Nine days ago World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy passed along scuttlebutt that both Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in Manhattan and Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Two days ago Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman passed along the same info.

For me the head-turner in Friedman’s story (i.e., what I hadn’t read before) is that the 2019 Venice Film Festival “will not have” Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman. Where did that come from?

If Friedman is correct this is a shocker. Who bypasses the Venice Film Festival? I know nothing at all but “no Venice” sounds to me like “no Telluride” and “no Toronto” in the same breath. Could this be true?

If so the likely world premiere destination would be the New York Film Festival, which is run by Scorsese’s friend and colleague Kent Jones (who also distinguished himself early this year as the director of Diane). On top of which much of The Irishman was shot in the New York City area, and the story more or less happens in the New York-to-Boston corridor.

HE to Jones: Will I have to fly to NYC to attend the world premiere of The Irishman at the NYFF? I usually go there anyway but I need to know in advance so I can find the right Airbnb and figure out out the best airfare, etc.

Michael Fleming reported this morning that Jill Soloway (Transparent, Afternoon Delight) will direct Red Sonja, replacing the departed and generally discredited Bryan Singer. Sounds like a plan.

In a 10.13.18 N.Y. Times profile of Soloway called “They Live in Public — Jill Soloway is building a gender-free empire“, writer Penelope Green stated for the record that “for the last few years, Mx. Soloway has identified as non-binary and prefers the third-person plural pronoun.” One presumes that in some way, shape or form Soloway’s Red Sonja will reflect this mindset or persuasion.

The last time Red Sonja occupied big screens was 34 years ago, when Brigitte Neilsen played the role. Richard Fleischer directed.

Honest question, no attitude implied: Within the last five years how many HE readers have written a letter or otherwise addressed a non-binary person as “Mx.”? It sounds like you’re saying the person in question has something to do with Mexico. That or he/she represents some sort of mixed gender (Neil Diamond‘s “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You”). I wish I knew a non-binary person well enough to write them a parchment letter so I could seriously and earnestly type “Mx.” for the very first time in my life (apart from this posting).

How many times has Eric Kohn addressed a non-binary pally as “Mx.” whomever? Or Kyle Buchanan? HE to J.J. Abrams — Yo, bruh, have you ever signed a formal letter on Bad Robot stationery that was addressed to a non-binary colleague or collaborator?

Seriously, I love the “Mx.” but at the same time I’m kind of scratching my head. I just need to acclimate.

Yesterday Facebook’s Tom Brueggemann attempted to paint Pauline Kael with a racist brush. His weapon was a paragraph from Kael’s March 1966 McCall’s review of Stuart Burge and Laurence Olivier‘s Othello.

My first thought was “it’s very easy to accuse someone of racial insensitivity or clumsy phrasing a half-century later.”

Obviously no white actor today would even think of trying to portray an African or Moorish character, but Kael, hardly beholden to rube attitudes, was thinking beyond the usual confines.

She was merely saying that Olivier, a burning furnace beneath the surface, was conveying a certain unhinged madness or mania that prominent black actors of the mid ’60s, in her view, had been or would be reluctant to wade into.

If Jerry Schatzberg‘s Street Smart (’87) were to be remade today, I wonder if any black actor would dive into Morgan Freeman‘s “Fast Black” character with as much relish? Freeman was amazing in that film, but also quite scary. Not concluding — just thinking out loud.

Paul Schrader‘s response to Brueggemann: “A valid observation. Sorry if it’s not p.c. enough for you.”

At least read Kael’s entire review before forming a judgment.

What percentage of regular-ass Netflix viewers have even heard of the original, 52-year-old Point Blank? Which wasn’t just a great revenge flick but a major genre game-changer by way of merging shootings and beatings with an impressionistic art-film aesthetic? 1% or 2%, if that. It’s okay, I suppose, if you’re using the title for a nine-year-old French-produced thriller, but it seems to me that in the good old U.S. of A. the Netflix guys are tredding on hallowed ground.

Falling Down is easily the best film that Joel Schumacher ever directed. (Or so I recall.) It couldn’t and wouldn’t be made for theatrical today, of course, and perhaps not even for streaming. Because no one today wants to sympathize with or feel a touch of mixed empathy for a middle-aged white guy under any circumstance, let alone one who feels he’s had enough and has begun to lose his ability to control himself.

