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World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has posted an intriguing list of films that should (and probably will) be released in 2022. I’ve boldfaced the ones I’m especially interested in, which come to 18 or 19.

Note: Terence Malick needs between two and three years in post-production to prepare a film for release. The Way of the Wind began filming a couple of years ago, so by my estimation it probably won’t be out for another year.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” (Martin Scorsese)
“The Killer” (David Fincher)
“The Northman” (Robert Eggers)
“Babylon” (Damien Chazelle)
“Armageddon Time” (James Gray)
“Asteroid City” (Wes Anderson)
“Disappointment Blvd.” (Ari Aster)
“Amsterdam” (David O. Russell)
”Poor Things” (Yorgios Lanthimos)
“The Fablemans” (Steven Spielberg)
“White Noise” (Noah Baumbach)
”Owl” (Kelly Reichardt)
“The Zone of Interest” (Jonathan Glazer)
“Crimes of the Future” (David Cronenberg)
“Bardo” (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
“The Whale” (Darren Aronofsky)
“Decision to Leave” (Park Chan-Wook)
“Fire” (Claire Denis)
“Tar” (Todd Field)
”Kimi” (Steven Soderbergh)
”Bones and All” (Luca Guadagnino)
“Next Goal Wins” (Taika Waititi)
“The Batman” (Matt Reeves)
”Kitbag” (Ridley Scott — Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte)
“Don’t Worry Darling” (Olivia Wilde)
“Bullet Train” (David Leitch)
“Nope” (Jordan Peele)
”Men” (Alex Garland)
”Pinocchio” (Guillermo del Toro)
“Elvis” (Baz Luhrmann)
“The Son” (Florian Zeller)
“The Stars at Noon” (Claire Denis)
“Blonde” (Andrew Dominik)
“The Bubble” (Judd Apatow)
“Women Talking” (Sarah Polley)
“3000 Years of Longing” (George Miller)
“Triangle of Sadness” (Ruben Ostlund)
“The Eternal Daughter” (Joanna Hogg)
“Tori et Lokita” (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
“Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure” (Richard Linklater)
”Rebel Ridge” (Jeremy Saulnier)
“Deep Water” (Adrian Lyne)
“The Way of the Wind” (Terrence Malick)

“There’s no doubt Diana, Princess of Wales went through some tough times as she navigated her initiation into royal life and later her crumbling marital relationship.

“But is this really how we should remember a woman who, after all, campaigned for causes close to her heart, brought joy to the people she met and established herself as a style icon like no other? Doesn’t she deserve to be portrayed as far more than someone who was too scared to go down to dinner with the in-laws?” — from a 10.24 Telegraph piece by Bethan Holt, titled “Diana’s inner circle on Spencer: ‘She’d be horrified at the way she’s portrayed now'”

Kristen Stewart‘s Diana isn’t just skittish about having dinner with the in-laws. She’s behaves like a kind of royal madwoman, disturbed and beset by visions of Anne Boleyn and whatnot…almost on the level of Julie Harris‘s “Eleanor” in the last third of The Haunting…a kind of sketchy cuckoo bird in a surreal mindscape movie…a kind of nightmarish Stepford Wives (or wife) in the country.

Filed on 9.4.21: I’ve said before that Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer (Neon/Topic, 11.5) is agony to sit through. It’s a simplistic, impressionistic head–trip film…a “poor free-spirited, pheasant-sympathizing, pearl necklace-loathing Diana vs. the cold, bloodless gargoyle royals” bullshit borefest.

It has a half-decent singalong ending (“All I Need Is A Miracle”) but otherwise pretty much stays in the same place start to finish.

Call it Diary of a Mad, Super-Privileged Princess on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Not, alas, directed by Pedro Almodovar but Pablo Larrain.

Stewart will be Best Actress-nominated, I’m presuming. The movie is appalling but she’s very good at what she’s been asked to do — let’s leave it at that. Her Diana speaking voice is breathy and whispery and hard to understand, but that’s okay. We enjoy being kept in the dark about certain things.

Spencer follows the wokester narrative that white elitism is evil and rancid and needs to be resisted at all costs. Because Diana needs to breathe, love, live, talk to pheasants and save her sons from those toxic royal traditions and soul-smothering attitudes.

Time and again and through Diana’s eyes, we see the royal family as icy monsters. I was actually thinking back to The Ruling Class (’72) and Peter O’Toole’s “Mad Jack” impressions of the House of Lords being filled with decaying corpses.

Jordan Ruimy: “Diana is portrayed as a total lunatic. She feels stuck and victimized, but is part of the most white-privileged of circumstances. You have no sympathy for her whatsoever. You just wish she could go see a therapist or get proper medication.”

A few off-the-cuff, random-ass Vimeo words about Guillermo del Toro‘s tweet about The Last Duel. Plus a confession about a certain weakness for orangeade-flavored and strawberry-lemonade Monster. Of course it’s bad for me, but at least I’m not snorting heroin.

The identity of Rust‘s female armorer, the person primarily responsible for the safety of prop guns used on the set of the tragedy-plagued Alec Baldwin western, has been revealed in a 10.23 Daily Mail story.

