Apart from my profound admiration for the performances by Mahershala Ali in Green Book and Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, I’m not all that certain of my Best Supporting Actor persuasions at this stage.

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I’m getting a swords-drawn, rough-and-ready, Game of Thrones-y attitude here….reactions?

Earlier today I attended a New York Film Festival press screening of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. A western anthology thing for Netflix. Diverting, amusing, first-rate chops, 132 minutes, good but “minor,” etc. I’m calling it the Coen’s “death film” as quite a few characters get killed in it, and many with the same exact wound. At 4 pm I did a brief interview with Studio 54 director Matt Tyrnauer in the library-like bar at the NoMad hotel (27th and Broadway).

Following press screening of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (l. to r.): Bill Heck, Tim Blake Nelson, Zoe Kazan, Ethan Coen, Joel Cohen, Kent Jones.

NoMad hotel, 27th and Brodway.

NoMad bar.

Could the title of Clint Eastwood‘s The Mule (Warner Bros., 12.14) allude to something besides a guy who smuggles drugs? Could it also allude to, say, stubbornness or obstinacy? Right now we’re all saying the same thing to ourselves — we might as lay it on the table. Variety‘s Kris Tapley” believes that Eastwood might wangle a Best Actor nomination — partly for his performance, partly as a Redford-like gold watch tribute. When Tapley muses, the world takes note.

Just read the FBI report on Kavanaugh – if that’s an investigation, it’s a bullshit investigation. pic.twitter.com/9D8oeVMEoU

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) October 4, 2018

“I have to say, I’m starting to think a bipolar sociopath with no moral compass might not have been our best choice for President of the United States. And the people in the crowd! When he did this, they loved it. He mocked this woman’s story about a sexual assault and they ate it up. They laughed, they cheered…I really don’t understand it.”