I’ll be doing the New York Film Festival today and tonight before hitting Connecticut for the weekend. I couldn’t stay at Jett’s place and was therefore forced to book a Manhattan hotel room. I looked around and couldn’t find anything better cost-wise than a boilerplate Comfort Inn on Ludlow Street, which is a block and a half north of Delancey. Just a standard room with a queen bed, a TV, a bathroom and wifi, and it’s costing me in the vicinity of $250 plus tax. I’m sorry but that strikes me as exorbitant.

I’m currently sitting in a McDonald’s at the corner of Essex and Delancey, partly for the wifi but also because I was starving. This morning’s NYFF press screening (10 am) is Mike Mills‘ 20th Century Women, which I caught in Los Angeles last week. This afternoon’s press screening (1 pm) is Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s Aquarius, which I saw and quite admired in Cannes last May — deserves a second viewing. I got the usual two hours of sleep on the plane so at some point I need to take a nap.

McDonald’s work station at Essex and Delancey — Friday, 10.7, 10:10 am.

“There is no Batman movie happening yet. We’re still trying to figure it out…you know, get the script and budget and all that stuff. And someone said, ‘what are you calling it?’ and I had said, like, back when we were promoting another movie, I was like ‘we don’t have a name for it, we’re just going with The Batman or Batman movie.’ And [after] I said that, everyone was like ‘Affleck announces the name of his Batman movie.’” — Ben Affleck during a recent E! Online interview that was mainly focused on The Accountant.

So Affleck’s Batflick, which sounds like it’ll be released in 2018 or ’19, is back to being a blank slate. Which should be a relief to diehards as The Batman radiated nothingness. I was thinking the other day about re-titling Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales as The Adventures of Captain Fatass, and a couple of commenters said “now that‘s something I’d pay to see!” I genuinely believe that Affleck should give his Batman flick some kind of locoweed title — something off the grid and fuck-all sounding. It hit me as I was riding on the A train this morning on my way into town from JFK: Bing Bang Bat Bongo.

Variety‘s Elizabeth Wagmeister reported yesterday that E! has shut down production of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, apparently out of concern for Kim Kardashian‘s emotions in the wake of the recent Paris robbery. “Kim’s well-being is our core focus right now,” an E! spokesperson told Wagmeister. “No decision has been made as to when production will resume.” KUWTK has been sinking in the ratings, and then a potential ratings-booster like the Paris heist comes along and E! stops shooting? Am I mistaken about KUWTK being a reality show? Wagmeister reports that E! signed the Kardashies to a three-year extension last year, which will extend KUWTK‘s presence into 2018, but when something like the Paris robbery happens, you exploit the shit out of it. Wagmeister writes that “when asked if cameras were rolling in Paris around the time of the robbery, E! declined to comment.”

ArtHouseTrump is a parody handle — i.e, some person pretending to be a Trump-minded film critic but in an SNL sense. Which is to say that some of his/her opinions, while obviously parroting Trump’s mentality, aren’t entirely absurd. Earlier today Jessica Chastain got into a scuffle with ArtHouseTrump over Interstellar, and to be perfectly honest I don’t think it’s all that crazy to suggest that she, Chris Nolan, Matthew McConaughey and the others do “owe” us for that fucking film. I laughed, in any event, at the suggestion. By the way: I’m not saying Chastain isn’t aware that ArtHouseTrump is a put-on, but one of her tweets today indicated that she thinks the person behind it is some kind of serious Trump surrogate. Or is she in on the joke? Help me out.

There’s a Sam Kashner-authored profile of Warren Beatty in the new Vanity Fair. Beatty participated mainly to plug Rules Don’t Apply (20th Century Fox, 11.23) but he also gave up some personal stuff, including two stories I’d never heard or read before — one about Marilyn Monroe that happened a little more than 54 years ago, and the other about Edie Sedgwick that also took place in the ’60s.

Monroe: “Peter Lawford invited Beatty out to his house in Malibu [HE correction: Lawford’s home in the early ’60s was on the beach in Santa Monica, not Malibu] for a night of tacos and poker, and Monroe was there. ‘I hadn’t seen anything that beautiful,’ Beatty recalls. She invited him to take a walk along the beach, which he did.”

In a presumed reference to their stroll. Beatty tells Kashner “it was more soulful than romantic.”

“Back in the house he played the piano. Marilyn sat on the edge of the piano in something so clingy that Beatty could tell she wasn’t wearing underwear. ‘How old are you?’ she asked. ‘Twenty-five,’ he answered. ‘How old are you?” he asked cheekily. ‘Three…six,’ she said, as if not wanting to bring the two numbers together.

