ORANGE AND BLUE SKIES
Reunion Newsletter [5.30.25]
NYC forecast has been rain rain rain and Reggie Miller’s been saying lotsa things about The New York Knicks. Turns out it’s orange and blue skies all around. Excited to host shabbat dinner tonight at my house…then Bad Shabbos Q+A at Quad Saturday afternoon…then The New York Knicks watch party at my house Saturday night. I’ll be there at MSG for the two greatest words in sports…Game Seven. Can’t wait. I love seeing the support from the whole squad. Landry Shamet getting his cheers, beautiful stuff. I’m feeling it all. Sinners, Mission Impossible, those kid movies, all doing great. Mubi is spending tons of money, so is Neon. There’s more than the ancillary brand builders like Netflix and A24, these are companies that are truly attempting to figure out how to build movies for the sake of movies. They have no alternate ‘culture’ plan or private equity situation, they’re just building movies. This is really exciting. And Broadway is doing huge numbers (don’t cynically say it’s only about high ticket prices, that’s not how systems work). Stay cool and don’t let Donald get to you. His nonsense will run its course. Elon’s out. Life finds a way. The New York Knicks will win the championship.
Also the David Lynch auction is insane. And Nathan Fielder is incredible. And yeah, come to Bad Shabbos Q&A Saturday at Quad 445pm showing, and hoping there will be a heckler like last time.
This week’s Reunion show was really fun. It was invigorating this time to present other people’s work vs micro manage and do it all. It was a stress test of the team and they did an amazing job. Appreciate all of them and it makes me excited for the work being planned now. I’m working on a full length adaptation of one of our favorite movies, and we’ll do more anthology / shorts showcases in meantime too. Stay tuned for those. And always get in touch re casting, collaborating, or working on the events yourself.
— Sean Glass @sdotglass
EVENTS (reunion.eventive.org )
NEWS
The important stuff on the important stuff. TL;DR + links if you want more.
Kung Fury Director Unveils New Movie Dragonlord, Calls It a ‘Crazy Mishmash’ of Star Wars, Mad Max and Lord of the Rings [Variety] More Kung Fury news below.
Ten Years After Kung Fury Rocked Cannes, Director David Sandberg Unwraps ‘Heartbreaking’ Legal Chaos That Left Feature-Length Sequel in Limbo [Variety]
Here’s the “leaked” sizzle reel for KF2—which is a movie in its own right.
Tom Cruise to Be Celebrated at MoMI with ‘Above and Beyond’ Retrospective Festival [IndieWire]
Tom Cruise, Above and Beyond series [MoMI]
Tom Cruise in F1 Over Brad Pitt Would’ve Been ‘Scaring Us More,’ Says Joseph Kosinski; Action Supervisor Quips: Tom ‘Terrifies Me’ and ‘We’d Have Had a Crash’ [Variety] He says he’s gonna do Days of Thunder sequel but I hope he doesn’t. Just want other things from him.
Sinners x Tom Cruise rumor mill:
David Lynch Fans Rejoice: The Late Auteur’s Personal Prop Collection Will Soon Be at Auction for You to Buy [IndieWire] This is unprecedented awesomeness, I have no idea how high these bids will go. I’m going to try to get a camera. To film on one of his cameras would be magical. I already have a lot of cool Lynch stuff in my house from various adventures and relationships, but this is an unrivaled treasure trove.
The David Lynch Collection [Juliens]
Guillermo del Toro to Host Canadian Horror Film Festival [THR]
Ed Gale, Chucky and Howard the Duck Actor, Dies at 61 [THR]
Janus Films Acquires North American Rights to Hlynur Palmason’s The Love That Remains Following Cannes Premiere [Variety]
Why does everyone want to get into the Criterion Closet? by Bilge Ebiri [Vulture]
Mandy Walker Elected President of American Society of Cinematographers [Variety]
‘Everything Could Have Been a Huge Disaster’: Nathan Fielder on Making ‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2 [Rolling Stone] Not a Fielder scholar or completionist but what was already an incredible season came to a close with one of the most remarkable turns in television ever.
