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According to an 8.21 N.Y. Times report by Nicole Sperling, the ongoing dispute between Netflix and two major exhibition chains, AMC Theatres and Cineplex, about the theatrical release of Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman boils down to an unrealistic expectation on the exhibition side.

The chains want Netflix to delay streaming The Irishman for “close to three months” after its theatrical opening day while Netflix, following their Roma model, wants to begin streaming 21 days after the theatrical debut.

This despite a claim by former 20th Century Fox distribution exec Chris Aronson that “more than 95 percent of movies stop earning their keep in theaters at the 42-day mark,” according to Sperling’s article.

Exhibitors nonetheless fear that the proposed 21-day window will persuade ticket-buyers to bypass The Irishman in theatres, as they would only have to wait three weeks to see it at home.

90% of The Irishman‘s theatrical revenue will come from educated, review-reading, 35-and-over types who will want to immerse themselves in Scorsese’s wiseguy epic (it allegedly runs around three hours) and be part of the conversation, and most of these transactions will happen during the first three weeks, four at the outside. A portion of the under-35 megaplex mongrels may attend out of curiosity, but the bulk of the business will come from Scorsese loyalists and cultivated cineastes.

So if Netflix wanted to be accommodating, they would agree to wait 45 days to stream — half of the window that exhibitors want. My hunch is that the deal with AMC and Cineplex will result in a 30-day delay. Somewhere between 30 and 45 — that’s where the peace lies.

Netflix will want The Irishman to be in theatres during the heat of award season, or from mid-October to early December. Open it in theatres on Friday, 10.18 and keep it in plexes for seven weeks, or until Thursday, 12.5. We all understand that peak Irishman business will happen between the weekends of 10.18 and 11.15, max. And more likely between 10.18 and 11.7 — be honest. Especially considering the allegedly somber, meditative tone (“It’s not Goodfellas“) and three-hour length.

In the exhibitor fantasy realm The Irishman, given the theoretical 10.18 theatrical debut, wouldn’t begin streaming until mid-January. Unlikely. Especially with the currently abbreviated Academy voting window.

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Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), a fictional Fox News producer, is apparently dreading an imminent meeting with ogre-ish Fox honcho Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). Also unsettled, it seems, are fellow elevator riders Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). They’re so rattled by what may be in the offing (or what’s in the air) that they don’t even small-talk each other. Then Carlson says it’s “hot in here.”

Pospisil (weird last name, a mashing of “possum” and “possible”) and Carlson get out, but the coolly observant Kelly doesn’t.

After the oddly muted response to Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, the Bombshell challenge will be to prove itself as the bigger, better, more pointed Ailes drama, above and beyond the marquee-name aspect.

Directed by Jay Roach and scripted by Charles Randolph, Bombshell will pop theatrically on 11.20. If it’s any kind of award-calibre thing…well, we’ll see.

Bombshell costars Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Rob Delaney, Malcolm McDowell and Allison Janney.

Three days ago Guy Trebay posted a N.Y Times “Critics Notebook” piece called “Naked Came the Strangers.” Without delving too much into the ins and outs of the article (which is subtitled “How our nudes have changed in the last 50 years”), please consider a portion of the seventh paragraph.

“In 1969, Americans were, it would appear, much thinner — men and women equally,” Trebay writes. “As it happens, this superficial impression is borne out by the available data, since in 1971 the average 19-year-old man weighed just 159.7 pounds, according to figures compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics, and the average woman 131.”

Given the “Americans were much thinner” line, you’d think Trebay would follow this up with statistics about how much heavier the average 19 or 20-year-old is today. But he avoids such comparisons.

The reason, I’m guessing, is that N.Y. Times editors wouldn’t want to offer an impression that the paper is taking any sort of dim view of the average weight of today’s young Americans, as that might constitute an oblique form of fat-shaming.

And so Trebay runs for cover by stating an obvious, uncontested fact — that older people are heavier than their younger selves. “A hippie now at Woodstock 50 — if such existed and if a planned anniversary concert had not fallen apart — would have added an additional 14 pounds to his frame and a woman another 20,” he states. (When Trebay says “a hippie at Woodstock 50”, he obviously means an old hippie as young hippies don’t exist outside of Deadheads.)

My reading of that meter tells me that many older guys (55-plus) are a lot more than 14 or 15 pounds heavier than their 19 year-old selves. Try 25 or 30 pounds heavier, and I’ve seen a lot worse.

By Trebay’s statistics (currently 14 pounds heavier than 159 pounds) the average 69 year-old guy is 173 pounds.

Last December a National Health Statistics Reports PDF stated that “the average American man between 20 and 39 years [of age] weighs 197.9 pounds, and that the average waist circumference is 40.2 inches, and the average height is just over 5 feet 9 inches (about 69.1 inches) tall.”

