From Richard Rushfield‘s latest The Ankler column, titled “How Low Will Oscars Go?” — posted this afternoon:
“This should be the year the chickens come home to the Oscars, not just to roost but to peck the foundation to collapse. “
“All the self-absorbed trends the Academy has indulged over the past decade will be out in full bloom, starting with a lineup of contenders that very few outside of media-land have ever heard of, much less seen.
“Just to set the over/under: last year’s show was watched by 10.4 million people, down 56 percent from the previous year. There’s not much reason to suppose that trajectory has been abated. So if this year’s show loses 56 percent over the year before, that will put it at 4.5 million viewers.
“That seems slightly low to me and I’d have to take the over there. The Ankler prediction stands at 5.6 million.
“But in any event, anything in that neighborhood stands a good chance that not only won’t the Oscars be one of the highest-rated shows of the year, it might not even be the highest-rated show of the week.”
As noted several weeks ago, Matt Ross‘s Gaslit (STARZ, 4.24) is the story of the colorful Martha Mitchell, the wife of former Attorney General John Mitchell and a Southern belle blabbermouth who was told to shut up about what she suspected about Watergate and yet refused to zip it.
I’m presuming that the idea behind Gaslit is to celebrate Mitchell’s feisty, temperamental personality and independent streak. But I’m hoping that the film will also acknowledge that Mitchell didn’t play her cards all that well, and that she died destitute at a relatively young age (57). Sad but true.
Julia Roberts plays Martha, and a barely recognizable Sean Penn plays husband John. Costarring Dan Stevens, Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham and Darby Camp.
From Martha Mitchell’s Wiki page: “Following the 6.17.72 Watergate break-in, Attorney General John Mitchell “enlisted security guard Steve King (a former FBI agent) to prevent his wife Martha from learning about the break-in or contacting reporters. Despite these efforts, the following Monday, Martha acquired a copy of the Los Angeles Times.
“Martha learned that James W. McCord Jr., the security director of the Committee to Re-elect The President and her daughter’s bodyguard and driver, was among those arrested. This detail conflicted with the White House’s official story that the break-in was unrelated to the CRP, and raised her suspicion.
“Martha unsuccessfully made attempts to contact her husband by phone, eventually telling one of his aides that her next call would be to the press.
“The following Thursday, on 6.22.72, Mitchell made a late-night phone call to Helen Thomas of the United Press, reportedly Mitchell’s favorite reporter. Mitchell informed Thomas of her intention to leave her husband until he resigned from CREEP. The phone call, however, abruptly ended. When Thomas called back, the hotel operator told her that Mitchell was ‘indisposed’ and would not be able to talk. Thomas then called John, who seemed unconcerned and said, ‘[Martha] gets a little upset about politics, but she loves me and I love her and that’s what counts.’
Obituary protocol requires that when a person dies you can never give him/her the “Bob Clark treatment**.” 15 years ago I was slapped around for precisely this offense.
When William Hurt passed last Sunday (3.13) I had nothing but love and fond memories in my heart and my copy reflected that. But the feelings of Hurt’s former live-in lover, CODA costar Marlee Matlin, were presumablymixed, certainly to go by her memoir “I’ll Scream Later.”
Matlin wrote that Hurt was a bit of a brutalist. Emotional and physical abuse (i.e., bruises) and even an incident of domestic rape while Hurt was filming Broadcast News, happened between them, most of it generated by Hurt. Hurt and Matlin were both apparently guilty of “considerable” drug abuse.
I’m also presuming that some #MeToo brigade types (like The Daily Beast‘s Amy Zimmerman) are persuaded that Hurt-in-his-heyday was an abusive prick and could even be described as satanic.
Hurt and Matlin were lovers for roughly a three-year period — late ’85 (when filming began on Children of a Lesser God) to sometime in mid to late ’88. They lived together for two years. Born on 3.20.50, Hurt was 15 years older than Matlin, who was born on 8.24.65.
Wiki excerpt: “In 1986, after Matlin won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Children of a Lesser God, Hurt reportedly asked her to consider what it meant to win the Oscar after just one film, when others won only after many years of hard work.
“‘What makes you think you deserved it, Marlee?’, Hurt allegedly asked in the limo after the Oscar telecast. ‘There are hundreds of actors who have worked for years for the recognition you just got handed to you. Think about that.'”
