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27 years after the horrific events that took place in Derry, New Hampshire in 1989, the “Loser’s Club” — now in their late 30s — are back in the old town and looking to settle this nightmarish Pennywise shit (hauntings, spookings, self-reflections) once and for all.

Let me tell you something — if on the cusp of 40 you’re still seriously haunted or even psychologically imprisoned by your childhood traumas — if you’re seriously inhibited or impaired by bad shit that happened when you were nine or ten years old and you can’t seem to get past it, then you’ve got a serious problem on your hands. Most people get past their childhood shit, but here you are still frowning and fretting and grinding your teeth about it. The applicable terms are (a) arrested development and (b) pity party.

I for one don’t give a damn if you resolve your problems with Pennywise and the other bugaboos or not. You can all take a walk in a swamp

You didn’t have to be a megaplex moron to rave about the first It film, but it probably helped if you were. It (’17) was not a Hollywood Elsewhere film, and the same probably goes for the forthcoming sequel — It Chapter Two. The It films are for popcorn munchers — lowbrows who prefer their horror films to howl and jolt and gush blood and vomit in their laps.

And I love the fact that the there’s no colon or dash between It and Chapter Two on the poster — it’s like the filmmakers are shouting “hello, idiots…over here!”

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Jonathan Levine, Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron‘s Long Shot is a bust. After costing “roughy $40 million to make and another $30 million to market,” according to the N.Y. Times‘ Brooks Barnes, it made a lousy $10 million last weekend (it’s currently at $12 million) and will almost certainly suffer a 40%-or-higher diminishment during the next round (5.10 to 5.12).

The odds of tripling that opening weekend tally by the end of the run are not high. Face it — the movie was intermittently funny at best (I found it flat-out unfunny), the premise was absurd or at least distasteful (the toad-gazelle pairing of Rogen and Theron) and Joe and Jane Popcorn said “nope.”

No, wait — that’s not why it died. The handicappers are claiming that Long Shot sank beneath the waves because the competition from Avengers: Endgame was too fierce. So HE’s above-mentioned issues were incidental to its failure? I doubt it but you tell me.

Theory #1: Rogen is only 37 but he looks 49, and I’m wondering if the guy he’s been playing in film after film for the last 12 years (or since Knocked up) is starting to wear thin among his followers. I personally love the guy when he’s spouting impudent, sharp-edged dialogue, but his Long Shot character was a 16 year-old. Theory #2: It’s Charlize Theron‘s fault! The public accepts/respects her as a dramatic actress who takes chances, but is wary of watching her in a romcom mode. Theory #3: The movie blew chunks and the word got around. Theory #4 (see below): It’s Jon Feltheimer‘s fault!

From “Joe Biden’s ‘Electability’ Argument Is How Democrats Lose Elections,” a 5.7 Vanity Fair piece by Peter Hamby:

“Since Vietnam, every time a Democrat has won the presidency, it’s because Democrats voted with their hearts in a primary and closed ranks around the candidate who inspired them, promising an obvious break from the past and an inspiring vision that blossomed in the general election. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. Barack Obama. All were young outsiders who tethered their message to the culture of the time.

“When Democrats have picked nominees cautiously and strategically falling in line, the results have been devastating, as Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton made plain.

“It’s not a perfect rule: While Gore and Clinton didn’t quite electrify the country, they still won the popular vote. And George McGovern was a heart candidate who got slaughtered by Richard Nixon in 1972. But the McGovern wipeout is kind of what Biden and his loyalists are clinging to: the idea that this Trump moment, like the wrenching 60s, is so existential and high stakes that Democrats will overlook their usual instincts and do the sensible thing.

“Theatrical and Irish, Biden surely is hoping that he can be a vehicle for both passion and pragmatism. But if he wins the nomination next year, it will be because Democrats went with their heads, not their bleeding hearts.

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Avatar, the last James Cameron film to hit screens, opened nine and a half years ago. Since that time Cameron has been working on making four Avatar sequels. That’s right — four of ’em. Not a sequel or a trilogy but a five-parter if you count the original. Basically a theatrical miniseries.

