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Last April I read a 2017 draft of Adam McKay‘s Vice, the Dick Cheney movie. (The script was called Cheney when McKay typed the title page; it was later called Backseat.) It struck me as a dark political horror comedy with a chuckly tone. A friend who read the same draft calls Backseat “a mixture of McKay, Deadpool and Armando Iannucci.”

One of the distinctive aspects of the ’17 draft were a couple of scenes in which Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and his wife Lynn (Amy Adams) assess their situation in Shakespearean verse. I don’t recall if there were musical scenes in this draft but apparently one was shot.

In any event Vice (Annapurna, 12.14) research-screened last week in Los Angeles, and at least one guy who attended was enthusiastic.

“This is powerful political stuff,” he began. “A very didactic, matter-of-fact examination of Dick Cheney‘s empirical rise behind the scenes.

“McKay has removed the big comedic set-pieces from the film,” he added. “Missing from the new cut was an elaborate musical sequence and a substantial scene of Bale and Adams reciting Shakespeare. As it stands, the film still works. Now it’s just a more dramatic Big Short. It implements the same style of filmmaking (flashy editing and montage). Bale commits to a transformative performance, and Adams has two early volcanic scenes that can win her the Oscar. Steve Carell‘s Donald Rumsfeld is comic relief. And Sam Rockwell‘s George Bush is little more than a cameo — he appears in three scenes. Plays him as insecure and fragile as you’d hope.”

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At the end of yesterday’s Other Side of the Wind review I wrote that “it must have been a whole lot of fun to have been part of the shoot back in ’70, ’71 and ’72…hugely enjoyable for those who were there and sharing a magic moment.” I noticed in the closing credits that director Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire) and Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy played partygoers. I wrote them and asked for recollections — they both responded.

McCarthy: “When I watched it I saw myself for about two seconds in a party scene shot with Cameron Mitchell and another actor I couldn’t identify. Joe McBride, who’s seen the film multiple times, said he saw me in two shots. Maybe when I get a DVD I can freeze-frame to be able to say with certainty how many times I’m onscreen and for how long. But the main thing was just being there.

“I was working as Elaine May‘s assistant on Mikey and Nicky during the day, then in the evenings — on and off for about a month — I would head to Bogdanovich’s house (212 Copa de Oro Road) to be part of Orson’s filmed ‘parties’ while Peter was away shooting Daisy Miller in Italy.

“I was even there for Orson’s 60th birthday” — 5.6.75 — “when he exploded in a rage when everyone paused late in the evening to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and present him with a cake. He was demanding that they continue working. Sometime after midnight, when there were maybe a dozen people left, he opened the freezer, pulled out a tub of ice cream and proceeded to eat the whole thing.

“But my favorite memory is of something that happened once a week. At 8 pm or 8:30 or whatever time it was, Orson would have a fit, yell at everyone in a fit of dissatisfaction and storm into his bedroom and slam the door behind him. A half-hour or an hour later, he’d come out in a fine humor and resume filming at once. My friend Gary Graver, the cinematographer, later told me what was really going on: Orson’s favorite TV series was Shaft (which aired from late ’73 to early ’74) and throwing this tantrum was his way of getting away to watch it.

“Working with Elaine and Orson, the two biggest mavericks in town, was my introduction to Hollywood.”

Crowe: “I think it was [during] my first trip to Los Angeles when my friend Phil Savenick said, ‘Let’s go be extras in an Orson Welles movie.’ It all felt very mysterious. We weren’t given the name of the film. We hung out all night in the backyard and big living room of a house in Bel-Air — Stone Canyon, I believe — and every thirty minutes or so, Welles would move through the set, look at us, and continue bantering with Peter Bogdanovich. We weren’t sure what was being planned or filmed. At a certain point cameras appeared. Welles appeared with Bogdanovich and shot a scene that took place in the backyard. There were long delays between takes.

“There were about thirty of us, and the best conversation among the extras was ‘If Orson Welles was a musician, who would he be?’ One of the extras argued strongly that he was like Stephen Stills, who wrote ‘For What It’s Worth’ and other classics at a young age. The other extras argued this theory down with relish. We finally decided the closest comparison was Brian Wilson. And right about that time, an assistant director came out and said, ‘Orson is going to bed. Anybody want to come back tomorrow?'”

