Without further comment, here are excerpts from a Maxine Leonard press release about David Mamet’s “Assination”, a thriller about the time-machine killing of “President John F. Kennedy, Jr.” in 1963.

Let everyone understand that weddings are not occasions from which thoughtful film discussions are launched.

When young, neither Robert De Niro and Al Pacino were conventionally “hot.” They were good-looking (symmetrical features, soulful eyes) as far as it went, but primarily they simply were who they were. They had a certain hot-wired urgency and commitment to the emotional moment, but that’s neither here nor there in terms of hottitude.

Young De Niro was always a bit on the geeky side, especially when he smiled. He was physically beautiful in The Godfather, Part II but less so in 1900 and Taxi Driver.

Pacino’s brown cow eyes (especially in the early to mid ‘70s) made him seem more vulnerable, I suppose. But think again of his Michael Corleone cold-fish expressions in the first two Godfather films. (He transformed into a warm contemplative fish in The Godfather, Part 3.)

This morning I slept through the 6:30 am alarm. Because I’d forgotten to turn on the sound. Which was partly due to last night’s exhaustion. All my fault, of course, but reserving press screening seats has nonetheless become a mad, breathless online Darwinian scramble.

I hate this. It’s on me, of course, but I really hate this. I’ve been attending the Cannes Film Festival for over 30 years (my first was in ‘92). It was never a walk in the park, but now it’s insane. Now if you fail to aggressively sign in and reserve press tickets at the required hour like an Olympic Games Nazi (i.e., before 7 am Paris time), you’re fucked for screenings four days hence…COMPLETE, slacker!!

Not to mention the Cannes press system crashing and this morning’s “page indisponible.”

I found this Covid-inspired system infuriating last year; doubly so this year. I’ll never stop coming to France, but I’ll almost certainly never do Cannes again. Comparatively speaking Telluride is a pleasure cruise. Eff this Côte d’Azur jazz…really.

I’ve only just gotten around to reserving press ticket access to Cannes screenings, and of course some of the films I was hoping to see on Wednesday (including Pedro Almodovar‘s Strange Way of Life, Wim Wenders‘ Anselm, Steve McQueen‘s Occupied City) are already closed off — i.e., COMPLETE.

It’s my own damn fault. of course, but Wednesday and Thursday are pretty much destroyed as almost everything (except for Hirokazu Kore-Eda‘s Monster and Maïwenn‘s Jeanne du Barry) is already reserved.

You need to make your online reservations four days in advance of a given screening, and at 7 am sharp, but even if you follow the protocol to the exact letter you still might not get a ticket. Press screenings for Friday, 5.19 will be theoretically reservable tomorrow morning (Monday, 5.15 at 7 am), etc.

Online reservations for the one and only press screening of Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon (Salle Debussy, 6 pm — available on Tuesday morning at 7 am) will presumably be absolute raging hell.

Everyone in the press community will be desperately lunging for tickets and a fair number of applicants will certainly lose out. Given this certainty, the obvious decent thing to do would be to slate a second screening at the Salle Agnes Varda on the following day (Sunday, 5.21). Have they done this? Of course not.

So after flying thousands of miles and spending lots of money, largely (be honest) in hopes of being among the first to see Flower Moon, there’s a half-decent chance I might get cockblocked and unable to see this film at all.

Friendo: “Don’t fret about the Cannes ticketing system. It’s always like this. There’s a huge ticket drop that happens the day of screenings. It’s been like this since 2021.”

HE: “Thanks for the comforting words, but the system is absolutely DESPICABLE. The McQueen is already blocked off…naturally.”

Friendo: “I would line up for the McQueen. You’ll get in. People who couldn’t get tickets can line up at the screening…if there’s room you can make it. The Flower Moon problem is that people have been doing the 7am wake-ups to get tickets, only to see the system crash — “ERROR — Reservation failed.”

Marcel Ophuls’ The Sorrow and the Pity, a 1969 doc about the Vichy government’s collaboration with Nazi occupiers during World War II, runs 251 minutes. The two-part, Oscar-nominated film was immortalized by two significant mentions in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (‘77).

Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, a soon-to-be-screened Cannes doc about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during World War II, whips Ophuls’ film in terms of running time — 262 minutes. A24 will be releasing it stateside.

Occupied City is based on a 2019 illustrated book “Atlas of An Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945,” written by author and filmmaker Bianca Stigter, who’s been marred to McQueen since…I’m not sure but they’ve been partnered for a good 20 years, give or take. (I think.)

SPOILER IF YOU CLICK THROUGH: Two days ago (Friday 5.12) Jeff Sneider tweeted the following about a minor, “who cares?”, barely-worth-raising-your-eyebrows-about FAST X spoiler:

Let me explain something. TheWrap‘s Umberto Gonzalez spoiling anything in any Fast franchise film is an excellent thing, a wonderful thing, a thing to sing and shout about.

Anyone who derides, dismisses or flips off, even in a small or insignificant way, this wretched franchise is, in my eyes, doing God’s work.

