Word around the campfire is that Thomas McCarthy‘s Spotlight, a drama about the uncovering of Catholic Church sex abuses by the Boston Globe‘s “Spotlight” team in 2001 and ’02, has turned out well. Earlier today Open Road announced a November 6th opening date with expansions to follow — an obvious indication that they expect award-season action. I’ve heard that Open Road honcho Tom Ortenberg has been telling pallies that Spotlight has the goods and then some. I was actually hoping it might screen at the Cannes Film Festival but that wasn’t to be. (I know for a fact that it test-screened in Pasadena’s Old Town on 4.29.15.) I wouldn’t be surprised if Spotlight turns up at the Venice or Telluride or Toronto Film Festivals, or maybe all three. Directed and co-written by McCarthy (with Josh Singer), pic costars Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Liev Schrieber, Brian D’Arcy James, Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup.

Pretty much all the difficulty in Jurassic World boils down to Indominus Rex getting loose and going on a killing spree — tourists, other dinosaurs, anything that moves. Around the halfway mark a deranged corporate guy (Vincent D’Onofrio) brings in a team of heavily armed SWAT commandos — guys with all kinds of automatic weapons, heavy artillery, helicopters, etc. D’Onofrio says he wants to use Chris Pratt‘s smart raptors to fight Middle-Eastern terrorists, but he doesn’t have any strategic plans for the Rex. The only shot is to kill the fucker, and yet somehow D’Onofrio’s guys are unable to, even from a chopper above. And what about the regular Jurassic World guys? Are you telling me they aren’t armed just in case? Indominus Rex is big and scary and ferocious, but he’s made of flesh, blood and bone. He could definitely be killed with a few shots to the head or the heart. And yet pretty much the whole film hangs on the inability of anyone to manage this. Ludicrous.

Michael Ritchie‘s Prime Cut (’72) is a moderately interesting, high-grade exploitation film. Women treated as cattle, meat for sale, property. More than a bit offensive by the cultural standards of ’72, grotesque by today’s standards. But this restaurant scene is nice. Apart, that is, from the absurd notion that Sissy Spacek, a young Midwestern prostitute who’s been adopted by Chicago gangster Lee Marvin, would wear a transparent dress without a bra to an upscale restaurant. But the quietness of this scene is nice. There’s a gentle, kindly vibe between the paternal Marvin and the socially uncertain Spacek. And it offers very little dialogue, and the dialogue you do hear is peripheral. Scenes with scant or no dialogue are relatively rare these days. Apart from The Artist, what 21st Century films have used silence in a scene that lasts…oh, 45 seconds or longer?

If you were charmed by the ludicrous, by-the-numbers plotting and the self-lampooning CG flamboyance in San Andreas, you’ll be similarly wowed by the shamelessly rote plotting and wildly illogical action in Jurassic World (Universal, 6.12). Is it going to matter to anyone how phony this movie is? Of course not. People hit the cineplex these days with the same attitude of a family of sheep visiting Magic Mountain…”baaah, wanna go on this ride or that one?” The idea of blending witty banter, character flavoring and various internal seasonings with the expected action, thrills and CG dazzle is completely out the window these days…gone. You don’t care, the corporate zombie production executives over at Universal don’t care and Michael Moses doesn’t care save for his expertise as an ace-level marketing guy…count the cash and fuck it all.

I didn’t hate Jurassic World, but I didn’t believe a single in-story aspect of it. I sat there half-numb and half-amazed at the outrageous chutzpah, and half amused by the self-mocking satirical side. Go ahead, pay to see it, spill the popcorn on the floor, sprawl in your seats…whatever.

Jurassic World is so relentlessly robotic and regimented and untethered to anything except salivating franchise greed…so determined to blow the audience’s socks or flip-flops or Crocs off by delivering the ultimate super-dino CG bullshit ride, the ne plus ultra of grand slam dino-whoring…whoa, I’ve lost my train of thought here, as Sam Elliott said in the opening moments of The Big Lebowski.

