…are still directed by too many white guys. Seven out of ten. Only three of HE’s ten are directed by non-whites — The Pot au Feu‘s Tran Anh Hung, Past Lives‘ Celine Song (both Asian) and The Color Purple‘s Samuel Bazawule (aka “Blitz the Ambassador”).

Which is significant because there’s a large segment of the Academy for whom identity is everything…just saying.

The most likely contenders, in order of likely or already discerned quality:

1. Maestro — dir: Bradley Cooper
2. The Holdovers — dir: Alexander Payne
3. The Pot au Feu — dir: Tran Anh Hung
4. Oppenheimer — dir: Christopher Nolan
5. Napoleon — dir: Ridley Scott
6. Ferarri — dir: Michael Mann
7. The Zone of Interest — dir: Jonathan Glazer
8. Past Lives — dir: Celine Song
9. Killers of the Flower Moon — dir: Martin Scorsese
10. The Color Purple — dir: Samuel Bazawule (aka “Blitz the Ambassador”)

Maybe But I Kinda Doubt it: Barbie — d: Greta Gerwig; Saltburn — d: Emerald Fennell; The Killer, d: David Fincher; Poor Things — Yorgos Lanthimos; Next Goal Wins — d: Taika Waititi; Pain Hustlers — d: David Yates; White Bird — d: Marc Forster; Leave the World Behind — d: Sam Esmail; Dune: Part Two — d: Denis Villeneuve.

A three-minute informercial about Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer (Universal, 7.21) and especially about the technical grandeur of 70mm IMAX, addressing the technical immersives and whatnot, and they can’t specifically state which aspect ratio Oppenheimer will be shown in — the preferred 1.43:1 or the less preferred 1.78:1 or 1.90:1?

Hardcore 70mm IMAX has to be projected at 1.43:1…period. 1.43 is taller than fuck, and not that far away from classic “HE boxy” (i.e., 1.37 or 1.33). Trust me — it’s the only way to go.

1.78:1 or 1.90:1, which is how a significant portion of Nolan’s Dunkirk was presented, doesn’t get it.

How much of Dunkirk was presented within 1.43? Wikipage: “The film [used] both IMAX 65 mm and 65 mm large format film stock in Panavision System 65, with more IMAX footage than in any of Nolan’s previous films — an estimated 75%. The sparsity of dialogue made it possible for IMAX cameras, which are notoriously noisy, to be used as the primary format.”

I know that Dunkirk switches back and forth a lot between 1.90 and 1.43, and that my basic reaction was “why wasn’t it an all-IMAX thing?” I don’t want any of that shit when I see Oppenheimer — I want a pure 1.43 experience, start to finish.

The 1.90:1 aspect ratio, of course, is right next to 2:1, which Vittorio Storaro was a big supporter of (he called it Univisium). Fine, but 1.90 is not IMAX — not really.

Casting-wise, blackwashing has been a thing since the woke dambreak of ’16 or ’17. For decades Hollywood adhered to whitewash casting, and now that European paleface culture has been identified and discredited as the root of all social evils, the tables have turned — simple enough.

But I wouldn’t call the latest alleged blackwashing rumpus — i.e., Nico Parker (daughter of Ol Parker and Thandiwe Newton) being cast as Astrid Hofferson in the forthcoming live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon — especially significant.

It’s a deal, okay, but a relatively small one. Not worth anyone getting into a twist.

True, Cressida Crowell‘s original children’s books were set in a Scandinavian Viking world, which for centuries has been a white-ass culture. (Just ask Kirk Douglas.) Ditto the 2010 Dreamworks animated version — white-ass Viking men and women from top to bottom. But the new social rules (including the doctrine of presentism) require that white-culture-based stories be reassessed and updated.

Casting directors understand that it’s politically safer to roll with diverse or multicultural mindsets, even if casting an actress of color as the heroine of a centuries-old Scandinavian saga defies any common understanding of Viking history.

Diminishing the visual presence of whiteness by going multicultural has been happening for six or seven years now (ratification of the Academy’s inclusion standards made it official in 2020). Politically speaking it boils down to this: if you don’t want industry people to give the side-eye, you need to play along.

Plus one other thing: Nico Parker was very good as the daughter of Pedro Pascal‘s Joel in HBO’s The Last Of Us.

Ryan Gosling’s idea, I’m presuming, was that post-Barbie he needed to butch himself up, hence the 19th Century gold prospector beard and the styled but un-styled Sutter’s Mill coif. At the same time he didn’t want to over-smother the Barbie association, hence the unbuttoned, chest-baring black shirt and the pink western duster