I’ve been saying for years that the Fast movies are utterly evil. And yet they still have an ardent following. So let me expand my definition. Aside from Rob Coen‘s respectable The Fast and the Furious (’01) which I recognized as a winningly unpretentious Samuel Arkoff-style exploitation film, the Fast franchise has been ghastly.

Anyone who’s sincerely loved the Fast films all along and eagerly looks forward to catching the next one has poison in his/her veins.

Posted on 4.14.21: “The idiots who pay to see Fast & Furious movies aren’t going to turn in their idiot cards and develop a sense of taste any time soon.”

Former Miami Herald critic Rene Rodriguez, on the other hand, was man enough to lay it on the line: “In Furious 7, the unstoppable franchise sputters and stalls, edging from spectacular, tongue-in-cheek B-movie fun to soulless, insulting inanity. Here is a film in which nothing is at stake: Cars crash into each other head-on at high speeds, vehicles sail off cliffs and tumble down rocky mountainsides, people jump out of buildings and fall six stories to the ground, then characters just dust themselves off and continue as if nothing had happened. [The film] plunges free-fall into absurd, cartoonish nonsense.”

The last one I saw was Furious 7, and I hate myself for doing so.

Stanley Kubrick was famous for encouraging lively, eccentric and even over-the-top performances. Steven Spielberg’s 1999 recollection abut a 1980 dinner with Kubrick at Childwickbury Manor, during which Kubrick explained that Jack Nicholson‘s over-the-top performance in The Shining was a kind of tribute to the acting style of James Cagney, is a case in point.

It is therefore strange if not bizarre that during the making of Barry Lyndon, Kubrick directed Marisa Berenson to give such an opaque non-performance. In each and every scene, her Lady Lyndon conveys utter vacuity…absolutely nothing behind the eyes.

Did Kubrick realize too late in the process that he’d made a mistake, that Berenson was profoundly ungifted and had next to nothing inside, and that the best course would be to emphasize (rather than try to obscure) this fact?

Berenson is the primary cause, in fact, of Barry Lyndon‘s “dead zone” problem.

My first and only submission to Michael Rsadford‘s 1984 (20th Century Fox) happened in the late summer or early fall of ’84. A private viewing at the Samuel Goldwyn Co., where I was freelancing as a press kit writer. Myself and the whole crew at the time (including Samuel Goldwyn Jr. himself, Larry Jackson, Jeff Lipsky, Laurette Hayden).

The screening-room mood was funereal, to put it mildly. Radford’s film certainly delivered the chilly Orwellian dread, but it also made you feel narcotized. A discussion session followed. They all conveyed the same cautious, qualified opinions: “Somber…okay, downish but very well made…excellent John Hurt…good reviews assured…Richard Burton on his last legs…a possible awards contender,” etc.

I can’t recall if I expressed my own view during that meeting or later in an inter-office memo, but I’m pretty sure I the only one to share how this gloomy dystopian vision of British totalitarianism had actually made me feel. Six words: “It’s a movie FOR DEAD PEOPLE.”

1984 opened in Europe in late ’84, but the U.S. opening didn’t happen until 3.22.85.

Dr. Phil: “In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Oceania came in and said ‘we’re gonna tell you what words you can use, and what words you can’t use.’ Right now…what Oceania, 1984’s government, was doing, we’re now doing to each other.”

Bill Maher: “I understand. I couldn’t agree more.”

HE is pre-approving Tina Satter‘s Reality (HBO Max, 5.23). Directed by Satter from a screenplay she co-wrote with James Paul Dallas and adapted from the FBI interrogation transcript of American intelligence whistleblower Reality Winner, pic premiered with glowing reviews during last February’s Berlinale. Sydney Sweeney, Marchánt Davis and Josh Hamilton on top.

“Reality transcends staginess as a strikingly well-realized piece of filmmaking, using judicious sound design and expressive lighting to gain a surreally vivid edge.” — from Tim Robey’s Telegraph review.
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Yesterday World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy passed along a report that roughly the first 20 minutes of Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix) will be presented in black-and-white. This in itself is intriguing.

Cooper has starred, directed, co-written and co-produced the upmarket Leonard Bernstein biopic, which will almost certainly debut at the early fall festivals, allegedly runs in the vicinity of 156 minutes.

“Lenny and Felicia,” posted on 5.31.22: Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix), a biopic about legendary composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, only began shooting this month. It will almost certainly open during the early fall Oscar season of 2023, as it is obviously Oscar-bait plus and Cooper’s makeup after his direction of A Star Is Born failed to land a Best Director nomination in early ’19.

With Maestro we’re talking Best Picture (produced by Cooper, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Todd Phillips, et. al.), Best Director and Actor (Cooper), Best Actress (Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife of 27 years, the half-Chilean Felicia Cohn Montealegre), Best Original Screenplay (Cooper, Josh Singer) and so on down the line. Jeremy Strong costars as John Gruen.’