Month: September 2019

Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, an “anti-hate satire”, has won the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, with Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story and Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite coming in second and third.

I don’t get it — I thought Jojo had bombed with non-wokester critics (i.e., seasoned and burdened with a sense of taste) and therefore would be facing an uncertain reception with 40-plus Academy voters. Except for the New Academy Kidz, of course, who will presumably embrace it.

I can only presume that a whole lot of wokesters voted in the poll, presumably telling themselves that voting for Jojo meant voting to stop hate. Wokester voter #1: “If we stand by Jojo we’re standing against racism…I don’t think we have a choice.” Wokester voter #2: “But Marriage Story is a better film…richer performances, more recognizably real, better writing.” Wokester voter #1: “But does Baumbach take a stand against hate?” Wokester voter #2: “Well, no, but…” Wokester voter #1: “Then why are we even discussing it?”

Wokesters and people with problematic taste buds, I should probably add. I haven’t seen Jojo, but there has to be some reason why so many disparate Toronto critics (from Owen Gleiberman to Todd McCarthy to Justin Chang) had dismissive things to say about it, and why Slant‘s Keith Ulrich called it “a spectacularly wrongheaded ‘anti-hate satire‘” and “the feature-length equivalent of the ‘Springtime for Hitler’ number from Mel Brooks’ The Producers, sans context and self-awareness.”

I don’t think this will mean much in terms of the Oscar race. The New Academy Kidz might push Jojo through for a Best Picture nomination, but that’s as far as it will go.

When Green Book won the People’s Choice award last year, it meant something. And the failure of A Star Is Born to place among the top three vote-getters also meant something — it meant that Variety‘s Kris Tapley had egg on his face.

When Silver Linings Playbook won in 2012, it meant that the HE comment-thread haters would attack it for months on end, and at the end of the day only Jennifer Lawrence would still be standing.

When 12 Years A Slave won in 2013, it meant something. When Room won in 2015, it meant…I don’t know what it meant but I wasn’t much of a fan. When Three Billboards won in 2017, it meant something. When LaLa Land won in ’16, it meant that Peoples Choice voters were too stupid to understand that a white guy can’t be a jazz buff.

Nobody knows what will happen with DeNiro and The Irishman, but right now it seems likely that Adam Driver and Joaquin Phoenix will snag a good portion of the prestigious critics awards for Best Actor, including the NYFCC and the LAFCA foodie awards.

People generally vote for Oscar nominees they feel close to, whose journey they understand, or whom they simply like the most. Under these terms Driver would be the favorite, but you never know.

Right now the supporting lineup is composed of Brad Pitt, Willem Dafoe, Jamie Foxx, Al Pacino and possibly Anthony Hopkins. The entire civilized world wants Cliff Booth to win. The second strongest contender is probably Dafoe, who was nominated last year for his Vincent Van Gogh and the year before that for the motel manager guy in The Florida Project. And Foxx sounds like a definite keeper.

If I found myself in the position of Daniel Kaluuya‘s Slim and Jodie Turner-Smith‘s Queen, I would immediately duck into a friend’s attic or basement and stay there for three or four days until things cool down. I would then somehow persuade the same friend to drive us out of town and across the border into Canada. We would take a series of bus trips across Canada and into Alaska, and hide out in Nome or Fairbanks.

And then, weeks later, we’d get on a plane to Seoul. Or maybe Hanoi. Or Bangkok. Then we’d try to figure things out. We could become characters in a Nicholas Winding Refn movie.

We would basically make every possible effort to disappear. No Bonnie and Clyde shit, no speeding down rural roads, no attracting attention, no tragic finale, no nothin’.

The Goldfinch, which completely blows and has totally died at the box-office, got a B CinemaScore — a moderately weak (if not quite fatal) grade. And yet Hustlers, which the Toronto wokesters and JLo worshippers adored, and which made $13M yesterday and is projected to finish the weekend with $32M, got a B minus?

Is there something screwy with CinemaScore’s methodology? Or on some level are Joe and Jane Popcorn not as enthusiastic about the film as the Toronto crowd was? Obviously the Hustlers grade represents a problem of some kind.