It was announced today that the release date of the fourth and final Avatar sequel (aka Avatar 5) has been bumped from 12.19.25 to 12.17.27, which is (a) eight and a half years from now and (b) 19 years after the release of the original. Given that Cameron began work on Avatar in early ’06, there will actually be a time span of 21 years between the start of it all and Avatar 5.

Has anyone in the history of motion pictures ever invested this many years in the multi-part fulfillment of a single franchise?

New Avatar sequel dates, as dictated by Disney: Avatar 2 — previously slated to open on 12/18/20, now opening on 12.17.21 or eleven months after the swearing-in of President Pete Buttigieg. Avatar 2 — previously dated on 12.17.21, now bumped to 12.22.23, by which time Buttigieg’s re-election campaign will be in the final stages of preparation. Avatar 4 — previously dated on 12.20.24, now set to open on 12.19.25 or nearly a full year into Buttigieg’s second term. And then the debut of the grand finale, Avatar 5, on 12.17.27.

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Tatyana has an ongoing insomnia problem, along with an occasional case of agitated nerves. This is largely due to her having been afflicted with Bell’s Palsy five years ago, which was triggered by stress issues due to a high-pressure job she had with a Swedish cosmetic company.

She wound up being treated for the malady during three successive hospital visits in Nizhny Novgorod, but a certain female physician didn’t correctly treat her with the right remedy at some point in the process, and to varying degrees she’s been living with nerves and occasional anxiety ever since. No big deal for the most part and certainly managable, but sometimes it spills over.

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A Criterion Bluray (4K digital restoration) of David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet pops on 5.28. I was immediately haunted, enthralled and perversely amused by this wild, brilliant noir when I first saw it 32 and 3/4 years ago (it opened on 9.19.86). And yet I haven’t rewatched it since. The bottom line is that it’s more fascinating than likable.

What do I actually “like” about Blue Velvet? Dennis Hopper‘s performance mostly. Breathing in the nitrous oxide. That line about Pabst Blue Ribbon. “Mommy…Daddy wants to fuhhhhck!” Plus the famous slow-mo shot of a small-town fireman smiling and waving from a fire truck as it passes by.

I also have a vaguely unpleasant recollection of poor Isabella Rossellini (who was romantically involved with Lynch from ’86 through ’90 or thereabouts) having been seemingly treated like a piece of erotic meat with all the s&m nude scenes and whatnot.

There must have been semi-profound currents between Lynch and Rossellini for their relationship to have lasted four years, but this famous Helmut Newton photo is, for me, a portrait of a guy who’s more fixated and erotically intrigued than taken by genuine love and affection.

Helmut Newton photo, taken in ’86 or ’87. I think.

Here’s an account of the Lynch-Rossellini relationship; here’s another. Both report that Lynch ended the relationship. Quote: “The couple reportedly broke up and one of the reasons given was that Lynch could not stand the smell of cooking in the house because it would infect his drawings and writing papers.”

Anecdote: In the fall of ’85 I was working for New Line Cinema as an in-house publicist for A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge. The Jack Sholder-directed thriller (which is better than half-decent) costarred Hope Lange, who at the time had also landed a supporting role in Blue Velvet.

One afternoon somebody called Lange about some p.r. matter. Before picking up she apparently had an idea that a Blue Velvet person was calling. Her tone of voice was very spirited and friendly during the first few seconds of the call, but things turned sour and chilly when she realized she was talking to New Line. As in “ohh, it’s you guys…can I help you?”

If you discount the softballers (which conscientious review-readers need to do on a regular basis), the general reaction to Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis‘s Yesterday seems to be that it’s (a) cheerfully sappy and (b) occasionally eye-rolling.

Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich: “This sweet but vacuous exercise in suspending disbelief is an overstuffed and underwritten misfire; a studio-engineered crowd-pleaser so convinced that All You Need Is Love that it loses sight of some other essentials along the way: Believable characters, elegant pacing, a script that develops an actual heart instead of just nodding its head to a steady drumbeat of Hallmark emotions.”

