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Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, who only spitballs about the Oscar potential of films she’s seen and who, like many others, takes great delight in getting early peeks at expensive, highly anticipated films, has put Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune (Warner Bros., 10.22) into her top slot on Gold Derby’s Best Picture prediction list.

That’s it, I said to myself. I have no more faith in Dune than I did in Blade Runner 2049 before seeing it (less actually), and I’ve never cared for the idea of investing in dense, multi-part sagas taking place in distant exotic realms and requiring enormous reading investments, and so it is now the solemn duty of all good souls and concerned cinefiles who stand with HE to say to Anne Thompson “what you like or what you think will be Best Picture nominated means nothing to us because we don’t trust you…we may become Dune fans down the road but for the time being we’re going to search for ways to diminish Dune just to spite your enthusiasm for it.”

Thompson was invited to see it the other day at the Steve Ross theatre on the Warner Bros. lot, you see, and there was wine and cheese and whatnot served in the lobby, and it was all very lah-dee-dah.

A friend who attended the same screening says Greig Fraser‘s cinematography is quite mesmerizing and that you can coast along on that aspect to your heart’s content. But there was absolutely no following the story for this person, not having read the original 1965 Frank Herbert novel or any of the sequels (Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune,Chapterhouse: Dune) and having no recollection of the disastrous 1984 David Lynch version, and that the plotting was too complex and that it seemed as if everyone was speaking some kind of foreign tongue, and that this sense of being lost and adrift had not, to put it mildly, coagulated into anything that amounted to the Right Best Picture Stuff…at least in this person’s opinion.

Let this be a moment in award-season history…a moment in which the little people in the bleachers rose up against the Anne Thompsons of the world, sitting in their pricey mezzanine seats along the first-base and third-base lines while sipping Chardonnay and munching fine cheese-and-cracker combos while the little people cope with their soggy popcorn and hot dogs and plastic cups of beer.

Three years ago I drove to Telluride with hotshot Variety music reporter Chris Willman. The first day we drove all the way from Los Angeles to Gallup, New Mexico — call it ten hours or more if you take leg-stretching breaks. We stayed at the historic El Rancho Hotel. The remainder of the trip took four and a half hours — relatively painless by comparison.

Next Tuesday morning (8.31) Tatiana and I and the cats are following the exact same route — interstate 10 to 15 to 40 and due east. The idea is to leave super-early — 6 am or thereabouts. Crash again at the El Rancho, and push on the next morning around 9 or 10 am.

The 2021 Telluride Film Festival begins on Thursday, 9.2, but you have to get your pass, buy groceries and get squared away the day before. Five days of screenings, although I anticipate leaving town by 2 or 3 pm on Monday, 6.6.

The Gallup-to-Telluride trip is estimated at 3 hours, 45 minutes. Call it four, four and a half hours with gas stops and whatnot. Leave at 9 am, arrive at 1:30 pm, 2 at the latest.

It’s so rare when a certain kind of socially realistic humor comes across from a certain kind of half-real, half-comic performance…the kind of humor that comes from a certain recognition of shared pain and social terror. You can’t help but step back and smile.

I don’t care what anyone says about the beyond brilliant Silver Linings Playbook. I was just want to take this opportunity to praise John Ortiz‘s performance in this scene [after the jump], starting at the 2:07 mark and ending at 3:17. Using the metaphor of the Alien face hugger to convey suffocating financial anxiety is one of the most perfectly conceived comic conveyances ever seen or imagined.

“We’re doin’ all right, man, I can’t complain. But the pressure…it’s like…[whispers] I’m not okay, don’t tell anybody…I mean, I feel like I’m being crushed…by everything…the family, the baby, the job, the fucking dicks at work…and I mean I’m trying to do this, and then I’m suffocating…you can’t be happy all the time…it’s all right, you just do your best, you have no choice.”

