Last posted on 7.10.20, originally posted on 12.8.06: “Not long ago, the Bagger was at a restaurant event with a major film writer and director and ended up in a booth with him for several hours. He admired the man tremendously, [but] did not like his last project. Finally, the subject came up and the Bagger told the truth, after which there was suddenly very little to say.

“Later, Carr asked an experienced colleague if he, Carr, had been wise to speak his mind. ‘No, that was profoundly stupid,’ he was told. ‘They really don’t want to know the truth.’” — from David Carr‘s “Ten Things I Don’t Hate About You, or At Least Your Movie,” also posted on 12.18.06.

“Carr’s friend was right, but I’ll never forget my initial reaction to Michael Bay‘s Armageddon after an Academy screening in June of 1998. It gave me a headache because of the machine-gun-like cutting. As Variety‘s Todd McCarthy famously said at the time, the pace felt like that of ‘a machine gun locked in the firing position.’ This over-accelerated editing, I was later told, was a result of a deliberate Michael Bay strategy of cutting out as many frames as possible in each scene order to make the film play as fast, hard and compressed as possible — i.e., ‘frame-fucked.’

“In any event, when I saw Bruckheimer in the lobby after the screening I did the usual chickenshit industry thing — I half-lied. I told Jerry that the film ‘rocked’ or felt like ‘rocket fuel.’ (Which wasn’t a total lie — it did feel like that, sort of.) As soon as I said this, however, Bruckheimer cocked his head and gave me a ‘look’. He knew I was snowing him, and I knew that he knew. I felt like a snivelling coward, possibly due to the fact that I was being precisely that. He didn’t look at me for the rest of the evening.

“I later shared this moment with a director friend, and he told me one of his own. A very big (one could use the word ‘legendary’) producer told him that an actress in a scene he was directing was ‘fucking smiling‘ too often, ‘just like fucking Tom Cruise…always smiling, always with the teeth. Tell her to cut it out.’ The director later spoke to the actress, who had seen him speaking with the big-name producer. ‘Did he say anything about me?’ she asked. The director replied, ‘He compared you to Tom Cruise.'”

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…during the six-week period between the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the film’s opening on the Independence Day weekend (6.30 to to 7.3)…whatever she and her handlers may have expected or hoped to happen, it’s fair to say that the whole promotional bandwagon didn’t bear fruit…it certainly didn’t connect with Joe and Jane Popcorn, particularly the under-35s. The whole effort amounted to a whiff. It hurts when this happens, I realize, and I’m not gloating at anyone’s failure.

…and lived in a primary state, I would vote for Chris Christie. Yes, I’ve said this before. Not a perfect candidate, but he has character and gumption and doesn’t shrink from saying “that man is a sociopath.”

Posted on 6.10.23:

The first and only super moon of 2023 rose last night — Monday, July 3. But there were no clear skies in my neck of the woods, and in fact lightning, thunder and heavy showers ruled by 9 pm. Sio much for that visual opportunity.

I therefore won’t be seeing it until Thursday afternoon (7.6). If anyone did catch it last weekend, please share.

Earlier today Jeff and Sasha sat down and played it by ear. At first they discussed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but they didn’t have anything novel or exciting to add to the conversation. So they kicked around the new Rock Hudson doc (All That Heaven Allowed, MAX) and then pondered some Telluride ’23 possibilities and recalled last year’s assassination of Empire of Light….I don’t know. It all just kind of mashed together after a while.

Link to Michael’s Telluride Film Blog.

Happy 4th of July! And again, the link.

So the main selling points in this version, directed by Blitz the Ambassador, are the songs, which are obviously de-emphasized here (as they always are in all trailers for musical films), and the pronounced lesbian currents, which were suppressed in the 1985 Steven Spielberg version. Yes, that’s Halle (Little Mermaid) Bailey as young Nettie. Don’t let that 12.25.23 release date scare you. Okay, you can be scared if you want.

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″).

Realistic animation showing the implosion of the “Titan”
by u/ACProfessor in CrazyFuckingVideos

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.