I thought reactions to Mad Max: Fury Road were embargoed until next Tuesday. When I asked last night about a rave tweet from York University’s Rob Trench, he said “no embargo, at least at the Toronto screening I was at tonight.” He meant, I presume, that no embargo was announced at last night’s screening. The use of the word “masterpiece” is tempered, of course, by the fact that Trench is fairly young, but still…

Yesterday the first image from Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, which recently wrapped and will presumably open at year’s end via Paramount, was posted by Entertainment Weekly. The film is based on Shūsaku Endō‘s 1966 novel, which is set in 17th Century Japan and concerns the religious persecution of a Jesuit missionary (Andrew Garfield). Pic costars Liam Neeson, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano and Ciaran Hinds. Per usual custom pic has presumably been assembled as Scorsese has shot over the last few months. He now has the entire summer and early fall to fine-tune, CG-finesse, lay on the score and whatnot. It shouldn’t be a huge deal to have it ready by October or November.

Andrew Garfield, Shin’ya Tsukamoto in Martin Scorsese’s Silence.

Andrew Garfield, Martin Scorsese during Taiwan press conference to announce end of filming of Silence. Note: The scraggly beard-growth thing doesn’t work when you’re Scorsese’s age — you have to either be clean-shaven or do a full smoothie beard.

At the invitation of Disney publicist Howard Green I had a nice chat with Ray Bradbury on the Disney lot in…now I can’t remember. It was either during a visit to Los Angeles in late ’81 or after I’d moved to L.A. in the spring of ’83. The motive was to promote Something Wicked This Way Comes, for which Bradbury had written the screenplay, adapting it from his same-titled 1962 novel. We talked about the film a bit but we mainly just freestyled all over the place. I remember feeling irritated by Bradbury’s insistence that writing was a total joy, and that anyone who didn’t feel that joy shouldn’t write. Well, writing had been murder for me since I started writing reviews and whatnot in the late ’70s. Every piece I wrote took it out of me big-time so I really didn’t like hearing how fucking wonderful it was to put words to paper. Bradbury was right, of course, but I only started to feel happy about writing about 15 years ago, maybe a bit more. Before that it was like digging ditches.

Almost a year ago The Hollywood Reporter‘s Megan Lehmann reviewed Josh Lawson‘s The Little Death (the English translation of “la petite mort,” a French euphemism for orgasm) somewhat favorably. The film is basically a collection of vignettes about odd sexual behavior between couples, but the only one that Lehmann found truly affecting happens “toward the end of the film’s fairly brisk running time. Newcomer Erin James plays Monica, a partially deaf switchboard operator at a video relay service who acts as a go-between connecting deaf-mute Sam (TJ Power) to a phone sex line. The two actors have fairytale chemistry, making this particular segment both hilarious and swooningly romantic.” It sounds worth the rental (or ticket price) for this alone. Magnolia opens it on 6.26.

Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, the action cyborg blam-blammers who gave us the amusingly ridiculous John Wick, are almost contractually locked to deliver John Wick 2 to Lionsgate. This time the slaughter commences when Keanu Reeves‘ pet hamster is eaten by a pit bull that belongs to a totally psychotic, bug-eyed, mouth-drooling Ukranian hipster drug dealer who lifts weights and wears a Hitler youth cut and a ten-day stubble and listens to ’70s-era vinyl and has greenish-yellow teeth with shiny metal fillings. But before Keanu can waste this miserable fuck he has to take out between 180 and 200 bodyguard goons, some of whom are Lithuanian, some Georgian, some Romanian but all of them brawny and studly with black suits and Hitler youth cuts and size 14 feet.

It was reported last January that Stahelski and Leith will also co-direct Cowboy Ninja Viking Samurai Street Fighter Fucknose Bare-Knuckled Stud With a Nine-Inch Wang, a Chris Pratt action-fantasy flick for Universal. I wrote in the same story that that Leitch and Stahelski “are robo-directors, and that they (along with Zack Snyder and all the other zombies in good standing) represent everything about the action-fantasy-superhero franchise business that is rancid, puerile and devoid of a soul. I’ve also noted that Stahelski is the last name of an electrician, a surfer, a pool-maintenance guy, a hot-dog chef at Pinks, a garbage man or a guy whose grandfather worked in the same New Orleans factory as Stanley Kowalski.”

The very first time I’ve ever heard those familiar John Williams themes coming out of a wooden, 1930s-era radio. It’ll probably turn out to be the last time. The radio is located at Dun-Well Doughnuts on Montrose near Bushwick. The waitress behind the counter spoke with the usual mincing, sexy-baby, beep-uh-duh-beep-beep vocal fry. When she asked if I wanted soy or almond milk (as they have no dairy), it sounded like “deebeedeesoyahahmand?” Uhm…are you asking if I want regular or low-fat milk? “M’sayingweeyonlyhavesoyahmand.” Soy or…? “Soyahamand.” Which is the least problematic? “Soy.”

“These people, their lives…they’re in a galaxy far, far away…it’s a journey that people can relate to” — 23 year-old Daisy Ridley (i.e., Rey) offering a generic, somewhat worrisome thought about Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens in the Vanity Fair video piece. What I find worrisome is a sense of what Ridley may (I say “may”) be implying when she says “people.” Millenials and fanboys, I fear she means. A chill just went down my backbone. I sincerely hope my suspicions are neurotic rather than intuitive. I really want Awakens to work in a classical way.

I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that that the converted, fluttery-voiced devotionals (i.e., the children of Harry Knowles) mean nothing — they’ll be there no matter what. This movie has to knock my demanding, somewhat grumpy socks off…that’s what’ll count at the end of the day. I will be one of the first canaries to go down into the Force Awakens coal mine, and if I die, the movie dies with me in a sense.

About five months ago the Stars Wars 7: The Force Awakens actor/characters were identified via Topp-style trading cards provided to Entertainment Weekly by J.J. Abrams and Co., and one of them was Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, which I described as “the black-cloaked bad guy in the snow-covered forest with the light saber“…duhh. In yesterday’s ign.com piece about the Annie Leibovitz Vanity Fair photo shoot on the set of the film, Lucy O’Brien somewhat breathlessly notes that the video essay [below] suggests that (a) Driver “is indeed playing antagonist Kylo Ren” and (b) “very little is known about his character beyond the lightsaber he carries and his attire, as spotted in the Force Awakens‘ first teaser trailer.” HE to O’Brien: How much do you need to know at this stage? When you see a tall, big-shouldered guy with severe features dressed in black, what does that suggest to you? Abrams quote from VF piece: “I have a thought about putting Jar Jar Binks’ bones in the desert there. I’m serious! Only three people will notice, but they’ll love it.”

A 21st Century D.C. Comics ragtag bullshit 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. Will Smith (as Floyd Lawton/Deadshot) is all but unnoticeable for his bald head and beard and not being well lighted. The problem for me is Joel Kinnaman (Robocop, Run All Night, Child 44), who lacks natural charisma or frowns too much or something. Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevingne, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Adam Beach, Jay Hernandez, Karen Fukuhara, Scott Eastwood, et. al. But not for another 15 months. Principal began on 4.13 in Toronto; Warner Bros. pic opens on 8.5.16.

“I’ll always be a devout fan of Rodney Ascher‘s Room 237 because it’s a treasure chest of endless imaginative theorizing about Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining. I loved the fruit-loop quality. But his latest, a documentary about sleep paralysis called The Nightmare, is almost completely devoid of imaginative riffing of any kind. The film is entirely about descriptions of creepy, real-deal encounters with “shadow men” — Freddy Krueger-like spooks who have terrorized several real-deal folks in their bedrooms (always in the wee hours) and caused them to freeze and be unable to speak and in some cases have trouble breathing. It just goes on and on like this for 90 minutes…”I was half-sleeping and then I felt something and the boogie man was behind me,” etc.

A few weeks ago I wrote that any chance of a restored, full-length version of Orson Welles‘ never-completed The Other Side of The Wind, shot in fits and starts from the early to mid ’70s, being assembled and screened in time for Welles’ 100th anniversary was out the window, and that it might be viewable later this year at best. Now even that scenario sounds doubtful. During last night’s Indiana University panel discussion about Welles’ legacy, explanations were offered about why the work hasn’t even begun. On 4.30 Wellesnet.com’s Ray Kelly reported that producer Jens Koethner Kaul had stated that Wind producers “have been stymied by distributors unwilling to finance the project without first seeing edited footage. Producers Filip Jan Rymsza, Frank Marshall and Jens Koethner Kaul need money to edit the negative, which has been stored in a Paris vault. But those with the money want to first see edited footage before committing funds.”

In short the same cash-starved uncertainty that has bogged down The Other Side of the Wind for decades is still alive and well. The project has become a pipe dream, and could almost be described in farcical terms. What kind of money do the editors need? Enough to cover rent, food, toiletries, fresh underwear and a handful of Paris metro tickets? Or do they “need money” in the way that Humphrey Bogart‘s Billy Dannreuther needed it? (In Beat The Devil he noted that “without money I become dull and listless and have trouble with my complexion.”) With Welles’ centennial birthday happening on Wednesday, 5.6, the Other Side balloon is all but deflated.

Hollywood Elsewhere to Steven Spielberg: You cared enough about Welles’ legacy to buy the Rosebud sled. Why not be a secret godfather and help out some? If you do the right thing HE pledges to stop all Spielberg bashing for a period of…uhm, six months?

The bottom line is that would-be distributors want assurance that the film has at least some commercial value. Will anyone other than serious Welles loyalists want to pay to see it? It’s a fair question.