Mid-July means it’s time to spitball the Telluride Film Festival, which this year will happen later than usual — Friday, 9.4 to Monday, 9.7. A lot of heavy-hitter titles in play so expect a stronger-than-usual slate. We’re talking four categories here — all but locked (i.e., if they don’t turn up I’ll fall over in my desk chair), likely spitballs (playing Telluride would be logical, strategic & smart), bizarros and wishy-wishies.

I know next to nothing in terms of absolute certainty but c’mon…

All But Locked (6): Todd Haynes‘ Carol (Weinstein Co., 12.18), Paolo Sorrentino‘s Youth (Fox Searchlight, 12.4), James Vanderbilt‘s Truth (Sony Pictures Classics, sometime in October?); Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul (Sony Pictures Classics, domestic release uncertain); Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette (Focus Features, 10.23); John Crowley‘s Brooklyn (Fox Searchlight, 11.6).

Toronto Favoring, Telluride Avoiding?: Thomas McCarthy‘s Spotlight (Open Road, 11.6).

Logical Spitballs (5): Jay Roach‘s Trumbo (Bleecker Street, 11.6); Scott Cooper‘s Black Mass (Warner Bros., 9.18 — only 11 days after Telluride ends); Brian Helgeland‘s Legend (Universal, 10.2 — too gangsterish for Telluride?); Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash (Fox Searchlight, release date unknown); Barry Levinson‘s Rock the Kasbah (Open Road, 10.23 — too much fooling around?).

A guy who caught last night’s research screening of Danny Boyle, Aaron Sorkin and Scott Rudin‘s Steve Jobs (Universal, 10.9) says it’s an Oscar-level knockout — sharp, fast-paced, whammo. And yes, it brings it home emotionally in Act Three. Best Picture, Best Director (Boyle), Best Actor (Michael Fassbender, who starts off as Fassy, he said, but grows into and physically becomes Jobs), some kind of Best Screenplay nomination for Sorkin (will it qualify as original or an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s book?). And very high marks for Seth Rogen‘s punchy performance as Steve Wozniak and Kate Winslet‘s as Jobs lieutenant Joanna Hoffman.

The screening at Leows Lincoln Square began at 7:32 pm. Pic ran a bit more than two hours (maybe 128 minutes), the guy said, and it just nails it. A Rotten Tomatoes score in the 90s, he predicted. “The clarity, the lines, the delivery…everything is swift, fast and on point,” he said, “and the whole audience was really laughing. I haven’t seen an audience laugh that much in a long time.”

Boyle, Sorkin and Rudin attended, he said.

Everyone understands by now that the film unfolds in three acts as Jobs is preparing to introduce three revolutionary products — the original Macintosh in 1984, the NeXTcube in ’90 and the iMac in ’98. Boyle told this guy that the ’84 scene is shot on 16mm (really looks like the mid ’80s), the NeXT scene on 35mm, the iMac scene on digital.

I was seriously impressed by Carey Mulligan‘s Bathsheba Everdeen in Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd (“A woman of passion and steel spine”). I was floored by her sad soulfulness in David Hare‘s Skylight, which I saw on Broadway nine or ten weeks ago. And now I’m feeling a certain gravitas-plus from her upcoming performance as Maud in Sarah Gavron and Abi Morgan‘s Suffragette (Focus Features, 10.23), which will naturally play Venice/Telluride and probably Toronto. It’s her lower-class accent, actually; there’s something almost musical about it. And that rock-steady gaze of hers, those shrewd, evaluating eyes, that patiently simmering undercurrent. I can’t be the only one sensing a Best Actress headwind. If, that is, Suffragette turns out be an 8.5 or better. I don’t know how much campaigning she’ll be able to do considering her pregnancy, but the stars seem to be aligning in her favor.

“In one single movie, Amy Schumer elevates herself from being a sketch-show maven to a bonafide comedy queen — and this is coming from someone who doesn’t really care for Inside Amy Schumer. Ironically, Trainwreck lets us far deeper into Schumer than her show ever does, and it’s that brutally honest energy that Judd Apatow feeds off of as a filmmaker. There’s nothing better than a mainstream comedy with soul, and that’s what you’ll be getting with Trainwreck — heart and soul. Plus an admirable amount of crude sex jokes, Schumer’s confident sexuality and a Tilda Swinton performance for the ages. I’m not saying it’s the best comedy of 2015, but I am saying there’s a good chance that it will be. And you can quote me on that.” — from a 7.14. review by We Got This Covered‘s Matt Donato.

