…if Cheech Marin was the star rather than a supporting player.

All you need to know is that The War With Grandpa (101 Studios, 10.9) was directed by Tim Hill (The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On The Run, Alvin and the Chipmunks). That tells you absolutely everything.

HE to Edward Snowden, Oliver Stone (email sent a couple of hours ago): Edward & Oliver — Can you guys give me a quote about this just-breaking Trump/Snowden story, which hints that a pardon may be in the offing? Would a pardon from an obese sociopathic crime boss make it any less of a desirable thing from your perspectives?

A filmmaker friend sent me into a funk this morning. He managed this feat by declaring that he loves Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie, and insisting that it’s a “fantastic” film. My first reaction was “dear God.” My second reaction was to send him the following:

“No one is more passionate about film and other things than yourself, but Marnie? Please name one aspect of Marnie that truly and consistently works, in your view. Name one aspect that you regard as truly ‘fantastic.’

“Tippi Hedren delivered the brittle and repressed, but she couldn’t deliver the eros — it just wasn’t there. Hitchcock never admitted this in so many words, but he was looking to turn audiences on with Marnie. It’s a film about repression, constipation and memory panic, but he wanted Hedren to deliver ‘the volcano’, as he once said. But she couldn’t.

“Grace Kelly, whom Hitch had originally cast, might have succeeded in this regard.

“Those stilted scenes with her deranged mother (Louise Latham), that deadly on-the-nose dialogue, those absurd flashes of red, those awful process shots when Hedren is riding her horse, those almost comically fake backdrop paintings by Albert Whitlock, etc.

“You’re basically stuck with a lead actress who can never be healthy, never trust anyone, never have great sex, never breathe easy.

“I like Sean Connery’s performance, the Bernard Herrmann score, the suspenseful Act One robbery sequence.

“I appreciate that Marnie is as much about Hitchcock self-portraiture as Vertigo was. In actuality Hitch was basically Connery’s “Mark Rutland” character, an authority figure using power and pressure to get Marnie/Hedren to sleep with him. Rutland and Vertigo‘s Scotty Ferguson are both rooted in a pervy, twisted psychology. And their respective lead females are liars, fakers and unreliable narrators.

“The bottom line? Hitch adored his ice queens (‘There are hills in that thar gold’) but at the end of the day his main erotic fixation was upon food.”

First of all, how is it Friday already? I thought today was Thursday or possibly even Wednesday.

Secondly, in a podcast released today President Barack Obama told former campaign manager David Plouffe that Orange Plague is trying to “actively kneecap” the postal service” to affect mail-in voting in the 2020 election.

Third, Trump said yesterday that he’s against an emergency bailout for the U.S. Postal Service because “he wants to restrict how many Americans can vote by mail, putting at risk the nation’s ability to administer the Nov. 3 elections,” per an 8.13 Washington Post story.

And fourth, the Post story also stated that the Trump campaign and RNC “are reportedly working on a comprehensive legal strategy to challenge the election after Nov. 3.”

On this, the occasion of Steve Martin‘s 75th birthday, I’m declaring that among my five favorite Martin performances only one could be called “broad” or “silly” — the All Of Me attorney with the split personality. The other four are the ill-fated loser in Herbert Ross‘s Pennies From Heaven (’81), the Larry Gordon-ish film producer in Lawrence Kasdan‘s Grand Canyon, “Neal Page” in John Hughes‘ Planes, Trains and Automobiles and the low-key con man in David Mamet‘s The Spanish Prisoner,

Honestly? I think his Spanish Prisoner guy might be my all-time favorite. Because I’ve always believed each and very word he says in that film, and yet the character is lying all the time. I’m sorry but I don’t like his silly stuff for the most part, and I don’t care that much for the domestic family comedies. I don’t know why I can’t remember much from Roxanne but I can’t.

Martin in Prisoner: “One thing my father taught me about business. Always do business as if the person you’re doing business with is trying to screw you. Because most likely they are. And if they’re not, you can be pleasantly surprised”

On this, the 121st anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock‘s birth, my revised list of his 12 most enjoyable and finely crafted films: (1) Notorious, (2) Vertigo, (3) North by Northwest, (4) Psycho, (5) Strangers on a Train, (6) Rear Window, (7) Lifeboat (propelled by Tallulah Bankhead and Walter Slezak), (8) To Catch A Thief, (9) The Man Who Knew Too Much (’56 version, and despite the agonizing, overly emotional performance by Doris Day), (10) Shadow of a Doubt, (11) I Confess and (12) Foreign Correspondent.

I couldn’t include The Birds (despite my love for the Bodega Bay diner scene) because of the ghastly performances by those awful school kids. I’m sorry but Suspicion (horrible ending), The 39 Steps and Rope have also been wilting on the vine.

And don’t even mention Marnie — The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody and a few equally perverse fans of this 1964 film had their fun a few years ago, but that vogue is over.

One of the greatest HE thread comments of all time, from “brenkilco”, stated that Brody’s determined fraternity of admirers is “insidious and frightening…they’re just like ISIS except instead of beheading people they like Marnie.”

Seconds after I began watching this trailer for Netflix’s Away, a 10-episode series about a long and difficult mission to Mars…right away I was thinking “I really don’t give a shit about Hillary Swank‘s feelings about leaving her teary-eyed daughter (Talitha Bateman) and husband (Josh Charles) behind for three years…please spare me the sorrow and the ‘I miss you and love you’ torture and the tinkling piano and all the rest of that ‘family is the only thing that matters’ crap…seriously.”

