“But Tony, with his impulsiveness and selfishness…he’s locked up in that fucking head of his.” — Junior Soprano (Dominic Chianese) in “The Knight in White Satin Armor,” the 25th Sopranos episode and twelfth of season #2, originally aired on 4.2.00.

When I first heard this line I laughed, and then I asked myself to what extent it applies to Scott Walker or Scott Foundas or myself or George Clooney or Alejandro G. Inarritu or whomever.

I like to think of myself as a free man in Paris who’s just dropped a tab of mescaline, but the unfortunate truth is that I’m probably “locked up” as much as Tony Soprano or anyone else ever was. It doesn’t feel good to admit this, but it’s probably true.

I know that I’m theoretically open to the concept of an emotional and psychological jailbreak, and that I live for that possibility on a daily basis. I could name a lot of journalists in my circle who are totally locked up (or more precisely locked down) but what would that accomplish?

I know that the line struck me as hilarious when I first heard it, and I’m chuckling at it right now.

Until today I had never seen this photo of Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe between takes of Some Like It Hot. Notice how Curtis is leaning forward slightly and how she’s leaning back and to the left. I love Curtis’s brand new brown-and-white saddle shoes. I could do with a pair of my own.

This latest Studio Canal Third Man Bluray is derived from the 4K restoration that screened at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. I’m mildly curious to see it, but I felt so horribly burned by that grainstormed Criterion Bluray of The Third Man (i.e., the one that popped in February 2009) that it’s entirely possible that I’ll never buy a disc of this film again, especially with that bothersome zither score. Maybe I’ll watch an HD version via Amazon streaming.

This was taken for a May 1974 People magazine profile. To me the look on Bodganovich’s face is kind of priceless because it suggests an attitude or mindset that often or most easily manifests when you’re young and flush and things are going your way, and especially when your girlfriend is hot and curvy and the perfect partner for the moment. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. It all falls away.

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Ridley Scott‘s The Martian looks and sounds great, but the idea of being saved by friends willing to risk their lives as well as destroy their careers is, of course, at odds with human nature. You know what isn’t at odds with human nature? Scott’s The Counselor. Damon is toast in the way that Lee Marvin was toast when John Vernon shot him twice in that Alcatraz cell in Point Blank — everything that follows is a dream. The film’s sentimental scheme, initially popularized by Andy Weir’s 2011 novel, is for little boys and girls who want desperately to believe in liberty, equality and fraternity. If you want a more realistic capturing of the way things unfortunately tend to go in tough situations of this type, watch Mikhail Kalatozov‘s The Red Tent (’69).

“Oh, but anyway, Toto, we’re home…home! And this is my room and you’re all here and I’m not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And…oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!”

That aside I’m sure I’ll have a great time at The Martian when I see it in Toronto. I’ll invest in the illusions and the storytelling expertise and the general technology “sell” but I won’t believe the story. But no biggie. I can unhook my brain activity as well as the next guy.

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The trailer for Roberts Eggers and A24’s The Witch promises a 2016 release (I’m guessing in either January, February or March) and a 1.24.15 Jeff Sneider/Wrap story stated that the film would be viewable on DirectTV 30 days prior to theatrical. The Witch had its big debut at Sundance ’15, out of which Eggers won a U.S. Dramatic Competition directing award. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy wrote that the film is about refined filmmaking chops first and conventional horror thrills second, but that sounds fine to me.

“A genuine curiosity to bubble up from the contemporary American independent film scene, The Witch aims to extract modern horror thrills from a story set in a meticulously re-created Puritan New England of nearly 400 years ago. In the event, the dedication exerted to render the mores, beliefs, speech patterns and way of life among radical Calvinists of the period proves more compelling than does the witchcraft-saturated story, which is pretty short on scares or surprises.

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I’ve never felt any kinship with Hillary Clinton, but a press-conference remark that she shared yesterday in Las Vegas not only made me laugh — it almost made me want to hug her. From The Hill‘s Ben Kamisar: “Asked if her email server, which has been turned over to the Department of Justice, had been wiped clean, Clinton initially shrugged and later joked, ‘Like with a cloth or something? I don’t know how it works digitally at all.'”

Clinton may have had dark Machiavellian reasons for deleting all those emails, but I suspect that most of the tale is contained within that “cloth” quote. Like many boomer and GenX women I’ve known, Clinton is just a technical klutz. That’s it. Coupled with her natural tendency towards secrecy and paranoid thinking about the people who are out to get her, that’s probably the whole thing. If she was more knowledgable about email accounts and had to do it all over again, she’d almost certainly not repeat this mistake. But she made it and now she’s stuck in it.

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Neflix’s Narcos is a ten-episode series (popping on 8.28) about the rise, reign and fall of the late Columbian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. I believe in the series because it’s been directed by HE’s own Jose Padilha (Elite Squad, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within), and because Escobar is played by the charismatic star of the two Elite Squad films, Wagner Moura. And because Miss Bala star Stephanie Sigman has a significant sopporting role. These are my touchstones.

Who previews a 50-minute portion of a longish film slated to screen at a major film festival in three weeks time? You preview 25 or 30 minutes’ worth, no? For what it’s worth I’ve heard the same admiring remarks, but I’d feel better if the praise wasn’t coming from semi-vested parties or from Collider‘s Haleigh Foutch, whom I presume is inclined to swoon for anything of a galactic or fantastical nature sight unseen. I just want to hear from a cranky nihilist who doesn’t give a shit about anybody or anything — if a person like this says The Martian is top-tier, then I’ll believe it. I’m happy for Scott if the news is true.

