Month: January 2026

Mainly because it just lies there. It doesn’t boogie or build to a crescendo or heat up or anything.

Remember that overly emphatic, fleurescent-pink suit you wore to the Oscars in ‘21? Tonight’s Golden Globes get-up looks better.

I just want Timothee Chalamet to win for Marty Supreme; ditto Josh Safdie for Best Director. (Marty has a problem with younger women, according to TikTok.) And I want Sinners to be brushed aside, or at the very least to win small.

Yesterday Paul Schrader dealt a resounding blow to Orson Welles‘ The Magnificent Ambersons (’42), and the tragic reputation of this alleged masterpiece (originally 131 or 133 minutes, although only an 88-minute version has been generally seen) will probably never be the same.

I’m not saying that Ambersons acolytes have fled into the forest, but they’ve definitely been told “whoa, come up for a little air” by a guy who knows a thing or two about directing and casting.

In a 1.10 Facebook post, Schrader, having recently seen the the 133-minute (or is it 131 minute?) “reconstructed” version of Ambersons, essentially agreed with a six-and-a-half year old HE column that Tim Holt‘s grating, agonizing lead performance is an insurmountable problem.

Edited Schrader: “MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS REDUX. I’ve always withheld judgment on Welles’ 1942 classic. Lost masterpeice, taken away from him and recut, he was in Brazil, blah, blah, blah. I’ve now seen the 133-minute ‘reconstructed’ version and changed my mind.

“Welles didn’t step away from the re-edit because he was cut out, and he didn’t go to Brazil simply at the behest of Nelson Rockefeller. I believe he stepped away from the film because he knew it was fatally flawed and that no amount of recuting could rescue it. And the fatal flaw was in the casting of Tim Holt.

“Welles again made a decade-spanning epic about a flawed macher, but instead of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles like a charismatic blunderbuss, it was an immature CFK, George Amberson Minafer, a snotty guttersnipe of a young man portrayed by the untalented Holt.

“Watching the film at the length that Welles originally intended, I realized that Holt’s George was hopelessly inadequate. Most of the 40 excised mintues came from Holt’s performance. Welles couldn’t have saved the film. No one could have. The studio notes, in essence, must have been this: lose one half hour, trim Tim Holt and try to make Joseph Cotten the lead.

“I suspect Welles welcomed the opportunity to distance himself from the film’s inevitable failure and, as the decades wore on and his memory dimmed, embrace the fantasy that The Magnificent Ambersons was a masterpiece which had been ripped from his hands and mutilated.”

HE’s “Horror of George Minafer“, posted on 8.17.18:

The hive-mind mantra behind The Magnificent Ambersons (’42) has been so deeply drilled into film-maven culture that even today, no one will admit the plain truth about it.

I’m referring to the fact that Tim Holt‘s George Amberson Minafer character is such an obnoxious and insufferable asshole that he all but poisons the film.

I’ve watched Welles’ Citizen Kane 25 or 30 times, but because of Holt I’ve seen The Magnificent Ambersons exactly twice. And the second viewing was arduous.

Welles admitted decades later that he knew “there would be an uproar about a picture which, by any ordinary American standards, was much darker than anybody was making pictures…there was just a built-in dread of the downbeat movie, and I knew I’d have that to face.”

He’d calculated that audiences would forget their discomfort when Minafer “gets his comeuppance” at the very end. But even in the truncated 88-minute version of the film that exists today, audiences still have to suffer Minafer’s ghastly arrogance, snippiness and smallness of spirit for roughly 80 minutes, and most people simply can’t tolerate this much abuse.

One of those who saw the 133-minute cut was costar Anne Baxter (1923-1985), who was 19 during filming. Yesterday I came upon a Baxter q & a in “Conversations with Classic Film Stars“, a 2016 book by James Bawden and Ron Miller, and came upon the following quote:

I love Manny Farber’s Ambersons review, and particularly this excerpt: “Theater-like is the inability to get the actors or story moving, which gives you a desire to push with your hands. There is really no living, moving or seeing to the movie; it is a series of static episodes connected by narration, as though someone sat you down and said ‘here!’ and gave you some postcards of the 1890s.”

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Last night I excerpted portions of a 1.10.26 N.Y. Times Ezra Klein Show podcast — an exacting discussion by Klein and M.Gessen that identifies and describes in depth the ongoing Donald Trump spectacle barrage.

Here’s what I wrote this morning in the comment thread:

Klein and Gessen have seriously nailed and bull’s-eyed it with their assessment of Trump being deeply, instinctually invested in brash, totalitarian spectacle. Swayed and swooned by it.

Spectacle as a theatrical tool or grand dramatic strategy. Spectacle as a demonstration of force and grand power. Spectacle doesn’t seek to persuade or acquire broad consensus — it trumpets, parades, dramatizes, symbolically bludgeons.

When Klein and Gessen said that word something clicked in my head. Tom Wolfe called it “the ‘aha’ phenomenon”, and I swear to God it just clicked into place.

