The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney is the only one among three (Jon Frosch and Lovia Gyarkye being the other two) to include Anora, the year’s finest film, among his top ten.

So many critics are lost in their own dweeb vapors…in a realm of their own elite sensibilities. Average ticket buyers pay them no mind, and who can blame them?

Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer is Rooney’s #2:

HE-posted on 10.7,24:

No one will argue that films were generally better 19 years ago. They obviously were. Herewith a reminder, posted or or about 12.15.05:

Creme de la Creme: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, Hustle & Flow, In Her Shoes, Match Point, The Family Stone, Cinderella Man, The Beautiful Country, Last Days, Grizzly Man, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (13).

70% Masterful…Merging of Lovers From Different Cultures in the Midst of a Splendorous Natural Symphony…But Goes off The Rails, Drop-Kicks the Mood and Leaves You Stranded at the 110-Minute Mark: The New World (1)

Overly Schematic But Clearly Delineated (hasn’t aged well): Crash. (1)

Pretty Damn Good to Reasonably Good: Good Night and Good Luck, The Wedding Crashers, Syriana, Munich, The Aristocrats, Batman Begins, Broken Flowers, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, Cache (Hidden), The Interpreter (for the bomb-on-the-bus scene alone), Nine Lives (for Robin Wright Penn alone), Cronicas, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach has an assured place at the table), The Upside of Anger (for Kevin Costner’s performance), The Thing About My Folks (for Peter Falk’s performance), Mrs. Henderson Presents, Kung Fu Hustle, Kingdom of Heaven, Rent, Broken Flowers, Brothers (for Connie Nielsen’s performance and the austere and upfront tone of Suzanne Bier’s direction), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, War of the Worlds, Casanova, My Date With Drew (a good-humored rendering of a metaphor about youthful pluck and persistence and team spirit), My Summer of Love, Paradise Now. (27)

Not Half Bad: The Producers, The Dying Gaul, The World’s Fastest Indian, Four Brothers, Layer Cake, The Great Raid, Reel Paradise, Green Street Hooligans, Everything is Illuminated, Proof, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (13)

Gets Worse The More I Look Back Upon it: King Kong (1).

Unquestionable Failure That Nonetheless Half-Saves Itself as It Comes to a Close: Elizabethtown (1)

Biggest Bummer (and splattered milkshakes don’t matter): The Weather Man (1)

Solid First Stab by Talented Director: Scott Caan’s Dallas 362. (1)

Grudging Approval (i.e., respect for an obviously first-rate film that I didn’t particularly enjoy watching all that much): Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 (1)

Blaaah: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, North Country, Shopgirl, Jarhead, The Libertine (5)

Tediously Acceptable: The 40 Year-Old Virgin (Catherine Keener’s fine performance helped); March of the Penguins. (2)

Crap Marginally Redeemed By…: Sin City (heavenly Nevada silver-mine black- and-white photography); House of Wax (Paris Hilton’s death and some fairly inventive pizazz shown by director Jaume Collet-Serra). (2)

Cavalcade of Crap…Moneyed, Honeyed, Sullied…an Affront to The Once Semi-Respectable Tradition of Mainstream Hollywood Filmmaking: The Dukes of Hazzard, The Island, Bewitched, Rumor Has it, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Must Love Dogs, Memoirs of a Geisha, Domino, The Legend of Zorro, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Constantine, Aeon Flux, Fantastic Four, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. (15).

The fun starts around the 5:30 mark.

I was deeply disappointed when I caught an allegedly magnificent 70mm print of John Ford‘s The Searchers last July at the Museum of the Moving Image.

“No ‘bump’ at all over the versions I’ve watched on various formats over the years,” I angrily wrote. “No bump whatsoever, fuckers! Plus some shots looked overly shadowed, and some looked a tad bleachy.”

But of course, trusting sap and sucker that I am, I’ve bought the forthcoming 4K Bluray, which looks extra-marvelous according to various reviewers. I don’t trust these whores at all, but I want the 4K to be extra-special so I’m talking the plunge.

If I feel burned again after watching it later this month, there will be hell to pay.

From my 7.21 review:: “Immediately my eyes were telling me that the 70mm restoration is some kind of reverent con job, and that ticket-buying schmoes like myself were being gaslit.

“’This?’, I was angrily saying to myself. ‘Where’s the enhancement? Where’s the extra-exacting detail that a ‘straight from the original VisaVision negative’ 70mm print would presumably yield?”

“The MOMI theatre is seemingly a technically first-rate operation with a nice big screen, but what a fuming experience I had. I was ready to hit someone.

“Technically sophisticated friendo who knows his stuff: ‘In order to present a film print properly — especially 70mm — more things must come together than you might imagine in your worst nightmare.’

“Thanks, powers-that-be! Thanks for lying right through your teeth!”

