“I’m not a conservative….I’m an original liberal from like 60 years ago.” — Bill Maher to Jake Tapper. A sensible JFK liberal, he means.

My absolute favorite Best Supporting Actor performance — hands down, no question — is Karren Karagulian‘s Toros in Anora. His signature line, spoken in the 24-hour diner just before they learn that Mark Eydelshteyn‘s Vanya is in a private room at HQ, is “I’m so fucked…sooo fucked!”

Yura Borisov gave my favorite male supporting performance that is actually in serious contention.

I’ll always think of Vache Tovmasyan‘s Garnick as the vanilla vomit guy…sorry.

On 2.25 WHE will release a 4K Bluray of Milos Forman‘s Amadeus (’84).

The Amazon page says the 4K runs 158 minutes, or three minutes shorter than the version that played in theatres 40 years ago.

On 9.24.02 Forman introduced an R-rated version with nearly 20 minutes of restored footage — a so-called Director’s Cut. Since that time or 22 years ago, the Director’s Cut has been the only available version of the film, as the producers modified the original film negative to include the additional footage.

The new 4K is the first time this century that the original theatrical cut has been available on home video. The longer Forman cut will also be included in the 4K package.

“The Tom Hulce Factor,” posted on 11.27.23:

“As much as I respect Milos Forman‘s Amadeus (’84), I haven’t had the slightest desire to rewatch it over the last 40 years. This is due to my profound, never-forgotten loathing for Tom Hulce‘s performance as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Not to mention that awful white lion’s-mane wig that he wore.

But if I could somehow re-experience my viewing of the B’way stage version with Ian McKellen and Peter Firth, I would do so repeatedly.

From “Respect for Milos Forman,” posted on 4.4.18: “Sometime in ’81 I saw Peter Shaffer‘s Amadeus at the Broadhurst, and revelled in Ian McKellen and Peter Firth‘s performance as Salieri and Mozart. It was such a huge, radiant high that I had difficulty adjusting to Milos Forman’s film version, which opened in September ’84.

“It was a handsome, well-crafted thing and a Best Picture Oscar champ, of course, and like everyone else I…well, appreciated F. Murray Abraham‘s Salieri. But Forman’s film just didn’t have that same snap and pizazz, and I hated Thomas Hulce‘s giggly-geek performance as Mozart and flat-out despised Elizabeth Berridge‘s bridge-and-tunnel performance as Constanze Mozart (i.e., she called her husband “Wolfie”).

“Amadeus is a good film but the play was much better.”

I have a black, beat-up Dennis Hopper-on-drugs cowboy hat, but I wanted a classic cowboy hat with nice trim lines…the kind that Hopper wore in The American Friend…the kind that country music stars wear when they perform…the kind of hat that Ringo Starr wears on the cover of “Look Up.”

My mistake was buying an El Cheapo Chinese cowboy hat, which arrived yesterday. The basic problem is that it’s not a cowboy hat, or certainly not my idea of one. The brim isn’t wide enough. It ain’t buckaroo…looks like a modified panama. The Chinese burned me. Tied a tin can to my tail. Humiliating.

Is it possible that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass won’t be ousted over the various apocalyptic fires of the last few days? If at least 15 percent of eligible voters sign a recall petition within a proscribed period, she’s toast.

The facts don’t matter — the fire hydrants running dry is her fault and that’s that. Plus she was off making whoopee in Ghana during the first 36 hours of the fire…forget it, she’s done.

Governor Gavin Newsom can’t run for re-election in ’26 (term limits) but if he runs for president in ’28 (which he should do, I think) he’ll have to explain the failure of the Los Angeles water system to combat the inferno.

Like I said, the facts don’t matter. But yesterday morning laist’s Kevin Tidmark explained what went wrong. It boils down to the fact that the water system wasn’t built to handle a catastrophic fire of this size, and after about 15 or 20 hours of constant, massive drainage from fire hoses spraying at full force, water pressure in the uphill regions simply gave out.

Here’s some of what Tidmark wrote:

“LADWP’s explanation for the shortage comes down to three nearby water tanks, each with a storage capacity of about a million gallons. These tanks help maintain enough pressure for water to travel in uphill areas through pipes to homes and fire hydrants — but the pressure had decreased due to heavy water use, and officials knew the tanks couldn’t keep up the drain forever.

“’We pushed the system to the extreme,’ LADWP CEO Janisse Quiñones said in a news conference. ‘Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”

“According to LADWP, the tanks’ water supply needed to be replenished in order to provide enough pressure for the water to flow through fire hydrants uphill. But officials said as firefighters drew more and more water from the trunk line, or main supply, they used water that would have refilled the tanks, eventually depleting them.

“That decreased the water pressure, which is needed for fire hydrants to work in higher elevations.

“'[Please] understand there’s water on the trunk line, [but] it just cannot get up the hill because we cannot fill the tanks fast enough,’ Quiñones said.”

