Month: November 2022

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Marcus Jones have posted several Best Picture Oscar predictions. Some of their calls have merit; others are a joke. Their choices are pasted below.

Among the Thompson-Jones picks, HE has boldfaced the titles of films that are either actually good or are thought to be genuinely good, and which may seriously deserve Best Picture consideration.

In fact, before picking apart the Thompson-Jones calls, here are ten of HE’s Best Picture projections, mostly based upon the fact that the films are (or in some cases are presumed to be) actually good and/or held in high esteem, and therefore deserving of a BP nomination. These are not political predictions as much as judgment calls:

1. The Fabelmans
2. TÁR
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Babylon
6. Empire of Light
7. She Said
8. Armageddon Time
9. Bardo
10. Close

Thompson-Jones reactions: The letters UL (as in “unfortunately likely”) appear next to films that aren’t good enough but will probably be be nominated anyway. The letters NH (as in “not happening”) appear next to films that haven’t much of an emotional or political prayer. The words FORGET IT are placed next to titles which HE regards as absurd and/or ridiculous in this context.

Frontrunners:

The Banshees of Inisherin / UL
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever / FORGET IT
Elvis / UL
Everything Everywhere All at Once / / UL
The Fabelmans
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio / ANIMATION
TÁR
Top Gun: Maverick
The Woman King / FORGET IT
Women Talking / NH

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We all understand that Brendan Fraser‘s performance as the 600-pound “Charlie” in Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale (A24, 12.9) is going to result in a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and perhaps even a win.

What many of us don’t understand is what the tearful Fraser is saying at the 45-second mark. I realize, of course, that he’s not saying “people are meerhit” but I’ve listened seven or eight times with headphones. and that’s what it sounds like — “people are meerhit.”

Update: A director friend informs that Fraser is saying “people are amazing.”

“According to the CDC, obesity impacts 49.6% of African Americans and 44.8% of non-white Hispanic Americans, compared to only 42.2% of white Americans.

“Black and Brown children are also disproportionately affected by childhood obesity. 2017 CDC data indicates that among racial groups, obesity impacts 25.6% of non-white Hispanic children and 24.2% of African American children, compared to only 16.1% of white children. These obesity disparities result from a complex confluence of socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and psychological factors.” — Center for Healthcare Innovation, 6.8.22.

“Only 42.2% of white Americans” are obese? ONLY??

Six years ago: “The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population has increased steadily since the 1960s — from 3.4 percent of adults in 1962 to 39.8 percent in 2016, the year of the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. In all, 180.5 million people or 60.7 percent of the population, ages 2 and over — were either obese or overweight.”

Whenever someone passes at too young an age or due to some tragic mishap or a stroke of bad luck, someone always says that the recently departed “loved life.” Which I would call a nice but imprecise sentiment. It’s so vague it’s almost meaningless.

HE’s definition of a lover of life would be the Kinks guy who loves living adjacent to Waterloo Station.

I’m actually a lover of the splendor and symphony of all great European train stations. Ditto the great cities and towns — Paris, Rome, Munich, Hanoi, Hoi An, Milan, Prague, Venice, Arcos de la Frontera, Caye Caulker, portions of Key West, the Berkshires, Monument Valley, Lauterbrunnen — and the tens of thousands of beautiful pastoral vistas all over. Ditto my cats, my granddaughter Sutton and her parents Jett and Cait and Sutton’s Uncle Dylan, black Volvo wagons, BMW rumblehogs, heavy leather jackets, Indian or Italian dishes, vinyl record albums, cookies & cream gelato, Italian suede lace-ups, etc.

The only negative that comes to mind amidst all this joy and nurture and rapture, the only aspect of life on planet earth that I consistently have problems with and which generally darkens my worldview are…well, people. Not everyone, of course. The majority are fine. I can just can’t with the three-toed sloths.

Last Thursday (11.3) an official trailer for Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre‘s Lady Chatterly’s Lover (Netflix, 12.2) appeared. The trailer is decently cut but it obscures a basic problem that I had with the film, which I caught a couple of months ago in Telluride.

HE review, posted on 9.7.22: “Actors should be allowed to play whomever or whatever. In a perfect world none of us would or should have a problem with a straight actor playing gay or vice versa, or a non-Latino playing Fidel Castro or you-name-it.

“Acting is about submitting and becoming, and whenever a particular effort succeeds it’s glorious. I can still enjoy Alec Guinness‘s Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia, his actual ethnicity be damned. I’ve always believed in his storied brilliance. All Guinness has to do is speak a line or two…sold.

“Then why, I was asking myself, did I have trouble submitting to Emma Corrin‘s lead performance in Lady Chatterly’s Lover?

“Corrin was a perfect Lady Diana in The Crown, and yet I had difficulty accepting her as a wealthy cis British woman succumbing to runting passion in the 1920s blah blah. Nor did I believe that her earthy gamekeeper lover (Jack O’Connell) had any special passion for her. I felt only the effort.

“This is probably at least partly because Corrin has been somewhat pronounced about being queer (she came out in July 2021) and adopting “they/them” pronouns and being nonbinary and wearing breast flatteners and whatnot.

