Month: January 2025

All Hail Jeff Sneider’s Oscar Telecast Suggestion

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For decades we’ve all been talking about (or denying the likelihood of) The Big One — the massive earthquake that might, God forbid, destroy much of Los Angeles a la Mark Robson and deliver a bruising blow to the entertainment industry.

It hasn’t happened yet, of course, but the various firestorm ravagings of the last six days (especially the Pacific Palisades Hiroshima blaze) have come damn close in terms of the numbing devastation…physical, historical, emotional, spiritual.

Last weekend it occured to damn near everyone that in the midst of all this shock and trauma, focusing on award season is suddenly, obviously a bad look.

Which is why Jeff Sneider’s suggestion to make the Oscars into a charity-and-compassion event sounds inspired.

Sneider: “It the Academy really wants to put its money where its mouth is, it should turn the Oscars into a telethon hosted by Conan O’Brien, backed by an army of A-listers. And I’m talking everyone — all hands on deck.

“If you’ve been reading Richard Rushfield’s thoughtful Ankler series on ‘How to Fix the Oscars’, one thing he’s absolutely right about is correcting the piss-poor attendance from A-listers. It shouldn’t matter if they’re nominated or not. Certain celebs need to make more of an effort to show their support, if only to signal that they care about the larger community.

THR‘s Steven Zeitchik has echoed Sneider in a post that appeared at 4:43 pm eastern:

“I think the show should be a giant all-in arts-based awareness-raiser of the kind done best in the 1980s,” he writes, “while also attempting to restore the spectacle of every Oscar decade but the last. A telecast that will at once provide the must-see qualities we all lament awards shows now lack while giving fundraisers the kind of shine they haven’t had in decades. Think Farm Aid meets the Titanic year.

“Here’s one way that could look:

“Every nominee comes with a plus-one — but it has to be someone who was affected by the wildfires. Could be a third-generation Altadena homeowner, could be a film person from the Palisades. As long as they lost something. Because it would be pointless to have this show and ignore loss.”

Back to Sneider: “This hypothetical Oscar telethon should, obviously, benefit every family and individual who was directly impacted by these wildfires, starting with those who experienced some loss of life, which should always be valued over property. As of now, the death toll stands at 25.

“Buildings, businesses and even communities can be rebuilt, but those 25 innocent people are never coming back. And that’s just awful to think about. The families of those victims need our help, as do so many others, and a global audience could be incredibly helpful in that regard.

“Meanwhile, if the Academy truly wants a viral moment, it will have first responders from the Los Angeles Fire Department on stage giving out the award for Best Picture.”

HE comment: I’m not so sure about this. I can see and heartily support various first-responders coming onstage and a spokesperson delivering the right kind of speech while urging charitable support, but announcing the Best Picture winner? Something about that feels a tiny bit off.

The 97th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 2nd — seven weeks hence minus a day.

“Babygirl” Has Topped “Anora”?

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Note: As the following article partly focuses on the financial earnings of Anora, any and all comments by HE commenter “This Is Heavy, Doc“, a relentless Anora buzzkiller and piss-sprayer, will be instantly deleted.

A friend reminded me yesterday that despite its overwhelming popularity with both critics and ticket-buyers, Sean Baker‘s Anora (Neon), which opened semi-wide in early November after a couple of weeks in select urban venues, managed to tally only $14,554,317 domestically and $15,699,037 internationally.

A $30 million haul is far from disastrous for a modestly-budgeted indie, of course, and Anora will continue to thrive on streaming platforms, especially if it snags several Oscar nominations (i.e., all but guaranteed).

But it struck me as odd or at least curious that Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl (A24), which opened on 12.25 but has sparked much less enthusiasm among critics as well as Joe and Jane Popcorn, has managed to bring in $21,738,200 in two and a half weeks of domestic theatrical play.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s great that Babygirl (of which I’m an ardent fan) has connected (it needs to make $50 million to break even) but given the fact that ticket-buyers are far less taken with it than Anora, what accounts for it having made more money?

That’s a simplistic, dumb-guy question, I realize. My first thought is that ticket-buyers were too lazy and stupid to have vigorously embraced Anora in November and early December because of Neon’s less-than-overwhelming promotion plus the no-star cast. Plus Babygirl‘s Christmas opening along with the name-brand attraction of Nicole Kidman obviously counted for something.

