A few days ago First Reformed star Ethan Hawke explained his opposition to the Academy’s four-months-defunct idea for a Best Achievement in Popular Film Oscar.

To hear it from Little Gold Men‘s Mike Hogan, Hawke believes that the popular-film Oscar would have detracted from awards season’s true goal: to boost the signal on under-seen, artistically challenging films.

“There already is a popular Oscar,” Hawke said. “It’s such a dumb thing to say. The popular Oscar is called the box office. They’re mad they don’t get prizes. You know, well…guess what, dude? Your car is your prize. Those of us who don’t have a car need a prize.”

Hawke misses the point from the Academy’s POV. Viewership of the Oscar telecast is dropping and will continue to drop because the vast majority of the moviegoing public doesn’t care about the smallish, Spirit Award-level films that have tended to win Best Picture Oscars over the last dozen or so years. Eventually the Oscar telecast will die if it doesn’t adapt to the times.

The fact is that the vast majority of moviegoers are agnostic regarding the faith of cinema — they don’t regard theatres at churches but as sports arenas, amusement parks, funhouses. Concurrently there is such a thing as applications of high craft in the making of popular films, and it wouldn’t devalue the smaller good films if the Academy were to acknowledge and celebrate this.

Once again into the breach: On 9.10.18 Bloomberg’s Virginia Postrel posted a solution to the Best Picture Oscar problem (tickets buyers preferring mass appeal or FX-driven popcorn flicks, Academy members preferring to honor movies that are actually good in some kind of profound, refined or zeitgeist-reflecting way) that I think makes a lot of sense.

The targeted hit pieces against Green Book that happened earlier today (i.e., Farrelly flash + Vallelonga-Trump-Jersey Muslims) wouldn’t have happened if Peter Farrelly‘s film hadn’t won three Golden Globes last Sunday night. The haters and wokesters wanted to cause as much injury as they could, and with due diligence they found the implements of destruction after two days of searching.

Knives were plunged into Julius Caesar for similar reasons. Woke twitter: “Not that we loved Green Book less but that we loved Rome more.”

In case there’s anyone in outer Mongolia who doesn’t understand what happened today and why, this is your explanation. Repeating: If the Globe wins hadn’t occured, these pieces wouldn’t have popped.

The wokesters have found a new way to torpedo Green Book. Much better than “magic negro” or “white savior.” This afternoon The Cut‘s Anna Silman posted a hit piece about Green Book director Peter Farrelly having comically weenie-wagged in front of two prominent persons 20 years ago.

How Brett Kavanaugh was Farrelly’s behavior? Sometime in the mid to late ’90s Farrelly jokingly whipped out his johnson in front of then-20th Century Fox honcho Tom Rothman. (Weird but who cares?) He also flashed Cameron Diaz in the same impish spirit, before she was cast in There’s Something About Mary. (That’s it…off with Farrelly’s head!)

Silman and her hit-squad allies found descriptions of said behavior in two 1998 articles, one in Newsweek piece and another in an Observer article by Nicola Barker (no link — available only on Nexis). Diaz hasn’t complained about Farrelly’s flashing, although Rothman was quoted by Newsweek as saying “it wasn’t a pretty sight…in fact, I’m still recovering.”

HE to Cameron Diaz reps: Your client to hereby requested to come forward and not only confirm Farrelly’s behavior but provide explicit damning details. Not by me but, you know, the em>Green Book haters. They’re looking to knock it out of contention once and for all, but they need your client to deliver the killshot quotes.

Silman: In these stories, it’s notable how Farrelly’s behavior is treated like a cute running prank instead of egregious sexual misconduct, illustrating just how much things have changed in the past two decades — indeed, much of it in the past year.”

Farrelly to Silman: “True. I was an idiot. I did this decades ago and I thought I was being funny and the truth is I’m embarrassed and it makes me cringe now. I’m deeply sorry.”

It really comes down to Diaz. If she waves or laughs it off, the story might peter out. But if she’s in any way traumatized or even irked by the memory, Green Book could be in trouble.

By the way: This afternoon “they” (Indiewire‘s Zack Sharf, among others) went after Nick Vallelonga with a deleted tweet about the Green Book co-screenwriter supporting Donald Trump’s tweet about mobs of New Jersey Muslims cheering the 9/11 disaster.

By The way: A friend sent me a Kate Erbland Indiewire piece about Green Book detractors and defenders. He interpreted the piece as more or less positive. Except it isn’t. The fact that Indiewire is basically Woke Central tells you the article had to contain a dig or two. Especially with Erbland, one of the woke-iest Indiewire staffers, on the keyboard.

