Vaclav Marhoul‘s The Painted Bird (IFC Films, sometime in early 2020) probably won’t win the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar, but, as the official Czech Republic submission, it totally deserves to be nominated. Because within its own ravishing and diseased realm, it’s a great film. It just happens to be tough to sit through.

I saw it last night and holy moley holy fucktard. It’s about a little Jewish kid (Petr Kotlár) trying to survive all on his own in eastern Europe during World War II, and man, does he suffer the drawn-out pains of hell. So did I in a manner of speaking. But not altogether.

I’m calling The Painted Bird a “beautiful” highbrow art film for elite critics and cineastes who have the fence-straddling ability to enjoy magnificent b&w cinematography (all hail dp Vladimir Smutny) and austere visual compositions while savoring the utmost in human cruelty and heartless perversion.

The vile, animal-like behavior is unrelenting; ditto the highly sophisticated monochrome arthouse chops. Marhoul is quite gifted, quite determined and uncompromised, and quite the bold cinematic artist. He is also, as Kosinski was, one sick fuck.

I mean that in a good way as Marhoul is a Bergman-like in an unrelenting clinical way; he never panders or tries to soften things up for the mom-and-pop schmuckos — he’s totally playing to Guy Lodge and his ilk. This is a movie about some awful, horrific, beastly people (Harvey Keitel‘s priest and the kid’s father excepted), and what agony it can be to suffer under them on a prolonged basis.

I read Kosinski’s “The Painted Bird” when I was 22 or 23, and I somehow absorbed all the horrific sadism and cruelty and lonely agony without incident because of the dry, matter-of-fact Kosinski prose. It’s quite another thing to hang with that feral, dark-eyed little kid who doesn’t talk for the entire film.

What is the perverse obsession with people and animals being hung upside down by ropes? What was so terrible about servicing that hot-to-trot farmer’s daughter (Jitka Cadek Cvancarova)?

The instant you see white-haired, beard-stubbled Udo Kier, you go “oh God, here comes another cold, maniacal, salivating monster performance.” Harvey Keitel is totally subservient to the mise en scene — just playing an old, white-haired priest who coughs a lot and then dies. Julian Sands plays a total salivating beast. Barry Pepper (who was young 20 years ago but no longer) is interesting as a Russian soldier with no love for Communism or Josef Stalin.

Exquisitely made, and utterly hellish to the core in terms of its depiction of the human condition. I happen to be on friendly terms with one of the producers, Tatiana Detlofson, who used to be married to Variety‘s Steven Gaydos. Does it deserve to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film? Yes — it’s too well made not to be so honored. Every frame screams “soul-cancer arthouse perversion“.

Originally posted on 7.25.11: The gist of Scott Feinberg‘s 7.25 piece (“The Art of Dying Young‘) about the death of Amy Winehouse is that it’s not such a terrible thing to check out early if your legend is going downhill anyway. Biological shutdowns will always be traumatic to friends, fans and loved ones, but it’s arguably worse, Feinberg is saying, to hang on past your peak point.

But how do you know when you’ve peaked? Answer: Nobody ever does. Everyone goes through life saying, “I’ll find a way to turn things around…after all, tomorrow is another day.”

“Most [performing survivors] overstay their welcome,” says Feinberg, “and simply begin to evaporate from the public’s consciousness, either because they find themselves (a) unable to maintain the performance-level that first garnered them fame, (b) creatively limited by the public’s limited perception of them, (c) distracted and/or deterred by fame and its trappings, (d) no longer able or willing to compete with ‘fresher’ faces.”

Truman Capote certainly fell prey to (c). I remember to this day what Gore Vidal said when Capote more or less committed suicide: “A very wise career move.”

If I could re-orchestrate my life from a free-for-all cosmic perspective, I’d like to live about 250 years but get no older than, say, 42 years. I’d arrange to be born in 1800 with my current consciousness intact, and then explore the unsullied American frontier and become an inventor and buy up all the patents for everything and become stinking rich.

And then tour the world and become friends with everyone worth knowing — young Abe Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, Chief Sitting Bull, Herman Melville, young Katherine Hepburn, Frederick C. Douglas, Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Isadora Duncan, D.W. Griffith, Theodore Roosevelt, John Reed, Jack London, young Cary Grant, young JFK, young John Lennon, etc. And then wind things down around 2050, give or take. Or maybe keep going.

All though the decades I’ve had a problem with the spelling of this famous character’s name — it should obviously have two “o”s (as in the spelling of Jimmy Doolittle, commander of the 1942 air raid upon Japan) and not just one. You can’t have that “ooooh” sound without two “o”s. One “o” produces an “oh” sound, as in dough.

Dolittle, God help us, will open on 1.17.20. Costarring Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Jim Broadbent; Malek aside, the voice cast includes John Cena, Marion Cotillard, Carmen Ejogo, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Tom Holland, Kumail Nanjiani, Craig Robinson, Octavia Spencer, Emma Thompson and Frances de la Tour.

David “Jim Hopper” Harbour as Oscar, a pissed-off, glum-faced sanitation engineer who decides to own it lock, stock and barrel: “If everyone calls you trash and everyone treats you like trash, why don’t you just become trash?”

My favorite all-time western gunfight, and that includes the Wild Bunch finale. And it’s not just those magic six-shooters that are capable of firing 15 or 20 rounds without reloading. It’s also that cannon-like sound when they fire. Perhaps not as roaring rumbling thundercloud as the gunshots in Shane, but in the same basic neighborhood.