But the rest of this scene works also. Ten perfect minutes. SLP premiered nine years ago in Toronto and with every subsequent performance Jennifer Lawrence has been (and I’m sorry to say this) missing, missing, missing. She’s never come close to another role even half as good and it’s not her fault…luck of the draw, inspiration is where you find it, you can’t always get what you want, etc.

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Being an ex-drummer myself**, I’ve always had a special reverence for the snappy, driving beat of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. For several reasons but mainly because he was always so metronomically spot-on…because every time his drumstick made contact he always hit dead center, and I mean exactly at the right millisecond.

In the wake of the news about Watts’ cancer-related death at age 80, I’ve been asking myself “on which Stones song have I always derived a special pleasure from Watts’ drumming?” After ten minutes of thinking it through I’ve decided that “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)” is tops in this regard, and it’s not that flashy. Update: I’ve been reminded that Kenney Jones was the drummer on that track. He did an excellent job of pretending to be Watts.

From Gavin Edwards‘ N.Y. Times obit: “While some rock drummers chased after volume and bombast, Mr. Watts defined his playing with subtlety, swing and a solid groove.”

“As the Stones guitarist Keith Richards said in his 2010 autobiography Life, ‘Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically.'”

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Remember Next Goal Wins, the Taika Watiti-directed sports drama, based on the same-titled documentary from 2014, about Dutch-American football coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) turning the low-rated American Samoa national team into groovers and hot-shots?

Principal photography began in November 2019 (a year before the Trump-Biden election) and wrapped in January 2020 (ten months before same). Then the pandemic hit in March and the train ground to a halt. Then along came 2021 and the glorious vaccines, and the train still didn’t move. It now appears that Next Goal Wins will open sometime in ’22, probably in the late winter or spring.

The only films that Searchlight has coming out this year are Michael Showalter‘s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch and Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley.

Next Goal Wins costars Elisabeth Moss and…uhm, Armie Hammer.

I like a good come-from-behind sports film as much as the next guy. What’s the problem?

Ryan Reynolds is great at playing glib, lightweight characters who skip across the water like flat stones and never plant their feet. look the other guy in the eyes and tell the truth. Reynolds almost never does that**. He’s a lighten-up guy, an “I just want to make money” guy, a guy who’s terrified of substance and gravitas and real, actual life. Which is why I never even flirted with the idea of seeing Free Guy. Because I knew it would be foam, froth and fizzle.

Update: I’m wrong! A friend calls Free Guy “an enormously clever comedy brilliantly executed that merges laughs and action with romance, heart, and something to say. It crosses Frank Capra populism with the world of a violent video game. It says much about the horrendous need for corporate entertainment to demand sequels and money over all else, and stands with those who shout to the mountaintop about the need for originality and the almost impossible fight to do it. That is what this is about, using your voice and finding a way to do it against all odds.”

“Whither Reynolds,” posted 12 and 1.2 years ago: You have to do more than just sell tickets to be considered a serious heavy-hitting movie star. Every so often (i.e., every three or four years) you have to be in a really good film. And I mean a really good one — not a line-drive single or ground-rule double but a serious triple or a homer. By this standard, or even in strictly monetary terms, how can 32 year-old Ryan Reynolds be considered a star of any kind?

He’s a talented performer, obviously charming and good looking. He seems to be trying to do quality work in ambitious or unusual films. (Whatever happened to Fireflies in the Garden?). And most of his movies have been modestly profitable. And he seems (or it has seemed) as if he might eventually be Robert Redford. Maybe. But this doesn’t seem to be happening.

Where are the super-grosses, the big critical acclaim (why doesn’t he work with AAA-rated directors?), the sense of being part of some kind of special firmament in the universe? When is Reynolds going to catch a really good wave? It’s okay to flip-flop around in your 20s but you don’t hit it big in your early 30s people start to wonder.

You knew Redford was a star he came out in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at age 32, and then Downhill Racer and The Candidate two and three years later. (All parts that Reynolds could have played and done relatively well with.) You knew Dustin Hoffman had hit it big-time when he made The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy and Straw Dogs. You knew Al Pacino was destined for greatness when he turned up in The Godfather ; ditto Robert DeNiro when he starred in The Godfather, Part II. Nothing like this has happened with Reynolds. Nothing even close.