In Owen Gleiberman’s view, Yesterday is “a cut-and-dried, rotely whimsical, prefab experience. [Supporting player] Kate McKinnon pushes her postmodern sarcasm to the wall — in Yesterday, she’s the acid-tongued incarnation of music-industry corruption. Yet beneath it all, there isn’t much difference between what Mandi does and what Boyle and Curtis are doing. They’re selling the Beatles all over again.”

To me Yesterday, which is basically about an enormous cosmic gift bestowed upon busker “Jack Malik” (Himesh Patel) by making him the only guy in the world who knows the entire Beatles library of tunes, seemed like an underwhelmer from the get-go.

From a 3.14 riff about Tribeca Film Festival announcement + trailer: “The fact that the trailer cutters chose to show clips of Patel singing ‘Yesterday’, ‘Let It Be’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand speaks volumes.

“If this film was even half-cool, Patel/Malik would be shown singing ‘Girl’, ‘Things We Said Today’, ‘Norweigan Wood,’ ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘Cry Baby Cry’, ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’, ‘Here, There, Everywhere,’ ‘Lovely Rita’, ‘Savoy Truffle’, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’, ‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey’, ‘You Know My Name — Look Up The Number’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’

“But no — he can only croon the sappy top-40 Beatles tunes (I hate ‘The Long and Winding Road’ with every fibre of my being) that everyone has heard 17 million times and is sick to death of.”

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There’s a fair amount of deep-down homophobia out there. Nobody will mention or admit to it, but it’s there in the backwaters and the suburbs, and even to some extent in the cities. If you think the average voter hasn’t laughed at Eddie Murphy’s Mr. T joke from the ’80s, you’re kidding yourself.

HE’s advice to Pete Buttigieg is to not refer all that often to his marital status (i.e., Chasten Glezman), and to basically soft-peddle the gay cards. His candidacy should be — is! — about brilliance, middle-class Indiana values, military service, Christianity, mild temperament, generational change, speaking several languages, administrative smarts.

In a manner of speaking, Pete’s candidacy has to be mild-mannered and straight-friendly. His campaign, I mean, will have to be analogous to Call Me By Your Name or Brokeback Mountain without the pup-tent scene. If so much as a whiff of Taxi Zum Klo slips out, he’ll be in trouble.

John F. Kennedy campaigned as a staunch Massachusetts Catholic, family man and World War II hero. He didn’t flaunt the fact that he was to-the-manor-born wealthy, and he kept his ex-bootlegger father, Joseph P. Kennedy, in the shadows. And of course there was never a mention of his sexual side-life or the fact that he had Addison’s disease. In short, he played it smart.

Franklin D. Roosevelt never emphasized to voters that he had polio and was confined to a wheelchair. He knew that a segment of the populace would be uncomfortable with the idea of a handicapped President, and so he used his steel braces and stood tall at every campaign rally. It’s all about branding and signage.

HE’s personal preference list of Cannes ’19 films comes to 27, and that’s not counting the Cannes Classics roster (Loves of a Blonde, Easy Rider, The Shining, Seven Beauties, Moulin Rouge, the Bunuel trio). 27 to 30 films in 11 days, and that’s leaving out a lot. Which films should I downgrade and which omissions should I include? Tell me this isn’t one of the most exciting Cannes rosters in years, at least on paper.

Top Ten: (1) Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, (2) Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Intermezzo, (3) Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse, (4) Jim Jarmusch‘s The Dead Don’t Die, (5) Pedro Almódovar‘s Pain & Glory, (5) Marco Bellocchio‘s The Traitor, (6) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s Young Ahmed, (7) Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life, (8) Ken Loach‘s Sorry We Missed You, (9) Dexter Fletcher‘s Rocketman (out of competition), (10) Kantemir Balagov‘s Beanpole.