“By then the tacos had arrived, and no one really played poker that night. Warren noticed that Marilyn was already a bit tipsy from champagne, even before the sun had set.

“The next day Harold Mirisch, brother of the producer Walter Mirisch, called. ‘Did you hear?’ he asked. ‘Marilyn Monroe is dead.’ Warren was one of the last people to see Marilyn alive — a story Beatty tells only reluctantly.”

1. Are you named after someone? / JW: “Yeah, some character in a novel. My mom told me the particulars once, forgot ’em.”
2. When’s the last time you cried? / JW: “Nine months ago. The first time I watched Manchester by the Sea. I didn’t exactly cry but I got a little misty.”
3. Do you like your handwriting? / JW: “Like it? I can’t even read it.”
4. What is your favorite lunch meat? / JW: “Spicy Italian salami.”
5. Do you have kids? / JW: “Two sons.”
6. If you were another person, would you be friends with you? / JW: “Certainly.”
7. Do you use sarcasm? / JW: “Infrequently. Only when it’s right. Which is rarely.”
8. Do you still have your tonsils? / JW: “The fuck?”
9. Would you bungee jump? / JW: “I’m past that point.”
10. What is your favorite cereal? / JW: “Open Nature strawberry vanilla granola with vanilla yogurt.”
11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? / JW: “Is this a trick question?”
12. Do you think you are strong? / JW: “Emotionally, not as strong as I could be. Physically, yeah, as far as it goes. I’m not weak.”
13. What is your favorite ice cream? / JW: “Cookies and cream.”
14. What is the first thing you notice about people? / JW: “Whether or not they look me right in the eye and hold it for two or three seconds when we first say hello.”
15. Red or pink? / JW: “Neither. Okay, red.”

Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper had its NYFF press screening this morning, and will screen for public festivalgoers tomorrow night. By which time I’ll be in the city and hobbling around. Critical and public acclaim for one of the coolest and most unusual films of the year, five months after debuting in Cannes and five months before it finally opens next March.

What besides Mike Pence‘s reference to Mexican genitalia was the stand-out line or moment from Monday’s Vice-Presidential candidate debate? I’m asking. Nothing else I can think of.

Due respect to Matt Reeves, whose direction of 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was as good as it could have been, but this mini=teaser for War of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox, 7.4.17) in no way heats the blood. The plot seems to promise the last half-hour of Full Metal Jacket except with apes. Personality- or charisma-wise it’ll be Andy Serkis (Ceasar) vs. Woody Harrelson (Colonel Horseshit). Sorry, that just popped out — Harrelson’s character is actually unnamed..

Hurricane Gloria came roaring across lower Fairfield County in the wee hours of 9.28.85, and I was there, man, standing in my parents’ front yard in Wilton, Connecticut, sometime around 1:30 or 2 am. That howling sound, 90 mph winds, huge trees bending. The full force of it ebbed after ten minutes or so, but I’ve never forgotten that feeling, that energy. Not to sound like an asshole, but if I was on the Atlantic coast of Florida right now I would be doing two things: (1) huddling inside a safe underground or brick-fortified shelter of some kind, but also (b) looking to safely absorb what I could of Hurricane Matthew’s raw ferocity, you bet. Give it to me! Incidentally: If I was determined to run for it, I definitely wouldn’t hit the highway in the daylight hours like all those tens of thousands of schmucks were doing yesterday — I’d make a point of leaving at 2 or 3 am.

More than a few have been posting breathless articles and tweet-gasms about Denis Villenueve‘s Arrival (Paramount, 11.11). Due respect but this situation needs clarification by way of a contrasting opinion (filed from Telluride on 9.4.16):

“Arrival lost me because it unfolds in the manner of some science fiction tales, starting off with a highly intriguing premise but then kind of levitating and leaving the planet around the midway or two-thirds point, flaking and spacing and dispersing into fragments of time and memory and inconclusive what-the-fucky.

“After the first 45 minutes or so it starts to feel slow and repetitive and, yes, boring. I personally found it increasingly irksome.

“Like any arresting science-fiction tale, Arrival challenges you to stretch your cognitive processes. It’s a workout.

“It also has a great set-up — a visiting (not an invasion) of earth by 12 super-sized alien vehicles, in various locations around the globe. And a linguistic professor, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who has raised and lost a daughter to disease, tasked by the government (primarily represented by Forrest Whitaker in military fatigues) to somehow communicate with the alien pilots, called Heptapods, to learn where they’re from and what they want.