Month: March 2023

The 2022-23 Oscar season will come to a merciful end six days hence — Sunday, March 12. The ABC telecast will start around 5:30 pm Pacific. (Or is it 6 pm? — I can never remember.) 3:30 or 4 pm if you count arrivals. And after it’s over, nobody will ever have to think about Everything Everywhere All At Once ever again, much less watch the fecking thing.

Thank God for the presence of third-time host Jimmy Kimmel, who will not be respected if he doesn’t address the fact that (a) a significant percentage of the Academy’s over-45 members hate the Daniels film, except (b) they’re afraid to say so even privately for fear of being branded as anti-Asian racists. Because Twitter is teeming with gangs of virtue-signalling mad dogs who are waiting to destroy anyone who doesn’t say the right thing.

EEAAO has been nominated for 11 Oscars, and the great fear is that it may sweep a la Titanic or Ben-Hur or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. If there is a God it will win no more than five or six Oscars…please. I’m on my knees…please. It’s a profoundly annoying grab-bag of geek Marvel-esque crap and flotsam. Even Daniel Kwan‘s mother doesn’t get the adoration.

Starting with Gone With The Wind and up to La-La Land, 19 films have been nominated up the wazoo.

The difference between these 19 and Everything Everywhere All At Once is that the vast majority (with the arguable exceptions of Gigi, My Fair Lady, Return of the King and Slumdog Millionaire) are widely regarded as brilliant, very good or good. No fair-minded person over the age of 45 will insist with a straight face that EEAAO really and truly rings the bell.

Titanic and All About Eve were the most nominated sweepers with 14 nominations each. La La Land was nominated for 13 Oscars.

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Jean Pierre and Luc Dardennes‘ Tori and Lokita is a watchable but moderately dull heart-and-compassion film about a typical Dardnennes subject — i.e., young underdog characters who are misunderstood by or at odds with mainstream Belgian society.

It’s a tragic immigration drama set near Liege, Belgium, about a pair of young, unrelated African kids (Pablo Schils as the younger Tori, Mbundu Joely as the teenaged Lokita) who get exploited and kicked around and treated cruelly by drug-dealing wolves.

It ends sadly and shockingly. I didn’t melt down but I felt it. The Cannes snobs did cartwheels in the lobby, but it’s just moderately okay.

The Dardennes have always had this plain, unaffected directing style — just point, shoot and watch. Believable characters, realistic dialogue, no musical score. Straight-up realism, take or leave. I’ve always emerged from their films saying “yup, that was a good, honest film” but I’ve never really been knocked flat. Because their plain-and-straight signature only penetrates so far. In my case at least.

If you know the Dardennes and how their films tend to play, Tori and Lokita feels very familiar You can’t help feeling sorry for these kids, but desperate immigrants have been getting kicked around and exploited for centuries, haven’t they? Life can be heartless for have-nots.

Tori and Lokita had its big debut in Cannes ten months ago. It opened in Europe last fall, and was available on Bluray & streaming late last October. Sideshow and Janus Film will give it a limited opening stateside on 3.24.23.

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My deep thundering depression over the seeming Oscar omnipotence of Everything Everywhere All At Once has come down to this:

With EEAAO having been nominated for no fewer than 11 Oscars, HE will celebrate any time it fails to win in this or that category. I’ll take anything.

We know for sure it will win three — Best Picture, Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh) and Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), and…it pains me to say that I’m more or less resigned to the terrible folly of the Daniels winning Best Director. And in my cynical heart of hearts I’m acknowledging that the identity–driven sweep mentality will probably result in one or two more.

But maybe the grand EEAAO tally can be held to five or six? Things feel so grim in HE Land now…words fail. And yet there are shards of hope…if this contemptible and infuriating film fails to sweep the table…no more than six!…that’ll put at least some color back in my cheeks.

Nearly 25 minutes long, but also an intelligent, perceptive, bluntly-spoken potpourri — it doesn’t lie. HE salutes ENDYMIONtv. The Woman King rant begins at 2:55 and ends around the 8:00 mark.

Aspects of Gone With The Wind are obviously antiquated and icky, and I don’t blame those who’ve washed their hands of it over the odious racial stuff. But it’s not, as an Ankler burb recently stated, “one of Hollywood most disgraced films.” That’s putting it way too harshly. The film’s distasteful attitudes aside, it’s more noteworthy for being one of Hollywood’s most misunderstood films. By wokesters, I mean.

I’ve posted this three or four times over the last seven years, but here goes again: “I don’t believe it’s right to throw Gone With The Wind under the bus just like that. Yes, it’s an icky and offensive film at times (Vivien Leigh‘s Scarlett O’Hara slapping Butterly McQueen‘s Prissy for being irresponsible in the handling of Melanie giving birth, the depiction of Everett Brown‘s Big Sam as a gentle, loyal and eternal defender of Scarlett when the chips are down) but every time I’ve watched GWTW I’ve always put that stuff in a box in order to focus on the real order of business.

“For Gone With The Wind is not a film about slavery or the antebellum South or even, really, the Civil War. It’s a movie about (a) a struggle to survive under ghastly conditions and (b) about how those with brass and gumption often get through the rough patches better than those who embrace goodness and generosity and playing by the rules. This is a fundamental human truth, and if you ask me the reason Gone With The Wind has resonated for so long is that generation after generation has recognized it as such. Anyone who’s ever faced serious adversity understands the eloquence of that classic Scarlett O’Hara line, “I’ll never be hungry again.”

