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This recent trailer for Adrien Lyne‘s Deep Water (Hulu, 3.18) gives you a taste of the territorial rage and icy cruelty in Patricia Highsmith’s source novel, which was published 65 years ago. Lyne’s film, which costars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, began shooting in November 2019. One viewing tells you that a certain stubble-faced party is going to dispose of other parties, at the very least.

Hollywood Elsewhere will be gladly returning to the Santa Barbara Film Festival next week. I’ll remain there for eight or nine days. The SBIFF is the friendliest, sexiest, easiest-to-navigate major film festival in the entire civilized world. Start to finish, it feels a sea breeze. And with the new CDC ruling we might not have to wear masks all the time!

The Directors of the Year Award tribute on Thursday, March 3rd (Spielberg, Anderson, Branagh, Campion, Hamaguchi) is the kickoff event.

On Friday night Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart will sit for a longish, in-depth interview at the Arlington while receiving the Riviera Award.

The next day brings the dual Writers and Producers Panels on Saturday, 3.5.22. The writers will include Kenneth Branagh, Jane Campion, Zach Baylin (King Richard), Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter), Sian Heder (CODA), Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up), Denis Villeneuve (Dune) and Eskil Vogt (The Worst Person in the World), and will be tossed the usual softball questions by IndieWire’s Anne Thompson.

The Producers Panel, set for the afternoon of March 5 and moderated by the mild-mannered Glenn Whipp will include Laura Berwick (Belfast), Miles Dale (Nightmare Alley), Kevin Messick (Don’t Look Up), Rita Moreno (West Side Story), Sara Murphy (Licorice Pizza), Mary Parent (Dune), Tanya Seghatchian (The Power of the Dog), Patrick Wachsberger (CODA), Tim White (King Richard) and Teruhisa Yamamoto (Drive My Car).

The SBIFF Virtuosos Award ceremony will happen at the Arlington that evening (Saturday 3.5) with TCM’s Dave Karger moderating. Belfast‘s Ciaran Hinds, Caitriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan, plus Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza), Emilia Jones (CODA), Troy Kotsur (CODA), Simon Rex (Red Rocket) and Saniyya Sidney (King Richard).

The following morning (Sunday, March 6) will launch the Animation Panel, with SBIFF executive director Roger Durling moderating.

Not to mention King Richard‘s Will Smith and Aunjanue Ellis receiving the Outstanding Performers of the Year Award in a ceremony that begins at 8 pm on Sunday, 3.6 at the Arlington theatre, (b) Penelope Cruz receiving the Montecito Award on Tuesday, 3.8 at the Arlington, (c) Benedict Cumberbatch receiving the Cinema Vanguard award on Wednesday, 3.9 at the Arlington, (d) Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman receiving the Maltin Modern Master Award on Thursday, 3.10 at the Arlington, and (e) a ten-year anniversary screening of David O. Russell‘s Silver Lining Playbook with a Russell q & a to follow.

The SBIFF runs from March 2nd through 12th.

Madonna looks great for a 63 year-old. She looks great for a 33 year-old. Having been there and done that in my home town of Prague, I’m all for good tasteful “work”. But most of us would agree, I think, that it’s important to resemble the person you were 15 or 20 years ago. I’d better watch my step — this is the same kind of observation that Owen Gleiberman shared about Rene Zellweger five years ago.

…if a semblance of All In The Family could return as a present-tense social-issues Hulu series, except Archie could be…well, a bit like myself…sensible liberal older guy, perhaps an editor & founder of an online publication or web business of some kind, grappling with the pressures of HR woke terror in the workplace, clashing with Millennial or Zoomer daughter and BIPOC son-in-law who are living with him while they save for a house…basically Hollywood Elsewhere meets Norman Lear…except Archie Wells wouldn’t be as smug or under-educated as Carroll O’Connor was…it could write itself.

If you wanted to self-delude you could tell yourself that this flash-and-dance number from Dexter Fletcher‘s Rocketman is mostly uncut — a single dazzling shot. It certainly seems that way from the 1:10 mark (once Taron Egerton appears from an opening in the fence) until he retreats into the pub and joins his bandmates around the 3:40 mark. 150 seconds!

It’s more likely three or four shots seamlessly blended together, but at least an energetic effort was made to persuade otherwise.

Any way you slice it this is easily the best sequence in the entire film.

Posted on 9.9.19:

Hollywood Elsewhere suspects that classic-film distributor and alleged rights-squatter Wade Williams, the apparent owner of distribution rights to William Cameron Menzies‘ Invaders From Mars (’53) since the mid ’70s, has a top-secret plan for creating and then distributing a restored 4K Bluray of this legendary impressionist classic.

It was just over five years ago when Williams projected, in a letter to director Joe Dante, that a high-grade restoration of Invaders elements was probably just around the corner and that a reputable distributor of this restored film would soon emerge.

