular basis.

This Al Jazeera video of Taliban cadres inside the now-abandoned Kabul presidential quarters reminds me of the 1.6 insurrectionists roaming around inside the U.S. Capitol building (or lounging around inside Nancy Pelosi‘s office) on 1.6.21. They sure do love their beards and turbans and automatic weapons, don’t they? Keep those fingers on the triggers, guys!

Bennett Miller‘s Capote cost $7 million to make, and earned just shy of $50 million worldwide. I’d forgotten that. It made $28,750,530 domestic, $21,173,549 overseas for an exact total of $49,924,079.

I was visiting Miller’s lower Manhattan loft apartment around the same time, maybe a few weeks hence…I forget exactly when. But I distinctly recall Bennett showing me some original Richard Avdeon contact sheet photos of Truman Capote, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, and for whatever reason Bennett happened to call Phillip Seymour Hoffman about something, and as he was saying goodbye he called him “Philly.”

I loved the idea of a distinguished hotshot actor being called Philly, and so I used it myself a few weeks later. I knew it was inappropriate to project an attitude of informal affection with a guy I didn’t know at all first-hand, but I couldn’t resist. I was immediately bitch-slapped, reprimanded, challenged, castigated, stomach-punched, dumped on, stabbed, karate-chopped, slashed and burned….”How dare you call him that? Who the hell do you think you are, some kind of insider?…soak yourself with gasoline and light yourself on fire!”

HE review, posted three or four weeks before the 9.30.05 opening: “I’m taken with Capote partly because it’s about a writer (Truman Capote) and the sometimes horrendously difficult process that goes into creating a first-rate piece of writing, and especially the various seductions and deceptions that all writers need to administer with skill and finesse to get a source to really cough up.

“And it’s about how this gamesmanship sometimes leads to emotional conflict and self-doubt and yet, when it pays off, a sense of tremendous satisfaction and even tranquility. I’ve been down this road, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

“I’m also convinced that Capote is exceptional on its own terms. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year so far — entertaining and also fascinating, quiet and low-key but never boring and frequently riveting, economical but fully stated, and wonderfully confident and relaxed in its own skin.

“And it delivers, in Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Capote, one of the most affecting emotional rides I’ve taken in this or any other year…a ride that’s full of undercurrents and feelings that are almost always in conflict (and which reveal conflict within Capote-the-character), and is about hurting this way and also that way and how these different woundings combine in Truman Capote to form a kind of perfect emotional storm.

“It’s finally about a writer initially playing the game but eventually the game turning around and playing him.

“Hoffman is right at the top of my list right now — he’s the guy to beat in the Best Actor category. Anyone who’s seen Capote and says he’s not in this position is averse to calling a spade a spade.