The legend of Pauline Kael and the cinematic artistry of Quentin Tarantino will not come together in a forthcoming QT film called The Movie Critic. It was a nice Borys Kit speculation while it lasted, but nope.

World of Reel Jordan Ruimy is reporting, in fact, that the main character isn’t even a movie critic. The story is set in 1977. Filming will begin in Los Angeles next fall.

Tarantino clarified things during a special book-promotion appearance on Wednesday, 3.29 at the Grand Rex in Paris.

I’m a little bummed, I admit, but I’ll get over it.

There have been many great opening scenes over the last century or so, but if you’re asking which is the greatest opening shot, I would have to go with two films released in ’79 — Woody Allen‘s Manhattan and Francis Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now.

One of the greatest opening sequences is the Union Station opening of Strangers on a Train (‘51), as the camera follows two men whose faces are unseen and whose shoes are their primary identifying trait…arriving by taxi, strolling into the station, etc.

Six hour-long Amazon Prime episodes of Dead Ringers, based on the 1988 David Cronenberg original and starring Rachel Weisz behind streaming sometime in mid April.

There’s also the actual 35-year-old Cronenberg film, which ran 115 minutes.

Irons played twins named Beverly and Elliot Mantle; Weisz does the same.

I have no thoughts….none whatsoever.

Keith McNally, the hotshot Manhattan resturateur behind Augustine, Balthazar, Cafe Luxembourg, Cherche Midi, Lucky Strike, Minetta Tavern, Nell’s, Odeon, Pastis and Schiller’s Liquor Bar, is a Woody Allen fan from way back. Would it be fair to say that McNally is “in the tank” for the guy? Yeah, I think.

Within the last several hours McNally announced on Instagram that he had “wheedled” his way into am early-bird screening of Woody’s Coup de Chance, which many of us are hoping will show up in Cannes in mid May.

McNally #1: “It’s fucking great!…Allen’s best film since Midnight In Paris.”

McNally #2: “Coup de Chance is a contemporary film about romance, passion, jealousy, infidelity and murder. It stars terrific French actors and actresses, and is sensationally shot by maestro cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

McNally #3: The film most critics will probably compare Coup de Chance to is Match Point, but the film it most reminds me of is Louis Malle‘s 1958 masterpiece, Elevator To The Gallows. The music especially. It’s a truly wonderful film.”

HE to McNally: A film reminiscent of Elevator to the Gallows suggests a plot that pivots on dark irony and passion-driven perps caught in the cruel grip of karma. In Match Point a lucky guy got away with murder — perhaps not this time.

(Thanks to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy for the tip-off.)

Here’s hoping that Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance (i.e., Stroke of Luck) will debut at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Early this month Jordan Ruimy quoted a buyer who saw Allen’s 50th film at Berlin’s EFM market, and called it “his best film in years.” Allen has described it as a spiritual kin of Match Point — a chilly romantic thriller “charting the story of two young people whose bond leads to marital infidelity and ultimately crime.”

Ruimy had also learned from a person who worked on the film that Coup de Chance has been submitted to Cannes with hopes of screening there in a few weeks time. Presuming this is true, it would be exceedingly strange for Allen’s first French-language film, which is set in Paris and costars many prominent younger French actors, to not debut on the Cote d’Azur.

We know, of course, that among many of the usual Cannes-attending critics there are a fair number of Allen-hating fanatics who are determined to pan it, no matter how good it might be or how much it resembles Match Point or whatever. Simply because they’re committed to his destruction because of the highly questionable Dylan Farrow thing.

Imagine being one of these maniacs. Imagine admitting to yourself in your darkest, most deep-down place, “No matter how this film measures up against Allen’s best films and even if it’s half-good or above average by this standard, I am going to give it a shitty grade…regardless of merit I will do what I can to take this film down.”

Imagine what it must be like to look at yourself in the bathroom mirror under these circumstances.

Wes Anderson‘s Asteroid City (Focus Features, 6.6) is a quirky romantic dramedy set in a “fictional American desert town” during “an annual Junior Stargazer convention in 1955.” It was shot in Spain between August and October of ’21.

The visually striking one-sheet suggests it was lensed in Spain’s Almeria section, where many spaghetti westerns were filmed in the ’60s. If it was shot domestically one might presume that the Monument Valley region was used.

But no — it was mostly shot in the town of Chinchón, which is roughly 50 km outside of Madrid. In the mid ’50s a big bullfight scene was shot in Chinchon for Around the World in Eighty Days.

Pic costars the usual assortment of eccentric Anderson players plus a newbie or two (Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jeff Goldblum, Fisher Stevens, Rita Wilson, et. al.).

Asteroid City will debut six weeks hence at the Cannes Film Festival.