Kris Tapley and Ramin Setoodeh‘s 8.14 Variety piece about the recently announced “Best Achievement in Popular Film” Oscar (“Will Oscars’ Popular Film Category Generate Ratings or Just Controversy?“) is somewhere between sufficient and reliably dull, an article that says “buh-dop-buh-deep” over and over. But Rob Dobi‘s illustration made me see red.

My instant reaction: “Go eff yourselves, beasties…you are the low-rent apocalypse, the end of the road, the servers of formulaic jizz-whizz to the brah masses. If the ghosts of George Stevens, William Wyler, John Huston, F.W. Murnau, John Ford, Howard Hawks, King Vidor, Billy Wilder, Victor Fleming, Charles Laughton, Ernst Lubitsch and Ida Lupino were to somehow manifest and stumble into your presence, they would all spit in your faces. Leave by the side door, get outta town and stab yourselves with kitchen knives when you get home.”

Funny auteur Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Three Stooges) leaves Bobby behind for his first solo venture, and a mostly dramatic one at that. The New Academy Kidz won’t like this — too calculated, too boomerish, too awards-baity — but I’m sensing the right stuff. The Universal release will play Toronto, and then open commercially on 11.21.

Boilerplate: “Inspired by a true story, the 1960s-era film, which is co-written by Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga and Brian Currie, follows Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a rough-and-tumble Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx, who is hired to drive a world-class Black pianist named Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South. Along the way, while being confronted with racism and bigotry, these two men from radically different backgrounds develop a genuine fellowship and mutual affection for each other.”

Driving Mr. Shirley?

Update from distribution guy: “Green Book has supposedly been testing through the roof for months, big time. This will be the next Help or Hidden Figures, you can be sure.”

Bill Cosby apparently isn’t objecting to the charge of being a sexual predator as much as the notion of being a violent one. Overpowering women by doping them and sticking your gross animal member in this or that orifice…that’s a form of violence, I think. The arrogance is breathtaking.

“A hole in one” doesn’t precisely convey anything, but if you step back, start chanting “ohm” and let it pass through you, it signifies everything

60 years ago Teenage Caveman, a Roger Corman-directed exploitation film starring Robert Vaughn, was released to the sub-runs. Vaughn once described the pic, originally shot under the title Prehistoric World, as “the worst film ever made.”

To go by Owen Gleiberman‘s Variety review, Albert Hughes‘ Alpha (Sony, 8.17), which apparently could be subtitled I Was a Teenage Paleolithic EMO Brah, is much better than Teenage Caveman. But in some ways it’s seemingly cut from the same cloth.

“A tale of a young hunter stranded in the wilderness who becomes best friends with a wolf, Alpha is “like a Disney adventure fueled by a higher octane of visual dazzle, with a gnarly texture wrought from elements like blood, excrement and maggots,” Gleiberman writes.

Maybe, but the blood and maggots are half-mitigated by the Late Stone Age hipster apparel worn by star Kodi Smit-McPhee. Look at those nice-fitting corduroy pants, those expensive Ugg boots, that cool animal-hide hoodie poncho pullover and not one but two shoulder-slung handbags. John Varvatos meets Gant Rugger meets Rag & Bone.

Darren Aronofsky also went a little wacko with garments worn in Noah. They were the work of costume supervisor Margret Einarsdottir. Russell Crowe wore animal-skin duds that were way too high-style and intricately woven for a guy living during the time of the Great Ancient Flood.

The 2018 Toronto Film Festival has announced a list of North American or World Premieres, none of which will be going to Telluride first. David Mackenzie‘s The Outlaw King…yay. Jonah Hill‘s Mid90s…ditto. Jeremy Saulnier‘s Hold the Dark…no comment. Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book…what about Bobby? Thomas Vinterberg‘s Kursk…son of Das Boot. Paolo Sorrentino‘s Loro…allegedly a problem, I’ve heard. Sebastian Lelio‘s Gloria w/ Julianne Moore. Nick Hamm‘s Driven…no comment. Paul Greengrass‘s 22 July…formerly Norway, allegedly a tough sit.

