Jeff Wells

I’ve learned that Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance, which received enthusiastic reviews when it premiered at last September’s Venice Film Festival, will receive some kind of limited U.S. release in April, possibly a streaming-only deal or perhaps a brief theatrical exposure in major cities followed by streaming.

My understanding is that the distribution arrangement will be announced sometime this week. The distributor isn’t an indie major but an outfit like Vertical or Ketchup…someone in that vein.

This indicates a change in the political weather as Woody’s films have been unwelcome domestically for several years now, especially in the wake of woke terrorism, which kicked off in 2018 or thereabouts. I’m presuming it won’t play any theatres as exhibitors are generally terrified of wokesters and don’t want the hassle.

A couple of weeks ago I reported that “a certain U.S.-based distributor is looking to open (or at least stream) Coup de Chance a couple of months hence, give or take.”

I also noted that a 4K Italian Bluray of Coup de Chance will be released on 3.18.24.

Two months ago I riffed about Rialto’s re-release of Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist.

This seemed to indicate a possible lessening of wokester terror as it wasn’t that long ago when even streaming distributors were afraid of offering Polanski’s J’Accuse (aka An Officer and a Spy) to English-language consumers. They’re still afraid of doing this, of course, but if The Pianist can be re-released why not Polanski’s 2019 Cesar winner?

Poated by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy last August:

Soon after opening on 9.25.21, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures became known as an industry joke — a forum for unintentional, institutional, self-regarding satire.

Rather than offer in-depth exhibits and tributes exploring the origins, struggles and triumphs of the Hollywood film industry, the museum focused almost entirely upon apologies for all the cruel exploitations of women and people of color during its first 100 years (1915 to 2015). Hence the nicknames “Woke House” and “Apology House“.

This focus was so obsessive and self-flagellating that the museum completely ignored the industry’s Jewish founding fathers — Paramount’s Adolph Zuckor, MGM’s Louis B,. Mayer, Fox Film Corporation’s William Fox, Warner Brother’s Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner (i.e., Polish jews), Columbia’s Harry and Jack Cohn, Universal’s Carl Laemmle.

This is about to be rectifed. A little more than three months hence the museum’s first permanent exhibit, “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital“, will open (5.19.24).

So it’s still a wokester apology house, except now the new apology is less sincere — i.e., “we’re not really sorry for ignoring the industry’s founders because they were white bastards who made the the lives of women miserable due to sexual exploitation and assault and POCs miserable due to under-employment, but now, after being pressured and dragging our feet for a couple of years, we’re opening the Jewish founders exhibit. We don’t like it but we have to do it so there it is.”

Posted on 10.9.21, or two and one-third years ago: After the Academy Museum I dropped by the Farmers’ Market. Within five minutes I was ordering a cup of Cookies ‘n’ Cream ice cream at Local Ice (formerly Gill’s ice cream stand, which opened in ’37). Four younger women (early 20s) were behind the counter. I was holding an Academy Museum brochure and placed it on the counter as I waited.

One of the women (a pretty brunette) beamed when she saw the brochure, and leaned forward slightly and said, “So what did you think of the museum?”

For three or four seconds I wondered if I should just say “oh, I really loved it…very handsome, beautiful displays” and so on. But of course the HE thing won out.

“Well, it’s kind of a mixed bag because it’s pretty woke,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and trying to softpedal my words. “It’s basically a huge apology museum,” I continued. “An apology for white males having run the film industry for 100 years. It’s basically a celebration of the inclusion moves made over the last few years on the part of non-white people and women are concerned, and it’s basically bullshit.”

When I said the word “women” the 20something brunette slightly twitched. She was apparently trying to suppress her discomfort that this older customer with red-tinted glasses seemed to be vaguely irked by the museum celebrating the progress of persons like herself. (Which I wasn’t conveying at all.) Plus her eyes had begun to harden. She wasn’t about to get into an argument with a customer but she clearly wanted to hear how wonderful and cleansing the museum was, and she didn’t want to hear my anti-wokey.

