Culturally and landmark-wise, the eye-catchy, partly neon sign at Astro Burgers (7475 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, NE corner of Gardner and S.M. Blvd.) is one of my favorite spots in this town. Because it conveys an old-time feeling of 1950s and ’60s kitsch, and Lord knows there’s damn little of that left. As I said a couple of weeks ago, it would be that much cooler if they re-named the place Mojo Burger. I’m sorry but Mojo kicks Astro’s ass.

The only wrinkle is that the joint is less than…actually I’m not sure how old it is. 35 or 40 years? Less? An Astro Burger opened at 5601 Melrose in ’74, but who knows when the WeHo site launched? The original Astro Burger, a Greek-style operation (“Cheeesburger! Cheeseburger!), was launched in Salt Lake City in ’82 by John and Soula Lyhnakis. I’m not really sure if the WeHo outlet is contractually descended from the Utah operation. The website says that John and Soula’s three sons, Vasili, George and Michael, grew up in the business and helped their parents open two more stores, one in South Jordan in 2002 and another in Draper in 2006. For all I know Roger Durling (aka “Nick the Greek”) owns the WeHo branch.

Astro Burger is the only WeHo place where you can get a decent-tasting hot dog. (Pink’s is technically not in West Hollywood.) Or at least the only one I know about.

From “The Oscars’ New Diversity Rules Won’t Change Who Wins Best Picture,” by reason.com’s Kat Rosenfield: “On its own, the conflation of diversity with quality raises interesting questions; under these standards, the massive Fast & Furious franchise would be Oscar eligible, but Martin Scorcese’s entire library would struggle to make the cut.

“[The impact of the new Academy Standards] will be felt most by indie directors, who work on shoestring budgets, with limited resources and no guarantee of being picked up by a distributor with adequately diverse executive leadership. For them, it becomes a choice: sacrifice their shot at the industry’s highest honor (with all the career-boosting benefits an Oscar nomination entails), or conform.

“Some may shrug at that, or even see it as a net positive in a world where too many movies already exist about straight white dudes.

“On the other hand, the list of movies that would be shut out from Oscar contention under the ‘Representation’ standard is pretty, well, diverse. The Hurt Locker; Boyhood; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Birdman; The Lighthouse; 1917; Gladiator; Gone Girl: All would fail to make the cut.”

Imagine being at last night’s Rose Bowl drive-in screening of Nomadland. Imagine all the usual distractions — small-looking screen if you were parked in the middle section, not-bright-enough image, people roaming around, ambient sounds.

Now add a guy parked in front of you who decided to watch the film with his air-conditioning on, which of course meant keeping his engine on for two hours straight and thereby bothering nearby viewers with (a) his bright red parking lights (i.e., the drive-in equivalent of twitter-surfing during a theatrical screening) and also (b) the gentle spewing of exhaust. Thanks, homey! The temperature was around 70 so no real need for a.c. Alas, some people want what they want when they want it.

I heard William S. Burroughs say “some people are shits” during a Madison Square Garden appearance about 40 years ago. It always stayed with me.

Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland is a moody, mesmerizing bulls-eye — a 21st Century Grapes of Wrath minus the simmering anger of Tom Joad and the villainy of random predators.  Like John Ford and John Steinbeck‘s 1940 classic, Zhao’s film is pure Americana, set against a backdrop of brusque fate and heartless capitalism, shaded with angst and no shortage of adversity and yet sustained by a certain persistence of spirit, both in front of and behind the camera. 

It’s a masterful, painterly portrayal of the American dispossessed, and a fascinating, character-rich study of a roaming vagabond and a constantly evolving community of weathered, mostly retirement-age homeless victims of a cruel economy (it’s set in the wake of the ’09 recession). 

I respected Zhao’s previous film, The Rider, which, like Nomadland, is about a sympathetic character who’s stuck in a tough situation with no apparent way out.  But I didn’t love it for the rigid scheme and an ending that was mostly about resignation.

Nomadland is on another level.  Within five minutes I knew it was a much better, more ambitious film — quietly somber and yet grander in scope, gentler, sadder.

A Best Actress nomination is absolutely locked and loaded for Frances McDormand and her performance as Fern, a sturdy 60something, widowed and close to broke and living out of a van and with no interest in settling. She’s an iron-willed survivor coping with extreme vulnerability; amiable and attentive and yet closed off or at least resistant to emotional attentions on a certain level, self-described as “house-less” as opposed to homeless, moving from job to job, camp to camp, parking lot to parking lot.  Inscrutable and yet scrutable. 

Nomadland, trust me, is going to be Best Picture nominated.  Obviously. Zhao will be Best Director nominated.  Joshua James Richard‘s magic-hour cinematography will also lasso a nom. But not, I’m told, Ludovico Einaudi‘s haunting piano score, because it wasn’t composed for the film.

A friend told me that Nomadland, which he felt had shortchanged him due to a lack of some of the usual usuals (carefully-plotted story, second-act pivot, decisive ending), would’ve been better as a half-hour short.  I strongly disagree due to the incontestable fact that it grows and deepens and adds more detail with each and every scene.  It’s a portrait piece.  

By the end you’re left with a full understanding of an industrious but somewhat closed-off woman who doesn’t want to invest in anything but her own discipline, and is curiously resistant to any overtures that verge on the intimate.  She can only live in the unstable now, in her own hard but not quite miserable life.

Thank fortune for Fern as well as the audience that Nomadland is full of humanist grace notes…charity, kindness, confessions, helping hands.

Shot in 2.39:1 (which none of the critics so far have even mentioned), it’s all character and atmosphere and mood — “tone poem” is the most favored term thus far.  The enhancements are, in this order, (a) McDormand McDormand McDormand, (b) a winning supporting turn by David Straitharn as a kindly, would-be romantic partner, (c) a steady supply of brief turns by real homeless folk, (c) the painterly images…gently dusky and soft and glowing, (d) Zhao’s crisp, urgent editing and especially (e) Einaudi’s score, which pulls you in you right away and captures exactly the right meditative tone.