The 2023 edition of the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which is HE’s favorite award-season, chill-by-the-sea, full-pleasure gathering of fans and sophistos, kicks off tomorrow night (2.8). And as usual, SBIFF is offering all the right tributes and guests — Cate Blanchett, Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Brendan Fraser, Angela Bassett, etc.

And I love the lineup for this year’s Virtuosos panel — Austin Butler, Kerry Condon, Danielle Deadwyler, Stephanie Hsu, Jeremy Pope, Ke Huy Quan, Jeremy Strong.

Thw only curious thing is the absence of To Leslie‘s Andrea Riseborough on Virtuosos night. With all the recent hoo-hah after she scored a surprise Best Actress nomination, I naturally assumed Riseborough would be added to the Virtuoso panel. But there’s been no SBIFF annøuncement about her so far, and I’m wondering why.

Could it be that Team Riseborough was offered the slot and chickened out? No need for concern on this front as regular Virtuosos host Dave Karger would certanly softball the interview. (Classic-era Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, he’s never been.) Risebourough would surely look and sound good, and reap a total win-win.

“Riseborough Convulsions,” posted on 1.27.23: “If Hollywood Elsewhere had Roger Durling‘s job as director of the Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival, right now I’d be doing everything I could to add Andrea Riseborough to the SBIFF Virtuosos panel. She has to be included…no debate!”

2.8 Afterthought: Riseborough’s Best Actress nomination is quite the splendid career moment, so unless she’s shooting in Africa or Southeast Asia (or, God forbid, is coping with a health issue) it seems against the basic nature of an acclaimed actor to say “thanks for the tribute offer but no thanks.” The best actors are about the work, of course, but what is a career or a life if you don’t take a bow or two and graciously acknowledge the acclaim of your peers? Historically speaking sidestepping the Santa Barbara award-season spotlight simply isn’t done.

Nearly 15 years ago (i.e., 3.31.08) a favorable Manohla Dargis review of Marina Zenovich‘s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired appeared in the N.Y. Times. The review also conveyed a fair-minded, agenda-free reading of the politically motivated prosecution of Polanski in the wake of his arrest for “unlawful sexual intercourse” with Samantha Geimer, who was 13 at the time of the violation.

Dargis: “Douglas Dalton, Mr. Polanski’s lawyer, and Roger Gunson, the assistant district attorney who led the prosecution, pin the blame for Polanski’s flight directly on the presiding judge, Laurence J. Rittenband (who stepped down in 1989 and died in 1994). Aided and abetted by an avalanche of fluidly organized visual material, the lawyers fill in the appalling details of what was effectively a second crime, one largely perpetrated by a celebrity-dazzled judge and the equally gaga news media he courted. This crime left two victims, Mr. Polanski, who was denied a fair trial, and Ms. Geimer, who was denied justice. As [Geimer] wrote, ‘Sometimes I feel like we both got a life sentence.'”

I’m not saying that if Zenovich’s film had been released today for the first time that Dargis wouldn’t render the same opinion. Nor am I saying that she would be obliged to. Times change and highly attuned people often adjust their perspectives and follow suit.

But at the same time I doubt that Dargis would write a fair-shake review of Zenovich’s doc in the current climate. As I pointed out in a 2.3.23 HE piece titled “Dargis Crossed the Feminist Rubicon,” Dargis began to wear the cloak of woke sometime around ’19 or ’20. On top of which she knows she’d catch hell from her own crew if she were to post such a review.

I got my Connecticut plates last October. (Or was it early November?). I told myself I’d put them on in a day or two. It takes two or three minutes but for various strange, complex reasons I kept putting it off. I finally put them on today.

They built and labored and created alongside dozens of tribes and cultures, and they certainly weren’t the only ones who suffered grievously as this country gradually developed and bloomed and grew into itself…a nation of primarily European-descended immigrants (even today) and a conflicted multicultural stew.

Two and a half years ago (7.30.20) I posted a loose-shoe retort to the 1619 Project, which attempted to (a) define the U.S. of A. as an empire built upon slavery and (b) to define 1619 (when the first slaves arrived in Virginia) as this country’s primal defining event rather than the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

In the wake of Disney’s The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, which at least partly seeks to indoctrinate 5 to 7 year-olds into the theology of anti-white racism and the basically racist idea that whites are inherently evil, and with the understanding that anti-racism essentially advocates for the furtherance of more racism (i.e., defining ourselves primarily by race and the huddling of separate tribes, pride within those tribes, white against black, etc.) and with the Proud Family chant of “slaves built this country,” I’m reposting “What’s Your 1619 Beef?”