The Santa Fe Reporter‘s Jeff Proctor declined to name her yesterday as she hasn’t been accused or charged in a crime; ditto Indiewire’s Chris Lindahl in another 10.22 story. But the Daily Mail team — Lauren Lewis, Jennifer Smith, Keith Griffith, Dhawn Cohen, Elizabeth Ribuffo — charged right in and blew the bloody doors off.

The armorer is Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the 24 year-old daughter of “legendary” gunsmith Thell Reed. Rust‘s assistant director — the guy who shouted “cold gun” before handing the loaded weapon to Baldwin, who subsequently and by way of a purely foolish accident shot and killed the film’s director of photography, Halyna Hutchins — is Dave Halls (Fargo, The Matrix Reloaded).

The Mail reports that Gutierrez-Reed’s last job was as head armorer for The Old Way, a Nicolas Cage western. She allegedly stated after that film wrapped that “she wasn’t sure if she was ready to be a head armorer,” and that “she found loading blanks into a gun ‘the scariest’ thing because she did not know how to do it and had sought help from her father to get over the fear.”

It’s been reported elsewhere that various concerns (safety, long hours, a refusal to pay for nearby motels) resulted in a production crew walking off the set of Rust on Thursday morning. “When the crew began to pack up, they found a team of non-union workers waiting to replace them,” the story reports.

It’s also been reported that firearms were accidentally discharged three times — including once by Baldwin’s stunt double who had been told the gun was not loaded, and twice in a closed cabin.

Friendo: “In all that’s been written about the tragic gun incident, one question has strangely not once been posed: Why was Alec Baldwin pointing the gun directly at the director and cinematographer?”

HE to Friendo: “I gather that the shot called for Baldwin to fire almost directly into the lens. That’s been done a few times on other films, or so I gather. The bullet hit Hutchins in the upper chest, exited through her back and hit the director, Joel Souza, in the clavicle area (i.e., the bone that connects the breastplate to the shoulder).

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Herewith an acknowledgement of the 11.13 AFI Fest screening of David Fincher and David Prior‘s Voir.

One of the “visual essays about the love of cinema” is titled “Summer of the Shark” — a Jaws recollection by none other than HE’s own Sasha Stone. The essay is nicely narrated by the Awards Daily owner, and it tells about her cinematic awakening, if you will, when she first saw Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic.

The photo is of a movie-set recreation of teenaged Sasha watching Jaws in her 1970s living room.

The other essays are “Ethics of Revenge” by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou, and “But I Don’t Like Him” by Drew McWeeny.

The entire thing will be shown on Netflix a few weeks hence. The trailer will also eventually pop through.

The people who cut this Being The Ricardos teaser obviously had zero interest in highlighting Javier Bardem‘s performance as Desi Arnaz, which is odd as Bardem allegedly outshines costar Nicole Kidman.

The best part is the I Love Lucy theme at the end, played over the credits.

This is a situational set-up teaser. Wildly successful couple with a hit TV show, running their own production company, dealing with the attendant pressures. There’s one brief allusion to Desi’s adultery in a magazine headline. Nicole’s narration implies that director-writer Aaron Sorkin sees this as Lucy’s story with cheating Desi as the bad guy.

Boardner’s is not opposite the old Desilu Studios (846 No. Cahuenga) — why do filmmakers insist on trying to sell this bullshit?

I thought the chocolate assembly-line factory routine was the big classic I Love Lucy bit, rather than the grape-stomping thing.

Friendo: “Nicole’s speaking voice is a problem. That is not Lucy’s very identifiable tonality.”

HE: “Totally Nicole’s voice — no attempt to even vaguely simulate Lucy’s braying tone. Then again 97% of the audience has no idea what Lucy sounded like. Many if not most of those who watched the ’50s show are dead.”

Amazon will release Ricardos theatrically on Friday, 12.10.21. The film will begin streaming on Prime Video on Tuesday, 12.21.21.

Reaction to research screening of Being The Ricardos, posted by Jordan Ruimy on 8.20.21:

Five days ago a friend sent me the Jamie Costa/Robin Williams “ROBIN test footage scene” clip, and wrote that he finds it “distracting when someone playing a real person is too accurate in voice and mannerisms, almost like they’re doing an impression versus someone like Anthony Hopkins interpreting Richard Nixon. Despite it being a not great movie, Rod Steiger pulled off a respectable W.C. Fields. While this is uncanny, I’m not sure how it would wear over an entire biopic.”

My immediate response: “Are you KIDDING? This guy is great. Not just a great impersonator but a first-rate, real-deal ACTOR. In my eyes, at least. Thanks for alerting me…amazing.”

Directed and edited by Jake Lewis, the clip features Costa as Williams on the set of Mork and Mindy in march 1982 when his costar Pam Dawber (Sarah Murphree) told him about the death of John Belushi.

I love the moment when Costa / Robin asks Dawber, “Did they say anything…you know, like, how [John Belushi] died?” Answer #1: “Gee, Robin…whadaya think might have happened? Any suspicions?” Answer #2: “Three guesses, Robin, and the first two don’t count.” Answer #3: “John was a secret agent like Chuck Barris, and he was shot last night by a Russian sniper.”

