You have to hand it to Netflix for pulling off a surprisingly effective award-season campaign on behalf of Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods. First came Delroy Lindo and the late Chadwick Boseman snagging Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor trophies from the NYFCC. And then on 1.14.21 Lee became the 34th recipient Of American Cinematheque Award. And now the National Board of Review has handed three major awards to Lee’s film — Best Film, Best Director and Best Ensemble.

Seriously, I’m impressed.

I’ve placed a boldfaced HE next to the NBR Award that I fully support or can at least live with:

Best Film: Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Best Director: Spike Lee, Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Best Actor: Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) / HE
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman (Focus Features) / HE
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) / HE
Best Supporting Actress: Yuh–Jung, Minari (A24) / HE
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Greengrass, Luke Davies, News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Best Original Screenplay: Lee Isaac Chung, Minari (A24) / HE
Best Animated Feature: Soul (Pixar)
Best Foreign Language Film: La Llorona (Guatemala) / haven’t seen it
Best Documentary: Time (Amazon Studios)
NBR Icon Award: Chadwick Boseman / HE

In a just-posted Variety video chat between Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan and Malcom & Marie‘s Zendaya, Mulligan offers her reaction to Variety management having apologized for a portion of Dennis Harvey’s 1.26.20 review of Mulligan’s film.

Mulligan’s assessment is astute and wise, but the timing of Variety‘s apology is crucial to understanding what actually happened here.

Harvey filed the review during last January’s Sundance Film Festival, but the apology didn’t appear until Mulligan complained to the N.Y. Times‘ Kyle Buchanan in a 12.23.20 profile.

Variety‘s mea culpa: “Variety sincerely apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review of Promising Young Woman that minimized her daring performance.”

Three important caveats: One, Harvey’s review passed muster with Variety‘s editors 12 months ago and nobody said boo — not until political pressure was brought to bear did they say a word. Two, a trade paper apologizing for a review is bad form and a bad precedent — Variety should have instead posted a counter-review that argued with Harvey. (I personally disagreed with what Harvey said about Mulligan vs. Robbie — his remarks missed the point of the film.) And three, out of respect for Harvey’s years of excellent reviews Variety should have given him an opportunity to explain his viewpoint more fully. Instead they threw him under the bus, and in so doing bruised his reputation.

Variety has devoted a special page to Mulligan’s just-posted remarks about the Harvey brouhaha. Kate Aurthur‘s intro to Mulligan’s reaction states the following: “Though the review…was mostly positive, the Variety newsroom agreed with Mulligan.” 11 months after the fact, she meant to say. After Mulligan complained to Kyle Buchanan and not before. Variety didn’t apologize for jack diddly squat when the review ran a year ago. Let’s make that crystal clear.

If I were voting for the Film Independent Spirt Awards’ Best Feature prize, I wouldn’t think about it twice. It would have to be Nomadland. But the total number of Spirit Award nominations is often a tip-off, and the fact that Nomadland has only five suggests that it may not win the top prize. Eliza Hittman‘s Never Rarely Sometimes Always has tallied seven nominations, including for Best Feature…what does that tell you? I’ll tell you what it tells you. It tells you that Hittman’s film, a respected effort that doesn’t hold a candle to Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (’07), is the likely champ.

Significant paragraph in THR announcement story, written by Hilary Lewis and Mia Galuppo:

A couple of days ago Josh Dickey, a respected entertainment and social media realm editor (Mashable, TheWrap, Variety) and veteran journalistic presence around town, announced on Facebook that he’s embarked on a new career path.

Dickey is now specializing in HVAC/R engineering, or the installment and maintenance of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration.

Why is he out of the Hollywood racket? The impression I’m getting is that he’s the wrong color and the wrong age, and is assessing the world in the wrong way. It would appear (and I’m stressing the “a” word) that no matter how smart and highly credentialed they might be, straight, middle-aged white guys aren’t being hired much these days. Especially if the white guy in question is more of a discerning, Bari Weiss-leaning centrist or libertarian than a wokester.

The Khmer Rouge wants to more or less eliminate guys like this, or at least seriously thin their ranks. And if you complain you’ll be laughed out of the room and probably end up in an even worse spot for your trouble.

Here’s how Dickey put it: “Everything you hear about media bias is ten times worse when looking out from the inside, [and] the homogeny of the industry’s worldview had become hostile to my center, libertarian, rugged individualist leanings, a dissonance that was manifesting everywhere I went. ‘They’ wanted me to write about social justice [while] I prefer to seek truth, and so something had to give.**

Josh Dickey, formerly of Mashable, TheWrap, Variety, et.al.

