Of course I love Wes Anderson creations…of course I do! It’s just that many of my Anderson faves are his commercials, and those dozens upon dozens of YouTube parodies. Feature-wise I’ve always been and will always be fully respectful of Anderson’s brand or stylistic stamp, and that includes, believe it or not, The French Dispatch, which I had a mostly unpleasant time with at Telluride last September.

But I am a genuine, whole-hearted fan of only a handful of Wes’s films — Rushmore (which I’ve always adored like a brother), Bottle Rocket, The Grand Budapest Hotel, the original black-and-white Bottle Rocket short, most of The Royal Tenenbaums. But I dearly love the Wes signage, specifically the shorts and parodies. The SNL Anderson horror film short is heaven.

I will always be on Team Anderson, and I will never resign. Partly because I’m 100% certain that one day he’ll reach into his heart and decide to broaden his scope, or perhaps even re-think things somewhat. (Wes is still relatively young.) He has to — artists have no choice. I just hope and pray he’ll make more of an effort to blend his hermetic Wesworld aesthetic with the bigger, gnarlier, more complex world that’s been there all along.

Two and a half years ago I suggested that 2007 was and is one of the great film years, or roughly at par with 1999, 1971 and 1962 and 1939.

I listed 25 2007 films of serious merit — American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Once, Superbad, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I’m Not There, Sicko, Eastern Promises, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, The Orphanage, 28 Weeks Later, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Darjeeling Limited, Knocked Up and Sweeney Todd. Just as strong as ’99, and perhaps even a touch better.

The idea in re-posting this is to note that 15 years have elapsed since ’07, and to ask if anyone feels that any of these annums have measured up to ’07 or any of the previous banner years.

I happen to believe that everything started to go badly the following year — 2008 — with the debut of Iron Man and the subsequent increasing power of the superhero genre (DC Extended Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe), and that “my” kind of movies haven’t been the same since. Strong, distinctive films have broken through every year, of course, but the pickings have been getting slimmer and slimmer since ’08, and especially since the Robespierre thought plague began to poison the water in ’17.

But don’t let me stop anyone. If you’re persuaded that ’09 or ’11 or ’16 were up to snuff, please make your case.

Herewith a tough but fair assessment from Variety’s Owen Gleiberman about why West Side Story (and it breaks my heart to say this) appears to be a flopperoo, at least as far as viewing appetites outside your X-factor Millennial, older GenX and boomer demos are concerned.

Not technique- or chops-wise but vision-wise in terms of reading the cultural zeitgeist, Gleiberman is saying that Spielberg’s instincts are perhaps no longer in synch with things, at least not in a razor–sharp way and certainly not like they were between Duel and Schindler’s List/Jurassic Park. He’s gotten older. It happens.

Arrogant assumptions + klutzy presumptions that it wouldn’t all come out in the wash don’t translate into “disgrace” for ex-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. He’s not a panting sexual animal, and isn’t in the same league with brother & ex-governor Andrew at all. It was rash and sloppy for the SNL team to slander him with the “d” word.

By the way, with Chris Wallace resigning from Fox is it feasible for the Trump-loathing Chris to fill his slot? Probably not, I would imagine.

The cast of Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth, a play about medieval Scotland, is pretty close to one-third African American. Presentism is par for the course these days, of course, but Coen and wife-producer-costar Frances McDormand seem to have moved beyond your obligatory woke casting requirements.

Which is a switch for Joel, at least compared to remarks he and brother Ethan made during an interview with The Daily Beast‘s Jen Yamato in February ’16 while promoting Hail Ceasar.

Yamato had brought up the issue of diverse casting and multi-ethnic representation. Even though Hail Ceasar was set in the racially illiberal early ’50s, her beef was basically #WhyIsHailCaesarSoWhite? Joel’s attitude was quite resistant and in fact fairly dismissive. Boiled down, his view was “why should I ethnically mix up my cast just for political reasons?”

It’s probably fair to say that a different Joel was at the helm when it came to casting The Tragedy of Macbeth. I know nothing, but I suspect that McDormand told him “you can’t really play it that way now, plus there are so many great actors of color out there…you should get in on this.”

Obviously Joel could have ignored the presentism requirement and made Macbeth as a traditional all-paleface play a la Roman Polanski and Orson Welles, and if anyone had complained he could have used the same argument he threw at Yamato. So why didn’t he? Because the Yamato mindset is industry-wide now, and he figured “well, I guess I need to get with the program…why make trouble for myself?…why not just embrace presentism and turn it into a plus?”

