Last night the American Cinematheque Egyptian screened William Friedkin‘s To Live and Die in L.A. (’85) and Ivan Passer‘s Cutter’s Way. Friedkin’s film has improved over the years — I realized this after watching the Bluray a year or two ago. William Petersen‘s William Chance is still a reckless sociopath, but he somehow seems less over-the-top, less of a bludgeoner than he did 33 years ago. Because society has undergone a coarsening, a degradation process since the Reagan era.

But I can’t stand Cutter’s Way anymore. I re-watched it after John Hurt‘s death and had to shut it off. Every engaging film requires viewers to invest in the main characters at least somewhat, but Hurt and Jeff Bridges are playing such sputtering, saliva-spewing losers. Not to mention the singular possessive title, which is a no-no ’round these parts. As I explained last September, the implication of a singular possessive title is that “the main character will be some kind of willful, egoistic, manipulative, obsessive type, and who wants to spend two hours with an asshole?”

If I’d been there last night I probably wouldn’t been able to focus on anything Friedkin or Kusama said because of a huge visual distraction. By which I mean they were both wearing sneakers with white midsoles, a 21st Century shoe design that I’ve previously described as “whitesides.” As I explained last month, walking around with a pair of whitesides equals instant social discrediting. Posted on 11.11.18: “White midsoles are about as 100% outre as it gets right now. There are so many different shoe styles, textures, color combos, tints and side-colors out there, but if you choose whitesides you’re no better than someone who wears Crocs. I’m not trying to be some kind of judgmental Torquemada but whitesides really don’t make it.”

Tiffany Haddish, Michelle Wolf, Chris Hemsworth, Hannah Gadsby, Rami Malek, Michael Strahan, Rachel Brosnahan, Sarah Silverman, Allison Janney, Terry Crews, Kanye West, Rosanna Barr, Matthew McConaughey, Ellen Degeneres…none of ’em. Bill Hader…seriously. He’d be perfect. Oh, that’s right, sorry…guys are out. Has to be a woman. Check.

At the 31st European Film Awards in Seville, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War has won four top awards — Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress (Joanna Kulig, who has been on my Gold Derby Best Actress slate for several weeks).

Lukas Dhont‘s Girl, another HE favorite, won the European Discovery Prize. Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name, which didn’t open in Europe commercially until last January, won the People’s Choice award.

I’m aware that some regard Kevin Connolly‘s Gotti as one of the 2018’s worst, but I’m not so sure. I finally saw it last weekend and my general impression was “okay, this could be better…all right, a lot better but at least it’s not painful to sit through.” Put another way: semi-dismissable but short of atrocious.

My most painful viewing experience of 2018 was Avengers: Infinity War, which I endured sometime around 4.23.18. It’s obviously lazy to re-post a review, but I don’t feel the fire today:

Less than ten minutes into Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Avengers: Infinity War (Disney, 4.27), I felt as if Josh Brolin‘s Thanos had leapt out of the screen and was sitting on my chest and blowing his stinking breath into my face. I also felt like a little kitten about to be given a bath in the kitchen sink. “Mew, mew…I don’t want to endure this…nooooo!”

But I had to because I wanted to experience the latest big Marvel flick, and I was seriously excited about…well, who knew but the death of Robert Downey, Jr.‘s Tony Stark had been rumored, and I wanted to at least celebrate this. Please. I was down with Iron Man a decade ago, but then Downey became the Reigning Marvel Paycheck Whore and for that he must pay.

I promised yesterday that I wouldn’t spoil any deaths in this film, but can I at least say that (a) the wrong guys die, (b) not enough guys die, and (c) you can’t trust a Marvel film to deliver death with any finality because Kevin Feige doesn’t respect death any more than comic-book creators respect it, which is not at all. Or woundings, for that matter. The MCU mostly regards death and serious physical injury as a tease, a plot toy, something to fiddle or fuck with until the apparently dead character comes back to life, etc.

President George Bush deserved the shoe and more for igniting the greatest foreign-policy blunder in U.S. history and creating ISIS in the bargain. But I have to admit that his seemingly half-amused expression during the shoe-throwing, which indicated a certain “bring it, I can duck it” attitude, is only thing he did that I found…well, half-appealing.

The most recent CNN/SSRS poll says former vice-president Joe Biden (reliable comfort factor, gaffe-y, neck wattle) is still way in front of other prospective Democratic presidential contenders. Now at 30%, Biden is 16 points ahead of Bernie Sanders, who ran nobly and bravely in ’16 but won’t be happening in 2020…he didn’t do well with POCs in ’16 and nobody wants a president who’ll turn 80 in his first year in office. That leaves the surging Congressperson Beto O’Rourke (9%), significantly ahead of Sens. Cory Booker (5%) and Kamala Harris (4%) and way ahead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (3%).

Dominic Cummings, the chief instigator and architect of the 2016 Brexit initiative, probably did more to negatively affect the English economy (partly by tapping into corresponding attitudes about immigration) than any other British subject in the 21st Century.

The only person I can think of who ignited a similar economic calamity was the late Howard Jarvis, whose 1978 campaign for Proposition 13, an anti-tax initiative, adversely affected the California economy for years to come.

The slightly curious thing is that Cummings’ facial features are arguably more appealing or, you know, conventionally agreeable than those of the otter-faced Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Cummings in Brexit.

A co-production between HBO and UK’s Channel 4, Brexit will debut on HBO on 1.19.

Hollywood Elsewhere has almost no issues with the winners of the 2018 Boston Online Film Critics Association film awards, and in fact applauds the top two decisions — the Best Picture prize going to Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here, and the Best Director award to Ramsay. Ditto the Best Actor and Best Actress trophies going to First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke and Hereditary‘s Toni Collette.