That wasn’t a very nice thing to say in the wake of Marlin’s big win. Hurt’s point, I presume, was that she won more for social-political-cultural reasons (i.e., the novelty of her being a deaf actress) than for the skill and chops that went into her performance.
But all Oscar wins are about “the narrative”, of course, and especially about being across-the-board likable. It was nonetheless mean of Hurt to try and denigrate her achievement.
In response to Matlin’s accusations about Hurt, particular those that aired on CNN on 4.13.08, Hurt issued a statement: “My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives. Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we have both grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good.”
Six episodes of that good David Simon Baltimore hardcore ghoulash that so many HE loyalists swore by in the form of The Wire. Plus come classic Serpico slash Prince of the City soul-searching action. Jon Bernthal (much slimmer), Treat Williams, Wunmi Mosaku, Jamie Hector, McKinley Belcher III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Josh Charles, Dagmara Domińczyk, etc. Directed by King Richard‘s Reinaldo Marcus Green. Launches on 4.25.
Daniel Craig‘s James Bond doesn’t really defeat Dave Bautista‘s Mr. Hinx — he gets some much-needed help from Léa Seydoux‘s pistol-packing Madeleine Swann, and then Hinx is accidentally yanked out of the train by a rope and some barrels.
Sean Connery gets some assistance from an exploding talcum-powder briefcase and a small knife, but otherwise decisively defeats Robert Shaw‘s “Red” Grant.
The From Russia With Love battle lasts 3 minutes and 40 seconds, and yet it seems shorter than Spectre’s train fight, which lasts roughly two minutes and 45 seconds.
The six-day Oscar voting period begins tomorrow (Thursday, 3.17) and ends the following Tuesday (3.22) at 5 p.m. This. Is. It. And here’s how the the Best Picture situation seems as we speak.
Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog hasn’t a prayer, of course, although her Best Director Oscar is assured. The top two contenders (i.e., the ones most likely to take the prize) are Reinaldo Marcus Green and Zach Baylin‘s King Richard and Sian Heder‘s CODA. So what will it be? The tennis movie or the singing-and-signing movie?
On 2.27.22 (two and a half weeks ago) the Best Picture Oscar odds shifted dramatically. The Screen Actors Guild handed its Best Ensemble Award (“Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture”) to CODA, and suddenly this low-budget, musically-driven family film had the heat. And yet, many reminded, CODA‘s lack of a Best Editing nomination suggested it may not win, as the correlation between Best Picture and Best Editing Oscars stretches back decades.
And then, six days after the SAG awards (3.5.22), King Richard‘s Pam Martin won the ACE Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film — Dramatic. Suddenly the narrative switched again — the Best Picture race was now a neck-and-neck between King Richard and CODA. Because of the merits, of course, but also because no one really likes The Power of the Dog. We know that.
It is noteworthy and coincidental that CODA and King Richard are about families engaged in tough struggles — the determined and pugnacious Richard Williams (Will Smith) pushing his athletically gifted daughters, Venus and Serena Williams (Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton), to succeed as professional tennis players, and CODA‘s Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) trying to overcome her own hang-ups and ambivalence in order to go her own way as a singer, the final goal being to gain admission to Boston’s Berklee School of Music.
Question: Which is the more fully engaged family film? Which is more realistic and less fanciful? Which is more reflective of the hard-nosed world the way it actually is than the way it seems by the terms and language of a sentimental fable?
King Richard is no sentimental fable — it’s a family film that never quits, never fiddles around, never loses focus, doesn’t know from serendipity.
A friend who attended last weekend’s Critics Choice awards says nooneseemedtotakespecialnotice of Jane Campion’s fauxpas about Venus and Serena Williams. No one gasped or shrieked either, and no one discussed it during the after-party.
But your Film Twitter wokey-wokes went ballistic.
Campion’s apology happened Monday morning (3.14). Shortly after The DailyBeast‘s KyndallCunningham, a Baltimore–basedfreelancer, claimed that the damage had been done and the bed irrevocably shat upon.
Maybe among your hair-trigger wackos but my guess — call it a hunch — is that Los Angeles- and New York-based industry voters secretlydespiseWokeTwitter, and may give their Best Picture vote to The Power of the Dog out of sympathy for Campion. Maybe.
Nonetheless the CODA ads appearing directly above Cunningham’s story were quite the visual accompaniment.
