Character actor Steven Hill (“Dan Briggs” in the original Mission Impossible series, “Adam Schiff” in Law and Order) has died at age 94. Hill’s performances were always sturdy. He always had a kind of melancholy, world-weary thing going on. For me the performance that stood out above all (and the one I instantly thought of when I heard of his death) was that outdoor park bench scene with Tom Cruise in Sydney Pollack‘s The Firm. Hill played FBI honcho F. Denton Voyles, and he made the following line stick: “I’m telling you that your life as you know it is over.” Hill, a strict follower of Judaism who killed his stage career by refusing to work Friday nights due to religious ritual, was 70 or 71 when The Firm was made. He never made another film after that. Honestly? If I was a theatrical or movie producer and an actor I liked told me “no work on Friday nights,” I wouldn’t hire him — simple as that.

Damian Chazelle‘s Los Angeles-based, ’50s-styled musical (debuting in Venice followed by Telluride and Toronto bows) should be titled La-La Land. The hyphen acknowledges that the two “La’s” are eternally bonded. The absence of a hyphen, on the other hand, suggests that one of the “La” guys might conceivably lose interest one day and move to Las Vegas or Vancouver. It’s just wrong, okay? Second thought: What if La La Land was Evita — an opera sans dialogue? I’m presuming it’ll follow the standard MGM ’50s musical style — dialogue, dancing and occasonally breaking into song with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone doing their best. Third thought: It’s nice that Chazelle has created a lulling, soothing, magic hour-meets-starlight Los Angeles because the actual look of the place is not that. Not even slightly, I mean.

I like the bit with Gosling dancing with the older black woman on the pier — classic.

The cultural mix of Los Angeles used to be whites, Hispanics, blacks, Asians. Over the last 15 or 20 years it’s become more and more Iranian, at least in my neck of the woods, and yet somehow I’m doubting that the lifestyle aesthetic of wealthy “Persians” — ostentatious bling, flashy cars, hijabs, atrocious taste in architecture, conspicuous consumption — will be included in La La Land, which seems to be about recreating sound-stagey, Arthur Freed-style Los Angeles from the ’50s.

Ten days ago I complained about IFC Films not having decided on a release date for Oliver Assayas‘ Personal Shopper. Today I wrote the following to IFC Films honcho Jonathan Sehring plus their publicity staff:

“If you ask me Personal Shopper is a knockout — an artful, unusual, arguably groundbreaking Kristen Stewart spooker.  Unless there’s something wrong with me it seems (and please tell me if you think I’m wrong) like an obvious Halloween attraction. You guys have had it since Cannes, where Assayas won the Best Director trophy (shared with Cristian Mungiu). It’s won rave reviews from key critics, has landed a NYFF berth, and is opening in England and other European territories (UK, France, Belgium) at the end of ’16. And you still haven’t given it a U.S. release date.

“This is the first Kristen Stewart film with a supernatural atmosphere since the Twilight saga, and it’s at least five times better than all the Twilight films put together, and yet you seem unsure about its potential. If you were going to release Personal Shopper in late October you surely would have announced that by now. Halloween is only ten weeks away so I guess we know the answer.

“You’re presumably uncertain because it drew a divided critical response in Cannes. For me this is one of the best films of the year so far (it’s my second favorite after Manchester by the Sea), and yet you haven’t settled on a damn release date. Two months ago I was told that you were thinking of bumping it into the late winter or spring of ’17. If you’re going to bail on a fall release, would you at least confirm this?

Yesterday afternoon I asked occasional Awards Daily contributor Jordan Ruimy, who mainly files for The Playlist while writing his own online column, to join me for an Oscar Poker session. Jordan, who will soon move with his wife from Montreal to Boston, attended Sundance last January (he shared my condo) and also did Cannes, and he’ll be in Toronto. Plus he knows his stuff. We talked about the fall season in general, but the two hottest conversational topics were (a) why has IFC Films refused to firm a release date for Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper? and (b) will Paramount even release Martin Scorsese‘s Silence this year? Again, the mp3.

