https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/?s=Mangold-Chalamet+

Variety’s Elsa Keslassy from Marrakech:

We all understand what Luca is saying here. We all understand who the proponents of industrial taste are, the easy lays and the obsequious whores, not to mention the lazy rubes and slowboats who support big shitty franchise movies and tumble all over themselves when films like Wicked (which is not so much problematic as overwhelming in a blitzkrieg, Jon M. Chu-like way, which is what makes it industrialized) come along.

HE to Clemmy: You really do need to consider the possibility that you simply don’t have a sufficient brain-cell count.

HE supports the cinematic art of the obviously gifted and indisputably great Roman Polanski.

HE does not and never has supported the notion that anyone proven guilty of sexual abuse or assault should skate. Crimes of the loins have penalties. Nobody’s disputing this.

Then again are you telling me that Polanski hasn’t been made to suffer and submit to the proverbial lash for the last 47 years?

Are you telling me that Polanski’s kids, Morgane and Elvis, live in a state of perpetual fear and horror about what their allegedly monstrous dad may do to them?

We’re talking about two twains here, two separate boxes.

History is flooded with accounts of great artists who didn’t behave well at certain points in their lives, or who behaved abusively or with cruelty or callousness.

Enlightened art scholars have long argued and understood that at the end of the day you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

#MeToo ideologues will never understand or accept this. Their basic creed is “if the bathwater smells bad or is tainted in some way, the baby must either submit to the sword or be banished to the desert.”

Howard Hawks is famous for having said that a movie is properly regarded as a major stand-out or perhaps as an Oscar contender if it has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

What are Wicked’s three great scenes? Put up or shut up.

I’m not sure musical numbers should count as the point of all musical scenes is to express a significant thematic or emotional moment while stopping the narrative in its tracks. Musical numbers are what I would call highly arresting as opposed to great.

Great scenes hit home, touch emotions, signify or deliver major plot pivots or wake-up moments, accomplish something at least semi-profound.

In The Wizard Oz, for example, the three…make that four great scenes are (a) Dorothy being effectively counselled by Professor Marvel, (b) returning to her farmhouse as the tornado approaches and being hit on the head, and then the house landing in Munchkinland as the film turns to color, (c) she and her three comrades managing to vanquish the witch and take her broom back to the wizard, and (d) the “there’s no place like home” finale in Dorothy’s bedroom.

I’ve been running Wicked in my mind and trying to recall the three great qualifying scenes. I’m not being cynical. I’m open to instruction. Please inform.

HE’s annual “By the Measure of Howard Hawks” article will follow later today, applying Hawks criteria to all the major Best Oicture contenders.

I’ve respected Wicked‘s wallop factor from the get-go, but please God, no…don’t let it win the Best Picture Oscar.

To improve its reputation among the Joe and Jane Bumblefucks who’ve had it up to here with elite leftist instruction, the Oscar-bestowing community has to get with the emerging new current…the “put down the wokey DEI playbook, and maybe ease up on queerish messaging” program.

And I’m saying this, mind, as a rapt admirer of Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer.

Wicked is basically a high-impact racial parable with songs, magic and lesbian sauce. It’s about an unjustly feared and despised woman of color (i.e., green) and the wicked superficial whitey-whites who are determined to socially ostracize and excommunicate her, and thereby leave her no choice but to evolve into Margaret Hamilton‘s Wicked Witch of the West.

And that’s fine as far as it goes. Just leave the Best Picture Oscar out of the equation.

Obviously industry people love Wicked and I’m not saying they’re wrong for leaning this way, but given that average Americans have been saying “enough!” and “whatever happened to real movies?”, it’s clear that cinema has to turn the corner or else…films have to get real, step off the soapbox, put their feet on the ground and ease up on the progressive instruction narratives…really. Honest stories that touch bottom. Anora, Conclave, that line of country.

We all know it’s been a weak year and I don’t mean to abruptly switch objections, but HE also wishes a double ixnay upon The Brutalist.

An hour ago I checked with domain.com and discovered that www.stopwicked.com, stopwicked,org and stopwicked.net are available.

Posted a few hours ago by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Seth Abramovitch:

“A week into its release, Wicked is starting to shape up as a serious contender. Elphaba isn’t flying off to the Western sky with statuette in hand quite yet, but there’s no denying that Wicked has a lot going for it in its bid to win best picture.

“Let’s start with the obvious. Academy members don’t just like Wicked — they love Wicked. At the Directors Guild, PGA and SAG screenings in both Los Angeles and New York, as well as at the Academy screening, capacity crowds burst into applause after many songs and gave the film a rapturous standing ovation after the cliffhanger finale.

“Guild members are known to give standing Os — they did last year for Oppenheimer when Christopher Nolan emerged for his Q&A — but according to those in attendance, the effusiveness for Wicked has been at another level.

“Then there’s the damn grosses. We are coming off a near extinction-level event for cinema — i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic, during which small streaming-friendly films like CODA and Nomadland won best picture.

“But in the post-plague era, some voters seem to be hungry for spectacle. Last year, Oppenheimer was the perfect mix of IMAX-sized visuals and weighty subject matter — a billion-dollar earner the Academy could proudly point to and say, ‘This is the cinematic gold standard.’ That bodes well for Wicked.”

Wicked is a ride, all right, but “cinematic gold-standard” is a whole ‘nother realm.

…are probably doomed to repeat it.

Three of us ordered breakfast this morning inside Raymond’s of Montclair, an obviously storied, 20th Century establishment that may (I say “may”) have begun serving food as a Swedish smorgasbord eatery called The Three Crowns back in the 1930s or before. I’m not really sure.

