…during the six-week period between the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the film’s opening on the Independence Day weekend (6.30 to to 7.3)…whatever she and her handlers may have expected or hoped to happen, it’s fair to say that the whole promotional bandwagon didn’t bear fruit…it certainly didn’t connect with Joe and Jane Popcorn, particularly the under-35s. The whole effort amounted to a whiff. It hurts when this happens, I realize, and I’m not gloating at anyone’s failure.

I therefore won’t be seeing it until Thursday afternoon (7.6). If anyone did catch it last weekend, please share.

Earlier today Jeff and Sasha sat down and played it by ear. At first they discussed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but they didn’t have anything novel or exciting to add to the conversation. So they kicked around the new Rock Hudson doc (All That Heaven Allowed, MAX) and then pondered some Telluride ’23 possibilities and recalled last year’s assassination of Empire of Light….I don’t know. It all just kind of mashed together after a while.

Link to Michael’s Telluride Film Blog.

Happy 4th of July! And again, the link.

So the main selling points in this version, directed by Blitz the Ambassador, are the songs, which are obviously de-emphasized here (as they always are in all trailers for musical films), and the pronounced lesbian currents, which were suppressed in the 1985 Steven Spielberg version. Yes, that’s Halle (Little Mermaid) Bailey as young Nettie. Don’t let that 12.25.23 release date scare you. Okay, you can be scared if you want.

I’ve already lamented the almost certain absence of Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance at Telluride ’23. The scolds and monsters will scream too loudly, and the nervous nellies don’t want any trouble.

And as I wrote on 6.28, I’m on pins and needles about whether IFC Films and Sapan Studios will have the moxie to screen Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu at Telluride — it would be a major aesthetic tragedy if this all-but=perfect film doesn’t play there.

I’m one of many who are 90% to 95% convinced that Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers will play Telluride. It has to. It can’t be absent. Payne is too much of a longstanding Telluride attender and supporter. The contrary view is that Focus, the film’s distributor, will want to stage a 2023 Toronto Film Festival premiere during the first five days, which TIFF wouldn’t allow if The Holdovers plays Telluride first. Does anyone remember when Green Book premiered at the Toronto fest? On Tuesday, 9.11.18 — the sixth day. Not premiering during the first five didn’t hurt that Best Picture Oscar winner a bit.

Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix) has been waiting a long time to bounce off the high board and make a big splash among the right people. Whatever happens with the Venice Film Festival, how could this Leonard Bernstein biopic not kick things off domestically in Telluride?

How could Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, which had its big bop-shu-wop premiere in Cannes several weeks ago, not go for a conversational re-start in Telluride?

Ditto Jonathan Grazer‘s The Zone of Interest, which also launched on the Cote d’Azur.

David Fincher‘s The Killer was shot between November ’21 and March ’22. It has seemingly been hanging around for ages, waiting to strike a hot iron before the 11.10 Netflix debut. Telluride, Toronto, New York…which one of these? Okay, probably not Telluride.

Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Apple, 11.22) somehow doesn’t quite feel like a natural Telluride pick but who knows? One way or the other the French-playing actors probably have to speak with the same accent — I’m not saying they all need to sound like Pepe le Pew, but they can’t sound like they’re from Tarzana or Burbank.

Apparent Telluride Likelies: Emerald Frennell‘s Saltburn, Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fall, Todd Haynes‘ wildly overpraised May December, Craig Gillespie‘s Dumb Money (or is the 9.22 release date too close to Labor Day?), Sean Durkin‘s The Iron Claw (A24). Not to mention Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla (A24, October), costarring one of the most extreme height-disparity couples in motion picture history — Cailee Spaeny (4’11”) and Jacob Elordi (6’5″).

Nor, to be honest, had I given much thought to Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley (the “One Toke Over The Line” guys) over the last few decades. But this (written by Jim Pepper) is infectious. It envelops.

The era of Brewer and Shipley (i.e, soothing folk rock) pretty much ended when punk rock came along in ’75 or thereabouts.

Yesterday we paid the River Country folks to go tube-rafting down the Delaware. A few miles south of Frenchtown. I wanted a Deliverance-type experience, but there were no canoes to speak of. Chumps on rubber tubes. On one hand it was quite peaceful and soothing, and on the other hand the current was barely there. Every now and then the current would accelerate slightly and you could imagine you were Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn cruising down the Mississippi. But most of the time we were drifting at the speed of a 92 year-old guy shuffling toward the bathroom at 3 am. So I just gave into the lethargy.

Friendo sez: “Live Free or Die Hard (‘07), Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (‘08) and Rambo (‘08) were all fourth installments after long gaps with older original leads. They all turned a profit.

“After that, the franchise-masters tried for a fifth go-round and tanked — A Good Day to Die Hard (‘13), Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny and Rambo: Last Blood (‘19).

“We all attend our first big high school reunion, but often don’t come back for follow-ups.”