I ran a rave review of Lucy Mulloy‘s Una Noche 16 months ago, after catching it at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. It’s opening in New York on 8.23 and on iTunes on 8.26. Una Noche “is a little raggedy at times, but always straight, fast, urgent and honed down,” I wrote. “It’s not quite on the level of Fernando Meirelles‘ brilliant City of God but is a contender in that urban realm, for sure. It’s a fine first film, and Mulloy is definitely a director with passion, intelligence and promise.

Ryan White‘s Good Ol’ Freda is said to be a likable enough portrait of a nice lady by way of some Beatles nostalgia. The two video reviews after the jump indicate that. I shouldn’t say anything more, but…okay, here it is. I don’t like the idea of young and attractive girls turning into older, heavy-set women. I’m obviously not addressing the spirit, personality and heart that are almost certainly evident in present-day Freda. I know this sounds lame. I just don’t like the weight metaphor, and because of this I’ll probably skip the film. I would feel the same way about Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr if they had put on 20 or 30 pounds, but they haven’t. I’m sure other people feel this way but they keep it to themselves. It’s just my cross to bear to get ripped to shreds for being honest.

Universal Home Video is releasing a Bluray of Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life on 10.8. I have a vague recollection of a testy and barking John Cleese performing sex with his wife in front of a class of young lads, but there’s only one big standout scene in this film and everyone knows what I mean. I remember to this day the reactions to Mr. Croesote waddling into that super-posh restaurant with all that mushroom-colored slop shooting out of his mouth. I saw it at a Manhattan all-media screening in the spring of ’83, and I can still hear that mixture of laughter, moans and groans.

I’m not saying there won’t be some August films worth catching in a week or two, but it sure feels flat now. I’ve been feeling like a flat tire all day. I’m basically sitting by the side of a pond and skimming stones across the water and waiting for Telluride/Toronto. I know Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (8.16) is exceptional because I saw it at Sundance. Good things have been (and will be) said about Drinking Buddies and Short Term 12 on 8.23. I’ve yet to see Closed Circuit (8.28) and The World’s End (8.23). (Never trust early geek raves!) There’s a JOBS premiere and after-party tomorrow night, a World’s End screening at 4 pm, an unveiling of Closed Circuit on Thursday night and The Grand Return of the French Lesbians (i.e., a screening of Blue Is The Warmest Color) on Friday night. I’ve been assured that this long-lead L.A. screening will have nothing to do with Blue showing at Telluride or not. I’ve been here before — you just have to ride it out.

Lindsay Lohan apparently made a decision to act sober and contrite for her Oprah sit-down, which will air next Sunday. She’ll probably do a decent job at playing this role, but it’s still acting. As Lyndon Johnson once said to George Wallace, “George, don’t you shit me.” If anything she would be more interesting if she continues with her alcoholic shenanigans than if she cleans up. Any way you slice it she’s…I was going to say she’s Tallulah Bankhead but at least Tallulah had that great performance in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat to point to. What has Lohan done on that level?

With the Ishtar Bluray finally out, it’s permissible to re-post a 33-month-old riff on the oppressively dull jacket art:

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment design guy: “So what about the Ishtar Bluray jacket art? I’ve roughed out some ideas.”

SPHE marketing director: “No ideas. Boilerplate. Use the art from the VHS. Tweak it or re-do the titles, but we’re not spending nickel one on re-design.”

Design guy: “The VHS art…? But we’ve got all this material.”

Marketing director: “We don’t care. It’s a loss leader. Just re-do the lettering. Fuck it.”

32 year-old Woody Allen was ten years away from Annie Hall when this was shot. The San Francisco TV news guy interviewing Allen is a clod. [Thanks to Joe McBride for passing this along.]

On 8.4 Scott Brown‘s Vulture interview with screenwriter Damon Lindelof appeared. The gist was obvious — robot-zombie Hollywood is bingeing on destruction porn, and in so doing is eating its own tail. I read Brown’s article and went “yeah….so?” I’ve been saying this for years. Strafe the ComicCon faithful in an F4 Phantom jet. The more CG apes and comic-book geeks you can eliminate, the better. The 80-minute finale of Man of Steel was, I suspect, the straw that broke the camel’s back for many of us. It’s gone too far. It’s moderately interesting to hear Lindelof, one of the leading whore-architects of this trend, admit that self-destruction is inevitable but…aahh, I wasn’t excited enough to link to it. But I came back to it today and decided that Lindelof’s quotes are so well-phrased that they deserve a re-reading.

I could have read Terence Winter‘s script for Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (11.15, Paramount) a year ago, but I was too lazy, cocky, indifferent. It can wait, I kept telling myself. I finally read it last night and this morning, and it’s Goodfellas on Wall Street. Or Casino…whatever. The finale of Scorsese’s American hustler/den of thieves trilogy. Venal and criminal, but wildly intoxicating. Time-shuffling, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Jordan Belfort (as Ray Liotta and Robert DeNiro narrated Goodfellas and Casino), manna from heaven, adrenalin-plus, woo-woo…and then the crash. If you fell for the first two how can you not like this installment? Same basic story, same engine, same unhappy wives, same juice, same cutting style. Winters’ script is awwwwwl right now, in fact it’s a gas. Best Picture nominee slamdunkaroonie.

Presumably people used to actually tell Woody Allen that while they enjoy his films, they really like “the earlier funny ones.” I once ran into Allen on 57th Street, right near Carnegie Hall, and the instant we exchanged glances he had a look of total horror in his eyes. The first time I saw Bananas I had recently swallowed a chocolate shake spiked with an ounce of pot. I was so ripped I was missing half the jokes or paying so much attention to the thematic undercurrent that I wasn’t laughing. But this is an example, I suspect, of what most people considered the earlier funny material.