So far Woody Allen‘s Amazon series, Crisis in Six Scenes, is flunking with critics. It isn’t being killed (most are saying it comes together during the last two episodes) but no one, it seems, is feeling much excitement. I’m just going to binge-watch this Friday (9.30) and tap out my reaction then. It’s not like the world is waiting with bated breath. Screenings this week include Voyage of Time, Miss Sloane, Girl on the Train, a LACMA showing of Christine, maybe a second look at Denial.

Rod Lurie‘s Killing Reagan doesn’t debut on the National Geographic channel for another 20 days (10.16), but at least now I can settle into it and bang something out when the time is right without any undue pressure.

Flashback: I was startled and concerned by Reagan’s shooting but not, truth be told, wildly distraught. The day it happened (3.30.81) I was working inside the McGraw Hill building (1221 Ave. of the Americas at 49th Street) for an MG division called the Product Information Network. For two or three months I researched and wrote a long, detailed report on the effectiveness of landfill compactors (tractor-like vehicles used in garbage dumps) and what the costs and benefits were to local governments.

George Finnegan, a McGraw-Hill exec whom my father was chummy with, gave me this freelance gig. Before he hired me I was desperate. Soon after I was hired as managing editor of The Film Journal. My economic situation became a little easier to handle after that. From ’78 through ’81 I’d been through three years of hand-to-mouth hell.

If you look at Nate Silver’s latest graph you’ll notice an obvious pattern that began in mid August, which is that Hillary’s support began to wither (except for a brief surge just before her “basket of deplorables” + fainting episode week) and Trump’s began to slowly surge. I don’t know if Trump will land any zingers tonight or whether he’ll bluster his way through and maybe lie himself to death, but I know for damn sure that Hillary HAS to land a few good ones or she’s in serious trouble. At the very least she has to arrest the trend of the last five or six weeks — she has to hold the Maginot line.

Like everyone else I was knocked flat when I saw Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country For Old Men on 5.19.07 at the Cannes Film Festival, and I think the venue — the cavernous Grand Lumiere — was part of the reason. The screen is huge, the projection perfect, the sound crisp and clear (if sometimes overly bassy). Plus I was in the company of a few hundred whip-smart journalists who were absorbing every line and scene like world-class connoisseurs. I was on a cloud when it ended.

Welcome to the Fairbanks screening room and stretch out.

Then I saw it again a few months later inside one of the shoebox rooms at Raleigh Studios — the absolute worst way to see a film outside of watching it with a crowd of sandal-wearing, popcorn-munching mooks at that shitty Regal plex just south of Union Square. It was still No Country For Old Men, of course, but it was like listening to Beethoven’s ninth on a tinny, ’60s-era Japanese radio. If you want to severely reduce if not nullify the impact of your movie, by all means screen it for critics inside one of the Raleigh shoeboxes — the 36-seat Douglas Fairbanks or 38-seat Mary Pickford room. (The 161-seat Chaplin theatre is, on the other hand, a generally okay facility.)

I won’t be seeing Terrence Malick‘s 40-minute Voyage of Time (Broad Green, 10.7) until this evening, and I recognize, of course, that it’s a cosmic travelogue of a much higher and more complex order than the legendary “Stargate” sequence in Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey (’68), which ran roughly nine and a half minutes. Obviously Malick’s visual compositions are more varied, naturalistic, sophisticated, etc. But it’s hard not to associate the two when you watch the Voyage trailer. Boiled down, they’re both atmospheric zone-outs.

When 2001 hit nearly 50 years ago, the “Stargate” sequence was a revolutionary groundbreaker — no feature film had ever delivered a sequence that even came close to that kind of nonverbal mindsweep. But by today’s standards, Malick’s doc looks passive and behind the curve. Malick has been working on this thing (“One of my greatest dreams”) for over 40 years, and the trailer makes it feel that way. An enjoyable thing to take the kids to in an IMAX theatre on a Saturday afternoon, but where’s the nerve or the provocation? So far the 90-minute Cate Blanchett-narrated version (i.e., “mother”) has tallied a 65% RT score.

On top of which Kubrick’s sequence delivered a chilly, discomforting feeling. The only unsettling thing about Voyage of Time is Brad Pitt‘s less than exacting diction.

Three days after a Paramount spokesperson said that Gold Derby‘s 9.23 report about Martin Scorsese’s Silence being set for a December release wasn’t necessarily valid as the film “hasn’t been dated,” Variety‘s Brent Lang has announced a firm release date of 12.23 with an expansion in January. I guessed last Friday that the platform release would happen “in mid to late December, a minimal break in NY and LA…and then open it in mid to late January.” Question: What length has Scorsese whittled it down to? It was reported a few weeks ago as being three hours-plus.