Erbland quote: “The awards campaign for any biographical film benefits from the support of those who knew the subject, but for the increasingly embattled Green Book, it’s essential.”

Farrelly’s film was embattled when it first came out and the wokesters all jumped on it, but now that it’s won three Golden Globe awards and has acquired a positive good-vibe aura, Erbland is calling it “increasingly embattled.”

This is a code term aimed at Academy and guild members: It basically means “you don’t want to vote for anything controversial.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has posted an exhaustively thorough vetting of the highly questionable Green Book pushback. It’s a thorough and measured response to a controversy that should never have gotten traction in the first place, but in the process Feinberg offers his readers a chance to reconsider some unfortunate opinions.

Feinberg gives the haters a prominent forum for their ill-considered, woke-ass complaints, but all in all he doesn’t focus as much attention on the majority opinion — i.e., critics and filmmakers who love this good-hearted film across the board.

Charges of Peter Farrelly‘s film being either a white-savior or magic-negro film are completely stupid and dismissable. For the seventeenth or eighteenth time, Green Book is essentially a parent-child road relationship movie. But with Feinberg’s fair-minded assistance, people are now contemplating the bullshit complaints all over again.

And the Shirley family! What is their actual, deep-down issue? Are they angry that they didn’t see any money out of the film? Feinberg’s exploration suggests they might be just a bunch of agenda-driven soreheads.

Feinberg has bent over backwards to be fair, and in so doing has dented the Green Book bumper.

Variety‘s Matt Donnelly is reporting that the Academy honchos have totally given up trying to find an Oscar host, largely due to the mustard gas after-affect of the Kevin Hart debacle plus the fact that nobody they’ve reached out to has accepted the thankless gig. And so the 2019 Oscars will be hostless, Donnelly is hearing.

Does everyone understand how completely and irrevocably the prevailing climate of politically correct terror has neutered Academy honchos? How they’ve been bullied into a state of cowering haplessness? The SJW twitter commissars have told John Bailey and Dawn Hudson to go sit in a corner, that they don’t run things any more.

“The Oscars are poised to embark on one of the most radical reinventions in the awards show’s long history,” Donnelly has reported. “For the first time in nearly three decades, the biggest night in movies plans to go without a host, individuals with knowledge of the plans told Variety.

“Producers will select a crop of A-listers to introduce various segments instead of relying on one marquee name to kick things off in a monologue filled with Trump zingers, said the insiders. The producers and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group behind the Oscars, are scrambling to line up top talent needed to carry the telecast, which is just six weeks from airing live — on Feb. 24 — from Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.

“Hand-wringing at the Academy has been palpable,” Donnelly writes.

“As it stands, no new offers are out, nor are any expected to be made to a single potential host to fill the void left by Kevin Hart, who dropped out within hours of being selected when he refused to apologize for his past homophobic remarks that had resurfaced on Twitter.”

In addition to starring in Jonas Åkerlund‘s Polar (Netflix, 1.25) as well as Joe Penna‘s Arctic, Mads Mikkelsen is reportedly circling Seal Hunter, a MeToo! survivalist saga about a female polar bear and a desperately hungry explorer trying to catch and kill the same seals in the same Arctic region. In addition Mikkelsen’s production company, Polar Visions, has begun preparation for a remake of Nanook of the North.

I’m kidding about the last two, but Mikkelsen is definitely the star of Polar and Arctic.

Hollywood Elsewhere has faith that the over-hyped, fated-to-lose storm clouds that are currently hovering over Bradley Cooper and A Star Is Born will not be dissipated by the BAFTA awards.

Five BAFTA nominations were handed today to Cooper and his much-celebrated remake (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Music), but at the end of the day he’ll probably be in the same shell-shocked place that he was after losing big-time at the Golden Globes.

Bobby Peru needs to explain to HE reader how A Star Is Born is going to beat Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favourite, which was nominated in 12 categories, or Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma in any significant way.

Like Cooper, Cuaron also accumulated five BAFTA nominations (Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing). Roma was also nominated for BAFTA’s Best Foreign-Language Film.

Hollywood Elsewhere salutes Glenn Close’s BAFTA Best Actress nomination. She’s up against The Favourite’s Olivia Colman, of course, and a considerable supply of hometown favoritism, but let’s see. We’re all sensing Close momentum in the wake of Sunday night’s Golden Globes, I think.

Here’s the whole 2019 BAFTA nomination rundown.

Last weekend I sat for my second viewing of Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’ Gate (CBS Films), which I’ve come to regard, no lie, as the finest Vincent Van Gogh flick ever made.