“I think GWTW particularly connected with 1939 audiences because they saw it as a parable of the deprivations that people had gone through during the Great Depression.

“On top of which the second half of part one of Gone With The Wind (the shelling of Atlanta to Scarlett shaking her first at those red skies) is undeniably great cinema. Max Steiner‘s music, the struggle, the crowd scenes, the panic, the burning of Atlanta, Ernest Haller‘s cinematography, the anguish, the soldiers groaning and moaning, Scarlett’s drooling horse collapsing from exhaustion, the moonlight breaking through as she approaches Tara…you just can’t throw all that out. Yes, the film’s unfortunate racial attitudes, which were lamentably par for the course 75 years ago, are now socially obsolete. And I wouldn’t argue with anyone who feels that portions of it are too distasteful to celebrate, but it just doesn’t seem right to lock all of that richness inside some ignoble closet and say “no more, forget about it, put it out of your minds.” Legendary filmmaking is legendary filmmaking.”

A 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating deserves attention and respect. (The Metacritic rating is 86%.)

Logline: A crew of young environmental activists execute a daring mission to sabotage an oil pipeline, in Daniel Goldhaber’s taut and timely thriller that is part high-stakes heist, part radical exploration of the climate crisis. Based on the controversial book by Andreas Malm.”

In any given year many Oscar nominees are elevated by career narratives (being “due” or launching a comeback). More recently or over the last five or six years, it’s been a matter of narrative plus identity with an emphasis on the latter.

In other words the Oscars have never been solely about merit, but since ’17 and especially in the Best Picture realm** they’ve become equity-driven and identity-branded, certainly as far as the Best Picture winners have been concerned. (The exception was Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book, which won in early ’19.)

We’re all familiar with this year’s recipients of equity largesse, but some nominees have made the grade solely on merit…imagine!

The merit nominees include Cate Blanchett‘s Tar performance, obviously, in the Best Actress realm. (She won’t be winning.) Elvis‘ Austin Butler (likely winner), Banshees‘ Colin Farrell and Living‘s Bill Nighy among lead actors. The Whale‘s Hong Chau (deserves to win) was nominated completely according to merit. Among support male performers the leading meritorious trio are Banshees‘ Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, and The Fabelmans‘ Judd Hirsch.

And among the purely meritorious Best Picture nominees there’s no elbowing aside Top Gun: Maverick, All Quiet on the Western Front, Tar, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans.

** Moonlight (’17 — counterweight to “Oscars so white”), The Shape of Water (’18 — mousey spinster has sex and falls in love with the grandson of The Creature From The Black Lagoon), Parasite (’20, absurdly plotted, chaotically concluded social drama from plump South Korean nerd director), Nomadland (’21, rootless nomad shitting-in-a-bucket drama, directed by female Asian who went on to shit the bed with The Eternals), CODA (’22, hearing-impaired feelgood family drama that also won because everyone realized at the last minute that they really didn’t want Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog to win the big trophy.) When EEAAO wins Best Picture Oscar next Sunday (3.12) the Academy will have bestowed six identity-driven Best Picture Oscars over the last seven years.

Except for English and history, my high-school grades were low and my SAT scores were mediocre. I was basically glum-minded and lacking in ambition, but at the same time quietly horrified and appalled that my shitty scholastic performance would be casting a dark shadow for years to come, at least in the matter of college admissions.

It was a difficult, unfair, punitive system. I felt oppressed by it. Seriously bummed. I didn’t develop any fire in the belly about movie journalism until my mid 20s, which is when my life began to turn around. But until that point…

And yet today the concept of scholastic merit and proving your mettle with good grades has been almost completely jettisoned, certainly as far as high-school and college-age POCs are concerned. Which is why Asian-American parents are irate at equity policies — because their kids seem to always earn good grades

I’ve often bitched about 4K remasterings looking too dark, but I didn’t feel this way about Shout! Factory’s recently released 4K Bluray of John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven (’60).

My immediate reaction was “whoa, this looks like celluloid!” I felt as if I was watching a screening at a Seward Street post-production house of a mint-condition 35mm print made from the original negative.” Shout! informs, in fact, that it’s a 2022 restoration and color grading using an existing 4K scan of the original camera negative.

I was spellbound during last night’s viewing — it seemed absolutely perfect to me. Excellent earthy colors, never too dark, spotless, fresh from the lab.

The Hi-Def Digest comparison footage below (the fast-draw contest between James Coburn and Robert Wilke) suggests that the disc is darker than it needs to be. It didn’t look that way to me. It struck me as more organic-feeling than previous versions, but that’s an enhancement in my book. I didn’t notice any teal tinting either.

TMS was shot by Charles Lang (Some Like It Hot, The Facts of Life, One-Eyed Jacks) in 35mm Panavision anamorphic. Lensing began in Mexico on 3.1.60. The Mexican village and the U.S. border town were built from scratch. The locations included Cuernavaca, Durango and Tepoztlán. Indoor filming was done at Mexico City’s Churubusco Studios.