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I’ve seen most of the significant Robin Hood features except one: Ken Annakin‘s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (’52), produced by Walt Disney and starring Richard Todd, Joan Rice, Peter Finch (!), James Robertson Justice, etc.

It was reasonably well reviewed, reasonably profitable and — this is important — shot in three–strip Technicolor. It’s therefore odd that Disney has never produced a Bluray version or even an HD streamer.

Disney issued a Laserdisc in ’92, a VHS tape in ’94 (the Walt Disney’s Studio Film Collection) and a limited Disney Movie Club DVD in July ’06. All versions were mastered boxy — either 1.33:1 or 1.37:1.

There’s no question that the all-time best is still Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn‘s The Adventures of Robin Hood (’38), and the absolute, all-time reprehensible worst is the most recent — Otto Bathurst‘s Robin Hood (’18) with Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornan, et. al.

I’ve got Kevin Costner‘s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (’91) tied with Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood (’10) for second place. Mel Brooks‘ Robin Hood: Men In Tights (’91) ranks third. I’ve never seen Douglas Fairbanks‘ 1922 silent version.

TheWrap: “Directed by Mike Mills (Beginners, 20th Century Women), C’mon C’mon will have its New York premiere at NYFF59.

“Joaquin Phoenix plays a soulful, kindhearted radio journalist deep into a project in which he interviews children across the U.S. about the world’s uncertain future. The film finds him connecting to his 8-year-old nephew (Woody Norman), who’s suffering from mental health issues, and taking him on a cross-country journey. Costarring Gaby Hoffmann and Jaboukie Young-White, pic will be released by A24.

I’m hearing “black-and-white road trip movie…moody, very arty, very euro, tons of voiceover.” Mills allegedly interrupts the narrative from time to time with docu-style interviews, kids talking about life, etc.

The initial Eternals teaser used Skeeter Davis‘s “The End of the World” as a background track, and now, in the new trailer, they’ve got Lia McHugh‘s “Sprite” saying “this is what the end of the world looks like…at least we have front-row seats.”

I’m not adopting the posture of some drooling, wild-eyed fanatic by claiming that The Eternals and the whole mythological Marvel branding machine of the last 13 years is the end of the moviegoing world as many of us have known it, but the Marvel virus has absolutely infected the realm. It is box-office manna but otherwise cancer…chemical sugar highs for pigs at the trough.

HE to all human beings and to God Herself: As payback and cure and an act of salvation it is the solemn responsibility of each and every serious film lover to band together and do what we can to turn The Eternals into another box-office shortfaller…to make it into another The Suicide Squad…to bring about a less impressive performance than Black Widow. Let’s all band together and punch a hole in the balloon…let’s send a message to Kevin Feige (who came from the same leafy New Jersey town that I went to school and suffered in for so many years)…”nothing lasts forever, friendo!”

It was late in the afternoon in the fall of ’78 when I ran into Chris Walken upon the New York-bound platform of the Westport train station.

Tall and slender and good-looking in a curious, off-center sort of way, Walken looked that day like he does in the below interview, which was taped in late ’80. He was 35 but could’ve been 29 or 31. Same hair, same calmness of manner, same “waiting for something to happen” watchfulness.

I’m pretty sure it was a Sunday. I’d been visiting my parents (Jim and Nancy) in Wilton. Walken had been in Westport to visit his manager, Bill Treusch.

Our encounter happened two or three months before The Deer Hunter opened. I hadn’t seen that pretentious, wildly over–praised Michael Cimino film at the time, and it was probably for the better. I was simultaneously taken aback (“Whoa, this movie is up to something!”) and at the same time irritated. Those ridiculous Russian roulette scenes, that interminable Russian wedding celebration and those absurd mountain peaks in rural Pennsylvania drove me insane. I was surprised and moved by the “God Bless America” finale.

