Year: 2019

“I leave it to the movie gods, and the gossip columnists, to debate how much Bradley Cooper is personally liked or disliked in Hollywood. But his omission from the best director roster didn’t happen in a vacuum.

“It crystallized the slow but steady fade of A Star Is Born over the last month or two, from Oscar slam-dunk to solid-but-hardly-sure-fire Oscar front-runner to middle-of-the-road Oscar contender to hanging-on-by-its-fingernails Oscar movie that’s still sort of in the game to the place it now holds: Oscar toast.

“And that, in a way, is a much bigger story than the issue of whether Cooper came off as too serious and self-involved over the course of awards season, especially in a certain much-talked-about newspaper-of-record magazine profile.” — from “The Message of the Oscar Nominations: You’d Better Have a Social Message,” posted by Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman on 1.22.

When Sundancers (even those without a press badge) arrive at Salt Lake City airport they need to grab a shuttle to Park City, which costs a tiny bit more each year. Express Shuttle and Canyon Transportation (same outfit, different routes) are charging $41. Way things are.

So I asked a GenZ desk clerk (elfin, thin) when the next Park City shuttle would depart, and she said “about a half hour.” Which didn’t sound too bad. “Or you could check with Ascent,” she offered, except she pronounced it “AYsent” — accent on first syllable. I looked at the Ascent sign (about 70 feet away) and said, “Ascent, you mean?” — second syllable accent. Half nod, half shrug.

So I walked down to the “AYsent” desk and asked the clerk (also GenZ, on chubby side) about their next Park City shuttle. “Leaving in about…uhm, 20 minutes?” Sounds good, I said. “And the fare is $40…?” AYsent GenZ clerk: “We charge $55 dollars.” HE cowboy hat: “Whoa!”

Back to Express Shuttle. HE: “Your competition is $14 more expensive.” Oh, she said. “Higher fares are usually a factor. Why didn’t you just…you know, mention that before sending me down there?” GenZ stringbean : “I didn’t know they were that high.”

Imagine working every day as an SLC shuttle clerk — hour after hour, day after day — and having no clue what your competitors charge, and no curiosity about this. If I was stuck with this kind of job I’d figure out the competition situation and the fare discrepancies (if any) right away. But that’s me — a Type A. A lot of people operate as Type Bs. Tunnel vision. Way things are.

In my view Spike Lee‘s best film ever was Malcolm X (’92), and if industry consciousness had been where it should have damn well been back then, Malcolm X might well have won the Best Picture Oscar. Who knows?

As Spike Lee celebrates his first Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Picture, I'm reminded of the 1989 Oscars, when presenter Kim Basinger went off-book to blast the Academy for snubbing Spike's DO THE RIGHT THING pic.twitter.com/JXEMwhaBdd

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) January 22, 2019

Hollywood Elsewhere never once yelped or cried out during this morning’s read-off of the 2018/19 Oscar nominations. I sat at my writing table, sober as a judge and going “hold on, hold on…I’m not seeing any shockers here…was there a shocker? Oh, yes, one…Bradley Cooper getting stiffed.” Nonetheless a few stand-out moments:

(a) I wouldn’t have blinked if Bradley Cooper had been Best Director-nominated for A Star Is Born as he did a first-rate job, but it didn’t happen — what say ye to this development, Kris Tapley? You said ASIB would land ten noms…not quite!;

(b) Three completely deserved nominations for Cold War — Best Foreign Language Feature, Pawel Pawlikowski for Best Director, Lukasz Zal for Best Cinematography;

(c) There’s absolutely no question that Cold War‘s Joanna Kulig deserved to be Best Actress-nominated this morning — I knew it wouldn’t happen but she should have been;

(d) Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma and Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favourite landed 10 Oscar nominations each (congrats to Lisa Taback and 20th Century Fox publicists!), and A Star Is Born received a totally respectable eight nominations, as did Vice;

(e) Since Telluride I’ve been an advocate of Roma‘s Marina de Tavira landing a Best Supporting Actress nomination, and today it happened!;

(f) All of those Vice nominations tell me Christian Bale is more or less locked for a Best Actor win (40% acting, 30% weight gain, 30% makeup) and…what else?

(g) Black Panther became the first superhero flick to be nominated for Best Picture — expected, appropriate, not exactly a shocker. The real triumph was/is the $1.3 billion worldwide earnings, which completely shattered the notion that predominantly black casts are financially risky propositions by the measures of international audiences.

(h) More snubs: No Best Director nom for Green Book‘s Peter Farrelly, almost certainly due to that hit piece. No Best Musical Score nomination for First Man‘s Justin Hurwitz — incorrect call!; No Best Doc nom for Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; no noms for Mary Poppins Return‘s Emily Blunt or Beautiful Boy‘s Timothee Chalamet; no makeup nomination for turning Nicole Kidman into a zombie/vampire in Destroyer.

The Oscar telecast will happen on Sunday, 2.24 on ABC.

