“It is not for that reason, however, that I salute your courage in going to see The Force Awakens. Something more urgent than metaphysics is at issue, namely this: paying to watch a new Star Wars movie, in the wake of its predecessors — The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith — is like returning to a restaurant that gave you severe food poisoning on your last three visits. So, be of good cheer. The Force Awakens will neither nourish nor sate, but it is palatable and fresh, and it won’t lay you low for days to come. Worshippers of the older films will have every right to feel cosseted and spoiled. [And] heretics and infidels, like myself, will be gratified to have avoided a more parlous fate. Please forgive us if we snort into our sodas when Han Solo remarks, ‘The Dark Side, the Jedi — it’s true. All of it.’ Actually, Han, it’s not. It’s baloney. But the Force is with us forever, whether we like it or not.” — from Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review.

Paramount will release Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some on 4.15.16 after its South by Southwest debut a month earlier. A “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused, the ’80s-era pic revolves around a group of college baseball players — Blake Jenner (Glee), Wyatt Russell, Zoey Deutch, Tyler Hoechlin, Ryan Guzman, Glen Powell, Ernest James, et. al. And the gut reaction is…?

I understand why the Broadcast Film Critics Association has added Star Wars: The Force Awakens to its roster of Best Picture nominees. A lot of members got a pleasurable bounce from it (as have many others) and they felt enormously relieved that it’s better than the prequels and they’re figuring that perhaps a sizable percentage of Star Wars fans will now tune into the 21st annual Critics’ Choice Awards show (1.17.16 at 8 pm eastern on A&E, Lifetime and LMN). No real harm in this, I suppose. Just a nice ceremonial gesture.

The official release states that Force Awakens “was not screened for BFCA voters in time for the initial nominations balloting, but after members of the nation’s largest film critics group saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens last week it was decided to hold a special referendum yesterday to determine if it would have been nominated if the BFCA membership had been able to consider it.

This TV spot has been named “bear attack.” We know why the Fox ad guys called it this. They’re playing with the nonsensical Matt Drudge bear rape thing. Which is arguably the biggest selling hook this film has, apart from the fact that, you know, it’s a drop-dead masterpiece.

The Hateful Eight‘s approval ratings (86% on Rotten Tomatoe, 82% on Metacritic) are an unfortunate portrait of the effete, perverse tastes of too many film critics. I’m a hard-working, subway-riding, clear-light guy who enjoys an occasional slice of pizza when I visit New York, and I absolutely worship the idea of reviving Ultra Panavision 70. But I’m telling you that anyone who totally creams over this film without at least including a reservation or two is just not being honest. The first two thirds of The Hateful Eight are fairly tasty and acceptable, but that final third…wow.

From Matt Zoller Seitz‘s Hateful Eight review, posted on 12.22: “Eight feels half-assed, but it carries itself like another masterpiece, swaggering and stubbing its toe and then swaggering some more. It has superb photography, music, set design and performances (particularly by Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Samuel L. Jackson), but no fervor, no framework, no justification for its nonstop insults, provocations and atrocities. It has a bully’s mentality. It’s hard to shake the suspicion that, deep down, Quentin Tarantino believes in nothing but sensation, and that he’s spent the last decade or so stridently and publicly identifying with oppressed groups so that he can get a gold star for making the kinds of films he’d be making anyway, if those meddling social justice types weren’t all up in his grill about responsibility.

“In the end, The Hateful Eight is less reminiscent of any single Western than of a certain episode of Seinfeld — the one where Bryan Cranston plays a gentile dentist who makes Jewish jokes but insists it’s okay because he’s converted. ‘I have a suspicion,’ Seinfeld says, ‘that he’s converted to Judaism just for the jokes.'”

Last night I caught my second glorious performance of the New York Oratorio’s Carnegie Hall performance of Handel’s “Messiah.” Jett and Cait attended also. My ex-wife Maggie Wells, part of the superb soprano chorus, provided the tickets. Special congrats to conductor Kent Tritle, the orchestra, soprano Leslie Fagan, mezzo-soprano Sara Murphy, tenor Nicholas Phan and bassy-voiced Matt Boehler. From my 12.24.13 review: “I must say that the piece itself, which ran about 2 hours and 45 minutes with intermission, felt a bit trying at times. ‘Messiah’ is an astonishingly complex work that soars and swirls and reaches for the heavens, but it is rather taken with itself. Handel was basically saying (a) ‘get down on your knees and stay there until this is over’ and (b) ‘if you’re a devout Christian, this shouldn’t be a problem.’ The lyrics, boiled down, are a pious repetition of Christian platitudes about the absolutely glorious, mind-blowing divinity and wondrousness of Jesus Christ and the Holy Father and the archangels and so on. All right already. But it’s a ‘great’ work and I let it all in. Happy for that.”