The die is cast, and we’ll all know the Oscar nominations come Tuesday morning. It’s totally okay to respect and honor Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan in their respective categories while at the same dismissing EEAAO as a Best Picture contender. It’s all right, you can do this, nobody will raise an eyebrow, it all fits together.
Jeff and Sasha‘s latest Oscar Poker (recorded two days ago) is up and running. For love, for formula, for comfort and for the joyful shirking of 2022 Best Picture nominees that many respect but nobody really loves…be honest. It was another weakish year, and the only film that really bull’s-eyed according to its own self-=imposed terms was Top Gun: Maverick. Stop arguing! Within the prison cell of general Academy preferences TG:M is the only hot mama that truly sings.
If you want 2022’s actual best films, I posted them on 12.30.22: 1. Empire of Light, 2. Close, 3. Happening, 4. Vengeance, 5. She Said, 6. Emily The Criminal, 7. Christian Mungiu‘s R.M.N., 8. Top Gun: Maverick; 9. Avatar: The Way of Water; 10. Tar (despite the many irritations). But we’re playing an Academy game now.
Posted on 1.21.23: “Sasha Stone and I just finished an hour-long chat about Tuesday morning’s (1.24) announcement of the ’23 Oscar nominations, and the obvious fact that Top Gun: Maverick, which will certainly be among the chosen few, is the only prospective nominee that feels truly commanding. Authoritatively, I mean.
“Despite the familiarity and the formulaic strategy, TG:M is the only finalist that feels home–runnish…not to mention the achievement of having joined forces with Avatar: The Way of Avatar to save and even restore a classic, life-giving Hollywood dynamic (thrills, popcorn, warm seats) to exhibition itself…there’s no ignoring the metaphor.”
Again, the latest Substack link.
“But the penis is not the enemy. The enemy is misunderstanding.”
Sundance Friendo: “Landscape with Invisible Hand is said it’s a really fascinating project. I’m sure Cat Person will be annoying and stupid, but i have to see it ahead of the online discourse. And i really want to see The Eight Mountains and Other People’s Children.”
Two seconds after I saw this pre-Super Bowl spot sometime in early ’07, I was 95% certain that Barack Obama would be elected president the following year. No question. Dozens in in my liberal circle were stubborn Hillary fans and stayed with her until the spring of ’08. But I knew.
Gather round and time-trip with yours truly back to Saturday, 12.2.06 — the day of the press junket for Steven Soderbergh‘s The Good German, held on the 18th floor of Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria. I’m mentioning this because of an impression I had that day of costar Cate Blanchett, who kiddingly called herself “so old!” at the Critics Choice awards a few days ago but was all of 37 back then.
It was the doodling that got me. Holding a #2 pencil, Blanchett was doodling on a note pad as she answered questions, and my heart kind of melted when I saw this. Here’s how I described her:
“Blanchett was extraordinary. Honestly? I stared at her more than I listened.
“It was obvious within a minute or two that she was living deep in her own realm. One with little electric cracks of lightning. She looks down and does little fidgety things — pulling her wedding ring on and off, drawing a doodle on a note pad. It’s not that she’s shy or avoids eye contact, but a lot of the time she talks to the tabletop or her eyes dart around as she’s answering. (Always a mark of a fine creative mind.) Plus it’s been a while since I’ve heard her native Australian accent. She’s done so many different accents recently she could be channelling the Meryl Streep of the ’80s.”
Here’s the mp3 from the conversation, but again — it wasn’t what she said but how she said it. Here’s George Clooney’s interview.
The round tables (which also included Soderbergh) ended just after 1 pm. I took a snap of Blanchett’s doddle pad and a pair of Good German DVDs, but the image quality is atrocious by today’s standards.
The Good German got creamed by critics — 34%.
Posted on 11.27.06: “I’ve seen The Good German twice in Los Angeles, both times with seasoned industry types, and nobody’s gone into a dismissive neg-head chortle about it. Not in my presence, at least. The reactions have been…well, okay, muted but always respectful. No one I spoke to was deriding it or grumbling on their way out to the parking lot.
“Set in the post-World War II rubble of Berlin, The Good German is a very periodesque, Third Man-ish experience, but it’s not spoofy in the slightest. Except for the final scene it’s relatively earnest (as far as a film like this can be) and straight and about itself. It’s partly a tribute piece — a recreation of a military whodunit drama as it might have actually looked and moved if, say, Michael Curtiz had directed it in 1946 — and partly a Phillip Marlowe detetective story in uniform.”
2.16.06: “Pete Hammond tells me he was casually praising Clooney at a party last weekend for helping to keep the monochrome tradition alive with both The Good German and Good Night, and Good Luck, and Clooney answered, “Yeah, well, I think after The Good German that’s about it for the black-and-white thing.”
