I was looking yesterday for an enthusiasm trigger as I read several Venice Film Festival reviews of Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix, 9.28). Alas, I found myself in a depression pit after hearing from a critic friend that the only encounter between Ana de Armas‘s Marilyn Monroe and Caspar Phillipson‘s John F. Kennedy is a blowjob scene. Just that, nothing more.

I understand that the basic Blonde game is about conveying how much of Monroe’s life was shaped by cruel and callous sexism, but my heart sank when I heard this all the same.

The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, a Netflix doc that relies on investigative reporting by Anthony Summers, claims that Monroe’s relationship with JFK dates back to the early ’50s, and repeats the legend that in 1961 and ’62 Monroe was on intimate terms with both Kennedy brothers. Not to mention the May 1962 “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” showstopper in Madison Square Garden plus the after-party encounter at Arthur Schlesinger‘s Manhattan apartment. A whole lot of swirling subcurrents, and all of it reduced to a single act of servitude. That hurts, man.

This strongly suggests that Dominik’s film, closely adhering to the extremely somber slant of Joyce Carol Oates’ 22-year-old same-titled novel, is a series of ugly encounters with cruel, compassion-less men who used and abused Monroe willy nilly.

We’ve all understood for decades that the life of poor Marilyn (aka Norma Jean Baker) was too often defined by bruisings and anguish and emotional starvation at the hands of heartless scumbags, but I was hoping against hope that Blonde might spare us to some extent, perhaps by injecting or even inventing some unusual or unexpected emotional grace notes from time to time. The reviews indicate otherwise.

Of all the Monroe biographers, Donald Spoto is probably the most scrupulous. Consider this excerpt from a Popsugar article, written by by Bret Stephens and posted on 8.29.18:

“Multiple Marilyn historians, including respected biographer Donald Spoto, who wrote the 1993 book ‘Marilyn Monroe: The Biography’, allege that the most plausible time that Marilyn and JFK could have had a sexual encounter was during a party at Bing Crosby‘s home in Palm Springs, CA, on March 24, 1962.

“Marilyn’s masseur and close friend Ralph Roberts told Spoto that he received a call from the actress asking him for massage techniques for muscles of the back, and that he ‘heard a distinctive Boston accent in the background’ before Marilyn handed the phone to President Kennedy.

“Roberts added, ‘Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her ‘affair’ with JFK. A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that.”

HE insert: What about investigator Paul Otash’s claim that he overheard a sexual encounter between JFK and Monroe at Peter Lawford’s beach home?

Back to Stephens: “It was reportedly that night at Crosby’s home that John asked Marilyn to perform at his upcoming birthday party at Madison Square Garden.

“Despite the fact that JFK’s philandering ways were well known, it’s most likely that his connection with Marilyn was just a dalliance and nothing more than a one-night stand. Was it salacious? Yes. But was it the torrid, persisting affair that we’ve been told it was? All signs point to ‘nah.'”

HE feels that it’s morally and artistically wrong to confine the JFK-MM thing to a single oral episode. Talk about cutting the heart out of things. Talk about harshly dismissive.

Last night Deadline‘s Michael Fleming reported that Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers, a low-key, Christmas-themed ensemble comedy with Paul Giamatti as “a disliked curmudgeonly teacher” at an elite New England private school, will be screened this weekend for distributors and marketers in Toronto.

The Holdovers “isn’t officially on the for-sale lists,” Fleming wrote, “but I expect it to be a big deal. And it’s very possible that one of the usual suspects will step up and put this film [into] the awards season race late in the year.”

The film’s Wiki page says Miramax is the distributor but maybe they’re looking to partner with someone or negotiate a hand-off of some kind,

The Holdovers began shooting in Massachusetts on 1.27.22. A seemingly finished version of Payne’s film was research-screened in Santa Monica on Thursday, 8.11, and was well received, I’m told, as a “return to form.” I’ve been presuming all along that it won’t emerge until Cannes 2023 at the earliest, but why show it to distributors during TIFF ’22 if there isn’t at least a willingness to consider an end-of-the-year opening?

Here’s hoping that the celebrated creator of Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, Citizen Ruth, The Descendants and Nebraska is back in that deliciously wise, character-driven groove that we’ve all come to associate with Payneworld and whom we all love and cherish despite the disappointment with Downsizing…here’s hoping that the Payne flag will soon rise again, rippling in the wind at the top of the smarthouse flagpole.

