I for one am disappointed with Owen Gleiberman‘s review of Star Trek Beyond (Paramount, 7.22). Speaking as a confirmed hater/enemy of all things Justin Lin (except for the Sundance cut of Better Luck Tomorrow), I was hoping Gleiberman would vivisect with glee. Alas, he’s written a fair-minded assessment that says “not great but not too bad in a place-holding way.”

To make up for this I’ve assembled some excerpts that focus on the negative. That’s fair, no?

(a) “For all the addictive intensity of its visual flourishes, Star Trek Beyond is the most prosaic and, in many ways, the least adventurous of the Abrams-era Star Trek outings.”

(b) “It’s not until the halfway point of Star Trek Beyond when [director] Lin stages a sequence that truly seems to get his juices flowing.”

(c) “To say that the movie fails to break new ground would be putting it mildly. It truly feels like an extended [Trek TV] episode, without a single ‘Oh, wow!’ trick up its sleeve, which may be why, until the eye-popping climax, it’s more earnest than exciting.”

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One of the biggest regrets of my life, personal and professional, happened at the ’01 Toronto Film Festival. A minor thing but at the same time, upon reflection, big. It basically involved my blowing off the great Debra Winger. The episode has strangely never left me.

I was exiting a press & industry screening of Big Bad Love, an indie drama about a boozy writer (played by director and co-screenwriter Arliss Howard) and his estranged wife (Winger, who was/is married to Howard). And like everyone else, I was somewhat surprised to find Winger and Howard standing in the lobby just outside the theatre, mingling and chatting.

I tend to shy away from this kind of encounter — too sporadic, too competitive — but this time I was especially averse as I didn’t want to share reactions to Big Bad Love, which were generally negative. But as I walked by Winger, who was being conversationally devoured by a small wolf pack, she looked right past them and, for maybe two and a half seconds, right at me. I recognize or know you on some level, her eyes said. C’mon over and we’ll talk a bit. And like the candy-ass I sometimes am, I immediately dropped my gaze and bolted.

At that moment I could and would have spoken to Winger for at least a couple of hours about almost anything, gladly, but not Big Bad Love. I was also a bit taken aback — intimidated — by those laser-beam eyes. And of course, by ducking her gaze I was giving her a negative review, and I’m sure she felt that, a little flash moment in her brain.

If I’d been able to push past my wimpiness I would have walked over and said something along the lines of “just want to convey my respect and fan affection…the movie didn’t get me, to be honest, but you did. And I love Mike’s Murder.” The encounter happened during the first weekend (i.e., the second or third day) of the festival. Two or three days later the World Trade Center was attacked.

Several months after the all-too-brief release of James Bridges‘ Mike’s Murder on 3.9.84, a short review by New Yorker critic Pauline Kael was published. Here’s a portion of it:

“A few days after seeing the newly manufactured, disposable Legal Eagles, I noticed that Debra Winger‘s last picture to be released, Mike’s Murder, was listed for Showtime in the New York Times TV schedule, and that the Times‘ advice was ‘Skip it.’ Please, don’t skip it next time it comes around — or, if you can, rent it.

“I wasn’t able to see this film during its unheralded, minuscule New York run in 1984, but I caught up with it on HBO last year…[I]t has two superb performances — a full-scale starring one by Winger, and a brief intense one by Paul Winfield. She’s a radiantly sane young bank teller who has an affair with Mike (Mark Keyloun). She likes him — you can see her eagerness, even though she knows how to be cool and bantering with him…

“Winger has thick, long, loose hair and a deep, sensual beauty in this movie. Bridges wrote the role for her after directing her in Urban Cowboy, and you feel the heroine’s expanding awareness in Winger’s scenes with Keyloun and her scenes with Winfield. It’s a performance that suggests what Antonioni seemed to be trying to get from Jeanne Moreau in La Notte, only it really works with Winger — maybe because there’s nothing sullen or closed about her. We feel the play of the girl’s intelligence, and her openness and curiousity are part of her earthiness, her sanity.

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It’s 10:12 pm back east. The first public screenings of Ghostbusters will start in a few and end by 12:30 or 1 am. Curious to know what people think…that’s all.

“It’s formula bullshit, of course — what else could it be? — but if you can lower your standards and just sit back and take it, it’s 80 minutes of silly ‘fun’ — fun defined as nodding submission to a super-budget presentation of a franchise concept that’s moderately amusing here and there and doesn’t piss you off. After the first 80 minutes it eats itself, leaving us to endure 35 minutes of CG overkill — Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel finale meets the Independence Day sequel meets the Pillsbury doughboy monster meets the end of the world.” — From my own HE review, posted on 7.10.