“Slavery has always been an ignominious chapter in the first 245 years of US history (1619 to 1865) and racism has stained aspects of the culture ever since, but to assert that slavery and racism (which other cultures have shamefully allowed over the centuries) are THE central and fundamental definers of the immense American experience strikes many of us as a bridge too far.

“Many factors drove the expansion and gradual strengthening and shaping of this country, and particularly the spirit and character of it…here are 40 for starters, posted in groups of 10:

1. Immigration. 2. The industrial revolution and the cruel exploitations of sweat-shop workers by wealthy elites; 3. The delusion of religion; 4. Anti-Native American racism and genocide; 5. the American Revolutionary War against the British; 6. The mid 19th Century influence of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick C. Douglas, John Brown and Harriet Beecher Stowe; 6. The vast networks of railroads; 7. Selfishness & self-interest; 8. Factories and construction; 9. The two world wars of the 20th Century; 10. Scientific innovation.

11. Native musical forms including jazz, blues (obviously African-American art forms) folk and rock; 12. American literature; 13. The influence of New York theatre and Hollywood movies; 14. 20th and 19th Century urban architecture; 15. The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry; 16. Major-league baseball (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris); 17. Family-based communities and the Protestant work ethic; 18. Fashion and the garment industry; 19. Midwestern farming and individual gardening; 20. Native cuisine and the influences of European, Mexican, Asian and African cultures, not to mention hot dogs with mustard.

21. The shipping industry; 22. Hard work and innovation in all industries great and small; 23. John Steinbeck, George Gershwin, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, JFK, MLK, Stanley Kubrick, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Malcom X, Taylor Swift, Charlie Parker, Elizabeth Warren, Woody Guthrie, Katharine Hepburn, Aretha Franklin, Jean Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carol Lombard, Shirley Chisholm, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen; 24. Barber shops; 25. Manual lawnmowers; 26. The auto industry; 27. Prohibition & gangsters; 28. The Great Depression and the anti-Communism and anti-Socialism that eventually sprang from that; 29. Status-quo-challenging comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Steve Allen (“schmock schmock!”), 30. Popular music of the ’50s, ’60s and ‘70s (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Beatles and Rolling Stones, Queen).

31. Television, cable and streaming; 32. Great American universities; 33. Great historians; 34. Great journalism (including the National Lampoon and Spy magazine); 35. Great poetry; 36. Beats, hippies and post-Stonewall gay culture; 37. The anti-Vietnam War movement; 38. Pot and psychedelia, cocaine, quaaludes; 39. The late ’70s splendor of Studio 54; 40. 20th & 21st Century tech innovations (Steve Jobs).

This is called “barely scratching the surface.”

I’m posting this to remind HE’s The Last Of Us fans that there are many, many “meh” responders like me out there, and that a good percentage of us regard the idea of watching a 50ish bear get an offscreen blowjob from a slender, gray-haired 50ish bear with acute discomfort, to put it mildly.

Response to “Sylvain BL”: You’ve said that judging a limited series after watching three episodes is like judging a feature film after watching just 15 minutes’ worth. Well, let me tell you something: If a film is working and grooving and doing it right, I don’t need 15 minutes to comprehend this. I can tell this almost immediately, and certainly within 5 minutes.

Ask anyone who’s done script-reading for an agency or production company — a smart reader can spot a stinker within three or four pages. And if a script is going to be good, you’ll also know it almost immediately. It’s also known, of course, that well-written scripts can go off the rails in the second or third acts, which is why script-readers are unfortunately obliged to read scripts all the way through. But 98% or 99% of the time, if a script blows during the first five pages, it’ll never recover. And if a limited series doesn’t seem to be doing it quite right during the first three episodes, the odds of the series pulling a rabbit out of a hat starting with episode #4 or #5 are very low.

Inner Affleck to himself: “I hate this but I have to do it…Jesus, man up! Pretend that you’re having a half-decent time. Do you want to become the latest misery meme? Remember that Simon & Garfunkel thing?”

Everyone else: “That‘s pretending? You’re telling the whole world what you’re going through, bruh. You look miserable.”

@gabriellemassari #benafflecks pained facial expressions at #thegrammys ♬ Funny Song – Cavendish Music

Profuse apologies for my not posting our latest Substack chat earlier today, but don’t let that stop you.