If you want to submit to a serious stress test and thereby discover how tenacious or ruthless you can be in pursuit of a coveted social goal, try getting a few words in edgewise with a world-famous celebrity at a party. The best way to manage this is to ask the celebrity’s publicist for assistance, but if you’re attempting to elbow your way into the star’s orbit on your own steam, look out. There are few exercises in life that are more naked or grasping.

The competition can be truly brutal, and the effort will almost always eat up 10 or 15 minutes of your time. Just standing there like some schmuck in a soup line…holding onto that half-smile, that look of casual expectation….beyond humiliating.

And while you’re ready to pounce into that little time-sliver of opportunity, that two-second opening when there’s a break in the conversation and you can jump in like a cat with your well-rehearsed opener…it’s really, really awful. How desperate am I? Where is my dignity? “Hey, Clint…Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere…we did a phoner in early ’04 for a Los Angeles magazine piece I wrote about Hollywood Republicans, and a while later I went apeshit over Million Dollar Baby,” etc.

And the way some people will just barrel right in while you’re having a chat with Clint or whomever…their aggressive behaviors aren’t unattractive as much as flat-out ugly. You might think you know someone, but you really don’t until you’ve seen them smoothly muscle their way into a celebrity’s face-space with just the right amount of finesse.

Andrew Goldman to Anjelica Huston about her Prizzi’s Honor Oscar: “I’d forgotten that you won over Oprah for The Color Purple. [The other three nominees for 1986’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar were Margaret Avery for The Color Purple, Amy Madigan for Twice in a Lifetime, and Meg Tilly for Agnes of God.] As I was watching the footage of you collecting the Oscar, my blood went a little cold thinking, There’s got to be some repercussions for beating Oprah.”

Anjelica: “She never had me on her show, ever. She won’t talk to me. The only encounter I’ve had with Oprah was when I was at a party for the Academy Awards, a private residence. I was talking to Clint Eastwood, and she literally came between us with her back to me. So all of the sudden I was confronted with the back of Oprah’s head.”

I’m going to try and phrase this as respectfully as I can. If you watched today’s Judiciary Committee testimony by Attorney General William Barr, you know that the toughest and sharpest interrogations, hands down, came from Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Mazie Hirono, and that the questions and follow-ups from Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Patrick Leahy weren’t as riveting or on-point, and at times sounded a bit doddering.

As I watched Harris and Hirono I was reminding myself that if and when Donald Trump is defeated in 2020, it’ll be essential to have a Democratic successor who’s a tough-ass lion — super-energized and vigorous and sharp as a tack. I don’t want an accommodating, turn-the-other-cheek sort of guy succeeding Trump. Due respect and sorry to be blunt, but I really don’t want a man of Leahy’s age (or close to it) to become the next President.

Ronald Reagan was obviously well along when he was elected president in November 1980, but at least he was 69 or eight years younger than the age Joe Biden will be during the 2020 election.

My instantant reaction to this Ophelia trailer was (and still is) that George MacKay is one dorky-looking Hamlet with an appalling pudding-bowl haircut. One glance and I was muttering “I hate this guy.” In the titular role, Daisy Ridley seems fetching as far as it goes, although she seems a little too athletic and spirited in her suicide scene. I’m sorry but you can just smell problems with this one. Any film released 18 months after debuting at Sundance almost always has problems. IFC Films will open Ophelia on 6.28.19.

From Jordan Hoffman’s Guardian pan, posted on 1.23.18, titled “Daisy Ridley stranded in disastrous Hamlet reimagining“:

“If a producer cornered me in an elevator and pitched ‘Hamlet, but from Ophelia’s point of view, and we’ve got Daisy Ridley in the lead’, I’d sell everything I had to invest. And I’d probably make a killing, as Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia is going to cut into one heck of a trailer.But to thine own self one must be true.

“This film looks absolutely gorgeous, but apart from its production design it is basically a disaster. Shakespeare purists will revolt, high-fantasy fans will be bored and the kids who make gifs of Daisy Ridley and put them on Tumblr will wait until they can pirate this anyway. This project is madness with no method to it.

“Daisy Ridley’s voiceover introduces us to Ophelia, floating in her watery grave, suggesting that only now will we hear ‘the real story’. We cut to her childhood at court, a little scamp that Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts) chooses to be one of her ladies-in-waiting. She and young Hamlet are already making eyes at one another, yet when he returns to Elsinore as a young man (MacKay) their flirtation soon escalates.

Film critics who in their prime operated as honorable members of the Great Middle Community (i.e., those who criticized in a measured, perceptive, fair-minded way) are rarely remembered when they’re gone. The critics people do remember are those who seemed overly gracious and forgiving (i.e., often erring on the side of accommodation) or who seemed unreasonably cruel and heartless. The consensus view is that theatre, movie and book critic John Simon, whose influence peaked in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s but is still at it at age 93, belongs to the latter category. This is underlined in a portion of an Andrew Goldman Vulture interview with Anjelica Huston.

