I’ve been reading Venice Film Festival coverage for decades, and not once have I seen snaps or video of the physical layout of the Venice Lido Grand Casino area, or of the magnificent press lounge. It’s a sprawling, beautiful, bucks-up, well-tended village unto itself, flanking the Adriatic and shaded by hundreds of mature pine trees. Newbies instantly feel very well taken care of. I do, I mean.

But it was hellish getting here early this afternoon. Every vaporetto gate attendant told us something different, and they all passed along dicey or erroneous info. Total confusion.

I realize, of course, that it’s simply in the character or nature of “laughing Mediterranean” fellows (a Harold Pinter line from Betrayal) to adopt a casual attitude that isn’t too detail-oriented or overly hung up on the clock. Public transportation is so well-ordered and easy to follow in Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona. But not here.

We took what we thought was a Line 20 vaporetto and quickly realized it wasn’t heading for the Lido. We got off at Redentore, and then took another to Zattere and got off. Then we got on a vaporetto that had a Mostra Cinema (MC) sign on it, and it took us back to San Zaccaria (briefly) and then it dropped us at the ‘wrong’ Lido stop — a 15- or 20-minute walk from the casino. We tried to take a bus south but couldn’t figure the bus system, so we finally hailed an Uber but there were no drivers. We finally got a regular cab to take us to festival headquarters, which was seven blocks away.

Oh, and the cab fee was 13 euros, or roughly half of what the Uber guy would’ve charged us.

Festival veteran: “All very strange. All the Line 20 boats are going to the Lido Casino today. Maybe you just got off too early? It makes two other stops at small islands before it goes to the Lido Casino…”

HE to Festival Veteran: “No ACTV employee seems to know what a Line 20 is. They ‘say’ they know, and then they give you a bum steer. It’s NOT strange — it’s totally par for the course.”

Festival Veteran: “Line 20 is pretty common during the festival. Dock B. It ALWAYS departs and arrives at Dock B, San Zaccaria. You have to look for it there in the inside left corner of that dock.”

HE to Festival Veteran: “Did you read the part that says ‘at Zattere we got on a vaporetto that had a Mostra Cinema (MC) sign on it, and it took us back to San Zaccaria (briefly) and then it dropped us at the wrong Lido stop — a 15 or 20-minute walk from the casino’? It’s the truth — it’s what happened.”

Festival Veteran: “I think you got on the wrong boat this time because there are ads for the MC line everywhere for the festival on every single boat now. But these are just ads. You really need to check the boat numbers. It will have a little sign on the boat say ’20’ or ‘MC’ in a colored circle.”

Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet (Searchlight, 11.27) may or may not be “misery porn”, as one research screening tipster has claimed, but at least (a) it’s been beautifully, hauntingly shot by dp Lukasz Zal (Ida, Cold War, The Zone of Interest), (b) it’s thrilling to see an original Globe theatre performance recreated so faithfully, and (c) you can tell straight away that Jessie Buckley‘s performance as the suffering Agnes Shakespeare (a.k.a., Anne Hathaway) will snag a Best Actress nomination — obviously, no question.

The word is that Paul Mescal‘s William Shakespeare is a supporting performance, and that the famed Elizabethan playwright is depicted as a shitty husband — weak, self-absorbed. But the story apparently shows Agnes embracing and possibly having an extra-marital affair with Joe Alwyn‘s Bartholomew, for whatever that may be worth.

A month ago I said that if — I say “if” — Bradley Cooper‘s Is This Thing On? is a docudrama origin story, 55 year-old Will Arnett is 20 years too old to play stand-up comic John Bishop, who broke into the biz in 2000 at age 34. I don’t see how this is even a little bit disputable

Posted on 7.30.25:

This woman’s alpha-vibe smile expresses so much about how Venice visitors feel about being here. I went up to this 40ish blonde on the vaporetto and confessed (her husband standing right there and listening in) that I had shot video of her and that I was moved by her look of serenity. She said “thanks” and offered no protest about being captured, so to speak. I’m presuming that the HE community will take offense all the same and attempt to browbeat me for another video violation, and maybe even slap the woman around for going along with it.