In other words the average younger to middle-aged guy of 2019 is 38 pounds heavier than 20-year-olds were in 1971, or 48 years ago.

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And those words are “we need to talk.” Not once in my life! Because they’re a code phrase, for openers. They don’t mean “we need to talk.” They mean “I’ve had it up to here with your selfishness and evasions and procrastinating bullshit, and so we need to figure something out because I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” That’s what “we need to talk” means.

It means “I’m losing patience with your lack of progress…you’re not improving according to my plan.” It means “are you gonna shape up? ‘Cause if you don’t I’m thinking of shipping out.” It means “you, sir, have been fucking up, and so ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes or else…incoming!”

Like anyone else I have my issues, but in the matter of relationships rule #1 has always been “whatevs, turn the other cheek, let it go, don’t pick fights, no ultimatums.” Which essentially means arguments are over-rated, fly under the radar, do your best, keep the gas tank filled, clean up, buy a good vacuum cleaner and take the garbage out before going to bed.

Reactions? To the trailer, I mean.

So in order to see Steven Soderbergh‘s Let Them All Talk sometime next fall, I’ll have to pay a subscription fee to HBO Max. Expected to launch sometime next spring. HBO Max will be a streaming service for all things Warner Media, right? HBO, Warner Bros. films and TV content, TCM, etc.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that WarnerMedia is mulling “a $16-to-$17-per-month price tag, which would be $2 more than a standalone HBO subscription and about $4 more than Netflix,” per qz.com.

I’ve been an HBO Now subscriber for two or three years, but management apparently wants me to follow HBO Max instead. I’m also being urged to subscribe to the forthcoming Apple TV and NBC-Universal streaming services also. No way would I even consider becoming a Disney Channel subscriber.

Written by Deborah Eisenberg, Let Them All Talk has been described as an older-woman’s ensemble drama (Meryl Streep‘s noteworthy author + Candace Bergen and Dianne Weist). Lucas Hedges plays Streep’s nephew; he and Gemma Chan‘s character apparently get something going.

Lensing began in NYC last week; it’s presently shooting aboard the Queen Mary 2 during an actual voyage to England.

If you find this post rote and uninspired, you’re right — I agree with you.

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I really love how Mindhunter 2 focuses almost entirely upon the Atlanta Child Murders investigation over the last…what, five episodes? And on the eventual discovery of likely child-murderer Wayne Williams, and how the guy who plays Williams (still searching for his name) looks almost exactly like him. Ditto the actors who play Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) and David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz (Oliver Cooper).

In the below video Holt McAllany (who plays Bill Tench) explains how and why the resemblance is so precise.

I was completely riveted and I may even re-watch for good measure, but there are two things I wasn’t especially transported by.

One was the subplot about Tench’s malignant son, Brian, who says exactly four words (“Did the fish die?”) in the whole series and is clearly destined to become some kind of super-fiend when he grows up. Nothing happens, nothing develops…the kid is just a zombie from the get-go. Brian is adopted but what a nightmare regardless, and there’s no way out of it for poor Bill and his wife Nancy (Stacey Roca).

The other “what?” is the serious attention paid to the love affair between Anna Torv‘s Wendy Carr and Lauren Glazier‘s Kay Mason, a foxy divorced bartender. Their relationship is not without intrigue and the performances struck me as exactly right, but the whole subplot is just an aromatic sideshow. It has nothing whatsoever to do with serial killers, interviewing serial killers, finding Wayne Williams or the BTK killer, FBI politics or the BSU. Takeaway: Workaholics and obsessives aren’t that great at relationships, etc.

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Until I watched this clip, I’d never seen color-and-sound footage of Marlene Dietrich being interviewed. All my life she was this sparkling, glistening black-and-white figure, acting lines and presenting the classic Dietrich persona. Born in ’01, she was 70 when she sat for this interview. Nice makeup, great hair, the shape of her mouth, etc. Judgment at Nuremberg was her last substantial role. Her Christine Helm in Witness For The Prosecution might have been her most glamorous and charismatic. I never cared for her dark-haired gypsy in Touch of Evil.

I respect and admire the six films Dietrich made with Josef von Sternberg more than I actually like watching them. She was a tiny bit chubby in those films; I prefer the older, sleeker Dietrich of the late 40s and ’50s….the Dietrich who had a hot and heavy affair with Yul Brynner in the ’50s, and who also did the raunchy with Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw (really?), John F. Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Michael Todd, Michael Wilding, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra.

Not to sound like a tech plebe but I’m having trouble imagining what kind of visual enhancement or “bump” will be delivered by the latest digital RED camera, called the Komodo Dragon. The Playlist‘s Rodrigo Perez reports that Steven Soderbergh is using RED’s untested 6K Dragon ** to shoot his ôcurrently-lensing film, Let Them All Talk, which costars Meryl Streep and Gemma Chan.

