Joe Biden is not only a dead man in terms of his reputation as a liar and gaslighter who ushered in Trump’s election. He’s also literally looking at lights-out from prostrate and bone cancer, although who knows how much time he actually has left? A year or two? I’m not an oncologist.

If Joe hadn’t drooled and stammered and old-manned his way to abandoning his presidential campaign last July and had somehow, against all odds and in his dreams, beaten Trump, Kamala Harris would almost certainly be taking the oath of office by late ’25 or certainly in ’26…right?

Science Direct estimates, posted in April 2024: “Of all men with a Gleason score of 9–10, 34% were alive at the end of follow-up, while 43% died of prostate cancer and 23% died of other causes.”

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At an early Sunday screening of Harry Lighton’s sexually graphic, dominant-submissive Pillion, Lighton said he wants the film to “make you laugh, make you think, make you feel and make you horny.”

Translation: He wants Pillion to inspire erections.

Alexander Sarsgaard’s portrayal of the dominant Ray apparently earns him gay-friendly cred; Harry Melling plays Colin, a shorter “bottom”.

So Pillion is a gay Babygirl, only more boner-y or thrust-worthy or whatever?

From Ryan Lattanzio’s IndieWire review:

I just tried and failed to get into a 2 pm showing of Kleber Mendonca Filho’s The Secret Agent (which I have a ticket to see late Monday morning inside the Grand Lumière), and now I’m seated inside the Salle Agnes Varda to see Raul Peck’s George Orwell doc at 4 pm.

But I won’t be able to see the whole thing (it runs two hours) as I have a ticket to see Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme at 6pm. If I want to avoid the agonizing Debussy balcony I’ll need to line up by 5:30 pm.

And yet, to be honest, I have a vague “problem” with the Varda. Or my eyelids do. The red Varda seats are so soft and cushy that I may wind up drifting off. I’ve caught a couple of great sleeps here before so don’t tell me. The body wants what it wants.

It’s too late to bang out a review of Lynne Ramsay‘s Die, My Love, which I saw late Saturday evening, but I can at least pass along that while I respected what it was on about, the Debussy journos didn’t go for it. Too grim, too downish in a one-note sense, no plot pivots of any kind….just a downward swirl into Jennifer Lawrence‘s increasing postpartum derangement….down, down, down.

What is it really about? Just as Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds wasn’t so much a restrained horror film about malicious winged demons as an indictment of social complacency, Die, My Love isn’t so much about JLaw’s descent into self-destructive madness as a portrayal of the dull horror of doing almost nothing with your life while caring for a child…an indictment of middle-class, stay-at-home-and-burp-the-baby-while-baking-cookies momism.

There isn’t a single aspect of Richard Linklater Nouvelle Vague — a concise, boxy, black-and-white, you-are-there reenactment of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking Breathless, 66 years ago on the streets of Paris….there isn’t a single scene or line or shot that didn’t strike me as wholly, deliciously authentic and note-perfect.

Thank you, Mr. Linklater, for nailing this…thanks for getting it exactly right.

For Nouvelle Vague is pure pleasure. By my sights, at least. Plus it looks, talks, feels, charms and shuffles around like Breathless itself, of course, and is about as joyful and immaculate as it could be in this regard — a genetically fused companion piece.

The handmade, little-film atmosphere shared by Breathless and Nouvelle Vague is the selling point of course…same vibe, same moves….both feel sharp, nervy, tight but impetuous, nimble, unpretentious — and are both focused, of course, on the same influential chapter in cinema history.

Guillaume Marbeck, Zooey Deutch and Aubry Dillon deliver perfect inhabitings of Godard, Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo…they wear their characters well and fully, which is to say with grace, relaxation and confidence to spare.

Will your fundamentally clueless Millennial and Zoomer know-nothings give a shit about any of this? How many under-45s out there have even heard of Breathless, much less seen it?

…will go instantly down the drain, as this is a film that despises the sensibilities of Joe and Jane Popcorn…people will hate it, hate it, hate it. It will lose money hand over fist, and yet IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio are either ignorant of this fact or curiously committed to furthering Sound of Falling‘s myth regardless. It’s this year’s Women Talking….a spoonful of cinematic Castor Oil if I’ve ever tasted one.

One morning in ’74 or thereabouts I strolled into a Hollywood Ralph’s in a semi-ratty neigborhood…Beverly Blvd. just west of Highland, something like that. I’m striding down one of the aisles and….boiinnnggg! — I came upon Doors keyboard guy Ray Manzarek, whom I instantly “made”. I experienced a simultaneous jolt of surprise and pleasurable adrenaline, as I’d long regarded the Doors as mystical-spiritual brethren and here I suddenly was, face to face.

A typical Doors fan would have geeked out and done the old babble-babble, asking Ray about the drug allusions in songs like “The Crystal Ship” and lyrics like “I’d rather fly” and what Jim Morrison was really like on personal terms and so on. But I didn’t want to do the hyper fan thing or even try to engage Manzarek in a conversation. I didn’t want to be just another breathless idiot. So without breaking stride…okay, I slowed down somewhat…I just let go with one of my cosmic grins and said “hey, man!” Manzarek smiled right back and repeated these same words, and that was it.

I didn’t think of myself as any kind of kindred spirit of Manzarek’s but in a Bhagavad Gita way I sorta kinda was (or we were), and so, you know, two souls exchanging some nice, tingly vibrations in a supermarket aisle…the same thing would’ve happened if I’d run into Jimi Hendrix (although he’d been dead for four years)…move on, dream on.

I’m sorry but David Corenswet isn’t quite axe-blade handsome enough — he has agreeable facial features, but is also a teeny-weeny bit funny-looking. Corenswet has a face that sorta kinda looks like a villain in a John Wick film. But at least he’s not gay or trans.

Rachel Brosnahan is three years older than Corenswet, and what’s with her big, thick-soled, lace-up boots?

Pruitt Taylor Vince, 64 going on 79, plays Superman / Clark Kent’s adoptive father, Jonathan Kent.

Or roughly eight hours, start to finish. The Ramsay tops the list, of course, followed by the Linklater and the Peck.

As I only got about four hours of good sleep last night (awakened at 3 am by snoring), I’m heading upstairs to the press lounge. Maybe I’ll find a place to lie down for a bit.

HE tried reserving seats for various hot-ticket (5.21) films this morning between 7 and 7:02 am…sorry! Better luck next year! There’s a word for this situation, and that word is “bullshit”.

Thank God I was able to snag a Bazin ticket to a late screening of Joachim Trier’s film…skin of my teeth.

10:45 am update: I’ve been informed by the festival press office that a “technical issue” is befouling the ticket request mechanism. Tickets are available despite the software saying they’re not, which is quite an “issue” indeed.