Matthew Miele‘s Alan Pakula: Going For Truth, a 98-minute doc about the director of the “paranoid trilogy” (Klute, The Parallax View and All The President’s Men) as well as Starting Over, The Sterile Cuckoo, Sophie’s Choice, Presumed Innocent, The Pelican Brief and The Devil’s Own, just finished screening at the Hamptons Film Festival.

Scott Feinberg tweet: “A tight/interesting authorized profile of a great filmmaker gone way too soon, with huge participation from key people related to his life including Streep, Redford, Fonda, Ford, Roberts, Hoffman, Bridges, Woodward & Bernstein.”

Straight superficial bullshit…hold your nose and cash the paycheck…pure posturing emptiness. Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott or Ella Balinska might be in great shape and they might have learned some cool moves from a choreographer, but when push comes to shove I don’t believe they can “take” any midsize guy (5’10” tall, 170 pounds or more) who’s in reasonably good shape. I wouldn’t be afraid if I ran into any of them in a dark alley. I don’t believe that short hardbody girls are a threat and neither do they…be honest.

Journo pally: “I distrust the influence of Wes Anderson. Because it seems to be everywhere, and it’s fascinating. One of my colleagues has been teaching film classes at college level, and the #1 filmmaker all the seniors want to be is Wes. Ari Aster is a case in point. He’s got the worst of Wes’s fussiness but none of his narrative gifts, and is just as ham-handed with his performances. Midsommar, though, is not as badly acted as Hereditary.”

Comment from HE reader “JD”, posted 12 years ago: “His movies have a child-like surface because that makes for a more potent, dynamic juxtaposition with the films’ darker undercurrents. His films are subversive for precisely this reason: the characters (like Anderson himself…and possibly his audience) are trying to hide from their very real, adult pain in the surface comforts and curiosities of childhood…but it doesn’t work. In all of his films, Anderson calls himself on his love of all things innocent and youthful, creating a conflict of substance and style that’s tremendously rich and rewarding.

“In essence, he makes children’s movies and/or fairy tales for adults with an interest in art films, literature, and rock ‘n’ roll. If you ask me, that’s an incredibly bold and original approach and one that is certainly worth revisiting in different genres/narrative contexts.”

“Some people think they’re born born better than others. I’m trying to prove it’s the way you’re raised that counts. Even a monkey brought up in the right surroundings can learn the meaning of decency and honesty.” — Professor Peter Boyd (Ronald Reagan) to Jane (Diana Lynn) in Fred DeCordova‘s Bedtime for Bonzo (’51).

THR‘s Scott Feinberg posted this yet-to-see list the other day. I’ve seen Ad Astra, of course. It’s just Richard Jewell now…an AFI Fest thing. I’m presuming but don’t know for a fact that 1917 will also debut at that November festival. Bombshell peeks out tomorrow (Sunday, 10.12). The first Little Women screening is slated for Wednesday, 10.23. I’m finally seeing The Painted Bird on 10.15. My first Knives Out experience will happen at the Middleburg Film Festival (which starts on Thursday, 10.17). I don’t know what’s up with Dark Waters, but expectations are fairly high. Catching the highly regarded Peanut Butter Falcon (that title!) this weekend. Queen and Slim has been seen and praised. JJ Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker won’t happen for a while yet. Cats? I tingle with anticipation. I don’t know from The Good Liar. Seeing Zombieland: Double Tap on Tuesday, 10.15.

I began to be friendly with the amiable Robert Forster 22 years ago, or just after I’d seen Quentin Tarantino‘s Jackie Brown. I was with People at the time, and had wrangled an interview with the 56 year-old actor because I absolutely knew (and had convinced People‘s bureau chief Jack Kelly) that Forster’s career, which had been slumping since the late ’80s, was about to take off again.

Because his low-key, straight-from-the-shoulder performance as bail bondsman Max Cherry was a perfectly assured mellow-vibe thing. Right in the pocket. It landed Forster a Best Supporting Actor nomination, and he was suddenly back in the game.

Forster worked steadily after that, and in 2011 he scored again as George Clooney‘s cranky father-in-law in The Descendants. I interviewed him right after seeing Alexander Payne‘s film at Telluride. Forster sure knew how to play pissy.

Both interviews happened at West Hollywood’s Silver Spoon cafe, which was Forster’s favorite haunt for many years. It closed on 12.31.11, and I distinctly recall Forster telling me that he was pretty broken up about this. (A seafood place, Connie and Ted’s, opened in the same spot two years later.)

And now he’s gone, dear fellow. I must have run into Forster at two or three hundred industry gatherings over the last 20-odd years. “Hey, Bob,” “Hi, Jeff,” small-talk, sound byte….”later.”

I’m very sorry that he’s left the room. Really. Only 78 — old not that old. Brain cancer.

When death comes knocking, you can hide in the cellar or duck into a closet and sometimes it’ll go away and forget about you. For a while. But if your number’s up, it’s up. Ask Warren Beatty‘s Joe Pendleton. Or Robert Redford‘s wounded cop character in that famous Twilight Zone episode, “Nothing in the Dark.”

In my book Forster made only four really good films and two pretty good ones: Medium Cool, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Don Is Dead, Jackie Browne, The Descendants, What They Had.