I’m happy to read that Rene Rodriguez is extra-double impressed with the new Taxi Driver 4K UHD Bluray, which is part of the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection, Volume 2, but is not yet purchasable as a stand-alone.

But really, how much better could the visual values be on this disc? Shot on 35mm Eastman color negative 100T 5254/7254 film using Arriflex 35 BL camera and Zeiss super speed lenses with portions captured on 16mm, Taxi Driver can only look as good as it can look.

I’ve seen it in theatres, on laser disc, DVD, Bluray and 4K streaming, and it looks fine but will never knock anyone’s eyeballs out.

The Amazon 4K streaming version looks pretty great, in fact.

The long-awaited commercial release of Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune is only days away. Theatrical + HBO Max on Friday, 10.22, with many theatres launching the night before. And with that, Average Joes and Janes will render a verdict about whether or not Dune belongs on a list of potential Best Picture contenders.

In this light, Dune has four Gold Derby handicappers in its corner — IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson (#2), Yahoo‘s Kevin Polowy (#1) and Variety‘s Clayton Davis (#3) and Tim Gray (#1).

So in a sense these four critics will be facing the music this weekend also. As you and your movie-watching brethren watch this 155-minute sand epic, say to yourself “it wasn’t just the usual gifted suspects who created this film — director-cowriter Villeneuve, dp Greig Fraser, screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth and star Timothee Chalamet — but also Thompson, Polowy, Davis and Gray, who’ve done what they can to lend award-season cred.”

In a strictly illegal sense, Dune “opened” yesterday morning when pirates began streaming an alleged HD version. I’ve only pirate-streamed two movies in my life — Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse and Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in Manhattan — and see no reason not to wait for Thursday.

But I’m telling you right now I can’t wait to hate this thing. At least I’m honest about this. Every fibre of my being wants to loathe it. By the same token if I like it and say so, it’ll mean more than praise from some snivelling gladhander critic.

And then two weeks later comes Chloe Zhao‘s Eternals, which I’m also looking forward to despising with every fibre of my being. Because Eternals hates me. I know how it’s going to make me feel, and so I’m turning it around and pledging to give it back before the fact. Death to Marvel unless it’s the Marvel films I like. Death to superhero franchises. Death to superhero wisecracks. Death to dinner-table camaraderie. Death to all of it.

Friendo: “Technically Dune is wonderful.  It will probably sweep all the tech awards at the Oscars.  Still stuck with that storyline which is a bit on the ‘who cares?’ spectrum.  Oddly enough the most compelling and likable character is Jason Momoa‘s.

“David Lynch‘s 1984 version is 2 and 1/2 hours long. The new film ends at around the 90 minute mark of the Lynch film, so basically it’s another hour of storytelling that if they get to make Part 2, which will actually take a lot longer than an hour.”

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Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, both in their 50s, are too old to play Lucille Ball in her early 40s and Desi Arnaz in his mid 30s in Aaron Sorkin‘s Being The Ricardos (Amazon, sometime in late December). I’m sorry but they are. Human biology and all that.

Kidman and Bardem can be de-aged with makeup and CG, of course, but will the audience buy it? Or will I be the only one carping and nitpicking while everyone else says “whatever”?

It’s one thing for an actress in her mid 50s to play 15 years younger, which is what Kidman will be doing when she portrays Ball in the early 1950s, when I Love Lucy was hitting its stride and she was in her early 40s. That’s presumably doable with makeup and careful lighting.

But a couple of days ago Sorkin mentioned to TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz that the film will include a scene of rehearsing for Too Many Girls, the 1940 George Abbott musical that Ball and Arnaz costarred in. (And which occasioned their first meeting, which led to their marriage later that year.) That will require the 52 year-old Bardem to play 30 years younger, as Arnaz was 22 or 23 when Girls was shot. Likewise Kidman will have to attempt to look 29 for this section of the film.

From EW summary of Sorkin-Mankiewicz interview: “Sorkin [reveals] that the film focuses on three points of ‘friction’ between Ball and Arnaz that really occurred but that Sorkin has condensed into the timeline of a single week.”

To the best of my knowledge there was one point of friction between Ball and Arnaz — Desi’s infidelity.

“Unregenerate Desilu Hound,” posted on 9.20.21: “As Lucy and Desi prepare over the course of a single week to shoot an episode that will go down in history as having some of the funniest and most memorable scenes to grace television, we will be enthralled to peek into why despite all of that passion and success their world-famous relationship could never be.”

“Cutting to the chase: Arnaz’s Cuban upbringing taught him that catting around outside the bonds of marriage was perfectly acceptable or at least workable.

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I happen to love black-and-white for its own silver-toned luminosity, but every so often you say to yourself “good as it looks, this monochrome film would have been fascinating in color.”

Howard Hawks‘ Red River is at the top of this list. I would have dearly loved to see Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Boulevard in Techniolor…how could it have been hurt by that? And speaking of Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings and Bringing Up Baby would have been glorious in color. Which others?