I’ve been ducking screenings of Stephen Frears‘ Florence Foster Jenkins (Paramount, 8.12) because, as I’ve muttered over and over, I don’t want to watch a film about a real-life rich socialite (played by Meryl Streep) who insisted on singing opera at a 1944 Carnegie Hall concert despite the fact that she couldn’t sing any better than you or me in the shower. (And perhaps worse — listen to this.)

But I’ve decided to man up and see it next Friday because of three reasons: (a) I’ve heard that Streep’s voice isn’t atrocious in the film. A friend who’s seen it says her singing-as-Jenkins “isn’t completely embarassing…she can’t sing but she almost gets there“; (b) Older audiences are lapping it up, and the afore-mentioned friend speculates that Streep “will probably be [Best Actress] nominated, which happens almost every time”; and (c) the theme of Florence Foster Jenkins is that the love of singing is what counts, and not whether you’re any good at it.

Alternate slogan: If singing makes you feel good, do it in front of others. Even if you murder every song you interpret.

I beg to differ with that. Most of us would, I think. If you can’t sing you should stick to the shower or your car — period.

What previous films have subjected audiences to singing that’s difficult to handle? Claire Trevor‘s pathetic a cappela scene in John Huston‘s Key Largo (’48). Gwen Welles‘ grotesque singing scene in Robert Altman‘s Nashville (’75). Elizabeth Olsen‘s country music singing in Marc Abraham‘s I Saw The Light (’15). Who else?

The last time I looked movie dragons were part of the reptile family. Over 60 U.S.-produced movies and at least one HBO series (Games of Thrones) have featured big dragons over the last half century or so, and they’ve all had standard scaly reptile skin. And yet the dragon in David Lowery‘s Pete’s Dragon (Disney, 8.12) has green Dr. Seuss fur. It’s probably safe to say this will be the first Seussy dragon in movies, ever. (For the record, Disney’s 1977 animated version featured a traditional scaly beast.)

Obviously Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) decided he wanted to create a more fanciful dragon — a big E.T.-like creature, a friend of a young boy, a protector, etc. And that, to Lowery, meant no lizard-like skin.

Pete’s Dragon, which is not animated and is fully realistic save for the dragon FX, costars Bryce Dallas Howard, Oakes Fegley, Wes Bentley, Robert Redford, Karl Urban and Oona Lawrence. Press screenings are beginning next week.

I never liked Hillary Clinton. Millions feel the same way. Ask any hinterland bubba. But I was ready to hold my nose and vote for her anyway. But now she’s reportedly ready to flip the bird to the Sanders/Warren movement by picking Tim Kaine as her vice-presidential running mate. Now I hate her.

An HE commenter wrote last night that Hillary has to play her cards cautiously with Kaine or she might conceivably lose to Trump. I posted the following in the comment thread three or four hours ago; here it is front and center:

You don’t get it. Many voters are riled, scared. They don’t want “straight down the middle”, which to them feels the same as “hold the course” and “same system & same social/political order that has been scaring them.” They want the apple cart overturned (Trump vs. multiculturals, Bernie vs. oligarchy), things re-ordered, the 1% challenged, the deck reshuffled.

With the Kaine pick Hillary has assured these scared voters that this can’t / won’t happen under her administration. She’s underlined that she will govern with a cautiously liberal, more-of-the-same approach — a measured, practical-minded, incremental application of moderate liberalism. She may win with Kaine — I certainly don’t want Trump — but I’m sickened by the lack of fire that the Kaine pick signifies — the guardedness, the caution, the lack of arousal.

N.Y. Times reporter Amy Chozick is persuaded that Hillary Clinton will likely announce her selection of Virginia Senator Tim Kaine (a.k.a. “Basketballhead”) via email on Friday afternoon. Liberals are in pain over this; I’m furious. Kaine is a lethally dull, sparse-haired, beady-eyed establishment centrist. In selecting him Clinton is basically telling supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to sit on their convictions and to forget about the whole super-charged, start-a-revolution fervor of the 2016 primary season. Clinton, seen by heartland bubbas as unlikable and ethically hopeless, is making a huge mistake by partnering with a toothless moderate who is obviously not a game-changer. Charles Chamberlain, exec director of Democracy for America, told Chozick that going with Kaine “could be disastrous for our efforts to defeat Donald Trump in the fall” because of his support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I for one am off the boat. Clinton has totally blown it. I’m voting for…I don’t know who I’ll vote for but right now I’m furious beyond words.

When a film debuts at the Venice Film festival, it’s not unusual for it to also show up at the overlapping Telluride Film Festival, and also, more often than not, at the Toronto Film Festival. So Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli reporting that Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals and Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi pic Arrival “are virtually assured a Lido launch”…well, there you have it. Both are likely to screen also in Colorado. Or, failing that, at least in Toronto.

