Jon Favreau‘s Chef (Open Road, 5.9) “is a lot of things — it’s fitting that a road trip movie should be so all over the map — but what it is, most of all, is a celebration of tasty food and the people who make it, and I guess I can get behind that.” — Badass Digest SXSW review by Meredith Borders. I still say there’s a vague element of discomfort in watching a movie about an overweight chef. It’s not a huge stopper. I can get past it. I’m cool. But it is something to get past. If Robert Downey, Jr. had the lead role instead of a cameo, Chef would be a whole different kettle of fish.

Remember the relatively modest career of Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek: Voyager from ’95 to ’01, Star Trek: Nemesis, Throw Momma From The Train)? I’m asking because I’m honestly wondering about her sanity. Mulgrew’s reported opposition to abortion rights obviously indicates a conservative bent (and there’s nothing wrong with that) but her decision to narrate a right-wing religious documentary called The Principle, which advances a belief in geocentrism or a belief that our planet is the center of the universe, suggests she’s gone off the deep end. She couldn’t just be doing this for the money…right? She must be a believer to some extent. How does an actor who convinced hundreds of Hollywood coworkers for three decades that she was a reasonable, level-headed sort who could be trusted…how can a person like Mulgrew evolve into believing that the earth is the center of everything? That’s insane — a Sarah Palin conviction.

With the exception of a very occasional brand-new restoration (like Thursday night’s presentation of Schawn Belston‘s 30-frame Oklahoma! or last year’s special Shane restoration), the TCM Classic Film Festival (4.10 thru 4.13) is about savoring films you’ve seen several times at home but via expert big-screen projection with good (or at least fairy good) sound. If, that is, they’re being shown on (a) the big Chinese TCL IMAX screen or (b) on the almost-as-big screen at the American Cinematheque Egyptian. (All TCMCFF projection is handled by Boston Light and Sound’s Chapin Cutler, one of the best guys in the business, but the architecture of at least one of the Chinese multiplex houses is seriously flawed).

After Oklahoma‘s opening-night showing on Thursday night I have a mild interest in seeing the following films: (Friday, 4.11) Zulu at 11:45 am at the Egyptian, an alleged (i.e., vaguely suspect) 70th anniversary restoration of Double Indemnity at 6 pm at the TCL Chinese, and a 7pm Egyptian screening of Harold Lloyd‘s Why Worry? at 7pm; (Saturday, 4.12) The original 1954 Gojira at the Egyptian at 11:45 am, sAND the digitally-restored version of William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer at the TCL Chinese at 9:15 pm; (Sunday, 4.13) Nothing pops out.

The usual publicists are sending out the usual queries to Cannes-bound journalists: are you attending, for how long, what’s your contact info and where will you be staying? Answer to everyone: I always do the whole thing. (Who flies all the way over there to only attend half of it?) All contact info is the same everywhere. People used to rent European cell phones five or ten years ago but Skype’s cell or land-line calling options have invalidated that. It’s all texting and email. And no publicist or distributor will ever mail or messenger anything to my local address (7 rue Jean Mero) so I don’t know why they want that.

Cannes apartment 2011 from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.

Three and half more weeks of spotty, low-energy April diversions and I’m off. Flying to NYC on 5.1 and staying there 8 days. Red-eye to Paris on Friday, 5.9. Stay there and acclimate until Tuesday, 5.10. Save money (Easy Jet baggage fees are ridiculous not to mention transportation out to Orly or CDG) by taking train down to Cannes that morning.

Say what you will about Anthony Lane not brandishing the right kind of Movie Catholic credentials, but in this 4.14 New Yorker review he’s captured the essence Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive (Sony Classics, 4.11) saying (as I’ve been observing repeatedly since I first saw it eleven months ago) that he’s “not sure that Jarmusch has really made a vampire film at all, still less a horror flick,” and that Tilda Swinton‘s Eve and Tim Huddleston‘s Adam “are more like junkies than predators.”

New Yorker illustration by Riccardo Vecchio.

This Jamie Stuart interview with Only Lovers Left Alive star Tilda Swinton is cool as far as it goes, but it needs a kicker of some kind. I don’t know what kind of kicker exactly (I’ve got enough aggravation) but I know it needs one. I love Stuart’s video pieces, mainly because they’re always highly conceptualized and very thought-out in a dry, less-is-less way. For the 16th or 17th time, Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive (Sony Classics, 4.11) “is a very droll, no-laugh-funny vampire movie about middle-aged goth hipster musician types — a nocturnal lifestyle movie that Lou Reed would have loved. After catching it 11 months ago in Cannes I called it ‘a perfect William S. Burroughsian hipster mood trip…I sank into it like heroin.’ Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin and Jeffrey Wright.

Best Interview Ever from The Mutiny Company on Vimeo.

