Congratulations to Quentin Tarantino and wife Daniella Pick on their announcement that a baby is on the way. Whatever the child’s gender, he/she will naturally be subjected to a relentless education about film. By the age of seven or eight he/she probably will have seen each and every Sam Fuller film ever made, and will be able to recite the release years of each, the principal cast members, the cinematographer and aspect ratio used, etc. Not to mention the films of Sergio Leone, Martin Scorsese, Howard Hawks, Richard Linklater, Brian DePalma, etc. By the time the kid is ten he/she will be blase about visiting the major film festivals. I could go on and on. His/her future is all mapped out.

Having opened in Poland on 7.26 and in Lithuania on 8.2, and with openings in Greece (8.22), the Netherlands (8.29) and Turkey (8.30) over the next few days, Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York will open the Deauville American Film Festival on 9.6. Followed by openings in France (9.18), the Czech Republic and Slovakia (9.26), Spain (10.4), Italy (10.10) and Vietnam (10.11).

And then the grand Mexico opening on 10.25, which will be celebrated by Hollywood Elsewhere with an actual visit to one of Tijuana’s megaplexes. I’m presuming that a subtitled version will be viewable somewhere.

Catching Rainy Day in Tijuana unfortunately involves an agonizing four-hour drive, give or take. It’s one of the most miserable things you can do in life, slogging it out on the 405 and 5 south, stop and go, hour after hour, miserable San Diego traffic, border backup, etc. The only way to beat it is to leave on Thursday and come back on Saturday.

I haven’t been to Mexico in six or seven years so as long as I’m doing this I might as well rent a modest room in Poco Cielo (south of Rosarito Beach) and have a nice dinner at the storied La Fonda, which has the greatest outdoor balcony overlooking the sea. La Fonda suffered a fire a couple of months ago, I’m told. Party animals were apparently to blame.

Consider this view without considering the source: “Liberals have become utterly, pathetically illiberal, and it’s a massive problem. This snowflake culture that we now operate in, the victimhood culture…everyone has to think a certain way, behave a certain way, everyone has to have a bleeding heart and tell you 20 things that are wrong with them. Liberals are getting it so horribly wrong. It’s [grown into] a kind of version of fascism. If you don’t lead your life the way I’m telling you to, then I’m gonna ruin your life. I’m gonna scream abuse at you. I’m gonna get you fired from your job. I’m gonna get you hounded by your family and friends. I’m gonna make you the most disgusting human being in the world.”

Couple this with a Bret Easton Ellis remark from last month:  “This is the one thing that has bothered me the most about the left. And as a creative it is something that worries me. I often wonder how you can be a writer, an artist, a director, a filmmaker, and ally yourself with a party that is basically subsidizing an authoritarian language belief on what you can say and what you can’t say and how you can express yourself or how you can’t express yourself.”

And a quote from Sarah Silverman on a recent Bill Simmons podcast: “’Righteousness porn‘ is ‘really scary and it’s a very odd thing that it’s invaded the left primarily…it’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone. It’s so odd. It’s a perversion.”

There’s no question about the accuracy and legitimacy of these opinions. Having tasted wokester “cancel culture” myself a few months ago, courtesy of the Sundance People’s Committee, I’m naturally susceptible to such views. And to the gist of quote #1. But quote #1 has a problem, and that’s the person who said it. Not to mention the talk show that this person said it on. So when you pull it all together and weigh the political schemes and ramifications, I feel obliged to distance myself from quote #1….even though it’s a fairly accurate assessment.

This is a chickenshit way to react, agreed. That’s because I’m torn and afraid at the same time. We’re living through a time of terror. Lillian Hellman would be appalled, not to mention Dashiell Hammett.

According to an 8.21 N.Y. Times report by Nicole Sperling, the ongoing dispute between Netflix and two major exhibition chains, AMC Theatres and Cineplex, about the theatrical release of Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman boils down to an unrealistic expectation on the exhibition side.

The chains want Netflix to delay streaming The Irishman for “close to three months” after its theatrical opening day while Netflix, following their Roma model, wants to begin streaming 21 days after the theatrical debut.

