I was and am a huge fan of James Cameron‘s Avatar, but for some reason I’ve never watched the Bluray version that I own. Possibly because I’m sated from having seen it four times theatrically or maybe because I’ve done that and enough already. But I’m up for a sequel in 2016, sure. If you want to be craven about it I guess I could roll with a trilogy, even. But three sequels for a grand total of four? Cameron has spoken to Slashfilm’s Germain Lussler about the writing process that yielded three Cameron-approved scripts, but really, man, c’mon…this is milking the cow beyond the point of tolerance. Mine, anyway. Not to mention Pandora: The Land of Avatar experience at Disney World plus any other commercial exploitations that are being cooked up as we speak. It feels greedy. I’m sure 20th Century Fox stockholders are delighted, but it seems as if Cameron is counting on exploiting the loyalty of Avatar fans a little too much. I know he’s a hardcore quality guy but on some level I feel like Kirk Douglas inside his gladiator cell as he looks through the overhead bars at a chuckling Peter Ustinov and Charles McGraw and yells, “I’m not an animal!” The three films will open in December in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

If you avoid the unruly, flip-flop-wearing hordes Venice is the quietest city in the world. The pad is a fourth-floor walkup at 1374 Calle Magazzen. Nicest place I’ve ever stayed in, Airbnb-wise.

In a 5.30 Vanity Fair interview with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, Bruce Handy asks about the final episode and the very last beat in the journey of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), which will air next spring. It seemed to me in the recently-aired finale of Part One of the final season — which concluded with Robert Morse‘s musical number — that Draper’s demons had been more or less faced and that he’d at least temporarily overcome his self-destructive tendencies. He’s moved past the drinking, treated Peggy with respect and support, and accepted that it’s time to let Megan go. Twists and turns are sure to happen but it basically feels like “steady as she goes.” All these years I’ve been irked by Draper’s morose, downer behavior, and now that he’s more or less out of the woods I really don’t want to see a relapse. As far as I’m concerned the only thing left to do is loosen up and stop wearing that 1961 Peter Gunn hair style and throw away that stupid fucking hat.

“I wrote the finale over Memorial Day weekend,” Weiner says. “I had an outline that the writer’s room and I had been working on for the past four or five weeks, so that always makes it easier to actually get it done, but it was great to finish it. I’ll be tweaking it and directing and working through that, so it’s not [a] complete release because it’s not really done until it goes on the air.

A 5.29 article about Edge of Tomorrow star Tom Cruise by MacLean‘s Barry Hertz basically says three things: (1) He’s an undiminished box-office dynamo (his films had grossed about $7.3 billion worldwide as of last year) who commands true international drawing power, (2) while he’s lately been choosing pricey, high-impact charismatic action hero projects, his success is largely due to his having chosen shrewdly and always ensuring the presence of smart scripts that are more defined by character than action beats, and of course (3) bringing that shit home with grounded, rounded, believable performances.

Cruise has always conveyed intelligence, drive and intensity, but he became a more interesting actor when stress lines began appearing on his forehead and around his eyes, and vague suggestions of vulnerability started to peek through. It is axiomatic that Cruise’s characters never “lose” but a certain weathering of his features indicated that his pogo-stick relentlessness might not be enough at the end of the day. This began to happen with his landmark performance in Oliver Stone‘s Born on the Fourth of July (hippie makeup, wheelchair, rage) but it really kicked in with Cameron Crowe‘s Jerry Maguire (’97), when Cruise (born in July ’62) was only 34 or 35. That was the first time I sat up in my seat and muttered to myself, “Whoa, he’s got little crow’s feet! No more Joel Goodson. A new phase has begun.”

That was Cruise’s crossing-the-Rubicon performance. I’ve since tended to process his performance as pre- and post-Maguire.

Best pre-Maguire performances: All The Right Moves, Risky Business, Rain Man, Born on The Fourth of July, The Firm.

Best post-Maguire performances: Eyes Wide Shut (although he seems straight-jacketed in that film), Magnolia, Vanilla Sky, all four Mission Impossible films (even though these were hardly about reaching inside and “acting”), Collateral (his third-best performance after Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire), “Les Grossman” in Tropic Thunder, Jack Reacher (arguably Cruise’s best low-key performance), Edge of Tomorrow.

Decent-to-acceptable Cruise performances in generally tedious, irksome or underwhelming films: Top Gun, Legend, Days of Thunder, Cocktail (I hated, hated, hated this bartending soap opera), The Color of Money, Far and Away (awful…one slamming right cross after another), Interview with the Vampire (by no means “bad” but for some reason I’m having trouble recalling any exceptional scenes), The Last Samurai (in which Cruise played a werewolf who could only be killed with a silver bullet), War of the Worlds, Lions for Lambs, Knight and Day, Oblivion.

There’s an arresting quote attributed to Woody Allen by the late Gordon Willis in a 5.29 Believermag q & a by Chris McCoy. Willis is asked about his bountiful relationship with Allen (Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo), and he calls it “a very good association. It was probably my favorite. I’m very quick to tell somebody how they should [shoot a scene] from a blocking-photographing point of view. I offer a lot.” And then the kicker: “Woody liked most of it and that he didn’t have to deal with it. He said once, ‘We both hate the same things.’ Which is true.”