“Much has already been written in advance of the opening of “Ghostbusters” about how the film will serve as a referendum on the future success or failure of female-centric Hollywood movies. All I can say is, I certainly hope this dreary, bleary comedy doesn’t end up serving as a referendum on anything. That would be a disservice to women, not to mention movies.” — Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor.

“Word to the studios: We lack penises, not brains! Taking a creaky but beloved Bill Murray franchise and recasting it with chicks isn’t progress. Ghostbusters demonstrates that a lame concept can’t make a female-driven film stronger. Meanwhile, shaming men as fanboys or misogynists for not embracing this dreck doesn’t help. [This] bloated 3-D action-adventure is symptomatic of a larger problem in this summer of chaos: sequel-itis. This dread disease — the reboot, the sequel, the prequel — squashes Hollywood one tent-pole film at a time like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Manhattan.” — Thelma Adams, The Observer.

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20 years ago I was just starting at People magazine (the second most miserable job I ever had, right behind working at Entertainment Tonight for three months in the spring of ’98). My Nissan 240SX was newish and in great shape. I’d been divorced for five years. Jett and Dylan were eight and six, respectively, and living in Santa Monica. I was starting to organize my own screening class, Hot Shot Movies, at the Woodland Hills AMC. I’d been attending Sundance Film festival for only the previous two or three years, but I couldn’t afford to do Telluride or Cannes. There was a decent DSL connection at People but I was on 56K dial-up at home (or so I recall).

My favorite films at this point in ’96 were Fargo, which had opened on 5.31, and Trainspotting, which I’d seen in a screening and would open on 7.19. And the fall/holiday season would deliver a few standouts, of course — Jerry Maguire, Sling Blade, Bound, Breaking the Waves, The People vs. Larry Flynt, the under-rated Evita. (The English Patient won the ’96 Best Picture Oscar, of course, but I haven’t had the slightest interest in re-watching it.)

But as I reviewed the remaining summer slate (7.12 through Labor Day), things sure seemed dispiriting.

Courage Under Fire (I barely remember this), Harriet the Spy (forget it), Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners (no recollection), Harold Ramis‘s Multiplicity (saw it once, hazy recollection), Joel Schumacher‘s A Time to Kill (never again), the Farrelly brothers’ Kingpin (disposable), Chain Reaction, Danny DeVito’s Matilda, John Carpenter‘s Escape from L.A. (gimme a break), Francis Coppola‘s Jack (awful), Julian Schnabel‘s Basquiat (respectable), Tony Scott‘s The Fan, Ron Shelton‘s Tin Cup (a standout — mostly decent Kevin Costner golfing film), John Frankenheimer‘s Island of Dr. Moreau (decent), A Very Brady Sequel (never saw it, never will), Arthur Hiller‘s Carpool, John Landis‘s The Stupids, Tim Pope‘s The Crow: City of Angels…wow.

The following conversation about San Pellegrino sodas happened…oh, a couple of weeks ago at WeHo Pavillions. Myself and a short assistant manager. Around 9:30 or 10 pm. Our chat was measured at first, then it went downhill. Where do they find these guys? I knew much more about the San Pellegrino operation than he did. I’ve been to Eataly in New York. I’ve bought cans of the stuff in Venice and Tuscany and Rome. He knew nothing.

Hollywood Elsewhere: Hi. I’m a big fan of San Pellegrino sodas and I’m wondering why you guys carry every flavor except Clementine.
Assistant Manager: Uhm, okay. I’ll have to ask. I don’t do the ordering.
HE: Who does?
Assistant Manager: The office in Fresno. Clementine?
HE: Right. Clementina in Italian.
Assistant Manager: Are you sure it’s selling?
HE: What do you mean? Yes, it’s selling.
Assistant Manager: How do you know?
HE: I drank it last summer in Connecticut.
Assistant Manager: Maybe it’s not for sale here.
HE: Why wouldn’t it be? You stock every flavor in their catalogue. Cases and cases. You’ve got it totally covered except Clementine.
Assistant Manager: Do you buy it in Connecticut?
HE: A friend had a can in their refrigerator.
Assistant Manager: In what town?

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The latest polling shapshot, provided by New York Times/CBS News, shows that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are now more or less even. The poll showed that while Clinton avoided an F.B.I. indictment for her “extremely careless” email behavior while Secretary of State, this makes no difference with voters. They don’t like her “with a large and growing majority saying she’s not honest and not trustworthy,” says the Times piece.

