Leonardo DiCaprio has agreed to portray a wounded, bent-on-revenge 19th Century explorer in Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu‘s The Revenant. The New Regency pic will begin filming in September for fall 2015 release by 20th Century Fox. Based on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel (which is based on a true story) yet another survival-against-great-odds film in the vein of All Is Lost and Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (with perhaps a sprinkling of Cormac McCarthy‘s Blood Meridien). The difference is that the Inarritu/DiCaprio/Punke project will basically be a payback/revenge flick. The second Webster’s definition of “revenant” is “a person who returns as a spirit after death; a ghost.” Yes, there was an obscure 2009 comedic horror film called The Revenant, but the title is probably a bad idea as the vast majority of moviegoers probably don’t know what it means. Titles can’t sound too cultured or fancy-schmancy — you have to grunt them down to reach your average Joe Schmoe. Just call it Revenge (nobody remembers the 1990 Tony Scott-Kevin Costner version) or Vengeance Is Mine (megaplex popcorn-munchers have never heard of Shohei Imamura, trust me) or something like that — plain and primitive. Yes, I know — I sound a bit like Harry Cohn here but I’m just trying to address the way things are.

Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, which will open the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, has long been presumed to be a total wash. Initially slated for release by the Weinstein Co. in November 2013, them bumped to 3.14.14, and then yanked again in favor of the Cannes slot . I’ve no interest in, much less sympathy for, a classy actress who marries for money and then realizes a few years down the road that she can barely stand the guy she married, much less feel love for him, and that she feels trapped and wants out. No sympathy at all. There’s also the highly problematic casting of Tim Roth as Prince Rainer. Consider the face of the Real McCoy — kindly expression, nice-enough features, mellow attitude. Then consider Roth’s demon-seed features — the face of a malevolent bad guy if I ever saw one. There’s no crossover, no similarity, no appeal. Roth has the face of a scowling reptile. Grace of Monaco died the day he was cast.

Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi and his wife, Princess Grace (the former Grace Kelly) on a yacht sometime around 1961 or ’62.

Tim Roth, whose rancid, pissed-off vibe and generally unappealing features killed this movie the instant he was cast. I loved Roth in Nic Jarecki’s Arbitrage, but he can’t play husbands or boyfriends or anything in that realm. He has to play feisty gargoyle characters and/or attitude monkeys. Roth was perfect in Stephen Frears’ The Hit and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Three…no, actually two days before the unveiling of the Cannes Film Festival’s roster, German helmer Fatih Akin has withdrawn The Cut, which had been submitted to the festival, “for personal reasons.” Does this have something vaguely to do with last month’s passing of Karl “Baumi” Baumgartner, the co-founder of Pandora Film, which is listed by the IMDB as one of the producers of The Cut and which is presumably distributing? Either way it doesn’t add up. Life is a vale of troubles, but when misfortunes occur you have to man up and soldier on. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I hope Akin’s situation will soon rectify or smooth out. All I know is that presumed Cannes hopefuls are dropping like flies — The Cut, Birdman, Inherent Vice.

The Cut director Fatih Akin.

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Last night I missed all the showings of “Time Zones“, the debut episode of the seventh season of AMC’s Mad Men. I naturally presumed it would re-air once or twice today and then again tomorrow and so on, etc. But it’s not. There are no airings today or tonight. The next showing is tomorrow morning at, believe it or not, 4 am Pacific. And then nothing after that until episode #2 on Sunday. And it’s not viewable via On Demand. At least according to my Time Warner options. Yes, I realize I can watch the episode online but I vaguely dislike watching dramas on my Macbook Air. I prefer the laid-back splendor of watching high-def images on my 60″ Samsung. So no offense but eff AMC and their stingy airing policy.

19 years ago I did a hotel-room interview with producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer during the Crimson Tide junket. A few months earlier I’d laughed hard at Quentin Tarantino‘s “go the way way” riff in Sleep With Me (’94), in which he discussed a struggling-with-homosexuality undercurrent in Top Gun. So I proposed to Don and Jerry that they should reach out to gay moviegoers by re-marketing all their films as secret gay movies that were fraught with homosexual themes and iconography (i.e., the phallic-shaped submarines in Tide). Bruckheimer froze with a grin on his face but Simpson smirked and kicked it around. When I asked them to sign my Crimson Tide script at the end of our chat, Simpson suggested that the gay subcurrent thing was more in my head than in their films.