Legendary dp Gordon Willis (1931 – 2014). Illustration by Tony Millionare.

Now that is a bond.

No, I don’t place more trust in hate than in love. Obviously a life that isn’t primarily driven by love and worship isn’t much of a life. It follows that the first initial steps in any relationship (emotional, professional, erotic, neighborly, marital) are going to be based on a recognition of shared loves and devotionals. People will naturally default to that because it makes them feel more positive and alpha to go there. He: “I like taking walks on Sunday morning with my dog.” She: “Me too. And then meeting friends and their dogs for breakfast at the local diner…perfect!” He: “Is vanilla your favorite ice cream flavor?” She: “No, cookies and cream…but vanilla is my second favorite!”

I reserve the right to post this brief scene from Robert Altman‘s California Split (’74) every two or three years. What the hell — maybe someone hasn’t seen it. The scene depends on the viewer believing in George Segal‘s radical but completely convincing mood swing — in 92 seconds he goes from utter despair and near-depression to giddy, child-like hilarity. It’s one of his greatest all-time acting moments. Remember that Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden‘s Mississippi Grind is believed to be a loose re-imagining of Altman‘s film with Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn in the lead roles. Grind also stars Sienna Miller, Analeigh Tipton and Alfre Woodard.

“This is not very complicated. It really isn’t. It’s prophesied in the Bible and the Bible says that before the beginning of the tribulation which will be in the end times, which I have no doubt we are living in…so therefore [the rapture] could happen tomorrow…the church is going to be called home and caught up in the air and taken to heaven and that’s what this movie’s about.” — Left Behind producer and co-writer Paul Lalonde, explaining the gist of the drama, which Samuel Goldwyn Films will open theatrically on 10.3.

So now we have two rapture/end times dramas to grapple with, both dealing with the sudden disappearance of millions — Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta‘s The Leftovers (HBO, 6.29) and Left Behind, in which poor Nicolas Cage stars. What a humiliation to go from being a legendary, envelope-pushing eccentric in the ’80s and ’90s to acting in…I shouldn’t judge, should I? The fair-minded thing would be to not process Left Behind as Christian ideological dreck mixed with disaster-movie spectacle and…you know, give it a fair shake. But of course it almost certainly is Christian dreck mixed with disaster tropes. What else to expect from a producer-writer who’s openly trying to spread Christian gospel through movies?

I had never seen this infamous Dick Cavett Show episode (aired on 9.18.70) until a half-hour ago. Honestly. Wow. Shitfaced behavior is often hilarious to other drunks, isn’t it? The idea that these three gifted, accomplished, hard-working guys somehow convinced themselves that vomiting the least intriguing aspects of their personalities onto Cavett’s gray shag carpet…the mind reels.

Yesterday I posted a piece about (a) the photo-chemical elements of the 202-minute, 70mm roadshow version of John Wayne‘s The Alamo being all but half-ruined, and (b) rights-holder MGM refusing to allow a crowd-funding effort to pay for a 70mm-quality restoration because it’ll make them look like pikers. The piece was called “Alamo‘s Loss Is MGM’s Shame.”

In response to an email about this issue, MGM Senior VP for Library Rights Management Trish Francis issued this statement: “I have spoken with our Technical Services staff who assured me that the film is not in danger of being lost. They proactively and routinely monitor and assess the condition of the various elements of all of MGM’s films and take steps as needed to protect and preserve them. The film is a valuable part of film history and naturally want to protect it. I will mention [the] concerns to the appropriate people.”

There are two stand-out pull quotes from Kate Aurthur‘s Buzzfeed piece (“No One Really Wants A Nikki Finke Comeback,” 5.30) about the apparent return of Nikki Finke. Her new website will allegedly launch on Monday, 6.2. The quotes are from Finke’s competitors so naturally they’re less than admiring. Quote #1: “She’s powerless at this point. She doesn’t have the work ethic or clout to be able to do what she did years earlier. Quote #2: ““There is an ecosystem in this world that she disrupts and tries to disrupt. In her heyday, she was able to move the news cycle. Toward the end, she was lazy and only doing box office — she was gone before she was gone.” Finke is apparently intending to ignore or declare invalid the part of her contract with Penske Media Corporation, which bought Finke’s Deadline Hollywood in 2009, that forbids her from competing with Deadline before 2016. I’d be lying if I said I’m not interested and intending to read whatever Finke posts, but what are some of the reactions among HE readers?

Yesterday I popped for a pair of tickets to an upcoming Black List Live! performance of Stephany Folsom’s 1969: A Space Odyssey, Or How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon, a 2013 Black List script. The reading, which Folsom is directing, will happen on Saturday, 6.14.14 at the historic Los Angeles Theatre. The script is about a White House Public Affairs assistant (Kathryn Hahn) who hires Stanley Kubrick (Jared Harris) to stage a fake moon landing in the event that disaster befalls the Apollo 11 mission. Thomas Sadoski and Shannon Woodward will costar.