Second Group: (11) Asif Kapadia‘s Diego Maradona, (12) Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Too Old To Die Young – North Of Hollywood, West Of Hell, (13) Nicolas Bedos‘ La Belle Epoque, (14) Jessica Hausner‘s Little Joe, (15) Corneliu Porumboiu‘s The Whistlers, (16) Ira Sachs‘ Frankie, (17) Xavier Dolan‘s Matthias And Maxime, (18) Arnaud Desplechin‘s Oh Mercy, (19) Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles‘ Bacurau, (20) Gaspar Noé’s Lux Aeterna.

Third Group: (21) Larissa Sadilova’s Odnazhdy v Trubchevske, (22) Gael García Bernal’s Chicuarotes, (23) Luca Guadagnino‘s short film The Staggering Girl, (24) Leila Conners’ Ice on Fire, (25) Dan Krauss’s 5B, (26) Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite, (27) Diao Yinan‘s The Wild Goose Lake.

Loveless composer Evgeny Galperin, whom I met in Cannes two years ago, says that he “worked” for (presumably composed the musical score for) Kantemir Balagov‘s Beanpole, which will show in Cannes under Un Certain Regard.

Evgeny will be in Cannes for a couple of days to attend the Beanpole screening and, I presume, take a few bows. He assures that Beanpole, a melodrama about two women struggling to survive in the 1945 aftermath of the German siege of Leningrad, is an “absolute masterpiece.” He’s also urging that I see Kirill Mikhanovsky‘s Give Me Liberty, which will screen at Directors’ Fortnight.

Balagov’s controversial Tesnota (Closeness) screened in Cannes two years ago. The 26 year-old director’s decision to include footage from an actual snuff film prompted some press-screening walkouts, and resulted in the ruffling of critical feathers. Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter review reflected this reaction.

Tatyana saw Tesnota/Closeness at Telluride ’17. She told Evgeny this morning that she found it “brilliant” and a “true masterpiece” and knew right away that “a new, very talented Russian film director had been born.”

Long Beanpole synopsis via Wild Bunch: “1945, Leningrad. World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Although the siege – one of the worst in history – is finally over, life and death continue their battle in the wreckage that remains. Two young women, Iya and Masha, search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.

“26-year-old Kantemir Balagov follows Tesnota, winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, with a powerful period drama.”

At long last, World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has posted results of a top-rated films of the 20-teens poll. Not entirely critics but 250 “critics, programmers, academics and distributors“, as Ruimy puts it.

George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road — a high-grade, brilliantly choreographed apocalyptic action flick — has emerged with the highest tally. Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life came in second, Barry Jenkins‘ overpraised Moonlight ranks third, Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood is fourth and David Fincher‘s The Social Network emerged as #5.

Of the top 20 favorites, a little less than half — Fury Road, Moonlight, Jordan Peele‘s Get Out (#10), Todd Haynes‘ Carol (#12), Spike Jonze‘s Her (#18) and Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name (#19) — could be called Joe Popcorn-friendly.

The others are studied, formidable, sophisticated, in some cases ultra-dweeby, New York Film Festival-y, non-popcorny “critics movies” such as Jonathan Glazer‘s Under the Skin (#12), Kenneth Lonergan‘s Margaret (14), Maren Ade‘s overpraised Toni Erdmann (#15), Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s Uncle Bonmee (#16), Joshua Oppenheimer‘s The Act of Killing and Leos Carax‘s brilliant Holy Motors.

#6 through #10 are The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), Roma (Alfonso Cuaron), Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson…get outta town!), A Separation (Asghar Farhadi…yes!) and the perfectly composed Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen).

HE opinion (reposted): Moonlight is a very good film, but it was over-showered with praise by way of virtue-signalling and p.c. kowtowing. Now that the post-Twilight Zone truth about Jordan Peele has begun to settle in, Get Out‘s rep is almost certainly undergoing a reassessment.

HE’s TOP ELEVEN OF THE LAST NINE YEARS: Manchester By The Sea, A Separation, The Social Network, Zero Dark Thirty, Call Me By Your Name, Son of Saul, The Wolf of Wall Street, Leviathan, The Square, Moneyball, Diane.

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