In his 11.19.80 review of Michael Cimino‘s Heaven’s Gate, N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby wrote that the film “fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter, and the Devil has just come around to collect.”

I’m not saying that Satan arranged for Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite to win the 2019 Best Picture Oscar, but it does seem as if some kind of some kind of reverse karma invaded BJH during the writing or filming of Mickey 17.

No distributor opens a film by an Oscar-winning director in late January, and if they do it’s close to a guarantee that there’s something very, very wrong.

The word on Mickey 17 hasn’t been good since it was announced on 2.20.24 that Warner Bros. had decided to release it on 1.31.25.

And now some Mickey 17 preview footage has been shown at Cinemacon, and Jeff Sneider smells a tank.

Sneider: “The trailer is set to ‘Ain’t That A Kick In The Head’, and what a kick in the head it is, playing out like a comedic version of Edge of Tomorrow with Pattinson’s Mickey dying over and over in service of some larger mission. Until, I guess, Mickey 18 wakes up to find that Mickey 17 never died…or something…giving us twice the #PattinsonPower.

“Yes, the star of The Batman plays dual roles here, but you won’t be talking about seeing double after this trailer. No, you’ll be talking about Pattinson’s [Joe Pesci-like] voice, which is…a choice. A bad one. How could Bong have allowed Pattinson to do that voice?”

I knew that Bong was part baloney — a sloppy scenarist — after watching that notorious Parasite scene in in which the drunken con artist mom lets the fired maid into the house during a huge rainstorm. That scene injected a kind of virus into BJH’s bloodstream, I believe, and now he’s paying the piper.

I awoke at 4 am this morning and needed a bit more shut-eye, so I returned to slumberland around 8:30 am. A half-hour later I was awakened…”aaggh, the fuck?” Luna was napping next to me in bed, her ass less than 15 inches away. She’d more or less farted in my face.

Will dudes shrug at Wicked costars Ariana Grande and Cynthia “witchy greenskin” Erivo and thereby bring about a somewhat muted reception?

Filing from Cinemacon, Jeff Sneider isn’t predicting a shortfall — he’s just saying Wicked (Universal, 11.27) is no Barbie.

Sneider’s quote: “I struggle to see men showing up in droves for this movie.”

At least Sneider’s gender generalization was about XY and not double-X. For if he had posted a gut hunch about potential female responses to Jon Chu’s two-part musical fantasy, he might have been clubbed, stabbed, skinned and all but decapitated.

That’s what happened to me eight and a half years ago when I posted four bad words about Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s The Revenant — “Forget women seeing this.” Never generalize about any gender in any context!

HE regretfully notes that Hillary Sharyn Marks Strauss, wife of veteran critic and HE comment-thread regular Bob Strauss, has passed on. Hillary and Bob were married for 35 years (i.e., hitched in ‘89). I knew and quite liked Hillary socially for a good portion of that union, and am very sorry she’s left us all too soon.

I’m very sorry about the passing of Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Coppola.

On her own creative steam Eleanor is best known for having shot George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr‘s masterful Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, a saga of Apocalypse Now — arguably the best making-of-a-famous-movie doc ever made.

Wiki excerpt: “The documentary was begun by Eleanor, who also narrates the behind-the-scenes footage. Coppola turned her material over to Hickenlooper and Bahr in 1990. The pair subsequently shot fresh interviews with the original cast and crew, and then intercut them with Coppola’s footage.

“Hickenlooper and Bahr premiered Hearts at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.”

Warning: Civil War spoilers herein…

On Friday afternoon (4.12), HE chatted with entertainment critic, on-air host, podcaster and movie maven Neil Rosen (“Talking Pictures with Neil Rosen“), comedian, critic, podcaster and East Hampton go-to guy Bill McCuddy for a nice Zoom encounter.

The principal topics were Alex Garland’s just-opened Civil War, Steve Zallian’s delectable eight-part Ripley and Charlie Sadoff’s Against All Enemies.

I started to pass along the story behind HE’s GoFundMe Cannes reach–out (i.e., the happiest story of my recent life), but McCuddy smirked and changed the subject.

McCuddy also swears Monkey Man (aka Monkey Wick) is a better bloodbath–revenge flick than one might initially expect. I watched the last 20 minutes’ worth two nights ago…effort appreciated but no thanks.

Again, the Substack link.

Robert MacNeil, who’s passed at age 93, was the co-host of The MacNeil/Lehrer Report with Jim Lehrer between 1975 and ’95.

He had the most soothing voice…a voice that I absolutely loved the sound of; ditto the professional consistency of McNeil’s cool, relaxed manner and that dry, slightly aloof, faintly sardonic attitude that seemed to be part of who he was deep down.

Robert MacNeil: “I was very close” to JFK on the morning of Friday, 11.22.63, outside that Fort Worth hotel. “Almost at his shoulder as he went around working the crowd, and it was really extraordinary, what that crowd felt for him.

“Then he emerged from it…I walked with him, right beside him, back into the hotel. And his eyes rested upon mine a couple of times. He didn’t know me well but he knew me slightly, and his eyes were absolutely cold, always…really cold gray. The smile was in the crinkles [around his eyes] and in the mouth and the big teeth, but the eyes always remained, I thought, very cold.”