Golden Lion 2026: odds updated 7-4 Wild Horse Nine (McDonagh) 7-1 Bunker (Zellner) 7-1 Woman Unknown (el-Toukhy) 8-1 Possible Love (Lee) 9-1 Bucking Fastard (Herzog) 14-1 The Echo Chamber (Pallaoro) 16-1 Mr Nelson, Did You Kill People? (Tsukamoto)

the shocker in TROY that had every classicist choking hard on their popcorn: Rose Byrne's Briseis kills Brian Cox's Agamemnon, thus saving the House of Atreus one gigantic heap of bother.

actually, if/when he ever gets out, incarnation-of-evil Andy T might perhaps consider starring in a new series of Coffin Joe pictures.

José Mojica Marins' MY NEIGHBOR IS A CANNIBAL WHO SCREAMS THROUGH THE NIGHT (Meu vizinho é um canibal que grita a noite toda.)

Venice 2026: Golden Lion: first show 3-1 Wild Horse Nine (Martin McDonagh) 5-1 Bucking Fastard (Werner Herzog) 6-1 Bunker (Florian Zeller) 8-1 Possible Love (Lee Chang-dong) 10-1 The Echo Chamber (Andrea Pallaoro) www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews...

Nolan should tackle the greatest still-unfilmed* horror novel. *THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF and THE LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF are only very loose adaptations, both entirely ditching the Paris-Commune context.

mon choix

Hitchcock's most golden box-office run only lasted a decade but included 11 films, of which a majority are widely regarded as classics/masterpieces.

The Long Ships (Bengtsson) Hard Rain Falling (Carpenter) Eastern Approaches (Maclean) Blessed Mcgill (Shrake) On the Road to Babadag (Stasiuk) Germinal (Zola)

DeMille's last couple of decades perhaps comparable.

RIP Simon Field (1946-2026), who I was proud to call a friend. A true and valiant cinephile, a real mensch, a lovely bloke, a good laugh, wonderful company, always smooth as silk, and a handsome devil with the most spectacular eyebrows in the business. He will deeply be missed by all who knew him.

cracks me up that Christopher Nolan has been catching so much noisy grief from right-wing clowns over his "woke agenda" with THE ODYSSEY —— and then delivers the most small-c conservative Hollywood epic for *many* decades. bloke's basically a "woke Tory."

as Ariane DeBose famously sang about Michelle Yeoh... "Sam Neill, I loved you from the start" (well, 1981).

a crucial detail of Greek mythology to know about BEFORE seeing The Odyssey (which I saw yesterday)

saw TUNER tonight and enjoyed the cameo by Herbie Hancock as himself — the 86yo's first big-screen acting role since he inexplicably played the intergalactic "Defence Minister" in Luc Besson's VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF THE THOUSAND PLANETS (2017).

I've always admired James Caan on screen, especially love him in THE GAMBLER (1974) and THIEF (1981). Even so, was *not* prepared for his magnificent early turn in Coppola's THE RAIN PEOPLE (1969) which I'm watching this weekend (for the first time) on dvd from @buechereienwien.bsky.social.

and of course with the semis and final taking place in Trump's USA, we now have an intriguing, politically "balanced" semi-final lineup: Spain: left (Sanchez) UK: incoming left-centre (Burnham) France: centre (Macron) Argentina: lunatic right (Milei)

6pm this evening at the @gartenbaukino.at Vienna I'll introduce a rare big-screen outing for Richard Lester's glorious disaster-suspense extravaganza JUGGERNAUT, one of the greatest British films of the 1970s.

⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡

cool Neils in the news.

Cabo Verde: COLOSSAL.

Radu Jude's DRACULA (in which I'm 24th-billed and have half a dozen lines) is released in Austria today! Showing in Vienna on the BIIIG screen at Gartenbau and the liiiitle screen at Schikaneder.

today saw PAPER TRAIL (14min 2026) by Don Hertzfeldt, best new film I've seen since Shinya Isobe's "13" back in 2020. Feels like the whole of animation has been leading up to this sui-generis masterpiece.

@moviegirlfrannie.bsky.social or as Conrad put in in LORD JIM... www.online-literature.com/conrad/lord_...

1. "Câine pierdut," 16-minute 2025 short by Jules Bourbon (b.1994) which I saw for the first time just this week. 2. "Bona" (1980) by Lino Brocka Carlotta Films

didn't recognise John Leguizamo in all the ODYSSEY trailers I've been seeing weekly for the last few months. Now I learn he's the blind swineherd Eumaeus (whom JL describes as ""most loyal character in Western literature".) I'd previously pegged Pattinson's Antinous as the likely Oscar-bait role...

"An amusement park terrorist really wants to blow up George Segal's lustrous mustache. Or some fucking thing."