Yesterday afternoon I met Vinny-the-mechanic at the same vaguely-down-at-the-heels Bridgeport shopping center. It took him about 90 minutes to take everything apart and repair the up-and-down driver-side window, which involved replacing the whirring, battery-driven electric motor that controls the movement.

Everything apparently back to normal…great! I paid Vinny, thanked him, drove back home.

25 minutes later I pulled into a Balducci’s parking lot in Southport, and pulled the latch that opens the door. Nothing…door wouldn’t open. Vinny had forgotten to connect the inside-the-door whachamacallit. I crawled over the console and escaped through the passenger side door. To my relief the outside driver-side door latch still worked, but the inside latch was kaput.

I called Vinny…silence. He made a mistake, okay, but he’s still a smart, methodical mechanic. Having a bad day, I presumed.

Nonetheless a sixth sense told me I should hire someone else to fix the door-latch problem. This morning I drove the VW Passat up to a Georgetown Shell station, as I know and trust the mechanic. I dropped it off around 8:30 am. Two hours ago they told me I’m good to go.

Never forget the astounding Beatle blindness that Steven Spielberg confessed to back in ’07…it still staggers me.

Everyone’s maximum musical receptivity happens in their late teens and 20s, and young Spielberg was right in that sweet spot (18 to 21) during the mid ’60s era when the Beatles were really cooking with petrol.

Has anyone ever heard of a baby boomer who wasn’t completely throttled and transformed by the trifecta of Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? What kind of walls did you have to live behind to be immune? And yet Spielberg didn’t become a Beatles fan until he listened to the White Album in late ’68. Where the hell was he in ’65, ’66 and ’67? What was he doing, living off the land in Borneo?

Oh and the Beatles were a “fad” for only the first few months after they exploded, and their musical maturity phase began to kick in around mid ’65. If you weren’t tuned into what they were doing between Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper you were a Martian. And by his own admission, that was exactly what Spielberg was back then.

“I was a teetotaler,” he told Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers 16 years ago. “I used to collect soundtrack albums from movies that I loved. I wasn’t smoking grass or taking LSD, though many of my friends were…I know, I know. I’m a disappointment. But I was just too busy making pictures.”

So if he wasn’t “hearing” the Beatles during their most creative period what else has he missed over the last half-century? Seriously — this quote is huge. It contains volumes, multitudes.

In the wake of the recent Blind Side squabble between ex-NFL pro Michael Oher and his one-time benefactors Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has taken another look at John Lee Hancock‘s The Blind Side (’09), which told the story of young Oher and the Tuohys, and basically slapped it around, calling it “even more fake [today] than before.”

“[The film’s version of] Michael Oher is treated, by the Tuohys, as a kind of family mascot. There’s never any conflict between them, and not much in the way of conversation.

“Bullock’s Leigh Anne, with her diamond-studded crucifix necklace, charges through the film like a refugee from Dallas, crusading for her sainthood merit badge, while Michael, with his benign torpor, rarely rouses himself with a force of ego. At one point, when Leigh Anne and Sean are discussing whether to become his legal guardians, Sean says, ‘Michael’s gift is his ability to forget. He’s mad at no one, and he really doesn’t care what happened in the past.’ Leigh Anne agrees, making a (comic) point of how much she hates it when her husband is right.

“But Sean’s statement about Michael is shocking in how wrong it is. Michael’s gift is his ability to forget? Who would say that about a white character who’d suffered the kinds of things Michael did? The movie is reducing him to a Teddy-bear simpleton, with little to no psychology. He never has rich exchanges with the other family members; he never expresses anything but gratefulness (or, after he crashes the truck they just bought him, cringing regret). There’s no interior complexity to Michael, and that’s the lie of The Blind Side. It’s what allows his character to basically be used by the Tuohys to feel good about themselves.”

Okay, but you know what I remember about The Blind Side? I bought the bullshit. I knew I was being fed suspicious vegetables, but they found their way into my heart all the same. And the sales agent was Sandra Bullock‘s performance as Leigh Anne. Everyone bought it, and no amount of complaining 14 years later can change that,

Consider a certain George Hickenlooper quote from 2009, excerpted back then by Sasha Stone.