Who wouldn’t want to tag along on Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson‘s first date on a summer’s day in 1989 Chicago, when they were respectively 28 and 25? With an assurance that nothing too heavy or difficult will happen, and that the chatter will always feel right and real? Richard Tanne‘s Southside With You (Roadside, 8.26) is smart and centered. Likable, interesting, holds your attention, no sweat. I’ve seen it twice and could go again. Everyone will like the intelligent, open, glide-along vibe.

Barack (Parker Sawyers) is an obviously bright, mild-mannered preppy bro, working at Michelle’s Chicago law firm for the summer, smoking too much, more than a little bothered about his deceased dad’s “incomplete” life and less than resolved about what he wants to do after finishing Harvard Law. “Maybe” politics, he says.

Michelle (Tika Sumpter, who also produced) is more mature and focused but also wrapped a little too tight, at first guarded to the point of almost being brittle, and yet open and spirited when the mood shifts. She gradually relaxes but when things start she’s against the idea of going on a “date” with a “smooth-talking brother” because she doesn’t want her associates to chuckle about her getting cozy with the “cute” black guy, etc.

It all happens in Chicago’s South Side, a primarily black district that is referred to a couple of times as “the garden.” Barack picks her up around 1 pm in his shitty little car with a hole in the floorboard. They exchange the usual personal histories, preferences, etc. (He likes pie, she likes chocolate ice cream.) They catch an exhibition of black painter Ernie Barnes. They attend a community center meeting where Barack delivers an impromptu speech about acting in a less hostile fashion toward white Chicago establishment politicians who don’t seem to care about funding a community center. They go for beers, talk some more, and then catch a showing of Spike Lee‘s Do The Right Thing.

Which leads to the only socially awkward moment of their non-date, when Michelle runs into an older white attorney from her law firm, apparently a senior member, under the marquee, and then Barack returns from the bathroom and she’s mortified…busted! But the older white guy brightens and grins at the sight of Barack and it’s all easy and cool. Except, that is, for senior whitey’s opinion of the ending of Do The Right Thing (i.e., why did Mookie succumb to self-destructiveness by throwing the trash can through the window of the pizzeria?). Michelle is guarded and pissed again, so Barack stops at a Baskin-Robbins and buys her a chocolate cone. It ends with a kiss and a nice feeling as they return to their homes. Over and out.

This morning the 54th New York Film Festival (9.30 to 10.16) announced a special world premiere screening of Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (TriStar, 11.1) on Friday, 10.14. Not at Avery Fisher Hall, mind, but at the AMC Lincoln Square, where the film will be projected with portions shown at 120 frames-per-second. The tech aspect alone has me all hopped up.

As I understand it Billy Lynn Pic is more or less an Iraq War Catch 22 with a little Flags of Our Fathers thrown in. Essentially a piece about projected fantasy and nationalistic delusion vs. the reality of warfare. Don’t we already know about all this? That families and communities can’t hope to understand what it’s like to be “in the shit,” and that they often express respect and thankfulness with overblown patriotic pageants and whatnot? Didn’t Clint Eastwood cover this through and through ten years ago?

The following titles are believed to be Telluride ’16 attractions. They were posted earlier today on Jordan Ruimy‘s “Mind of a Suspicious Kind” website. (Michael’s Telluride Blog has the same titles.) I recorded an Oscar Poker podcast earlier today with Ruimy, a regular Playlist contributor. Soon to move to Boston from Montreal, Ruimy has been catching movies all year long and staying abreast of things and not ducking movies and hibernating like a bear from February through Labor Day, like another columnist I could mention. I ran these by a guy who knows stuff, and he had no arguments with these being likely Telluride entrees. He said, however, that the list doesn’t mention one major American film that is definitely going.