I hated Brian DePalma‘s Mission to Mars, but I’d rather re-watch that failure than this new thing.

Based on a December 2014 Esquire article by Chris Jones, Away was created by Andrew Hinderaker (Penny Dreadful) and exec produced by Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights), Matt Reeves, Adam Kassan and Ed Zwick. Zwick directed the pilot episode. I haven’t watched a minute of this miniseries and I already hate it with a passion.

Charles’ hubby apparently suffers some kind of brain aneuryism — I can only hope that he dies.

The three hottest attractions of the forthcoming, COVID-threatened NY Film Festival (Friday, 9.25 thru Sunday, 10.11) aren’t exactly award-season rocket fuel — be honest.

The opening night attraction is Steve McQueen‘s Lover’s Rock, an ’80s-era film about a blend of young lovers (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, Michael Ward) and music at a blues party…whatever that suggests or amounts to.

Lover’s Rock (apparently the strange apostrophe placement is correct) was cowritten by McQueen and Courttia Newland. Rock is one of three films from McQueen’s Small Axe anthology that will screen at NYFF. The other two are Mangrove, about an actual 1970 clash between black activists and London fuzz, and Red, White, and Blue, based on the story of Leroy Logan (John Boyega) who joined the police force after seeing his father assaulted by cops.

The centerpiece attraction, as previously reported, is Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland, a sad-eyed-lady-of-the-highway film with Frances McDormand.

The closing-night attraction is Azazel Jacobs‘ French Exit, an allegedly surreal comedy about “a close-to-penniless widow moving to Paris with her son and cat, who also happens to be her reincarnated husband.” Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Danielle Macdonald and Imogen Poots costar.

from Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland — the pink dusky sky and the brightly glowing lantern are ravishing.

Michelle Peiffer, Lucas Hedges in French Exit, which was only PARTLY filmed in Paris with the remainder in Montreal.

From Michael Cohen’s opening essay in “Disloyal,” his forthcoming book about having served as Donald Trump‘s special attorney, close counsel, hatchetman and bagman:

“I urge you to really consider that fact: Trump has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them.

“I was the one who most encouraged him to run for president in 2011, and then again in 2015, carefully orchestrating the famous trip down the escalator in Trump Tower for him to announce his candidacy. When Trump wanted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a secret back channel, I was tasked with making the connection in my Keystone Cop fashion. I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power.

“From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch-and-kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise — I was an active and eager participant.”

“Disloyal” will be selling for $40 a copy — $32 and change if you pre-order.

A saga of scurvy redneck trash in the Southern Ohio and West Virginia regions, The Devil All The Time (9.16) is the first of two 2020 Netflix features that will explore the low-rent depravity of rural yokels over a time span of a couple of decades (in this instance the late ’40s to mid ’60s).

The second Netflix film in this vein is Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy, which explores three generations of an Appalachian family, spanning between the ’80s and the aughts.

Directed and co-written by Antonio Campos (Simon Killer, Christine), Devil costars Tom Holland (whom I kind of half-dislike for his Spider-Man bullshit), Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Mia Wasikowska and Robert (“RBatz”) Pattinson.

In his 7.23.11 review of Donald Pollock’s same-titled novel, The Oregonian‘s Jeff Baker said that it “reads as if the love child of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner was captured by Cormac McCarthy, kept in a cage out back and forced to consume nothing but onion rings, Oxycontin and Terrence Malick‘s Badlands.”

22 years ago, man. A program of procreative racial deconstruction, you bet. And if you prefer milk-fed Farmer’s Daughters or curvy blonde Russian types, you must be LexG or somebody in that realm…right?

Awards Circuit‘s Clayton Davis has been running around the award-season mulberry bush for 15 years, and now he’s ridden that horse into a new gig as Variety‘s film awards editor — the same position held by Kris Tapley until he left the trade publication 17 months ago, and more or less same job held down by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg.

A sharply observant, politically fleet-footed type of guy (and who can blame him in this current climate of political terror?), Davis will begin his Variety duties as of Sept. 1.

Davis will deliver the usual award-season razzmatazz and soft-shoe tap dance — racetrack odds on various Oscar contenders, predictions about this and that, softball interviews, assessments of the intrinsic or historic value of you-name-it and who-the-fuck-knows?, etc.

Variety film-awards editor Clayton Davis

The art of award-season coverage was aptly summed up by Laurence Olivier in a third-act line to Jean Simmons in Spartacus: “You tread the line between truth and insult with the skill of a mountain goat!” (Or, if you will, the line between truth and flattery.) Most showbiz journos and columnists never approach that line, much less tread it. They like to hang in the shade.

No offense and due respect but Davis will almost certainly never use the term “Ma Bumblefuck” as a nickname for Glenn Close‘s “Mamaw” character in Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy. (The term was coined by Hollywood Elsewhere on 2.24.20.) Variety doesn’t want that, and that’s not who Davis is.

Another likelihood: If West Side Story‘s Ansel Elgort is once again attacked by Twitter wolves over the non-issue of having insensitively cut things off with “Gabby” after a brief romantic fling, Davis isn’t likely to stand up and call bullshit like Sasha Stone did on 6.21.20, and like I did on on 6.19.

Davis now stands side by side with Variety‘s award-season team — the longstanding Tim Gray, deputy awards and features editor Jenelle Riley, senior editor and red carpet guy Mark Malkin, and Artisans editor Jazz Tangcay.