Twelve years ago I wrote a little Reel.com piece about the death of a black cocker spaniel puppy in my neighborhood. It happened when I was three years old, and it’s like it happened two days ago. A moving truck had backed up and flattened the little guy, and all that was left was a black dog-shaped pancake with the arms and legs and ears all spread out, and most gruesomely with the puppy’s red tongue sticking out from what used to be his head and snout. All the kids in the neighborhood were standing around and looking at this grotesque sight and going “jeez…jeez!” while the puppy’s owner, a little girl I was friendly with named Sue Ellen, was bawling inside her nearby home. The puppy’s name was Blackjack.

When I described this event in ’03 I wrote, “I can still see that little black pancake on the pavement with the tongue sticking out.” And then one of those online object d’art creations happened. Somebody I didn’t know created a piece of photographic art to accompany the piece. A perfect black-and-white shot of a suburban New Jersey neighborhood with a splotch of red at the bottom of the frame. It finally turned up.

After last Friday’s SLS hotel phone-interview blowoff episode with Peter Bogdanovich, I felt curiously compelled to rent Bogdanovich’s Targets (’68), which I haven’t seen in decades. Directed and co-written by Bogdanovich, produced by Roger Corman and with uncredited screenplay assistance from Samuel Fuller, Targets was a way-above-average first film. It’s a modest psychological thriller about the clash of old-school values (refinement, gentility and sophistication as represented by Boris Karloff‘s Byron Orlok) and the mid ’60s values of alienation, rage and random brutality as represented by a young Charles Whitman-like killer (Tom O’Kelly). The portions about the mayhem caused by Kelly’s Bobby Thompson are nothing much, but I loved the kindly, respectful vibes between Orlok and director Sammy Michaels (who was played by Bogdanovich) and the film’s gentle attitude toward Karloff. Targets was basically Bogdanovich saying to the film community of the late ’60s, “Here is this wonderful old gentleman, a gray-haired fellow of polish and cultural refinement who carries the wisdom of the ages, and all you can do is put him in cheesy low-budget horror films.”

Notice how the jacket cover of the Mad Max: Fury Road Bluray (due on 9.1) indicates that Charlize Theron‘s performance dominates Tom Hardy‘s. As I said yesterday, I’m completely down with a Charlize-for-Best-Actress scenario — she’s earned it but she needs to campaign. The three deleted scenes are reminders (as if we needed reminding) of the extraordinary craft levels (particularly the cinematography) in this George Miller film, which I’ve seen three times in a theatre. I’m not persuaded that I need to own the Bluray. If I’m not mistaken an HD version is purchasable on Amazon right now.

The truth is that I was able to understand maybe 25% of of Rachel McAdams‘ dialogue in season #2 of True Detective. I listened to her with earphones, with the sound turned up and down…every which way and her vocal-fry delivery was all but impenetrable. McAdams’ Ani Bezzerides spoke in an anguished, existentially weary tone of voice that was breathy and half-raspy — a speaking voice that I’ve been calling “True Detective fry.” I’m guessing that she’ll speak much more clearly for her reporter role in Spotlight — journalists have to be clear and concise — but I’m afraid that she might have fallen in love with being all but misunderstood. Here’s hoping I’m wrong and the issue is quickly forgotten.

How many months have I been hearing about Tab Hunter Confidential? It’s played at every gay-friendly film festival in the country not to mention SXSW and several others. So when do I finally get to see the damn thing? Nobody’s approached with any screeners or screening options…nothing. It’s been floating around for roughly five months but still doesn’t want to be viewed by columnists like myself. Not yet! In the words of Cliff Gorman‘s “Emory” in William Friedkin‘s politically incorrect The Boys in the Band, “Who do I have to fuck to get a drink around here?” Update: Someone sent me a link.