The difference between it and, say, Vincent Minnelli and Kirk Douglas‘s Lust for Life or Robert Altman‘s Vincent and Theo is a gentle but absolute communion with Van Gogh’s inner light. It’s not a tourist’s view of the man, but a portrait of an artist by an artist — a “you are Van Gogh” dreamscape flick.

In the view of many Willem Dafoe‘s performance of this gentle, conflicted, angst-ridden impressionist is his best since playing Yeshua of Nazareth in Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (’88).

When I say “many” I mean the National Society of Film Critics, who yesterday morning celebrated Dafoe’s performance as a top-tier achievement. That’s quite the ringing endorsement when you think of the competition. Dafoe’s Van Gogh also won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film festival, and he’s currently nominated for Best Actor prizes with the Broadcast Film Critics Association (i.e., Critics Choice), Alliance of Women Film Journalists and the San Francisco and Toronto Film Critics associations.

Let no one forget that Dafoe is a three-time Oscar nominee for his performances in Oliver Stone‘s Platoon (Sgt. Elias), E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire (Max Schreck) and Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project (the hapless Bobby Hicks).

From Manohla Dargis‘s N.Y. Times review of Schnabel’s film: “Few actors can look so frightening or so beatific in such rapid succession. Dafoe’s thin, coiled physicality suggests both fragility and determination, while his tensile face flutters with an astonishment of emotions that, by turns, suggest a yielding or off-putting sensibility. [And] Vincent’s agonies render moot the age difference between the character and actor; Dafoe is 63, and his deepest creases can seem like evidence of Vincent’s current and past suffering.”

At Eternity’s Gate is essentially a channelling of the dreams and torments that surged within Van Gogh during the final chapter in his life, when he lived in Arles and St. Remy de Provence. The film is more into communion than visions — intuitions, intimacy, revelations.

“Rather than a movie about Van Gogh, I wanted to make a film in which you are Van Gogh,” Schnabel said during a NY Film Festival presser that I attended.

Yesterday I received a Vanity Fair “Awards Extra!” supplement issue that seems — emphasis on the “s” word — to be the definitive 2019 “Oscars edition”. The issue is 76 pages and feels like an echo of what used to be, and the cover photo of the great Olivia Colman feels dull and pedestrian — no style.

Is this some kind of teaser, this thing? Will a real-deal Vanity Fair Hollywood issue publish in early February, or is this it?

Remember the years when the special Vanity Fair Oscar/Hollywood issues would be stuffed with ads, and with all the biggest stars posing in a big en masse fold-out? What happened to that swanky attitude, that “we own the world and everybody wants to join our club” vibe?

Remember when Annie Leibovitz was the default, blue-chip photographer for the super-stylish, cost-was-apparently-no-object, all-the-cool-kidz-of-Hollywood photo spread?

Remember the years when there would always be at least one if not two fully researched, seductively written, looking-back-at-the-glory-days piece by Peter Biskind or Sam Kashner or one of the other heavy-hitter writers? The calamity of Ishtar, when Mike Nichols went kerflop with The Fortune, when Clint Eastwood found his romantic directing mojo with The Bridges of Madison County, the making of William Wellman‘s Star Is Born…that line of country.

Obviously things are not what they once were. The current “Awards Extra!” issue (whether it’s some kind of teaser or not) is like some kind of mildly okay Hollywood Reporter supplement. It’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t exude that top-of-the-world AAA bucks-up vibe that the Vanity Fair Hollywood issues had…what, only three or four years ago?

On top of which the subhead for Richard Lawson‘s Best Picture lay-of-the-land piece (“This Race Could Change Everything”) reads “Oscar bait like First Man is in the game — but so are more tantalizing possibilities.” I hate to say this because I’m a serious admirer, but poor First Man isn’t in the game at all except for Justin Hurwitz being up for Best Musical Score and maybe a tech award or two. It breaks my heart but it’s true.

I’ve been complaining about the Vanity Fair downswirl for a few years now. When Graydon Carter left and VF basically became a kind of glammy “woke” fashion magazine…that was kind of what did it for me.

It just feels as if things are limping along in a scaled-down way.

This, to be honest, is how First Reformed ends and what it’s essentially saying. All the cares and aches and horrors of the world melt away when a beautiful blonde wants to have sex with you. I’m very sorry — I know this is a terrible thing to say out loud and that only pigs and dogs have thoughts along these lines. But at least with Paul Schrader I’m in good pig-dog company.

Hollywood Elsewhere is now operating at roughly 450 Mbps, or more than double the download speed I’ve been using for the last three or four years. There was nothing wrong or especially lacking about 200 to 220 Mbps, but 450 is amazing. A Spectrum guy just installed the new system (including a superspeed modem)