“Not that the media, spattering grease fire that it has become, would have me. I’m not the right make, model and year anymore. That’s not something I’m whining about — it’s just a stone fact. Ten years ago I was beating back recruiters. My resume is a garden of journalistic delights and editorial accomplishments, and I’ll always be proud of those.

But during the past couple of years, I have applied for more than 100 media jobs — roles I was uniquely qualified for — and not a single interview or lead has come of it. I mean crickets, folks. Because, let’s face it, HR won’t look past my LinkedIn profile picture. Not in this climate.”

A year or so ago I passed along an anecdote from an east-coast critic friend who said that a job-seeking colleague had been told point blank by Variety critic Peter Debruge that as far as critic stringer postions are concerened, Variety is looking to only (or primarily) hire women and POCs. When I shared this anecdote with a journo colleague his response was “I don’t know that I trust that story” or “that doesn’t sound like Debruge” or words to that effect.

Today I was told that a rep for another entertainment-industry publication had explicitly stated in an email that their unspoken hiring policy is focused more or less entirely upon women and POCS. Because if it got around that this publication isn’t dedicated to hiring these two categories of job applicants or aren’t giving them full and fair consideration, they’d be DEAD in the Twitter water.

And white guys can’t beef about this because they’ll sound wimpy and whiny and…well, lacking a sense of irony. They’d sound ungracious and entitled. The applicable phrase is “a taste of your own medicine, fuckface.”

Khmer Rouge cadres to middle-aged white guy job applicants: “For decades you and your buddies (not to mention your fathers and grandfathers) were at the front of the line…now you’re at the back of it. It’s that simple And if you don’t like it, tough. You’ll take it and like it.”

So combine (a) the earlier, second-hand Debruge anecdote (however accurate it may or may not be) with (b) Dickey’s statement and (c) what I’ve been told about the hiring philosophy at a certain publication, and you’ve got three blades of grass…three blades that suggest there’s a whole lawn’s worth of attitudes out there…attitudes that basically say “older white guys can suck on it.”

We all want a fair and equal playing field when it comes to hiring, but we now seem to be in a phase in which straight white guys appear to have taken on the status of targeted must-to-avoids — actively discriminated against because they’re not black or female. Or are simply too “straight” or aren’t, you know, gay enough. Or because vaguely centrist or conservative-minded fellows just don’t fit in these days. Or some combination of the above.

As Henry Hill said in Act Three of Goodfellas, “These are the bad times.”

There’s no place for White Guys With Opinions anymore. Unless you’re someone like myself, I suppose, but don’t think things aren’t tough in my corner as well. I’ve been grappling with punitive Khmer Rouge backhands and freeze-outs for a solid three years and counting.

There are certain outfits in the industry that aren’t even trying to hide this bias. If (and I say “if”) someone were to present an email from an entertainment or media-related company that said in so many words that they’re only interested in hiring women and POCs these days, a guy could theoretically hire a labor lawyer and sue. Expressly not even considering hiring a job applicant due to gender and/or skin color…that’s about as litigious as it gets.

But white guys can’t do this because people would say “how dare you? You and your kind swaggered around for decades, and now that the tables are turning you’re upset? Man up, you fucking child. Take a course in sensitivity training, read Robin D’Angelo‘s ‘White Fragility’ and shove it up your ass…you’ve had your day and now it’s time for guys like yourself to step aside and wait your turn.”

** For more on this, Dickey wrote, see Bari Weiss’ brilliant resignation letter.

Last night the New York Film Critics posted a video that saluted the 2020 awards winners and gave them a forum to say “many thanks, deeply grateful,” etc. Hollywood Elsewhere congratulates all the winners and also-rans. And congratulations to longtime NYFCC member Marshall Fine for shooting and assembling the below video — clean, classy, succinct.

But as long as we’re discussing the NYFCC and last month’s award announcements, it’s fair to repeat an opinion that I posted on 12.18.20.

Starting in ‘18 and concurrent with rising wokeness, the NYFCC awards began to move beyond eccentricity and into knee-jerk virtue signalling. In the same way that everyone in the entertainment industry is currently emphasizing the hiring of women and POCs, the NYFCC’s 2020 award choices were mostly at least partly about kowtowing to sacred p.c. cows.