At that precise moment in time I knew Walken from only two roles — that “who’s this guy?” performance in Paul Mazursky‘s Next Stop, Greenwich Village (’76) and his bit part as Diane Keaton‘s weird, soft-spoken brother, Dwayne, in Annie Hall (’78).

Anyway I stepped up to the platform, ticket in hand, and there he stood, reading a newspaper. I felt a certain natural kinship with Walken as I resembled him somewhat, and I wasn’t shy back then anyway so I introduced myself. Walken was cool and casual (“I’m Chris”), and we wound up talking all the way into Grand Central Station.

I visited Walken’s Upper West Side apartment twice in ’79, although he wasn’t there. I had an excellent thing going with a lady named Sandra, you see, who was working for Walken and his wife as a kind of au pair girl or house-sitter. I remember the oriental rug on the living room floor, you bet, and the wood-burning fireplace in front of it. I don’t know why Sandra and I didn’t last for more than four or five weeks but it wasn’t for lack of interest on my part. She was quirky and moody, but that was part of the allure.

I spoke to Walken one or two years later (’80 or ’81) when I went backstage at the Public Theatre after a performance of The Seagull. (He played Trigorin, and rather well at that.). He had no recollection of our train-ride discussion. Zip. I could have mentioned Sandra as an ice-breaker but I thought better of it.

The chicken-and-pears video was shot, I’m presuming, at Walken’s home in Wilton, Connecticut, which is where I lived for a few years and where I did my last two high school years. Paul Dano went to high school there also. And Keith Richards has a big home there.

I love, love, love, love the way Chris Walken pronounces “chicken” and “pears.” Certain people says certain words perfectly, and I mean better than anyone else in the world. Walken saying “pears” (“peahrs“) is like Peter O’Toole pronouncing “ecclesiastical.”

Showbiz411’s Roger Friedman on Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Soggy Bottom: “The forthcoming film stars Cooper Hoffman, the 18 year old son of the late, famed Philip Seymour (aka “Philly”) Hoffman, as a child actor in Hollywood in the early 1970s.

Cooper’s character’s story is modeled on that of producer Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks’ producing partner. Bradley Cooper plays a producer modeled on Jon Peters, the former hairdresser who became Barbra Streisand‘s lover and producer, and who was one of the inspirations for Warren Beatty‘s “George Roundy” character in Shampoo. (Along with Jay Sebring.)

Goetzman was a child actor in the ’70s, costarring in Yours Mine & Ours (Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball) and Divorce American Style (Dick van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds, Jason Robards).”

On 9.27.18 Barbra Streisand said she was a fan of Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga‘s A Star Is Born. “It’s very good,” Streisand told Billboard. “Every time that film is made it’s a success. I loved Judy Garland‘s version, I like this one a lot, and I liked mine.”

But couple of days ago she told an interviewer with Australia’s The Sunday Project that she’s changed her mind. Or that she wasn’t being honest in the first place.

“At first, when I heard it was going to be done again, it was supposed to be Will Smith and Beyoncé, and I thought, that’s interesting. Really make it different again, different kind of music, integrated actors. I thought that was a great idea,” Streisand said.

“So I was surprised when I saw how alike [the Bradley-Gaga version] was to the version that I did in 1976. I thought it was the wrong idea. I can’t argue with success but I don’t care so much about success as I do originality.”

Two interpretations: (a) Streisand wasn’t being honest three years ago or (b) she saw it again and thought about it and decided she had been too generous in her initial assessment. This happens. Showbiz people are always reluctant to diss a new film — it’s easer to just say “it’s good” and get out of the way. And people sometimes re-think things and change their minds.

More interesting to me: At the 4:34 mark in the Sunday Project interview, Streisand pronounces the word “singers” as “sing-GURS.” That’s a Brooklyn thing, a Long Island thing. You know…the way some people pronounce Long Island as “Long-GYLAND“?