Step outside the woke-critic realm and there’s a sizable body of opinion (or so I determined after speaking with Telluride viewers) that Sarah Polley‘s Women Talking is a static, dialogue-driven #MeToo chamber piece that could be fairly described as a “tough sit.”

Based on Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, which is “loosely based on real-life events that occurred in 2011 at the Manitoba Colony in Bolivia,” Women Talking is about several women dealing with corrosive sexual trauma.

Set within an isolated American Mennonite community, Women Talking focuses on a nocturnal, seemingly dusk-to-dawn discussion inside a barn, and focuses on eight or so women debating whether to leave their community to escape the brutality of several men who have repeatedly drugged and raped them.

Fortified by several first-rate performances (most notably from Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy) and currently enjoying a 92% and 90% approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively, the post-Telluride narrative is that Women Talking will probably be Best Picture-nominated and will certainly be in the running for a SAG Best Ensemble prize.

The other narrative is that this counted-on support for Women Talking will be largely emotional (particularly driven by the overturning of Roe v. Wade) and certainly political.

As I wrote in a 9.5 piece called “Telluride Hive Mind,” “The elite Telluride critic community feels it has no choice but to worship Polley‘s film…politically speaking there’s no upside to not praising it.”

I added that Women Talking is “sturdy and nicely handled as far as it goes, but sitting through it felt confining and interminable. For me, it was almost totally about waiting for it to end.”

The indisputably brave, lone-wolfish Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal: “Critically acclaimed as an oblique commentary on the #MeToo moment, it’s an example of a prestige film that is more focused on point-scoring than coherence.”

A sentence in Jordan Ruimy’s mostly negative Toronto assessment, however, gave me pause: “There were women sobbing all around me during the press & industry screening of Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, so I assume the film will work with a large contingent of people. But it fell flat for me.”

Roe v. Wade plus Toronto “sobbing” means Women Talking isn’t going away and will command repeated salutations in award-season assessment articles between now and early ’23 (the Oscar telecast happens on 3.12.23). The bottom line is that, as THR‘s Scott Feinberg suggested during Telluride, a significant percentage of Academy and guild members will probably be less than enthused.

This won’t stop the wokester cabal, of course. They will push for Women Talking with the same fervor they used to (unsuccessfully) take down Green Book, and which some of them will use to diminish Sam Mendes‘ immensely affecting Empire of Light, which will absolutely be Best Picture-nominated…trust me.

I’ve said before that I’m not especially interested in Disney’s live-action, Robert Zemeckis-directed, Tom Hanks-starring musical Pinocchio (Disney, 9.8), and that my real interest is in Guillermo del Toro‘s fascist-Italy version, which Netflix will premiere on 12.9.22. I don’t think I even want to see the Disney version, to be honest. But what a trouncing by Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

Bernard Shaw was a first-rate TV news journalist who peaked during his time at CNN (1980-2001).

Shaw’s second most memorable moment with CNN was reporting from Baghdad on the 1991 Gulf War (“This feels like we’re in the center of hell“).

But there’s no question that Shaw’s most consequential moment happened when he drilled Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis with a highly emotional question that by normal human standards demanded some kind of emotional response. Dukakis’s refusal to answer with his heart did a lot to kill his chances of being elected.

Shaw had asked if Dukakis would support an “irrevocable death penalty” for a man who had hypothetically raped and murdered Dukakis’s wife. Dukakis’s reply was logical, measured and legalistic, and so doing he defined himself as a chilly technocrat.

This debate answer plus Willie Horton plus Rocky the Squirrel on a military tank did the job. Dukakais is still with us at age 88.

In the wake of his mother’s passing at age 96, the 73-year-old Charles, Prince of Wakes, has unofficially become the King of England, to be ceremoniously crowned in due time. It was only two days ago when Queen Elizabeth received the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, in Balmoral Castle. The moment has happened; no one is gut-punched; tradition soldiers on. Ten days of pomp and cirumstance to follow.

HE congratulates New York Film Festival chief Eugene Hernandez on being named the new director of the Sundance Film Festival and head of public programming, following the departure of Tabitha Jackson three months ago.

Hernandez has piloted the New York Film Festival for the past three years, and of course was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of IndieWire, the indie-focused news-and-opinion trade that has become synonymous with ardent. dug-in woke-itude.

Eugene certainly has his work cut out for him. Sundance has been stalling for four or five years now, but HE is hoping that he can turn things around. The Sundance glory era ran from the early ’90s until 2016 or ’17, but nothing is forever and all things must pass.

Here’s how I put on 12.27.21: