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.

I’ve been hearing all along that despite a feeling of occasional CG-ishness in some of the shots in George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road, the film is very much a tour de force of practical effects. “We had to do it old-school,” said Miller during a post-screening q & a in Los Angeles on 4.29 (as quoted by Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan). “This is not a CG movie…we don’t defy the laws of physics.” So why does some of the trailer footage seem a bit hard-drivey? Presumably because of the intensity of the color scheme, which Buchanan describes as “eye-popping” with “the teal of the desert sky and the orange of the explosions cranked up to hypersaturated heights.” Miller said that “one thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to desaturate postapocalyptic movies. It can get really tiring watching this dull, desaturated color.” Thank you!

If this was set along the Oregon coast and starred Keanu Reeves, Robin Wright and Ethan Hawke and being released by Lionsgate, I’d be skeptical if not cynical. But being from Norway and particularly from director Roar Uthaug (Escape, Cold Prey) tells me it might be okay. As long as it’s not American, there’s a chance. Boilerplate: “The film draws from a real-life scientific prediction that an 80-year-old natural catastrophe — in which a large mountain slide generated a massive tidal wave in Norway — will occur again, likely sooner than later.” Opening in Norway on 8.28 but no U.S. release date as we speak.

Visited my ailing, sleepy mom earlier today at her facility (The Watermark at East Hill) in Southbury, Connecticut. No chat, no words, her eyes closed. Just hugs, neck rubs, hand holdings. Then I thought, “I know…Sinatra!” I gently covered her ears with my headphones, turned the volume down a bit and played the Nice ‘n’ Easy album. At first she didn’t seem to respond but then I noticed her left foot tapping to the rhythm — a moment. Hers, I mean. Now I’m in Wilton and visiting with an old friend, cartoonist-musician Chance Browne, and his wife Debbie in their homey red farmhouse on Indian Hill Road. A Bedlington terrier puppy, three cats, a talking parrot and a rabbit. Listening to Vin Scelsa‘s last day on the air. Not a big filing day.

I was initially unhappy with Avengers: Age of Ultron, which I saw today in 3D (but not in IMAX) at Loews 34th Street. A more accurate term would be “convulsed by and twitching with hate.” Letmeouttahere, letmeouttahere, letmeouttahere. On top of which two 20something fanboys were sitting behind me and chortling and yaw-hawing at every in-joke and smart-ass riposte. And two Asian toddler kids sitting to my left (with their parents, of course) started making a racket about a half-hour in, and yet I didn’t care because their whining and chattering at least took my mind off the film. I was thinking I might have to duck out and see this thing in installments, like I have with Furious 7. That or I’d have to be tied down with eyelid clamps (like Alex in A Clockwork Orange) to make it through to the end.

But then I chuckled at a couple of bitterly sarcastic lines spoken by Ultron (voiced by James Spader). And I found myself half-enjoying a thrash-down between Ironman (Robert Downey) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). And I faintly chuckled at Ultron’s misanthropic justification for wanting to rid the earth of humans (i.e., because they’re no damn good). And I didn’t half-mind the romantic current between the Hulk and Scarlett Johansson‘s Black Widow. And then bit by bit I found myself making actual sense of this and that portion of the plot. I was far from fully engaged, much less enthralled, with Ultron, and like everyone else I found it awfully labrynthian and a little too cast-heavy but I found myself starting to half-tolerate it. I was saying to myself “this is pretty good on a scene by scene basis but it’s a little oppressive as a whole.” I was also muttering during the second half that “this isn’t great but it isn’t awful.”

Publicists repping Gil Kenan’s Poltergeist (20th Century Fox, 5.22) are declining to screen it for critics in at least one major Northeastern city.  They could always change  their minds but even this tentative decision (a) indicates the usual-usual and (b) offers a slight hint as to how good it is.  “Looks like Fox is crying ‘uncle’ by not screening this,” a friend writes.  “First casualty of the summer movie season.”  Not to mention another gravy stain on the rep of producer Sam Raimi.

“Even those who don’t count themselves among the transgender-prostitute-movie-shot-on-an-iPhone demographic will want to try Tangerine, an exuberantly raw and up-close portrait of one of Los Angeles’ more distinctive sex-trade subcultures. Centered around two sharply drawn transgender women (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor) who find the resilience of their friendship tested and affirmed over the course of one busy Christmas Eve, writer-director Sean Baker’s sun-scorched, street-level snapshot is a work of rueful, matter-of-fact insight and unapologetically wild humor that draws a motley collection of funny, sad and desperate individuals into its protagonists’ orbit. The result is a big-hearted, stripped-down yet technically innovative feature obviously destined for a limited audience, but it should be enthusiastically embraced on and beyond the LGBT fest circuit.” — from Justin Chang’s Variety review, 1.24.15. Costarring James Ransone (HBO’s The Wire). Tangerine opens theatrically and otherwise on 7.10.

“The experience of watching Avengers: Age of Ultron — which is not just long but, in Iron Man’s words, ‘Eugene O’Neill long’ — runs as follows. First, you try to understand what the hell is going on. Then you slowly realize that you will never understand what is going on. And, last, you wind up with the distinct impression that, if there was anything to understand, it wasn’t worth the sweat. I gave up around the time that we were presented with something called the Mind Stone, yet another cosmic thingamajig, and apparently one of six ‘infinity stones,’ which sound like the kind of stuff that Bilbo Baggins would hawk on QVC.

“All of this is a bitter disappointment, not least because the movie was written and directed by Joss Whedon. He is a smart and witty operator, as was evident to anyone who saw Much Ado About Nothing, the deft little jeu d’esprit that he knocked off in between this dose of Avenging and the last. Now and then, in Age of Ultron, amid the pap about ‘molecular functionality,’ we get glimpses of what Whedon can do, as in the fine scene where Thor’s comrades attempt, in turn, to lift his mighty hammer.