I was working on a notion about Jurassic World injecting a kind of cinematic thorazine into my system and…naah, that wasn’t it. Fine, I can’t remember what I was working up to. I know I was shaking my head over and over during Monday night’s screening and going “this is so fucking silly, so stupid….I don’t believe anything in this movie except for Chris Pratt‘s professional determination not to wink or make fun of himself like he did in Guardians of the Galaxy. You can see the wheels turning in Pratt’s brain as he goes through the motions of delivering the standard masculine-stud-hero routine, and you can almost hear him saying ‘these guys aren’t as hip as James Gunn was…the safest way to play it is to just grim it down and hit the marks and forget the jokes.'”

“My first viewing of Love & Mercy put my attention more on John Cusack, whom I’ve never seen so vulnerable and exposed as he is here. So to me, on first pass, Cusack was the one I thought had the better chance at a nomination — not for lead, mind you, but for supporting. But then I saw the movie again. The second time through, Paul Dano’s performance emerged much more. So much so that I think he could be a strong contender not just to be nominated for Best Actor but maybe to win. It’s just a masterwork from Dano who tends at times to go a bit over the top. He doesn’t do that here.

Paul Dano, Brian Wilson, John Cusack.

“Both actors capture Brian Wilson’s gentle spirit and inherent sadness. Both actors show in such a subtle way how Brian Wilson tried so hard to beat back the voices and the demons. So while it’s true both actors make one complete performance, if it were me, I’d go for Dano for lead and Cusack for supporting. I’m saying this for two reasons: (1) the Best Actor race is going to be so crowded by Oscar-nomination time and (2) it will be hard to make sure this film is remembered at all because it’s being seen so early.” — from a 6.8 Sasha Stone piece called “The Dilemma of Paul Dano and John Cusack and the Best Actor Race.”

I really enjoyed and admired Listen To Me Marlon — an intimate, fascinating, full-scope portrait that turns rather sad during the final 20 minutes. Fascinating, never-before-seen footage. I’d read Marlon Brando‘s autobiography (“Songs My Mother Taught Me“) but until I saw Stevan Riley‘s doc last January I’d never heard him really open up. His recollections and reflections almost shook my lifelong suspicion that he’d allowed defeatism and bitterness to consume him over the last 30 years of his life. Directed and edited by Riley, produced by John Battsek. A select theatrical release on 7.29 plus some kind of exclusive Showtime airing.

I was complaining the other day about the vogue-ishness of transgender trending. A few hours later I was decisively told “no” (i.e., that shit will not fly, homey, so button it) by a columnist friend, and then another columnist friend replied that while the current era of transgender acceptance and celebration may seem threatening or confusing to some, it is nonetheless valid. My reply: “It’s not in the least bit threatening or confusing to me. Of course it’s valid but let’s keep in mind that the transgender option is a surgical remedy — a procedure that corrects a mistake that nature and biology occasionally perpetrate — and is therefore not quite the same as being a passionate socialist or a campaigner against fossil fuels or an opponent of NSA data gathering.

“Caitlin Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair has opened up the floodgates. Transgender choices have become a ‘thing’ in the p.c. realm — a cool vogue, a fashion statement, a topical celebration…a pride flag to hoist up the pole and cheer. And to judge by its proliferation in the media these days you’d think that transgender surgery is now suddenly being weighed or mulled over or considered by a semi-significant percentage of the population. Please. It’s an option that is now out there for people who want to take the plunge (and good for that) but calm down. What percentage of gender-ambivalent persons are having the procedure these days? More now than ever before, I’m guessing, but the attention being given to transgender stories and the general raising of consciousness is, I strongly suspect, wildly disproportionate to the statistical realities.

