What Will Asghar Farhadi and Jafar Panahi Say About The Siege of Iran and the Killing of Ali Khamenei?

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If things work out as the U.S. and Israel governments are hoping they might, Jafar Panahi‘s problems with the Iranian government might be over. Both Panahi and Asghar Farhadi are liberals and generally not regarded as allies of Trump or Netanyahu, but they fact is that many if not most of the educated, independent-minded Iranians over there are, for the time being, overjoyed about the murdering missiles that rained down upon Iran last weekend. This puts Panahi and Farhadi, allegiance- and reputation-wise, between a rock and a hard place. It boxes them in.

Sean Penn Has Won Twice Because BAFTA and SAG Voters Wanted to Say “Eff Greg Bovino”….It’s That Simple

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Sean Penn to Greg Bovino: “Just to be clear, I don’t respect you or any of the other ICE thugs who brought about murder and mayhem on the streets of Minneapolis in recent weeks. But I may as well be honest and acknowledge that you’re the reason I won a Best Supporting Actor award at BAFTA last weekend and last night at the SAG Actor awards.

“Lord knows I’m not ‘thanking’ you, but I can’t pretend you didn’t have anything to do with this. Had it not been for you I probably wouldn’t have won in London and Los Angeles. I’m just being honest with myself and, fuck it, with the world at large. My OBAA performance was not considered strongly competitive a few weeks ago, but now I’m going into the Oscars as the frontrunner at this point, dammit. For the wrong reasons, I mean.

“Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard gave a much richer performance than I, but he can’t compete with the Greg Bovino factor. I’ll be winning thanks to you. I regard you as a macho fuckhead, but the situation is the situation.”

Jordan’s Stock Would Have Soared Sky High…

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…if he’d blurted out the following upon winning SAG’s Best Actor award last night:

“Yo…whoa. I can’t…okay, I’ll just spit it out. This is about last weekend in London, right?

“Don’t get me wrong — I’ll take it, I love it. I think I gave a rock-solid, kick-ass performance in Sinners, and that guy shouting what he shouted when Delroy and I were on-stage at the BAFTAs…it’s okay, man, but let’s cut the shit. The guy has a condition but what he said came from inside. You know it, I know it, Jamie Foxx knows it and that’s probably why I’m standing here right now. You guys want to feel good about yourselves. I get it, and, like I said, I’ll take it.

“Do you guys really think I’m a more deserving recipient of this award than Ethan Hawke or Timothee Chalamet? Of course you don’t, but you want to feel good about yourseles and that’s fine. From my perspective, a win is a win is a win.”

In-Country Intel Could’ve Solved This

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If I were Pete Hegseth, I would have told my Langley CIA bros to get the word out to our Iranian double-agents. Have them slip a covert message to the Tehran government guys who are eager to step in and fill Khamanei’s Ali Baba shoes: “Don’t go to your office…don’t sleep in your usual bed…get out of town as things might get explosive this weekend.”

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Michael B. Jordan Wins SAG Best Actor Award for “Sinners”?

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This is an identity-propelled insult to the concept of “Best Actor” by any definition, in any context.

If there was going to be an overturn-the-apple-cart winner in this category, it should have been Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon. But no — SAG members gave the big prize to a guy who played the dual role of Smoke and Stack in a 1930s Delta blues vampire exploitation film…but of course!

On top of which Sinners has won SAG’s Best Ensemble award…what a revoltin’ development. This is total bullshit…identity over merit. Sinners might actually win the Best Picture Oscar. At least the lack of certainty makes for a palpable suspense element.

Please Read Stephens’ Piece About The U.S.-Israeli Assault Against Iran

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Excerpts from Bret Stephens‘ “Trump and Netanyahu Are Doing the Free World a Favor“, posted on 3.1.26:

“It’s a mistake to say that Trump got America into war on Saturday. What he did was respond to a war that Iran has been waging against the United States since 1979.

“It waged war when it seized our embassy in 1979, murdered (via proxy) hundreds of our service members in Beirut in 1983 and supplied the I.E.D.s, or roadside bombs, that killed or maimed over 1,000 of our troops during the war in Iraq. It waged war when it sought to assassinate former senior U.S. officials, including John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and, according to a 2024 report in Politico, Trump himself. One reason Iran behaved as it did is because it drew the lesson that it would pay no great price. No more.

“Would the United States, the Arab world or Israel have been safer if we had waited a year or two for Iran to build several thousand more missiles? Or after Russia had supplied the regime with thousands of advanced shoulder-fired air defense missiles, as The Financial Times reported last week that it had agreed to do?

“Iran does not exist in a geopolitical vacuum: With Moscow and Beijing, it is a core member of the axis of autocracies that threaten the democratic world broadly.

“It is impossible to imagine anything like Mideast peace without the end of this regime.”

No “Ann Lee” Bluray…Streaming Only

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A healthy audience will probably want to see The Testament of Ann Lee, once, but how many would really want to own a Bluray version? Ann Lee is not what anyone would call a repeat viewing experience, or even a film you’d want to see twice. So no Bluray is no biggie.

Zero Rooting Interest…No Pulse

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Last night the Producers Guild Awards put everyone to sleep by handing their top prize to Paul Thomas Anderson and One Battle After Another. Okay, I felt a certain “whew” when they didn’t give their award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures to Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners…thank you, dear God, for small favors.

Otherwise I’m feeling nothing, nothing, nothing.

Three years ago my blood turned acidic and my soul was choked with industrial-strength hate for EEAAO, but I’m not even feeling that this year as OBAA is indisputably well-made. Throughout my entire life I’ve felt some kind of emotional response to this or that Best Picture Oscar winner, but this year is a total flatliner. Okay, I’m rooting for Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard to win Best Supporting Actor, but otherwise the well is dry.

If It Weren’t For Go-Getters Like Myself

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…films like Willam Castle‘s Hollywood Story (’51) would be completely forgotten….they would sink beneath the waves.

Bosley Crowther review, posted on 6.7.51:

“It is easy to see, now, why some pictures which sound promising at the start, on the strength of the ideas behind them, turn out to be dismal flops.

“Hollywood Story demonstrates it.

“This film, which came to the Paramount yesterday, is, in fact, a detailed demonstration of the collapse of a good idea upon which a movie producer hopefully launches himself. And with the collapse of his idea, this picture collapses, too. Only goes to show what a gamble the movie business is.”