Andrew Scott‘s Elsinore turn as the heroic, AIDS-afflicted Ian Charleson (i.e., the Chariots of Fire costar) playing Hamlet on a grand London stage during the final months of his life…this may be the performance that elbows aside Matt Damon and snags the Best Actor Oscar. You can just tell from the trailer — Scott really goes there.
Focus Features will open Simon Stone‘s Elsinore on 11.20.26.
The semi-hypnotic swimming sequences in Taylor Swift‘s Patient Zero music video and the 44-year-old For Your Eyes Only main-title sequence (starring the silky-voiced Sheena Easton) are fairly similar. The main difference is that Swift’s video is quaking with intense loathing for Colin Farrell‘s wicked husband while Easton’s is about devotional worship for Roger Moore‘s 007 and his phallic, long-barrelled pistol.
A secondary difference is that Easton’s aquatic dream sequence is far more pleasurable to watch (more lulling and otherworldly) than Swift’s.
Decide for yourself. DIGGER – in theaters and IMAX FRIDAY. Tickets on sale now. https://t.co/Z1IpSpFnXd pic.twitter.com/e5ID4WUxbL
— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) September 29, 2026
A boring writer is governed by caution, timidity, and/or conventional guardrails. What comes out is usually a consensus view that says “I’m not entirely sure who or what I am but I do know who or what I don’t want to SOUND like so in order to play it safe I’m going to wear a cloak of deference…an attitude performance that conveys pseudo-fairness. When in doubt it’s always better to project what sounds like impartiality.”
A strong, distinctive writer is guided by self-trust. This is how Patti Smith operated during her ‘70s and ‘80s heyday when she would impulsively riff on this or that subject. If you trust your gut, you usually go where it leads you without fear or favor. Your gut tells you that a basic instinctual reaction or perception that’s stirring within is mostly worth sharing or at least toying with and/or exploring for the hell of it. Or, in Don Logan-ese, “the bolt and the buzz of it.”
What your tedious consensus slowboats (i.e., often repped by wokerati) may regard as masturbatory or wanker-esque is, 85% or 90% of the time, in fact a form of swan-dive bravery. All writing needs refinement and clarification, of course, but the best writing always starts with a faith in gut instinct…always think it through and discard the blather, but you’re nothing if you don’t trust what your heart may be telling you deep down.
AI Florence Pugh therefore reps a sadly tedious mentality.
Taylor Swift deserves serious applause for the direction of her “Patient Zero” music video, which premiered at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards on 9.27. Praise for Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki‘s lensing is also due. Swift portrays a ghost (i.e., a once-wealthy deceased wife) haunting a miserable affluent couple (Colin Farrell, Dakota Johnson).
One HE complaint: Is there any other theme that interests auteur-level female filmmakers besides “men are foul, duplicitous shits who cheat, murder and defile?” Apparently not.
”There’s one sequence in Digger that gets your blood pumping, and that’s because of Tom Cruise’s acting, and also because of what the scene is saying.
“As the world veers toward calamity, Digger stands before a global assembly (it looks like the UN of the future) and gives a speech explaining why the world has remained addicted to oil. It is, he says, because you want it that way — all of us who are hooked on 1,000 lifestyle choices, far beyond gasoline-fueled cars, that we don’t actually want to give up.
“It’s the film’s Howard Beale speech, and it’s bracing to see Digger, at least for 10 minutes, stop blaming the Usual Bad Guys, and to see Cruise deliver that message with a fire-and-brimstone glee. But then that theme slinks away, and it’s back to the accusatory disaster-movie gloom-mongering.
“And while I won’t reveal anything more about the film’s breaking of the fourth wall, let me just say this: It makes the movie, however unintentionally, seem to be about nothing so much as Tom Cruise taking on this role, and Iñárritu erecting the edifice for him to stand on.
“And that’s a tone-deaf mistake. It punches up the fact that we’re never going to solve the climate-change crisis until we disentangle it from the hot air of people celebrating themselves.” — from Owen Gleiberman‘s Variety review.
Another gender-swap flick…fanfuckingtastic! Set in 17th Century Europe and enhanced by the deployment of a sexual prosthetic. An historical trans saga of sorts. Except Sandra Huller‘s strap-on isn’t a Myra Breckenridge-type deal. Because it’s used (I think) for straight hetero sex.
Rose, trust me, is the kind of film that Joe and Jane want, entertainment-wise, when they go to the plex.
ASMR is an acronym that stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It describes “a calming, static-like tingling sensation that usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine,” blah blah
Why would anyone on the planet earth use a term like this in any context? Is there something psychologically wrong with the (mostly younger) people who use ASMR in casual conversation?
I’ve experienced ASMR tinglings from time to time, sure, but I’ve never once said out loud “whoa, I’m feeling a little ASMR in my scalp and down the back lof my neck…very nice!”
Have any veterans of mescaline or LSD trips ever experienced fluttering chest spasms while tripping? I would be engaged in a conversation with someone and suddenly a tingly, half-tickling shuddering sensation would ignite in my upper chest area, and then my entire chest area would succumb to an earthquake-like spasm.
I knew this smooth-talking Wilton guy named Tim Petersen, a preppy, brainy party animal who fancied himself as a ladies man. One night Tim, myself, a mutual friend named Gerry and one or two others were all tripping on little green mescaline tablets. We were all hanging and giggling inside a large, late-night diner, and Tim, true to form, managed to strike up a conversation with a pretty girl who was not tripping. Tim is into his sophisticated preppy mode, Brooks Brothers shirt and all, sharing his usual brilliant chit-chat and doing pretty well with the girl, who was grinning and chuckling at his charming conversational patter.