The Best Picture winner, Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow, is a respected, finely crafted but rather somber mood trip about a mid 19th Century relationship film that…uhm, was faintly gayish but not acted upon? It bears the Reichardt stamp, you bet — quiet, studied, authentic but radiating a kind of chaste, closed-off feeling. I was mystified stunned when the NYFCC chose it above Nomadland, Mangrove, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The Father, Mank, etc.

I also scratched my head when Sidney Flannigan, star of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, won for Best Actress. Flannigan was playing a sadly damaged, extremely stand-offish character, but she barely emoted except in that one scene in which the abortion clinic lady asked those probing questions. Obviously an emotional keeper — it got to everyone — and I fully believed all of Flannigan’s scenes, but I never even considered the possibility of her winning anything, due respect. The last time I checked Best Actress awards were supposed to be about more than just the emotional impact of a single scene.

And Maria Bakalova won for Best Supporting Actress in the Borat sequel because she and Sascha Baron Cohen punked Rudy Giuliani and because her character stood up for herself as a strong and independent thinker? Out of all the worthy Best Supporting Actress performances to be seen in 2020 they chose Baklava’s? The award belonged to Mank‘s Amanda Seyfried or The Father‘s Olivia Colman.

These and some other calls, due respect, struck me as more than the usual quirky elitism. The 2020 NYFCC awards were about members fortifying their progressive credentials and their progressive vision of life (call it a party platform) in 2021.

Da 5 Bloods costar Delroy Lindo gave a vigorous, blustery, scattershot performance. I respect the first 50% or 60% of Da 5 Bloods, but I believe it’s been celebrated mainly because of last summer’s George Floyd tragedy and the subsequent BLM demonstrations, and because of Spike Lee‘s no-brainer decision to blend his story with issues of POC identity and certain ghosts of the past, and what was happening in the streets.

I’ve been saying this for three or four years, but the NYFCC members seem to live in their own rarified realm, and all they want to do is blow people’s minds (or certainly mine). They’ve almost become as weird as the LAFCA foodies Their awards are almost entirely about choosing the most socially deserving recipients. Feminism because sexism must be defeated, and support for black people any which way because of BLM. It’s all political.

When the NYFCC gave the Best Actress award to Regina Hall in 2018’s Support The Girls instead of Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me, I threw up my hands. A day after that awards announcement Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn implored me to watch Support The Girls and I did — it’s a decent little film and Hall is very good in it. But good enough to warrant a Best Actress award from the NYFCC?

Four days ago Ben Kenigsberg posted a N.Y. Times piece about Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (’59). It praises the Jimmy Stewart courtroom drama, which costarred Ben Gazzara, Lee Remick and George C. Scott. It especially admires Preminger’s willingness to “trust [that] audiences will dwell in gray areas.”

Here’s a passage that made me sit up: “While some other Preminger films of the era (’58’s Bonjour Tristesse, ’59’s Porgy and Bess) used widescreen formats like CinemaScope or Todd-AO, Anatomy of a Murder instead favors claustrophobic compositions that ask viewers to judge several characters’ reactions at once.”

Excuse me but if Kenigsberg had tracked down the boxy (1.37:1) version of Anatomy of a Murder, which is only available on a 21-year-old Sony Home Video 480p DVD, he would have realized that in no way, shape or form is this a claustrophobically-framed film. It’s actually loose and roomy and quite relaxed and laid-back…in my view the exact opposite of cramped and congested. Because it has room to move and room to breathe…because it inhales and exhales that northern Michigan air like a jazz-loving attorney on a fishing trip.

Here’s how I explained it nine years ago:

“Otto Preminger‘s 1959 film looks sublime at 1.37. Needle sharp and comfortable with acres and acres of head space. Plus it’s the version that was shown on TV for decades. It looks stodgy and kind of grandfatherly, true, but that’s fine because it’s your grandfather’s movie in a sense. Boxy is beautiful.

“It is perverse if not diseased for Criterion to deliver their 2012 Bluray version — obviously the best that Anatomy of a Murder has ever looked on home screens — with one third of the originally captured image chopped off. Flip the situation over and put yourself in the shoes of a Criterion bigwig and ask yourself, ‘Where is the harm in going with the airier, boxier version?’ Answer: ‘No harm at all.’ Unless you’re persuaded by the 1.85 fascist cabal that a 1.37 aspect ratio reduces the appeal of a Bluray because the 16 x 9 plasma/LED/LCD screen won’t be fully occupied.”

