A six-episode “Plot Thickens” podcast about the extremely troubled, super-costly making of Cleopatra (’63), will begin on July 17. TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz, the grand-nephew of Cleopatra director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz (and grandson of Herman J. Mankiewicz), will serve as series host.

But of course, the most alluring way to sink into this saga is Kevin Burns and Brent Zacky‘s Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood.

Released in 2001, the two-hour doc is included in the Cleopatra Bluray package. It’s also on YouTube.

I’ve said two or three times in this space that the Burns-Zacky doc is far more absorbing, entertaining and dramatic than Cleopatra itself (which is actually a moderately good film, certainly in terms of the highly eloquent and literate script and fortified with the most sumptuous production values ever).

And if you can’t handle a two-hour commitment, at least read David Kamp’s April 1998 Vanity Fair piece about the whole clumsy, flamboyant, drawn-out adventure (“When Liz Met Dick“).

The Burns-Zacky is such a wise, tasty and fascinating consideration of…well, the basic stew of things within the Hollywood film-making community and culture of 60-plus years ago. A scenario for all kinds of folly and hubris and large-scale delusion and boredom and indulgence and tenacious uphill determination. It’s about what happens when an ambitious, extremely large-scale film isn’t wisely prepared or planned for. It’s about how a never-ending spigot of studio spending will inspire a torrent of waste, connivance and corruption among the best people.

Who were the “bad guys”? One was definitely 20th Century Fox chief Spyros Skouras, who sank over $7 million into the first attempt to shoot the film in England (directed by Rouben Mamoulian, and costarring the constantly bed-ridden Elizabeth Taylor plus Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd).

It was this initial wasteful investment that put the studio into a hole, and which led to the second, much more costly version that was shot in Italy (directed by Mankiewicz and costarring Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton. It wound up costing $44 million, which roughly translates into $462,887,333 in 2025 dollars.

Taylor ended up getting paid around $7 million, which works out to $73 million in our present-day economy.

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My fascination with Clint Eastwood boils down to two…make that three things. One, how he kicked his directing chops up a couple of notches in the early ’90s and became a seriously formidable director. Two, his affinity for jazzy piano playing. And three, an alleged quote of his that I heard 15 or so years ago, and which I’ve repeated a few times over the years:

“Show me a beautiful, fascinating and worldly woman whom any man would be delighted to know” — in the Biblical sense, I presume he meant — “and I’ll show you a guy who’s tired of fucking her.”

That sounds initially like a brusque or insensitive observation, but the basic thought is one of fatigue and resignation. He was saying that longterm relationships are hard.

I don’t know anything about longterm relationships, much less keeping the fires going in the midst of one. My first marriage lasted four years (’87 to ’91). My second lasted the same**. My other relationships (including the People magazine affair with the married journalist) have all lasted two or three years so what do I know?

I know that keeping the coals hot isn’t easy. A dude has to reach deeper and deeper within and give it up Delbert McLinton-style, and if he holds back and retreats into his inner man-cave for some selfish reason he’ll gradually lose her. Because you have to give it up even when you don’t feel like it. And sometimes that’s difficult.

HE to Shawn Levy, author of “Clint: The Man and the Movies“, which streeted yesteday (7.1.25):

“How ya livin’? I’m still longing to own copies of your coffee-table books about the Sinatra Rat Pack and Rome in the golden age of the ‘50s and ‘60s. I’ve just decided (15 seconds ago!) to go the Wilton library route, but libraries don’t tend to own glammy large-format books of this sort.

“The early reviews of your Clint book (which I haven’t read yet) seem to indicate that it’s as full, thorough and well-measured as Patrick McGilligan’s “Clint: The Life and Legend”, which published in ‘02.

“If I were you I’d say ‘you’ve got it wrong…my Clint book delves much deeper into the crevasses of Clint’s storied, if peculiar and guarded, life and is far richer and more flavorful’ but what do I know?

I will continue to share my all-time favorite Clint anecdote, whether it’s true or not (when truth becomes legend, print the legend), but please tell me, privately or publicly (whatever), that while researching your book you were told that Clint did in fact say this on occasion. I’ve chatted with Clint a few times and interviewed him once for a Los Angeles magazine piece in ‘95, but you’ll be breaking my heart if you tell me this quote is fictitious or mis-attributed.”

** Then again four years isn’t nothing — it’s 48 months.

“Something of a victory”, according to N.Y. Times reporters Ben Sistasio abd Julia Jacobs.