What was Rod Serling‘s The Twilight Zone, boiled down to basics? During its 1959-to-1962 heyday it was a half-hour series about the fears, anxieties, neuroses and psychological maladies that flooded the anti-social undercurrents of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy eras. That or the issues that made Serling himself feel antsy and unsettled. It was not a show about “boo!” — it was about “what is this strange feeling I have in my gut?” or “why can’t I shake this memory from my childhood?” or “why do I feel trapped?” or “what if I just ran away from my high-paying job and moved to a small bucolic town called Willoughby…wouldn’t I be happier?”

Does anyone think that the latest Twilight Zone reboot, which will be hosted by Jordan Peele because Get Out was a racially-stamped reboot of Ira Levin‘s The Stepford Wives, which of course has nothing to do with the Serling aesthetic…does anyone think that this new streaming Twilight Zone will come within 100 miles of the deep-down fears, anxieties, neuroses and psychological maladies of the Trump era?

My presumption, in fact, is that Peel’s Zone will deliver cheap horror wanks because that’s what 90% of the viewing audience likes. They don’t want to know from their deep-down fears, anxieties, neuroses and maladies, and would probably run in the opposite direction of any streaming series that delivers anything resembling this.

Variety story: CBS announced Thursday that Peele will serve as host and narrator of “The Twilight Zone,” the revival of the classic science-fiction anthology that he is producing with CBS Television Studios and Simon Kinberg for CBS All Access. Peele and Kinberg are set to serve as executive producers alongside Win Rosenfeld, Audrey Chon, Carol Serling, Rick Berg and Greg Yaitanes.

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The gifted Cary Fukunaga has been hired to direct the 25th James Bond film, which is untitled as we speak. A smart move for the Bond producers — a critic friend calls the Japanese-American director “a real chameleon who always rises to every occasion” — and, be honest, a paycheck gig for Fukanaga.

There’s a term for any name-brand director helming a Bond film — slumming. The pay is great but you’re still submitting to the factory-level requirements of a well-worn, whore-level franchise.

It’s no small footnote that Fukunaga will be the first American-born director to helm a Bond film; all the others have been British, New Zealanders (Martin Campbell, Lee Tamahori) or German-Swiss (Marc Forster).

What is the worst, most banal aspect of the Bond franchise that Fukunaga could theoretically turn away from? The Travel & Leisure luxury settings. Almost every exotic location that Daniel Craig‘s 007 visits is pornographically luscious — the perfect spot for your next damn-the-expense getaway with your wife or girlfriend. Agreed, the ambitious Mexico City tracking shot that Spectre began with avoided this trap but otherwise my head is flooded with memories of Mr. Bond revelling in drop-your-pants, Kardashian-level splendor. Which I hate because with minor variations flush travel-destination settings are exactly the same the world over. They spread the corporate poison.

It’s been nearly three years since I reviewed Spectre (“All Bond Films Are Vaguely Numbing…What?“), and I recall it like yesterday:

The virulent pan of Spectre (MGM/Columbia, 11.6) by Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson is almost…touching? Mendelson is really, really disappointed in this thing — “the worst 007 film in 30 years,” he claims, or since, like, A View to a Kill or whatever.

This indicates, obviously, that Mendelson doesn’t go to Bond films for a nice wank-off, like most of us probably do. He apparently believes that Bond films have the potential to redeem and cleanse and change our lives…okay, his life for the better. Skyfall came a lot closer to this, he contends, and…uhm, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace were relatively decent? Something like that.

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Remember the opening of Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O’Toole rumbling along that winding country road without a helmet? That was me yesterday afternoon. God bless Connecticut’s optional helmet law. I cruised all over Wilton, Ridgefield, Norwalk and Westport. Never in my life have I driven a two-wheeled vehicle without a helmet, not even in Europe. Do I think it’s a good idea to forsake one as a rule? No, but the wind whipping through your hair feels wonderful, and that wild and free sensation seemed to intensify the road aromas. It was symphonic.