France’s decision to submit Paul Verhoeven’s Elle as their official contender for the Foreign Language Oscar offers a tantalizing possibility — a notorious Dutch-born, bad-boy provocateur primarily known for unsubtle, big-budget envelope pushers in the late ’80s and ’90s (RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers) snagging an Oscar at age 78 and revitalizing his career in one fell swoop. The comeback kid!

People vote for this or that film, yes, but they also vote for the best narratives, and in this year’s foreign film realm you really can’t beat Verhoeven’s…c’mon.

Not that Elle won’t be up against some tough competition. My presumptive spitballs include Asghar Farhadi‘s The Salesman (Iran), Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s Aquarius (Brazil), Pablo Larrain‘s Neruda (Chile), Christi Puiu‘s Sieranevada, Maren Ade‘s Toni Erdmann (Germany) and Martin Zandvliet‘s Land of Mine.

From my 9.8 TIFF review: “Elle is one wickedly perverse, end-of-the-world, ice-cold erotic whodunit. It’s not really a thriller as much as a fascinating character study of Isabelle Huppert‘s Michele, a 50something owner of a Parisian videogame company that creates violent rape fantasies, and how a series of assaults and shocks that befall her are reflective of Michele’s pathology and that of the general drift of social mores these days.

Hillary can’t be Bruce Willis as that would mean she’ll destroy the Trump asteroid tonight at the cost of her own life…doesn’t work. And she can’t be Ben Affleck or Steve Buscemi…forget the casting. On top of which Armageddon seems like an unsavory analogy considering that a Republican (Jerry Bruckheimer) produced it. Face it — this one of those tweets that doesn’t expand or hold up to scrutiny.

I’m figuring a lot of under-40s out there have never heard of this famous Noxzema shaving cream commercial, much less seen it. Lewd and sexist but great stuff. Gunilla Knutsson, who was crowned Miss Sweden in 1961, starred in a few such commercials, but the most famous (this one) aired in 1967. There was also a Joe Namath commercial in the early ’70s that costarred Farrah Fawcett — more sexist than the Knutsson! I’m guessing the idea of equating soapy shaving cream with hot sex came from that car-wash scene in Cool Hand Luke (’67).

If I was to say I followed the career of legendary golf pro Arnold Palmer all my life, I’d be a liar. He was a world-renowned athlete with a smooth manner and the vibe of a winner, but I never cared. I admire any athlete who can bring glory to himself like Palmer did from the late’ 50s to early ’70s, but I fucking hate golf — there’s no sport on the planet that I feel less enthusiasm for. I kinda hate guys who play golf — I’ve known a few and they all seem to have this smug aura of entitlement, this clubby yaw-haw attitude. Not to mention those atrociously designed golf shirts.  The only time I felt a scintilla of interest in the sport was when I saw Kevin Costner‘s Tin Cup 20 years ago. But here’s to a great, good-looking, widely-loved golf champion who died today at age 87. Heads down, golf caps off.

Arnold Palmer sometime in the early to mid ’60s.

Everyone reflexively smiles when they meet people socially. Some smile slightly, some a little too much but always with the same glazed eyes. No sincerity offered or expected. But handshakes are a different deal when you’re saying hello to a powerful Hollywood player. Their teeth are gleaming but their eyes are scanning you like a Manhattan detective, trying to assess your nature or strengths or potential threat levels in the space of two or three seconds. I felt this when I met CAA honcho Mike Ovitz in ’88 — he had the eyes of a timber wolf. The eyes of MPAA president Jack Valenti, whom I met in ’84 at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, weren’t as feral but he was definitely sizing me up. Do I scan people like Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s cyborg when I meet them? Frankly, yes…but I try to mask it. Maybe that’s what a lot of people do.

“A formally and thematically ambitious documentary that revisits the 1966 sniper shootings at the U. of Texas at Austin, Tower powerfully channels the terror and confusion of that terrible August day while also achieving the weight and authority that can only come with time and distance. A gripping dramatic reconstruction, a tribute to the heroes and the fallen, and inevitably an expression of nostalgia for the days when a mass shooting still had the power to shock, Keith Maitland’s film weaves rotoscopic animation, archival footage and present-day interviews into a uniquely cinematic memorial that will be in demand from programmers and buyers as the 50th anniversary of the shootings approaches.” — from Justin Chang’s 3.15 SXSW review.