Things started out a little languidly when Sasha Stone and I recorded the latest Oscar Poker, but they eventually picked up. We discussed the changeover from physical media to streaming, and how my visits to Amoeba are getting less and less frequent. Bummer: “My daughter’s generation doesn’t seem to care as much about image quality.” We visited speedtest.net and learned how fast Sasha’s download speed is (lowish, slowish) vs. my own (84 Mpbs). We also discussed the likely Best Actress nominees and the reasons why. We discussed Waterworld then & now. We didn’t touch Telluride or Toronto. Again, the mp3.

Two days ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a rundown of the likeliest Best Actress nominees. She mentioned 12 contenders but she’s just being nice. There are only four serious hotties:  (1) Suffragette‘s Carey Mulligan (not to mention her arresting performance in Far from The Madding Crowd), (2) Brooklyn‘s Saoirse Ronan, (3) Joy‘s Jennifer Lawrence and (4) Carol‘s Cate Blanchett.  I don’t know about the fifth slot but it’s up for grabs. 

People may feel persuaded to give Blanchett her second Best Actress Oscar after she won In early ’14 for Blue Jasmine, but they’re probably going to want to spread the wealth by giving the Oscar to Ronan, Lawrence or Mulligan. Ronan’s Brooklyn performance (she plays a young Irish immigrant torn between two nice-guy suitors) is solemn and understated and quietly mesmerizing. And yet I’m sensing that Mulligan and Lawrence’s roles — a working-class campaigner for woman’s voting rights in early 20th Century England and a go-getter mom struggling to compete in a rough-and-tumble business environment — are showier and punchier than Ronan’s…right? 

I’ve only seen Carol and Brooklyn and know nothing substantive about Joy and Suffragette.  But insect antennae vibrations are the great forecasters. 

The two top maybes are Sandra Bullock, who may or may not have “one of those roles” in David Gordon Green‘s Our Brand is Crisis (something feels a bit iffy and uncertain about this one…be careful), and Grandma‘s Lily Tomlin, who scores affectingly as a pissy, contentious 60ish woman who helps her granddaughter raise money for an abortion. Tomlin could land the fifth slot if she gets out there and campaigns like Hubert Horatio Humphrey in the 1960 Wisconsin primary

Sicario doesn’t give Emily Blunt enough to do except look emotionally drained and devastated by the horrors of the Mexican drug-dealing carnage…forget it. Watching Macbeth is like slowly sinking into a combination of cold oatmeal and hot quicksand, and while Marion Cotillard is “good” as Lady Macbeth, all you want to do is escape from the theatre so you can take a shower and get a manicure (because everyone in Macbeth has dirt under their fingernails) and go to an Indian restaurant…no action for Cotillard, trust me.

There’s room for only one award-calibre performance as a transgender character this year and that’s Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, so Elle Fanning’s performance in About Ray, however good or brilliant or knockoutish, will have to step aside…sorry. Bel Polowy won’t even stir talk about a possible Best Actress nomination for her performance in Diary of a Teenage Girl…no way. And the star of Crimson Peak is Guillermo del Toro, I’m afraid, and not Mia Wasikowska.

Yesterday morning I read a 7.28 Yahoo piece by Oliver Lyttleton called ‘Waterworld‘ Turns 20: How Costner’s Apocalyptic Adventure Became One Of The Biggest-Budgeted Fiascos of All Time.” So I’m missing the 20th anniversary by a couple of weeks, but I played a part in trashing the film’s reputation when I was filing for Entertainment Weekly and the L.A. Times Syndicate, and I’m feeling a tiny bit guilty about that. And so I reached out to Costner as well as veteran publicist Bruce Feldman, who was p.r. chief at Universal from ’93 to ’95 (here’s a piece he wrote a few months back about fixing the Oscars), and they both gave me some quotes — Costner by text, Feldman on the phone.

Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

And then I re-watched Waterworld for the first time since catching it at a Los Angeles all-media screening just before the opening. And you know what? It seems to have “improved” slightly. It’s really not bad. It’ll always be indebted to George Miller‘s Mad Max films but that aside Waterworld has aged reasonably well. It’s not a great film but an urgently inventive spectacle, afflicted with logic plotholes here and there and certainly with a weak ending, and it still feels to some extent visually frustrating (why didn’t they shoot it in widescreen?). And I still maintain that Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat conveys a fuller sense of the moody, irascible energy of the ocean, despite having been shot in a studio tank with rear projection.

But Waterworld is certainly ambitious in its attempts to both excite and intrigue and provoke serious thought about climate change. And it’s mostly a real-deal practical thing except for a few obvious CG detours. And it wound up making a reasonable profit at the end of the day. (So Lyttleton was wrong in this sense.) And it’s not a fucking superhero film.

I began with Costner by texting the following: “As you know or may remember I was reporting and hammering pretty hard on Waterworld when I was writing for Entertainment Weekly in the mid ’90s. And it kinda seems better now than it did back then. The one-line review that I recall someone saying after the first screening was ‘it doesn’t suck.’ Which may have sounded cruel from your perspective but was actually an acknowledgment that for all the toil and trouble and headlines, the movie itself wasn’t half bad. Anything you want to say or reflect upon 20 years later?”

Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn in Waterworld.

John Ortiz to Tom Hardy: “No one ever sees you comin’…do they, Bob?” Perfect and even legendary as this line is, it didn’t quite ignite when I first saw The Drop a little more than a year ago in Toronto. I didn’t feel it until I saw it the second time in Los Angeles, and now it’s considered one of the greatest end-of-the-flick kicker lines in history, right up there with “Nobody’s perfect” and all the others.

Bill Maher: “I don’t want to sound like Donald Trump, Hillary, but your campaign stinks and your numbers are terrible…and that laugh…the one that makes people think you’re the Wicked Witch of The West Wing.” (And eye bags! I know they’re not funny because too many people have them and they’re not a criminal offense, but eye bags are a very pungent metaphor.) Best line in whole riff: Scott Walker “looks like a drunk in a silent movie who’s just been punched by mistake.”

For whatever reason nobody has commented much about F. Gary Gray‘s Straight Outta Compton, which I saw and liked in late July (“A tight, satisfying, straight-ahead telling of the N.W.A. saga…quite an indictment of police racism and brutality past and present”). It opened yesterday, of course. It may earn as much as $59 or $60 million by Sunday night, according to Boxoffice.com. (As of noon today a piece by Boxofficemojo’s Keith Simanton was predicting a $40 million weekend.) So what’s the verdict? Presumably a decent-sized portion of HE regulars caught it last night. I respect this film. It does a lot of things right. It’s not an award-calibre deal but so what? It’s well made and feels honest as far as that goes. It’s a hit for the right reasons.

“I’m aware that my ass looks like a bag of flapjacks. But I’m not trying to be the best-looking broad in the world. At a certain point you start asking yourself, ‘What really is sexy?’ It’s not just the elevation of your boobs. It’s being present and having fun and liking yourself enough to like the person that’s with you. If I believed that sexy was trying to be who I was when I did Basic Instinct, then we’d all be having a hard day today.” — Sharon Stone, 57, talk to Christopher Bagley for a Harper’s Bazaar piece that (a) is about promoting Agent X, a forthcoming TNT series in which Stone will play the vice-president of the U.S., and (b) includes three attractive black-and-white nude shots. She looks pretty great.

Sharon Stone as photographed by Harper’s Bazaar‘s Mark Abrahams.

Except, as usual, she doesn’t look like herself. Her face, I mean. Four and a half years ago I noted that she’d obviously had transformative facial work done, and the photographs by Mark Abrahams reiterate that. I’m all in favor of tasteful touch-ups but getting Zellweger-ered is surreal — surely one of the creepiest indulgences of the well-to-do-class in world history. We’re living in a Terry Gilliam movie. They look like a certain someone for two or three decades, and then they go under the knife and they’re someone else entirely. Not internally, of course, but what a metaphor!