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Everything about this trailer for David Fincher‘s Gone Girl is somewhere between cool and extra-cool except for two things: (a) the sickly greenish-grayish tint in Jeff Cronenweth‘s cinematography, which seems very similar to the tones Cronenweth used for Fincher’s Fight Club; and (b) the lame, somewhat shitty-ass voice of the guy singing Charles Asnavour’s “She.” I’m sure I’ll know the singer’s name in minutes but God, his vocal delivery is no better than mine in the shower and that’s not saying much, believe me.

Why didn’t Fincher use Elvis Costello’s version? I’ll tell you my theory. I think it’s because Costello’s version was already used by Notting Hill and Fincher was a little afraid of the mediocre association this might raise. If true, this suggests Fincher is a little off-balance and perhaps even insecure about the film. If he was totally secure he would have said, “Fuck it, I’m using the Costello because it’s the best one…I don’t care if people bring up Notting Hill or not.”

Sorry, man, but John Slattery‘s God’s Pocket (IFC Films, 5.9) was perhaps the most decisive wash of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Almost universally slammed. Slattery’s ass was handed to him on a plate. Working-class, small-town Pennsylvania misery. Rarely have I visited a realm that I wanted so little to do with or wanted to escape from this much. The last time I saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the flesh was when he stood on the Eccles stage with Slattery and costar Christina Hendricks. One of my first reactions was that Hendrick’s character, a bereaved mom, is too young, pretty and stacked to be married to the paunchy, saggy-faced Hoffman, who looked at least 60. It also didn’t feel right that she had it off with the 60ish Richard Jenkins, who played a local journalist.

“Three crazy women for five weeks is a lot more than I bargained for” — Tommy Lee Jones‘ character (i.e., George Briggs) says to Hilary Swank‘s (i.e., Mary Bee Cuddy) in The Homesman. Except a man sitting on a horse with a rope around his neck is in no position to bargain. The trailer tells me it’s a blend of John Huston‘s The African Queen and Kelly Reichardt‘s Meeks’ Cutoff. Directed, produced and co-written (along with collaborators Kieran Fitzgerald
Wesley Oliver) by Jones. Costarring Hailee Steinfeld, William Fichtner, Meryl Streep, James Spader (no doubt playing a scurvy scumbag), Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and John Lithgow. Cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto. Based on the book by Glendon Swarthout. Screening in Cannes, right?

If you know Mad Men, you know the first episode of a new season never does anything especially head-turning or eye-opening. First episodes just quietly amble along, taking their time, no big hurry, at most planting seeds that might pay off four or five episodes down the road…if that. Mad Men guru Matthew Weiner doesn’t believe in keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. He believes in keeping them slumped in their seats and moderately engaged as far as the general scheme allows. He believes in peeling off artichoke leaves one by one…one leaf and then another and then another…whoops, out of time. Well, there’s always next week!

Those square, somewhat older sports fans (i.e., guys over 35) didn’t show up for Ivan Reitman‘s Draft Day this weekend. The Kevin Costner-starring ensemble piece “underperformed” with a three-day haul of just $9.8 million anticipated. This despite a B-plus CinemaScore rating. So what happened? It couldn’t have been the reviews as nobody reads them. Reactions from HE regulars are hereby requested.

Last night I attended the 9:15 pm TCM Classic Film Festival screening of William Friedkin‘s digitally remastered Sorcerer (Warner Home Video, 4.22). I’ve seen this film six or seven times now, and I was just as absorbed as ever. It’s a near-great movie. But during the finale I was remembering why Sorcerer choked at the box-office when it opened on 6.24.77. It went down because it didn’t deliver a fair and just ending.

I’ve never bought Friedkin’s theory that Sorcerer died because the hugely popular Star Wars, which opened on 5.25.77, had ushered in a sudden sea-change in mainstream cinematic appetites — i.e., a new comic-book, popcorn-high attitude plus a corresponding diminished interest in gritty, low-key, character-driven adult dramas. Sorcerer, of course, was never going to be a hugely commercial film. It’s a fairly downbeat, men-against-the-elements adventure flick made for guys. Women don’t go for sweaty, atmospheric, end-of-the-road Latin American fatalism. But I suspect that Sorcerer would have been at least a modest success if it had delivered a sense of justice in the case of Roy Scheider‘s character, a wise guy on the run from the New Jersey mob.

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