And then all of a sudden Tim succumbed to a fluttering chest spasm, and the whole smooth operator performance fell apart. The girl was slightly alarmed. The spell had been broken.
In December of 1980 I saw Peter O’Toole in that reviled production of Macbeth at London’s Old Vic. It was slow and turgid and altogether horrid, and the audience all but booed at the curtain call.
The look on O’Toole’s face at that moment was ghastly in itself. I felt truly sorry for the guy. I wanted to comfort him on some level.
All such thoughts went out the window when I interviewed the 48-year-old O’Toole in his Hampstead Heath home two or three days later, and just after John Lennon‘s murder. He was mostly dry and amiable after a fashion, but shifted into a chilly performative mode when the mood struck. He obviously didn’t much care for my company, and I didn’t have the moves or the moxie that might’ve sparked a connection.
I re-encountered O’Toole a few months later during a Manhattan press schmooze luncheon for the then-filming My Favorite Year. I was so afraid that I might say the wrong thing again that I went into hyper mode, cranking my energy field up to level 11. O’Toole saw right through my anxiety. “Whoa whoa whoa,” he dismissively chortled with wry amusement, slightly rolling his eyes.
Here’s a snippet from Jim Sheridan‘s documentary “Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba“. It features Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh and Brian Blessed speaking about the production and reception of O’Toole’s Macbeth.
A filmmaker friend saw Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Digger (Warner Bros., 10.2) on Sunday night at the old Academy theatre.
Key filmmaker observation: “The movie’s overall strength is that it will be remembered as the first work of art to capture the moral and actual chaos and insanity of the Trump era and the top-to-bottom, soul-destroying duplicity of MAGA supporters. It’s a climate-change Dr. Strangelove for the 2020s.”
I’m sorry to acknowledge that the mostly lethal reviews will hit tomorrow at noon.
HE to filmmaker: MAGA supporters are indeed duplicitous cult members, but not because they think Trump is a great or even an effective president. The MAGA movement is entirely driven by revulsion for the progressive left’s totally lunatic femmebot identity politics & the general condemnation of white cis males.
Hardcore progressives 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.
BRAD PITT SPOILER CONTAINED HEREIN:
When this or that male character winds up dying in a rugged survival flick, it’s usually because society regards him as lacking in social value or gravitas and is therefore disposable or diminishable.
Lee Tamahori‘s The Edge (’97) is about three guys who’ve crash-landed in a remote Alaskan lake — aloof billionaire Charles (Anthony Hopkins), smart-ass photographer Bob (Alec Baldwin) who’s been secretly schtupping Charles’ wife Mickey (Elle MacPherson), and Bob’s black assistant Steve (Harold Perrineau). The film was largely (though not entirely) about the trio trying to avoid being eaten by a Kodiak bear.
It was obvious to audiences back then that Perrineau would be eaten first. Because those were the Hollywood rules in the late ’90s. White movie stars would prevail while an occasional dude of color might buy the farm.
It was equally obvious that Robert Redford wouldn’t die in J.D. Chandor‘s All Is Lost (’13). Because he was the great Redford at age 77…no way could he have drowned!
In 1965 audiences knew going in that James Stewart and at least a few of the crash-landed guys in The Flight of the Phoenix would survive. It was written in stone that the intrepid Stewart could not and would not die in the desert. Hollywood law insisted.
And yet at the end of Joe Carnahan‘s The Gray (’11) Liam “paycheck” Neeson appeared to end up dead of fang-toothed wolf bites. Why did this happen to the Taken guy? No simple answer but his death was certainly unexpected.
In Chris Kentis‘ Open Water (’03), a married couple, played by Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan, wound up being devoured by sharks. Why? Because Travis and Ryan weren’t established name actors, and it was presumed that however shocking the finale, audiences would accept their demise.
And yet in The Mountain Between Us (2017), another romantically linked couple, played by Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, survive horrific blizzard conditions and come together at the end. Why? The rules of 2017 were that you couldn’t kill a charismatic black actor or a name-brand actress. Signed, sealed, delivered.
One of the most glorious outdoor survival sagas is Kevin McDonald‘s Touching The Void (’03). It was such a profound high when the real-life Simon Yates emerged exhausted but alive at the end. A true story and incredibly life-affirming.
If Brad Pitt had starred in a man-against-the-elements drama in the late ’90s, he would have absolutely survived at the end. Same deal if he had starred in the same kind of film in the aughts or early teens.
But after the drunken-Brad-vs.-Angelina Jolie-and-the-kids airplane incident of 2016, Pitt was seen as a somewhat flawed and perhaps even a diminished fellow. And so, in David Ayer‘s Heart of the Beast, two or three large wolves attack his character, a grizzled ex-special forces guy with a tennis-ball haircut, and…well, Pitt and Liam Neeson are suddenly the victims of a shared fate. Because on some submerged level, fairly or unfairly, society had decided that Pitt needed to symbolically atone.
This is why I forgot to review Heart of the Beast after seeing it last weekend. I just couldn’t get behind a film that champions the idea of a German Shepherd surviving but his owner, provider and best friend going down for the count. It feels inconsequential.
