I was initially excited to hear of ZeroZeroZero (Amazon Prime, 3.6), a cocaine-trafficking miniseries costarring Andrea Riseborough, Dane DeHaan and Gabriel Byrne. Mainly because Stefano Sollima, ace helmer of Sicario: Day of the Soldado, is a creative contributor. Then I read further and realized he’s only one of the directors. Two others are Janus Metz (Borg vs. McEnroe, True Detective) and Pablo Trapero (The Clan, White Elephant).
Boilerplate: “Brought to you by the Gomorrah guys, ZeroZeroZero follows the lives of several individuals and cartel members who are involved in a worldwide, multibillion-dollar drug-smuggling ring that stretches from Italy to Mexico and the United States.”
With a new 2K restoration you’d also presume that a Criterion Bluray would be in the pipeline, but I can’t find hide nor hair. I’ve done some basic searches…zip. A publicist friend says it’s viewable via TCM On Demand — haven’t been able to find it there either. I’m sure this is all my fault, and not that of distributor Janus Films.
All I know is that I’ve been repeatedly admonished by Tatyana for not seeing it, and the reprimands aren’t going to stop until I do.
I don’t remember very much about The Last Tycoon (’76) except that it stunk. Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh but but it certainly seemed inert. Robert DeNiro was almost comically miscast as coolly arrogant studio exec Monroe Stahr, whom original author F. Scott Fitzgerald had based upon legendary MGM exec Irving Thalberg.
De Niro played Thalberg as a relatively uncultured New York street guy (i.e., Travis Bickle wearing nice suits) with those Lower-East-Side Italian vowels of his. The real-deal Thalberg came from Brooklyn and never attended college, but I’ve always read he was a man of discipline and exactitude — a classy gent with a highly concentrated mind. I didn’t believe DeNiro’s “Travis” Thalberg for an instant. That idiot grin of his was pure loony Bickle. For what it’s worth I enjoyed the two or three scenes that De Niro shares with Jack Nicholson, who plays a commie union leader.
How could a film directed by Elia Kazan, based on a 1941 Fitzgerald novel, adapted by Harold Pinter, produced by Sam Spiegel, scored by Maurice Jarre and shot by Victor J. Kemper…how could a movie made by such an ace-level team turn out badly? But it did. It just sat there.
The Last Tycoon was DeNiro’s first shortfaller. He’d previously made five excellent films (Bang The Drum Slowly, Mean Streets, The Godfather, Part II, Taxi Driver, 1900). After Tycoon he starred in another failure (Scorsese’s New York, New York) but then rebounded with The Deer Hunter, Raging Bull, True Confessions, The King of Comedy, Once Upon A Time in America and Falling in Love.
At 4 pm yesterday afternoon Tatyana and I arrived at West Hollywood’s Soho House for Neon’s Parasite party (telecast viewing + after-party). The cheering was ecstatic after all four Parasite wins, of course, but especially when the historic Best Picture win was announced by Jane Fonda. Excellent vibe, scrumptious food, free drinks, great wifi, not overly crowded, plenty of flat screens and electrical wall outlets.
Thanks to Lea Yardum and Colleen Camp for their generous hospitality and efficiency.
The show ended around 8:15 pm, give or take. I packed up the two computers, and we began to roam around. Soho House is quite a large and sprawling place, as some of you know. Views of WeHo and Beverly Hills to die for, etc. Plus that dramatic grand staircase. Plus several guests smoking in the outdoor balcony area. (Who smokes?) We decided to pack it in around 10:10 pm — six hours felt like enough. In the sheltered ground-level parking lot there was a huge crowd waiting to enter as we departed.
A friend who arrived late reports that Bong Joon-ho and Team Parasite (actors, producers) made their triumphant entrance around 12:45 am, and that the reception was “truly mad.” They came up the staircase to exuberant cheers and hugs, and then paraded around the party holding the four Oscars aloft, and received more whoops and cheers on the small stage in the main dining room (i.e., where the bar is).
If Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, our deranged and grotesque authoritarian crime-boss president will almost certainly be re-elected, and this country will be saddled with a political and cultural tragedy of increasing proportions.
This is not theory, not maybe — it’s real. How can Democrats be so rock stupid as to not see the tragedy that’s currently unfolding and taking shape? The republic is splitting, cracking apart. The end of civic sanity and reason is nigh. And it’s like we’re all covered in a kind of slow-motion glue.
The untested Sanders (a virtual babe in the woods on the national stage) is electoral death. He won’t just get knifed and bloodied by the Trump smear machine — he’ll probably get creamed a la Jeremy Corbyn and George McGovern.
Can anything prevent this nightmare? Not if African-American voters have anything to say about it, and of course they will starting with the South Carolina primary.
Pete Buttigieg recently connected with moderate suburban Iowans, and could theoretically do the same countrywide in the general. But AAs (particularly your older-demo homophobes) are apparently determined to sit on their hands rather than support him. (One more time — thanks, guys!) And of course Bernie bruhs and other progressives hate Pete’s guts. Except Pete or someone like him — a sensible, practical-minded, non-scary moderate liberal or left-centrist — represents the only shot at beating Trump. Who else could become the prime banner-carrier for this kind of approach at this point? Biden, Warren and Klobuchar are too low in the polls — they have no serious heat. Ditto Bloomberg and Steyer. It’s down to Pete v. Bernie, except Bernie is more or less Corbyn.
Filed on Sunday, 2.9 by London Times correspondent Josh Glancy: “At a ‘politics and eggs’ event on Friday morning in Manchester, New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders faced a friendly crowd, who applauded his familiar spiel about the ills of Wall Street, Donald Trump and big pharma. But one voter, Lenny Glynn, had a question.
