Month: March 2022

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.

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A friend who attended last weekend’s Critics Choice awards says no one seemed to take special notice
of Jane Campion’s faux pas 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 Daily Beast‘s Kyndall Cunningham, a Baltimore–based freelancer, 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 secretly despise Woke Twitter, 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.

90 minutes ago I was pedaling south on La Cienega (I have a nice bicycle) when I noticed a block-long line of mostly teenage girls. Okay, 20somethings.

I pulled over, walked up to a 50ish dude standing by one of the girls (a dad, I presumed) and said, “May I ask what this is?” He gestured to his daughter and she said “oh, it’s for hair styles.”

“Hair styles?” I said. “People are having their hair done?”

“Hairy Styles,” she repeated, a little more clearly this time.

“Oh, Harry Styles…sure!” I quickly replied. “Dunkirk, dresses and pearl necklaces.”

It was the young girl’s fault. You don’t pronounce Styles’ first name so it rhymes with “hairy.” You pronounce it Hahrry. Like Harry Truman or Harry and the Hendersons or “a little touch of Harry in the night.” But she could have been thinking of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape. Not that she was.

I’m not questioning the Muslim identity thing, but her pipsqueak voice sounds so “Valley” — she has the vocal-fry speaking voice down cold. She could be any mousey, low-self-esteem teenager in any region of the country. Same manner, same vibe. In short, she’s done everything she can to blend in and assimilate with all the other vocal-fry girls.

Cruel perversity runs through Adrien Lyne‘s Deep Water (Hulu, 3.18). That’s what you feel more than anything else….the cold-blooded cruelty.

Based on a 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel and adapted by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, the film is about Vic and Melinda Van Allen (Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas), a youngish, quite wealthy couple who’ve fallen into a very weird and toxic chapter in their relationship. They’ve agreed that Melinda is free to fuck around on a consensual, wide-open basis — an arrangement that Vic is ostensibly okay with although he’s clearly not. You can sense his suppressed rage from the get-go.

It’s also obvious that Melinda is (am I allowed to say this?) a horrible person and a total sociopath. She must sense that Vic is at the very least conflicted about their arrangement, and yet she takes up with three boyfriends in succession without blinking an eye, and she even invites these guys to social gatherings that she and Vic attend as a couple.

Their friends see what’s going on, of course, and they all say “bruh, this is fucked up, and no offense but your wife is the cause of it…she has some real problems…why are you going along with this?”

The deal seems even worse when you realize they’re raising a young daughter.

The first thing that comes to mind (after the “God, what a monster she is!”) is why — why has Vic agreed to Melinda boning all these guys? Is it because he can’t get it up with any regularity? That doesn’t appear to be an issue, but then you ask “okay but why did they get married and have a daughter if Melinda has an insatiable sexual appetite that can’t be suppressed?”

No sensible, self-respecting dude would marry a woman like this. Remember that Blood, Sweat & Tears song, “Lucretia McEvil”?

The reason he’s down with it, we’re told, is that Vic gets turned on by Melinda slamming ham with the boys, and this intensifies their marital sex life. But it’s clear that he’s mainly pissed about the whole deal. 95% of the time Vic seethes and glowers, and 5% of the time he has good sex with Melinda when she isn’t in the mood for one of the boyfriends.

Their arrangement, in short, is fundamentally mystifying and frustrating from an audience POV. And this is only one of the Deep Water irritants. I’ll mention others tomorrow, Thursday and Friday,

Originally posted on 7.12.19 on HE Plus: “I became an amateur stage actor between ’75 and ’76, when I was living in Westport, Connecticut. My big move to Manhattan was about a year and a half off. The usual nocturnal distractions prevailed, of course — catting around, partying, movies. But I also wrote program notes for the Westport Country Playhouse Cinema. And I acted in front of paying audiences.

“First I played the timid ‘Dr. Spivey’ in a Stamford Community Playhouse production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which I mentioned to Ken Kesey when I interviewed him in Park City in ’98 or thereabouts), and then a macho backwoods type named ‘Marvin Hudgens’ in a Westport Playhouse production of Dark of the Moon.

“Sandra, a pretty married woman of 34, was also in Dark of the Moon. She and hubby Burt, a balding oil-company attorney, lived in a nice clapboard colonial not far from the playhouse. She was one of those ‘passionate with a capital p’ types — a lover of theatre, intense eyes, great cheekbones. Plus she was a part-time dominatrix with all the necessary gear (black bustiere, fishnet stockings, a leather cat-o-nine-tails whip, tall spike-heeled boots). Every so often she would visit Manhattan and get into scenes with submissives.

“Sandra was playing a sexy witch in Dark of the Moon, and it wasn’t much of a reach. Fierce energy, quite the firecracker.

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An Industry Professional Responding to Sunday’s “Normcore Bill at Le Petit Four“, which mentioned an ill-advised impulse to briefly greet Bill Maher in the restaurant’s back room:

“I vaguely know Bill [Maher]. I represented the writer-producer of [details redacted]. It seemed to me that Bill was exuding misanthropic vibes from time to time.