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Posted on 12.30.21, previously paywalled: Almost all big-time gangsters go down in flames sooner or later, and almost always after a relatively short heyday — imprisoned, expelled from the U.S., blown away like Tony Montana or Tony Soprano, found stuffed inside a garbage can.

Gangsters rarely live to be old and gray-haired and surrounded by grandchildren. Okay, Vito Corleone did but that was fictional. Meyer Lansky made it to age 80 (cancer took him out) but he only had $57K in the bank at the end. Pablo Escobar was shot to death in the end, but he lasted as a kingpin for 17, 18 years — an exception to the rule.

If I was running Gangster Financial Services, my basic pitch would be this: “Sooner or later you’re going to have to lam it. You need to face the fact that you’re probably looking at five or six years at the top, perhaps a couple more, nine or ten at the outside. But sooner or later the law will indict you or rivals will have you killed.

“Smart gangsters understand that they need to start planning their escape early on. They need to start putting money away and building low-key homes in Vietnam or Eastern Europe or Belize or Paris or Rome, and having false passports and identity cards made and arrangements with good plastic surgeons, so when it’s time to go on the run, they do so on their own terms, and in relative comfort.

“We at Gangster Financial Services understand the game and how it works. Let us help you and your family plan for the inevitable, while you still can and before it’s too late. Oh, and by the way? No private zoos while you’re flush and at the top. Only idiots have Bengal Tigers and giraffes living on their property.”

Before today I regarded Jacob Elordi as a tall, broad-shouldered, dishy-looking actor who may or may not have been a fellow of serious character or intestinal fortitude.

His two most recent performances were nothing to write home about — a Paul Bunyan-sized Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla and a laid-back, to-the-manor born hunk in Emerald Fennel‘s Saltburn.

But after lightly roughing up Joshua Fox, a producer for Australia’s “The Kyle & Jackie O Show” after Fox good naturedly but idiotically asked Elordi for some dirty bathwater (a goof on Saltburn‘s Barry Keoghan slurping same)…after this episode was reported I said to myself, “This settles it…Elordi is now a man with his feet planted on terra firma.”

By which I meant he’s no longer just an actor looking for another job, another high-impact role…he is now his own poet, his own creation, the captain of his own ship…he’s now a dude who won’t take any shit from any douchebags and will most likely refuse to back down if this happens again.

Elordi is now a personality as well as a semi-tough guy…Frank Sinatra, Sean Penn, Robert Mitchum…that line of country. Hats off, stiff salute.”l

Elordi allegedly pushed Fox against a wall and then allegedly put his bands on Fox’s throat, but he didn’t hurt the guy. He was just making a point like Sinatra used to back in the old days when some asshole journalist or photographer had gotten on his nerves.

In a recording that was aired on the show, Fox can be heard introducing himself to Elordi before proceeding to give him a container. Here’s HE’s version of the conversation:

Fox: “Really random but I want to give you this…Jackie wants a birthday present.”

Elordi (reading from a piece of paper): “Jacob Elordi’s bath water?”

Fox: “She’s a big fan of [Saltburn.”

Elordi: “What am I supposed to do with this, put bath water in it?”

Fox: “Yeah, and then you could send it to the studio.”

Elordi: “Jesus, man…you’re kidding, right? God, why are there people like you on this planet?

Fox: “Seriously, it’s for Jackie O.”

Elordi: “You’re obviously goofing off like a 13 year-old but this isn’t even slightly amusing…not witty, not clever. It’s just fucking stupid. Wait, are you filming?”

Fox: “Yeah.”.

Elordi: “Can you not, man…please?”

Fox said he felt “intimidated” as Elordi got “in [his] face” and backed him against a wall. The actor’s security team was also present during the incident.

True Detective: Night Country, which I decided to stop watching last Sunday, is a relentlessly grim, noirish atmosphere puzzlebox series. Not as long or convoluted as the deeply despised Westworld series, but similiar in certain ways.

Matt of Sleaford, eight years ago: “Puzzlebox shows can be fun to chew on while they’re progressing. But the solution is almost always anticlimactic.”