Six days ago I posted bad information in a short piece about Anton Corbijn‘s Life, the James Dean movie. The information came from Life‘s Wikipedia page as well as (according to a Wiki link) an Indiewire article. A Wikipage statement reads that “Cinedigm originally acquired the distribution rights of the film in United States but later the deal fell off and Cinetic Media came on board as US distributor and will release the film in Fall 2015.” I’m informed by a Cinedigm spokesperson that this is incorrect, and that “Cinedigm is releasing the film this fall and will announce a specific date later this week.”

This somewhat tense but frank conversation between Hillary Clinton and three Black Lives Matter activists happened a week ago, but it only just popped yesterday. This is one of the very few Hillary video clips that I’ve found appealing. She’s naturally brittle and she’ll never be a charmer, but Hillary at least shows steel here. She doesn’t kowtow. “You’re not going to change every heart,” she said to the guy. “You’re not. But at the end of the day, we could do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential.”

The International Alliance of Stalinists Against Body Shaming have made it illegal or at the very least politically unwise to say anything even faintly critical about anyone’s anatomy. But as this publicity shot from Lady Godiva of Coventry suggests, it’s…let’s change that to it was generally unwise for actors of either gender in glamour shots to allow the soles of their feet to be photographed. Look at any coffee-table book of old-school Hollywood glamour photography and you’ll notice that feet were rarely captured from any angle, and that soles — especially when they were somewhat crinkled or lumpy — were certainly a must to avoid. Not every aspect of the body is drop-dead glorious. I’m sorry but this was my first thought when I saw this photo of Twitter this morning. Maureen O’Hara, born in 1920, is still with us. Kirk Douglas, born in December 1916, has her beat by three and a half years.

Sasha Stone‘s theory about actors or actresses winning two acting Oscars is that the second performance has to be stronger or more affecting than the first. A better written role, more forcefully delivered — so knock-down and reach-in that it can’t be denied. Jodie Foster‘s performance as a working-class rape victim in The Accused was riveting stuff, but Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs was in another league altogether — a sympathetic, vulnerable woman in a tough job, dealing with a highly traumatic case — and so she won again. Sally Field‘s two Oscars (Norma Rae, Places in the Heart) came from playing women grappling under difficult economic conditions, but her performance in Places arguably had a bit more bone-weary heartache and solemnity.

You could argue the same thing about Jane Fonda‘s military-wife role in Coming Home vs. her guarded prostitute performance in Klute. Was Tom Hanks‘ simply-phrased Forrest Gump guy more award-worthy than his AIDS-afflicted attorney in Philadelphia? Perhaps not but Gump was more zeitgeisty and groundswelly — a lot of impressionable people fell in love with that film. No one believes that Katharine Hepburn‘s Oscar-winning performance for her tough grandma in On Golden Pond was better than her blazing Lion in Winter performance — I think it was mostly an end-of-career gesture, a gold-watch Oscar.

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If a movie is going to Telluride it’s presumed to have a certain award-season schwing, and if not that at least a sense of strong character — a certain accomplished, sift-through quality that will be fodder for intense, late-night conversations with Larry Gross at the Sheridan bar. And if a film bypasses Telluride for Toronto it means…well, first and foremost that’s not necessarily a “problem.” A Toronto opening is fine. But to some of us it hints or indicates that the producers and/or distributors are perhaps a tad more interested in hoopla and fanfare and perhaps a bit less interested in being closely examined and burrowed into, and in that pre-Toronto conversation possibly affecting the Toronto reception.

Sandra Bullock as ‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine, a political consultant hired by an unpopular Bolivian president (Joaquim de Almeida’s Pedro Gallo) to help him win an election.

There’s nothing “wrong” with Toronto or anyone deciding to open there first. A Toronto debut can be the start of something very big. Silver Linings Playbook bypassed Telluride and look what happened there. Toronto can mean anything. You can find God in Toronto just as readily as you might find Him/Her in the Colorado mountains. I don’t know anything. I’m just typing away.

But in my mind there’s a certain modified droop effect, a certain “oh, really?” quality when a film bypasses Telluride. It means the producers are a tad more interested in the roar of the crowd than in the more particular, pond-ripple enthusiasms of an elite but impassioned fraternity.

I therefore suspect that it probably “means something” that two Sony Pictures Classics films — Marc Abraham‘s I Saw The Light, the Hank Williams biopic costarring Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen, and James Vanderbilt‘s Truth, the truth-based politics and journalism drama with Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford — were announced this morning as Toronto Film Festival selections. Our Brand Is Crisis, a dryly comedic, upmarket Warner Bros. release from director David Gordon Green and producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov and starring Sandra Bullock, Scoot McNairy and Billy Bob Thornton, was also announced as a Toronto debut, and that probably means…let’s not go there. I know nothing.

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So this Owen Wilson dialogue-refrain trailer is a kind of backhanded tribute to the star of No Escape, a butterscotch-dad-protects-family-from-Asian-chaos exploitation flick? Pic finally opens on 8.26 after six months of trailers. Observation #1: All movie stars play the same character (i.e., themselves) and therefore say similar things and behave in similar ways in film after film. That’s why they’re stars…people like their dependability. Observation #2: Wilson can play leading men but he’s not a natural at it — he is best when playing clever, witty, conspiratorial best friends who like to riff about all kinds of things but mostly relationships with women. Observation #3: I don’t like films about average American families having to deal with scary predatory people in a foreign country. The underlying message is ‘you don’t want to venture outside the safety of your American shopping-mall lifestyle…you’re just asking for trouble if you go overseas and particularly to unstable Asian or third-world countries…stay home, go to the mall, enjoy a backyard barbecue or watch a movie from the safety of your basement den.'”