“Easterners commonly complain that there is no ‘weather’ at all in Southern California, that the days and the seasons slip by relentlessly, numbingly bland. That is quite misleading.

“In fact the climate is characterized by infrequent but violent extremes: two periods of torrential subtropical rains which continue for weeks and wash out the hills and send subdivisions sliding toward the sea; about twenty scattered days a year of the Santa Ana, which, with its incendiary dryness, invariably means fire.

“At the first prediction of a Santa Ana, the Forest Service flies men and equipment from northern California into the southern forests, and the Los Angeles Fire Department cancels its ordinary non-firefighting routines.

“The Santa Ana caused Malibu to burn as it did in 1956, and Bel Air in 1961, and Santa Barbara in 1964. In the winter of 1966-67 eleven men were killed fighting a Santa Ana fire that spread through the San Gabriel Mountains.

“It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself. Nathaniel West perceived that, in ‘The Day of the Locust’, and at the time of the 1965 Watts riots what struck the imagination most indelibly were the fires. For days one could drive the Harbor Freeway and see the city on fire, just as we had always known it would be in the end.

“Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds shows us how close to the edge we are.” — Joan Didion essay on the Santa Ana winds from “Slouching Toward Bethlehem”

Posted earlier today on Awards Daily:

Without a permit or even a great deal of preparation, photographer Robert Sebree shot this legendary Sunset Boulevard snap of Farrah Fawcett, 52, on a warm morning in 1999.

What kind of crew did Sebree have? What was Farrah standing on? What painting was it based upon? What kind of stretch wrap? How was it lighted? How long did she pose? Any trouble with gawkers? In a 4.7.14 essay about working with Fawcett, Sebree reveals no technical shooting details at all.

Fawcett passed 10 years later from cancer, aged 62.

Demi Moore winning a Best Comedy/Musical Actress Golden Globe award was the only heart moment during last Sunday’s GG broadcast. She is therefore the only presumed Best Actress nominee with a compelling narrative, the handcicappers are all saying. But how genuine was the story that Moore recited?

“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress,’ and at that time, I [took] that to mean that…I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in and I believed that. That corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it, maybe I was complete, maybe I had done what I was supposed to do.

“And [just] as I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance. And the universe told me that ‘you’re not done.’”

Except over the last 40 years Moore wasn’t pushed and bullied into a mainstream megaplex career, which is what that producer meant when he used the term “popcorn.” I’ve never read or heard that she tried to prove her arthouse mettle by appearing in edgy Sundance films, and as far as I know she wasn’t kept down and put in a confining box by big, bad studio execs — she went for big, attention-getting, high-paying roles in mainstream films, and she became rich and famous and lived a very flush life. She chose this path while the choosing was good.

She did Brat Pack roles, sexy hottie parts, romantic relationship roles, femme fatale roles…Blame It on Rio, St. Elmo’s Fire, About Last Night…, Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, Striptease, The Scarlet Letter, The Juror, G.I. Jane. True, she played a small part in the arthousey Margin Call but that was 14 years ago after her career flame had cooled. And last year she did Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

In short, Moore never tried to be in a critically-approved, Cannes-worthy, outside-the-box feminist statement film, and certainly not in a body-horror film. She only took the lead in The Substance when she calculated that she’d aged out (duhhh) and a role like this was her only likely shot at prominence, just like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford signed up for hag horror in the ’60s.

Moore played it smart, and the gamble has obviously paid off. Coralie Fargeat knew how to make a David Cronenberg film, although The Subtance ie not an emotional, soul-baring film…far from it.

Moore’s Elizabeth Sparkle character is basically a scream queen role…except she doesn’t scream. It’s essentially about ghastly stuff that happens to the poor woman because she’s desperate to stay in the game. It’s a film driven by feminist smirk-rage about a system rigged by exploitive male assholes, and yet a system that just about every Type-A woman has bought into and tried to compete in. Including Demi Moore herself.

It’s not about Moore reaching into her soul and delivering the performance of her life, but about Moore playing a victim…a desperate character reacting to horrific things that are happening to her. The Substance never strays from that path.

Posted last September:

If Demi Moore scores an Oscar nom for going all body horror in The Substance…fine. But it’ll be one of those gold-watch, career tribute deals…a gesture that says “40 years, Demi!…we’ve all loved you since your Brat Pack heyday and your ‘90s heyday and here you still are,” etc.

The Substance is basically a slick, David Cronenberg-ian social satire, and it doesn’t ask Moore to do much more than deliver extreme reactions to the extreme things that happen more and more to her body. It’s not a heart-and-soul thing — it’s a freak-out thing.

We all know how the old virtue-signalling two-step goes. It’s been a common refrain since ’16 or thereabouts.