Mike Leigh‘s Peterloo is listed as a Canadian premiere, so it’s apparently going to Telluride.

A new Bluray of Federico Fellini‘s I Vitelloni, the grandfather of prolonged adolesence hang-out films, streets on 8.27. But for the grace of God I almost became an I Vitelloni guy, treading water and chasing girls in Fairfield County. I finally couldn’t stand it and moved into my first Manhattan pad on Sullivan Street. It took me two years to make it as a fringe-level film journalist, but I finally did.

Originally posted 12 years ago, on 7.6.06: “There’s a trend in movies about guys in their early to mid 30s having trouble growing up. Guys who can’t seem to get rolling with a career or commit to a serious relationship or even think about becoming productive, semi-responsible adults, and instead are working dead-end jobs, hanging with the guys all the time, watching ESPN 24/7, eating fritos, getting wasted and popping Vicodins.

“There have probably been at least 15 or 20 films that have come out over the last four or five years about 30ish guys finding it hard to get real.

“The 40 Year-Old Virgin was basically about a bunch of aging testosterone monkeys doing this same old dance (with Steve Carell’s character being a slightly more mature and/or sensitive variation). Virgin director-writer Judd Apatow has made a career out of mining this psychology. Simon Pegg’s obese layabout friend in Shaun of the Dead was another manifestation — a 245-pound Dupree.

“Prolonged adolescence is an age-old thing, of course. The difference these days is that practitioner-victims are getting older and older.

I’ve been reluctant to buy into Filmstruck / The Criterion Channel for a long time, but last night…all right, fine, fuck it, I bought a year’s subscription. Now I can finally watch a high-def streaming version of Ingmar Berman’s The Silence. And I can easily watch on my Macbook Pro 15-inch or via the Roku player or even on the (still not fully functional) iPhone.

But as long as I’m discussing Criterion, it’s necessary to re-state what a travesty and a desecration those Midnight Cowboy and Bull Durham Blurays are, and that Peter Becker and the Criterion team need to nip this horrific teal-tinted color tendency in the bud.

Speaking as one who (a) loathes the Christian community for its conservative political leanings, (b) feels mostly contempt for faith-based movies, (c) likes Brenton Thwaites and (d) genuinely admires the great David Strathairn, something in me shuddered when I watched this trailer for An Interview With God.

Don’t Thwaites and Straitharn realize what they’re doing to their brand by appearing in this thing?

HE to God: Cosmic design, unity and connectivity are obvious to anyone with half a brain, but as a beyond-intelligent entity do you and your only begotten son feel just a teeny bit responsible for the massive amounts of stupidity, ignorance and arrogance that are directly attributable to religious devotion? Which is partly responsible for destroying the earth as we speak? Are you good with all that?

Also: Do you agree or disagree with Tony Gilroy‘s assertion in Devil’s Advocate that you’re basically an absentee landlord? When I was a kid I thought you were that deep, slowed-down voice in Cecil B. Demille‘s The Ten Commandments; now you’re nothing more than a component in the ugliest political movement in U.S. history.

I barely remember Carl Reiner‘s Oh, God!. Probably better that way.

An Interview With God will be released in U.S. theaters for only “three nights” — August 20, 21 and 22. What, no matinees?

With Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased announced as a Toronto Film Festival “international premiere”, it can be presumed that this fact-based Focus Features release about gay conversion therapy will play Telluride first.

Which reminds me, by the way, that I’ve forgotten to review The Miseducation of Cameron Post, the other gay-conversion drama (premiered during Sundance ’18, opened on 8.3). It’s not a “bad” film, but a little underwhelming. It’s basically an ensemble piece set at a Christain conversion camp, and it’s a bit odd in that the titular character, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, is the least assertive or distinctive character of the lot. In scene after scene she expresses almost nothing, and certainly not verbally. She just wants to be left alone to love other women, but she’s a blank canvas. Far more interesting are costars Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, John Gallagher, Jr. and Marin Ireland.