It’s just odd that despite a mixed or disappointed reception Babygirl has earned $21M in less than three weeks while Anora managed to earn only two-thirds of that amount over a five or six-week period. Younger urban audiences have flocked to it, but your suburban and rural slowboats…not so much.

Myth of Evil Lions

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Directed by Stephen Hopkins and written by William Goldman, The Ghost and the Darkness (’96) was one of those mediocre, big-studio, high-concept films that had a B-movie vibe. You could smell it before it opened, and once you saw it there was virtually no residue.

Goldman sold the idea as “Lawrence of Arabia meets Jaws“, but despite being fact-based (John Henry Patterson‘s “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo“, published in 1907) it passed along a cruel mythology — a notion that bad-ass lions were somehow analogous to the great white shark in Jaws, which is to say bringers of primal evil.

Val Kilmer played the heroic Patterson; producer Michael Douglas played an invented lion-killer character, Charles Remington — a grizzled, brawny, larger-than-life figure who seemed modelled on Robert Shaw‘s Quint. Like Quint, Remington is eaten at the end, but Hopkins missed an opportunity by not including a shot of Douglas’s bearded head — the camera doesn’t even glance at this final carnage.

Shot within the Songimvelo game reserve and with great difficulty, Hopkins called the Paramount release “a mess…I haven’t been able to watch it.”

It’s significant that a 1.12.25 Forbes article about the real-like Tsavo lions that inspired Patterson’s book doesn’t even mention the Paramount film.

Lions are today an endangered species, and one of the reason for their population decrease is sport-hunting. I’m convinced that The Ghost and the Darkness inspired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump (respectively 19 and 12 years old when The Ghost and the Darkness opened) planted the ideas that bagging a lion enhanced the masculinity of the hunter.

An Awful Listen

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Does anyone remember the infuriating 1970 Bob Dylan album, “Self Portrait”?

For me the loathing began with the album cover — Dylan’s grotesque, flagrantly crude painting of his face. That ridiculous nose, which looked like a moldy banana that had been run over by a car, and those cherry-red “Clutch Cargo” lips. You just knew the album would try your patience at the very least.

From “Ten Times Bob Dylan Was The Most Insufferable Man in Rock”, a 1.9.25 Telegraph article by James Hall:

From “Self Portrait” Wiki page:

Equity on Fire

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Lionelnation.com is about the love of Lionel trains…really. But the site’s founder, obviously a cranky conservative, digresses here for an examination of a 2019 clip by LAFD deputy chief Kristine Larson, a 33-year, LGBTQ-identifying veteran (Equity on Fire) who is subordinate to LAFD chief Kristin Crowley (also LGBTQ). The offending clip is six years old, mind. I’m sorry but the Lionel guy is kinda funny in an irked, tempestuous, exasperated way.

12 Years Ago, Six Months Sober

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Thanks to the gracious, good-humored Stephen Holt for conducting this Toronto Film Festival interview in 2012. It’s oddly comforting to consider a 12-years-younger version of one’s self. I had darker sideburns — otherwise I haven’t aged at all. Well, I have but…

Venice Instead of Telluride

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For the last two or three years I’ve only been able to attend the Telluride Film Festival through the grace and charity of Sasha Stone, who’s been renting a large, centrally located three-bedroom condo. I’ve been on the couch, and gratefully so.

Alas, Sasha has decided against attending Telluride next September (she’s miffed about not being invited last year to the Patron’s Brunch) and so I’m out also. Even if I was bringing in a reasonable income the off-the-charts Telluride greed factor would make it impossible to rent on my lonesome.

And so after 14 years of attending glorious, soul-nourishing Telluride (my debut visit was in 2010) I’m planning on attending the Venice Film Festival for the very first time — 7 and 1/2 months hence. 

I’m also half-persuaded that I can’t do Cannes this year. We’ve lost our Old Town, Napoleonic-era, rue Jean Mero apartment and the local greedheads are just as bad as their Telluride counterparts.

I don’t think that early-bird viewings of Paul Thomas Anderson and Terrence Malick’s latest will be worth the pain. I’d still like to attend, of course, but I have no choice but to accept, etc.

Venice won’t be cheap either, of course. I’ll be once again passing the GoFundMe hat. As HE is entirely Patreon-free and wide open now, I’m hoping that the same generous followers who pitched in last year for Cannes ‘24 will repeat the favor. Excepting those whom I wished cancer upon, of course. I understand their reticence.