Goldman: A Walk With Love and Death was not well received. The critic John Simon wrote, ‘There is a perfectly blank, supremely inept performance by Huston’s daughter, Anjelica, who has the face of an exhausted gnu, the voice of an unstrung tennis racket, and a figure of no discernible shape.” I had to look up what a gnu is.
Huston: Wasn’t that pretty? That’s good, isn’t it?
Goldman: Coming as it did when you were 18, did it stick with you?
Huston: It sticks with you. And now that you’ve reminded me, it will stick with me for another ten years.
Goldman: I probably wouldn’t have quoted it had you not included it in your memoir.
Huston: No, I completely accept that. I think the news there is he’s dead and I’m not.
Goldman: You think he’s dead?
Huston: He must be.
Goldman: I was curious myself. I looked him up. He’s 93 years old. He’s alive.
Huston: He’s dead as far as I’m concerned.

“The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, pushed Attorney General William P. Barr twice to release more of his investigative findings in late March after Mr. Barr outlined the inquiry’s main conclusions in a letter to Congress, citing a gap between Mr. Barr’s interpretation and Mr. Mueller’s report, according to a letter released on Wednesday. The letter, from Mr. Mueller, revealed deep concern about how Mr. Barr handled the initial release of the special counsel’s findings.” — from N.Y. Times story by Michael S. Schmidt, titled “Mueller Pushed in Letter for Barr to Release Report’s Summaries.”

A 4.30 N.Y. Times report states that a month ago special prosecutor Robert Mueller expressed disagreement with Attorney General William P. Barr‘s pro-Trump whitewash summary of the Russian investigation’s conclusions.

If this in fact happened, why the hell is Mueller being quiet about it? Is he a stand-up patriot and a believer in the rule of law or not? And why have “senior Democratic lawmakers been unable to secure a date” for Mueller’s testimony about this and related matters before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as the Times story reports? Mueller has been frequently described as a straight-arrow traditionalist, but who the hell hides in his study or allows himself to be restrained from testifying when a Democracy is being dismantled by a lying, authoritarian brute?

From the story by Mark Mazzetti and Michael S. Schmidt: “Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation’s conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department and three people with direct knowledge of the communication between the two men.

“The letter adds to the growing evidence of a rift between them and is another sign of the anger among the special counsel’s investigators about Mr. Barr’s characterization of their findings, which allowed Mr. Trump to wrongly claim he had been vindicated.

“It was unclear what specific objections Mr. Mueller raised in his letter, though a Justice Department spokeswoman said on Tuesday evening that he ‘expressed a frustration over the lack of context’ in Mr. Barr’s presentation of his findings on obstruction of justice. Mr. Barr defended his descriptions of the investigation’s conclusions in conversations with Mr. Mueller over the days after he sent the letter, according to two people with knowledge of their discussions.”

Five days after the first commercial viewings of Avengers: Endgame began and 48 hours after the first weekend of worldwide play, Variety‘s Guy Lodge is sincerely (no bullshit) disappointed that Thor’s weight gain has been spoiled by a Guardian headline. HE to readership: What levels of depression or anger (if any) were experienced due to the “fat Thor” thing?

In the not-so-distant past Jett and I were talking about an important job interview he had coming up. It was set for the following day or whatever, and Jett was a bit anxious. He confessed that he’d blown a couple of previous interviews because he was overly nervous and on-edge, and that he didn’t want that to happen again. I suddenly had a thought. Just before the interview, I told him, slip into a bathroom at a Starbucks and rub one out. It’ll make you feel calm, centered and anxiety-free. And perhaps even serene.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Since Sunday night’s Apocalypse Now: Final Cut screening at the Beacon, I’ve read four or five articles that mention the forthcoming 4K Bluray (streeting on 8.27) that will contain Final Cut, the Redux version, the original theatrical cut, and what some have casually referred to as Eleanor Coppola‘s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (’91), a doc about the making of Apocalypse Now.

I guess I need to remind everyone that the actual auteurs of Hearts of Darkness were the late George Hickenlooper (whom I knew as a trusted acquaintance and a good fellow) and Fax Bahr. Eleanor Coppola shot the 1976 location-photography footage and narrated some of the doc, but not too much else.

Hearts of Darkness co-director George Hickenlooper, Barack Obama during the ’08 campaign.