Brenkilco, same post (11.28.16): “The problem with episodic TV narratives designed to blow minds is that the form and intention are at odds. A show [like Night Country] cannot by definition have a satisfying structure. It can only keep throwing elements into the mix until it collapses under the weight of its own intriguing but random complications.”

Yes, another effing Lily Gladstone profile, this one from The New Yorker.

Once again the main points are recited — (a) Gladstone being the first Native American woman to be Oscar-nominated, (b) what a long and difficult road it’s been (toil and struggle stuff, on the verge of quitting acting three or four years ago), and, way at the bottom of the list, (c) dodging the fact that Mollie Burkhart simply isn’t a lead role and that Lily’s performance is…well, decent, given what she was allowed to do but please calm down.

The Gladstone propaganda campaign has been relentless, but at least it’ll be over on the day that final voting ends — Tuesday, 2.27.24, at 5 p.m. Pacific. Three more weeks of this head-pounding narrative.

Gladstone was snubbed by the BAFTA award nominating committee (the London ceremony happens on 2.18) so there’s no suspense there. The SAG awards (2.24) will provide either (a) a final confirmation that she’s destined to lose the Best Actress Oscar and that Emma Stone is fated to win, or (b) a final cliffhanger element that will indicate how close things might be and allow for the possibility that Gladstone might take it after all, despite Stone’s Golden Globe and Critics Choice wins.

Stone isn’t allowed to campaign, of course. If she were to speak on her own behalf people would accuse her of some form of racial hostility.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s “The Theatrical Success of Anyone but You Sends a Message: Has Streaming Become a Form of Stockholm Syndrome?“:

“Last fall, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man was one of the hits of the Venice Film Festival. It was a critical darling built around a charismatic performance by an up-and-coming star named…Glen Powell. Distributors were hot for it, and it was bought for $20 million.

“Here we are five months later, and Glen Powell is a star, and Hit Man, set to come out in June, will certainly advantage of all the marquee capital that Powell built up in Anyone but You. Which is a distributor’s dream, right?

“Wrong. Because it’s actually not going to happen that way.

“Hit Man was bought by Netflix, so no one was ever going to see it in a theater. And no one will see it in a theater now. Hit Man was a festival sensation that had the makings of an indie hit, but now it will be another movie that vanishes into the Bermuda Triangle of the streaming ocean.”

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This is utterly brilliant. A student accuses @jk_rowling of being transphobic. This teacher skilfully dissects the claim and challenges it by asking questions.

He teaches not what to think, but how to think critically.

Watch until the end.
You see the epiphany in real-time. pic.twitter.com/x00gWdOugc

— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) February 3, 2024

Very few major-league Hollywood stars have suffered such an abrupt and precipitous hair decline as James Stewart, and it all happened during his service as a bombardier squadron leader during World War II.

Before the war the rail-thin, tousle-haired Stewart looked fairly boyish; when he returned in ’45 he had developed widows’ peaks and stress fissures, and soon after (probably during filming of It’s A Wonderful Life or certainly before Call Northside 777) began to wear toupees. By the mid ’50s his hair was mostly gray and barely hanging in there.

Without the rug the older Stewart looked like an aging middle-management businessman or an Air Force General (which he was); with the rug he definitely looked younger but also like an actor wearing a rug.

Why didn’t Stewart take care of things “in Prague” via micro scalp implants? Because the technology didn’t really come into being until the ’90s or the early 21st Century.

Ayo Edebiri to Nikki Haley: “I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with an S and ends with a lavery?”

Haley to Edebiri: “Yep, I probably should have said that the first time.”

Yesterday HE gifted Sutton Wells with a 30-inch, red-and-white kids guitar — made by Master Play, Fender Stratocaster-resembling, etc. A totally decent little axe, and inexpensive to boot.

During the drive down from Connecticut HE was hit with an engine problem. The engine was coughing, struggling. I found a friendly West Orange garage. Everything’s fine now, but the total damage is/was $570.00.

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HE is more or less down with this Joe Rogan rant.

Rogan on 70% of HE commentariat: “They know who and what they are…they won’t admit it but they’re in a cult…the very definition of a cult…they’ll attack you.”