It appears as if it might make more financial sense to stay in Dorsoduro (my favorite Venice district) and each morning take the vaporetto to the Lido, and the return to Dorsoduro in the mid evening. 

Does anyone know anyone who plays it this way? A freelancer who pays his/her own way and has stayed in the city? I’ve been to Venice six or seven times over the last quarter-century but I’d like to ask them some questions. 

I’m not against staying on the Lido, mind, but it seems a lot pricier.

If Agitated Blamers Can Calm Down and Listen…

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The Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki-like obliteration in Pacific Palisades over the last five-plus days has been so severe and traumatizing that people are probably emotionally incapable of accepting rational-sounding explanations for the fire-hydrant failures of last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Average Joes (especially the MAGA variety) don’t want to know from calm, plain–spoken assessments. They want to see heads lopped off and bouncing down the courthouse steps, and particularly those belonging to Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. It ain’t fair and they don’t care.

Meteorologist Jodi Kodesh, however, has offered a simple tutorial that explains what went wrong. It’s not complex rocket science. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported the same observations and conclusions.

What went wrong in the higher Pacific Palisades regions, Kodesh, WaPo and the WSJ say, was the sudden, massive drainage of the lower altitude trunk water line on Tuesday during the daylight hours, which in turn quickly lost pressure and couldn’t re-fill the three higher-elevation reservoirs.

The system simply couldn’t stand up to a maelstrom of this size and strength…the largely unprecedented wind-blown ferocity of the Palisades firestorm.

Even if the upper reservoirs hadn’t been drained the wildfire would have still overwhelmed.

The structure and system in place simply couldn’t stand up, to re-phrase, to the enormity of the fire…to the perfect storm of eight months of remote, bone-dry hill growth that should have been cleared…an overgrown tinderbox environment consumed by a massive inferno that tore through PP last Tuesday, starting in the mid-morning.

It’s also being claimed that there was a crucial six-and-a-half-hour delay last Tuesday on the part of Mayor Bass (who was then in Ghana) and acting mayor Marqueece Harris-Dawson in requesting federal assistance. The request allegedly wasn’t made until Tuesday at 5 pm. I’m not certain how sturdy or reliable this analysis of an alleged dereliction may be.

Then there’s the fire department budget cuts that were approved by Bass, coupled with an apparent administrative dispute between Bass and Fire Dept. chief Kristin Crowley.

Ed Norton to “Apprentice” Avoiders: “You Have Sinned A Great Sin Against The Movie Godz”

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All hail Edward Norton for praising Ali Abassi‘s under-seen and under-heralded The Apprentice in an interview with THR‘s Scott Feinberg:

Posted by yours truly one week ago (1/4/25): “Industry-ites are afraid to praise The Apprentice because they’re cowards…plain and simple. I’ve been saying for nearly eight months that it’s a truly excellent film with superb performances by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, but they’re afraid to acknowledge the quality because they don’t want to be seen as supportive of anything bearing any kind of Trump stamp, even though the film’s second half is quite condemning of the former and future president.”

HE’s Cannes review, posted eight months ago:

Richard Brody Is HE’s New Best Friend…For Now

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I knew less than 15 minutes in that I would loathe sitting through The Brutalist, for right off the top it struck me as a melancholy slog, a swamp thing…a movie populated with draggy characters and a draggier-than-fuck storyline. Lemme outta here.

Silly as this sounds, I came to believe that The Brutalist hated me as much as I was learning to hate it.

I looked at my watch and moaned…dear God, over three hours to go. I was nonetheless determined to at least make it to the halfway mark. I almost managed that.

From Richard Brody‘s “The Empty Ambition of The Brutalist”:

“The Brutalist is [fundamentally] a screenplay movie, in which stick figures held by marionette strings go through the motions of the situations and spout the lines that Corbet assigns to them—and are given a moment-to-moment simulacrum of human substance by a formidable cast of actors.

“The themes [of The Brutalist] don’t emerge in step with the action; rather, they seem to be set up backward.

“[For] The Brutalist is also a domino movie in which the last tile is placed first and everything that precedes it is arranged in order to make sure that it comes out right.”

Brody subhead: “Brady Corbet’s epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life.”