I somehow can’t accept that the great Ang Lee, a serious filmmaker and two-time Oscar-winner, has made a problematic action film. Despite, I realize, ample evidence that says I’m in denial — namely a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 41% plus an even-worse Metacritic tally of 33%. I swear to God you can feel the resignation wafting out of Paramount publicity right now, and yet Hollywood Elsewhere wants to like it…really! My soft spot for Gemini Man is a serious admiration for high-frame-rate cinematography. I didn’t attend the 10.2 Grove screening, and I can’t be at Monday’s all-media because of a conflict. My only shot is the Sunday evening premiere. I understand that Gemini Man has issues, but maybe on some level they aren’t so bad.

Hollywood Elsewhere last attended the Middleburg Film Festival in 2015 — i.e, the Spotlight year. I’m happy to announce that I’ll be returning for this year’s festival between Thursday, 10.17 and Sunday, 10.20, and that Tatyana will join.

An LAX-to-Dulles red eye on Wednesday night (no sleep to speak of), and then a three-and-a-half-day stay at the five-star Salamander Inn. We expect to catch nine or ten films, minimum. And then a two-and-a-half day roam-around in the nation’s capital, and then a flight back to Los Angeles on Tuesday evening, 10.22.

The Middleburg slate is lively, necessary, and all-encompassing. The Irishman, Ford v, Ferrari, The Cave, The Capote Tapes, Clemency, Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life, Honey Boy, JoJo Rabbit, Just Mercy, Knives Out, Marriage Story, Motherless Brooklyn, Parasite, The Traitor, The Truth, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Report, Varda by Agnes, Waves plus panel discussions plus leisurely nature strolls and some roam-around time in historic Middleburg.

Tatyana and I would be delighted to pay $135 each for a clop-clop horse ride along a nice woodsy trail. Whether we’ll actually do that is another matter.

After last weekend’s Joker premiere screening I heard a couple of predictions that at least a portion of the Joe and Jane Popcorn community might find it too unsettling, too severe, too fuck-all. Because it doesn’t deliver the usual safe spaces and comfort zones, and by the finale seems to more or less endorse the idea of mass anarchic rebellion in the streets. It leaves you with no one to care for or identify with except loony Arthur Fleck. Obviously not your dad’s D.C. movie.

HE to comment-thread gang who saw it last night or earlier today: What was the after-aroma in the room as everyone was filing out? Too heavy-creepy? A mad, daring bull’s-eye? Somewhere in between? The drag-assers at CinemaScore haven’t posted a grade yet.

Last night’s $13 million take apparently means a $90 million tally by Sunday evening. Nobody cares about the carpings by wokester critics. Joker is an essential activity for the next 60 hours.

Sam Mendes‘ 1917, one of three presumed Best Picture heavy-hitters yet to be screened (along with Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women and Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell), will probably have its big peek-out during AFI Fest 2019 (11.14 to 11.21).

Diahann Carroll, the respected actress and racial-barrier pathfinder, has passed at age 84. When I heard the news I immediately flashed to her Tony-award-winning role in Richard Rodgers‘ No Strings, a 1962 stage musical in which she played Richard Kiley‘s lover — regarded at the time as a big barrier-breaking deal.

Six years later Carroll broke another barrier in Julia (’68 to ’71), a TV series about a nurse and her son — the first time that a woman of color had played a non-servant role on TV. (I know, I know.) The series was criticized at the time for presenting an unrealistic, overly sanitized portrait of a single black mom. Wiki excerpt: Gil Scott-Heron‘s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (’71) “referred to Julia in the same breath as Bullwinkle, implying that the character was something of a cartoon.”

Carroll was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Claudine (’74), as another single mother (of six!) who finds romance in Harlem with a sanitation engineer (James Earl Jones).

After shooting in the NYC-New Jersey area for 11 weeks, Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story wrapped a week ago — on 9.27.19. The Daily Mail posted the below video today (10.4). Yes, that’s Spike Lee paying a visit.

HE continues to maintain two things:

(1) It was probably a bad idea to remake West Side Story for 2020 audiences. The original idea came from early to mid ’50s NYC gang culture, and the original B’way stage play opened in 1957 — 62 years ago. The 1961 film version was derided up and down for being glossy and inauthentic. Spielberg will almost certainly deliver a more realistic ’50s milieu, but the basic, strongly emotional song-and-ballet material probably won’t connect with under-35s, who will probably regard it at arm’s length. Romeo and Juliet is eternal, but West Side Story has essentially become a nostalgic timepiece for boomers;

(2) If a single young actor (either a Jet or a Shark) says “daddy-o”, West Side Story will collapse like a house of cards.

Incidentally: It’s nobody’s business if costars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler have developed an off-screen relationship of some kind. (Or not.)

There are three kinds of people in this world, as defined by the words “Moulin Rouge.” The first kind are typical average Joes with disposable income who say “yeah, Moulin Rouge…the next time we go to Paris let’s pay a visit…I hear it’s a lot of fun.” The second kind are people who saw the 18 year-old Baz Luhrman musical version with Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor, in part because they’d heard of the dance number scored to “Lady Marmalade.” The third kind (and there are very few of us left) say “oh, wow….John Huston’s 1952 film with Jose Ferrer as Toulouse Lautrec, which is noteworthy for Oswald Morris‘s misty, rose-tinted, somewhat subdued color cinematography!”

The Technicolor execs back in Hollywood didn’t like Huston’s idea because the colors wouldn’t be strong and vivid enough. Huston wanted the film “to look as if Lautrec had painted it,” or words to that effect. Huston and Morris collaborated on two other color experiment films — Moby Dick (’56), for which they created a grayish black-and-white color, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (’67), which they tinted with a sickly mixture of pink and gold.

In a video attached to Marc Malkin‘s 10.3 Variety piece about A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Tom Hanks offers the following observation about the late Fred Rogers, whom Hanks plays in the film:

“I do not have the skill that Fred had, which was to meet somebody and make it seem as though as if they’re the most important person in the world. Everybody that we met at KQED…they all said that ‘when you talked to Fred, you felt as though you were the most important person in the world.'”

Excuse me, but Hanks is talking about an elementary Hollywood skill that all successful actors are highly efficient at using for their personal benefit. It’s probably the second most essential skill in the game of creating a successful acting career, after knowing how to act. Many of them do it like absolute samurai pros.

I’ve been the recipient of this special kind of attention hundreds of times. Mostly from actors but sometimes from directors or producers. They look right into your soul and convey that you’re a special, fascinating, world-class person, and that your thoughts on whatever topic are truly spellbinding.

You know it’s an act, of course, but you can’t help feeling charmed and flattered.

Hanks is one of the absolute Zen masters of this routine. He’s one of the most likable human beings on the planet, and once you’ve sat in a hotel room with him for 15 or 20 minutes you become a lifetime convert.

Warren Beatty is another Yoda-like figure in this regard. I’ve never felt so enthralled and alpha-vibey as I did after Beatty and I had one of our first serious discussions back in…oh, ’92 or thereabouts. All he said was “how are ya?”, but the way he said it made me feel like some kind of inner lightbulb had been switched on. Even though I knew he was just turning it on like a gardener turns on a sprinkler system. Because he’s so good at it.

At the top of each HE post there’s always a number telling you how many comments have posted. In months past I’ve noticed that the software would occasionally get it wrong, declaring that 11 or 12 people had commented when in fact the number was close to 19 or 20. But now the numbers are completely missing. Each and every post says “0” at the top.

Yo, Disqus…any chance of fixing? Or paying attention at least?

I tried reaching out an hour ago, but they can’t be bothered with a chat service. You can apparently send them an email (hello@disqus.com) but who knows if they’re paying attention? I’d love to tell them what’s happening and ask for the best solve. If I had the time and the extra scratch, I would fly to San Francisco (they’re at 717 Market Street, Suite 700, 94103) and personally buttonhole each employee, one by one, until SOMEBODY listens and offers an intelligent suggestion.

I would gladly pay Team Disqus to solve this problem on a one-shot basis, but of course they can’t be bothered to offer such an option. And why should they?

Speaking as one who embraced sobriety seven and a half years ago (on 3.20.12) and have never attended more than two or three AA meetings, I’ve never felt the slightest urge to re-watch Blake Edwards‘ Days of Wine and Roses (’62). Not once. I respect it but that’s all.