The above comparison show that cropping the image down to 1.85 from 1.37 doesn’t kill the visual intention. In the 1.85 version Stewart simply has less breathing room above and below his head. But the comparison below makes my case. Consider a scene between Stewart and Gazarra in a small jail cell. The boxier version is clearly the preferred way to go. It feels natural and plain. The 1.85 version delivers a feeling of confinement, obviously, but Otto Preminger wasn’t an impressionist. He was a very matter-of-fact, point-focus-and-shoot type of guy.”

Definitive Bernie mitten, as good as it gets, etc.

King Kong (super-sized, 15 or 20 times bigger than he was in 1933) is regarded as an ally or good guy of some kind because he’s forged a tender emotional bond with a little Asian girl…check. So he’s been brought in by military authorities as a kind of pinch-hitting bruiser who can take on Godzilla…check. On the other hand Godzilla sure can take a punch. HBO Max will begin streaming Godzilla vs. Kong on 3.26.

33 years ago I was poking around Book Soup on Sunset, and I came upon a thin paperback version of Bruce Wagner‘s “Force Majeure“, which I’d been reading about. This was the original novella that was only 80 pages long. But as Hollywood satires went it was one of the tastiest and most downbeat (as in “fuck me, I can’t believe my life is over and I’m not even middle-aged yet”) I’d ever read.

Those 80 pages were honed to perfection. Every line was spot-on, every phrase tight as a drum.

Three and a half years later a much longer version of “Force Majuere” appeared — same author, same Bud Wiggins character, some of the same situations (including that legendary Malibu moment with a powerful red-haired producer blowing Wiggins while The Best Years of Our Lives played on a nearby TV), only this time it was 468 pages. It arrived in Book Soup on 8.2.91.

I didn’t find it as satisfying as the 80-page version. It was very well-written, but with each turn of the page I was muttering “if you can say it in 80 pages why write a 468-page version?”

Today I was searching around for my old, coffee-stained copy of the 80-page original. No dice. So I ordered a used copy on Amazon, for only $13 and change.

A draft of Quentin Tarantino‘s Crimson Tide punch-up, signed by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. A 1998 copy of Any Given Sunday, signed by Oliver Stone, Jamie Foxx (“peace”), Dennis Quaid and Cameron Diaz. And a musty, somewhat early draft of Chinatown (153 pages, Evelyn Mulwray kills Noah Cross at the finale), bearing some resemblance to the finished film and signed by the great Robert Towne, Dick Sylbert, Robert Evans and James Hong.

Polanski wasn’t around, of course, but if he had been he probably wouldn’t have signed because it’s a version of the film he had no influence upon.

I’m the only one who gets them mixed up, right? Sees one and thinks it might be the other, etc. Name any two actresses from the recent or far-off past (and when I say “far off past” I could be referring to a time before the ’80s) who shared this much of a resemblance to each other.

Two and three-quarter years ago I posted one of my “Jesus, things really suck out there” pieces. It was titled “Definitive Saga of The Destruction of Theatrical Experience Still Required,” and the idea was that the next great Hollywood expose or tell-all could or should be called “Super-Vomit: How Hollywood Infantiles (i.e., Devotees of Comic Books and Video Games) Degraded Theatrical and All But Ruined The Greatest Modern Art Form.”

Not filmed dramas per se but the stand-alone, non-sequelized, franchise-resistant form of dramatic endeavor that used to be Hollywood’s bread-and-butter when theatres showed movies of substance (1920 to 2015). This kind of thing hasn’t completely disappeared from theatres, but it nearly has. Streaming and cable are where the goods are now, and half the time you’re talking long-form serials.

Otherwise a form of dramatic story-telling that has existed since the time of the Greeks — a tale told in one sitting, three acts delivered within 100 to 160 minutes and that’s all she wrote — is showing signs of serious theatrical erosion and may even be extinguished down the road. What does Kenneth Lonergan have to say about all this? Oh, Manchester By The Sea, how we loved ya, how we loved ya…your brevity, discipline, dramatic choices, shape.

That was then, this is now. We’ve all been living in a Covid penitentiary for roughly 11 months. It’s unlikely any of us will be paroled until sometime next fall, and perhaps not until early ’22. I’m very happy to be alive and well and writing this column and bringing in ad dough, etc., but spiritually speaking I’m the star of a downish indie flick called Each Dawn I Die.

And all I can say is “boy, would I love to be back in the old Hollywood Elsewhere misery pit of April ’18!”