Sasha Stone and I…what can I say? Among our topics: (a) What it’s like to attend the Oscars with the wrong kind of dress and unnecessary heels, (b) How it isn’t necessarily a Revenant slamdunk for Best Picture — The Big Short or Spotlight could still eek out a win, (c) The end of Bernie & the triumph of Hillary, (c) What Oscar parties have we been invited to? Just a nice Sunday morning chat. Again, the mp3.
Remember M.C. Hammer? Does M.C. Hammer remember M.C. Hammer? On 11.22.16 Barry Sonnenfeld‘s The Addams Family will celebrate its 25th anniversary. A sizable hit by any yardstick (it cost $30 million, made $191 million) but I can’t remember anything about it. No lines or bits…nothing. (Here are some reviews.) And yet I can remember loads of material from Beetlejuice. All I can summon are images of Chris Lloyd‘s Uncle Fester — his expressions, brown monk cloak, bald head, etc.
I would love it if Saturday Night Live would bring back a version of David Spade‘s “Hollywood Minute”, which I used to live for in the early to mid ’90s. So snide, fearless, smug…I would have this attitude again. No sanding down the edges…zap ’em.
For three years now Buzzfeed‘s Kate Aurthur has been posting and refining a 2014 piece that ranks the Best Picture Oscar winners, in order of her preference. Here’s my somewhat shorter list of Best Picture winners that I’ll sometimes re-watch for fun or nourishment or both. It goes without saying that most Best Picture winners (the first was William Wellman‘s Wings) are not all that re-watchable, and that some (i.e, Peter Jackson‘s The Return of the King) are quite difficult to get through.
If I’ve failed to list certain well-regarded winners, it’s not because I don’t respect or admire them. It’s because I just can’t seem to goad myself into watching them again. I think ’em over, consider their merits, recall how I felt the last time I re-watched them…and I put them aside.
Ten Most Easily Re-Watchable Best Picture Winners (in this order): Francis Coppola‘s The Godfather (’72), The Godfather, Part II (’74), Elia Kazan‘s On The Waterfront (’54), Jonathan Demme‘s The Silence of the Lambs (’91), William Wyler‘s The Best Years of Our Lives (’46), William Friedkin‘s The French Connection (’71), Billy Wilder‘s The Apartment (’60), Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons (’66), David Lean‘s Lawrence of Arabia (’62); Franklin Schaffner‘s Patton (’70).
First Runners-Up (11 through 20): Clint Eastwood‘s Unforgiven (’92), Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed (’06), Joel & Ethan Coen‘s No Country For Old Men (’07), David Lean‘s The Bridge on the River Kwai (’57), Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker (’09), James L. Brooks‘ Terms of Endearment (’83), Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s All About Eve (’50), Michael Curtiz‘s Casablanca (’42), Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80), George Roy Hill‘s The Sting (’73).
Did you know there’s something basically buoyant and charmed and perhaps even a little bit holy about being a non-white person these days? Did you know there’s something fundamentally corrupt, ass-draggy, wrong-minded, retrograde and dark-souled about being a white person, and particularly a white male? You didn’t? Well, then you need to pay attention because as perverse as this may sound, both generalizations are more or less true in our current conversations.
It’s certainly time for the 20th Century American white-guy dynasty to give way to multicultural plurality and a fairer, less elitist way of figuring out incomes and disparities — no one’s disputing that. But it’s also permissible, I think, for urbane, educated, well-dressed, high-information white guys to say, “Look, I am who I am…I was born like this and my family is my family and there are shards of honor in our history, and I’m not going to whine and whimper and apologize for being who and what I am.”
This is where we are, oh ye motherfuckers. This is what things have come to in this age of politically correct, finger-pointing, banshee-wailing stormtroopers kicking down doors at 4 am and dragging politically incorrect miscreants into the street and throwing them into the back of Army trucks. White guys have to stand up and plead for understanding…”We aren’t all bad, really…there are a few good things about being white, and we demand a certain measure of respect,” etc.
“Before sitting down to interview Bernie Sanders [last October], Bill Maher polled his studio audience to see how many of them supported Sanders and how many preferred Hillary Clinton. Not surprisingly, Maher’s progressive audience members were feeling the Bern. Far more of them cheered when asked if they were backing Sanders than when asked if they were supporting Clinton.
“’But if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, who will stay home and not vote for Hillary?’ Maher asked. Only one person clapped faintly.
“See? Exactly,” Maher exclaimed. “We have two good candidates. It’s like on the airlines: Sometimes you don’t get the fish, you have the chicken. ‘I’ll eat the chicken if I have to!’” — from a 10.17.15 HuffPost riff by Daniel Marans.