“Plus there’s just something about her that seems coy and stand-offish about sensuality in any form.

“I said a somewhat similar thing about the late Olivia De Havilland when she passed in late July 2020. To me OdH always seemed to lack a sensual ignition switch. Too goody two-shoes or something. I was immediately disciplined for saying so. Variety‘s Steven Gaydos accused me of ‘pissing on her coffin.’ I replied that detecting an absence of a sensual undercurrent in De Havilland was not dismissive or derogatory.

“I’ll never not appreciate Corrin’s first-rate skills, but I just couldn’t believe that her Lady Chatterly was hungry for the proverbial thrusting loins. I kept telling myself ‘forget Corrin’s stated real-life identities’ — just sink into her soul and absorb the feelings and let the movie wash over you and carry you along. But I couldn’t.

“And I’m saying this as someone who truly loved Jonathan Groff‘s straight FBI guy in Mindhunter, Cate Blanchett‘s vampy lipstick lesbian in Carol, Kevin Spacey‘s miserable married suburbanite in American Beauty, Peter Finch‘s gay doctor in Sunday Bloody Sunday and so on. Great acting is great acting, but…well, I’ve said it.”

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Andrew Prine, a respected character actor who drew from the water of episodic television and B movies for many decades, died a few days ago at age 86.  

Prine was one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite character actors.  Alas, he never enjoyed a late-career, Tarantino-sponsored rennaissance like the late Robert Forster did. Prine died on 10.31 while on vacation with his wife in Paris.  He liked wearing bow ties for some reason, but let’s not hold that against him.

Friendo to HE: “There are worse ways to go.” HE to friendo: “When my time comes I’d be honored to breathe my last in Paris. Preferably while strolling north on rue Veille-du-Temple, close to the intersection of rue de Bretagne.”

…but I honestly would’t want to spend a weekend in a glass house topped by an ostentatious, big-ass glass dome, much less hang with the guy who owns or has designed it.

Most of us understand that avoiding gauche, declasse people and their environments is a basic requirement in life. If I’m going to fraternize with super-wealthy or super-opportunistic folks I want to stay someplace cool and approvable in an architectural sense. In a home, for openers, that doesn’t say “boy, I sure am wealthy!”

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Steven Williams and Stefani Robinson‘s Chevalier (Searchlight, 4.7.23) is a rare historical drama that doesn’t, for a change, smack of presentism. It’s the real-deal saga of a gifted young mulatto fellow from Guadalupe (Kelvin Harrison‘s Joseph Bologne, aka Chevalier de Saint-Georges) vs. evil snooty racist whiteys of Paris and Versailles.

Bologne was a superb violinist-composer, a skilled sword-fencer and a lover second only to Warren Beatty‘s George Roundy in Shampoo. I have a vague idea of how this story will play out, but I’ll tell you this much — any movie in which Marton Csokas plays a venal bad guy is itself problematic.

Ty Burr: “Chevalier [is a lesson about] how to take a grand subject – the life and times of 18th-century Creole violinist-conductor-composer Joseph Bologne — and dumb it down into a strident, shallow melodrama pitched at the rear balcony.”

Friendo: “Evil white people again — do they think this is going to make money?” HE answer: “:In ’20 and ’21 there was a strong belief among Hollywood wokesters that evil-white-people movies would strike a chord. Not necessarily with palefaces but among BIPOCs. I suspect that they realize now that Chevalier is a flop waiting to happen. Shown in Toronto, they bumped the release into April ’23….what does that tell you?”

Regional friendo: “Saw Banshhes of Inisherin earlier today. Less than a dozen people in the theater.

“I think a lot of people are expecting one McDonagh thing — more In Bruges wackiness – and getting something entirely different. It’s a very downbeat film, not funny at all (okay, there are maybe one or two chuckle moments), and it quickly becomes obvious why it’s set during the Irish Civil War, which pitted brother against brother, friend against friend.

“What’s going on in Inisherin is the war in microcosm…the violence, the despair, the unforgiving nature. It takes place in an economically depressed setting, one that seems way behind the times with no electricity, no cars, no decent roads, where the police and the priesthood seem to rule over everything.

“Brendan Gleeson‘s character relies on his music to keep him from despair, but it doesn’t really help. Colin Farrell relies on his friendship with Gleeson to help pass the endlessly boring days. And Kerry Condon, truly the heart and soul of this film, knows she has to get off the Island or else turn into a bitter old hag, like the other women in the film.

“Can’t say I enjoyed the fecking movie, and I had some trouble with the fecking accents. But it’s deeper than I expected, and I appreciated where McDonagh was going with it. But boy, is it a downer!”

A friend wrote an hour ago about a movie theatre that decided against going dark during a showing of Till.

Friendo to HE: “This is just one more reason I watch films at home. Me alone at Till at Regal Cinema Hampton Bays on Long Island.”

HE to friendo: “Uhm, what about that folksy, time-honored tradition of strolling into the lobby and asking theatre staffers to turn the lights out during a showing?”