“He was standing next to me one evening about three years ago at the CAA valet after a reception for Julia Roberts, so I chatted him up. He was incredibly tense at first but relaxed when I praised his show as well as Politically Incorrect. I said ‘You seemed visibly nervous when I said hi…I bet a lot of crazy people come up to you?’ Maher relaxed and laughed and said “Yes, and they want to argue about something from the show. I never know what to expect. “

“He doesn’t like fans as a result. And he’s a bit of a grumpy guy to begin with.

“The unfortunate 21st century new rule is not to approach an on-camera celeb in public if they’re wearing a hat or are trying to obscure their face or hair etc. Unless they’re an old friend or someone you’ve worked with.

“You read Twitter. There are too many mean and crazy people out there.”

The ’22 Cannes Film Festival (5.17 to 5.28) has officially announced that both Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount, 5.27) and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (Warner Bros,., 6.24) will have big splashy debuts on the Cote d’Azur. But then we suspected this weeks ago.

I have vague qualms about both. It can be safely presumed that neither will deliver serious heat. The possible competition titles that I’m most excited about are Alejandro G. Innaritu‘s Bardo, Cristian Mungiu‘s R.M.N., Ruben Ostlund‘s Triangle of Sadness, James Gray‘s Armageddon Time and Kantemir Balagov‘s Monica.

Posted on 3.4.22: World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has compiled a list of (seemingly) likely titles for Cannes ’22.

Other possible out-of-competition titles: Bullet Train, Nope, Lightyear. Perhaps George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing (rumored to be something of a slog) will play OOC instead of competition.

Here’s the general rundown:

Here’s Variety‘s Cannes projection.

TUCKER CARLSON 2019: “Why do I care what’s going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia? And I’m serious. And why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.”

TUCKER CARLSON 2022: “Who’s siding with Putin? I haven’t seen anybody do that.” pic.twitter.com/HpyXtVEw0I

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 15, 2022

…but it’s irritating in a lot of ways. That’s putting it concisely, I think.

I’ll always be a sucker for any kind of humid, storied New Orleans atmosphere, and a noirish mood only adds…not as rich as Angel Heart’s in this case, but one that at least lets you savor the flush fragrances of the Garden district. In this respect it’s an agreeable hang.

But man, what a perplexing and unsatisfying story about dread and a weird form of impotence and crazy-rage jealousy. Plus the head-scratching dynamic between the perverse married-couple leads, originally created by Patricia Highsmith and played by Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. Not to mention a final 45 minutes that really doesn’t work from a logical standpoint and which even flirts with self-mockery. Not to…

Look, can I finish this tomorrow morning? I’m not feeling the mojo right now. Plus I have to hit the market before it gets too late. Everyone knows this movie is a stiff so what’s the difference if I carve it up tonight or tomorrow?

Friendo #1: “I didn’t think I could root any harder than I already am for The Power of the Dog not to win [the Best Picture Oscar]. But now, if it loses, it will just be unimaginably sweet.”

Friendo #2: “I never thought it could win because people don’t actually like it that much. But I don’t really want to see CODA win either. Apple bought it for $20 million, and it made $1 million. There is just something really awful about that. Maybe King Richard will win.”

Friendo #1: “I’m not quite sure what you’re saying about CODA. Apple bought it for $25 million, and it made no money because it never played in theaters. Just like The Power of the Dog.

“The difference is that CODA is the better film. The Power of the Dog is well-made, but it’s thin and fatally woke. Sam Elliott, in his ham-handed way, was actually right about it. It’s an attack on masculinity. I wasn’t personally offended by it, but I think it’s didactic.”

Friendo #2: “It bothers me because Apple is the most powerful company in the world. The #1 most powerful, and they’re selling CODA as ‘the little movie that could.’ I like it. It’s fine but it bothers me that they’re going to buy an Oscar, if they wind up doing that. And what will ultimately mean is more subscribers for them! I just don’t want the Oscars to go that way. I don’t really want Netflix to win either, despite that I think they’re a good company and that the movies are good. I just don’t want the Oscars to give up on theatrical.

“I know I probably have to let it go — adapt or die but still. Apple in particular bothers me. Amazon is the same. It just feels hopeless.”

Friendo #1: “Oh, I don’t want to see the Oscars give up on theatrical either! But I don’t agree with you that ‘Apple is buying this Oscar.’ They’re laying out the money for an Oscar campaign, the same way that Netflix does, and the same way that Harvey set the template.

“But CODA is ‘the little movie that could’ because…people love it! You can’t buy that. That’s why it could win. And people, by and large, don’t like TPOTD.

“But yes. Bring back theatrical!! For adult films. That’s my crusade.”

Friendo #2: “I’m not on Team CODA! It is a TV movie at best. It is not a Best Picture of the year.”