But love the ostriches. A warm, sunny day in Buckingham, Pennsylvania —- not too far from Trenton. Such a beautiful region except for all the bumblefucks.

Jessica Savitch death canal in New Hope.

Sasha Stone and I are hastily assembling an award-season spitball forum, callled GATE CRASHERS. It’s kind of an anti-Gold Derby thang. Only journos and filmmakers of character, no whores or corporate ass-kissers, no raising damp fingers to the wind.

We’ll have the participation of least three or four anonymous filmmakers plus Chris Gore, Jeff Sneider, Jordan Ruimy, myself, Sasha, Bill McCuddy, Ed Douglas, and one or two more. 10 or 12 people thus far. We’re hoping to land at least two or three women of consequence besides Sasha.

Sneider will post a special link in advance with each updated posting. Ruimy will also post the chart.

Participants will just have to fill out a dropdown menu form with their gut predictions every two weeks. They won’t have to have seen every last film — they can spitball, fantasize and instinctually project like the Gold Derby members do. We’d all be taking it one step at a time.

The great Mark Frenden is assembling a King Kong logo as we speak.

We’re looking to get rolling on this fairly soon.

All hail Payal Kapadia’s All We Inagine As Light!

The 2024 woke manual says that characters in mainstream films aren’t allowed to point to negative consequences due to weight issues. Because there are no negative consequences from same — sporting a bulky bod is a lifestyle choice, not a health issue. Such judgments were allowed 29 years ago when Crimson Tide was released, but no longer. Understood?

…I am a confirmed, committed, dyed-in-the-wool upper level guy. I like to glance at the big blue-white sky and the deep blue Hudson as I’m crossing over. The lower level feels too confining.

Friendo who attended last night’s CAA screening of Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig ‘s Queer:

“Unless the movie itself doesn’t accumulate sufficient enthusiasm (it’s a pungent, sensual trip movie and anything but bland), it will be hard not to nominate Daniel Craig‘s emotionally vulnerable tour de force performance.”

HE will be seeing Queer at the NYFF on Monday, 10.7.

In a post-screening discussion with a Vanity Fair guy whose name escapes, Craig said he’d spent a year getting his mind “wrapped up into the character.”

HE to friendo: “Who was the guy sitting in front of you with the big fat head?”

…I would probably be inclined to vote for him/her over Kamala Harris. But of course they haven’t. They’ve nominated an animal, and that’s why standing by Kamala is a necessity.

If you go to movies hoping for quaalude highs, Joker: Folie a Deux is definitely not a Lemmon 714. But you have to respect it. Really–it’s anything but a throwaway.

In all my years of searching for tantalizing color snaps of Times Square marquees from the ’40s, ’50s and 60s, I’d never once glimpsed a shot of The Guns of Navarone marquee at the Criterion (B’way at 44th). But I did this morning. Hat tip to GorillsaDontBlog.

The Carl Foreman-J. Lee Thompson pic was press previewed on 5.16.61 (the screening curiously began at 8:30 pm). It opened at the Criterion on 6.23.61 and lasted through the summer.

Gung-ho, super-confident progressive team captain Michael Moore is predicting a decisive loss for Donald Trump on Tuesday, 11.5. He’s saying, in fact, that Trump is “toast.”

But in what universe is a Kamala Harris 270 electoral vote tally over 268 for The Beast…in what realm is this not an all-time squeaker?

This is one of those photos that people will be contemplating for decades to come. I saw it on Facebook yesterday. Somewhere in western North Carolina. Your heart breaks, and I don’t care if it’s AI.

Most men involved in heated hetero relationships have two personas — (a) the dynamic achiever, performer, stick-man and breadwinner, which usually satisfies or at least placates wives and girlfriends, and (b) the young lad or adolescent child who wants to be loved unconditionally, as he might be by his mother or, in sexual terms, by an exceptionally passionate lover he’s only been with a short while.

All men of maturity understand that the young lad kind of love is a dream, even if most men long for this kind of thing in their heart of hearts. And yet most fellows of experience realize they can’t hold onto a girlfriend or wife for very long unless unless they achieve and perform and go into an impressive song-and-tapdance now and then…rules of the game.

Joker: Folie a Deux is about a man with two personas — Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the abused and traumatized child who wants to be loved and adored for who he is deep down, and the giggling sociopathic showboat known as “the Joker” (also Phoenix).

Both Arthur and his alter ego delight in fantasies of singing and dancing with his new lover (Lady Gaga‘s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel). Alas, Lee is primarily in love with the dynamic criminal, clownface sociopath and crazed performer of legend.

The big emotional climax of Joker: Folie a Deux arrives when Arthur Fleck confesses who he really is and that “Joker” is an inauthentic, sensationalized media persona, and subsequently realizes that Lee doesn’t have much of an attachment to the traumatized child and is entirely attracted to the eccentric and generally venal Joker.

The only portions of the film that deliver feelings of peace and serenity are the musical dream sequences with Arthur and Lee singing and dancing to a series of classic love songs.

The thematic import of Joker: Folie a Deux is a hard one. You could call it cruel. Todd Phillips and Scott Silver‘s film is essentially saying that glorious, fanciful, all-accepting love — the kind that young naive men might long for — is a nice dream but basically for the birds.

Because women tend to prefer the rogue, the conqueror, the operator, the headliner, the charismatic personality. This is the basic way of relationships, the film is saying.

Joker: Folie a Deux is therefore a massive downer of a movie, and yet it has to be respected for its refusal to entertain (except during the song-and-dance sequences) and for the general integrity of the scheme.

It’s a movie that’s impossible to love, but you can’t accuse Phillips and Silver of not dealing straight cards. It really is a “fuck you” to the escapist attitudes of D.C. fanboys, and I for one respect what it’s up to. It’s a serious art film, defined by a certain morose integrity. It’s going to be hated by almost everyone. But it’s not trash. Far from it.

For me, a shorter length would have improved matters. 110 or 115 minutes as opposed to 138.

Incidentally: I was more than a little bothered by Phoenix’s cigarette smoking in the film. In almost every damn scene he’s got one going, and I suspect this is because Phoenix himself is a heavy smoker, and that he collaborated closely with Phillips and that before anyone realized it Folie a Deux had become a lit-cigarette movie with ashes dropping all over the place.