BOFCA’s Best Foreign Language Film prize went to Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma — I would’ve given it to Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War.

Best Picture: You Were Never Really Here

Best Director: Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here

Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed

Best Actress: Toni Collette, Hereditary

Best Supporting Actor: Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Screenplay: Paul Schrader, First Reformed

I can’t be bothered to type out the rest; it’s all available on BOFCA’s website.

A friend recently gave me a Samsung 4K Bluray player. It was an extra unit he had lying around so “here, enjoy…Merry Christmas.” I’ve so far watched 4K discs of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Revenant, but I’m not going to start buying 4K Blurays until they start issuing 4K remasters of large-format classic films (70mm, Ultra Panavision 70, VistaVision), which they’ll probably never do. However, I noticed today that the Samsung 4K player up-rezzes regular 1080p Blurays to 4K resolution. This afternoon I was watching my Bluray of Robert Harris‘ Spartacus restoration, and it looked significantly sharper and more refined on the Samsung 4K than it does on my regular Oppo Bluray player, which is five or six years old. Plus the Samsung generates much louder sound.

Jett had some professional-grade photos done last weekend at the Long Island City studio of a friend, Ted Ou-Yang. Ted is also a Universal Life Church pastor or minister or whatever the correct term is; he married Jett and Cait on 9.22.17. Ted is clearly a pro — he used just the right amount of light and shading in this shot, plus the high-detail threading in Jett’s gray sweater is fairly amazing.

A hot-shot with Believe Digital as well as a talent manager, Jett turned 30 seven months ago.

Last night I caught a special little screening of Amazing Grace, the nearly 47-year-old Aretha Franklin gospel concert doc, at the Park Avenue screening room. It was hosted by producer-savior Alan Elliott and director Spike Lee, a huge fan of the doc who’s trying to generate interest in hopes of landing a nomination for a possible Best Feature Documentary Oscar.

Amazing Grace has qualified itself with two recent theatrical bookings, one in Los Angeles and another at Manhattan’s Film Forum. The latter booking is totally sold out so I’m glad I was able to attend.

Filmed over two nights (Thursday, 1.13.72 and Friday, 1.14.72) inside L.A.’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church (So. Broadway near 87th Place), Amazing Grace became an unfinished calamity when it became clear that director Sydney Pollack and his crew had captured 20 hours of footage without shooting clapper boards at the start of each take, which in the analog era made the footage impossible to synch in post.

Amazing Grace producer Alan Elliott, director Spike Lee following Thursday’s Park Ave. screening room showing.

How Pollack, who’d been directing features for six or seven years at the time, could have failed to realize that clapper-boarding was essential is one of the all–time great Hollywood mysteries. Maybe he felt it was more important to be unobtrusive — maybe he felt intimidated by the spiritual vapors and didn’t want to get in the way.

Elliott is the music-industry guy who eight or nine years ago finally synched the footage with digital technology. And yet despite this resurrection Franklin, who died from pancreatic cancer last August at age 76, was curiously opposed to letting the film be commercially released. Or even screened at film festivals. She legally prevented Telluride Film Festival showings in both 2015 and ’16.

After Franklin died her estate agreed to let the film be shown. Neon will distribute sometime in early ’19.

Amazing Grace is just as spirit-lifting as the early-birds have been saying. Classic rhythmic bass-throbby gospel, churning and turning and cranking it up…”Oh, my…oh, yeah! Oh, my…oh, yeah!” (That might have been my own private chorus.) I’ve been listening to Franklin’s singing all my life, but to watch her improvise and embroider and work through a song top to bottom, little beads of sweat covering her face and neck, her concentration fierce and unwavering — pure flight, pure emotion, pure reach-for-the-skies.

Franklin is supported by top-tier pros…maximum energy, discipline, coordination. The barrel-chested Rev. James Cleveland (who died at age 59 in 1991) at the piano. The Southern California Community Choir, led by Alexander Hamilton. And Franklin’s superb backup band — guitarist Cornell Dupree, bassist Chuck Rainey, drummer Bernard Purdie, organist Ken Lupper, conga player Pancho Morales — is as good as it gets. They were a kind of Wrecking Crew-plus; Elliott said last night they were the session guys for the 1962 recording of the Four Seasons’ “Sherry.”

The bass-heavy soundtrack sounded analog-y. You could almost hear the tape hiss. It did wonderful things to my rib cage.

Oh, and there are two or three shots of Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts clapping along from behind the back row. Exile on Main Street had been recorded at the time, but was yet to be released. Sticky Fingers had been in circulation for eight or nine months.

Amazing Grace should obviously, definitely be Oscar-nominated. With a 47-years-in-the-making narrative and arriving only four months after Franklin’s death, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt about this.

The IMDB’s claim of a 120-minute running time is incorrect; reviews have reported 87 to 90 minutes. I’m siding with the reviewers.

Elliott and Lee did a q & a after the screening. I captured about ten minutes’ worth on the iPhone.

When the subject of Oscar attention came up, Spike sounded a little bit ambivalent. He mentioned his heartbreak about Driving Miss Daisy having won the Best Picture Oscar over Do The Right Thing, “like it happened yesterday.”

After the q & a ended I asked Spike if he’s seen Green Book, which some have incorrectly said is similar to Driving Miss Daisy. He said he hadn’t.

I’ve said this 50 times, and here comes the 51st. There is, thank goodness, a genre called elevated horror (Hereditary, The Babadook, The Witch, etc.). There is also, sorry to acknowledge, low-rent, shrieky, electric-shock, horseburgers-with-onions horror. The latter, of course, is at least ten times more popular than the former. This is the country and the culture that we live in.