Day: April 4, 2021

SAG’s feature film winners have been announced. 7:25 pm update: The Trial of the Chicago 7 has won for Best Ensemble and there’s been a sweep of the acting awards by four POCs — Chadwick Boseman and Daniel Kaluuya for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, and Viola Davis and Yuh-Jung Youn for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role: CHADWICK BOSEMAN in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM (Winner…no surprise at all) (Winner)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role: BIG SURPRISE: Ma Rainey‘s Viola Davis snatches it from Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan. HE had presumed all along that Mulligan would win, and I frankly can’t figure where the Davis support came from except from (am I allowed to say this?) a rote allegiance among SAG/AFTRA voters for performers of color. Nobody in Oscar Handicap Land had hyped Davis from the start of the season…nobody. So what does this mean for Mulligan’s Best Actress Oscar chances?

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role: Minari‘s YUH-JUNG YOUN has won (another POC triumph) and Borat 2‘s MARIA BAKALOVA has been elbowed aside. (Winner)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role: DANIEL KALUUYA in JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (Winner)

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture: THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 / YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II / Bobby Seale, SACHA BARON COHEN / Abbie Hoffman / JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT / Richard Schultz / MICHAEL KEATON / Ramsey Clark / FRANK LANGELLA / Judge Julius Hoffman / JOHN CARROLL LYNCH / David Dellinger/ EDDIE REDMAYNE / Tom Hayden / MARK RYLANCE / William Kunstler / ALEX SHARP / Rennie Davis/ JEREMY STRONG / Jerry Rubin (Winner…Netflix memo: Let’s use this Big Mo headwind, guys, to try and dilute or diminish the persistent industry-wide presumption of of a Nomadland Best Picture Oscar win) (Winner)

…in which (a) over 95% if not 97% of ostensible movie lovers have no idea who John McCabe was, and couldn’t care less and will absolutely, positively never ask, (b) boxes of pink-colored Promising Young Woman swag has made their way around town, and (c) many people, knowing the vaccines are several weeks away from distribution for younger folk, still feel as if their souls have been drained dry.

Last night I paid $21.50 to see Nobody at the AMC Century City. I also paid $15 or $16 for a small popcorn and a hot dog. Plus $6 for parking. Call it $43 for an experience that was…well, kinda silly and, okay, somewhat “passable” if you lower your standards but certainly not in the least bit believable — not with unshaven, small-shouldered, not-tall-enough, late-50ish Bob Odenkirk in the role of a seemingly mousey dad who rapidly morphs into a version of Liam kick-ass Neeson.

Nobody actually feels like a cartoonish satire of a Neeson flick because the violent scenes are never realistic (do you believe that Odenkirk would whip five tough Russian dudes on a city bus after he stupidly empties a .38 pistol of all ammo, just to show how physically confident he is?), and because the violence becomes increasingly surreal as things move along. Sensible adults made this thing, but what did they make? Just a stupid bullshit face-puncher and ball-kicker aimed at multiplex morons…nothing more or less than that.

I wanted a Steven Soderbergh-style action flick that would try to respect reality and physics and deal semi-realistically with what a 50ish guy in reasonably good shape could manage within a John Wick-like, one-guy-vs.-the-mob vicious beatdown and shoot-em-up, and you know what happened? Director Ilya Naishuller, screenwriter Derek Kolstad and producer-star Odenkirk stepped out of the screen a la The Purple Rose of Cairo, walked over to where I was sitting (front-row, handicapped seat), took out their schlongolas and urinated right into my lap. I was too much in shock to respond.

Okay, I appreciated Naishuller’s decision to convey what a mundane, soul-draining life Odenkirk’s “Hutch” is living (before the rough stuff begins) with rapid-fire montage cutting, and I half-enjoyed the reliance on pop tunes to kind of, I don’t know, lighten the mood or something.

And I half-enjoyed Christopher Lloyd‘s hoot-level performance as Odenkirk’s ex-FBI, retirement-home-residing dad, and I was glad to run into Aleksei Serebryakov (who played a leading role in Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan) as a Russian drug lord who likes to dance and perform in front of customers at a club he owns. I was stunned when a new version of Michael Ironside showed up — “new” as in 75 pounds heavier than he was in Scanners. Connie Neilsen is okay, I guess, as Hutch’s semi-patient, non-judgmental wife.

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“Yet Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick‘s Allen v. Farrow, praised in some quarters as ‘devastating,’ is a blatantly skewed narrative based on cherry-picking, distortions and evidence-free assertions (examined in my Quillette magazine review). If it does ‘cancel’ Allen for good, it will not be on its own strength but on that of a climate in which one must ‘believe survivors.’ — from Cathy Young‘s “Woody Allen is getting a raw deal: A new documentary doesn’t present a fair picture” — N.Y. Daily News, 4.2.21.

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks to American literary critic, essayist and novelist Daphne Merkin about HBO’s highly torqued documentary, Allen v. Farrow, and the dubious claims it contains:

Posted on 7.10.09: “[Michael] Jackson‘s body is still missing his brain, which coroners are temporarily keeping for testing.” — from a 7.10 N.Y. Post story about the temporary parking of Jackson’s coffin in Berry Gordy‘s Forest Lawn crypt.

“Jackson’s brain, Donovan’s Brain with Lew Ayres, The Man With Two Brains, the brain of Dr. Hans Delbruck in Young Frankenstein. I feel an idea coming on.

“A struggling Broadway musical performer in his mid 20s comes to Vegas to find work. During a visit with an L.A. friend he’s hit by an SUV on the Hollywood freeway. He’s taken to USC and declared brain-dead. A brilliant irreverent L.A. surgeon somehow gets hold of Jackson’s brain, reanimates it with Dr. Victor Frankenstein-styled lightning bolts and transplants it into the dancer’s head. The kid survives and prospers as a kind of reincarnation of Michael Jackson — a dancing genius with a gentle little voice and a thing for young lads.

“And then what? At the very least it’s a short film. Seriously…this is a fairly good idea.”

I didn’t realize is was Easter Sunday today. Actually, to be honest, I kinda stopped noticing Easter when I hit my mid teens. I now regard Easter as being on the same level of importance as….I don’t know, Groundhog Day. It was a fairly big deal when I was a kid, of course. I actually played a Hebrew marketplace hustler in an Easter pageant performance at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Westfield, New Jersey. (Don’t ask.) I remember the palm fronds and the colors (violet and white) and the easter-egg hunts.

One of the reasons Geoffrey Wright‘s Romper Stomper (’92) works as well as it does — an anti-racist, anti-skinhead film that isn’t afraid to dive right into the gang mind and pretend-revel in the fevered currents — is John Clifford White‘s score.

The main theme, in particular, seems to simultaneously channel skinhead rage and, at the same time, deftly satirize it. I don’t even know what kind of brass instruments White used on these tracks — tuba? trombone? French horn? trumpet? But the sound and mood are perfect. Just a clever instrumentation of a melodic hook and obviously less than complex, but once you’ve heard the theme you’ll never forget it.