Glenn Close is going to play some kind of Ma Bumblefuck in Ron Howard and Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy…right?

Close is one of our greatest actresses and Lord knows she’s covered the waterfront with many disparate characters — long suffering literary wife, Jenny the nurse, Alex the psycho, Cruella de Ville, Albert Nobbs, etc. But she’s never played a rural, dispirited, mule-stubborn, Trump-supporting Okee from Muskogee with an Oxycontin habit. I’ll believe Close’s acting (I always have) but I’m going to have difficulty forgetting that Close, the refined, well-educated, WASPy actress from Connecticut, is pretending to be this kind of…uhm, person. It’ll be like Helen Hayes or Jeanne Eagels playing Daisy Mae from L’il Abner.

Amy Adams is also playing some kind of yokel type, or so I gather.

The screenplay, based on the respected book by J.D. Vance, is by Shape of Water co-screenwriter Vanessa Taylor. Howard is producing with Imagine’s Brian Grazer and Karen Lunder.

The original 181-minute cut, I mean. Saw it on the Universal lot. Rough sit. I never saw the 129-minute Alan Smithee version.

Needless to say this Manhattan coffee shop scene between Brad Pitt and Claire Forlani would’ve worked better without the double-hit ragdoll body bounce-flop…really bad CG. Imagine if just after Forlani walks off she hears the screech of tires and vague sounds of commotion, but doesn’t realize Pitt is dead until she reads about it the next day. Maybe a small photo in the N.Y. Daily News. It’s always better if you can nudge the audience into imagining a scene of violence rather than hitting them over the head with it.

BTW: Pitt was no spring chicken when Meet Joe Black was shot (he was around 34. had made Se7en three years earlier) but he looks 24 or 25.

From Cineuropa‘s Fabien Lemercier by way of World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy about next month’s Cannes Film Festival: “Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced (Lionsgate, 12.20) rumored to premiere out-of-competition; ditto Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Copperfield.”

It would be highly unusual (if not unheard of) for a December release to debut in Cannes, but maybe the Lionsgate guys are thinking “we have to somehow out-splash The Loudest Voice,” the Showtime version of the Roger Ailes story that pops on 6.30. It costars Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Seth MacFarlane and Sienna Miller.

Fair and Balanced costars John Lithgow as Ailes, Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, Margot Robbie as a fictional Fox News employee, plus Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Mark Duplass and Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch.

Lemercier is also claiming Pablo Larrain‘s Ema has been bought by Netflix but that the deal has yet to be finalized. Either way Cannes is a no-go, he’s reporting. (My understanding is that the Netflix story is smoke, but what do I know?)

Ruimy: “A major find for American cinema will be director Danielle Lesowitz‘ debut Port Authority, which is rumored to be in Un Certain Regard section. I’m hearing that Cristi Puiu‘s French-language Manor House is 199 minutes. Marco Bellocchio‘s The Traitor has major Godfather vibes.”

I haven’t yet seen Amy Poehler‘s Wine Country (Netflix, 5.10), but I will soon. It may amount to more than a Napa Valley, gender-flipped Sideways blended with a late-40ish Bridesmaids, but you can tell in a heartbeat…no, you can’t. Trailers always mislead. But you certainly sense a lack of gravitas. No one’s going to get clobbered with a motorcycle helmet. Directed by Poehler (who also stars and co-wrote the original story), written by incidental costars Emily Spivey and Liz Cackowski. Costarring Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Paula Pell, Tina Fey, Jason Schwartzman, Cherry Jones.

Julien Assange, 47, obviously knew for some time that his ouster from the Ecuadoran embassy was imminent. But when the moment arrived this morning he looked breathless and anxious, and like an unwashed, tattered, 69 year-old Gandalf.

I would have manned up and submitted to the inevitable. I would have showered, shaved, gotten a haircut and a manicure, put on a freshly-pressed suit and a pair of elegant Italian shoes and walked out with British officials in handcuffs. Standing tall with a touch of dignity. Instead Assange looked and behaved like an asshole…”aaghhh, they’re carrying me out…aagghhh, these brutes!”

From Eileen Sullivan and Richard Pérez-Pena’s N.Y. Times report, posted this morning: “Assange, 47, has been living at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012. British authorities arrested him on Thursday, heavily bearded and disheveled. A dramatic video showed him shackled and being carried out of the embassy and forced into a police van. He was detained partly in connection with an American extradition warrant after he was evicted by the Ecuadoreans.”

Had it not been for Assange’s torpedoing of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats with those Wikileak-ed emails, she might well have won…no? This year she’d be facing primary challengers and looking like Jimmy Carter in ’79. But at least we wouldn’t have Trump.