It’s not accurate to say that Combs has “walked”, but he’s certainly dodged heavy penalties and a long prison sentence.

I confess to not having read the fine print within Trump’s “Big Beautiful” bill — a Poor-Screwing, Medicaid-Gutting, Tax-Slashing, Debt-Increasing Enactment which the Senate has passed but has yet to clear the House — but Elon Musk’s five-alarm, total-war resistance is theatrically striking to say the least…very emotional and absolutist.

…called “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of The New Hollywood“, Harris’s short Criterion essay, “Spotlight on New Hollywood“, recorded in 2024, will give you a little taste.

It’s very satisfying and soothing to liaten to Harris explain what happened within the U.S film industry between 1966 or thereabouts (the beginning) and the debut of Star Wars in May 1977 (beginning of the end). “Spotlight on New Hollywood” is one of the supplements that compliment the Criterion Channel’s HD streaming of The Graduate.

I watched it late last night…no embed code but very nice. It lasts around 15 minutes. Here it is…watch it.

Chris Nolan‘s Odyssey teaser-trailer (reportedly lasting 70 seconds) is playing in front of Universal’s Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens tomorrow (Wednesday, 7.2) in theatres nationwide.

Why do hardcore movie fanatics never look like…oh, like James Garner looked in the mid ’60s or something? Or at least like Don Gordon, who played “Delgetti” in Bullitt? Why do they always look like nerds? Or nerds on cheeseburger diets? Like guys who haven’t a prayer in hell of getting “lucky”? Identify one YouTube movie guy who appears to be in shape.

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Poor Glen Powell can’t land a quality-calibre role to save his life. That or he likes starring in this kind of popcorn crap.

One thing’s for sure: With Edgar Wright directing, The Running Man (Paramount, 11.7) couldn’t get much cheaper or more thoughtless.

Powell plays the Arnold Schwarzenegger role, of course…a featured slot on “The Running Man”, a highly-rated game show in which contestants are chased by killers all over the map, the idea being to escape a jail term and win money. (That was the deal, at least, in the 1987 original.)

Bellowing TV emcee in red-sequin jacket: “This is America, goddamit, and we don’t put up with no bullshit!”

Come again?

HE clarification: This is America, goddamit, and we not only put up with bullshit 24/7, we revel in it…it’s our spiritual mother’s milk.

The 38-year-old Schwarzenegger version is “set in a dystopian United States between 2017 and 2019, featuring a television show where convicted criminal ‘runners’ must escape death at the hands of professional killers.” Loosely based on Stephen King‘s “The Running Man”, published in ’82 and written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman.

There’s no greater shoveller of empty, thoughtless, glossy bullshit-for-glossy-bullshit’s sake than Wright. Whatever social or psychological undercurrents the King book may have had back in ’82, Wright (who cowrote the script with Michael Bacall) will erase them in this November release. For Wright is a 16-year-old in the body of a 51-year-old director.

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One presumes that the decision to use Faces‘”Ooh La La” (’73) for the new Sentimental Value trailer came from director Joachim Trier.

This is a masterstroke as (1) “Ooh La La” instantly Anglicizes or Americanizes this Oslo-produced family drama, and thus relaxes any resistance that Academy members might harbor about Value being a fitting Best Picture contender, (b) it recalls Wes Anderson‘s brilliant Rushmore (’98), which was the last film to use “Ooh La La” on its soundtrack, and (c) it alludes to personal growth, self-knowledge and finding wisdom, which Sentimental Value is fully concerned with. A perfect song for a perfect trailer.

Neon’s trailer says Sentimental Value will open stateside in November…nothing more specific than that. Obviously a prime Oscar consideration platform.

Friendo: “Looks great. Why can’t Hollywood make movies like this? Because they mostly don’t see personal relationships out there — they only see gender and skin-color power dynamics.”

Sentimental Value opens in France on 8.20.25, in its home country of Norway on 9.12.25, and in Sweden on 10.3.25.

Variety‘s Clayton Davis has spitballed ten would-be Best Picture titles, and it’s my duty to highlight those films that deserve instant disqualification in this regard.

