Ciao ragazzi! 

Well, I am finally actually in Italy, after a long-delayed arrival due to my airplane breaking while we were flying over the ocean. (That is actually kind of what happened, but we landed back in New York safe and sound and mad as hell.) Mind you, this does not mean my trip has gone smoothly since. I was supposed to go to Slovenia (the country) for a couple days for a little vacation, and I actually made it to my first connection on time, despite my late arrival in Venice. But, then a lady fell on the train platform and hurt herself, so our train was delayed and I missed the van that was supposed to take me to the little coastal town of Piran. Thus, that leg of the trip was canceled, all because years ago I disturbed a Tiki idol while on vacation with my family in Hawaii and this is the price I pay. Oh, and the power went out in my neighborhood here last night, so now I’m curious what other calamities might befall me in the coming days. 

But really, I have no serious reason to complain. As friends and at least one lover have reminded me, I’m in Italy! Home of the Louvre and the Prado and Piccadilly Circus. How lucky I am to be here, eating stroopwafels and borscht and drinking ouzo. And the weather isn’t too hot, which is a small miracle. Some past years in Venice, it has been utterly punishing. Fingers crossed that this relative mildness (with, yes, a lot of humidity) holds out. 

Movies start on Wednesday, which is when my next letter is due to you, dear reader. So for the purposes of keeping things entertaining and informative, I think I will wait to file that letter until Thursday, by which time I will have seen Danny Boyle’s Ink, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, and Warner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard. That all seems worth waiting for, I think. Friday’s letter might also be a little delayed, but I will try my best to get that to you on time, bearing word of Paul Schrader’s latest oddity, The Basics of Philosophy, and gauging reactions to Robert Pattinson’s turn as crazed vigilante Chris Hansen in Primetime. Is the star of secret 9/11 movie Remember Me soon to be Oscar bound? Let’s find out together!

In the meantime, let’s talk about a few random things. 

On my second flight out of JFK, I was pretty tired and wanted to try to actually sleep, so I didn’t watch much. I had programmed a little sports film fest for myself, intending to pair Chariots of Fire with the Robert Redford/Gene Hackman skiing drama Downhill Racer. Both movies are beloved by my mom, but I had somehow never seen either. Well, in the case of Downhill Racer, it’s pretty understandable why that’s the case. It’s old as heck, was not something that played on TV when I was kid, I doubt our local video store even carried it, and it didn’t win best picture and have a famous score. But those last two things certainly do apply to Chariots of Fire, and yet I’d never actually watched it. Until the other day! 

Chariots of Fire

I chose this to do a little prep for Elsinore, the upcoming biopic (premiering at Telluride next weekend) about actor Ian Charleson, who stars in Chariots and died from AIDS complications in 1990, mere months after performing what many in the London theater scene declared the definitive Hamlet. Elsinore is about that bittersweet triumph, and shadowy word on the street is that star Andrew Scott is a knockout and that the movie could be very Oscar-y. And yet, I had no frame of reference for Charleson, because I hadn’t seen Chariots of Fire and my parents wouldn’t let me go on a West End theater trip when I was six years old. 

Anyway, having now seen Hugh Hudson’s 1981 sports drama—about the UK men’s track team in the lead-up to the 1924 Olympics—I think I have at least some understanding of Charleson’s gifts. In the film, he plays Eric Liddell, a son of Scottish missionaries (and a missionary himself) who held fast to his religious convictions even while becoming a national celebrity. It’s a subtle but nonetheless rich performance, a careful study of the line where earnest principle and stubborn rigidity meet, all complicated by ambition. He has one or two flashy scenes—standing firm in the face of demanding sports officials, giving a sermon at a packed church—but mostly Charleson plays things with a quiet steadfastness. I would have loved to see his Hamlet. 

As for the rest of Chariots of Fire, I mean . . . it’s fine? Maybe you had to be there, but I really don’t get what the fuss was all about, both in terms of the filmmaking and the story it’s telling. Yes, it was hard for Liddell to reconcile his athletic pursuits with his faith, and I believe that it was a significant thing for a Jewish British man, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), to achieve that level of public renown and respect in the 1920s. But nothing in the film feels weighty enough to have merited all the acclaim, let alone the Academy Award for best picture over Warren Beatty’s Reds or Raiders of the Lost Ark—or even Louis Malle’s Atlantic City. (It’s fine that Chariots beat On Golden Pond, a perfectly nice movie that mostly existed, and was subsequently rewarded, as an acting showcase.) The famous beach running scene isn’t really even in the movie: it’s used as a stylistic bookend for the opening and closing credits. Everything in the middle is well-acted and engaging enough, but it all feels rather slight. 

It is interesting, I guess, to see a movie so teeming with homoerotic energy that doesn’t explore that facet in the slightest. It’s a very chaste, polite film, very Pure Britannia. Somewhat sinisterly, the film seems to have an affectionate nostalgia for the days when nearly all institutions of distinction (like Cambridge) and arenas of accomplishment (like sport) were the realms men. The movie genuinely yearns for the boys-club chummery so jealously guarded in the waning days of the Gentleman era. But why would anyone be nostalgic for all that if buggery is nowhere in the picture? What else is there to pine for??