“’There’s a lot of people in this room that share your anger, your anxiety and your rage,’ Glynn said. ‘But there’s a question in a lot of our minds. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour Party, who is very similar ideologically and politically to you, just took them to the worst defeat they’ve had in half a century. How can you assure us that you would not face the same onslaught?”
N.Y. Times columnist Frank Bruni, filed on 2.8: “You can analyze Sanders and assess his prospects in terms of how liberal many of his positions are: the end of private health insurance, the dismantling of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, free tuition at public colleges regardless of a student’s economic circumstances. By that yardstick he’s Corbyn, and, in my view, a hell of a general-election risk.”
Tip of the hat to Collider‘s Scott Mantz for being 91.67% correct in his Gold Derby balliot, and particularly for having won a $40 bet from Collider‘s Jeff Sneider over last night’s Parasite triumph. Below is a 1.29 Collider chit-chat between Mantz, Sneider and Perri Nemiroff. Start at 6:15.
Perri Nemiroff: “I do think that the top two on many of the ballots are going to be 1917 and Parasite. There’s little to no criticism on those compared to some of the others…” Jeff Sneider: “You’ve gotta be crazy! ‘Little to no criticism about Parasite‘? You’re wrong. That’s a fact — you’re wrong.” Nemiroff “In the voting community. I know you didn’t like it as much as most.” Scott Mantz: “But most did.” Nemiroff “Especially when you compare the critics of Parasite to the criticism we’ve seen about some of the other films. They’re much more divisive and..” Jeff Sneider: “What film had the most criticism last year? What film?” Scott Mantz: “Green Book.” Sneider: “Did it win Best Picture?” Mantz: “Yes.”
Sneider: “Scott, you just said you think Bong’s gonna win Best Director?” Mantz: “Yes.” Sneider: “And you think Parasite‘s gonna win Best Picture? Mantz: “Yes.” Sneider: “And you think it’s gonna win Best International Feature?” Mantz: “Of course! Sneider: “So you’re just going all in on Parasite? Mantz: “I’m all in.” Nemiroff: “That’s a dangerous guesstimate.” Sneider: “I would bet you any amount of money it’s not gonna win all three of these awards.”
[$20 is wagered; later on it’s doubled to $40]
Nemiroff: “You’re in so much trouble now. Sneider: “A bad bet.” Nemiroff: “Parasite could be Best Picture or Best Director in addition to Best Int’l Features, but it’s not gonna win all three.”
“Americans are always worried that when we lose our freedom it’ll look like the movie Red Dawn, with tanks in the streets. That’s not how a republic ends. We keep the names on the institutions, [but] we change what’s inside. We still have trials — we just don’t have witnesses. We still subpoena people — they just don’t show up. There’s still an EPA — it just works for the coal companies now. It’s like the way TV channels sometimes completely change formats but keep the name? MTV — music television — hasn’t had music videos for years. The Learning Channel has no learning — it has Honey Boo-Boo and American’s Worst Tattoos and Family By The Ton.
“When Rome stopped being a republic, it didn’t stop having a Senate. And neither have we. It’s just more like student government now. Because that’s what dictators do. Russia has a pretend parliament. So does China. And North Korea.”
“It is always darkest, John McCain used to say, before it gets totally black. So it is for the American center-left right now. Bernie Sanders is currently favored to win the nomination, a prospect that would make Donald Trump a heavy favorite to win reelection, and open the possibility of a Corbyn-esque wipeout.
“While Sanders has not expanded beyond a minority of the party, he has consolidated support of the party’s left wing, and while its mainstream liberal wing is split between numerous contenders, it is hard to see how the situation is likely to improve soon. Indeed, it could get worse, much worse.
While I don’t happen to personally agree that Parasite deserved the Best Picture Oscar (if I was an Academy member I would’ve voted for The Irishman), I respect what happened last night. The fervor, I mean, was obviously strong and Bong Joon-ho ruled the roost with four Oscars — Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
I am, however, bothered by the double shot overlap between Best Picture and Best Int’l Feature.
So here’s what seems to have happened, and please correct me if I’m wrong on some level. Even with the preferential ballot dynamic, which meant that a clear majority of Parasite Best Picture supporters didn’t necessarily manifest on the first round of vote counting, most Academy members decided to simultaneously give the Best Picture Oscar AND the Best International Feature Oscar to Parasite.
They didn’t consider the double-shot overlap factor. They mentally compartmentalized, and in so doing refused to consider the overall equation. Not enough of them said “as I strongly believe in Parasite for Best Picture” — which is totally fine, of course — “then I’m going to spread the love around by giving the Best Int’l Feature Oscar to the absolutely deserving LesMiserables or PainandGlory.“
Instead an apparent (or preferential ballot-ized) majority said to themselves “an overlapping double-shot of Parasite love works for me! Parasite is sooo overwhelmingly good and sooo much better than PainandGlory or LesMiserables that it deserves both Oscars.”
Am I allowed to say this way of voting is highly questionable? And that the Academy should take steps to prevent it from happening again?
How would you feel about this if you were LadjLy or Pedro Almodovar?
Additionalquestion: To what extent (if any) was Parasite’s overwhelming triumph attributable to lingering resentment among the diversity-above-all crowd (i.e., the New Academy Kidz) over Green Book’s Best Picture win last year? How many Parasite supporters said to themselves “above and beyond my genuine affection for Parasite, this will teach those older-white-person supporters a lesson, or at least will balance things out”?
An excerpt from Owen Gleiberman’s post-Oscar assessment piece, filed this morning:
