By Lindsey Bahr, Film Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) --Clint Eastwood wants to get one thing straight: He did not threaten to kill Michael Moore.
"It isn't a bad idea," Eastwood laughed Wednesday during a tribute luncheon for the veteran actor and director at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.
The "American Sniper" director was responding to comments from Moore on social media and in interviews criticizing the movie "American Sniper" and a reported confrontation between the two back in 2005.
"I said, 'hey, he's probably right'," Eastwood said. "He was just expressing an opinion."
In front of a large audience of theater owners at the annual conference, Eastwood discussed subjects as varied as the most impactful film he saw as a child ("Seargant York"), his early struggles in the business, and the highs and lows of directing.
Eastwood said projects consume his life and thoughts completely.
When it's over?
"There's sort of a postpartum thing that comes over you," he said.
But it was the box office success of "American Sniper" that most interested the audience. Eastwood attributed the appeal of the film to the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq are on people's minds.
"Everyone has opinions on it, but nobody's really thought about it from the point of view of the families of the people over there and the people who go over there … and donate their time for a belief that some of us think is a great idea and some of us don't think is a great idea," he said.
"It opens a lot of questions that are fun to broach," he added.
The 84-year-old Eastwood said he "ain't stopping" when it comes to making movies. But there is one genre he probably won't be dabbling in: superhero movies.
"I read comic books when I was a kid," he said. "I don't read them now."
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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