You would not know by the looks of the crowd on Tuesday night that the movie biz’s premiere party thrower, Peggy Siegal, was having a difficult week.

Her crowd showed up and showed support for at the Landmark 57 Theater and Ousia restaurant premiere of the hot foreign film of the summer, “Tel Aviv On Fire.”

Oscar winning director Barry Levinson hosted the screening without question. He and Peggy go back to “Diner.”

Among the guests who loved the movie, directed by Sameh Zoabi, a Palestinian who grew up in Israel and went to Columbia University, were Oscar winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple, famed journalist Gay Talese and his famed book editor wife Nan; former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and his wife Veronica, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, “GoodFellas” writer and equally famed journalist Nick Pileggi, as well as movie and theater producer Jean Doumanian, former CNN and Fox correspondent Paula Zahn, and award winning producer-writer James Schamus.

The group– which also included Jeffrey Epstein journalist Vicky Ward–was happy to come support Peggy, but also perplexed by the viciousness of the recent pieces describing Siegal’s friendship with Epstein. Ward, who knows everything about Epstein, lamented, “I think Peggy was conned by Jeffrey.”

The many guests concurred, and were surprised to learn about studio defections based on innuendo.

“No one knows how to get people together to have a meaningful impact for a new film,” said more than one guest.

Siegal is out of town. But her staff and that of CohenMedia, which releases “Tel Aviv on Fire” on August 2nd, knew the drill. It didn’t hurt that the movie is sensationally funny, witty, and human. The director mixed Israeli and Palestinian stars in a well written saga of a live Palestinian soap opera that’s become a huge TV hit in both countries. Everyone is hanging on the lives of the characters.

Kais Nashif (looking like a Middle Eastern Stephen Mangan from “Episodes”) plays the Palestinian producer’s ne’er do well nephew Salaam who winds up writing scripts for the show, set in 1967. Salaam becomes entangled with an Israeli border crossing captain (Yaniv Biton) who starts helping him, surreptitiously, with the show and becomes more demanding about the characters’ outcomes.

Zoabi cleverly entwines the Israeli and Palestinians as they go back and forth across the border until you realize, late in the game, he’s declared peace among these people. He also blends the current day mishegos at the soap with the soap itself to the point where it’s almost hard to remember if the past is influencing the present or vice versa. The soap’s main characters a triangle of a female spy, an Arab “freedom fighter,” and an Israeli soldier. Somehow Salaam must resolve their story live, while two countries watch and root for their own sides.

Great movie, great night, and Peggy’s crowd is looking forward to an Oscar season full of these kinds of films.

The 2019 Toronto Film Festival looks pretty swell. No Scorsese “Irishman,” but everything else we need, want, and expect including Tom Hanks in the Mister Rogers movie “Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Western Stars,” Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory” with Antonio Banderas’s Cannes winning performance, and Todd Philip’s “Joker.” They’ve also got Isabelle Huppert in “Frankie,” Renee Zellweger as “Judy,” and “The Goldfinch.”

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SOME SPOILERS.

Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski get the happy ending they always deserved in Quentin Tarantino’s 9th movie, “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” This isn’t much of a spoiler. You had to know Tarantino was not going to go all Helter Skelter on us and deliver a gory re-enactment of what took place in Los Angeles in August 1969. There’s no point to that.

So instead, Tarantino has gloriously reimagined Hollywood in 1969, as a certain kind of filmmaking left over the from the 1950s is coming to an end. This is right before Coppola and Lucas, Spielberg, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Peter Fonda overtook the business. It’s really a minute before movie making and Hollywood were turned upside down.

I think the threat of Charles Manson-like mayhem got people’s attention because Tarantino is known for violence, and the Tate-LaBianca murders would be imagined by his fans as the ultimate gore fest. But this is not that movie. Tarantino was six when all this went down in nearby Hollywood (he was in the suburbs). What he’s recalling here is not Charles Manson carving crosses into Squeaky Fromme’s forehead, but the beauty of Los Angeles as western frontier. There’s one sequence of all the neon in Hollywood coming to life at twilight that is the most romantic thing Tarantino has ever filmed.

So Leonardo DiCaprio is kind of a washed up star, maybe a little inspired by Chuck Connors, called Rick Dalton. He’s sort of a cult star from the 50s who’s drifted between TV and movie roles with minor success. (DiCaprio less mannered than usual, going deep, great to watch.) Brad Pitt (best work maybe ever, watch out Oscars) is his loyal stunt double, Cliff Booth, who’s got maybe a bad history. (It’s rumored that he killed his wife, no one can say for sure.) Rick and Cliff are Hollywood buds, thick as thieves, devoted to each other.

Rick has done well enough in his career that he owns a decent home in the Hollywood Hills, where Cliff hangs out as his major domo. Who moves in next door but Polanski and Tate, into the house where Terry Melcher lived. So you know Tarantino has put Rick and Cliff in proximity of what we know happened in real life. But we know it’s not going to happen in this story. Tarantino telegraphs that early on. He’s certainly not going to end the movie with a blood bath (even though he does, in another way).

