Honestly? I’d much rather see a smart, sexy, well-layered, in-depth documentary about the late Lou Reed than a doc about the Velvet Underground. Because all my life I’ve had to deal with John Cale‘s jagged, screechy-ass electric violin, and while I know (and respect the fact) that Cale’s tonally abrasive playing was an essential component in the Velvet Underground sound, it always bothered me regardless.

Telepathic HE to Cale while listening to “Venus in Furs”: “Yeah, I get it, man…you’re a brilliant string-saw, an avant garde musician who’s moved past the tired milquetoast game of trying to comfort or ear-massage your listeners…but every now and then I wish I could shut you up, no offense.”

I loved the Velvets because of Reed and Nico and most of the songs, but I liked Reed a lot more when he was free of Cale–screech and began cutting his own albums with David Bowie, Mick Ronson and his own musicians — Transformer, Berlin, Sally Can’t Dance, Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, Coney Island Baby, Street Hassle, Magic and Loss.

I’m therefore a little bit sorry that Todd Haynes‘ The Velvet Underground doc, which premiered Wednesday night in Cannes, allegedly focuses a bit more on Cale than on Reed. Or at least, it does according to Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman. That’s unfortunate, if true.

Gleiberman: “Lou the subversive guitar bad boy and Cale the debonair experimentalist came together like an acid and a base. The drone that Cale would listen to became part of the DNA of the Velvets — you can hear it in the ominous sawing viola of ‘Venus in Furs,’ the majestic cacophony of ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties.’

“Yet as great and defining as those songs are, it’s hard to shake the feeling that The Velvet Underground overstates the John Cale side of the equation. The film spends close to an hour reveling in the New York bohemian soil out of which the Velvets sprung. If this were a four-hour, long-form doc (which the subject deserves), I could see that, but Haynes, I think, also views John Cale as a metaphor for the band’s ‘purity.’ Their transcendent first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, is unthinkable without him, yet he’s the one whose story the documentary feels organized around.

“And that’s not just because Cale (now 79, with floppy silver hair) is interviewed at length while Reed, who died in 2013, couldn’t be. No, it’s as if Haynes wanted the Velvets to be an art band even more than he wanted them to be a rock ‘n’ roll band.”

A prequel to the deeply loathed Kingsman: The Secret Service (’14) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (’17), The King’s Man is a fresh serving of bored derring do, bland British attitude and bullshit CG swill from director-cowriter Matthew Vaughan and screenwriter Karl Gajdusek. The costars are Harris Dickinson (the new guy), Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou and Charles Dance — each one bending over for the money and nothing else.

Originally slated to open on 11.15.19, or roughly a year before the 2020 election, The King’s Man (20th Century Studios) will open on 12.22.21. HE suggestion: What about December ’22?

It’s now just after 10:30 pm Cannes time, and World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, whose Montreal-to-Nice flight landed earlier today, reports that “nothing substantial has screened” in his orbit.

One seasoned know-it-all was impressed with Sophie Marceau‘s lead performance in Francois Ozon‘s Everything Went Fine but otherwise found it “a little too emotionally manipulative.”

Ruimy adds that Nadav Lapid‘s Ahed’s Knee “is a big whatever.”

A black-tie screening of Todd Haynes‘ The Velvet Underground (doc) is currently playing for a sea of swells.

Playing out-of-competition tomorrow (Thursday, 7.8) are Andrea Arnold‘s Cow (Debussy — a doc) and Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater (Grand Lumiere). Paul Verhoeven‘s Benedetta screens Friday and Saturday.

View from the top of the Palais steps, with Taylor Hackford and Helen Mirren posing down below, just ahead of the Cannes world premiere of Todd Haynes’ doc THE VELVET UNDERGROUND… pic.twitter.com/RBy0MIHHdA

— Scott Feinberg @ Cannes (@ScottFeinberg) July 7, 2021

Hollywood Elsewhere salutes Robert Downey Sr., the once-legendary director of iconoclastic, guerilla-style, counter-culture stoner classics like Putney Swope (’69) — the deadpan Madison Ave. comedy that put Downey on the map — and Greaser’s Palace (’72), an absurdist western comedy about the second coming of Christ. [The entire film is embedded after the jump.]

