Yesterday Facebook film maven Martin Bradley posted a list of “TEN BORING FILMS THAT ARE HELD IN HIGH CRITICAL ESTEEM.” It reminded me of a Mr. Showbiz piece I wrote in July ’99 titled “A Wee Bit Boring.” The basic idea was that 90% of films that are held in high critical esteem are very slightly boring. Here’s how I put it:

“Anyone interested in higher-quality films these days knows the truth of it. Some of the better ones are unique, special, X-factor — Go, The Matrix, Election, Rushmore, There’s Something About Mary, Run Lola Run, Saving Private Ryan, etc. The rest of the quality movies flirt with being boring from time to time. A good kind of boring, I mean. Nutritional, Brussels-sprouts, good-for-your-soul boring.

“It’s important to understand the degree of boring I’ve speaking of here. I don’t mean sinking-into-a-coma boring. Or regular boring. Or even mildly boring. But a little bit boring.

“I’m always glad after seeing a high-quality, slightly boring film, because I can then say to myself or someone I happen to meet that I’ve just seen one, and because of this my soul is richer and my horizons have been broadened. I never feel this way after seeing a big-studio, high-velocity idiot movie. Does anyone?

“Face it — most of us are peons when it comes to upscale, slightly boring movies. We don’t want to know from complex or sophisticated. We just want to sit there and get stroked.

“This is probably our fault, to some extent. Maybe movies just seem a bit boring at times because we’ve lost the ability (or the willingness) to stay with movies that require a little patience or concentration. The cliché about kids not having the attention span of a flea is reaching out to the older age brackets. Even the over-40s seem to be losing interest in movies with even a minute meditative edge.

“So clearly, in the backwash of all this cultural deprivation, ‘a little bit boring’ is a serious compliment these days. You just have to mean it (or hear it) the right way.”

[Snapped yesterday] Tatiana and Gleb on their way to Shermetyevo Airport for a trip to Moldova and a visit with Tatiana’s mom.

Last night I sat through the first three episodes of Robert Siegel‘s Pam & Tommy, an eight-part dramedy about the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape, which was stolen from Lee and Anderson’s home by contractor Rand Gauthier in late ’95 and covertly, half-assedly released in late ’97 or early ’98…somewhere around then.

The generally engaging series delivers the how, the why, the motive, the background, the personalities and the fallout. The first three episodes are titled “Drilling and Pounding”, “I Love You, Tommy” and “Jane Fonda.”

When I first saw the promos and the trailers, I rolled my eyes when I realized Seth Rogan would be playing Gauthier, and probably, I assumed, resorting to his usual schtick. Not was I thrilled at the idea of spending time with Lily James and Sebastian Stan as Pam and Tommy Lee, but I figured their performances…well, who knew?

I was therefore surprised to find myself enjoying the smart, clean construction that Siegel put into the storytelling. This is a well-made effort, logically assembled and absorbing as far as it goes.

I also found myself relating more to the none-too-bright Gauthier and his sleazy partner-in-crime, “Uncle Miltie” (Nick Offerman). It’s obvious early on that Rogan and Offerman are taking these guys fairly seriously, and not playing them as blue-collar dolts. Gauthier and Miltie are low-rent scuzballs but reasonably decent fellows with recognizable human aspects if you can relax your standards.

Pam and Tommy Lee, however, are not only portrayed but fully believable as egoistic, drooling, moronic (as in breathtakingly stupid and comically simple-minded) and pathetically under-educated fools.

HE to friendo: “Rogan and Offerman’s characters are the best. Lily James and Sebastian Stan’s Pam & Tommy Lee are stupid, vapid, uneducated cyphers…not just bad company but profoundly boring characters.”

Friendo to HE: “The perfs by Stan and James are great.”

HE to Friendo: “No, I really do not agree with you. James and Stan deliver energetic performances — physical and loud and loutish, yes, and she never seems to stop grinning or giggling or shrieking with delight, and yes, the animatronic penis scene is stupidly funny But Stan and James are playing REPREHENSIBLE PEOPLE. He’s an angry, mascara’ed, ovr-indulged, over-tattooed heavy metal asshole and she’s an utterly brainless boop-boop-pee-doop Barbie Doll.

“I mean, the movie pretty much dies when it’s just about James and Stan, and it comes back alive when Rogan and Offerman return. Not to mention Taylor “I’m not letting that guy fuck me up the ass” Schilling.”

Friendo to HE: “Well, let’s both agree that this did not need to be eight episodes long.”

HE to Friendo: “I’m not bored as we speak but the idea of watching five more episodes of this does seem like a possible stretch. One thing the series makes clear at the beginning was that the sex-video theft was provoked, that Tommy Lee’s seriously abrasive and bullying treatment of Gauthier led to some angry payback. Perhaps not justified, but certainly understandable.”

This sordid affair was explored in a 2014 Rolling Stone article by Amanda Chicago Lewis. I’ve never read it, but I’d like to now.