This despite a claim by former 20th Century Fox distribution exec Chris Aronson that “more than 95 percent of movies stop earning their keep in theaters at the 42-day mark,” according to Sperling’s article.

Exhibitors nonetheless fear that the proposed 21-day window will persuade ticket-buyers to bypass The Irishman in theatres, as they would only have to wait three weeks to see it at home.

90% of The Irishman‘s theatrical revenue will come from educated, review-reading, 35-and-over types who will want to immerse themselves in Scorsese’s wiseguy epic (it allegedly runs around three hours) and be part of the conversation, and most of these transactions will happen during the first three weeks, four at the outside. A portion of the under-35 megaplex mongrels may attend out of curiosity, but the bulk of the business will come from Scorsese loyalists and cultivated cineastes.

So if Netflix wanted to be accommodating, they would agree to wait 45 days to stream — half of the window that exhibitors want. My hunch is that the deal with AMC and Cineplex will result in a 30-day delay. Somewhere between 30 and 45 — that’s where the peace lies.

Netflix will want The Irishman to be in theatres during the heat of award season, or from mid-October to early December. Open it in theatres on Friday, 10.18 and keep it in plexes for seven weeks, or until Thursday, 12.5. We all understand that peak Irishman business will happen between the weekends of 10.18 and 11.15, max. And more likely between 10.18 and 11.7 — be honest. Especially considering the allegedly somber, meditative tone (“It’s not Goodfellas“) and three-hour length.

In the exhibitor fantasy realm The Irishman, given the theoretical 10.18 theatrical debut, wouldn’t begin streaming until mid-January. Unlikely. Especially with the currently abbreviated Academy voting window.

Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), a fictional Fox News producer, is apparently dreading an imminent meeting with ogre-ish Fox honcho Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). Also unsettled, it seems, are fellow elevator riders Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). They’re so rattled by what may be in the offing (or what’s in the air) that they don’t even small-talk each other. Then Carlson says it’s “hot in here.”

Pospisil (weird last name, a mashing of “possum” and “possible”) and Carlson get out, but the coolly observant Kelly doesn’t.

After the oddly muted response to Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, the Bombshell challenge will be to prove itself as the bigger, better, more pointed Ailes drama, above and beyond the marquee-name aspect.

Directed by Jay Roach and scripted by Charles Randolph, Bombshell will pop theatrically on 11.20. If it’s any kind of award-calibre thing…well, we’ll see.

Bombshell costars Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Rob Delaney, Malcolm McDowell and Allison Janney.

I don’t know why I’m posting this, but on top of Trump’s scrapping a state visit in Denmark over their refusal to sell Greenland (an autonomous country of the kingdom of Denmark), this morning’s tweet of sincere thanks to rightwing eccentric Wayne Allyn Root about Trump’s allegedly exalted status among Israel’s rightwing community…I can’t even.

I wouldn’t want to go out on a shaky limb, but given that 93% of Chicago’s South Side population is African American, I’d say Mayor Pete has nothing to worry about. Seriously, look at this.

This is the crowd for a Pete Buttigieg event on the South Side of Chicago. 🧐 pic.twitter.com/nZpvreRea8

— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) August 21, 2019

Originally posted on 9.10.14, or midway through the second term of the Obama administration: “When I reach out for a handshake, there’s a little part of me that dreads the possibility of clasping a damp clammy hand. I’m thinking about this because I shook a really sweaty one last night. Outwardly I didn’t react in the slightest but inwardly I shuddered like a candy-ass. It’s like shaking hands with an eel with a fever or some kind of jellyfish or something. It’s worse when the clammy hand is cool but warm and slithery runs a close second.

Please, God…let the next hand be dry and crisp like mine. Aahh, that was great. Okay, here comes another one…terrific, nice and dry. Another one…aagghh, an eel!

Some people just have this condition. A glandular thing. If I was a clammy-hand type I’d avoid handshakes. I’d clasp people by their wrists and quickly pat the tops of their hands or give them a comradely poke in the shoulder. Confession: I had slightly sweaty hands when I was a kid but I grew past it. I love that my hands are currently dry at all times, and I mean like sandpaper. Okay, the inner palms contain a hint of dampness but only that.