I’ve been complaining about muddy, murky movie dialogue for years, and enduring constant derision from the HE commentariat (“It’s your fault…hearing aids are cheaper now”). Will the shit talkers apologize now that the actual problem (bizarre sound-mixing habits) has been exposed? Of course not.
Vox copy: “Have you ever been watching a show or movie, and then a character delivers a line so unintelligible you have to scramble to find the remote and rewind? Or activate subtitles?
“Gather enough people together and you can generally separate them into two categories: People who use subtitles, and people who don’t. And according to a not-so-scientific YouTube poll we ran on our Community tab, the latter category is an endangered species — 57% of you said you always use subtitles, while just 12% of you said you generally don’t.
“Why do so many feel that they need subtitles? We got straight to the bottom of it in this explainer, with the help of dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick.”
“Shitty Bull Sound,” posted on 8.5.07:
Every now and then someone writes a looking-back-on-Raging Bull piece (like this one from the Guardian‘s Ryan Gilbey, a nod to the film’s re-release in England on 8.17). And they all report that Martin Scorsese‘s classic wasn’t tremendously popular critically or commercially when it first opened in November of 1980. But what’ s never mentioned is that moviegoers couldn’t hear many of the quieter dialogue scenes with any real clarity, even in the better big-city theatres. And that this almost surely had an effect upon the general reception.
I distinctly remember watching a public screening of Raging Bull in the Sutton Theatre on 57th Street just before Thanksgiving, and leaning forward and cupping my ears and getting angry as I asked myself, “Dammit, why don’t they turn the damn sound up?” I had this reaction every time Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci or Cathy Moriarty were murmuring or muttering their thoughts in their middle-class Bronx apartments, or when “Tommy” the mafia guy was laying things out in his two quiet scenes.
Raging Bull‘s sound was apparently rendered with an intentionally murky-crude quality so it would seem unaffected and working-classy — the idea being that naturalism was equivalent to a kind of aural muck. This almost certainly resulted in tens of thousands of ear-cuppings across the nation given that the sound systems in all but a few big-city theatres back then were atrocious, for the most part. By today’s standards, it was truly the aural Dark Ages.
Around two or three weeks ago Tweetbot, purchased eight or nine years ago and my favorite Twitter app by far, stopped functioning. At first the alerts called it a temporary or pending situation. I didn’t investigate or even focus all that much on the problem — I figured it would eventually shake out. A few days ago Tweetbot began working again, and then not. Now it’s permanently neutered. Elon Musk has deliberately zotzed all third-party apps. Fucker.
…but he could really turn on the warmth and humanity when called upon, and he had the kindest and gentlest eyes of all the classic marquee-brand actors of his generation. Which is why I’m disappointed with the Kino jacket art for a forthcoming 4K Bluray of 12 Angry Men. I’m sorry but those Fonda peepers are nowhere to be found. They belong to someone else.
I’m delighted with my Criterion Bluray version, and can’t imagine how a 4K bump (out on 3.28.23) could make that much of a difference. I sound like a broken record but still.
Sasha Stone and I just finished an hour-long chat about Tuesday morning’s (1.24) announcement of the ’23 Oscar nominations, and the obvious fact that Top Gun: Maverick, which will certainly be among the chosen few, is the only prospective nominee that feels truly commanding. Authoritatively, I mean.
Despite the familiarity and the formulaic strategy, TG:M is the only finalist that feels home–runnish…not to mention the achievement of having joined forces with Avatar: The Way of Avatar to save and even restore a classic, life-giving Hollywood dynamic (thrills, popcorn, warm seats) to exhibition itself…there’s no ignoring the metaphor.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is passionately supported (I’ll give it that) but on its own terms (reach, theme, imagination) and despite an excellent final line it drives sane people crazy.
The Fabelmans is basically a double that makes you feel more relieved than fulfilled when it ends.
For all the brilliance and audacity Tar underwhelms — Kubrick famously said that strong films connect for the feel rather than the think, and Tar is not much of a feeler.
The Banshees of Inisherin is also more weirdly thinky than feely.
I don’t know what Elvis is but it sure as hell is no triple or homer. The Bazzyness is draining.
Women Talking is an earnest whiff. Babylon, due respect, missed it. The corrosive cruelty delivered by All Quiet on the Western Front is unforgettable but not, in the annals of world cinema, unfamiliar.
At the end of the day Avatar: The Way of Water is more about knockout efficiency than the turning of a special key.
[Note: I’m aware that stories about dental matters can be distasteful. Please feel free to ignore.]
