All through season #1 of The Leftovers Justin Theroux was rocking a ten-day beard, which is usually an indication of hip existential lethargy or in some cases serious depression. In the second season he’s clean-shaven. The indication is that his character, a small-town cop named Kevin Garvey, feels less gloomy about the big cataclysmic disappearance. That or Theroux (who married Jennifer Aniston last night) is declaring that the beard-stubble hipster thing is definitely over. (Ten months after The Spectator‘s Harry Mount said the same thing. Was Theroux’s despairing beardo look in season #1 the final death blow?) Season #2 kicks off on 10.4.15; a season #1 Bluray package will pop two days later.

The Leftovers “is about cosmic malevolence and the utter absence of wonder,” I wrote last August. “A cosmic event of extraordinary significance has occured three years before the series begins, and in the wake of the disappearance of 2% of the world’s population, it seem as if everyone in The Leftovers is saying ‘Wow, we didn’t get chosen…that’s fucked up…this feels bad…I guess we’re all spiritually deficient on some level…shit.’

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“The vacation of a famous rock star and a filmmaker is disrupted by the unexpected visit of an old friend and his daughter”…okay. And then somebody does something they shouldn’t…right? There is ample evidence that Luca Guadaginino‘s A Bigger Splash exists as a film, but I’m not sensing any organic strands, aromas, tastings. Where’s the teaser? Why is this remake of La Piscine (which I tried to watch on Amazon Prime a few months ago only to lose interest) using the title of a late ’60s David Hockney painting? Answer: Because they both use images of swimming pools but I’m not getting any kind of sparkling blue chlorine vibe from A Bigger Splash — I’m getting an exotic Mediterranean island vibe with the aroma of the sea and beach tar and fine red wine. Splash will be seen at the Venice Film Festival and will probably, I’m guessing, turn up in Toronto (and perhaps even Telluride?). The IMDB says it’ll open in England sometime in October but what about stateside? Fox Searchight acquired it last February but their theatrical plans seem enveloped by a kind of fog bank or misty haze. I’m sensing a 2016 winter-spring opening. You could explain it 100 ways from Sunday and A Bigger Splash would never mean anything to Joe Popcorn because it seems to be about lah-lah elitists succumbing to base urges (or something like that). The costars are Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts and Ralph Fiennes.

Matthias Schoenaerts, Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Ralph Fiennes in A Bigger Splash — a movie that will play in Venice in less than four weeks but which is shrouded in a kind of haze. It seems to be hiding something on some level or at least has yet to define itself in a way that adds up to some kind of recognizable psychology or geography or odor…something that hints at a certain molecular constitution.

One, with journos of consequence leaving town for Venice, Telluride and Toronto a little more than three weeks hence, I’m presuming Universal will soon be press-screening Baltasar Kormakur‘s Everest, which will open the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, 9.2. Two, directors are always telling actors to scream or bellow in pain whenever something violent or traumatic happens (gunshots, avalanches) but I don’t believe this — people who’ve been hurt or seriously threatened instantly devote their energy to surviving their ordeal, and if they make any kind of sound it’s usually along the lines of a mumbled “uh-oh.” And three, will Everest convey the basic mistake of the 1996 Everest climbing disaster, which is that reports of an oncoming blizzard were known but ignored by those who didn’t want to stop?

“The reason Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus made almost nothing but crap is that they loved the action and the chutzpah in their veins (winning awards, making money, signing big names, the crackling excitement of ‘being there’), but they never really got it. Their affection for movies was enthusiastic but primitive. An under-educated rug-merchant mentality could never really fit into a business that is also, at heart, a kind of religion. The best filmmakers have always operated on a devotional Catholic principle. I believe that Menahem and Yoram were never devoted enough to the faith and traditions of great, soul-stirring cinema. They never really respected the idea of wearing cinematic monk robes.” — from HE’s 8.8.14 obit for Mr. Golan.