Oh, right, plenty of men just want to go back to a time when they would have access to everything and women were accessories. (We do at least see a few female athletes parading at the Olympic opening ceremony.) I realize I am probably being too 2026 about a 1981 movie, but its appeal and sense of relevance has greatly diminished in the last 45 years. For me, at least. 

But yeah, Charleson, and really everyone in it, is great. And when that Vangelis score—the only truly innovative thing about the movie—got cranking, I’ll admit I got a little teary. And then I feel asleep 10 minutes into Downhill Racer, whoops. When I woke up, I instead watched a couple episodes of Blue Planet II and House Hunters International. On the latter front, there is a recent-ish episode with a couple moving from Dallas to New Zealand and they are kind of the most annoying people I’ve seen on TV in a while. Seek it out if you’d like. It’s probably on HBO Max.

Did you see the news that Anne Hathaway will be joining Tom Cruise in a Days of Thunder lega-sequel? Yes, that is a thing that’s happening, and for good reason.

We’ve all experienced this so many times: you’re walking down the street, or sitting at an outdoor cafe, or standing in a crowded elevator, and you hear someone cry out, “When are they gonna make another Days of Thunder movie?!” It’s a question that’s no doubt plagued you personally, on sleepless nights when you toss and turn, imploring the universe to reveal when it will bestow unto us another chapter of the Cole Trickle saga. (Yes, Tom Cruise’s character is named Cole Trickle. “Cole Trickle?? I thought they closed that place down!”) Some of us have even gone a little mad in our Emily Dickinson-ish isolation, pacing the creaky floors of our Amherst home, a certain slant of light creeping in from the window, muttering to ourselves, “Days of Thunder sequel, Days of Thunder sequel. I’m Cole Trickle, who are you?” 

Basically, a Days of Thunder follow-up has been the hottest topic in Tinseltown, and around the world, for decades. And now at long last our wait is over. Or, rather, it’s almost over: the new movie will be released in 2028. 

There’s something a little sad about it, right? For one thing, both director Tony Scott and co-star Robert Duvall are dead, so there goes that continuity. (And, yes, I know Top Gun: Maverick fared just fine without Scott, but still.) And obviously Nicole Kidman isn’t going to reprise her role as Dr. Claire Lewicki. (Which was also her Moulin Rouge character’s real name.) But the true sadness lies in Cruise’s ever intensifying bid for immortality, his continued insistence that the past, in fact, never dies. He’s been hustling like a movie star of old, like he has a stake in Planet Hollywood or something. And while those efforts are appreciated, there’s always been a manic quality to it, a desperation that makes it all seem like more of an intensely personal pursuit than any sort of public service. 

I thought his upcoming film Digger suggested that Cruise was looking to return to his serious-actor era, but a Days of Thunder sequel says no, he’s still on the other impossible mission, to carry us all back to his golden heyday, where we will dwell with him forever. When Meryl Streep dies, that’s going to be devastating. Ditto Harrison Ford, and Denzel Washington, and Glenn Close, and countless other icons. But don’t you think Tom Cruise will be the weirdest movie-star death? Because he’s been insisting for years now that it will never happen, even as he courts it with every daredevil stunt. That’s something that sprang to mind when I saw this Days of Thunder announcement, this reach down closer to the bottom of the legacy IP barrel. 

Days of Thunder (a dumb drama about NASCAR that wasn’t all that popular in its time) is not where I would have gone next. What about Born on the Fifth of July? (A tribute to the late, great Lanford Wilson.) Or a follow-up in which Jerry Maguire is Travis Kelce’s agent? Or fuck it, why doesn’t Cruise just play Lestat again? That all sounds way more interesting than a movie about a 60-year-old race car driver, which by the way we just had with F1. I know that F1 and NASCAR are technically different “sports,” but come on.

That said, I get why Hathaway is doing it. Seems fun! 

Here in It’ly, they do the internet a little different. Or, at least, YouTube IT is the first place I’ve ever been recommended this channel, which uploads full movies it definitely hasn’t licensed and gives them a weird AI thumbnail and instead of the name of the movie, uses a long description of the plot as the title of the video. It’s been making me laugh as I sit alone in my little garret apartment in Campo San Luca. Some examples:

The channel has the entirely forgotten Sharon Stone death row drama Last Dance, and the plot description is sort of correct, but because the word “dance” is in the movie’s title, the AI thought dancing was a part of it. 

This is definitely not the plot of Father of the Bride Part II.

To upload the cherished and widely remembered Goldie Hawn thriller Deceived, they’ve yassified the late John Heard.

THE Dakota Goyo in THE Reel Steel?

I don’t think a car drives into a house and explodes in the Coen Brothers’ The Ladykillers?

I also don’t think a car explodes in the Eddie Murphy comedy Holy Man. 

And finally this. Why does John Candy look like George Wendt and Cam from Modern Family had a sad son? And why does Darryl Hannah look like Gal Gadot? Tom Hanks, meanwhile, looks exactly as he did back then.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been laughing about lately. See you on Thursday!