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If after reading Daphne Merkin’s just-posted Soon-Yi Previn interview as well as Moses Farrow’s 5.23.18 essay (“A Son Speaks Out“)…if after reading these personal testimonies you’re still in the “I believe Dylan Farrow” camp…if you haven’t at least concluded that there’s a highly significant amount of ambiguity and uncertainty in this whole mishegoss, then I don’t know what to say to you. There’s probably nothing that can be said to you.

Journo pally: “Ugh…I’m starting to loathe Ronan and Dylan Farrow.”

Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book has won the Toronto Film Festival’s Grosch People’s Choice Award for most popular film! Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma and Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk were the second and first runners-up. A Star Is Born came in…what, fourth? Astonishing. (What happened to the suspected ballot-stuffing thing?) HE’s mind is officially blown. Downside for Green Book: It’s now in danger of being labelled the Best Picture front-runner.

Documentary Award: Free Solo. The Biggest Little Farm and This Changes Everything were the second and first runners-up.

Midnight Madness award winner: The Man Who Feels No Pain. Assassination Nation and Halloween are the second and first runners-up, respectively.

In his first Oscar-odds-assessment piece of the season, N.Y. Times “Carpetbagger” columnist Kyle Buchanan notes that “uncertainty makes the Best Actress field hard to predict, since The Favourite fields three women, each of whom could position herself as a lead: Olivia Colman shines as a diminished Queen Anne manipulated by two crafty women in her court, played with comic precision by Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.”

However, later in the piece Buchanan adds that “should Ms. Colman drop down to the supporting-actress category for The Favourite, she would probably coast through Oscar season, picking up trophies right and left.”

HE to 20th Century Fox award-season strategists: One, Colman’s role in The Favourite is not a lead — she’s Robert Shaw in The Sting. It would not be category fraud if she ran for supporting. And two, she’s this year’s Bruce Dern. Remember how Dern’s performance as a doddering old guy in Nebraska was praised left and right but he refused to campaign for Best Supporting Actor? And then lost? He could have easily won if he’d gone for supporting. Easily.

The Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Awards will be revealed tomorrow. I’m hoping that Green Book wins the popularity prize, but the betting is that A Star Is Born has it in the bag; ditto Lady Gaga for Best Actress. The suspicion is that high-fervor Lady Gaga fans will be avalanching the process.

It’s been claimed that the voting system isn’t fair — that you don’t have to see the film to vote & can vote multiple times for the same film with different email addresses. But TIFF spokesperson Andrea Grau says this isn’t true — that TIFF has “ensured that an individual cannot vote for the same film multiple times by email address. The data is processed through our system which then analyses the origin of the vote and matches votes to TIFF’s ticket buyer information and database.

“Using these methods any attempts to sway the result through mass campaign voting can be quickly identified and discounted.”

It’s also been suggested that TIFF should reinstate the rule that voting for a film is limited to those who actually watched a film (e.g., entering some sort of proof or barcode or whatever). I’m not even sure when or if that rule was removed. I’ve asked around; hard to pin down.

In the wake of Criterion’s garishly tealed-up Midnight Cowboy and Bull Durham Blurays, the teal monster has re-appeared in Criterion’s forthcoming Bluray of Brian DePalma‘s Sisters (’73). Or it has, at least, according to frame captures posted by DVD Beaver’s Gary. W Tooze.

HE to Tooze: “This continuing Criterion teal thing is crazy. WHAT IS CRITERION DOING? No disrespect but is there any chance at all there’s something screwy on your end? Something to do with 4K discs or your 4K player? Nobody else is talking about Criterion’s teal obsession. Please level with me — WHAT COULD BE HAPPENING HERE? BECAUSE IT’S INSANE. Why would Criterion do this? The latest offender is Sisters.”

Notice the distinct teal tint in the bottom image, which is taken from Criterion’s Sisters Bluray; the above image is from an earlier Arrow Bluray.

Mark Smith to HE: “To go by DVD Beaver frame captures Criterion’s Sisters Bluray is not as egregious, offensive and baffling as the recent Bull Durham and Midnight Cowboy releases, but it’s in the ballpark.

