I was mezzo-mezzo, at best, with Amelie Bonnin‘s Partir Un Jour (Leave One Day), which I saw this morning at 9 am. It’s one of those “going back home and sorting through the past” films. I was there but drifting.
And yet I was seriously and repeatedly struck by a remarkable similarity between the star, Juliette Armanet, best known as a French singer-songwriter, and the late Albert Dieudonne, the star of Abel Gance‘s Napoleon (’27).
They have almost the exact same nose…one of those French honkers you can slice roast beef with.
“I have such close feelings for the Festival de Cannes. Especially now when there’s so much in the world pulling us apart, Cannes brings us together — storytellers, filmmakers, fans and friends. It’s like coming home.” — Robert DeNiro during yesterday’s Cannes tribute event.
HE feels exactly the same way. Really good to be here. Plus it’s warm and sunny with blue skies above.
Jimi Hendrix wasn’t a “black” musician per se or one given to blasting out white rock ‘n’ roll. He was completely defined by and borne aloft by his own genius…a gypsy mystic, a sensual smoothie, a Krishna-like figure, not of this earth, a virtuoso Spirit God.
If Hendrix been less cavalier or thoughtless about which pills he was dropping, he’d be 82 today, and if he’d gone to see Sinners in IMAX he would certainly love the Robert Johnson musical tribute stuff, but he would not be kowtowing and hyperventilating and talking endlessly about identity…trust me. Hendrix didn’t believe in devils and angels, and certainly not in the myth of schlocky Samuel Z. Arkoff vampires. He was way, way above that shit.
Sound of Falling‘s German-language title (In die Sonne schauen) translates to Staring at the Sun. Any film that shoots in 1.37:1 pretty much has my vote, sight unseen. Farm life is never a bowl of cherries, especially for women and doubly when it comes down to having to fuck those homely Farmer Clem types. I’m getting a little bit of a Padre Padrone vibe from this.
The new F1 trailer ends with the words “Filmed for IMAX”. Meaning what exactly? All of it will be projected in 1.43:1 IMAX? No IMAX-shot film has ever screened entirely in that process. It’s always sections. So this is different? They need to be specific.
“Hope isn’t a strategy”….true.
When a costar asks BradPitt, “Any other words of wisdom, professor?”, he says “Drive fast?” Good one, except he should have said this more emphatically.
In my head it’s a profound tragedy that F1 won’t be playing at Cannes.
Every dude with hair uses “product” (Crew Fiber or Boost Powder, hair spray, Batiste dry shampoo, Brylcream…something) or at the very least a comb. To give it an intended attitude, a little shape. Otherwise your hair just flops and scatters out all over the place.
TomCruise definitely applied hair shapers and holders in the early days (Risky Business, The Firm, A Few Good Men) but not over the last few years. Nowadays he pretty much wears a raggedy-ass soup bowl. An odd way to go.
I don’t care for stories about kids, but I will always sit up straight for a Fatih Akin film. A child’s tale of World War II, Amrum is based on the childhood memories of co-screenwriter Hark Bohm. Occasional Akin collaborator Diane Kruger costars. Eight years ago she starred in my favorite Akin film, In The Fade (’17) — her performance won her a Best Actress award in Cannes.
Besides being “offensive”, offensive humor is, on a certain level, good for the soul. Almost on a level of “the more offensive, the better”. Because any jokes that piss off wokesters are, on a certain level, quite soothing. I’m not saying that the actual import of racist humor is literally funny, but the howling and abusive spectacle of it all is, on a certain level….I don’t know what I’m saying.
Insult humor is often funny, okay? To sensible center-left types, I mean. I’m sorry but it is.
We all remember how Tony Hinchcliffe infuriated AOC and many other lefties after trashing Puerto Ricans at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden on 10.27.24. He described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”, and joked that “these Latinos, they love making babies, they do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that, they come inside, just like they do to our country”.
He also riffed about “carving watermelons with Black people” and “making a rock paper scissors joke involving Palestinians throwing rocks, and Jews “[having] a hard time throwing that paper.”
This is still a very catchy and agreeable song….nice harmonies, easy 4/4 rhythm. Primarily written by John Lennon in early ’62, “Ask Me Why” was initially recorded at Abbey Road studios on 6.6.62….with drummer Pete Best.
Sure enough, Best got the axe nine weeks later — 8.16.62. Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison didn’t have the stones to lower the boom directly, so their 28-year-old manager, Brian Epstein, stepped up and did the deed.
“Ask Me Why” was recorded again, along with “Please Please Me”, on 11.26.62 with Ringo Starr on drums.
