Year: 2019

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.

Read more

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.

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.

Read more

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)

Everyone understands that Roma‘s Alfonso Cuaron is going to win the 2018 DGA award for feature film directing…right? You know that, I know that, we all know that.

Cuaron was nominated this morning for Roma along with A Star Is Born‘s Bradley Cooper (hangin’ by a thread!), Green Book‘s Peter Farrelly, BlacKkKlansman‘s Spike Lee and Vice‘s Adam McKay.

Cooper also landed a second nomination for best first-time director, which he’ll almost certainly win in a post-Golden Globes debacle sympathy vote.

The next big bellwether will be the January 13th announcement of the Critics Choice Awards.

When asked about Donald Trump‘s blizzard of bullshit about “the wall”, Sen. Kamala Harris, who’s definitely running for President in 2020 (hence the new book “The Truths We Hold”), said, “I was a prosecutor for many years including California attorney general, and I specialized in trans-national criminal organizations…that wall ain’t gonna stop them!”

The last six words got a huge response from the View audience, mainly because Harris briefly broke out of her tough prosecutorial persona and said them like an earthy, no-bullshit woman of color.

How black is Harris? The answer is “partly to somewhat.” She’s the daughter of an Tamil Indian mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan Harris (1938–2009), a breast cancer researcher and daughter of an Indian diplomat, and a Jamaican-American father, Donald Harris, a Stanford University economics professor. You certainly can’t call her “street.”

This week’s bravery badge has been earned by The Stranger‘s Christopher Frizzelle, author of “I Am a Gay Man, and I Liked Bohemian Rhapsody“:

“Did you know Freddie Mercury died of AIDS? Did you know he lived in a time when gay sexuality was criminalized in most jurisdictions? Did you know he liked gay sex? Did I mention he died of AIDS?

“Those are the only important things to know about him, according to the cool kids. Vox’s review gave the movie 1.5 stars out of 5. Why? ‘Bohemian Rhapsody was made with the cooperation of Queen’s surviving members, but they reportedly were only willing to sign on if it wouldn’t be R-rated, and thus it’s scrubbed clean of much of the content that might round out a film more committed to accuracy regarding the lifestyle of its characters.” Shorter version: needs more gay sex, needs more AIDS.

“Memo to the moral crusaders: Mercury did not want to be known as an AIDS icon. He wanted to be known for his art. Your insistence that he is an AIDS icon, that what was meaningful about him was his AIDS, and that only a movie that dwells on his AIDS and how he got his AIDS is acceptable is frankly disgusting.

“The sub-headline of a negative Stranger review: ‘It’s a ballad of tragic gay cliches.’ Actually, it’s not. It’s a movie set in a time before you were born; there’s a difference. And if you want more AIDS, more bathhouses, more dick, more repression, more orgies in the dark, etc., well, you’re asking for more ‘tragic gay cliches,’ not fewer.”

From “Straight-Washing Concerns,” filed by yours truly on 11.3.18:

“There are some fellows who are a bit irked that Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t depict Freddie Mercury‘s amorous escapades in franker terms. It’s not gay enough, they mean. Too sanitized. Why not a heifer-ramming scene or a splooge shot a la Taxi Zum Klo?

“There’s no question the film feels a bit chaste — it probably needed to be a bit ruder, darker, crazier. And maybe a little Mine Shaft action. Hard to say. Then again if Bohemian had been shot in a way that would have been gotten a Guy Lodge stamp of approval it probably wouldn’t have earned nearly $50 million this weekend.”

All hail and all heed the following just-posted Golden Globes commentary from The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield:

“I’m sorry to break it to Oscar Twitter, but Bohemian Rhapsody is a genuine international phenomenon. And the audiences don’t seem to care that it was partially made by a director over whom there is a cloud; you’re free to tell them they are wrong. For a musical biopic to do numbers rivaling a mid-range Marvel film is astonishing, and for people to suggest that this is something Hollywood should turn their backs on, rather than taking the good and leaving the bad, shows you how deep into the internal narrative the commentariat has driven itself.”

This next paragraph in particular should be printed out, framed and hung on office walls all over town:

“And while we’re at it: if you wanted to show visitors from the future what the atmosphere was like in and around and about Hollywood in 2019, you’d only have to show them Green Book and tell them that this likable, good-hearted film provoked the biggest, fiercest backlash of the year.

“With both these films, there has been this complaint that they are soft-peddling their respective social issues — i.e., not giving audiences the full, unwashed bleakness of the true situation. It’s this continuing sense that giant mega-conglomerate entertainment producers should be making movies to satisfy the farthest thresholds of the sensibility of the media elite class; that there is nothing to be gained in finding a broadly digestible version that will draw in audiences in the tens and hundreds of millions.

“To that end, I noticed a little boomlet among in the Oscar Twitter last night, suggesting that the Academy now needs to respond to the outrages perpetrated by the HFPA’s best pic awards by unequivocally, by acclamation, bestowing the Best Picture award on Roma.

“Now, I liked Roma [quite a lot]. It might (or might not!) by my personal favorite of the nominees.. But if anyone thinks that Oscar getting in the habit of giving its big prize to tiny intimate films seen by a handful of people is a long-term or even medium-term strategy to Save Our Show…they are off their rockers.”

The Roma diss aside, Rushfield is saying in effect that most of the critics who are wringing their hands over Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Golden Globes win and particularly the haters who went the extra mile to try and torpedo Green Book (Variety‘s Guy Lodge, L.A. Daily News‘ Bob Strauss, Vox‘s Alissa Wilkinson, The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody, Globe and Mail‘s Barry Hertz, A.V. Club‘s A.A. Dowd, N.Y. Times A.O. Scott, Slate‘s Ingkoo Kang) have, for lack of a better term and at least as far as mildly populist over-35 sensibilities are concerned, encamped themselves inside their own anal cavities. They are all filing from inside a very deep and dark politically correct cave.