…in the HE commentariat’s own version of “Box Office Poison,” the Tim Robey book that I just bought this afternoon?

Let’s say there are 20 or 24 chapters highlighting the same number of films. Which cinematic calamities should be fully examined for posterity’s sake? Not the obvious ones (Heaven’s Gate) but the most interesting, the least deserving, the most unfairly dismissed?

All I want from tomorrow morning’s reciting of the 2025 Oscar nominations is a couple of shocking omissions opr unexpeceted inclusions…please. At least give me that.

I’d greatly appreciate it if The Apprentice‘s Sebastian Stan winds up with a Best Actor nomination; ditto Jeremy Strong for Best Supporting Actor. And Queer‘s Daniel Craig…please! Anora‘s Mikey Madison is in for Best Actress, of course, but how about including Marianne Jean-Baptiste of Hard Truths? I know Conclave‘s Stanley Tucci won’t make the Best Supporting Actor cut (a shame) but Anora‘s Yura Borisov…well, of course!

Here’s hoping for slightly fewer Emilia Perez and Brutalist nominations than generally anticipated. Too bad the Brutalist AI controversy didn’t break a couple of weeks earlier.

Any serious surprises at all will suffice. Thank you.

Here are the Gatecrashers predictions on a category-by-category basis. And here are mine, which of course aren’t predictions but personal choices.

Bowen Yang (Saturday Night Live, Wicked) and Rachel Sennott (Saturday Night, The Idol) will announce the nominations live on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern / 5:30 a.m. Pacific. Should I post some kind of live-blog reactions? I’m on the fence about this.

Arguably the greatest sound-stage recreation of hurricane-force seas in motion picture history. The pitching of the ship, the frothy sea waves slamming against the hull, the howling winds, etc.

…create the slightest cultural tremor, I’ll be hugely surprised. Not that I wouldn’t welcome a new Sundance film that’s as good as, say, last year’s A Real Pain, but what are the odds of a myopic, more-or-less moribund festival like Sundance giving birth to a film that anyone’s going to actually care about or even stream down the road?

By all outward appearances Sundance has no fresh, socially vital cards to play these days — fringe stuff, this or that gay character, gender fluidity, hip horror, this or that form of progressive perversity.

Example #1: Jimpa, a family “dramedy” about a mom (Olivia Colman) and her non-binary teen (Aud Mason-Hyde) traveling to Amsterdam to visit with the kid’s gay grandfather (John Lithgow). Fucking hell!

Max Walker-Silverman‘s Rebuilding, about the aftermath of a forest fire inside a FEMA camp, might add up to something. It’ll surely be interesting to see Josh O’Connor play a hinterland guy in a cowboy hat (i.e., an actual human being). Meghann Fahy, Kali “cheek stud” Reis and Amy Madigan costar. Caveat emptor: Walker-Silverman is a well-educated rich kid who grew up in Telluride, went to Stanford and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Bill Condon‘s Kiss of the Spider Woman remake….okay, maybe.

Sundance ’25 starts tomorrow (Thursday, 1.23) and wraps 11 days hence (Sunday, 2.2).

Temps below 20 degrees make me miserable. They darken my attitude, lead me into feelings of gloom and nihilism. The blacktop roads turn frosty gray at night, and it just makes you feel godawful.

This is weather that could theoretically kill you. At least it’s not windy…small comfort.

I’d rather be bike riding in Key West or, better yet, Turks and Caicos. Or in Dr. No Jamaica, mon. Or in Montserrat.

Herewith is a spirited chat I had with the cooking-with-gas, bell-bottom-wearing, hippie-haired John Carpenter in either late 1979 or very early ‘80 to promote The Fog (Avco Embassy), which opened on 2.1.80.

It should be noted for posterity’s sake that when I recorded this interview at the Sherry Netherland (I’m fairly certain it wasn’t the Carlyle or Waldorf Astoria) that IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, then a PMK publicist, monitored the conversation.