Forget ’ems: Bugonia (Focus Features, d: Yorgos Lanthimos, too weirdo-oddball); Frankenstein (Netflix, d: Giuillermo del Toro…can’t); F1 (Apple, d: Joseph Kosinski, Jerry Bruckheimer…too popcorn for Best Picture category}; Sinners (Warner Bros., d: Ryan Coogler…too schlocky, too exploitation-ish, too many TikTkok ayeholes singing its praises); Wicked: For Good (Universal Pictures…can’t do this again…go away!); The Smashing Machine (A24, d: Benny Safdie…Benny films are too self-absorbed, too hyper-crazy, not Academy friendly). (6)

Maybes, Probables: Hamnet (Focus Features, d: Chloe Zhao); Late Fame (d: Kent Jones); Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (Searchlight, d: Scott Cooper); Sentimental Value (Neon; d: Joachim Trier) (4)

While Greenwich Entertainment delays (drags ass?) on releasing its English-language trailer for Michel Franco‘s Dreams, there’s a Czech-subtitled trailer out now. The Czech title is Nebezpečné sny, or Dangerous Dreams. Great sex madness…that’s obvious. HE to Greenwich: Get the lead out, fellas!

Disclaimer: this is an unauthorized fan-made video made by The Tapes Archive. The words are Tarantino’s, but the voice is generated by AI. The script is taken from Tarantino’s ‘Cinema Speculation’ chapter on Bullitt. Some of the pages were cut for the video to hopefully encourage people to buy his book.”

“No Sweat“, HE-posted on 12.3.22:

From Quentin Tarantino‘s “Cinema Speculation“: “Steve McQueen as Frank Bullitt keeps moving forward while Peter Yates, the director, follows him here and there as we, the audience, sit back and let them do our thinking for us. As pure cinema, Bullitt is one of the best directed movies ever made.”

I love it when IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich pans something, but his 6.30 review of Jurassic World: Rebirth (Universal, 7.2) doesn’t go batshit enough.

Just remember that even if Rebirth is, as some are claiming, the best Jurassic flick since the 1993 original, it’s still made for people of a very low sociological order, and that, in this instance, includes you. Films like this are intended to make you feel a bit stunted and slimey.

Initially posted on 6.6.18:

Last night I tried to catch a 7 pm all-media screening of Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom (Universal, 6.22) at the AMC Century City, but I almost didn’t make it. It happened in theatre #2, where two previous screenings had occured at 10 am and 3 pm. I arrived around…oh, 6:50 pm but all the seats seemed to be taken. I asked a Universal staffer if I should leave and she said, “No, no…we’ll figure it out.” Things didn’t look at all hopeful.

On top of which the crowd looked kind of mongrelish to me — overweight, T-shirts, jeans and sweat pants. There were a lot of kids there, and they all seemed to be wolfing down popcorn, candy and super-size soft drinks. A typical mall mob, the kind you’d see at Magic Mountain or Disneyland or Knotts Berry Farm. A thought went through me — “Do I want to sit with these awful-looking people? I don’t see any of my critic friends here. This is not my kind of scene.”

But I shook myself out of that mindset, manned up and decided to do my job, even without a seat. After a while I walked up the left-side aisle and sat down on the steps.

Ten seconds later a nice 30ish woman said, “We have a seat here.” It was five or six in from the aisle. “Oh…thank you so much!,” I said. I shuffled my way in and sat down, and right away felt a twinge of concern. On my right was a 20something woman of no particular distinction, but to my left…good God…was a Jabba-sized Latina who was sitting with a similar-sized friend. And Jabba Latina was eating, eating and eating. The movie began and she kept chowing down like someone who hadn’t eaten in days.

Her first course was some kind of chicken salad, tomato and cucumber dish inside a deep plastic container. Then came the second course — a butter-soaked tub of popcorn and a big slurpy drink. Then she opened up a bag of Doritos.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t give her the HE stink-eye. I just sat there like a sphinx and tried to concentrate on the film. But every now and then I snuck a peek.

I couldn’t ignore the fact that Jabba Latina’s reactions were extremely coarse and downmarket. I was reminded of those close-ups of Collisseum cheap-seat serfs watching Christians get eaten in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Sign of the Cross.

Every time a person got eaten by a dinosaur, Jabba Latina went “oooh, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Movies like Fallen Kingdom are obviously made with this kind of person in mind. She really loved the huge alligator-like dino that leapt out of the sea to eat a squealing 20something guy who was trying to climb into a hovering helicopter — “Eeeeee-hee-hah-hah!” Anything and everything that happened of a stupid or low-rent or pandering nature, Jabba Latina was in movie heaven.

Yes, I focused on the film and took mental notes all through it, but I couldn’t completely divorce myself from the Jabba Latina factor. I mostly pushed it aside but I kept twitching when she laughed. I’ve said this dozens of times over the years, but hell is truly other people.