At the same time no one would want to greenlight a film about a middle-aged POC (a Samuel L. Jackson or Idris Elba type) losing his shit and becoming a public menace. That would be too negative and/or against the current p.c. narrative. So those who might respond with interest or even perverse enjoyment to a Falling Down-type film will have to be content with the original, which opened over 26 years ago

It’s streaming on Amazon for a lousy $2.99.

N.Y. Times “Carpetbagger” Kyle Buchanan has posted a fascinating state-of-things piece called “How Will the Movies (As We Know Them) Survive the Next 10 Years?” Not an article but a collection of quotes from 24 Hollywood hotshots, including J.J. Abrams, Jason Blum, Tom Rothman, Barry Jenkins, Kumail Nanjiani, Jon M. Chu, Joe and Anthony Russo, Jessica Chastain, Elizabeth Banks, Ava DuVernay, Octavia Spencer, Lena Waithe, Nancy Utley, Paul Feig, Michael Barker and a few others.

It’s probably the best thing that Buchanan has posted since he became the new “Carpetbagger” a little less than a year ago.

All 24 sound engaged and forward-looking as opposed to “Jesus, what is this business coming to?…I hate what Millennials and GenZ and their fucking phones have done to this business… I liked it better in the ’90s when people actually went to theatres” and other such laments. Don’t kid yourself — these sentiments are more common than you might think, to go by industry people you might talk to privately or run into at Academy screenings.

A thought that came to mind after finishing the article: “Thank God for elite film festivals…wall-to-wall theatrical showings, and in the company of people who actually get it, which is to say Movie Catholics.”

The most depressing comment by far comes from Feig. It actually implies why Feig isn’t as good or crafty as people thought he was after the success of Bridesmaids, and in fact may be an argument for Feig being immediately seized, driven out to Bakersfield and thrown into Movie Jail. The second most depressing quote is from Nanjiani. (The in-between remark about kids not going to “movies” but to “a movie” is from Rothman.) The third remark is from Whiplash producer Blum, which I’ve included because of the Hollywood Elsewhere “Yo, Whiplash!” factor.

Feig:

Nanjiani:

Blum:

I bailed on the Toy Story franchise after the second installment (’99), which I saw because the kids weren’t quite tweenish enough to be snide about family fare. It was okay, engaging for what it was, good enough…zzzzz.

But I completely ignored Toy Story 3 (’10), and proudly at that. Yeah! It goes without saying that I wouldn’t watch Toy Story 4 on a long flight to Seoul in which I had no wifi, nothing to read, no Percocets and absolutely nothing else to do. Which is why I politely bypassed last night’s all-media screening at the El Capitan…no offense.

I’m not sorry about missing either one. But if I had seen Toy Story 3 I would at least be able to appreciate Peter Bradshaw‘s lament. He’s basically saying that the third installment “had that staggering and triumphant sense of what we all yearn for in the cinema — a sense of an ending. The glorious finality [of Toy Story 3] is what made it such a triumph in many ways, and so I have to say, if this doesn’t sound too absurd, that Toy Story 4 kind of loses the integrity of the existing Toy Story trilogy.”

On the other hand thank God I don’t have to even consider such concepts.

Three and a half years ago the catastrophic demise of the legendary Ziegfeld theatre was announced, and now comes Michael Fleming’s Deadline report that the uptown Paris theatre (58th Street near Fifth, right next to Bergdorf Goodman) will shutter in late July or August.

Obviously depressing, deflating, food for despair. The closing of another hallowed theatrical landmark — a move that will further diminish the character, personality and soul of midtown Manhattan.

Since opening in 1948 the mere existence of the Paris, a comfortable, well-maintained, mid-sized arthouse smack dab in the heart of one of the most flush, culture-rich areas of NYC and directly in the shadow of the historic Plaza hotel, was a statement by Manhattan itself — “This theatre never shows crap, and we’re immensely proud of this as well as thankful…only the best or at least the most interesting films of the moment…and so we, the Manhattan coolios, are delighted and honored that the Paris has such a great location, because it reminds passersby what a great and necessary thing it is to support and celebrate first-rate cinema.”