Congratulations to Pack, a management company and record label, and co-founder Jett Wells for the use of OTR’s “Midnight Sun” on the just-out Netflix preview trailer. Pack represents OTR and many other groups. OTR’s stuff is “emotional electronic music,” I’ve been assured, and “not techno, which is a very different genre.”

Of the nine Best Picture nominees among films that were released in 2011, three are eminently re-watchable and regarded by the Movie Godz as quietly vibrant and human and truly salutable — Bennett Miller‘s Moneyball, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor‘s The Descendants and Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris. You can re-watch these films once a year for the rest of your life, and you’ll never be sorry.

Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life, a competing Best Picture nominee, was the first of Malick’s “whispering soup movies”…swoony, swirling meditations about birth, life, love, beautiful women as spiritual-vibe vessels, nothingness and everythingness and leaves on the ground, not to mention granules of sand. Tree was applauded as a major stand-out at first, but after Malick kept making this kind of movie over and over and over (To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song, A Hidden Life) and taking up to two years to edit them, people realized he was mainly wallowing in a kind of hazy mist of meandering mysticism and distracted indecision…that he was basically jizz-wanking.

The remaining five Best Picture nominees are regarded today as over-praised (as in “what were they thinking?”) embarassments — earnest, plodding films that nobody and I mean nobody has re-visited.

I’m speaking of Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist, a stunt movie beloved by the chumps (I repeatedly begged the critics groups to stop giving it their Best Picture trophies and they wouldn’t listen) and the winner, of course, of the Best Picture Oscar.

Stephen Daldry‘s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was close to unwatchable even in 2011. Tate Taylor‘s The Help was agony to sit through; ditto Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo (the one portion that everyone admired was the flourishy tribute to Georges Méliès at the very end). Steven Spielberg‘s War Horse did decent business and was embraced by the middle-class sentimentalists, but nobody will ever re-watch this fucking movie…please.

From HE’s “What Killed War Horse’s Oscar Hope?,” posted on 11.27.11:

With Oscar nomination voting having ended two days ago, the just-out 2022 BAFTA nominations won’t be influencing anyone about anything. If you ask me they’re only “meaningful” as a clear indication that Kristen Stewart, whose BAFTA snub of her Spencer performance follows the SAG omission of a few weeks back, is almost certainly finished as a Best Actress Oscar nominee.**

On top of which the BAFTA nominators ignored Parallel Mothers‘ Penelope Cruz…what is effing wrong with these guys? We’re talking about a thoroughly degenerated set of aesthetic values. They don’t even nominate the year’s finest female performance?

The BAFTA Best Actress nominees are House Of Gucci‘s Lady Gaga (a premonition that she’ll probably win the Best Actress Oscar is truly soul-crushing), Licorice Pizza‘s Alana Haim (rounding out the pack), CODA‘s Emilia Jones (forget it), The Worst Person In The World‘s Renate Reinsve (superb performance, great part), After Love‘s Joanna Scanlan (who?) and Passing‘s Tessa Thompson (minimalism, no voltage, no nothing).

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone: “Reading anything into the acting categories is basically like fan fiction role play for Film Twitter.”

All but one of BAFTA’s Best Film nominees are the usual nod-outs — Belfast, Dune, Licorice Pizza and The Power Of The Dog. The surprise (to me at least) is the nomination of Don’t Look Up, which has run hot and cold across the board. It got in, I’m guessing, because it says the right things about political imbeciles and climate change. Meanwhile I am still deeply, deeply depressed about the likely triumph of The Power of the Downer Dog

Outstanding British Film nominees are After Love, Ali & Ava, Belfast, Boiling Point, Cyrano, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, House Of Gucci, Last Night In Soho, No Time To Die and Passing. I can’t muster the passion to even speculate. God, this is so boring.

Sasha Stone’s bottom line: “The BAFTAs aren’t really the BAFTAs as we once knew them. Meaning [that] they aren’t really a consensus vote. They are a tightly micromanaged jury vote to spare the membership embarrassment or bad headlines for not being inclusive enough.”

BAFTA declaration: “Juries are made up of industry experts, with each jury comprised of BAFTA members from a diverse range of backgrounds, experience, gender, location and age groups.” Translation: “It’s more important for the BAFTAs to be sensitive and supportive of artists representing historically marginalized cultures and tribes than to select the ‘best’ in this or that category, whatever that actually means.”

In other words, a signification portion of the BAFTA nominees have been decided upon by woke-minded jurors. It’s basically political bullshit. The BAFTAs used to be about the usual factors — popularity, the “due” factor, estimations of quality, reflections of Academy sentiments. Now they’re almost worthless — woke whores, a dog-and-pony show by way of Twitter.

** BAFTA’s Stewart snub can also be read as a rejection of Pablo Larrain‘s flourishy, “Diary of a Mad Princess” fantasia.

How are the current Scream creators able to even glance at their reflection in the bathroom mirror? Perhaps they don’t even have one.

