I own a beautiful-looking Bluray of No Country For Old Men (‘07), and right now I’m watching this Joel and Ethan Coen classic via HD streaming and it looks just as good as the Bluray.

Just as good as it looked, in fact, on that big brilliant screen inside the Salle Debussy in Cannes…17 and 1/3 years ago.

All to say it’s highly unlikely that Criterion’s forthcoming 4K Bluray version will deliver any kind of pulse-quickening bump in visual values, certainly not the kind that might prompt you to sit down at a motel-room desk and write home about.

…for posting a takedown piece about the dying–on–the–vine Toronto Film Festival, and for posting the following three paragraphs in particular:

“I’d rather be villainized than infantilized…”

If you can somehow forget about Matt Walsh actually wanting Donald Trump, a lying, diseased, foam-at-the-mouth sociopath, to beat Kamala Harris, a transactional politician with obvious problems but who is still far more sensible, consructive and practical-minded as a potential U.S. president, on 11.5, Am I A Racist? is a compelling, fair-minded documentary.

The only problem with this interview is that the Free Press guy is wearing shorts.

A couple of days ago a friend attended an early-bird screening of Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl (A24, 12.25), a B & D variation on the “Type-A cougar has it off with a hot young dude” genre. Costarring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas, etc.

Last weekend’s CAA screening followed a TIFF showing on 9.10 and the Venice Film Festival debut on 8.30.

Friendo is calling it “a groundbreaking investigation of female sexuality by a female writer-director.” Kidman said afterwards it would have been a “completely different movie if a man had made it.”

Pic drew a “sensational response” from an elite audi4nce, he says. Attending were Brad Pitt, Olivia Wilde, Peter Dinklage, Catherine Hardwick, Rooney Mara, Charlie Hunnam.

There was q post-screening discussion between Kidman, Reijn and THR‘s Scott Feinberg, followed by a schmoozy wine gathering. Nicole stayed very late.

CAA honcho Bryan Lourd was there; ditto Nicole’s agent Chris Andrews.

Pic will gather multiple noms, he says — Best Actress (Kidman), Best Actor (Dickinson), Best Direction and Writing (Reijn).

“Don’t underestimate A24…at this time last year I had the same feeling about Poor Things. And previously about All Quiet on Western Front, Parasite, Cold War.

All hail Steven Zallian’s Ripley…the finest Emmy contender of them all. I’ve never had the slightest interest in watching Shogun, the evening’s biggest winner. I hated Baby Reindeer so much I stopped watching after the first episode. Jodie Foster’s Emmy-winning performance in True Detective: Night Country had a commendable, lived-in, fraying-at-the-seams quality. All hail the failure of Only Murders in the Building to land a single Emmy award…good!

Another eccentric (older this time, nudging his 60s) apparently wanted to kill Donald Trump yesterday but this time didn’t even fire a shot.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, is the would-be Florida golf course shooter. Trump was untouched and unfazed and not even in the immediate vicinity. He’s extremely thankful for the attention, of course.

Sunday’s incident might have made for a semi-alarming story as a one-off, but it pales alongside the attempted Pennsylvania assassination of two months ago, which resulted in a bloody ear and a bandage on the stage of the Republican National Convention.

I’m presuming that most average Americans are unimpressed, and are most likely reacting with a “what, again?” Or, if you will, “been there, done that.” This tinderbox country is teeming with well-armed nutters. What else is new?

How do I know this? Dwayne Johnson and Lucy Liu, the king and queen of disposable paycheck garbage cinema, and the polar bear with a winning personality. All four holding their noses.

Could the general lack of excitement have something to do with the fact that Mike Flanagan, no offense, is a boilerplate horror genre guy?

Winning the TIFF People’s Choice Award used to really mean something in terms of Best Picture Oscar contention. Now, not so much. Audience taste buds have coarsened.

I knew something strange had been injected into the Toronto water supply when Taika Watiti’s Jojo Rabbit won the top prize in 2019.

Sean Baker‘s excellent Anora and Jacques Audiard‘s reasonably decent Emilia Perez were the second- and third-place choices, respectively. Or the other way around…whatever.

From THR’s Scott Feinberg:

…in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which I finally saw last night. I’d read several reviews plus the Wiki synopsis and had somehow missed spoilers about the flamboyant musical finale, which is based upon Jimmy Webb’s seven-minute 1968 hit single.

But right now HE spoiler whiners can go fuck themselves because the cat is totally out of the bag via Chris Willman’s 9.14 Variety interview with Webb. If they wanted a surprise they should have gotten off their asses and seen Beetlejuice Beetlejuice earlier. It opened on Friday, 9.6.

How good is the film itself? The MacArthur Park celebration aside, it’s basically a greatest-hits rehash of Tim Burton 1988 original, which felt a lot nervier then than Burton’s 36-years-later sequel does now. Call it a reasonably pleasant here-we-go-again thing. Not bad, lively, occasionally amusing, pricey-looking.

The people calling it better than the original are overly generous, taste-free whores, but as sequels go it’s really not bad.

The 1988 original cost $15 million or roughly $40M in 2024 dollars — the newbie cost $99 million. The oldie earned $85 million or $226M in 2024 bucks. As of today (9.15) Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had earned around $250 million worldwide.

Why did Richard Harris, who reportedly hung extensively with Webb in London during the mid-hippie era, pronounce it “MacArthur’s Park”?