I’m really sick about this. I’ve been attending occasional premieres at the Paris since ’79 or thereabouts. My mother and I went to see Alain Resnais‘ Mon Oncle d’Amerique there in ’80. I attended a Green Book premiere there last November, and a very cool premiere for Lone Scherfig‘s An Education in the fall of ’09.

As surely as Julius Caesar was knifed to death by political rivals, the Paris has been suffocated by HD streaming. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends…not with a bang but with another theatre closing.

I can’t say I adore the films of Carlos Reygadas, but I’ve always found them bracing and serioso with subcurrents and shit. (And occasionally horrific.) I won’t be seeing Our Time until next Monday, but Silent Light, This Is My Kingdom and especially Post Tenebras Lux established Reygadas as a respected first-ranker.

But this sweater, man…c’mon. Not quite Cosby-level but fairly grotesque. How can a first-rate visual artist wear a garment like this?

I had a similar thought when Robert Eggers took the stage following the first Cannes screening of The Lighthouse. Eggers is a brilliant filmmaker and obviously standing on the mountaintop right now, but God, look at him…jerkwad sneakers, white socks, black chinos with cuffs above the ankle, an oversized Target sweatshirt and a dorkmeister whitewall haircut. Look at Rbatz and Willem Dafoe — they obviously know what decent-looking threads are about but Eggers is a geek-squad guy.

Remember that pathetic light green Army-Navy winter jacket with the orange lining that Stanley Kubrick wore during the shooting of Eyes Wide Shut? Why does Steven Spielberg always seems to dress like some older suburban home-owner on his way to the hardware store? Where are the directors who wear tight jeans, expensive leather jackets, Italian lace-up shoes, nice scarves and whatnot?

Is being a terrible dresser more the rule than the exception when it comes to gifted directors? The only helmers who seem to have an interesting sense of film-set style are Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch, Alejandro G. Inarritu and…you tell me.

Eric Von Stroheim was a serious clothes horse in the ’20s; ditto D.W. Griffith, Victor Fleming, Howard Hawks, Cecil B. DeMille, etc.

Carlos Reygadas

(l. to r.) Robert Eggers, Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe following first Cannes screening of The Lighthouse.

20 years ago I owned a Palm5 or Palm vx…one of those. There was no email on phones back then, but I remember how cool it felt to beam info (address, email, phone #) to other Palm users. No more asking for business cards or phone #s or writing anything down…love it!

If you were on the receiving end you had to set your device to “receive beam” mode…right?

The Palm started to die three or four years later, especially after the first iPhone was introduced in ’07. Alas, the Apple guys ignored the beaming option. Android phones offer a beaming capability but Apple refuses to. I’ve never understood why.

If you sit down and actually read the reviews of Ari Aster‘s Midsommar (A24, 7.3), you’ll quickly understand that a Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% is a less-than-fully-comprehensive assessment.

Randomly: (a) “More unsettling than frightening”; (b) “A gnarly horror movie…some of the kills are admirably nasty”; (c) “An intermittently impressive and frustrating film, but worth watching for every single one of its flaws“; (d) “As opposed to Hereditary‘s hushed, focused terror, Midsommar explodes with blood and gore”; (e) “Though viewers may be shocked by the occasional bit of self-conscious gore, any tendency toward slow-building dread is leavened by the script’s frequent ‘WTF?’ asides.”

I could catch a screening tomorrow night, but I’ve decided to attend another on Monday evening. There’s plenty of time.

Critic friend: “It was…okay? The entire time I was wishing it could be a better movie. Aster uses so many familiar tropes of the pagan cult genre, many of which were practically invented by The Wicker Man more than 45 years ago. The last hour or so is fairly entertaining, a lot of batshit stuff happens, but it’s no Hereditary.”

Time seems to move more quickly these days because I’m always trying to jam in as much activity as possible on a daily basis.

In my early 20s I had to strive and struggle as much as anyone else, but I spent most of my time daydreaming. Over and over I was saying to myself (a) “This situation vaguely sucks” and (b) “I’d rather be doing something else.” I spent my time watching movies or TV, taking road trips, chasing women, working as a tree surgeon and getting high or drinking in bars.

It was only when the writing bug kicked in that things began to take shape.