“Get the stretcher, nurse, and a strong sedative. Voters are saying that the most ludicrously unqualified candidate for President in the history of the U.S. is no worse or no better than Hillary Clinton, which indicates she could actually, theoretically lose. This possibility is just starting to sink in for the first time, and she’s going into shock.”

No question about it — Hillary is a wounded candidate. She’s on the ropes. She’s everything that angry voters don’t want is this turbulent election season. We’re in one of those “throw the bums out” moments, and roughly half the electorate wants to give her the heave-ho.

But if Hillary chooses Elizabeth Warren as her vp running mate, all the mud will start to fall away. Warren could be Hillary’s great cleanser or spot-remover. Tim Kaine is an amiable go-along guy, a career politician, a liberal pudgeball with thinning hair and a basketball-shaped head. His presence on the ticket says “more of the same.” And you know Kaine’s presence won’t wash away or dilute Hillary’s sins. But Warren’s could.

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Do you think the words “rules” and “apply” are mentioned often enough in this spritzy new trailer for Warren Beatty‘s Rules Don’t Apply (20th Century Fox, 11.23)? As well as “crazy”? It doesn’t feel so much like a “dramedy”, which is what Beatty has been calling it, as a restrained screwball comedy, like something Carole Lombard, James Stewart and John Barrymore might have made in the late ’30s. The background music (a little like “Tequila”) reflects the late ’50s era in which the story unfolds, but Beatty also uses some ’40s big-band swing. Either way a tone of old-school, high-strung wackiness has obviously been threaded in. Which is cool.

The audience will skew somewhat older, of course — forget the Millenials — and because of the classic screwball-farcical tone I’m presuming that the know-it-alls will mutter that it’s not audacious, deep or heavy enough to warrant award-season chatter. Ask any seasoned Oscar campaigner — funny stuff always gets elbowed aside.

But the story drops anchor in the third act, I can tell you. I know what happens chapter and verse, and just hearing it got to me. And it is about values and the things that endure. And it is doing something unusual — arguably novel in the year 2016 — and that at the very least warrants attention and respect.

My strongly held view is that the best way to ignite positive chatter about Rules Don’t Apply and thereby launch it with an attractive narrative is to take it to the Telluride Film Festival. Not Toronto, mind, but friendly, cozy, convivial Telluride, where Beatty can roam around and work the crowd.

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I was wondering this morning when I’d be hearing about screenings of John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder, which until today was slated to open on 8.5. Now The Weinstein Co. has bumped it to December. The drama about McDonald’s honcho Ray Kroc (played by Michael Keaton) is slated to open limited on 12.16 and wide on 1.20. That’s an award-season slot, of course, but I can’t quite accept it in that reagrd. I can’t erase the fact that the Weinsteiners were cool with August 5th for months and months. But I guess I can re-orient my thinking. (When the 8.5 date was announced Harvey Weinstein said that he hoped it would prove that “award-caliber movies [can] open any time of year and be successful.”) The Founder was originally slated to open 11.25.15.

One thing you’ll never see explored or even mentioned in any historical film is the level of hygiene available to the main characters. I realize that nobody wants to hear this stuff, but can I at least write one short article about it? We’re all so accustomed to living in total hygienic splendor (huge bathrooms, dynamic showers, soaps, deodorants, perfumes, facial cremes, hair gels) that we tend to forget or ignore how unclean and smelly things were in the old days, especially before the 19th Century.

It follows that historical films, none of which have ever been captured or projected with Aromarama-like technology, have never gotten into this. Until fairly recently (i.e., before intensely realistic pics like The New World and The Revenant) everyone in every historical film from whatever century has always been presented as looking relatively clean and well-groomed, and by inference agreeable smelling. But the fact is that most people stunk like animals in centuries past.

As I mentioned four years ago there wasn’t even a White House bathtub with hot running water until Abraham Lincoln’s first term. And when you’re talking about ancient Rome and especially Judea, which will be represented a few weeks hence in Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur, forget it.

By our standards almost everyone except the wealthiest ancient Romans almost certainly had odor issues to varying degrees. The other day while sitting in an outdoor food court I noticed that a young guy sitting nearby (I’m not allowed to mention his ethnic heritage) smelled pretty gamey, and so I moved four or five tables away. If I was time-machined back to ancient Rome or Judea the stench would probably give me a heart attack.

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