Boiled down, critics and columnists aren’t allowed to dismiss or pooh-pooh performances by actors of color. Most of us also understand that the spark and strategy behind fascinating (as well as less-than-fascinating) performances have no tribal component, but try telling that to the scold brigade. On the other hand since the Obama era there’s been a kneejerk tendency to praise any and all performances by non-white actors, just to be on the safe side.

For the sin of not being a fan of Sing Sing and feeling a tad sleepy about Colman Domingo‘s lead performance in that underwhelming film, “bentrane” tried yesterday to indict Hollywood Elsewhere for the usual racist discrimination, etc.

“It’s truly amazing that nearly every time a POC is nominated, you declare it a DEI choice,” he wrote. “First of all, Domingo totally deserves his nomination for his searing, uplifting performance. And the way you relate to nominations like his is truly ugly.”

HE reply: Many actors have given, currently give and always will give performances that are praiseworthy for reasons that have nothing to do with DEI instincts among lockstep virtue signallers like “bentrane.” I won’t take the bait or push back against his punitive tactics by listing several of these actors, some of whom are non-Anglos but are all pro-level artists, conveyers and communicators.

Sing Sing was/is a sensitive whiff. I saw it inside the AMC Lincoln Square last summer, and while it was effective in a certain heart-baring, docudrama-ish way it also just fucking LAID THERE. Domingo’s “I feel it so deeply…this is what I do as my eyes glisten and moisten…can you FEEL ME feelin’ it, not just in my performances but during interviews on the red carpet?” schtick is fine as far it goes, but don’t tell me it’s not patented schtick. His lead performance in Rustin was all about that.

What is empathy schtick? It’s when you can sense and at times literally SEE the gears moving.

Remember the twitchy, neurotic Jack Lemmon schtick that he used in damn near every film (and often effectively — don’t get me wrong) once he became the patented, Oscar-approved “Jack Lemmon” in the mid ‘60s? Colman Domingo is doing the exact same thing these days.

Imagined bentrane: “You can say that about Lemmon and other actors who’ve developed a certain dependable schtick that has worked with many critics and often with Academy voters, but you CAN’T say that about Colman Domingo because if you do you’re a truly ugly racist, not to mention a homophobe.”

”Bentrane”, in short, is not only practicing but enforcing a form of award-season identity admonishment — think and say the right things about certain distinguished actors of color or you’ll be tied to the whipping post.

Inner “bentrane” frustration: “If only I could use some kind of race-card admonishment to castigate Wells for his expressions of pique and annoyment about Adrien Brody’s ‘Brutalist’ performance, but I can’t, dammit! Wait…maybe if I call him an anti-Semite? That might work!”

Less than two hours ago (1.59 pm Eastern) TMZ reported that the sprawling Mediterranean home of Steven Spielberg has not succumbed to the Palisades fire! Forbes had reported otherwise but good news!

Earlier this morning: Until this morning I hadn’t heard that the Palisades fire has reduced Steven Spielberg’s Pacific Palisades home (Amalfi Drive near Spoleto Drive, adjacent to Santa Monica Canyon) to cinders. Update: Casa Spielberg is safe!

I had never visited, of course, or even looked past the tall hedges (Tatiana and I would stroll right by during our weekend Pacific Palisades hikes) but photos tell us it was a beautiful, sprawling, old-world Mediterranean palazzo. Actually “a little Spanish, a little French and a little Italian,” Spielberg told his redesign architect Harry Newman.

Renovated by Newman in the late ’80s and profiled in ’89, the place was thoroughly infiltrated with Hollywood legend. Previous residents included Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., David O. Selznick and Cary Grant. “The history of the house attracted me instinctively,” Spielberg says. “It was important for me to know that Selznick had lived there during the time he produced Gone With the Wind.”

Homes can be rebuilt, of course, but the vibes of history (i.e., ghosts) can’t be replicated. Not to mention Spielberg’s own history. Think of the many movie-shoot artifacts that Spielberg or his staffers may not have had time to carry out. Think of the leather-bound scripts, the old photos and 3/4″ tapes, the Bluray collection, etc. Was the original Rosebud sled saved?

In 2018 Spielberg told BBC1 that the Indiana Jones whip and fedora, props from 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, are kept in his office.

“This house was a burden of dreams,” Spielberg told Architectural Digest in a May 1989 article. “It was not an easy house to do. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the challenge of doing another house, but that’s far in the future.”

The home of Miles “don’t be a pervert, man” Teller was also eaten by the Palisades fire. Ditto the homes of Billy Crystal, Anthony Hopkins, James Woods, Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore, Adam Sandler, etc.

@michaellevitt_1 #greenscreen #hollywood #fire #pacificpalisades #palisades #malibu #la #celebrity #wildfire #famous #rich #fyp ♬ original sound – MICHAEL LEVITT

I generally go through my day-to-day without thinking about this kind of activity (i.e., sex between sea lions), but if I could clap my hands three times knowing that this would eradicate any and all thoughts of such arrangements…