It’s a reasonably effective portrayal of the horrors of alcoholic enslavement and how difficult it can be for some people to unshackle themselves for good. The script by JP Miller is a little too on-the-nose, but it doesn’t exactly get in the way. And it’s certainly well acted by Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman, Charles Bickford, etc. But it also manages to make inebriation and sobriety seem equally miserable.

Lemmon and Remick’s sloppy alcoholic shenanigans during the first third seem empty, juvenile and demeaning — they’re acting like giddy idiots. And when they turn sober it’s like they’re both covered with some kind of awful gloom sauce — like they’re taking two misery pills with breakfast and two at dinner. You’re watching it and going, “Jesus, I wouldn’t want to hang with these dullards drunk or sober.”

Sobriety isn’t easy at first, granted, but the morning wake-ups are wonderful, and you gradually learn how to smile and even laugh again. And that feeling of a terrible 700-pound wet gorilla no longer clinging to your back is heavenly.

Drinking, for me, was a lot more fun that what Lemmon and Remick were up to. I was never a pathetic, falling-down drunk, and I recall experiencing some truly insane and hilarious episodes when I was buzzed. Especially in my 20s and early 30s. I was almost never shit-faced (or at least not after high school), but at the same time my motto was “life would be unbearable without alcohol.” I was just having a good time. Thank God I got to carouse around Italy two or three times before I renounced. Drinking good wine in a sensible way can be wonderful.

My first cold-turkey renunciation happened in ’96 (I was mainly determined to quit vodka), but after two or three years I gradually started to sip wine from time to time, and it felt pretty cool for the most part. My last and final quit (no wine, no beer, no nothing) happened because nightly Pinot Grigio sippings had began to play hell with my looks, and because it gradually over-heated my personality and made me behave in an intemperate manner from time to time.

Sobriety has been the best thing to happen to me this century, no question. But if I ever want to feel badly about what I didn’t go through with alcohol, I’ll watch Days of Wine and Roses.

“I know why…it’s because I’m an animal. And arrogant. And because I’m stupid, so stupid…stupid.”

Read the 10.3 N.Y. Times story, written by Julia Jacobs, about Robert De Niro and his ex-Canal Productions employee Chase Robinson suing each other over mutual dissatisfaction with work behaviors, and then consider the following HE assessments:

(1) Let me explain something. When you work for someone directly or personally, you’ll find out soon enough who they really are. And they’ll find out soon enough who you really are. And this familiarity will breed contempt. And then you’re stuck with each other until (a) you mutually build or create your way past this state of mutual loathing and/or disrespect, or (b) until someone quits or is fired. That’s life.

(2) Naturally Chase has accused De Niro of belittling behavior on his part — asking her to “button his shirts, prod him awake in his hotel room, doing his laundry and vacuuming — making her effectively an ‘office wife’ even as she was promoted…not to mention berating her, often while intoxicated, calling her names including ‘bitch’ and ‘brat’”…not to mention “gratuitous unwanted physical contact” (i.e., playing the #MeToo card).

(3) DeNiro seemingly resented what he regarded as Chase’s casual, profligate, laissez-faire attitude about her job. DeNiro seems to feel that she basically didn’t work hard enough. Too extravagant, too entitled, too many perks, too many extras. She loafed around, slacked off. Business-expense-wise, she spent waaaay too much money on pricey Italian restaurants, handbags, Ubers and whatnot.

(4) Chase was probably bored by her tasks. She felt resentful about an equal-status male employee being paid more. She undoubtedly resented the requests for back-scratchings and listening to DeNiro pee while talking to her. Too much information but here goes anyway (and De Niro should take note): If nature calls while I’m speaking to someone on the phone, I always sit down.

(5) Chase basically overplayed her profligate hand, her entitled approach to the job, and De Niro eventually asked himself, “Why am I paying her all this money and giving her this extravagant lifestyle? For what?”

(6) And what about that special N.Y. Times photo portrait of Chase that accompanies the article [after the jump]? Nice tasteful lighting. Nice green background. Nice antique-looking chair. Nice tasteful dress.

(7) And what about this recording, which happened in 2012? DeNiro was hugely pissed off, obviously — didn’t like her haughty attitude, declining to return his calls, etc. He was apparently on the verge of firing her, and yet their relationship recovered and she continued to work for him for another five years…odd.