No offense but Tom Holland‘s accent sounds very “street”. Like a guy who sells fish and chips or a chimney sweep from Mary Poppins or a jockey who races at Ascot or a thug from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I’m not familiar enough with working-class Brit-speak so can someone help me out? Whatever his accent or manner of delivery, he certainly doesn’t sound posh.

I can only surmise that Susan Sarandon is afflicted with some form of mental instability. She’s a symbol for and an argument against everything that Average Joes & Janes despise about the absolutist, vitriolic, nihilistic left. Every sensible person understands that “defund the police” was insanity…everyone except Sarandon. It’s like she’s an agent provocateur planted by the right — like some kind of Manchurian assassin.

If by the late winter or spring of ’23 it looks like Joe Biden‘s chances of being re-elected are somewhere between slim and shitty, and if, like me, you’re terrified of Kamala Harris somehow wrestling the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination into her court and if you think Ritchie Torres is too young, the brilliant and semi-folksy Al Franken should step up to the plate. I’m 100% serious. Trump vs. Franken would be beautiful. Franken is frank, smart and sensible, and everyone knows that he was torpedoed out of his Senate seat over bullshit. Trump is a criminal sociopath and a destroyer of worlds.

Franken’s only problem is that he’s 5’6″ — too inches shorter than Michael Dukakis.

Six or seven years ago I began to assemble a list of the greatest lead performances in feature films, and Monica Vitti in L’Avventura was one of them, you bet.

The names that that came to mind off the top of my head were James Gandolfini in The Sopranos, Geza Rohrig in Son of Saul, Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront and The Godfather, Amy Schumer in Trainwreck (I’m dead serious), George Clooney in Michael Clayton, Gary Cooper in High Noon, George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, Mia Farrow in Broadway Danny Rose, Lee Marvin in Point Blank, Alan Ladd in Shane, Brad Pitt in Moneyball, Marilyn Monroe in Some like It Hot, Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast and Betrayal, Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings, Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton, Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and, last but not least, Vitti in…aww, hell, her entire Michelangelo Antonioni travelogue.

After 90 years and 2 months on the planet earth, Vitti has left for realms beyond. I’m very sorry but then again she really lived a life, particularly during her ultimate star-power and mesmerizing collaboration years with the great Antonioni — a five-year exploration comprised of L’Avventura (’60), La Notte (’61), L’Eclisse (62) and Red Desert (’64).

Were it not for this five-year chapter, we wouldn’t this day be praising Vitti to the heavens. She “lives” today because of Antonioni, and a significant reason for his own exalted early-to-mid-’60s rep is due to — owned by — Vitti’s allure.

In her Antonioni films Vitti always seemed to be thinking “is this all there is?” Or “my God, there’s so little nutrition…I’m sinking into quicksand, withering away…so little in the way or sparkle and joy…nearly every waking minute I’m consumed by the glammy blues.”

Yes, she laughed and loved in L’Ecclisse, but only briefly and anxiously and in a sense ironically. The African tribal dance sequence was the exception — a spoof, of course, but lively and sexy.

Born in 1931, Vitti was 28 or 29 at the beginning of her Antonioni period and 33 when their collaboration ended — no spring chicken even at the start.

From Adam Bernstein’s Washington Post obit: “Her willowy physique, husky voice, full lips and mane of sun–kissed blond hair gave her a raw sensual appeal. But Antonioni cast her against type in a cycle of acclaimed films about emotional detachment and spiritual barrenness. He made her the personification of glamorous malaise.”

Take L’Avventura, for one example. It’s about wealthy Italians wandering about in a state of gloomy drifting, anxious and vaguely bothered and frowning a good deal of the time.

The movie is about the absence of whole-hearted feeling, and it never diverts from this. If there’s a moment in which Vitti conveys even a hint of serenity in her intimate scenes with Gabriele Ferzetti, it barely registers. I don’t remember a single shot in which Ferzetti smiles with even a hint of contentment.

From “Red Desert Return“: “I saw Red Desert for the first time in 2015. I know the Antonioni milieu, of course, and had read a good deal about it over the years, so I was hardly surprised to discover that it has almost no plot. It has a basic situation, and Antonioni is wonderfully at peace with the idea of just settling into that without regard to story.

“And for that it seemed at least ten times more engrossing than 80% or 90% of conventional narrative films I see these days, and 87 times better than the majority of bullshit superhero films.

“Vitti plays a twitchy and obviously unstable wife and mother who’s been nudged into a kind of madness by the industrial toxicity around her, and Richard Harris is an even-mannered German businessman visiting smelly, stinky Ravenna. The film is about industrial sprawl and poisoned landscapes and a lot of standing around and Vitti’s neurotic gibberish and a certain caught-in-the-mud mood that holds you like a drug, specifically like good opium.

“Each and every shot in Red Desert (the dp is Carlo di Palma, whom Vitti later fell in love with) is quietly breathtaking. It’s one of the most immaculate and mesmerizing ugly-beautiful films I’ve ever seen. The fog, the toxins, the afflictions, the compositions.”