Month: January 2016

In a just posted State of the Union interview with Jake Tapper, Donald Trump claims that he has a “very great relationship with God.” As opposed to…what, a mildly fulfilling relationship with the Almighty? What Trump meant, I think, is that he has a Thomas Becket-like attitude. Trump respects God as far as interviews with the media are concerned, but he doesn’t worry about His judgment all that much, as he is fairly secure in the knowledge that God doesn’t judge anyone or anything. So in Trump’s mind they’ve agreed to leave each other alone.

I began my life feeling very angry at God for giving me such a miserable life in suburban New Jersey and especially giving me such strict, hard-nosed parents, particularly a mother who made me go to church every damn Sunday. Then in my teens I went through a period of mocking and taunting him. Then I embraced and worshipped Him as a result of my mystical LSD trips in my early 20s. Then I came to a Trump-like understanding that God is, depending on how lucky or unlucky you are in terms of parental or tribal lineage and birth location, at best impartial about whether you’re living a happy or miserable life.

Then again God does give you the freedom to become someone like Donald Trump or David Bowie or whomever. If you want happiness and you’re not living under a horrible dictatorship, orchestrate your own version of it without making things worse for others.

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This is nothing more than a couple of sharpies trying to gin up interest in a Best Picture race that is not as wide open as they’re suggesting. Pete Hammond thinks the real comers are Spotlight and The Big Short because they have nominations in directing, writing, acting and editing. Hammond and O’Neill, in fact, believe that Spotlight is rebounding, and maybe so. And no one will be happier about a Spotlight win than myself. But if The Revenant sweeps or wins big at today’s Critics Choice Awards, which has historically mirrored the Academy more than the HFPA, its momentum will be all the stronger. It has 12 nominations, is going great guns at the box-office, Revbros, etc.

I’ll be driving over to Barker Hangar around 3 pm today. The show kicks off at 5 pm.

Listen to Michael Musto: Journalism films “never win,” he notes, and when you look hard and long The Revenant looks like a safer bet to win Best Picture. “Slog equals best picture…did you snuggle up to 12 Years A Slave? Did you cuddle up to No Country For Old Men?” Kudos to Musto for describing Mark Rylance‘s Bridge of Spies performance as “recessive.” On top of which Sasha Stone has predicted a no-win for Spotlight because of some BAFTA shortcoming.

Six or seven weeks ago some blowhard over-simplistically suggested that reactions to The Revenant might divide along gender lines. The idea came from first-hand observation and first-hand heresay, but it was wrong, terribly wrong, to generalize like this. The guy who tweeted this silly, shoot-from-the-hip notion suffered hate and hyena-bites for weeks, and rightly so. We’re all free-thinking individuals under God’s immense sky, and to suggest that gender might have a little something to do with our reactions to this or that film…well, it’s just despicable when someone says something like this. And the fact that we haven’t yet seen a revgirls hashtag is…well, it’s just fucking meaningless.

From The Guardian‘s Carole Cadwalladr: “Alejandro González Iñárritu’s idea was for it to look as real as possible. Which would have been magnificent if there was something in the way of a story or any meditation on the nature of retribution or anyone — anyone — that you could give one toss about, but there’s not. So the landscape is chilling and the violence is pointless and the whole thing is meaningless. A vacuous revenge tale that is simply pain as spectacle. The Revenant is pain porn.

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It’s evident that Creed director Ryan Coogler pays close attention. He’s the kind of guy who feeds off anything of value, anything that makes him sharper or more attuned. An Oakland dude, educated but no elitist, couldn’t be a dweeb if he tried. You can feel the spark, the nerve, the engine…he types fast and furious like Justin Chang. Coogler will never be anything or anyone other than himself. A fan of Precious and Inglourious Basterds, he’s one of those guys who will always make movies for audiences, but he also has that keen hunger thing, a taste for heights and expansion. But after Black Panther, he’d be wise to get into something more personal or, you know, maybe in a Fruitvale Station-ish vein. More of a real-deal people movie. Heroism and triumph can turn stale at the drop of a hat.

Despite all the things that are cloying, miscalculated, rightwingish or even grotesque about Michael Bay‘s 13 Hours, I still say it’s a thrilling, expertly assembled actioner. Please weigh in, and share observations about the crowd you saw it with, what they were saying afterwards, what friends have said, etc.

Yesterday Variety‘s Elizabeth Wagmeister quoted producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, offering some admiring words about Donald Trump. “Listen, he’s an interesting, very successful man,” Bruckheimer said during a Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, where Bruckheimer was plugging the Fox series Lucifer. But he didn’t call himself an out-and-out Trump supporter. “I like ’em all,” he said of the various candidates. “I want to see who comes out ahead and I’ll support who I believe will be best for our country. The American people will decide who they want to support.” I can think of a lot of things to call Trump, but “interesting”?

