Announced earlier today, the National Society of Film Critics awards struck me as fairly predictable in a dweeby, scholarly, wokester-friendly sort of way.

It’s like all the NSFC members live in the same, closed-off little village, which they do in a way, and they pass notes to each other about which films they’re allowed to like and which ones they need to dismiss. They’re like monks living in the Abbey of St. Martin in the French countryside, shuffling around in brown robes and sandals and milking goats in the barn.

The deserving Nomadland won Best Picture and Best Director (Chloe Zhao), but the only awards that made my blood surge were (a) Sound of Metal‘s Paul Raci winning for Best Supporting Actor and (b) Collective winning for Best Foreign Language Film. A part of me wishes they’d given the Best Director trophy to Small Axe‘s Steve McQueen rather than Zhao, but not altogether.

Best Picture: Nomadland
Runners up: First Cow, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Best Actor: Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods
Runners up: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal

Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Nomadland
Runners up: Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Sidney Flanigan, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Runners up: Amanda Seyfried, Mank; Youn Yuh-jung, Minari

Best Supporting Actor: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
Runners up: Glynn Turman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Chadwick Boseman, Da 5 Bloods

Best Director: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
Runners up: Steve McQueen, Small Axe; Kelly Reichardt, First Cow

Parler, the crazy-rightwing Twitter, has been eliminated from Apple, Google and Amazon platforms. Too much hate, lunacy, toxicity and dangerous wacko fantasy. But why were the anti-wokester Bari Weiss and Michael Tracey complaining yesterday about Twitter having “nuked” several thousand of their followers?

Regrets and condolences on the passing of director Michael Apted, 79.

I know I’m expected to hail the long-running Up documentary series as Apted’s greatest achievement. It may well be, but my favorite Apted film has always been Coal Miner’s Daughter (’80). Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones are perfect in that biopic; ditto Levon Helm as Loretta Lynn‘s coal-miner daddy.

Apted’s hot streak was from the early ’70s to late ’80s, and the highlights were Stardust, Agatha, Coal Miner’s Daughter, Continental Divide (arguably John Belushi‘s best film), Gorky Park and Gorillas in the Mist (which I wouldn”t mind seeing again). I can’t remember a single, stand-out element from Apted’s Bond film, The World Is Not Enough (’99).

We’re all familiar with the progressive attitude that ignores the health implications of obesity and insists that positive self-defining and social acceptance of all shapes and sizes is far more important than losing weight or at least staving off morbid obesity.

We all get this, but declaring on the cover of Cosmopolitan that obesity is “healthy” is not only untrue but…I’m sorry but the word that comes to mind is “ludicrous”. Nobody wants anyone to be fat-shamed or suffer emotional distress due to being stigmatized, but we all know that obesity ushers in all kinds of health risks (diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers).

And yet the forces of progressive positivity and correct-speak, currently represented by Cosmopolitan editors, are proclaiming otherwise.

The irony is that body-shaming is alive and well if a formerly overweight famous person loses weight. Consider the negative reaction that Adele got last spring when she shed all that BMI.

Nobody ever cats around on his or her partner in an upfront, honest way. They never do it with permission or pre-affair clearances. The horse always comes before the cart. Nobody ever says to his or her partner “I think we need to be apart for a while and decide what we really want” and then falls for someone else. 99% of the time the hunka chunka comes first, and then the cuckold smells it and accusations ensue, etc.

In a 1.8.21 People piece about the recent romantic triangle between the now-together Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles and Wilde’s cuckolded partner Jason Sudekis, Alexia Fernández and Melody Chiu report an old familiar tale…same as it ever was.

It all happened during the shooting of Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling, which Wikipedia describes as a “psychological horror film” set in the 1950s.

Excerpt: “While an insider told People [last] November that Wilde and Sudekis had split ‘at the beginning of the year‘ after seven years together, another source with knowledge of the situation refutes the claim, saying ‘Olivia and Jason were very much together as recently as [last October].”

Wilde fired the film’s lead actor Shia Labeouf (poor behavior, clashes with crew members) and replaced him with Styles. An affair between Styles and Wilde ignited fairly quickly once shooting began. The usual hints and signals were generated, and Sudekis gradually got wise.

People again: “Jason [explains] that the timeline that Olivia and Harry would like people to believe—that she and Jason split ages ago, long before she became involved with Harry — is simply not accurate,” says [a] source.

“She began filming Don’t Worry Darling in [the early fall], and by October, Sudekis began to get the impression that she wanted out. By November, they’d announced their split.”

And that, says the source, “is how quickly it happened, and none of it happened until she began filming with Harry.”

Any relationship counselor will tell you that infidelity is sometimes as much of a symptom of relationship troubles as a cause of them.

Then again sometimes a married actor will simply conclude that a certain costar is a hotter, more desirable partner than the person he/she is married to, as Brad Pitt apparently decided when he began cheating on Jennifer Aniston with Angelina Jolie.

Or when Elizabeth Taylor dumped Eddie Fisher when she fell for Richard Burton during the making of Cleopatra.

Or when Meg Ryan betrayed Dennis Quaid when she and Russell Crowe had an affair during the filming of Proof of Life.

Any way you slice it there’s no neat and tidy way to break up with your spouse after you’ve catted around behind their back. Especially with People and Hollywood Elsewhere writing about the blow-by-blow. Always messy, always hurts.

Better late than never: HE conveys a hearty high-five to Deadline‘s Todd McCarthy‘s for his decision to include Judd Apatow‘s King of Staten Island in his recent “Top Ten Films of 2020” piece (12.31.20).

Myself, McCarthy, Chris Willman, a few others…obviously a small fraternity. But my opinion isn’t an “opinion” — I knew right away during my initial viewing seven months ago that Apatow’s film was a few cuts above the norm. I’m not saying “this is what I think” — I’m saying “you may or may not not have embraced or bonded with this film, but it’s quite excellent either way, and I know this with absolute certainty…a sagely written and performed portrait of a somewhat coarse underclass culture…a funny but serious film that in some ways reminded me of those early ’60s British kitchen sink dramas.”

Excerpt from McCarthy’s 6.12.20 review: “Written by Apatow along with Pete Davidson and Dave Sirus, KOSI has the solid lived-in feel of a working class community…they’re rude, they’re slobs, they’re layabouts, they’re no-accounts and they all speak in clichés as if they’ve learned their entire vocabularies from watching TV. It’s a film full of characters who have to say ‘I’m sorry’ a lot. Bottom line, though — they’re all quite recognizably and vibrantly human.”

An excerpt from my 6.8.20 review, “The Staten Island Funnies“:

Many of the lunatic bumblefucks who spearheaded Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol building are being arrested as we speak. Prosecute these delusional cretins to the fullest extent of the law. Break their lives, make it hurt, stifle their agency, etc. God, listen to me — I sound like a #MeToo-er venting about Roman Polanski.

Obviously poor quality — been searching around for a sharper, larger file

Bus stop ad in Washington, D.C., apparently snapped by CNN’s Jim Acosta.