The most persistent argument against my Beware of Brownfellas piece is that (a) the 2007 Bluray version of Goodfellas was artificially brightened and (b) the new Goodfellas Bluray is a truer, more film-like rendering of what the original answer print looked like — i.e., nice and dark and murky. My response is simple. The 2007 Bluray version, which I’m completely happy with, contains a good amount of shade, shadows and darkness where appropriate. I saw Goodfellas three times in theatres in 1990, and I’m telling you that the ’07 Bluray is by no means an artificially brightened thing. It looks gritty, unaffected, like reality. How in the name of God can it improve the experience of watching Goodfellas by darkening and brown-tinting the image? How is it better for the viewer to remove details that were visible on the 2007 Bluray and bury them in shadows?

This morning I asked restoration guru Robert Harris about the why and wherefores, and his response was that the 2007 Bluray is “totally irrelevant.” What matters is the Scorsese-approved answer print that was supplied for the 2015 Bluray transfer. The 2007 Bluray, he says, “didn’t have stable reds, didn’t have proper black levels, didn’t have proper shadow detail.” The guys who mastered it, he says, “were using a more primitive technology.” And yet 2007 was ironically the first year “in which we had the ability to recreate film on Bluray.” It just wasn’t part of the ’07 Goodfellas. So, boiled down, the new Bluray is a welcome thing because it’s giving us a version that really looks like film, or so Harris and his brethren are saying.

Nancy Wells, my dear mom, passed Sunday night. She gave me everything — life, love, love of the arts (she turned me on to Peter Tchaikovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, John Updike, Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin…the list is infinite) and particularly love of theatre. She was the beating heart and balm of our family — 90% of the joy and spunk and laughter came from her, and she basically saved me and my brother and sister from my father’s alcoholic moodiness when we were young. (Not to diminish my dad’s influence too much — he gave me the writerly urge along with the barbed attitude, such as it is. But I would have been dead without my mom’s emotional radiance and buoyancy.) My mom loved show business, plays, films, music. She worked for NBC and BBC in the old days, acted in several plays in New Jersey (including Somserset Vaughn‘s The Constant Wife) and directed two or three plays at the Wilton Playshop. She was partnered in her own real-estate business in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

She had been gradually slipping away for a couple of years (during my last visit in early May she didn’t even open her eyes), and now, at last, her peace is absolute.

The corporates at the Watermark called and left a message about “an update on your mother’s situation” around midnight on Sunday. I called back and left a message…nothing. They called again this morning to say she’d “expired” at 8:55 pm Sunday night. Isn’t that what driver’s licenses and AAA memberships do — expire? I’m presuming that the Watermark, a perfunctorily compassionate if corporate-minded concern, learned from focus testing that the word “died” or “passed” is upsetting for immediate family members. 

I’m flying back to New York this weekend for a gathering of some kind.

I wasn’t much of a visitor but every so often I’d fall by Jan’s, an unpretentious, down-at-the-heels diner on Beverly Blvd. It closed last March. This morning I noticed that it’s been half-destroyed. Something else is being built there. I shed a little tear. I wasn’t that attached and it didn’t have a lot of architectural flavor, but I liked that Jan’s was there. They served very generous fruit bowls. Thank God that Norm’s of La Cienega, which is about two blocks west and two blocks north of where Jan’s used to be, has been saved. On 5.20.15 the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate Norms La Cienega as an Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM). Councilmember Paul Koretz has called Norm’s “a home away from home for many people” and the kind of place that “isn’t just culturally significant, but culturally uniting.”

That’ll be enough in the way of tantalizing come-ons for season #2 of HBO’s True Detective (debuts on 6.21). I’m expecting a DVD screener in the mail before long and then we’ll see what’s what. The only concern is that Fast and Furious franchise helmer Justin Lin, who literally sold his soul to the devil years ago, has directed the first two episodes. Lin has always impressed me as one of the most brazenly shallow, corporate-kowtowing filmmakers working today, but maybe he managed to suppress that side of himself while shooting. Here’s hoping.