I’ve already lamented the almost certain absence of Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance at Telluride ’23. The scolds and monsters will scream too loudly, and the nervous nellies don’t want any trouble.
And as I wrote on 6.28, I’m on pins and needles about whether IFC Films and Sapan Studios will have the moxie to screen Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu at Telluride — it would be a major aesthetic tragedy if this all-but=perfect film doesn’t play there.
I’m one of many who are 90% to 95% convinced that Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers will play Telluride. It has to. It can’t be absent. Payne is too much of a longstanding Telluride attender and supporter. The contrary view is that Focus, the film’s distributor, will want to stage a 2023 Toronto Film Festival premiere during the first five days, which TIFF wouldn’t allow if The Holdovers plays Telluride first. Does anyone remember when Green Book premiered at the Toronto fest? On Tuesday, 9.11.18 — the sixth day. Not premiering during the first five didn’t hurt that Best Picture Oscar winner a bit.
Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix) has been waiting a long time to bounce off the high board and make a big splash among the right people. Whatever happens with the Venice Film Festival, how could this Leonard Bernstein biopic not kick things off domestically in Telluride?
How could Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, which had its big bop-shu-wop premiere in Cannes several weeks ago, not go for a conversational re-start in Telluride?
Ditto Jonathan Grazer‘s The Zone of Interest, which also launched on the Cote d’Azur.
David Fincher‘s The Killer was shot between November ’21 and March ’22. It has seemingly been hanging around for ages, waiting to strike a hot iron before the 11.10 Netflix debut. Telluride, Toronto, New York…which one of these? Okay, probably not Telluride.
Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Apple, 11.22) somehow doesn’t quite feel like a natural Telluride pick but who knows? One way or the other the French-playing actors probably have to speak with the same accent — I’m not saying they all need to sound like Pepe le Pew, but they can’t sound like they’re from Tarzana or Burbank.
Apparent Telluride Likelies: Emerald Frennell‘s Saltburn, Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fall, Todd Haynes‘ wildly overpraised May December, Craig Gillespie‘s Dumb Money (or is the 9.22 release date too close to Labor Day?), Sean Durkin‘s The Iron Claw (A24). Not to mention Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla (A24, October), costarring one of the most extreme height-disparity couples in motion picture history — Cailee Spaeny (4’11”) and Jacob Elordi (6’5″).
Nor, to be honest, had I given much thought to Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley (the “One Toke Over The Line” guys) over the last few decades. But this (written by Jim Pepper) is infectious. It envelops.
The era of Brewer and Shipley (i.e, soothing folk rock) pretty much ended when punk rock came along in ’75 or thereabouts.
Yesterday we paid the River Country folks to go tube-rafting down the Delaware. A few miles south of Frenchtown. I wanted a Deliverance-type experience, but there were no canoes to speak of. Chumps on rubber tubes. On one hand it was quite peaceful and soothing, and on the other hand the current was barely there. Every now and then the current would accelerate slightly and you could imagine you were Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn cruising down the Mississippi. But most of the time we were drifting at the speed of a 92 year-old guy shuffling toward the bathroom at 3 am. So I just gave into the lethargy.
Friendo sez: “Live Free or Die Hard (‘07), Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (‘08) and Rambo (‘08) were all fourth installments after long gaps with older original leads. They all turned a profit.
“After that, the franchise-masters tried for a fifth go-round and tanked — A Good Day to Die Hard (‘13), Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny and Rambo: Last Blood (‘19).
“We all attend our first big high school reunion, but often don’t come back for follow-ups.”
I just tapped these out off the top of my head, and when I get back to Connecticut I’ll probably add several more…I’m just roughing this out as I go along:
There are many, many female characters and performances that I will always treasure, but let’s start with Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty. And then…aww, hell: Carey Mulligan in Suffragette, An Education and She Said. Rachel McAdams in The Wedding Crashers. Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings and Shane. Greta Gerwig in Greenberg and Frances Ha, Amy Adams in The Fighter, Teresa Wright in The Best Years of Our Lives. Katy Jurado and Grace Kelly in High Noon. Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story. Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl and What’s Up, Doc. Sally Field in Places of the Heart. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, Network and Mommie Dearest. Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and Johnny Guitar. Katherine Ross and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. Frances McDormand in Fargo, Almost Famous and Nomadland. Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. Charlize Theron in Monster and Mad Max: Fury Road. Sigourney Weaver in Alien (1979) & Aliens (1986).
Posted twice before: I adore this clip from Don Siegel‘s Charley Varrick (’73), in which Walter Matthau‘s titular character tells John Vernon, portraying a mob-connected banker, that he wants to return a pile of ill-gotten mafia money.
Just after 1:03 Vernon conveys something about serendipity with a wonderful economy, using a gently changed expression and a little gesture with his left hand. Arguably the most elegant piece of acting that Vernon ever performed, the gesture seems to say “sometimes there’s God, so quickly!” — a Tennessee Williams line from A Streetcar Named Desire.
In ’85 I was working in publicity and had a chance to speak to Vernon on the set of Hail To The Chief, a TV series about a female U.S. President (Patty Duke) in which Vernon played a hawkish military advisor. I told him I was a huge admirer of this little slice of Varrick, but he didn’t seem to get what I was saying. He just brushed it aside and indicated he wouldn’t mind if I left him alone. I was probably the only guy on the planet who’d ever recognized, much less said to him, that his Charley Varrick hand gesture was some kind of beautiful.
Or he did feel a certain pride but didn’t care to share it with a fan? Whatever. Perhaps he felt insulted by my not praising some meatier part that he once played (the Mal Reese character in Point Blank, his Cuban revolutionary Alfred Hitchcock‘s Topaz, the husband of Sophia Loren in Ettore Scola‘s A Special Day).
Vernon died at age 72 on 2.1.05, following complications from heart surgery.
I was particularly annoyed by the second-to-last scene when Wombat wouldn’t let Indy “stay in Syracuse,” so to speak, and thereby separated the poor old guy from what he really and truly wanted (“All my life,” he said). And then she slugs him and suddenly they’re back in his New York apartment, and his heart is completely broken. So was mine.
In what realm is old, aching Indy rekindling things with old, withered Marion (Karen Allen) better than Indy hanging out with Archimedes and possibly managing to save his life from that Roman solder who slew him in actuality?
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny doesn’t end on anyone’s idea of a happy, vigorous or triumphant note, but Indy and “Arky” joining forces as they explore an array of scientific possibilities as well as the physical ancient world? Are you kidding? That’s a glorious ending. It would be like being reborn.
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