It obviously began life as an old-time, pre-war restaurant of some kind. It’s the sort of place that James Stewart’s George Bailey or Gig Young’s Martin Sloan or Fredric March’s Al Stephenson may have visited with their families during the holidays.

Before doing my research I asked three waiters at Raymond’s if they knew when this spiffy yesteryear joint (excellent food, beautifully maintained, well-weathered under the surface) began serving food. Two weren’t sure; our own waiter said 1979. (Note: I found out later that the place apparently began as a breakfast and lunch place in ’89, and the current upscale version was created roughly 20 years ago.)

“That can’t be right,” I said to her. “Maybe the owners began in ‘79 but this place was obviously designed and built in the 1920s or ‘30s..something like that.”

She shrugged her shoulders and said that’s all she knew. Translation: “To me a place that began serving 45 years ago is old, old, old, and that’s about as far back as I can navigate from my Millennial or Zoomer viewpoint.”

Alternate translation: “We don’t really care that much. We’re waiters, not historians. You’re not going to give us bigger tips if we can recite this place’s history chapter-and-verse. We’ve never even heard of It’s a Wonderful Life or The Best Years of Our Lives, much less seen them. To us, Gig Young is about as relatable to our culture or way of seeing things as the pharoah Amenhotep.”

Our waiter told us there are black-and-white photos hanging upon a rear bathroom-adjacent wall, and that’s where I picked up on The Three Crowns.

People born after 1980 don’t particularly want to consider the way things were during the Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt or Truman years, or even the Eisenhower or Kennedy era. It’s all going to be washed away down the road. 20something or 30something mutants don’t want to know. Out of sight, out of mind.

AI Overview: The history of Raymond’s in Montclair, New Jersey, includes the following events:

Raymond’s Coffee Shop

Raymond Badach opened a small coffee shop in 1989 on Church Street.

Raymond’s Restaurant:

In 2004, Badach and Joanne Ricci opened a larger restaurant in the same location. The restaurant was designed with a 1930s diner/brasserie look by artists Ian McPheely and Christian Garnett. Chef Matt Seeber created a menu that was part diner and part bistro.

Roman Polanski haters have kept English-subtitled Blurays of An Officer and a Spy (aka J’Accuse) off the market for the last four-plus years, and no English-sub streaming options have surfaced in the U.S. or Europe either (except via pirate sites). And yet a beautiful all–format Russian Bluray with English subs has been kicking around on eBay for a year or two. It took me a long time to wake up to this. I’m now a proud owner.

…I’d never even heard of Salmon P. Chase, the seventh Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1864-1873) whose facial features adorned the $10K bill, which was printed between 1878 and 1934.

$1K bills were printed between 1861 and 1954; the small-sized Grover Cleveland version was issued in 1928 and 1934. Since 1969 banks have been required to forward $1K bills to the government for destruction.

William McKinley $500 bills were also printed between 1861 and 1945.

$100K Woodrow Wilson bills were printed by FDR’s administration “in response to hoarding of gold during the Great Depression.” 42,000 went through the printing process.

Man, would I love to carry a couple of McKinley or Cleveland bills in my elephant-hide wallet, just to watch people’s eyes pop out of their sockets…boinnnng!

…for everything, all of it. Especially delighted that I finally own an English-subtitled Bluray of Polanski’s J’Accuse. Heartbroken that the hooligan bad guys are about to take charge and that the degradation of so much is about to kick in.

Otherwise I’m grateful for the hundreds of small pleasures and comforts and nourishments that constitute daily life…I could write a book. Good wishes and heartfelt greetings to everyone, even my comment-thread enemies…even those I’ve wished cancer upon.

Friendo:

I’d forgotten that before Clint’s Dave Garver slugs Jessica Walter’s knife-wielding Evelyn Draper — pow! — and sends her plunging to a rocky seaside death, Walter gives Donna Mills’ Tobie Williams a severe haircut.

That has to be one of the ugliest and creepiest things a cinematic serial killer has ever done to a victim — “Before I stab you to death I’m going to chop off half of your Jane Fonda-in-Klute hair.”

Clint was a young-looking 40 when he directed and starred; Walter was 29, Mills was 30 or 31, and John Larch, who played the amiable, well-dressed, Martin Balsam-like detective, was in his late 50s.

Evelyn and Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest are birds of a feather. Evelyn is a bit more manic and unhinged —almost an AIP horror film character — but they both slash their wrists in Act Two and threaten the hero’s significant domestic other during the climax.

The sexual ethos of Play Misty For Me (‘71) presents Dave, a KRML deejay who drives an Austin Healy and lives in a cliffside bungalow, as an innocent libertine. By 2024 standards mellow Dave is almost the bad guy — a handsome, low-key hound who gets laid whenever and with whomever (pick of the litter!) with a general understanding that casual, no-big-deal affairs are part of the no-strings nookie game of the Nixon era. No internet or social media spears or frowning feminist currents — an exotic world as different from our own as Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

I’m not saying that if either Wicked, Emilia Perez or The Brutalist win the Best Picture Oscar, it’ll feel like an apocalypse to me personally. Actually I am kinda saying that, to be honest.

If either Perez or Wicked win, I’ll feel the next morning like I did on 11.6.24.

THR’s Scott Feinberg recently wrote that a vote for Perez and/or Karla Sofia Gascon could be seen around town as a fuck-you vote against The Beast, and that this symbology could be a determining factor.

Please don’t do this, Academy. On a certain level movies like Emilia Perez and the attendant wokey influenza within are among the reasons that Trump won.

The bumblefucks didn’t so much vote against Kamala Harris as they voted against men competing in women’s sports. Please don’t make things worse by doubling down on this shit. Please consider backing away from radical gender fluidity and transitioned six-foot biomales competing againet female swimmers, and come down to the normal earth amidst the mindsets of Joe and Jane Popcorn.