We’re all pleased that IFC/Sapan will be opening Trân Anh Hùng‘s The Pot au Feu (aka The Taste of Things) later this year as part of a generally vigorous effort to snag Oscar attention and perhaps even Best Picture and Best Director nominations.

And we’re doubly pleased that it’s just been announced as a New York Film Festival “Spotlight” attraction.

And we’re extra double ding-dong delighted that the NYFF guys aren’t calling it a North American premiere, which means this masterful foodie flick will be debuting at Telluride two weeks hence. (The Toronto Film Festival slate is not an option as its slate is wrapped tight with no room to breathe.)

But we’re still appalled that IFC/Sapan has (a) dropped the original, perfect-sounding French-English title, which translates as The Pot Roast and was used when it played in Cannes three months ago, and (b) saddled it with the pedestrian title of The Taste of Things….please!

I wrote last night that The Taste of Things “isn’t an awful title, but it sounds vaguely antiseptic and blanded down…flat, lacking in flavor and aroma…it no longer sounds or feels like a film simmering in French culture, but like a gourmet cookbook that might have been written by the owner of a suburban restaurant in northern New Jersey or Westchester County.”

The best response was posted early this morning by HE commenter “Christophe“: “I don’t mind the new title, but somehow find it ironic that notoriously marketing-obsessed Disney/Pixar had the guts to release a mass-market film called Ratatouille, and yet an indie foreign-film distrib thinks The Pot au Feu is too strange-sounding for discerning audiences.”

When you get right down to it, IFC/Sapan is hung up on au Feu as the original title starts with “The“, followed by “Pot,” a familiar kitchen term to any rube in Arkansas.

IFC/Sapan exec #1 during conference: “But they won’t understand what au Feu means, and we’ll lose tens of thousands in revenue!”

IFC/Sapan exec #2: “But millions understood Ratatouille, and that’s obviously a bigger tongue-challenge than au Feu could ever be.”

IFC/Sapan exec #3: “Will you come up for air, please? Clem Kadiddlehopper is not going to pay to see this film in Dogpatch, Kentucky…it’s a film that discerning, semi-educated audiences will flock to in the cities and suburbs, and a nice easy title like The Pot au Feu won’t give them a moment’s hesitation.”

The good news is that IFC Films and Sapan Studios, U.S. distributors of Tran Anh Hung‘s The Pot au Feu, have committed to a prestige Oscar campaign for the French foodie masterpiece, not just for Best International Feature (if and when it’s selected by France as its official nominee) but in all categories, including Best Picture.

This means it’ll open this year and not, as feared by HE, in the winter or early spring of ’24. From my perspective this is wonderful and gratifying news, as The Pot-au-Feu is still HE’s hands-down favorite film of the year.

For several weeks I’ve been sharing concerns that IFC and Saban might, God forbid, give The Pot au Feu the bum’s rush by opening it in the doldrums of early ’24, which is what IFC has done in the past with promising titles.

It is extremely heartening, to say the least, to learn otherwise, and that this Cannes-praised film might….do we dare to dream? …play Telluride and one or two other prestigious fall festivals…who knows?

I apologize for airing my pessimistic concerns, and I congratulate IFC and Saban for doing the right thing.

The bad news is that Tran Anh Hung‘s film has been retitled, according to Variety‘s Clayton Davis, as The Taste of Things. HE’s gut reaction: gaaahh!

IFC and Saban’s concern, obviously, is that U.S. audiences might find the original French title, which basically means meat and vegetable stew, meaningless or overly obscure.

The Taste of Things isn’t an awful title, but it sounds vaguely antiseptic and blanded down….like something that a whitebread PTA committee might have decided upon. It’s flat, lacking in flavor and aroma. It no longer sounds or feels like a film simmering in French culture, but like a gourmet cookbook that might have been written by the owner of a suburban restaurant in northern New Jersey or Westchester County.’
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But overall this is excellent news, at least as far as IFC & Saban’s Oscar determinations are concerned.