Not that this means squat, but Anna Peele’s Esquire profile of Miles Teller mentions that (a) he’s “kind of a dick” and (b) during a luncheon interview Teller was wearing “a pool-blue V-neck that shows off the Roman-numeral tattoo on his arm,” which sounds like what he was wearing when he and I had our “don’t be a pervert, man” encounter last October. (I described it as “a powder-blue shirt of some kind.”) I don’t know if the woman in the black-and-white Esquire photos is Teller’s girlfriend Keleigh Sperry, but Keleigh was the one I was subtly eyeballing. (Not subtly enough, I mean.) Peele describes her as “a twenty-two-year-old model/aspiring swimsuit designer/professional girlfriend who thinks Teller is attractive enough to have permanently monogrammed her perfect ass with his initials.” Oh, and by the way? Josh Trank‘s Fantastic Four, the reason why Teller’s puss is on the cover in the first place, is currently rocking a 17% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Don’t make shitty movies, man.

Sony Pictures Classics has announced an acquisition of worldwide rights to Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead, a Miles Davis biopic that will close the New York Film Festival on Sunday, 10.11. It may or may not be significant that the release doesn’t say when SPC will release the film, which obviously indicates that they may be looking at ’16 rather than the 2015 award season. If (and I say “if”) a 2015 release is off the table, that tells you something right there. I also went “uh-oh” when I came across a statement from Cheadle that says the film was made “with the family’s blessing.” I’ve always believed that when it comes to telling stories of famous dead guys who lived on the razor’s edge, it’s better if your film unsettles or even agitates the family. The stamp of family approval (Erin and Cheryl Davis, the late trumpeter’s son and daughter, are executive producers) doesn’t always mean the film has been compromised or blanded down in some way, but it often does. Boilerplate: “[Pic] tells the story of a few lost days in the life of Davis (Cheadle), the virtuoso, fighter and genius, as he bursts out of his silent period, conspires with a Rolling Stone writer (McGregor) to steal back his music, and relives the years he had with his great love, Frances Taylor (Corinealdi).”

I couldn’t invest in Jeremy Irvine‘s lead performance in War Horse because of the giant-squid-like Spielberg factor, but I’m sensing he might be okay as a young gay kid in Roland Emmerich‘s Stonewall (Roadside, 9.25) I’m prepared to stow the cynicism and engage with this film on a serious basis. It’s Emmerich’s third U.S.-produced historical drama (the first two being The Patriot and Anonymous) but the first set in the 20th Century and the first in which Emmerich has a certain investment, being gay and old enough to remember. (He was 14 when the Stonewall riots occured.) Yes, it’s conceivable that Stonewall might seem too Hollywoodish to some but Emmerich is a pro who knows what goes. Plus the script is by respected playwright and West Wing writer Jon Robin Baitz. Costarring Joey King, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Caleb Landry Jones, Ron Perlman, Jonny Beauchamp, Matt Craven, David Cubitt, Atticus Dean Mitchell, Joanne Vannicola, Mark Camacho. Roadside needs to start screening soon with everyone out of town for Venice, Telluride and Toronto less than four weeks hence.

I’d been presuming all along that this or that aspect of Jonathan Demme‘s Ricki and the Flash (TriStar, 8.7) isn’t quite up to snuff. The release date spoke volumes. There’s nothing wrong with TriStar looking to attract an over-30 female audience, but I wrote last February that if Ricki was serious rock ‘n’ roll it would open in September or October. (It may not be fair but I’ll never fully divest myself of a notion that August is mainly for films with a soft or not-quite quality.) And then last week a critic friend told me it was “thin.”

So I attended last Monday night’s screening with low expectations, but I didn’t have that bad of a time. Yes, it’s “thin” but also an intelligent, reasonably flavorable, well-acted domestic family drama for a little more than an hour. Agreeably sharp Diablo Cody dialogue, a few interesting detours and details. Plus the unstoppable, exotically-coiffed Meryl Streep belting out eight or nine tunes with her L.A. bar band, which consists of Rick Springfield on lead guitar, a cool keyboard guy and a pair of old denim dogs on bass and drums. (Streep also manages to fake expertise at guitar-playing, which she learned for the film.) It doesn’t really add up or strum deep chords or slam any long balls, but it’s more or less okay. Not as pushy or nervy as Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, for sure, but I found myself settling for what it had.