I adored Linda Lavin‘s simultaneously hilarious and emotionally devastating performance in the Broadway stage presentation of Neil Simon‘s Broadway Bound, which I still regard today as his finest play, hands down.

Lavin played Kate Jerome, the steadfast mother of burgeoning radio-show scriptwriters Eugene (the Simon stand-in, played by Jonathan Silverman) and Stanley (Jason Alexander). She was wonderful — the audience (including myself and my parents, Jim and Nancy, sitting in the third or fourth row) stood and cheered and wouldn’t stop at curtain call.

I would love to watch the 1992 TV movie version right now, but it’s not streaming or even on Bluray, and copies of the DVD are so scarce that it costs $79 a pop on Amazon.

Anne Bancroft played Kate; Silverman and Corey Parker played Eugene and Stanley. Hume Cronyn, Jerry Orbach and Michele Lee costarred.

Lavin passed on 12.29.24. A truly great and wondrous actress — lifted my heart, melted me down.

The four acting-Oscar winners will be Chalamet, Anora‘s Mikey Madison for Best Actress, A Real Pain‘s Kieran Culkin or Anora‘s Yura Borisov for Best Supporting Actor and…I’m not sure about Best Supporting Actress. It’s probably a toss-up between Emilia Perez‘s Zoe Saldana and Wicked‘s Ariana Grande…either one winning would basically amount to a compensational “throw the movie a bone” gimmee as neither film will win the Best Picture Oscar.

I had a serious thing for Kathryn Harrold back in the day, particularly after she costarred with Albert Brooks in Modern Romance (’81).

Consequently there was no one in the known universe who was more bummed out than myself when Harrold played a doctor who becomes Luciano Pavarotti‘s lover in Yes, Giorgio (’82).

The images that flashed through my mind as I contemplated…I don’t need to elaborate here.

It was ridiculous, of course, that I, a mere journalist and movie hound with a full understanding of how and why various Hollywood films are thrown together, would feel actually upset, but I honestly felt like a jilted lover when Harrold did this. Jilted and appalled that she would…I can’t even think it, much less say it. I was pretty much groaning in pain.

Suffice to say that Yes, Giorgio single-handedly terminated the idea of a slender, drop-dead beautiful actress like Harrold indulging in breathless, around-the-world sexual activity with a gifted artist-elephant like Pavarotti…even now these images are injecting emotional pain into my system.

Harrold was 30 when Yes, Giorgio was shot. She is thankfully still with us and working as a Los Angeles-based Marriage and Family Therapist. Pavarotti was 45 during filming. He died from pancreatic cancer in 2007, at age 72.

I wasn’t the only one who suffered cardiac arrest when Yes, Giorgio opened, of course. Pretty much the entire world rejected it. It cost around $19 million to produce, and brought in $2.3 million. It was estimated to have lost $45 million and change.

Joe and Jane Popcorn to Hollywood slickos in the early ’80s: Don’t ever ask us to pay to see a fat bearded guy, however famous or charming or wealthy or gifted, boning Kathryn Harrold or for that matter anybody else in her physical attractiveness class. Never do this again…ever.

Life in the highly competitive film industry has always been unfair…sexist, racist…never a bed of roses…cronyism, boys club reciprocity, the usual rough-and-tumble.

But for a while there equity quotas and being guilt-tripped by Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative was definitely stirring the pot…culturally, politically.

Things are somewhat better for women (and also, I presume, directors of color and LGBTQ persuasion) than they were in 2007, when only 2.7% of working directors were female. It’s a rigged game, but less so as we currently speak. Changes for the better have come about over the last 18 years.

It’s probably also accurate to say that the USC Annenberg wokey card isn’t as big of an influencer as it was, say, starting in ’18 and peaking during Hollywod’s woke-terror chapter (’19 to ’22 or roughly a four-year period that was roughy analogous to China’s Great Cultural Revolution of the mid ’60s).

…is about judgment, bitter gruel, the wrong kind of karma, deflation. That said, I’ve never once read or researched the lyrics. It’s the chops, the punctuation, the garage-band guyness of it. It began playing on the Passat sound system of its own volition when I started the car around noon. I found this meaningful on some level, and I was never really a huge Guess Who fan.

Wiki excerpt: “[Guitarist and Co-writer Randy Bachman] was walking down a city street with several vinyl albums under his arm, when he saw three ‘tough-looking biker guys’ approaching. He felt threatened and was looking to cross the street when a little put-put car pulled up to the men.

“A five-foot-tall woman got out, shouting at one of them, asking where he’d been all day, that he’d left her alone with the kids, didn’t take out the trash, and now was down here sniffing around. The man’s grungy friendos walked away, and he was suddenly alone. Tail between his legs, he got into the car. The woman’s parting shot: ‘And you can forget about any sugar tonight.’”