From Todd McCarthy’s Deadline pan, posted on 7.12: “Breathing in the air that the master breathed, staying in his home and becoming saturated with all manner of first-hand Bergman-iana has in no way qualified Bergman Island writer-director Mia Hansen-Love to be mentioned in the same breath as the late Swedish master Ingmar Bergman, much less make a film about his aura and legacy.

“This story of a filmmaking couple — Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps) — who make a pilgrimage to Faro Island to soak in the man’s influence, is a very poor excuse for an homage except as a travelogue. When Woody Allen did it, it was both sincere and very funny.”

In a phrase: “Lazy, unimaginative and incapable of expressing admiration for Bergman in any meaningful way.”

“The first 20 minutes of Bergman Island hold a certain interest simply on a touristic basis. It’s hard to think of any other filmmaker whose home, like those of certain presidents, has become a travel destination. Still, I once made a pilgrimage to Yasujiro Ozu’s grave in Japan; on his tombstone is simply inscribed the word ‘mu,’ which means ‘everything and nothing.’

“’How can I sit here and not feel like a loser?,’ cries Chris in despair as she sizes up Bergman’s body of work, which not only consists of 30-odd scripts and films but also plays and books. Well, you probably can’t, but Chris has to find out the hard way by getting down to work with Tony on a script she’s been thinking about.

“She figures that sitting in Ingmar’s chair and just existing in his lingering aura might be enough to inspire them to unprecedented heights of creativity on their next project. Ahhh, how presumptuous mere creative mortals can be.”

Serious question to Cannes-based Jordan Ruimy: “Given the mostly encouraging reviews for Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch so far (an 88% Metacritic rating) and no other film doing as well with the critics so far, is it fair to suggest that Dispatch seems likely to emerge as a prime contender for the Palme d’Or?

The five biggies (and correct me if I’m wrong) are The French Dispatch, Drive My Car, Benedetta, Compartment #9 and Val.”

Ruimy to HE: “Dispatch is minor Anderson.”

HE to Ruimy: “Not as good as Grand Budapest Hotel?”

Ruimy to HE: “Hell no.”

The scene in Cannes as the end-credits wrap following the world premiere of THE FRENCH DISPATCH, as Wes Anderson-y a movie as any… pic.twitter.com/qmShSnzqfc

— Scott Feinberg @ Cannes (@ScottFeinberg) July 12, 2021

HE to Ruimy: “Okay.”

Ruimy to HE: “[David] Ehrlich didn’t even like it.”

HE to Ruimy: “I was influenced by Peter Debruge‘s Variety rave…so he’s just capitulating to the underlying desire to praise films because it feels good or something?”

Ruimy to HE: “I think a lot of critics are doing that. Cannes ’21 is being celebrated as the reemergence of cinema. There’s a celebratory mood in the air here.”

HE to Ruimy: “So there are no real HOTTIES so far…not really. No big consensus films.”

Ruimy to HE: “Benedetta is too shocking for [some]. I guess Dispatch is the de facto Oscar movie here so far, but it’s very minor. The photography is stunning, but the anthology aspect of it does a major disservice to Anderson’s style. He works better with a large tableaux and a two-hour narrative.”

When the well is dry and you have to wash the car (not to mention pay money to see Black Effing Widow), post Times Square marquee photos.

The word along the Croisette is that certain distributors have either pulled their films out of the 2021 Toronto Film Festival or are seriously thinking about same. Why? Because (a) the Telluride and Venice festivals, unlike Toronto, are not leaning on streaming, and (b) distributors greatly prefer live-audience projection screenings.

Why is Toronto a mostly-streaming festival this year? Because the Canadian government is being extremely cautious about the new Delta strain of Covid, despite high rates of vaccination.

In short, this is not Toronto’s year. Which is a good thing, of course, as Toronto, like Sundance, has become a repressive and prejudicial wokester festival. All hail Telluride and Cannes…festivals that believe in art, freedom of ideas and fair access.

Ingmar Bergman‘s Scenes From a Marriage (’73) was originally a six-part Swedish miniseries that ran 281 minutes; the shorter, theatrically released version ran 167 minutes. It costarred Liv Ullmann, HE nemesis Erland Josephson and Bibi Andersson.

In Hagai Levi’s remake of the Bergman series, a multi-episode thing that will air on HBO in September, a woke switch scheme has been hatched. Instead of Jessica Chastain playing Ullman and Oscar Isaac playing Josephson, Isaacson plays Ullmann and Chastain is doing Josephson. (Or so I’m told.)

The miniseries is exec produced by a boatload of people, but Isaac, Chastain and Williams are among them.

The good-looking Isaac (i.e., Poe Dameron) is only 42, but with his gray hair and beard he looks at least 50 if not 55. It’s obviously a choice and there’s nothing “wrong” with this…just saying. Chastain is no spring chicken (the clock never relents), but she looks fine. Ditto Williams.

…should’ve been on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight this morning. Because without a Joe Schmoe presence it’s just a brash elitist stunt…”look at what this billionaire can do…hah! Because I can!”

What is weightlessness? It’s nothing. 53 years ago that Pan Am space stewardess wearing “grip shoes” was weightless in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it was almost nothing even then. Ditto Gary Lockwood, Keir Dullea and William Sylvester…who cares? The Apollo 13 guys — Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, director Ron Howard — were weightless on the vomit comet 25 or 26 years ago, and most of us shrugged and said “okay, cool, but what else can we read about?”

By “average schmoe” I don’t mean some person who works for Door Dash or Target or Southwest Airlines — I mean anyone who has to work for a living, which can obviously include six-figure earners.

Long-festering allegations about an alleged secret alteration of the 8mm Abraham Zapruder film of the Dealey Plaza murder…an alteration that allegedly began late in the evening of 11.23.63 and was completed sometime near dawn on Sunday, 11.24…this, I’ve been told, is a significant focus of Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass. Reading through all this stuff makes your brain ache, and my gut still says there’s something fundamentally flakey about the Zapruder alteration scenario, and yet…

Oliver Stone speaking to Deadline’s Tom Grater:

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg “suspects” that Juho Kuosmanen‘s Compartment No.6, which screened on Saturday, may be “the first serious contender for the Palme d’Or.” Because of the alleged quality of it and the enthusiastic audience response.

Before you buy the hype, consider the trailer (top) and especially the bottom clip, in which the costars, Seidi Haarla (Finnish) and Yuriy Borisov (Russian), chat inside a small train compartment.

And ask yourself how many minutes you’d want to spend listening to the drunken Borisov boast and cackle as he blows his rancid smoke and drops ashes all over the place…I was feeling repulsed rather quickly. Imagine having to listen to this jerk for hours on end as he lights up cigarette after cigarette…dear God.

Boilerplate synopsis: “Compartment No. 6 is the story of a young Finnish woman who escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the Arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of compartment no. 6 to face the truth about their own yearning for human connection.”