As usual, the calendar presents problems for Telluride. Challenges, I meant to say. The Venice Film Festival will run from Wednesday, 8.31 thru Saturday, 9.10, and the Telluride Film Festival starts on Friday, 9.2 and ends on Monday, 9.5. Venice therefore has a two-day jump. Venice’s world premieres of Nocturnal Animals and Arrival would have to happen early (no later than Thursday, 9.1 and Friday, 9.2) for their respective filmmakers to fly to Telluride straight after.

The Venice Film Festival will announced its full slate a week from today — on Thursday, 7.28.

Nocturnal Animals (Focus Features, 11.18), which costars Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Laura Linney, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Shannon, Isla Fisher and Armie Hammer, has been a leading hottie in HE’s Oscar Balloon since early this year, mainly because of the quality of Ford’s A Single Man. Arrival (Paramount, 11.11) is a sci-fi drama costarring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, 54, is said to be another of Hillary Clinton‘s favorites for a possible vice-presidential running mate. Perez is bright, Latino, personable, mild-mannered, a good guy, toothy, highly educated, bald. He clearly has more progressive pizazz than Hillary’s boring-white-guy favorites, Tim Kaine and Tom Vilsack. Perez is clearly more progressive than these two bowls of room-temperature soup. But he still doesn’t have “it”. No snap, virility, hormonal magnetism. Elizabeth Warren is the only high-energy, rock-and-roll, revivalist alternative, and Hillary (whom I’m learning to hate all over again) can’t decide what kind of boring she wants from her vice-presidential partner.

I’ve just been told I can attend this afternoon’s 5 pm screening of Oliver Stone‘s Snowden in San Diego. That’s a logistical problem considering that (a) I’m still in West Hollywood and (b) it’s 2:10 pm as we speak. If I leave within 20 minutes I might be able make it. Maybe. This is nuts but I’m figuring “go for the gusto,” life is short, etc. Update:  Forget it.  A half-hour ago Google Maps informed it’ll take three hours and 27 minutes to drive to San Diego’s Horton Plaza.  I just wasn’t fast enough.  I’ll see it sometime next month.  The embargo review date is 9.10.

Hollywood Elsewhere supports the just-announced lawsuit filed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Marl Boal against the U.S. government. It was filed in response to a threat by a military prosecutor in Bowe Bergdahl‘s upcoming court martial to subpoena Boal’s taped interviews with the Army deserter and former Taliban P.O.W. prisoner of war. Boal has been writing a screenplay about Bergdahl’s story, which may be directed down the road by longtime creative partner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty).

But I ask again with all sincerity — who the hell wants to see a movie about Bergdahl? What is it that I’m missing about this guy that supports an admiring or even an interesting portrait?

I’ve said before that I don’t want to see a film that portrays Bergdahl as a thouightful, perceptive anti-war humanist who found the courage not to fight in Afghanistan and to abandon his post only to be captured by the Taliban, etc. I’ve come to suspect that Bowe’s desertion was an act of a mentally unstable asshole, particularly since his desertion led to a search party that resulted in the deaths of fellow combatants. The general assessment is that Bergdahl is not made of uncommon valor. He appears to have been mentally unstable at the time of the desertion. He walked off his post without even carrying a weapon, for Chrissake.

Yesterday Deadline‘s Anita Busch reported that Bruce Dern has been cast as the stroke-sidelined Joseph P. Kennedy in Chappaquiddick, a feature based on the Ted Kennedy-Mary Jo Kopechne tragedy, which happened on July 18, 1969 — two days before the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Chappaquiddick will begin shooting just after Labor Day. John Curran (Tracks, Stone) will direct from a BlackList script by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan. Jason Clarke and Kate Mara are playing Ted Kennedy and Kopechne; Ed Helms (??) is portraying Kennedy confidante/advisor Joe Gargan. The producers are Apex Entertainment’s Mark Ciardi and Campbell McInnes.

Could someone please send me a PDF of the script?

Kennedy, the multi-millionaire founding father of the Kennedy clan and orchestrator of the mystique going back to the 1920s, suffered a stroke in 1961. It left him half-paralyzed, in a wheelchair and for the most part unable to speak. With the help of therapy he gradually recovered some mobility (he was seen walking with a cane in May of ’64) and limited speech functions. But by July of ’69 he was 81 and near the end. He died on 11.18.69, four months after the Chappaquiddick incident.

It therefore seems curious that Busch, presumably going on information provided by someone at Apex, is describing the elder Kennedy’s involvement in the tragedy as “key.”