A week late to this…

Cruise was cabled in. He wasn’t going anywhere. What could have “gone wrong”? Yes, he was game to do this. Practical effects forever. But let’s not get carried away.

I don’t know which James Stewart-Anthony Mann western was shooting when this was taken, but I’m guessing either Winchester ’73 (’50) or Bend of the River (’52) as Stewart, born in ’08, looks like he’s in his mid 40s. You’ll notice that no less than 14 crew guys are utterly fascinated and delighted with what Stewart is saying at the moment. (Mann is sitting at Stewart’s left.) Trust me, I’ve been one of those suck-uppy guys on a set. I kind of hate myself when I’m beaming at every last quip, witticism, sage observation and smart-assed remark that a big star shares, but that’s the system. If a star farts, every crew member bends over for a good whiff. The star knows this, of course. He/she can do anything, say anything. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to handle this kind of attention.

During a Most Violent Year interview last November I asked Oscar Isaac about the HBO miniseries Show Me A Hero, which he was shooting at the time. A period piece (late ’80s to early ’90s) based on Lisa Belkin‘s nonfiction book of the same name, Hero is about white middle-class rage over a planned public-housing development (i.e, non-white neighbors) in Yonkers, and how Nick Wasicsko (Isaac), the youngest mayor in the country, dealt with it. (Curiously, Wascisko committed suicide in ’93.) Six episodes, written by David Simon and William F. Zorzi, directed by Paul Haggis. Premiering on 8.16.15. Again, the mp3.

I have to watch each True Detective episode a couple of times to figure out what the hell is going on, and even then it helps to read a couple of online summaries and then watch a third time for good measure. Partly due to the labyrinthian plotting, partly due to the general slurring and murmuring. But hoowee, did things come alive last night or what? For the first time this year I sat up and went “whoa, whoa…wait, wait!” It began around the 45-minute mark and lasted for just about nine minutes. Easily the best action scene of this kind since the downtown L.A. firefight in Michael Mann‘s Heat (’95), which lasted about 90 seconds longer. A lot of cops and non-involved citizens went down before it was over. Those Mexican drug dealer guys (especially the baldie with the white T-shirt) are really crazy — all they want to do is waste as many cops and bystanders are possible before being killed. I didn’t believe Rachel McAdams would run after the bad-guy SUV and fire away — too reckless. In real life she would have caught a bullet or two or three.

Originally posted on 5.3: A 21st Century D.C. Comics ragtag Dirty Dozen minus three. A metaphor for comic-book culture ragtag subterraneans, livin’ tough and hard by their own flinty, scruffy-as-shit, smart-assed outlaw code…rude, used, abused, sued, yahoo’ed & tattooed. “Incarcerated supervillains acting as deniable assets for the United States government, undertaking high-risk black ops missions in exchange for commuted prison sentences” blah blah. Warner Bros. will open this David Ayer creation on 8.5.16.

Whatever happened to Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups? It was screened and, it has to be said, not ecstatically reviewed at last February’s Berlinale, and…well, I haven’t felt anything since. No buzz, no anticipation, no sound of humming engines…zip. What’s to say, right? Another ethereal, rhapsodic dream poem from Mr. Wackadoodle. The distributor is Broad Green Pictures. I’m guessing Cups will turn up at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival prior to a limited theatrical/peek-out VOD opening sometime next year. This is what the Malick cult has boiled down to — peek-outs, escapes, secretions.

When will Malick’s other space-trip movie, Weightless, play to audiences? I realize that principal photography began on this Austin-based musical drama in September 2012 or thereabouts, or a little less than three years ago. But it probably won’t be seen….well, who knows but sometime next year, I’m guessing, and most likely in the late summer or fall, especially if Knight of Cups doesn’t open this year, which wouldn’t surprise me.

If (I say “if”) Weightless doesn’t open until the fall of ’16, a full five years will have transpired between the earliest filming at the September 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival. That would be a kind of milestone — the first ostensibly commercial film in history to shoot with major stars and not open until they’ve all noticably aged and basically turned into slightly different people.

Variety‘s Scott Foundas has mentioned Margaret and Accidental Love (a.k.a. Nailed) as precedents. Except Accidental Love was delayed by force majeure financial factors and Margaret was held up due to differences between a director (Kenneth Lonergan) and a distributor. Weightless is the first major film to be delayed ad infinitum due to creative dithering, indecision and lettuce-leaf-tossing on the part of the director.

The genius stroke, of course, would be to release Knight of Cups and Weightless either simultaneously or closely in tandem. The fact that Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett costar in both (as either the same or different characters…does it matter?) would lead to a certain intrigue. You can’t see just one, etc.