The bottom line (and you have to roll with this) is that Ricki and the Flash isn’t a real-deal movie in that it bails on the basic drama — a mildly gloomy tale about a 60ish, barely-hanging-on rock band performer (Streep) facing her failures as an absentee parent when she returns to an Indiana homestead to help a daughter (Mamie Gummer) in crisis — around the 65 or 70-minute mark, or when Ricki returns to Los Angeles after being treated as a semi-pariah by her two sons (the younger of whom is gay and hugely resentful) and her husband’s second wife (Audra McDonald).

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Last Friday (7.30) in a piece called “Dressed To Lose Weight, Turn Greenish-Yellow,” I voiced surprise that screen captures of Criterion’s new Dressed To Kill Bluray (due on 8.18) indicated the film has been horizontally compressed — faces thinner, circles changed to ovals, etc. A review by DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze provided the screen captures and observed that the Criterion Bluray “seems vertically stretched,” which makes “the faces thinner and taller…the Bluray is also more faded-looking and has a yellow/green tinge to it.” Some HE commenters argued that the distortion was in my head or that I was misunderstanding anamorphic photography or jumping the gun by saying it looked wrong.

Well, today Criterion announced that the Dressed To Kill Bluray is indeed wrong, and for a reason that boggles the mind and makes no sense at all — i.e., director Brian DePalma had asked for the geometry of the scan to be corrected — not to be widened or fattened, as some commenters had surmised, but to normalize the image — and yet “unfortunately that change was never carried over in the final product, and the resulting discs are wrong.” Understand that this is a direct quote from the Criterion website.

Let’s re-read it: a change requested by DePalma “was never carried over in the final product, and the resulting discs are wrong.” Because…what, the guy in charge of implementing DePalma’s wishes was drunk? Because he was grappling at the time with a self-destructive streak? Because he was worried about his kid or some outside-the-workplace concern and forgot to do his job? Does this make any sense to anyone?

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Hollywood Elsewhere approves of Kris Tapley‘s hiring by Variety as its new co-awards editor. Kris starts on August 24th, and his first live swagger-around will happen at the Telluride Film Festival (9.4 through 9.7). This doesn’t mean Kris will be commuting to the Variety office and working from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm every day. It means that after being cast aside by Hitfix, In Contention is now revitalized under the Variety banner. It means Kris won’t have to sell ads. It means that Variety‘s awards editor Tim Gray probably feels at least a little bit unhappy as Kris is now Variety‘s new hot shot, his experience and industry relationships speaking for themselves and probably allowing for a little polite jostling as the season evolves.

What this also means is that Penske Media’s Jay Penske now owns In Contention, Deadline and Tom O’Neil‘s Gold Derby. That leaves two and only two gold-star, battle-scarred, Los Angeles-based indie columnists with real voices — Hollywood Elsewhere and Sasha Stone‘s Awards Daily. No brag, just fact: Sasha and I are the last of the Charley Varricks who dispense advocacy and passion with a personal stamp, and in a manner of speaking we’re worth just as much as all the sage analyzers and, as Delbert Grady once said, perhaps a bit more.

I’m mainly referring to five…okay, make it six mild-mannered pulse-takers and trade seers who specialize in reading tea leaves, putting their fingers to the wind and explaining why mainstream Academy farts like or don’t like this or that film or performance — TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, the L.A. Times‘ Glenn Whipp and Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson. Grantland‘s Mark Harris does this kind of thing also, of course, but he tends to post infrequently…what, every three or four weeks once the season begins? And the N.Y. Times‘ Cara Buckley, of course. And you can’t forget the constant poll-taking and analysis by O’Neil’s Gold Derby.

Also swaggering around and doing his vaguely bored know-it-all routine and his DP30 interviews and tabulating Gurus of Gold opinions, of course, is Movie City News‘ honcho David Poland.

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