I avoided watching this Marvel trailer yesterday; today I gave in. I’d rather watch a self-referencing Marvel comedy than a movie that that deals with this central figure (Tatiana Maslany as a female Hulk lawyer) more or less straight. A nine-episode Disney series, She-Hulk: Attorney-At-Law pops on 8.17.22.

It’s taken me nine and 1/2 years to finally get around to buying Richard Crouse‘s “Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils,” which was published on 1.1.12. It’s now in my Kindle archive. I’ve seen this 1971 film six or seven times. I own a British DVD of the restored 117-minute version, but where’s the Bluray version? Why hasn’t Criterion released one?

From Josh Stillman’s 10.1.12 EW review: “The story of 1971’s The Devils‘ is an unpleasant one. Based on Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun’ and a play by John Whiting, the film details an episode of alleged demonic possessions and exorcisms — and the innocent priest who was executed for heresy — in 17th-century France. And that’s just the plot line.

“The real story of The Devils took place behind the camera, in the movie’s production process and its reception among censors, critics, and audiences. The intensity of the shoot cost director Ken Russell his marriage and tested the nerves of its stars, British screen legends Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave.

“Later, after facing numerous cuts from the British Board of Film Censors for material deemed inappropriate (or, according to the Catholic Church, blasphemous), The Devils received an abysmal response from critics, was banned in several countries, and basically vanished for three decades.

“In recent years, though, the movie’s seen a bit of a resurgence. Fan sites are popping up and bootleg copies with fewer cuts have surfaced (Russell lamented that a fully uncensored version simply doesn’t exist); critics, for their part, have begun to see the film in a different light, hailing it as a provocative masterpiece in league with A Clockwork Orange.”

Most kinescopes of live TV look awful. The first 35 seconds of this 1963 Candid Camera segment, in which a 27 or 28 year-old Woody Allen introduces a boss-and-secretary dictation gag, is from videotape, and the clarity is astounding. The bit itself is…well, not bad.

You Tube commenter: “I love this lady. She’s got good style. Reminds me a little of Amy Winehouse.”

Except for a Romy Schneider doc early this evening, HE is seeing almost nothing today. Entirely due to the horrors of the system, which is responding better now but was partly impossible on Monday and Tuesday and completely uncooperative early this morning.

But Thursday will be a serious day — Kyrill Serebrennikov‘s Zhena Chaikovskogo at 8:30 am, James Gray‘s Armageddon Time at 6:30 pm, and Jerzy Skolimowski‘s EO at 10:15 pm.

As I’m not a member of the infamous “”James Gray cabal” and because I’ve spoken to a friend who caught a research screening of Armageddon Time, I’m considering a re-think by attending Alexandre Moix‘s Patrick Dewaere, Mon Heros at 7:15 pm.

12:15 pm update: The system has suddenly begun functioning. Over the last hour or so I’ve able to fill my Saturday and Sunday calendars for the most part. The trick seems to be to avoid trying to access the system in the early morning.

Trouble In Mind, Ethan Coen‘s doc about Jerry Lee Lewis, is unavailable. Under the old system this wouldn’t have happened.

Earlier: This is why journalists travel thousands of miles to Cannes…so we can get shut down by moronic or overwhelmed software coding when we try to log in for updates at 7:10 am…a sense of humor is necessary in such situations. [Posted on Wednesday, 5.18 at 7:35 am.]

Michael Hazanavicius’ Final Cut (aka Coupez! aka Z) is a kind of Noises Off -like farce blended with zombie hellzapoppin’ blended with Tom DeCillo’s Living in Oblivion (‘95). Allegedly a nearly line-by-line remake of Shin’ichirō Ueda’s zom-com One Cut of the Dead (‘17), I found it thin, exhausting, odious and unfunny. And a tiny bit sad. I didn’t hate it, but my basic attitude was a combination of “who cares?” and “lemme outta here.”

And that’s all I have to say for now as it’s midnight and I’m bushed.

Yesterday an official trailer surfaced for Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a Searchlight/Hulu release costarring Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack and Isabella Laughland. The three-hander begins streaming on Hulu on 6.17.

“Nine Thoughts About Leo Grande and Naked Emma,” posted on 1.26.22:

Thought #1: Last night Hollywood Elsewhere sat through Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, and I was more or less okay with it, minor issues aside. It’s a reasonably engaging two-hander about a 55-year-old woman (Emma Thompson‘s “Nancy Stokes”, who doesn’t look 50ish as much as her actual age, which is 62) and a handsome young sex worker (Daryl McCormack‘s Leo Grande”). The widowed Nancy has led a rather sex-less and certainly orgasm-free life, and she’s hired Leo in order to sample the real thing.

The film (97 minutes) is basically three sexual and very personal encounters in a hotel room, and one in a hotel bar. (Or something like that.)

It’s an intimate, occasionally amusing, open-hearted exploration of an older woman’s sexuality and what a transformational thing good sex can be (nothing wrong with that!), along with the gradually building rapport between Nancy and Leo. It’s smoothly and nimbly performed, especially by Thompson.

In the realm of gender identity and not Presidential politics, Matt Walsh is my idea of a sensible conservative. He’s been very heavily and logically focused on the refusal of many progressives to acknowledge basic gender biology. We all understand there are gender variations among the trans community (which represents roughly one half of one percent of humans) but c’mon, man…we all understand what men and women are.

During confirmation hearings Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she couldn’t define what a woman is because she’s “not a biologist.” As much as I admire Jackson I recoiled the instant she said that — millions did, I imagine. Jackson said this, I gather, because she knew it would be dangerous to answer honestly. She knew that progressive loons would get their backs up.

Simply put: “Typically, women have two X chromosomes (as opposed to men’s XY chromosones). Between puberty and menopause they’re naturally capable of pregnancy and giving birth. Female anatomy is primarily distinguished from male anatomy by the female reproductive system, which includes ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, vagina and vulva.

“Plus the adult female pelvis is wider, the hips broader, and the breasts larger than that of adult males. Women have significantly less facial and other body hair, have a higher body fat composition, and are on average shorter and less muscular than men.”