But of course, Williams being Williams, nothing ever happened.

HE can now officially share the above-referenced, fully considered suspicion. Wade’s plan may involve waiting for the inevitable deaths of hundreds of thousands of the film’s boomer-aged fans — movie fanatics who were deeply impressed by Invaders‘ spooky vibe and penetrtating, dream-like hallucinatory impressions during their soft-clay years.

It is entirely reasonable to suspect that Wade’s plan may be to wait for these film buffs (particularly boomers who experienced said reactions to Menzies’ film in their adolescent years)…it’s quite possible that the plan is to wait until all the boomer-aged fans of this film are dead and gone. Once departed and their remains scattered to the winds, Williams will finally assist with a restoration effort and then release and approve a 4K scan of the best extant materials.

Then again a respected inside-track guy who knows all the players has confided the following: “From my knowledge, Wade Williams doesn’t hold controlling rights to Invaders From Mars, nor does he control the original camera negative, so any activity that may occur need not have his approval.”

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Two days ago I wrote that Austin Butler doesn’t look enough like Elvis — at best he’s a young John Travolta. The new trailer suggests that Butler doesn’t have the surly Elvis drawl either. (Kurt Russell‘s Elvis voice was ten times better.) It’s one thing to not resemble Elvis but to sound like him, and another thing to not have the voice but to own a serious look-alike thing, but to come up short on both counts is a huge problem — it really is.

Forget reanimating the actual long-gone Elvis of yore — Butler doesn’t even seem like a good Elvis imitator. He just doesn’t have it.

And yet Baz Luhrman‘s Elvis trailer gets one thing absolutely right — it conveys the effect of Presley’s explosive sexual current and how the wiggles and pelvic thrusts made young girls pant, or at the very least pause.

All this time I’ve been wondering if the Elvis guys (director-writer Luhrman, screenwriters Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner) would be including the “fat Elvis” chapter, or roughly the last three years of his life. Unless the trailer is lying by omission, the apparent answer is “no.”

There is, however, a seriously fat Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker, and he’s wearing one of the best fat suits I’ve ever seen in a film…seriously, hats off. Or do I mean “fats off”?

I can’t seem to identify the fair-haired kid who plays 11 year-old Elvis in Tupelo, but this is almost exactly what Elvis looked like as a tweener. Odd that Luhrmann chose correctly in this realm, and yet totally dropped the ball with the adult-sized version.

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This is definitely a sad week for guys associated with the National Lampoon‘s heyday. Three days ago Ivan Reitman, whose first big score came from producing National Lampoon’s Animal House (’78), died in Montecito at age 75. And now P.J. O’Rourke, who served as editor-in-chief of the National Lampoon in the late ’70s and for many decades was one of HE’s favorite satirists and comic essayists, has passed from lung cancer at age 74.

I interviewed O’Rourke in August ’15 to help promote Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Doug Tirola‘s doc about the NatLamp’s hey-hey. Here’s the mp3.

I’ve been chuckling at the flip, iconoclastic, world-weary smirkings and pot-shots of P.J. O’Rourke since the mid ’70s — a long journey. I can’t think of another rightie libertarian whose stuff I’ve laughed at quite so often. Come to think of it I can’t think of another rightie libertarian whose stuff I’ve laughed at, period.

One way or another I’ve always been a fan of his material. (For the most part.) Mainly, I suppose, because O’Rourke was editor-in-chief at the National Lampoon during that legendary publication’s last decently creative period, or ’78 through ’80, and because I truly worshipped that mag back in the day so there’s a carry-over effect.

O’Rourke is the author of 16 satiric, smart-ass books (including last year’s “The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again),” which I haven’t yet read) and is currently a monthly columnist for the Daily Beast.

Two of my favorite O’Rourke books are “Holidays in Hell” and “Modern Manners“. I’ve also always loved the title of “Republican Party Reptile“, or more precisely the illustration of Dwight D. Eisenhower wearing a mohawk (which was dumped when O’Rourke’s publisher explained that relatively few targeted readers knew or cared who Eisenhower was). Honestly? I’ve never read “Republican Party Reptile”. No offense but why would I? I’m a leftie, and in some respects I’m selfish enough as it is.

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A trailer for Baz Luhrmann‘s Elvis pops on Thursday — three months before its likely Cannes debut, a bit more than four months before it opens on 6.24. And I’m taking this moment to voice a concern.

Austin Butler is Luhrmann’s Elvis, and ever since this was announced I’ve been wondering why. Because Butler doesn’t look like Elvis. He doesn’t have those surly eyes and lips, I mean, or that vaguely bashful “aw shucks” Memphis rockabilly thing. And he sure as shit isn’t pretty enough.