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Glenn Strange had the wrong kind of face to play the Frankenstein monster. Whatever it was that Boris Karloff had, Strange did without. Look at his expression in this cake-cutting photo with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. There’s something forlorn and downcast in his features — he almost looks like Peter Fonda — he could be a Boy Scout master or a gas-station mechanic in upper New York State. Bela Lugosi was a lousy-ass Frankenstein monster also. Ditto Christopher Lee and Robert De Niro. There was only one who mattered.

via GIPHY

Four of those shots weren’t taken by me; all the others were.

Jett Wells on Positano beach — June ’07.

Key West — November ’17.

East Berlin, January 1987.

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…was his name. He was born Edward Joseph Mahoney. I don’t know who thought up his marquee name, but it was pure genius. Upon entering public consciousness in ’77, “Eddie Money” perfectly expressed the transition from the last remnants of hippie-ish, pot-and-hashish spiritualism (which had ignited in the mid ’60s and was choking and sputtering by ’76) to the cocaine-fortified, disco-frequenting, coming-of-Reagan narcissism that began to take over. To me Eddie Money was Studio 54, glitter, sexual indulgence, nose candy, etc. Except I couldn’t afford nose candy back then. I couldn’t afford a lot of things. But Eddie could.

The current woke hoo-hah is over comedian Shane Gillis‘s coarse use of “racist, sexist, homophobic remarks”, per a 9.12 Variety story by Will Thorne and Elaine Low. The furor started with a resurfacing of an anti-Asian remark from Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. (I can’t find a link to the offensive podcast in question.) In the video, Gillis is heard saying “Chinatown’s fucking nuts…let the fucking chinks live there.”

“I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said,” Gillis said in a statement. “My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.”

Update: The Gillis scandal has instantly vanished in the wake of a shocking revelation that director Martin Scorsese willfully and maliciously used the term “chinks” in a scene in Mean Streets (’73). In an early discussion between Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro‘s characters over a debt, De Niro complains to Keitel that “you’re leavin’ me with nothin’…we gotta go eat chinks?”

In the early ’70s the term “eat chinks” was a callous and insensitive urban phrase that meant “eating inexpensive Chinese food.”

Shocking as it may seem, Scorsese also had characters use the n-word in both Mean Streets and Taxi Driver (’76).

Gillis definitely used terms and phrases that any reasonable person would identify as hurtful and insensitive.

Should it matter one way or the other that Scorsese’s use of callous racial terminology happened over 40 years ago? A racist is a racist is a racist, no? How should Scorsese and for that matter De Niro be punished? Should they be forced to wear needle-sharp cactus sandals during promotional appearances for The Irishman?

Industry guy: “The real time and one-continuous-take thing is cool and all, but I hear 1917 is more of a commercial play than an awards thing. Children of Men is incredible, but that wasn’t an awards thing either. Even Dunkirk, which mounted a big below-the-line Oscar campaign, as 1917 could also be doing, didn’t win the big one, nor did Nolan pose a serious threat that year for the Best Director prize.”

HE to Industry Guy: “WHAT? Universal is going to promote the hell out of this as a Best Picture candidate. Movies shot in real time constitute a very proud tradition, going all the way back to High Noon and The Set-Up and on through Linklater’s Before Sunset and Greengrass’s United 93. On top of which 1917 delivers ‘shot in real time’ AND captured in one continuous shot a la Birdman…are you effing kidding me?”

“Children of Men was the best film of 2006, and eff the Academy slackers who didn’t or couldn’t recognize that for lack of brain cells. Dunkirk was blazing drop-dead brilliant. People are idiots. They voted for The Fucking Artist in 2011…empty Coke bottles, no hope.”

Industry Guy: “Universal is going to push it, of course, but is that the kind of movie that typically wins, Birdman notwithstanding? It feels gimmicky. It’ll all depend on the emotion of the story. Agreed on Children of Men. but just because something is the best, doesn’t mean the Academy will recognize it as such. are YOU fucking kidding ME? Dunkirk was very good, but hardly a masterpiece. Mendes is a warmer filmmaker than Nolan — I’ll grant you that. American Beauty has heart, ditto Road to Perdition.”

Do the sage executives at Sony marketing finally understand how inevitable it is that Brad Pitt will take the Best Supporting Actor Oscar early next year? And how pointless it is to push A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood‘s Tom Hanks in the same category? Surely this is sinking in.