During the 2010 Sundance Film Festival I was half-appalled and half-delighted by Chris Morris‘ Four Lions, a black comedy about group of British Muslim jihadi martyrs. That film was co-written by Morris, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. Bain is the sole author of the screenplay for Patrick Brice‘s Corporate Animals (Screen Media Films, 9.20). I’m also impressed by the cannibalism aspect as well as the use of “Weinstein” as a verb.

“Corporate Animals is a character sketch in search of a plot,” wrote Variety‘s Amy Nicholson. “In the first act, fatuous guide Brandon (Ed Helms) gets the gang trapped in an underground cavern large enough for people to slink off to the bathroom or seduce each other behind a rock. Even before the first person gets filleted, we’re grateful the film isn’t in Smell-O-Vision.

“Yet most of the brutality is verbal. There’s a gleeful shiver when the employees finally feel free to speak their minds. Who cares about getting fired when one employee is writing a will to clarify who gets to eat her butt cheek? Given the lack of narrative options once the group is stuck passively waiting for rescue, attacking each other is the only way to pass the time.”

Three days ago Guy Trebay posted a N.Y Times “Critics Notebook” piece called “Naked Came the Strangers.” Without delving too much into the ins and outs of the article (which is subtitled “How our nudes have changed in the last 50 years”), please consider a portion of the seventh paragraph.

“In 1969, Americans were, it would appear, much thinner — men and women equally,” Trebay writes. “As it happens, this superficial impression is borne out by the available data, since in 1971 the average 19-year-old man weighed just 159.7 pounds, according to figures compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics, and the average woman 131.”

Given the “Americans were much thinner” line, you’d think Trebay would follow this up with statistics about how much heavier the average 19 or 20-year-old is today. But he avoids such comparisons.

The reason, I’m guessing, is that N.Y. Times editors wouldn’t want to offer an impression that the paper is taking any sort of dim view of the average weight of today’s young Americans, as that might constitute an oblique form of fat-shaming.

And so Trebay runs for cover by stating an obvious, uncontested fact — that older people are heavier than their younger selves. “A hippie now at Woodstock 50 — if such existed and if a planned anniversary concert had not fallen apart — would have added an additional 14 pounds to his frame and a woman another 20,” he states. (When Trebay says “a hippie at Woodstock 50”, he obviously means an old hippie as young hippies don’t exist outside of Deadheads.)

My reading of that meter tells me that many older guys (55-plus) are a lot more than 14 or 15 pounds heavier than their 19 year-old selves. Try 25 or 30 pounds heavier, and I’ve seen a lot worse.

By Trebay’s statistics (currently 14 pounds heavier than 159 pounds) the average 69 year-old guy is 173 pounds.

Last December a National Health Statistics Reports PDF stated that “the average American man between 20 and 39 years [of age] weighs 197.9 pounds, and that the average waist circumference is 40.2 inches, and the average height is just over 5 feet 9 inches (about 69.1 inches) tall.”

In other words the average younger to middle-aged guy of 2019 is 38 pounds heavier than 20-year-olds were in 1971, or 48 years ago.

A couple of weeks ago I said I was looking forward Pedro Almodovar‘s Pain and Glory for the second time at the Telluride Film Festival. Because Almodovar’s films are always worth a second look. And who knows — maybe I’ll come away with a greater degree of enthusiasm this time. Antonio Banderas won the Cannes Film festival’s Best Actor prize, after all. Respect must be paid.

Well, I wound up seeing it for the second time last week, and it played a lot stronger. I felt a certain delicacy and poignance from the film that somehow didn’t penetrate as much in Cannes. A richer, sadder, more particular meditation. Especially the scenes with Penelope Cruz, who plays the mother of Antonio Banderas‘ Salvador Mallo character, and Julieta Serrano, who plays a 70something version of Cruz. My Cannes reaction was positive but qualified — respectful but somewhat muted. This was partly due, I think, to being exhausted by the 16-hour days. I was rested and ready when I saw it four or five days ago, and it made all the difference.

Fatigue gets in the way of a lot of things, if you’re not careful.