The Wiki page explains the basics: “Using behind-the-scenes footage shot by Eleanor Coppola, the doc chronicles how production problems delayed the film [and] nearly destroyed the life and career of Apocalypse Now director Francis Coppola, who was and remains Eleanor’s husband. In 1990 Coppola turned her material over to Hickenlooper and Bahr, who subsequently shot new interviews with the original cast and crew, and intercut them with her existing material. After a year of editing, Hickenlooper, Bahr and Coppola debuted their film at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival to universal critical acclaim.”

Two days after Hickenlooper passed on 10.29.10 I posted a piece that contained Hickenlooper’s recollections about the true authorship of Hearts of Darkness. Here’s how he put it:

“I think the more appropriate way to look at it is that Hearts of Darkness is Eleanor Coppola’s story. It’s not her film. Hardly. It’s her story. But that’s because I decided to make it her story.

“When I got involved with this project [in 1990], Showtime was going to make it a one-hour TV special called Apocalypse Now Revisited. It was going to be basically an hour-long special about how they did the war pyrotechnics. It was going to be dull and stupid.

“At the time I told Steve Hewitt and my partner Fax Bahr that ‘nobody cares about the making of a movie, especially one that is 11 years old.’ I argued that the film had to have an emotional component. At the time, no one was familiar with Eleanor’s diary ‘Notes.’ My father had purchased it for me on my 16th birthday. I ate it up.

“When I got involved with HoD, I advocated using her diary as the narrative thread. I got incredible resistance from Showtime, and I got initial resistance from Eleanor. Not much, but some.

Hillary Clinton did this to us. Unlocked the gates, set free the bats of hell. She was the change agent — the bringer of the horror that plagues us to this day. She and her enablers. They’ll all have to deal with this for the rest of their lives.

Loveless composer Evgeny Galperin, whom I met in Cannes two years ago, says that he “worked” for (presumably composed the musical score for) Kantemir Balagov‘s Beanpole, which will show in Cannes under Un Certain Regard.

Evgeny will be in Cannes for a couple of days to attend the Beanpole screening and, I presume, take a few bows. He assures that Beanpole, a melodrama about two women struggling to survive in the 1945 aftermath of the German siege of Leningrad, is an “absolute masterpiece.” He’s also urging that I see Kirill Mikhanovsky‘s Give Me Liberty, which will screen at Directors’ Fortnight.

Balagov’s controversial Tesnota (Closeness) screened in Cannes two years ago. The 26 year-old director’s decision to include footage from an actual snuff film prompted some press-screening walkouts, and resulted in the ruffling of critical feathers. Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter review reflected this reaction.

Tatyana saw Tesnota/Closeness at Telluride ’17. She told Evgeny this morning that she found it “brilliant” and a “true masterpiece” and knew right away that “a new, very talented Russian film director had been born.”

Long Beanpole synopsis via Wild Bunch: “1945, Leningrad. World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Although the siege – one of the worst in history – is finally over, life and death continue their battle in the wreckage that remains. Two young women, Iya and Masha, search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.

“26-year-old Kantemir Balagov follows Tesnota, winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, with a powerful period drama.”

At long last, World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has posted results of a top-rated films of the 20-teens poll. Not entirely critics but 250 “critics, programmers, academics and distributors“, as Ruimy puts it.

George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road — a high-grade, brilliantly choreographed apocalyptic action flick — has emerged with the highest tally. Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life came in second, Barry Jenkins‘ overpraised Moonlight ranks third, Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood is fourth and David Fincher‘s The Social Network emerged as #5.

Of the top 20 favorites, a little less than half — Fury Road, Moonlight, Jordan Peele‘s Get Out (#10), Todd Haynes‘ Carol (#12), Spike Jonze‘s Her (#18) and Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name (#19) — could be called Joe Popcorn-friendly.

The others are studied, formidable, sophisticated, in some cases ultra-dweeby, New York Film Festival-y, non-popcorny “critics movies” such as Jonathan Glazer‘s Under the Skin (#12), Kenneth Lonergan‘s Margaret (14), Maren Ade‘s overpraised Toni Erdmann (#15), Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s Uncle Bonmee (#16), Joshua Oppenheimer‘s The Act of Killing and Leos Carax‘s brilliant Holy Motors.

#6 through #10 are The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), Roma (Alfonso Cuaron), Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson…get outta town!), A Separation (Asghar Farhadi…yes!) and the perfectly composed Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen).

HE opinion (reposted): Moonlight is a very good film, but it was over-showered with praise by way of virtue-signalling and p.c. kowtowing. Now that the post-Twilight Zone truth about Jordan Peele has begun to settle in, Get Out‘s rep is almost certainly undergoing a reassessment.

HE’s TOP ELEVEN OF THE LAST NINE YEARS: Manchester By The Sea, A Separation, The Social Network, Zero Dark Thirty, Call Me By Your Name, Son of Saul, The Wolf of Wall Street, Leviathan, The Square, Moneyball, Diane.