I own the Criterion Bluray of Soderbergh’s two-part, 258-minute Che (’08), which was shot with a then-experimental RED digital camera. And in my uncultured, dumbfuck, outside-the-loop opinion it still looks heavenly. Last January in Park City I saw Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird, which was shot with an iPhone8 coupled with an anamorphic lens, and to my peon eyes it was pure viewing pleasure — clean, vibrant, razor sharp.

So what exactly can be achieved by the RED Komodo Dragon already? 6K, okay, but how much better can it look? (Or, as Jake Gittes said to Noah Cross, “Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat?”) It will all end up, viewing-wise, on 1080p flatscreens in people’s living rooms so…

Let Them All Talk is currently shooting in NYC “before whisking away to a remote location outside the U.S. where no one will be available to do service work on the camera at all,” Perez writes. That’s an allusion to a cruise ship (possibly the Queen Mary 2) crossing the Atlantic or whatever. A scale model of same was posted on 7.26 by “Bitchuation,” who may or may not be Soderbergh.

One likely distributor of Let Them All Talk is Netflix, which streamed High Flying Bird earlier this year and is also distributing Soderbergh’s upcoming, allegedly satiric The Laundromat in the fall.

** “Komodo seems to be RED’s new ‘affordable’ camera. From the teasers we already know it will shoot 6K video, use a Canon RF mount, CFast media, and it will have a headphone jack and a microphone input jack. The body will weigh less than 2 pounds and all the dimensions will be under 4″, which is very compact. There will be no HDMI port. The camera is supposed to work closely with HYDROGEN One phones and it will cost over $5,000 (less for HYDROGEN users).” — excerpt from cinema5d article, posted on 8.9.19.

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Pete Buttigieg, the only candidate I feel truly excited about, is fourth or fifth-ranked in the polls. Typewriter Joe, way ahead in terms of likely Democratic voters, is a decent, reasonable guy but a stumbling, doddering gaffe machine who’ll be nearly 80 if and when he’s inaugurated in January 2021. The two most progressive-minded candidates, “stubborn old goat” Bernie and Elizabeth “I have a plan for that” Warren, humanist and compassionate as they are and as much as I admire them personally, probably can’t beat Trump if nominated. And the reedy-voiced Kamala Harris, all five foot two inches of her, may not have the horses either.

This is a really awful situation. I see disaster on the horizon, and it’s largely due to laziness, stubbornness and/or closet homophobia. Who the hell cares about sexual behavior? Was the fact that JFK was a hound…did that mean anything in terms of his effectiveness as a U.S. President? The worst monster in the history of the Presidency actually has a shot at re-election. Good God — it’s a slow-motion nightmare.

Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Annapurna, 8.16), based on Maria Semple’s same-titled 2012 novel, is basically Diary of a Mad Architect.

It bears little relation to Frank Perry‘s Diary of a Mad Housewife except for the “mad” part, and even then it’s a different kind — very Seattle-ish and 21st Century, extremely fickle and antsy and yet, for me, diverting and almost fun in a contact-high kind of way.

Bernadette was originally slated to open on 5.11.18, and then was bumped four times (11.19.18, 3.22.19, 8.9.19, 8.16.19). That’s always a sign that something’s wrong, but guess what? Linklater’s film is spotty and imperfect, but it half-works. Make that two-thirds.

This is largely because of Cate Blanchett’s nervous, neurotic, irritated performance as Bernadette Fox, a frustrated ex-architect who’s floundering and miserable because she’s given up her drafting table. As her friend Paul Jellinek (Larry Fishburne) says, “People like you must create…if not, you become a menace to society.”

And because she’s become an agoraphobe. Because she despises conventional living and the Seattle mothers sorority whom she’s expected to pal around with. She loves her daughter Bee (Emma Nelson), who’s extremely loyal and bright, and is on mildly ambivalent terms with her software-genius millionaire husband, Elgie (Billy Crudup).

Bernadette is a prickly pear (along with Frank Lloyd Wright, Howard Roark, Frank Gehry and every other architect worth his or her salt) but I understood her — I recognized a kindred spirit. And I honestly liked and related to her more when she was agitated and dismissive and hoarding medication than when she was smiling and creatively fulfilled and hugging Elgin and Bee during the South Pole finale.

Because in a way Bernadette is a cousin of Randall P. McMurphy — she’s been wounded over an architectural debacle that happened in Los Angeles, and she really hates conventional mindsets and people who cluck-cluck and go along, and there’s just no peace in her heart when it comes to most manifestations of middle-class normality.

That aside I didn’t believe that Bernadette and family would live in a 19th century, vine-covered Edgar Allen Poe mansion. Nobody would allow that much flora to cover and in fact smother their home. No architect would allow that much rot and ruination to affect his/her living space.

And it made no sense at all for a landscape architect to advise that vines and bushes be removed from a hilly area in the middle of Seattle’s rainy season.

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