Best Picture:

“Black Panther”
“BlacKkKlansman”
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
“The Favourite”
“Green Book”
“Roma”
“A Star Is Born”
“Vice”

Best Director:

Spike Lee, “BlacKkKlansman”
Pawel Pawlikowski, “Cold War”
Yorgos Lanthimos, “The Favourite”
Alfonso Cuarón, “Roma”
Adam McKay, “Vice”

Best Actor:

Christian Bale, “Vice”
Bradley Cooper, “A Star Is Born”
Willem Dafoe, “At Eternity’s Gate”
Rami Malek, “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Viggo Mortensen, “Green Book”

Best Actress:

Yalitza Aparicio, “Roma”
Glenn Close, “The Wife”
Olivia Colman, “The Favourite”
Lady Gaga, “A Star Is Born”
Melissa McCarthy, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

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Without getting into whys and wherefores I’m temporarily upset and stressed about things, so I’m posting these photos in order to self-anesthetize or otherwise calm myself down. Nothing to it beyond that.

Shot in Manarola in Cinque Terre, on 6.5.17.

Went hiking in the West Hollywood hills yesterday afternoon. From late ’87 to the early fall of ’89 I lived at 8682 Franklin with my then-wife Maggie. The upstairs portion, I mean. Two bedrooms, killer view, tall ceilings, $1400 per month. Our landlord was Mitch Mitchell, drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

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You can never trust a trailer about anything, but Elizabeth Vogler‘s Paris Is Us looks pretty good. Why isn’t it playing in the World Cinema section of Sundance ’19? The original French title, Paris es une fete, translates as Paris Is A Feast, which sounds slightly better. Exceptional cinematography, editing. Noemie Schmidt, Gregoire Isvarine, Marie Mottet, Lou Castel. Arriving on Netflix on 2.22.19.

I’ve read over Kris Tapley‘s predictions for the 91st Academy Awards, which are more or less the same that everyone else is mentioning. I don’t have any significant disputes — I just want to see my favorites (Roma, Green Book, Cold War, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Vice) do well. If A Star Is Born collects 10 nominations, great — it still won’t win Best Picture.

I’ll have to pack sometime later today or this evening, and then arise at 4:45 am. I’ll have an hour or so (5:45 am to 7 am) to bang out a reaction piece before leaving for Burbank Airport.

Big Sick auteur and Silicon Valley costar Kumail Nanjiani and Black-ish costar Tracee Ellis Ross will announce the nominees. An inner voice is telling me that Ross will pronounce the names of foreign-born nominees better than Tiffany Haddish did last year.

Dear Sundance Press Office (Emily, Chrissy, Jason, Janine & Spencer),

As I prepare to leave for Park City, I’m asking again that you reconsider your decision to deny me press credentials for the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Hollywood Elsewhere is one of the best-known daily columns in the film industry. I’ve been tapping out an online movie column since October 1998 — 20 years plus. Before then I wrote for the L.A. Times Syndicate (’94 to ’99), People, Entertainment Weekly, L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, N.Y, Daily News, etc.

I’ve been a steady Sundance press person for 25 years, going back to ’94. Over the last quarter-century I’ve done a great deal to bring praise and heated attention to dozens upon dozens of Sundance premieres. I would be honored to be able to continue to do that. Everyone else has press-credentialed me for many, many years — Telluride, Toronto, Cannes, Berlin, New York, Santa Barbara, etc.

I’ve tried apologizing for whatever it is that you’ve apparently disapproved of in my recent (the last couple of years) of coverage. I’ve tried asking you and yours to please let bygones be bygones and turn the other cheek. And I’ve written to John Cooper and, more recently, to Robert Redford about this issue.

Whatever your response I’ll be humping it around town and attending whatever I can by the good graces of publicist and filmmaker friends.

But a press pass would make things so much less complicated. Please reconsider your decision.

Regards,

Jeffrey Wells, HE

We all know what Aaron Sorkin meant three days ago when he said (a) he really likes “the new crop of young people who were just elected to Congress”, but (b) “they now need to stop acting like young people, okay? It’s time to do that.” We know what he meant.

Sorkin meant that Democrats have to start conveying to Middle American bumblefucks that they’re not entirely about advancing the agendas of POCs, LGBTQs and Twitter lefties, and that they don’t necessarily believe that “white person” is an epithet, and that whiteys are not necessarily evil on a genetic basis.

We’re living in such an insane, loop-dee-loop world right now that the previous half-sentence (beginning with “they” and ending with “basis”) will, in the minds of some, be taken as proof that I’m a bad person. In fact I just don’t believe in necessarily demonizing Anglo Saxons as Satan’s emissaries on earth, which is pretty much what the SJW twitter wing of the Democratic party has come to accept as a given.

“I think there’s a great opportunity here, now more than ever, for Dems to be the non-stupid party, to point out the difference,” Sorkin said. “”We [have to convey that we] haven’t forgotten the economic anxiety of the middle class, but we’re going to be smart about this. We’re not going to be mean about it.”

From “Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture,” an October 2018 Atlantic article by the Harvard-affiliated Yascha Mounk: “On social media, the country seems to divide into two neat camps: Call them the woke and the resentful.

“Team Resentment is manned — pun very much intended — by people who are predominantly older and almost exclusively white. Team Woke is young, likely to be female, and predominantly black, brown, or Asian (though white ‘allies’ do their dutiful part). These teams are roughly equal in number, and they disagree most vehemently, as well as most routinely, about the catchall known as political correctness.

“Reality is nothing like this. As scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres and Tim Dixon argue in a report published Wednesday, ‘Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,’ most Americans don’t fit into either of these camps. They also share more common ground than the daily fights on social media might suggest — including a general aversion to PC culture.”