“This MUST have something to do with color technology on 4K or HDR or…something. I cannot believe that this is just a series of full–on botch–jobs. These transfers are director- or cinematographer-approved. There’s no way Criterion and Adam Holender looked at the teal sky in Midnight Cowboy and said, ‘Perfect!’

“What is Gary Tooze seeing that Criterion is not? What monitors are they all using? Why are not all of Criterion’s new releases tealed-up? I’d be willing to bet that this is an HDR/4K monitor problem.”

Tooze replies: “Hello, Jeffrey — We don’t obtain our captures on 4K UHD monitors. We have sampled comparisons with other sites (that also use the VLC software) and they seem to be the same on our reviews of other films.

“As I noted in our review, [the teal tint] is less-visible on my OLED (4K UHD) but all systems may have different filters, especially nowadays. We used the latest version of VLC — flat with no enhancement.

“The teal effect has been noticed on plenty of non-Criterion Blurays for years. And you can see about 800 Criterion reviews on DVD Beaver WITHOUT the teal…so it ain’t me. I’ve been doing this 18 years.

“Maybe directors in the booth are swayed by modern technical-ability to shift colors? I don’t have an answer as to why it exists – I am just reporting it.” — Regards, Gary Tooze”

Hollywood Elsewhere also totally agrees with Virginia Postrel’s additionally brilliant suggestion for a Best Hindsight Oscar for the Best Picture from 25 years ago.

“Nominees would be selected through the same process as the current year’s Best Picture nominees but from the earlier year’s offerings,” Postrel explains. “To keep already-confusing dates consistent, the award would count back from the year whose films are being honored — say, 2018 — rather than the year of the ceremony.”

If, in other words, the Academy was to hand out a Best Hindsight Oscar next February, the applicable year (a quarter century prior to 2018) would be 1993…right? Academy voters who therefore re-consider the best films of that year (Groundhog Day, Jurassic Park, True Romance, Philadelphia, Schindler’s List, The Firm, The Age of Innocence, In The Line of Fire, Falling Down, A Perfect World, A Bronx Tale, In The Name of the Father) and vote for their favorite.

Schindler’s List might still take the top prize, of course, but guess what definitely wouldn’t win? Correct — Philadelphia. What should win? Correct — Groundhog Day.

Jacques Audiard‘s The Sisters Brothers (Annapurna, 9.21.18) is a grimy, gunky wad of episodic, half-comedic western nihilism — aimless, wandering, constant gunplay and fuck-all violence at nearly every turn.

It ambles and shuffles along in a loose, tension-free way that tests your patience and has you begging for a conclusion at the one-hour mark. Unfortunately you have to sit there for another full hour.

At the very beginning there’s a cool-looking nocturnal gunfight in which extra-bright lightning gun blasts illuminate the darkness a bit more than they probably would in actuality. That’s the one thing I genuinely admired about this film.

Otherwise I found the second half agonizing. Almost everyone dies in a fairly brutal and bloody way, and all the characters, it seems, are negligible and not worth giving a fuck about, and none of it amounts to squat. Everyone has bad teeth and is covered in grease and dirt or are dressed in smelly boots and stinky socks or a combination of all five, and it’s all on the level of “Jesus H. Christ, what did Audiard and Annapurna see in this material? Dear God, please…lemme outta here.”

Except I was stuck in the middle of a big IMAX theatre (#12 in the Scotiabank plex) with about 15 people to step over or around on either side, and I was asking myself “which is worse, staying to the end or irritating all these people as I make my way out?” I decided it would be more honorable to tough it out.

John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play the titular characters. Reilly’s Eli is the wiser, gentler and more thoughtful of the two, or at least is less grunty than Phoenix’s Charlie Sisters, and so he delivers a more affecting performance. (I guess.)

Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed are of passing interest (good acting but I couldn’t have cared less about their characters) in supporting roles. Rutger Hauer plays the Commodore, the Sisters Brothers’ boss. I didn’t even recognize Carol Kane, who appears at the very end as Reilly and Phoenix’s mother.