The instant I heard about yesterday’s passing of Mickey Rooney, one of the most legendary and indefatigable Hollywood actor-entertainers in Hollywood history, I asked myself “okay, so what great movies did he star in?” If you want to be strict about it, the answer is none. Rooney was a world-class personality and a great punchy performer, but he basically played himself for the better part of 80 years…a comedian, song-and-dance man, legendary banger of broads (and one-time husband of Ava Gardner), never-say-die guy, character actor and basically a squirrel-sized locomotive who never slowed down or stopped choo-chooing.

The Other Woman (20th Century Fox, 4.25.14) is a comedy about three women (Leslie Mann, Cameron Diaz, Kate Upton) taking revenge upon a hot-shot businessman three-timer (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who’s been involved with and cheating on them all. So it’s a kind of female payback comedy a la Nine to Five (i.e., aimed at women) but it’s also trying to appeal to horndogs with Upton’s white-bikini carnality. The movie was produced by Julie Yorn, wife of A-list entertainment attorney Kevin Yorn and also his partner in their production company, LBI Entertainment. On 2.18.14, Heavy.com‘s Paul Farrell reported an “anonymous source” allegation, tweeted by Whisper.com’s Neetzan Zimmerman, that Yorn (brother of Hollywood agent Rick Yorn and singer/songwriter Pete Yorn) was having an affair with Gwynneth Paltrow. Maybe bullshit, maybe not. (On top of which Paltrow and her husband Chris Martin are in some kind of open arrangement.) If the Yorn-Paltrow thing is true, this would at least add a level of intrigue to an otherwise rote-seeming formula comedy.

I had a mostly unpleasant experience with Jonathan Glazer‘s Under The Skin during last September’s Toronto Film Festival. My negative reaction was a minority view against the current 85% Rotten Tomatoes rating. I’ll allow that festival fatigue factor can sometimes get in the way; perhaps I should see it again fresh today. Jonathan Glazer‘s film earned a “robust” $140,000 in four L.A. and NYC theaters this weekend. Maybe, but “robust” is not what this film is when you watch it. Not for me, at least.

A couple of years ago I stole from Esquire by writing my own “What I’ve Learned” essay. There’s a new issue with a long piece called “84 Things A Man Should Do Before He Dies,” so here’s another ripoff: “Theatrical Movie Experiences You Should Have Before You Entirely Succumb to VOD.” Here are four indelible movie-watching recollections — three from the late ’70s, one from ’95. The concept or suggestion is that a devoted Movie Catholic should try to experience something similar in his/her lifetime.

(1) Catch An Exciting New Film In A First-Rate, Big-City Theatre On Opening Day, and In So Doing Experience Something You’ve Never Felt Or Sensed Before. The first time this happened in my 20s (teenage or tweener experiences are too impressionable) was on the afternoon of 11.6.77 at the Zeigfeld theatre — opening day for Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I’d waited in the ticket line for an hour or so in the brisk November air. I was actually knocked out several times by that film (this was more than 20 years before my Spielberg hate would begin to manifest), but the first chest-pounder happened during the opening credits. White titles on black, dead silence. And then more credits and then just a faint hint of alien-like syntho-hum on the soundtrack. As the credits ended the choral hum slowly got louder and louder, and then CRASH! An orchestral crescendo perfectly synched with the the first images of the storm-blown Sonoran desert. We can’t go home again but somehow or some way, each and every movie lover has to experience something like this. A theatrical high, couldn’t stop talking about it, saw CETK producer Michael Phillips standing in the back of the theatre and talked a him a bit.

Some Esquire guys have suggested a few David Letterman replacements. Every since the announcement I’ve been thinking either Patton Oswalt, Louis C.K. or Ellen DeGeneres. Before his recent Spirit Awards emcee gig I would have recommended Oswalt but he might be a little too brilliant (i.e., original-thinking, challenging) for a late-night crowd. Not that Louis C.K. isn’t just as brainy as Oswalt, but his humor is wrapped in an oafish blue-collar package. He’ll never be truly uptown. I think he’d actually be perfect…seriously. Ellen would be a pretty good fit (I spoke to her at a party once and realized then and there she’s very fast on her feet), but she seems a bit too…easy-going? A little too daytime in her attitude and worldview?

Three days ago, or on Wednesday, 4.2, the John Roberts-led Supreme Court decided by the usual 5-to-4 margin to eliminate limits on aggregate campaign contributions in the case known as McCutcheon v. FEC. “Many people watching the case had called it the sequel to Citizens United,” the Washington Post‘s Jamie Fuller wrote the following day. “However, it’s more like the latest, inevitable film of an unending franchise. McCutcheon v. FEC is probably more like the Saw IV of campaign finance, at least as far as reformers are concerned. For those who agree with the Supreme Court’s latest decisions, McCutcheon v. FEC is probably more like the latest Land Before Time movie — returning us back to a land with founding fathers and without election filings and regulation.”