Taylor Swift did a duet with Mick Jagger last night during a Rolling Stones “50 & Counting” show at Chicago’s United Center. The song was “As Tears Go By.” The Stones always ask singers who are “hot right now” and doing something distinctive and different than what the Stones have always done to sing duets — it’s a badge of recognition and honor. Swift has strong pipes, of course, but her voice sounds a little tinny, a little Minnie Mousey. If there’s a God that notion about her playing Joni Mitchell in a Girls Like Us biopic has been forgotten and buried.

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Michael Douglas realized fairly quickly, of course, that he sounded a little fruit-loopy when he told The Guardian‘s Xan Brooks that his bout with throat cancer was largely due to giving head to his wife, Catherine Zeta Jones. People were chortling and wondering what Douglas’s deal was. It seemed to me like a fairly ridiculous thing to say. And remember that Douglas also said that giving more head cures the cancer you got from giving head in the first place….what?

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I’m vaguely depressed or certainly alienated by the decision of Paramount Home Video marketing guy to present John Schlesinger‘s Marathon Man (’76) to potential buyers as if it’s some kind of primitive Charles Bronson flick. It’s anything but that, of course, but any marketer will tell you that if you even slightly indicate that a film contains complexity or texture or anything other than primary color elements you’re hurting sales right off the bat. Keep it stupid and blunt and you can’t go wrong. The region-free Bluray streets today.

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With the ghastly wifi situation in Lauterbrunnen last weekend I missed the “Mad Men‘s Megan Draper is about to be killed, possibly in the manner of Sharon Tate” speculation. Even if it’s total bullshit the notion certainly jacks up interest levels in the show. And yet Matthew Weiner has obviously planted the seed by having Jessica Pare wear the same T-shirt that Tate wore, etc. Violently killing a character…I don’t know. Something a little facile about that.

Berne, Switzerland is a very appealing city. I could almost live there. But the train back to Paris put me in Lausanne for a few hours yesterday afternoon. I walked down to the shore of Lake Geneva and took a ferry to Evian-les-Bains. The idea of literally weeping from boredom had never entered my head until I visited this little morgue of a town. Give me those eight spindly trees in front of Rockefeller Center any day. In my mind there is nothing so loathsome and soul-stifling as strolling around picturesque little towns like Evian at the pace of a 75 year-old, snapping photos and lolling around cafes. I would rather be dodging bullets in Syria — seriously.

Breakfast room inside Berne’s Hotel National.

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Three interesting things about this What’s My Line? appearance by Liberace on 6.3.56. One, the huge applause he gets. Two, the drawing of the piano and the candelabra next to his signature, and how quickly and skillfully he draws it. And three, the fact that Lee’s hair was going at the time but not yet to a fatal extent. It didn’t reach emergency levels for another five or ten years, I’m guessing. Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra tells us Liberace’s hair had totally gone south by the time he met Scott Thorson in ’76.

In a 6.3 review, Daily Mail critic Christopher Tookey has taken a dump on Marc Forster and Brad Pitt‘s World War Z (Paramount, 6.21). And so has the Telegraph‘s Robbie Collin. In fact they’re both using the “World War Zzzzz” line so U.S. critics need to come up with something else.

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I’m persuaded that Sharon Waxman‘s “Nikki Finke has been fired by Jay Penske” story is untrue, or at least misleading. Finke may be leaving Deadline to run a one-woman website again, but that’s within the limits of her contract. The elements (temper, saber-rattlings, internal squabbles) may be true, but you have to take all family arguments with a grain of salt. What appears to be true is not always the truth even if it seems like it is.

Penske knew when he partnered with Finke that volatile Type-A personalities require constant backrubs and reassurance, and that on a certain level he had to be a 24/7 care-giver. Did Penske boil over and maybe convey anger or frustration to this or that person? Apparently, but that’s not the finality. Or so I gather.

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10 varied films by and about African-Americans (and one directed by a Brit) are coming out between August…actually, make that July and December, a N.Y. Times story is reporting. And many of them are angled at quality-seekers who wouldn’t watch a Tyler Perry flick with a knife at their backs. Michael Cieply has posted a laundry-list story [URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/ 06/02/movies/coming-soon-a-breakout-for-black-filmmakers.html?hp] that calls this slate a significant turn in the road, but he doesn’t indicate which are the pick of the litter and which are the black sheep.

From Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station.

It’s the kind of laundry-list story I can’t stand, Lawrence…the kind that just lies there. But I have to acknowledge, of course, this being a Cieply story, that it’s accurate and well-sourced and that things do seem to be blooming and upticking for black filmmakers. A rennaisance of sorts. The mining of richer, broader material.

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Post-Cannes, here are my Best Picture predictions as things now stand…and what do I know? David O. Russell‘s American Hustle is still #1 because the script is sharp and tight and because smilin’ Russell is an effing machine gun — he’s on his game and due and everyone knows it. #2 is J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost — one of the most audacious, aesthetically ballsy survivalist dramas ever made, and with a major comeback, career-high performance from Robert Redford. And #3 is Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis, a major American piece-of-time folkie art film that will stand the test, and which you’ll want to see a second time. That was my first thought, at least.

Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street is #4 because…I don’t know exactly as I haven’t read the script, but I know that people have been slip-sliding into an “okay, all right, what else can you show us?” attitude about the Scorsese-DiCaprio partnership. Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight has to be a Best Picture contender…it has to be. (What’s the argument against it? That it’s too good, too real, too well-written and well-acted?) And then comes John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks (Kelly Marcel‘s script is quite good), Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips, George Clooney‘s Monuments Men and Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher.

I’m not enough of a fan of Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska to predict a Best Picture nomination, but on the other hand I’m not opposed to the idea. And let’s not forget Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station, which has the heat and could vault ahead of Hancock-Scorsese-Clooney-Greengrass.

I would normally complain about the cropping of 1.33 16mm color footage down to 1.50 or thereabouts (or is it 1.66?) but I’ll let it slide this time. Just think of all that Brylcream on each and every guy’s head (except for the baldies) and each and every head covered and half-suffocating under a hat. Think of all the millions who were laughing and struggling and eating steamed potatoes and peach ice cream when this film was shot, and who would be shot, starved, bombed or incinerated to death over the next six years. And if you wanted to get away from it all, all you had to do was pay 25 cents to see Only Angels Have Wings…”who’s Joe?”

On Tuesday, 6.4, a Bluray of a director’s cut of Peter Bogdanovich‘s At Long Last Love (’75) will be released. From the Wiki page: “The film opened in March 1975 to scathing reviews and poor box office returns, prompting Bogdanovich to have an open letter of apology printed in newspapers throughout the U.S. Bogdanovich has since stated he regretted that ALLL was hastily cut prior to theatrical release based on reactions to studio previews.

“PB subsequently recut the film himself for cable TV, and has stated many people who first saw it in this version did not react so badly [as others did] to the [theatrically released version].

“It came to light in 2012 that a studio employee had secretly kept a more complete version of the film in the vaults for many years, and when Netflix decided to make it available to stream, this is the version that was shown. This version came to the director’s attention as a result of Netflix streaming and running on Fox Movie Channel, and, with Bogdanovich’s cooperation, [it was] decided to release At Long Last Love (with some added refinements from the director) on disc in 2013.”

HighDefDiscNews reports that “tech specs for the release include full 1080p Hihgh-def video in the 1.66:1 aspect ratio and DTS-HD 1.0 Mono Master Audio sound.” 1.66…yes! Here’s the URL: http://www.highdefdiscnews.com/1975-film-at-long-last-love-with-burt-reynolds-comes-to-blu-ray-june/