The trailer for Love, Judd Apatow‘s Netflix relationship series (ten episodes to start) starring Community‘s Gillian Jacobs and sketch comedian Paul Rust, is the only tolerable one that’s popped in the last couple of days. (There are actually two trailers.) Rust “co-created Love with Apatow and TV writer Lesley Arfin (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Girls),” it says here. The costars will include Charlyne Yi, Brett Gelman, Bobby Lee, Dave Allen, Chantal Claret and Andy Dick. The series begins on 2.19.

Three days ago I was on my way to returning a SIXT rental car (La Cienega south of Wilshire) when I decided to pick up my Beatle boots from a West Hollywood shoe guy. They were too tight so I’d asked him to stretch them out. I wasn’t wearing socks but I put them on and they fit well enough. I impulsively decided to ask the guy to repair the banged-up suede mocassins I was wearing, so I wore the Beatle boots from then on.

Or at least until I’d dropped the car off and began walking back to the pad. My bare heels began rubbing against the inner boot and were starting to really hurt. So I went into a men’s store opposite the Beverly Center and bought a pair of socks.

But with the socks on I discovered that the Beatle boots were too tight again. So the hell with it — I walked the rest of the way home in the socks, carrying the boots in a plastic bag. At that moment I was the only sober guy in Los Angeles who was walking on a major boulevard in socks — nobody else was doing that. I had to stare at the sidewalk the whole way, of course, as I had to watch for stones or shards of broken glass.

I’m realizing now that the Beatle boots will probably never work. I used to be a size 12 but now I’m a 12 and 1/2 or a 13.

Back in the mid ’90s Robert Evans told me the following: “When you get older your feet get a little bigger, your ears get longer, your teeth get smaller and your nose gets bigger. And women won’t fuck you as much. Or you don’t want to fuck them as much. Or something like that.”

Last night I asked HE Photoshop guy Mark Frenden to attempt a paste job over Dennis Hopper and/or Bruno Ganz‘s face on an original American Friend poster from Germany. I’ve long felt an affinity for the noirish, neon-lit mood and ambiance in this poster. “That’s me,” I told myself when I first saw it. “That’s where my heart and soul are at.” (The poster inspired me to pitch a column to several magazines called “Hollywood Weltschmerz.”) I’ve been planning to attempt this for years, but my Photoshop skills are shit. Hat tip to Frenden — a master at this stuff. (Here’s the full-sized version.)

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Graffiti not far from David Bowie‘s two-story condo at 285 Lafayette Street, between Houston and Prince. The photo, taken by Getty Images’ Nicholas Hunt, is featured in a 1.16.16 N.Y. Times piece, titled “David Bowie: Invisible New Yorker” and written by Steven Kurutz.

Yesterday The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg singlehandedly energized the Best Actress Oscar race by NOT half-yawning and muttering “Brie Larson, of course it’s Brie Larson…she’s totally locked” like every other fucking Oscar pundit out there, but by suggesting that Charlotte Rampling, whose 45 Years performance is easily the year’s finest, may be in a better position to win.

The great Charlotte Rampling, star of 45 Years and now a possible Best Actress frontrunner. Maybe. If you follow the thinking and calculations of Scott Feinberg.

“The Best Actress race just got a lot more interesting,” Feinberg wrote yesterday morning. “Room‘s Brie Larson, 26, and Brooklyn‘s Saoirse Ronan, 21, were expected to duke it out for the win, but the far-from-assured nomination of Joy‘s Jennifer Lawrence, 25, might further split the support of people who want to champion a young up-and-comer, to the benefit of the revered veteran Charlotte Rampling, 69, a first-time nominee, for 45 Years.”

The words “first-time nominee” coupled with Rampling’s age, which in the wake of the deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman is a reminder that it’s all over too quickly (a couple of days ago somebody tweeted that “69 is the new 27”), may prompt older GenX and boomer-aged Academy members to vote with a generational attitude.

I wrote Feinberg yesterday about the Rampling thing, and here’s what he said:

“I’m certainly not rooting for or against anyone in the category, and I reserve the right to change my pick as events unfold over the coming weeks. But many voters have responded in a major way not only to Rampling’s performance, but also to her personal narrative, and the fact that she’s pitted against three ‘It’ girls who are all 26 or younger (Larson, Ronan and Lawrence) is much better for her than if it was one-on-one sort of contest.

“‘Which of these things is different?’ many ask themselves when filling out a ballot, and Rampling surely is. Plus she’s someone whose name and work they know far better than her competitors. So we’ll see.”

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