Sundance ’22 will announce the slate tomorrow (12.9)…I think. Late last month Indiewire‘s Kate Erbland and Eric Kohn speculated that Luca Guadagnino‘s Bones and All, a cannibalism in the ’80s love story starring Taylor Russell and Timothee Chalamet, might debut there.

But it won’t. An authoritative source told me this morning that Bones “is still in the works and will not be ready for months.” Which sounds to me like it might not even be ready for Cannes — more likely the early fall festivals (Venice/Telluride/New York)?

I thought Bones might be a Sundance fit given that Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name enjoyed a triumphant Park City debut in January 2017, or nearly five years ago. But of course Sundance was an entirely different equation back then. The Park City gathering was still a powerhouse indie launch thing (Manchester By The Sea was the big explosive film of Sundance’s 2016 fest.) Since then, of course, Sundance has changed identities. It’s now the Sundance Wokester Festival….a secular event for people of the wokester faith & cloth.

In short, even if Bones was ready for Sundance ’22 it probably wouldn’t be a great idea.

‘

Arson is a ghastly crime, of course — menacing, malicious. And it’s good to hear that last night’s burning of the Fox Christmas tree resulted in no harm to any fire fighters or passersby. The 49 year-old arsonist, a Brooklyn resident, was arrested soon after the tree ignited. The initial presumption, of course, was that the tree was torched as a political statement by a Fox hater. There are flammable Christmas decorations all over midtown Manhattan, but the arsonist chose the Fox tree. Do the math.

JUST IN: @ShannonBream announces on @FoxNewsNight that Fox News's Christmas tree has caught fire outside their HQ on the Avenue of the Americas. pic.twitter.com/Ah0OUfTrlE

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 8, 2021

David Fincher and David Prior‘s Voir (Netflix, currently streaming) is a collection of six essays about film worship. I’ve watched four and they’re all finely wrought, but I have to spit something out. Despite my long friendship with Sasha Stone I can’t not say what I know to be true, which is that her autobiographical piece — “Summer of the Shark” — is the most eloquent and well-produced of the lot.

It’s the only one that reaches out and says “this, once upon a time, was me” plus “this was all of us back in the fanciful, doobie-toke Gerald Ford era, and what an impressionable time it was.” It’s about what’s gone forever and will never come back, but in another sense about what’s lasted forever.

“Shark”‘ tells a modest but fascinating little saga about young Sasha (played as a ten-year-old by Eva Wilde, and as a 17 year-old by Shannon Hayes) and her sister Lisa sinking into the captivating vortex of Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws, and how that film lit a certain fascination and devotion in both of them, and in Sasha especially.

The essay paints a swoony, sun-dappled portrait of hippie-ish Topanga Canyon and San Fernando Valley teen culture in the ’70s…detailed, lulling and just as time-trippy as Licorice Pizza in this respect…and tells how Sasha and her sister came to worship the refuge and sanctum of movies in that era (partly for the Spielberg and Star Wars-ian coolness, partly to escape from the turmoil of their mom’s bad boyfriends), etc.

Prior (whose involvement was more hands-on than Fincher’s) does a killer job of blending Jaws beach footage with recreations of Sasha’s own beach time — he and dp Martim Vian even mimic that famous zoom in-track back shot of Roy Scheider.

All in all, “Summer of the Shark” is a great little short (only around 12 minutes…longer?). I’m very proud of Sasha for having written from her heart and narrated it just so and worked so hard for so long on this thing, and (with Fincher and Prior’s expert assistance) having given it just the right touch and spin.

Walter Chaw‘s “Profane and Profound”, a delicious take on Walter Hill‘s 48 HRS., and Drew McWeeny‘s “But I Don’t Like Him”, about unlikeable protagonists, are very fine essays also.

I didn’t care for Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou‘s “The Ethics of Revenge”, a piece about Park Chan-wook‘s Lady Vengeance (’05) — it struck me as cold and creepy. And I haven’t watched “Film vs. Television,” although I hear it’s admirable.

Friendo: “Watching Voir….your pal Sasha’s episode was good…looks like they spent some money on that one recreating the ’70s.  Then again Fincher doesn’t do anything cheap.”

Previously: “Some of our greatest cinema challenges us to really confront our own hearts in the safety of that darkened theatre. That’s part of the purpose of filmmaking.” — quote from Voir trailer.

2021 Reality Check: Movies stopped challenging or even slipping into the hearts of filmgoers with any regularity a long time ago. The only current movies that even flirt with this aesthetic are West Side Story, King Richard, Cyrano, Pig, A Hero and one or two others. Voir is therefore a nostalgia flick to a certain extent.

The dual purpose of 90% to 95% of movies is to (a) repeat and reenforce woke narratives and (b) enhance corporate revenue.