Aronofsky and Soderbergh Collaborator Eddie Alcazar Debuts Surreal Animated Pilot Inspired by ’90s Golden Age of Cartoons [IndieWire]
SUBSTACK RECOMMENDATIONS
Big takeaways from Cannes are that there are multiple players in town, with multiple business models and verticals at play. It’s exciting. There are options and upsides. No idea if this will work nor stabilize anything, but it’s a path to justify trying things. The last few years have had zero viability to speculative investment. Anyone who invested in movies in the last few years without a concrete business model…was a fool. They may have succeeded, but it was still a foolish investment. There has been no logic to why a movie would sell or recoup budget in box office or otherwise. Straight box office as an exit went out the window a while ago, where the middle got cut out by streaming. In that context, anyone who gave you ‘projections’ over the last decade or so…is a snake oil salesperson. They stopped existing with streaming. So the cost-plus model from Netflix was something many could rely on for a few years, but that went away too. Last few years have been pretty random. But now there’s these companies building themselves as kinda private equity model for movies. The movies become portfolio and brand builders for companies with valuations seeking larger revenue platforms. This gives movies a pathway to justify themselves in both cultural relevance and direct revenue drivers. It’s exciting. It’s potentially (probably…definitely) nonsense…but exciting because there is a window where we’re incentivized to come up with great ideas and get them to audiences. Generate ideas…talk to the audience…and there are options to be stabilized and rewarded financially. That has not been the case for a while with movies. But also, do not confuse this for the studio system of days past. This is far from that. The studio system generated a responsible profit & loss and consistent production schedule. This is not that. This is basically a random go make things happen and space will be made for you system.
Underrated western from Sidney Poitier (his directorial debut) and Harry Belafonte.
WATCH
Bring Her Back [wide] Three A24 movies at Lincoln Square this week, and I can’t bring myself to really see any. If this came out with another company, I’d go. But every time I see one of these movies, I just feel this uncanny valley, like what are they trying to do to us? Why do they want us to talk that way? These aren’t human beings. I put on Opus for like 3 minutes and turned it off. All these movies are like this. They’re like Netflix. They just talk a different robotic meme speak than Netflix ones. But it’s all this kinda YouTuber Creator / Netflix Rom-Com / TikTok influencer inflected way of presenting things. I can’t handle it. Outside of exceptions they had nothing to do with, like Brutalist, I can’t watch A24 movies.
Karate Kid: Legends [wide]
The Phoenician Scheme [Angelika] Speaking of movies I cannot bring myself to watch, I don’t get what this guy has been doing for like 20 years. This isn’t Woody Allen. Woody did his thing, with his style, but also did a bunch of other things within the style. He made comedies and tragedies. He did abstract stuff. Wes Anderson is just doing the same thing forever. I don’t get what the whole project is. Maybe I’ve missed the profundity of it. But these each feel like retreads and exercises. The actors continue because it’s an enjoyable experience, and the public does still respond, so it’s good for careers. He probably shoots fast also. I imagine if I were a famous actor, I’d happily spend a few weeks in the Wes Anderson world every couple years. But as an audience member, I have zero interest in watching these, and haven’t for a long time.
Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2025 [Film Linc]
Bad Shabbos, w/ filmmakers in person [Quad] I’ll be doing a Q&A on Saturday for the 4:45pm show.
Television Event [Film Forum]
Before Sunrise [IFC]
It’s All Gonna Break, w/ filmmaker in person [IFC]
JUNE 2: To Die For, w/ special guests [IFC]
HITCH! The Original Cinema Influencer series, continues through June 29 [Paris]
Bleak Week New York, June 8-14 [Paris]
Hatari!, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Grapes of Wrath—all in 35mm + Heat and more [Roxy]
My Neighbor Totoro, The Insider, The Matrix, Matador, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Gimme Shelter, Magnolia—all in 35mm + more [Metrograph]
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gloria, Hooper, Troma’s The Curse of the Weredeer + more [MoMI]
The Life of Chuck previews w/ special guests in LA & NY.
JUNE 4:
Audition w/ live score at Nitehawk.
JUNE 5:
Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us – Part II [Japan Society]
JUNE 1-14:
The Virgin Suicides 25th anniversary events.
JUNE 20-26:
The Other America: A Cosmology of Jordan Peele’s Us series—including Peele’s personal 35mm print. [Film Linc]
JUNE 25:
Nightbreed, w/ special guests [Film Linc]
STREAMING
Bono: Stories of Surrender [Apple TV+]
A Desert [VOD] WATCH THIS!
On Swift Horses [VOD]
The Seed of the Secret Fig [Hulu]
Who By Fire [VOD]
The Wild Robot [Netflix]
Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming) [VOD]
ON OUR MIND
Tom Cruise reflecting on 30 years of Mission: Impossible.
Film critic Amy Nicholson on Tom Cruise, the last movie star.
Eva Victor promoting Sorry, Baby in Vogue.
JUST ANNOUNCED: The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years [Criterion] I would die.
Cassavetes and Rowlands by Carrie Courogen book announcement.
28 Years Later 20 iphone rig used for filming.
Never leave NYC.
Star power helped fuel Broadway’s big year.