If a cosmic wizard were to offer me a chance to re-live the first three or four decades of my life all over again, I’d immediately say “yes!” and jump into it like a swimming pool. As long as the wizard agrees, that is, that I could retain the knowledge, perspective and seasoning that I have in my head right now. Man, what a symphony of stimulation and smoothitude. The advantages! The foresight! Almost every day of my actual childhood and teenaged life was miserable in one way or another, but the re-boot would be a steady high. Well, most much of the time.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Excerpt from video essay on Dragged Across Concrete Bluray:

Jordan Ruimy sent a Wayback Machine capture of several best of the ’90s lists from top-tier critics. This inspired me to come up with my own ’90s rundown, but I really can’t confine an entire decade (especially the ’90s) to ten films. Well, I can and did, but I feel better about listing my top 40. Which were selected not just on the basis of alleged greatness and sublime craft and whatnot, but because they’re closest to my heart.

1. Fargo (d: Coen brothers)
2. GoodFellas (d: Martin Scorsese)
3. Pulp Fiction (d: Quentin Tarantino)
4. Unforgiven (d: Clint Eastwood)
5. L.A. Confidential (d: Curtis Hanson)
6. Schindler’s List (d: Steven Spielberg)
7. The Silence Of The Lambs (d: Jonathan Demme)
8. Groundhog Day (d: Harold Ramis)
9. Heat (d: Michael Mann)
10. Saving Private Ryan (d: Steven Spielberg)

11. The Insider (d: Michael Mann)
12. Go (d: Doug Liman)
13. Flirting With Disaster (d: David O. Russell)
14. Rushmore (d: Wes Anderson)
15. Fight Club (d: David Fincher)
16. The Player (d: Robert Altman)
17. Reservoir Dogs (d: Quentin Tarantino)
18. JFK (d: Oliver Stone)
19. Mad Dog & Glory (d: John McNaughton)
20. The Usual Suspects (d: Bryan Singer)

We all know that cats bring home captured prey as tribute to their human family. Over the last week Anya, who just turned two, has been delivering live geckos, one after another. At least five if not six. In each instance she’s bitten their tails off before bringing them home. And then, as cats tend to do, she plays with them to death. Well, not really because after congratulating Anya for being a good hunter and telling her how much I respect her prowess, I grab the gecko, take it outside and throw it over the fence. And then Anya will bring home another tail-less victim. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Compare these color portraits of Audrey Hepburn — the first taken sometime in the mid ’40s in Holland, when Hepburn was in her mid teens, and the second during the making of William Wyler‘s Roman Holiday (’53), or sometime in ’52 when Hepburn was 23. Seven or eight years, the right kind of hair length and style, and especially the right kind of makeup and photographic lighting can make for a world of difference.

If you didn’t know Hepburn or her films, the Holland shot wouldn’t necessarily scream “glamorous Hollywood movie star to be.” It’s a portrait of a plain, pleasant-looking teenager but no drop-dead beauty queen in the making.

Robert Matzen‘s “Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II” pops on 4.15.

15 or 16-year-old Audrey Hepburn in Holland.

23 year-old Hepburn during making of Roman Holiday.

In “The Truth About Woody Allen (Part II)“, which was posted on 4.8.19, author Robert Weide mentions the theatrical fate of A Rainy Day in New York, which Amazon has refused to distribute and which Allen has sued them over. However long it takes for the long-delayed film to surface stateside, Weide indicates it may see the light of a projector beam later this year in Mexico.

Key excerpt: “One thing I know for sure [is that] the Farrows may succeed in throwing some road blocks in Woody’s way, but they can’t stop him. A Rainy Day in New York is already due to come out in theaters overseas, and will eventually be released in the states — even if not by Amazon.”

Weide’s link is to a January ’19 article in Medio, which mentions that the Mexico-based Latam Pictures will release it sometime later this year.

If and when A Rainy Day in New York were to open in Tijuana before debuting stateside in any format, I would happily drive down to see it.

For the first time in recorded history, an actual, real-deal photo of a black hole — calling Chris Nolan and Robert Forster! — was circulated today.

N.Y. Times excerpt: “The image, a lopsided ring of light surrounding a dark circle deep in the heart of the galaxy known as Messier 87, some 55 million light-years away from Earth, resembles the Eye of Sauron, a reminder yet again of the power and malevolence of nature. It is a smoke ring framing a one-way portal to eternity.

“To capture the image, astronomers reached across intergalactic space to Messier 87, a giant galaxy in the constellation Virgo. There, a black hole several billion times more massive than the sun is unleashing a violent jet of energy some 5,000 light-years into space.”

The image isn’t as disappointing as Jupiter, but it’s a little too vague and indistinct — it’s just not what we want to see when we’re looking at “an actual photo of a black hole.”

Historic but nonetheless underwhelming photo of an actual black hole.

13 months ago director-screenwriter Emily Carmichael spoke with Coming Soon‘s Max Evry about her screenplay for Disney’s on-and-off-but-more-recently-on Black Hole remake.

Evry: You’re writing Disney’s reboot of The Black Hole, which is very exciting. I’m actually a big fan of that film, warts and all.

Carmichael: Fuck yeah!

Evry: I think that movie is fascinating because it’s a movie of two eras. It was originally developed post-2001: A Space Odyssey as more of a serious science fiction film and then when Star Wars came out they were like, ‘Oh, we gotta Star Wars this up!” It has foot in old school sci-fi and the effects extravaganzas that followed Star Wars.