Will hardcore progressives smell the coffee? Are they even capable of doing so?

Unless they abandon all the wokey crap and stop playing racial-identity politics (i.e., never permitting another Lily Gladstone-styled Best Actress identity campaign) and renounce gender affirming care for minors and drag shows in elementary schools and generally embrace the sensibly moderate theology of Rahm Emanuel and, yes, even J.K. Rowling, they’re finished for the time being.

They won’t budge, of course. In their minds they’re doing God’s work by pushing for transformational social change, and are determined to die on this hill, even if it means taking a once proud and effective political brand down to Davy Jones’ locker.

But unless they ditch all this shit, they’re effing toast.

It seems odd, to say the least, that the 82nd Venice International Film Festival is screening The Delicate Delinquent, a decent but unexceptional Jerry Lewis dramedy that opened in June ’57.

All I can figure is that Delinquent has recently been restored due to having been shot in VistaVision (I adore the clarity of black-and-white films in this process, The Desperate Hours and Fear Strikes Out being two examples) and Venice is offering a showcase out of respect or allegiance.

The Delicate Deliquent was Lewis’s first feature after the breakup of Martin & Lewis, and I guess the idea was to show the industry that he had a serious side and could play a normal, ground-level guy without going “hey laaaaady!”

It’s a passable shoulder-shrugger about an odd, not-that-young janitor named Sidney L. Pythias…named after the ancient Greek figure of legend? The film, directed and cowritten by Don McGuire (directed Johnny Concho, co-wrote Bad Day at Black Rock and Tootsie), doesn’t present Sidney as a j.d. out of Rebel Without a Cause or West Side Story. He’s basically just an aimless adolescent (Lewis was 30 when it was filmed in ’56) who lives in a cellar apartment.

The story is about Sidney being guided into a law-enforcement career by Darren McGavin‘s Mike Damon, a fair-minded cop who takes an interest.

From the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s, certain elite critics (the late David Chute leading the pack) sold the legend or more precisely the promotional hype about the florid, anti-realistic, furiously kinetic brand of John Woo-stamped action cinema. Chute and others filing from the proverbial “China desk.” Everyone fell for it, and I’m not saying it wasn’t a signature genre or a real-deal “thing” (it obviously was), but thank God that era is over and done with.

Because to me it was always more about the “sell” than the actual cinematic reality, which is to say the flaunting of brazen, high-style cartoonish-ness. Action-driven (or more precisely action-opera driven and certainly fighting the principles of physics tooth and nail) as opposed to plot- or character-driven.

New York / Vulture‘s Bilge Elbiri is celebrating all the same. “Absurd, grotesque, sublime”, etc.

Ron Howard‘s Eden (Vertical, 8.22) is a total flop, of course. Nobody wants to hang with a few headstrong German contrarians living hand-to-mouth on a remote island in the 1930s. I would have seen it nonetheless, but with all the packing and preparation I couldn’t find the time.

There’s something generally dull and flatliney about solitary survival films set on sandy remote islands…Randall Kleiser‘s The Blue Lagoon, the last third of Ruben Ostlund‘s Triangle of Sadness, Ivan Reitman‘s Six Days Seven Nights, Peter Weir‘s The Mosquito Coast, Stuart Heisler‘s Island of Desire, Michael Powell‘s Age of Consent…stuck there, no escaping, later.

In my book only three such films have “worked” — Robert Zemeckis‘s Cast Away (’00), Ken Annakin‘s Swiss Family Robinson (1960 Disney film) and Nicolas Roeg‘s Castaway (’86).

Agreed, Castaway is a tiny bit dull for a lack of story tension, but I was half-taken with…okay, with Amanda Donohoe‘s nudity. A Cannon release, I wrote the press kit for it. My phone interview with Oliver Reed didn’t go well — I tried not to rub him the wrong way but I said something about his character being a bit of a lazy sod. Things went downhill from there on.

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Posted on 7.24.23: “If nothing else, Oppenheimer makes it unmistakably clear that Christopher Nolan should never, ever film a sex scene again. Or should never again, at the very least, shoot one with Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh. Within the confines of Nolan World, it’s all but impossible to believe that Oppie actually laid pipe.”