The first screener I received this year was for Sebastian Lelio‘s Disobedience, the first-rate, finely acted, highly emotional Orthodox Jewish lesbo drama with Rachel Weiss, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola. (My default mini-review.) The screener for Morgan Neville‘s widely praised Mr. Rogers doc arrived yesterday.
Nobody knows anything except for the fact that Ethan Hawke and Glenn Close are brilliant in First Reformed and The Wife, respectively. I feel like a wuss for allowing Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil to nudge me into making predictions based on almost nothing but gut feelings, intuition, insect antennae vibrations, hairs on the back of my neck, little devils and angels whispering on my shoulders (except in the cases of Close and Hawke).
But you know what? A lot of these names are going to be top contenders anyway. Because people want what they want, and they can sense things. On top of which I am occasionally Zoltar, the all-knowing channeller, award-season mystic and Academy whisperer. Please tell Zoltar what’s coming that he’s missing, etc.
Comment from a guy who hears things, gets around, knows a thing or two: “The long drive must be affecting your mind. Lakeith Stanfield for Sorry to Bother You????? Single worst movie I have seen all year. Green Book‘s Viggo Mortensen AND Mahershala Ali, with Viggo in front position of those two.”
The 45th Telluride Film Festival announced its alphabetical slate this morning. The only title that hadn’t been predicted in this or any other space space is Ed Zwick‘s TRIAL BY FIRE, a fact-based wrongful execution drama. The boldfaced titles are those I’m especially interesting in seeing, totalling 18. How many of these will I actually see? 12 or 13, if that.
· ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT (d. James Longley, U.S.-Denmark-Norway, 2018)
· BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ (d. Pamela E. Green, U.S., 2018)
· BIRDS OF PASSAGE (d. Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, Colombia-Denmark-Mexico, 2018)….saw it in Cannes.
· BORDER (d. Ali Abbasi, Sweden, 2018)
· BOY ERASED (d. Joel Edgerton, U.S., 2018)
· CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (d. Marielle Heller, U.S., 2018)
· COLD WAR (d. Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland-France-U.K., 2018)
· DESTROYER (d. Karyn Kusama, U.S., 2018)
· DOGMAN (d. Matteo Garrone, Italy-France, 2018)…saw it in Cannes.
· DOVLATOV (d. Aleksei German, Russia-Poland-Serbia, 2018)
· FIRST MAN (d. Damien Chazelle, U.S., 2018)
· FISTFUL OF DIRT (d. Sebastián Silva, U.S., 2018)
· FREE SOLO (d. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, U.S., 2018)
· GHOST FLEET (d. Shannon Service and Jeffrey Waldron, U.S., 2018)
Winslow and Holbrook, specifically. Poor Winslow isn’t exactly down-at-the-heels, but it doesn’t seem all that economically robust. It has a swanky Spanish-styled hotel and two or three nice bars or restaurants (maybe more), but the atmosphere feels a bit flat. If it weren’t for that Jackson Browne-Glenn Frey song “Take It Easy,” things would probably be that much leaner. There are statues of Browne and Frey dead smack in the center of town.
Jeff Sneider and his ilk are claiming that David Gordon Green‘s Halloween remake is one of the hottest TIFF tickets. News to me. I spit on any attempt to reactivate the Halloween franchise because excepting the John Carpenter original, all Halloween films are aimed at horror-fan knuckle-draggers. Hollywood Elsewhere supports elevated horror (i.e., Hereditary, The Witch). On top of which HE doesn’t do midnight screenings. Especially ones cowritten by Danny “warlock eyes” McBride. I’ll catch it at a Scotiabank p & i screening at a reasonable hour or not at all.
On the 15 north toward Barstow, and internet connectivity is spotty. I’ve nonetheless managed to watch this Other Side of the Wind trailer twice, and I’m thinking that the choppy, whiplash editing might prove a bit taxing if the whole film is like this. I shouldn’t say anything more — it’s just a trailer. I’m told that I should watch Morgan Neville‘s Orson Welles doc, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, before watching the main feature. Netflix streaming for press, etc.
From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review of Damian Chazelle‘s First Man: “The fact that space travel, viewed from the inside, could look and feel so much more abrasive and hazardous than we might ever have thought is part of the raw dramatic power of First Man. The movie captures that death was always part of it. The steep risk factor, the sheer number of pilots and astronauts who lost their lives, the scary macabre thrust of the voyages — it was all a dream poised on the edge of an abyss.
“First Man bears the same relation to the space dramas that have come before it that Saving Private Ryan did to previous war films. The movie redefines what space travel is — the way it lives inside our imagination — by capturing, for the first time, what the stakes really were.”
The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney says that “this sober, contemplative picture has emotional involvement, visceral tension, and yes, even suspense, in addition to stunning technical craft.
“The extent to which mainstream audiences will respond to the lengthy film’s unfaltering restraint remains to be seen” — in other words, portions of the popcorn crowd may feel unfulfilled in terms of standard jingoistic rah-rah vibes. “But this is a strikingly intelligent treatment of a defining moment for America that broadens the tonal range of Chazelle, clearly a versatile talent, after Whiplash and La La Land.”
Variety music reporter and AARP magazine film critic Chris Willman picks me up tomorrow morning around 6:30 am, give or take, and then it’s off to Gallup, New Mexico. Typing is always difficult in a moving car, but I can manage. 11:30 pm now — alarm set for 5 am. Expecting to hit Telluride around 2 or 3 pm on Thursday afternoon. Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone is driving also, but she tends to poke along. Last year she arrived Thursday evening.
A Venice-Telluride-Toronto assessment by WorldofReel’s Jordan Ruimy: “Telluride no-shows that are premiering at Venice include Suspiria, The Sisters Brothers, Sunset, Maya, Kursk, 22 July, Buster Scruggs, The Nightingale and A Star is Born.
“Meanwhile, Toronto can brag about snatching up world premieres for Widows, If Beale Street Could Talk, High Life, Beautiful Boy, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, The Outlaw King, Hold the Dark, Mid90s, Fahrenheit 11/9, Ben Is Back, Green Book, The Land of Steady Habits and many more.
“Can we now conclude that this year’s Cannes Film Festival had a fantastic lineup? Part of the complaints that derived from this year’s pre-Cannes buzz was the fact that the festival failed to deliver the big names.
“However, looking at all the Cannes rejects and now the mixed buzz surrounding them, maybe Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux was right all along in not including Peterloo, Loro, The Death of John F. Donovan, The Sisters Brothers, Suspiria, The Nightingale, Sunset, Maya, Kursk and a few others. These rejections, and consequent pickups by Venice, could definitely detract from the quality of the films being presented at the Lido this year.
Late yesterday afternoon Tatyana and I did a Griffith Park Observatory hike. We started by sneaking through a security gate and strolling past Angelina Jolie’s stately manse, which was known for decades as the one that Cecil B. DeMille once lived in. Then we humped it up Catalina Drive and onto the hill trails that lead to the observatory. I hadn’t visited this historic location for 26 or 27 years. To me it’s not a scenic tourist spot as much as holy James Dean ground — i.e., where the knife fight happened in Rebel Without A Cause. Remember that I own a deep-red James Dean jacket.