Getting older unfortunately means having to cope with our teeth getting gradually smaller due to grinding and whatnot. I have reasonably decent dental insurance but it doesn’t cover cosmetic stuff, and I can’t afford to shell out $15K or $20K for a set of new crowns (top and bottom). So last summer I decided to try the Instasmile veneer guys. Top and bottom veneers for around $700 and change. Not a massive amount of dough for an experiment that might turn out.
The veneers arrived two days ago. Instasmile offers a warranty agreement that allows for a re-do if there’s a problem. Here’s what I wrote to a customer rep named Autumn:
The basic problems are these: (a) They fit, but they don’t fit snugly enough. The bottom teeth especially. They generally feel a bit bulky. I feel as if I’m wearing HORSE TEETH — like I’m Mr. Ed. Plus they actually hinder my ability to handle consonants.
I’d hoped they would slip right on without issue. Except they feel a tiny bit large (especially on the bottom ridge), and seem a little too big. (b) There’s a saber tooth on the top left bridge that makes me look like a fecking VAMPIRE. It’s ridiculous and embarassing. The vampire tooth has to be ground down and eliminated. It makes me look like Christopher Lee in The Horror of Dracula (’58).
Generally speaking the feeling of looking like a hybrid species (half HORSE and half VAMPIRE) is not pleasant or welcome.
I need veneers that are delicate and generally lighter — ones that fit snugly but are a tiny but smaller on the bottom ridge. And the ridiculous VAMPIRE TOOTH has to be eliminated. I am a human being — I do not sink my fangs into the virginal necks of fair young maidens. Nor am I a HORSE — I don’t whinny or trot or eat oats or gallop around the horse track. To paraphrase F. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, I am a human fecking being.
SUMMARY: I need dentures that feel lighter and which fit more snugly without hindering my ability to speak clearly. Veneers, in short, that don’t make me look and feel like a HORSE, especially due to an overly large and bulky lower bridge. And you really need to eliminate the upper left VAMPIRE tooth. (I realize that I have a large upper left saber tooth but the Instasmile dentures make me look RIDICULOUS, like a drooling vampire.)
In short, your tech team needs to try again and do a better job. Sorry but that’s the situation, — Jeffrey Wells, HE
Yesterday on Twitter I derided Anne Thompson‘s go-with-the-woke-flow celebration of the appallingly overcranked RRR as “virtue signalling.” Glenn Kenny called me a bad person for saying this.
HE reply: “’Virtue signalling’ is a fairly common malady. Common among older white critics, I mean. Hardly an insult. In their heart of hearts, they know what they’re up to. Someone comes along and calls it by its rightful name…not exactly a cruel or even rude accusation.”
Kenny: “So to call someone a liar is not an insult…gotcha”.
HE to Kenny: “Proclaiming your woke bonafides by praising an obviously mediocre film by a Tollywood schlockmeister…calling such a film an ecstatic experience isn’t ‘lying’ — it’s a way of telling your readers and fellow critics ‘look how liberated and post-racist I’ve become in my critical estimations! Except I’m post-racist in a good way. By thinking only positive thoughts about people of color.”
Kenny: “[So] you’re not insulting your dear old friend Anne Thompson, and she would never tell you to piss off on account of you doing so, or just ignore you. It’s true Anne is pretty good-natured. But everyone has their limit. And I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by suggesting you made yourself something of a non-person to her some time ago. And now you’re freer to lay it on than you ever were, since you’ll likely never lay eyes on her in person again.”
HE to Kenny: “Aside from the usual collegial chiding, I did absolutely nothing to warrant being labelled a ‘non-person’ in Anne’s eyes….nothing at all. It’s all horseshit.
“You wanna hear something? Last year a person in the know told me that when the #MeToo Millennial harridans and hardcore trans lunatics decided, for no sensible or logical reason other than the furtherance of woke psychosis (and with your own kind and gracious goading when you tweeted that I had behaved like some kind of sexual ogre because, in a state in which the legal consent law is 16, I’d fallen in love with a 17 year-old heiress when I was 10 years older), to classify me as a toxic person who had to be booted out of two fraternities (Gold Derby and Critics Choice)…
“You know what I heard later? I was told by a person in the know that my ‘dear old friend’ Anne Thompson, whom I’ve known and been friendly with since the early ‘80s…an old Entertainment Weekly colleague whose Hobart Ave. home she invited me to once or twice to when our kids were very young in the early ‘90s…this person in the know told me that Anne voted with the Robespierrres to eject me on one of those decisions. (I forget which.) That is what’s known in the journalism trade as exhibiting loyalty, backbone and character, or otherwise being (heh-heh) a good hombre.”