The killing of Renee Good obviously wasn’t planned in advance, but it was a cruel, media-flooding spectacle all the same.

MAGA stalwarts believe that Trump is doing God’s work by pushing back against the multi-cultural immigrant hordes (“They’re eating the dogs!”) and warring with the deeply deranged, white-guy-hating, gender-fluid wokeys, but they also know that he has only the remainder of ‘26 and possibly early ‘27 before it all starts to topple and crash into a heap.

Trump surely knows this. He’s fortified by strong German-family genes, yes, but he’s old and clearly withering (turns 80 on 6.14.26 — five months from now) and declining after a fashion, and knows he’ll be impeached after the Democrats re-take the House and possibly even the Senate in November.

So he’s in a hurry to throw more logs onto the fire and swamp the country with more and more Trumpian spectacle (including the likelihood of a forthcoming attack upon Iran’s theocratic dictators as the street furor grows — a prospective move that I personally agree with) while he still has the moxie.

Spectacle, spectacle, spectacle.

“Mohammad Movahedi Azad, Iran’s attorney general, said on Saturday that legal proceedings against rioters should be undertaken “without leniency, mercy or appeasement,” according to Iranian media, and he warned that ‘all criminals involved’ would be considered an ‘enemy of God,’ a charge that could carry the death penalty.

“President Trump, who had previously said that the United States would intervene militarily if Iran killed protesters, said in a post on social media on Saturday that ‘Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help.’

“He has been briefed in recent days on new options for military strikes in Iran, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.”

Iranian woman lights her cigarette with a burning photo of the ayatollah. This is braver than anything an American feminist has done in the 21st century. Actual badass: pic.twitter.com/1nzV4lmwOh

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 10, 2026

A message for @elonmusk on behalf of the people of Iran pic.twitter.com/78sBink5to

— Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن (@elicalebon) January 10, 2026

Ezra Klein: “The Trump administration often operates through propaganda of the deed. They’re not an anarchist collective — they’re a state, a regime. But they operate not so often through the dull work of rules, laws, legislation and deliberation but rather through spectacle.

“Venezuela was a spectacle. They do not seem to have planned for the aftermath. They were decapitating the Maduro regime, but they left it otherwise completely in place. Nobody — not even Trump or his administration — seems to know what it means for America to be running Venezuela. But it was an example, an act that showed something.

“Even before the capture of Maduro, they had chosen not to fight the drug war, America’s fentanyl scourge, through laws and legislation on addiction and drugs. Instead, they chose to do very high-profile bombings of alleged drug boats, which, even if they were drug boats, were probably carrying cocaine.

“It was spectacular. It was a message. It was showing what they could do. It was a deed that everybody could see and would talk about.

Masha Gessen: “The Trump administration is an administration of spectacle. I’ve heard it sometimes described as a reality-TV administration, but I don’t think that’s quite right. Because what reality TV wants is ratings. And these spectacles, this propaganda — they’re meant to carry messages. They’re meant to make clear how the world now works.

“Venezuela was structured as spectacle. There did not seem to be a long planning process for what the post-decapitation of the regime would look like, but just: Go in. And then you have this picture of Maduro on the plane, blindfolded. You have this very triumphant news conference from Donald Trump.

“There’s the level of this love of a particular aesthetic of strength, a particular aesthetic of dominance and organization that Trump seems to be instinctively drawn to.

“We’ve known that since his first term. He has an obsession with military parades and, obviously, the spectacle of the transformation of the White House — both the creation of all the gold leaf and the destruction of the East Wing as a demonstration of dominance and power.

“But I also think that Trump is always in a movie. He is always watching himself onscreen. That’s something that makes him different from anyone I’ve ever read or written about. There just seems to be this constant external observation of this character that he’s playing, which is in some ways his superpower. It’s what gives him the ability to shake his fist after literally dodging a bullet and shouting, ‘Fight, fight, fight’ — and having that incredible photo op. Because even at a moment when he really did come face-to-face with death, what he’s thinking of is what it looks like from the outside.

“There’s a whole other level of spectacle that we’re seeing here that we still need to understand.”

Klein: “When I listen to MAGA and Trump and then its theorists and its followers, I hear something being said about this idea that we have restrained the animal, masculine, dominance-oriented, conquest-oriented instincts that made humanity great — that, in the Elon Musk version, will get us to Mars in the future — and tied them up in hollow, liberal values and self-restraints and debate, discussion, deliberation, rules and procedures.

“There’s something being said that is operating at all levels, that the way America is acting under Trump is the way America should act, the way a superpower should act. That is what it means to be a superpower: To be unrestrained. But that the way Trump acts is also the way a man should act.

“I’m almost having trouble having this conversation because the thing I am thinking about is the public execution of Renee Good in Minnesota. It’s a little unclear what happened. Her car was in the middle of the street, and then you watch the federal agents rush the car, and she begins executing a multipoint turn to try to leave. And then an agent shoots her dead in the middle of the street.