Margot Robbie is the third piece of the puzzle here as Sharon Tate, who was a beautiful girl not destined to win Oscars. She was a starlet, albeit one maybe with a good sense of humor. Robbie seems like she’s peripherally in the movie, but she’s more important than that. I think hers is the toughest role, and pulls it off with aplomb. She’s a little like a Robert Altman character who you don’t pay attention to at first, but suddenly ties everything together. Tarantino gives her a little Easter egg when she buys Polanski a first edition of “Tess of the Durbanvilles” as gift. Nice touch.

There are lots of people in this movie, from Lena Dunham to 50s and 60s star Clu Gulager (born in 1928, he must see Rick as based on his own career). Some of the young people jump right off the screen including Maya Hawke, Austin Butler, most especially Margaret Qualley. Dakota Fanning, now only 25, reminded of  why we loved her as a teen. Rumer Willis has a cool turn as actress Joanna Pettet. Bruce Dern is spot on as George Spahn, who let the Manson family run wild over his ranch. Damian Lewis (whom we love in “Billions”) is an uncanny Steve McQueen.

“Once Upon a Time” is long (two hours forty five minutes), often rambling, in need of more tightening. But it also has a dynamite soundtrack, of course, and Robert Richardson has made it look Los Angeles is melting in the summer sun. This is a movie made on film! Reels have to be changed, and you can see the marks in the upper right hand corner. No one wears a cape or has a super power and there will be no sequel. But it’s a movie that will last a long, long time in audience’s memories. It’s cinema, like we used to know it.

PS Sit through the credits. There’s a clever bit after the movie ends, an then an audio piece from the ’60s that will make some 60 year old boys and girls smile nostalgically.

Go see this movie this weekend. It’s the best summer gift we’ve had in a long time!

 

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It’s a busy weekend for Disney and Marvel with all time this and that records.

“The Lion King” reboot comes in at number 8 on the all time list of opening weekends. It also smashed the July record for openings, overtaking “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pts.” which had the July record with $169 million.

“The Lion King” comes in at around $185 million, much lower than hoped by Disney, but a whopping amount of money for four days. They didn’t have great reviews, but they did have the widest ever opening. Also, the weather helped– the theaters had to be filled with families looking for some air conditioning.

The $185 million is $7 million lower than the latest estimates posted by all the trade magazines prognosticators. Of course, they erase all the earlier predictions and tout this number instead.

Is it great filmmaking? No. None of this stuff is. Filmmaking doesn’t mean anything in this world. Well, maybe in the extended Pixar world. This is about business. It’s the money, stupid. This “Lion King” will never resonate in the culture like the original, animated film or the excitement of the Broadway show.

It is what it is, as they say, which means more than it ever did.

Anyway, Beyonce probably got the most out of all this. She has the number 1 album.

There are so many records to be had and to be broken in the movie world. Biggest Thursday, Best Four Day Weekend, Tops in September, and so on.

But there are only three records that really count: Biggest Domestic Gross Ever, Biggest Gross Adjusted for Inflation, and Top Worldwide Movie– meaning domestic plus international.

For that third title, “Avengers: Endgame” has snatched the title from James Cameron’s “Avatar.” This was Marvel’s stated goal, so they added extras to the original film and sent it out again. Over the weekend, “Endgame” nosed out “Avatar,” with over $2.7889 billion.

It’s a record. Congrats, get out the confetti. But “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” remains the number 1 movie ever at the domestic box office. It’s about $78 million ahead of “Endgame.”

And the biggest movie of all, with domestic box office adjusted for inflation? That’s “Gone with the Wind,” with $1.8 billion. “Endgame” is number 16 on that list. Purists will go with that list because it consists of real movies, classics, that reflects cinema before everything went to hell. That list continues with “Star Wars (A New Hope),” “The Sound of Music,” “ET,” “Titanic,” “The Ten Commandments,” “Jaws,” “Dr. Zhivago,” “The Exorcist,” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

The adjusted for inflation list is also popular with those of us who still consider the Empire State Building the world’s largest, Hank Aaron the all time home run hitter, and Al Gore elected president in 2000.

The Lion King rules the box office jungle.

The live action CGI remake received mixed to poor reviews, but it’s hot out and audiences don’t care. They voted with their wallets and gave Jon Favreau’s movie $78.5 million including the $23 million from Thursday.

The guesstimate now for the weekend is $178mil-$200 million depending on how much audiences use movie theaters as cooling centers. With temperatures at 95 degrees, my guess is the high end. Somehow Disney lucks out.

“The Lion King” thus becomes the 10th biggest opening night movie, surpassing “Black Panther.”

Number 2 last night was “Spider Man” with $6 million, and 3 was “Toy Story 4” with $4.3 million.

If you’re looking for a good movie, try “Rocketman” — still in theaters– or “Yesterday.”