Not to mention lesser Downey efforts like Chafed Elbows, Pound, an adaptation of David Rabe‘s Sticks and Bones, Up The Academy, Too Much Sun and Hugo Pool.

Downey died in his sleep earlier today (7.7) at his Manhattan home. He was 85.

I interviewed Downey 24 and 1/2 years ago during the ’97 Sundance Film Festival, where Hugo Pool had its big debut. Nobody thought it was very good (including Downey Sr. himself), but the man was such a legend that all the journalists wanted to chat with him. My sit-down happened at a Hugo Pool party at a handsome chalet-type home in Park City, sometime in the mid to late evening. Downey Sr. was 61 at the time and brimming with personality — fleet, funny and wise. (And totally white-haired.) I liked him immediately, and felt honored to have been given my 20 minutes.

It can’t be over-emphasized what a huge counter-cultural deal Putney Swope was when it first broke; ditto Greaser’s Palace three years later. I’m not saying these films don’t “work” according to classic or present-day sensibilities, but they were much funnier and significantly enhanced if you were ripped.

Here’s a pretty good q & a (“Six Decades of Robert Downey Sr.“) from Interview‘s Kaleem Aftab, posted on 12.8.14.

100% Martin Riggs: “Whaddaya wanna hear, man? Do ya wanna hear that sometimes I think about eatin’ a bullet? Hah? Well, I do. I even got a special one for the occasion with a hollow point…look. Make sure it blows the back of my goddam head off, do the job right.”

The following passage is 50% Riggs and 50% me (i.e., Jeffrey Wells) right now: “Every single day I wake up and I think of a reason not to do it, every single day. And you know why I don’t do it? It’s gonna make you laugh. You know why I don’t do it? The job. Doin’ the job. And that’s the reason.”

Every now and then Chris Gore seems to be on the verge of saying “yes, they’re a prison camp…of course they are!” But he always wusses out or, you know, holds back. Because he’s still invested in the things that moved him as a kid and a teenager. Which, I suppose, also describes me to some extent.

“Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” is available on Kindle for $4.99.

…that a fair-sized percentage of the Republicans refusing the vaccine will succumb to the Delta variant and perhaps…move on the next realm? C’mon, what’s so bad about that? They’re monsters, they’re lunatics, they’re prolonging the pandemic…fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

If you haven’t yet, please get vaccinated. It’s the best way to keep yourself and your loved ones safe from the dangerous new COVID-19 variants.

Let’s finish this virus once and for all. pic.twitter.com/wMfP6yAnFV

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 7, 2021

Leos Carax’s musical collaboration with the Mael brothers is “an audacious folly that comes across as grandiose and joyless” — Screen Daily‘s Jonathan Romney.

I’m sorry but I don’t wholly disagree with the sixth paragraph in a 7.5 USA Today op-ed piece. It pains me to acknowledge that it was written by Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative Millennial who’s buddied up with Tucker Carlson and the vile Mark Meadows. I hate Trump-allied righties for the most part, but the sixth paragraph has validity.

Here’s Rufo in the 6.18 New Yorker:

“‘Political correctness’ is a dated term and, more importantly, doesn’t apply anymore. It’s not that elites are enforcing a set of manners and cultural limits — they’re seeking to reengineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race. It’s much more invasive than mere ‘correctness,’ which is a mechanism of social control, but not the heart of what’s happening.

“The other frames are wrong, too: ‘cancel culture’ is a vacuous term and doesn’t translate into a political program; ‘woke’ is a good epithet, but it’s too broad, too terminal, too easily brushed aside. ‘Critical race theory’ is the perfect villain. Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as ‘creative’ rather than ‘critical,’ ‘individual’ rather than ‘racial,’ ‘practical’ rather than ‘theoretical.’

“Strung together, the phrase ‘critical race theory’ connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American.And it’s not an externally applied pejorative. Instead, it’s the label the critical race theorists chose themselves.”

The nub of Rufo’s rebuttal begin at 6:45, and they partly stem from Anastasia Higginbotham‘s “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness“, the controversial children’s book.