Could the title of Clint Eastwood‘s The Mule (Warner Bros., 12.14) allude to something besides a guy who smuggles drugs? Could it also allude to, say, stubbornness or obstinacy? Right now we’re all saying the same thing to ourselves — we might as lay it on the table. Variety‘s Kris Tapley” believes that Eastwood might wangle a Best Actor nomination — partly for his performance, partly as a Redford-like gold watch tribute. When Tapley muses, the world takes note.

Just read the FBI report on Kavanaugh – if that’s an investigation, it’s a bullshit investigation. pic.twitter.com/9D8oeVMEoU

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) October 4, 2018

“I have to say, I’m starting to think a bipolar sociopath with no moral compass might not have been our best choice for President of the United States. And the people in the crowd! When he did this, they loved it. He mocked this woman’s story about a sexual assault and they ate it up. They laughed, they cheered…I really don’t understand it.”

Why will people want to see that just-announced Challenger space shuttle flick, above and beyond the Michelle Williams-as-Christa McAuliffe factor?

Exactly — they’ll be curious to see if the film will depict what actually happened to the Challenger crew after calamity struck. As everyone knows the seven-person crew almost certainly survived the initial explosion and that most of them were alive and conscious during the crew cabin’s two-minute, 45-second descent down to the ocean surface.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

…the Senate would probably confirm him. Relaxed vibe, handsome, an apparent straight-shooter, centered, non-defensive. The actual nominee, of course, radiates none of this. The FBI report pops Thursday morning (10.4), and the Senate’s vote on Brett Kavanaugh will reportedly happen on Friday. My sense is that he probably won’t make it. How certain am I? I’m not willing to bet money on it — put it that way. But I really don’t think he’ll amass the votes. How can the five fence-sitters (Flake, Collins, Murkowski, Manchin, Heitkamp) vote for a guy who wrinkles his nose like that? Everyone knows he’s bad news, tempestuous, a stone liar, a fly-off-the-handle partisan who lacks the right judicial temperament, etc.

Home Theatre Forum fellows have noted that a “restored HD” version of George Pal‘s War of the Worlds (’53) is now streamable on iTunes. It’s said to be a marked improvement over the HD version that’s been streaming since ’11 or thereabouts, especially with the wires that once held up the Martian attack ships now digitally removed.

In fact a Paramount Home Video spokesperson told me today that the HTF guys are actually viewing a 4K version, “remastered and restored over the past year.” She said the new restoration is only being offered in 4K (i.e., not in 1080p HD or SD) and “only digitally for now, starting on iTunes then rolling out to other platforms that offer 4K.”

She said that Amazon “doesn’t offer 4K at this time,” but of course she’s mistaken about that. I’m speaking as a very gratified owner of a beautiful Amazon 4K streaming version of Lawrence of Arabia. Many Amazon customers, I’m sure, would love to stream this new War of the Worlds.

The spokesperson also said there are “no plans” for a 4K or 1080p Bluray release. Physical media…stake through the heart.

This War of the Worlds 4K restoration will, however, be screened sometime during the forthcoming Infinity Film Festival, which will run from Thursday, 11.1 to Sunday, 11.4 somewhere in Beverly Hills. The festival’s site doesn’t say what screening venue[s] will be used.

You can see the Martian wires in this screen capture (taken off my 15″ Macbook Pro) of the Amazon streamable version that’s been available since 2011.

A 1960-era drama based on a Richard Ford novel, Wildlife (IFC Films, 10.19) is about ennui, loneliness and infidelity. It’s set in Montana and is specifically about 30something Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) and her strained relationship with unemployed hubby Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) after he leaves the household to fight a nearby forest fire. The story is mostly about Jeanette’s decision to slip into a diseased affair with an older, Uriah Heep-like rich guy (Bill Camp) and how this traumatizes her 14 year-old son Joe (Ed Oxonbould).

In my 1.20.18 Sundance Film Festival review I wrote that I was “appalled — astonished — by the cruel, self-destructive behavior of this sad 34 year-old woman, and particularly by her decision to invite her son to almost participate in some extra-marital humping with a rich, small-town fat guy while her doltish husband is off fighting a forest fire.

“Yes, the screenplay (co-authored by director Paul Dano and Zoey Kazan) is an adaptation of Ford’s 1990 novel so blame Ford, right? But who dreams up stuff like this? And what kind of mother has ever injected this kind of sexual poison into her son’s life?

“Infidels hide their affairs, particularly from their kids. But Jeanette more or less whispers in her son’s ear, ‘I dunno but I kinda like this balding toad…he’s rich and definitely not your father, and so I’m feeling a bit flirty and thinking about…well, I’ve said enough.’ And the kid just stares at her like she’s some kind of ghoul from a Vincent Price flick.

Later she says she’s miserable and almost ready to kill herself, but that doesn’t negate the earlier thing.”

Well, the night before last Wildlife screened at the New York Film Festival, and lo and behold someone in the audience had the same reaction as I did. Instead of asking a typical obsequious question the viewer voiced displeasure at Jeanette’s behavior. The nerve!

Paul Sharf‘s 10.2 Indiewire story reports that the “audience member” — a guy — “addressed Mulligan and criticized her character for being ‘completely reprehensible‘ and ‘unsympathetic.’ Mulligan’s response was that the guy was man-complaining — that his rigid preconceptions were getting in the way and that he needed to get past himself.

“We’re all too used to only seeing women behaving really well [in movies],” Mulligan said. “When we see them out of control or struggling it doesn’t ring true because of everything we’ve been brought up to understand that women are always perfect and can do anything. That’s an unrealistic expectation of a woman. Seeing real humanity on-screen can be really jarring from a female perspective.”

HE to Mulligan: If Wildlife had been about a youngish mom leaving her husband and young son in order to take a job in another city or whatever, and if the father had soon after decided to not only embark on an affair with an older woman but invite his son to participate in this indiscretion, I would be just as turned off to Wildlife, and so would that guy who complained the other night — trust me.

The ugliness isn’t about being unhappy or depressed or having an affair — that’s normal. The ugliness is in smearing the aroma of adult carnality in some poor kid’s face.

Sharf has described the question as “an unfortunate moment.” Perhaps other New York Film festival attendees will read this story and take heed. Questions for filmmakers have to be kiss-assy at all times.

Remember the “torture” scene from Billy Wilder‘s One, Two, Three? East German security guys forcing Horst Buccholz‘s “Otto” to listen over and over to Brian Hyland’s “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini“, and Otto being so unable to stand it that he screams and pleads and is willing to sign any confession they put in front of him? An hour ago I was waiting to speak with Apple tech support (i.e., trying to authorize iTunes access for my 15-inch Macbook Pro). While I waited Apple was playing one of the most genuinely horrible glam-pop songs I’ve ever suffered through. Here’s a recording of what I was listening to. If and when authoritarian brutes ever want to break my spirit, all they’ll have to do is play this over and over and I will become putty in their hands.

In his review of Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born, New Yorker critic Anthony Lane says that “ideally, Cooper’s film would end after the first hour,” or “after the first night that Jackson Maine (Cooper) and Ally (Lady Gaga) spend together. They don’t have sex; they just hang out. She gets into a fight, and he buys frozen peas to soothe her swollen hand. He listens to her sing in a parking lot, then drops her off at home, where she lives with her father (Andrew Dice Clay).

“All that’s good about the film is in these scenes, with their clash of the coarse and the delicate, and you can sense the scales beginning to tip. Everything hereafter feels hokey by comparison, not least the swiftness of the heroine’s ascent.

“Like her counterpart in What Price Hollywood?, Ally used to wait tables, but within a day or two she has flown on a private jet and made her début in concert, hauled into the spotlight by her adoring superstar beau and fêted on social media. Before long, she has a recording deal and three Grammy nominations, while Jackson’s contribution to the Grammys is a bit part in a Roy Orbison tribute. Worse, and more ignominious, is to come.

“A Star Is Born is very much a product of our times. Jackson Maine’s problems date back to a wretched childhood, guaranteeing our pity and love, whereas Fredric March and James Mason gave the hero a nasty and dangerous edge. Cooper’s camera crowds the characters, getting in their faces, and the dialogue is determinedly foul with oaths: ‘If you don’t dig deep into your fucking soul, you won’t have legs.’ What?

“In striving to make the whole thing rough and rooted, Cooper slakes our need for the apparently authentic, and yet the story he tells, with its sudden shock of fame, is little more than a fairy tale.”

“Studio 54 may be a traditional rise-and-fall story, but this film has an unusual focus on the period of reflection that tends to follow. ‘We rose and fell together,’ Schrager says, absent any of the animosity that you’ve come to expect from narratives like this one. Remembering the blow-out party the two friends threw at the club on the night before they went to jail, Schrager can only laugh: ‘When I look back at it now, it is so preposterous. What were we thinking?’

“Matt Tyrnauer‘s film is resonant because it offers such a reasonable and poignant answer to that question. Tyrnauer, in a roundabout way that never quite tips over into dull reverence, suggests that Rubbell and Schrager weren’t wrong to tilt at windmills and pursue a dream that could never survive the morning. Schrager says that ‘it was fun holding onto a lightning bolt,’ and this film loves him for that. He and his late partner were only at the reins of Studio 54 for 33 months, but we’re still talking about what they did more than 33 years later. So, one imagines, maybe they were thinking that it would all be worth it in the end. And maybe they were right.” — from David Erlich‘s Indiewire review, posted at 12:45 pm.

Steve Rubell, Ian Schrager.