You have to wonder why Luhrmann didn’t choose someone who could actually be the resuscitated, back-from-the-dead Elvis of the ’50s. There are dozens of spot-on Elvis imitators out there (and a few on YouTube), and a certain portion of these can probably act. Nobody wants to watch a guy who doesn’t quite look or sound like the Real McCoy — they want to watch something close to a dead ringer. So why didn’t Luhrmann find one?

I’ve been worried about Butler ever since he played his big scene as Charles “Tex” Watson in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (“I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s bizness!”). The instant he said that line, I muttered to myself, “Nope…not good enough.”

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This Rear Window fan poster was composed by Jonathan Burton. The immediate question, of course, is why does James Stewart‘s L.B. Jeffries, a Greenwich Village-residing photographer with a broken leg and a wealthy, high-society girlfriend (Grace Kelly)…why does Jeffries have a massive bald spot, partially covered by greasy hair strands? Stewart wore his usual toupee in this 1954 classic. Is he half-bald because Burton himself is half-bald? What kind of illustrator does this? And what’s with the jug ears?

Based on a 1959 Tennessee Williams play, the film version of The Night of the Iguana (’64), directed by John Huston, is rather awful, which is to say dreary and stifled. But I’ve always wanted to visit Mismaloya, the small Mexican beach village (just south of Puerto Vallarta) where it was shot. The main stars were Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon. Elizabeth Taylor hung around during most of the filming. Huston wound up buying a home nearby.

People stopped watching films on VHS when DVDs emerged, or sometime in mid ’97. Pretty much everyone had adopted DVDs by the turn of the century, or roughly 21 years ago. (The first DVD players were priced at $799 and up.) And yet a couple of days ago some ornery old codger posted a photo of his Alfred Hitchcock VHS library.

https://apple.news/IKh3Y9WHmQB6oaC-vJDMyjg

A few hours ago David “take no prisoners” Poland posted a video interview with Sundown star and renowned character actor Tim Roth.

Roth’s first big score came from playing “Myron”, an emotionally volatile thug, in Stephen Frears‘ The Hit (’84). His latest role is the indifferent, nihilist-minded “Neil” in Michel Franco‘s Sundown, which instantly registers as one of the greatest-ever character studies of an older guy who just says “fuck it”.

Until, that is, Franco starts explaining why Neil has unplugged, which makes the film far less interesting. But let’s not dwell on the negative.

Roth thought #1: One of the highlights of Sundown is when Neil’s sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg), having returned to Acapulco following funeral services for their mother, finds him at a low-rent hotel where he’s doing nothing except sipping beer, hanging on the beach and fucking a pretty local woman he’s just met. “What the fuck are you doing?” she screams. “You lied about losing your passport…what is wrong with you?” And Roth just sits there and stares at her, not saying a word. Franco only shows us the back of Roth’s head during this tirade. Because Neil doesn’t give a shit, and has nothing to say.

Roth thought #2: If Sundown taught me anything, it’s never to visit Acapulco for any reason. Zero charm, overcrowded, shitty hotels, too much like Cancun.

Roth thought #3: A lady friend and I were walking along Blvd. St. Germain in ’02 or thereabouts, sometime in the early evening. Lo and behold we came upon Roth and a significant other, sitting at a cafe table and people-watching, etc. I smiled and introduced myself, explained that I’d just been in Cannes, complemented Roth on his most recent work, etc. The not-bright-enough woman I was with didn’t know Roth and asked what he did. Roth gave her a death-ray look; The mood went south immediately.

Roth thought #4: Roth, 60, is starting to develop a little bit of a bulldog jowl in his cheeks, right around the corners of his mouth. If I were him I would pop over to Prague and get this taken care of. A very slight “touch-up.” Just so he keep playing guys in their mid ’50s. More range and opportunity that way.

22 years ago Javier Bardem played Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban poet, in Julian Schnabel‘s Before Night Falls — a performance that launched his career. This year he portrayed another Cuban in Being The Ricardos — the band leader, conga-player and and TV comedian-producer Desi Arnaz, and the wokesters (including Variety’s Clayton Davis) gave him shit for it.

In response to this bullshit, HE hereby approves of Bardem playing any character from any culture in any part of the world who seems to speak with a Spanish or Mexican or any south-of-the-Border accent. He can play Spanish, Cuban, Argentinian, Chilean…he can play a Columbian immigrant living in the Bronx…he can play cops, drug dealers, heads of state, henpecked husbands from Rio de Jainero, a quadraplegic looking to humanely commit suicide…he can play an auto mechanic from Tijuana, a Venezuelan diplomat based in Washington, D.C., a smooth womanizer from Barcelona, drug dealers, arms dealers, a confused poor guy…he’s free to play anyone and everyone, including the voice of God.