“The Trump administration is saying she was trying to run them over. But you can very easily see that she was not trying to run everybody over. She was parked first. They run at her, and she tries to leave. Not even speed out, just leave.

“And it is a spectacle of its own. It is the kind of thing they’ve always been creating the conditions to see happen. I’m not saying they intended for this to happen, but everybody has predicted things like this happening, myself included. And it feels like a message to every protester.

“I’m curious how you have understood her killing and this moment — what its meaning is.”

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CBS Sunday Morning, a news-driven, topical-events show, is basically “performance television” for older people who aren’t that hip. The producers require their interviewers (or maybe the interviewers do this on their own volition) to pretend like they’re yeehaws from rural Arkansas, although without the yokel accents and wearing uptown apparel.

Watch the doofusy Jim Axelrod as Carrie Coon tells him that she’s become a hot Broadway ticket since costarring in The White Lotus. He leans forward and squints his eyes in skepticism if not astonishment, his voice adopting a “no, wait a minute…really?” quality.

Yes, Coon patiently explains. Her White Lotus performance led to her landing a starring role in Tracy Letts‘ Bug**, now playing at the Manhattan Theatre Club The wealthy suburban yahoos who know her are more eager to buy tickets for their day-long or weekend excursions into midtown Manhattan, etc.

HE to Axelrod: Has the “recognizable face and name upping ticket sales” equation ever not been true in the Broadway realm? Have you been living under a rock? No, you’re just pretending that you have.

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The Rolling Stones performed for six nights straight at Madison Square Garden in mid-June 1975, and Hollywood Elsewhere was there for one of the shows with then-girlfriend Sophie Black. Good seats too, snagged by Sophie’s Broadway producer dad, David Black.

I’ve never heard this recording of the 6.22.75 MSG show, but I remember the wowser beginning — a star-like, flower-petal stage unfolding as Aaron Copeland‘s “Fanfare for the Common Man” blared through and filled the house…cheers, howls, sonic excitement. And then the opening chords of “Honky Tonk Women”…

If you listen closely to the studio recording version of “Honky Tonk Women”, the Stones sing the chorus as follows: “It’s a haung-ahhauhuhhaung, it’s okay!…gimme gimme gimme the honky tonk blues.”

At MSG on 6.22.75, the Stones sang “it’s them hawng-kay-TONK, hawng-kay-TONK wimmin’…gimme gimme gimme the honky tonk blues.”

And I don’t want to hear any fucking bullshit about this. The words “honky tonk women” simply aren’t sung on the recording.

1. Bugonia (nominees: Ed Guiney, p.g.a. & Andrew Lowe, p.g.a., Yorgos Lanthimos, p.g.a., Emma Stone, p.g.a., Lars Knudsen, p.g.a.) — Not a serious nomination…not a chance. Marginal Lanthimos.

2. F1 — Ceremonial nomination. Totally respectable film for what it is, but included just to round out the pack.

3. Frankenstein (nominees: Guillermo Del Toro, p.g.a., J. Miles Dale, p.g.a., Scott Stuber, p.g.a.) — not a serious nomination, and GDT knows this.

4. Hamnet (nominees: Liza Marshall, p.g.a., Pippa Harris, p.g.a., Sam Mendes, p.g.a., Steven Spielberg, p.g.a., Nicolas Gonda, p.g.a.) — A serious, totally respectable nomination.

5. Marty Supreme — Totally serious, high-octane nomination…world-class all the way.

6. One Battle After Another (nominees: Adam Somner, Sara Murphy, Paul Thomas Anderson — Obviously a favored winner, not because it’s better than Marty Supreme but because all the industry whores are supporting it for political metaphor (anti-Trump) reasons, and because of the safety-in-numbers factor.

7. Sentimental Value (nominees: Maria Ekerhovd, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar) — Totally serious, high-octane nomination…world-class all the way.

8. Sinners (nominees: Ryan Coogler, p.g.a., Zinzi Coogler, p.g.a., Sev Ohanian, p.g.a.) — A schlocky exploitation film secures an identity tribute nomination…terrific. Politically meaningful as far as it goes, but hasn’t a prayer of winning.

9. Train Dreams (nominees: Marissa McMahon, p.g.a., Teddy Schwarzman, p.g.a., William Janowitz, p.g.a., Ashley Schlaifer, p.g.a., Michael Heimler, p.g.a.) — Not a serious nominee. Basically an attaboy, pat on the back.

10. Weapons (nominees: Zach Cregger, p.g.a., Miri Yoon, p.g.a.) — Totally serious, high-octane nomination…world-class all the way.

Shame, shame, shame upon the Directors Guild noms for blowing off Sentimental Value‘s Joachim Trier.

Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.)
Ryan Coogler, Sinners (Warner Bros.)…get outta here.
Guillermo Del Toro, Frankenstein (Netflix)…WHAT??
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme (A24)…fine.
Chloé Zhao, Hamnet (Focus Features)