Arrival, d: Denis Villeneuve
Bleed For This, d: Ben Younger
The B-Side, d: Errol Morris
Defying the Nazis, d: Ken Burns
Fire at Sea, d: Gianfranco Rosi
Frantz, d: Francois Ozon
Graduation, d: Cristian Mungiu
Into the Inferno, d: Werner Herzog
Journey Through French Cinema, d: Bertrand Tavernier
La La Land, d: Damian Chazelle
Manchester By The Sea, d: Kenneth Lonergan
Maudie, d: Aisling Walsh
Moonlight, d: Barry Jenkins
Neruda, d: Pablo Larrain
Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, d: Joseph Cedar
The Red Turtle, d: Michael Dudok De Witt
Toni Erdmann, d: Maren Ade
Una, d: Benedict Andrews
Wakefield, d: Robin Swicord
Things to Come, d: Mia Hanse Love

“If you make people laugh, it is very hard for them to see you not making them laugh. Every time I do a movie like Moneyball or Wolf of Wall Street or War Dogs, when you do interviews they all say ‘wow, this has been a major transition for you.'” — Jonah Hill speaking to Any Given Wednesday‘s Bill Simmons.

But Jonah has transitioned, completely, into the realm of serious performance-giving and profile-expanding. Yes, playing an assortment of colorful, curious and eccentric guys, for sure, but well beyond the realm of Superbad-level (or Superbad-wannabe) comedies.

You know who I thought might transition into better, more substantial films or at least out of lowbrow comedies but hasn’t? Seth Rogen. For the most part he seems determined to stay in his safe zone. If Rogen was going to “do a Jonah Hill,” he would’ve done it by now. He just keeps making these mildly middlebrow stoner comedies (I loved Pineapple Express, didn’t mind The Interview, meh Neighbors) and letting go with that Rogen laugh and living up to that famous Michael O’Donoghue-ism – “Simply making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.”

The BFI Bluray of Ken Russell‘s Women in Love pops on Monday, 8.22. According to British Amazon I’ll receive it sometime between Wednesday, 8.24 and Friday, 8.26. Because I paid an extra $31 (24 British pounds) for priority shipping. I want a week to savor and settle in with it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this 1969 film in serious tip-top shape, having only caught it once or twice in a Manhattan rep house in the late ’70s or early ’80s.

If Women in Love had never appeared in ’69 and yet was somehow recreated by a fresh creative team and released this fall by Focus Features or Fox Searchlight, it would instantly vault into the Best Picture category. Because nobody and I mean nobody makes brainy period dramas as good as this for the theatrical market any more.

Posted on 2.4.14: Ken Russsell‘s Women in Love (’69), indisputably his greatest film, demands a meticulous high-def remastering, if for no other reason than the cinematography by Billy Williams (Gandhi, On Golden Pond).

“Women is one of the most sensual films ever made about men, women and relationships (and I’m not just talking about the nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates), and one of the most anguished in portraying the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many relationships and marriages.

There was a brief, horrific two- or three-week period last September when it seemed as if Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, which 90% of female cognoscenti and quite a few girlymen critics adored, might become the emotional favorite and thereby nudge aside Spotlight, which was clearly the cultivated-journo favorite in the wake of Telluride-Toronto, for the Best Picture Oscar.

A ghastly sense of foreboding gripped my soul as I began to realize how strongly many people felt about Room. That anecdote about a woman weeping in the Academy lobby told me it was fait accompli. The prospect of a Room victory felt like a spear in the side. But all of that Best Picture talk went away pretty quickly, didn’t it? Because it became increasingly clear that more people were on my side of the equation, and the Room crowd realized by late October or thereabouts that their only realistic shot was Brie Larson winning the Best Actress Oscar, which of course she did.

But thank God Room was defeated. The world came to its senses! We’ll be stuck with cloying Jacob Tremblay for the next few years (Before I Wake, Shut In, The Book of Henry, Burn Your Maps, Wonder are due in ’16 and ’17) but them’s the breaks.

I was just re-reading my initial Toronto review and the horror just came whooshing right back:

In a CNN.com article filed this morning (Sunday, 8.21) by Barbara Starr, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, said he hopes the US-led coalition can “defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria in this next year.”

Townsend quickly qualified this ambitious-sounding agenda. “Do I think ISIS will be gone from Iraq and Syria [by the end of ’17]? No. But I want them out of the cities. I want them dead or on the run in a hole somewhere in the desert, and significantly less of a threat.”

I like that, the “dead or in a hole” part. This is how a strong military commander should talk about the enemy. What Townsend said doesn’t quite have the ring of “we’re not just gonna murder those lousy ISIS bastards…we’re going to use their living guts to grease the treads of our tanks,” but he’s on the right track.