After debuting 11 months ago at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky‘s The Polka King, a reasonably decent real-life dramedy, will begin airing on Netflix on 1.12.18.

I called it “a briskly paced, broad-brush tragicomedy that’s aimed at the none-too-hips. It’s funny and engaging as far as it goes — a kind of regional (i.e., Pennsylvania-based) farcical screwball thing. It has a tightly sprung comic attitude, and is packed (as you might presume) with traditional polka music, colorful, behind-the-eight-ball characters and all kinds of local douchebag flavor.

“It’s a bit like The Wolf of Wall Street in that it’s about a manic, larger-than-life polka-singing hustler — the real-life Jan Lewan — who ponzi-schemed his way into a five-year jail sentence about 15 years ago. The difference is that while Wolf was a half-satirical portrait of predatory financial-market culture, Polka King is about a guy who tries to flim-flam his way out of financial difficulty only to wind up in an even deeper hole.

“You know going in that the buoyant, Polish-born Jan (entertainingly nailed by the great Jack Black) is headed for a fall, so the movie is basically a waiting game — how long before Jan’s bullshit finally catches up with him? The Polka King therefore lives or dies based on how diverting or hilarious you find delusion and denial as the hallmarks of a business plan.

“I for one didn’t find it hugely amusing –the only film about relentless lying and flim-flammery that I’ve liked was Robert Zemeckis‘ Used Cars — but I took the ride and had a decent-enough time. I recognize that others who caught The Polka King last night (as I did) are down with it more than I, and that it may well prove a commercial success.

I’ve had the BFI Bluray of Ken Russell‘s Women In Love (’69) on my bookshelf since August 2016. Yesterday it was announced that Criterion will be releasing its own version on 3.27.18. The Criterion will almost certainly look identical to the BFI. Both are 4K scans of a BFI-restored print from 2015; both using a 1.75:1 aspect ratio and running 131 minutes.

The Criterion jacket features a painting of drowned lovers, taken right from the film. More alluring than the still images on the BFI Bluray.

Women in Love is Russell’s greatest work — a perfectly captured, brilliantly written period romance that pulls you in immediately with a feeling of Lawrentian eloquence and authenticity. Not as shocking or inflammatory as The Devils but richer and more flavorful and more spiritually open, not to mention erotic. Billy Williams‘ cinematography is dazzling — the pictorial detail and robust colors on the BFI Bluray are worth the price in themselves.

Released just over 48 years ago but looking fresh from the lab, Women in Love is one of the most lusciously captured films ever made about men, women and relationships (and I’m not just talking about the nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed), and one of the most articulate portrayals of the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many lovers.

It’s also one of the first mainstream films to fully explore and dramatize the lives and longings of free-spirited, semi-emancipated 20th Century women (i.e., Glenda Jackson‘s Isadora Duncan-like Gudrun and Jennie Linden‘s more conservative Ursula) in a historical context.

Posted on 8.21.16, but applicable right now: “If Women in Love had never appeared in ’69 and yet was somehow recreated by a fresh creative team and released this fall by Focus Features or Fox Searchlight, it would instantly vault into the Best Picture category. Because nobody and I mean nobody makes brainy, pulsing period dramas as good as this for the theatrical market any more.”

This morning The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg posted a pre-holiday Oscar race chart. One standout call was Feinberg’s decision to throw in with Variety‘s Kris Tapley by describing Darkest Hour as a “maybe not” in the Best Picture race. In Feinberg parlance and especially in mid-December, “maybe not” contenders are given a “major threat” designation…same difference.

But even more striking is the sudden influence of the just-announced SAG Ensemble Award nominees, and particularly Feinberg’s decision to place Get Out at the very top of the Best Picture list.

Everyone realizes that Get Out is a tenacious contender that has struck a nerve, and that a Best Picture nomination is 100% locked. But placing it ahead of everything else seems….what, excessive? Delusional?

Do I have to say again that the three most Oscar-deserving films of the year — Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird and Dunkirk — are the most independent-minded and very much singing their own tune, and are far more adventurous and accomplished than Get Out?

HE readers are probably sick of this opinion, but what am I supposed to say about Feinberg going apeshit for Get Out? Declare what a seer he is?

As for the mystifying Daniel Kaluuya for Best Actor thing, I riffed on that the other day.

Two friends disagree. “Scott’s call isn’t delusional at all,” says critic #1. “I have a feeling Get Out is going to win too. I just need more intel to make a full prediction. Right now it’s down to three: Get Out, Lady Bird and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

Critic #2 says that Kalyuua gives “a strong performance in an important film, and [the Kaluuya talk] is retroactive justice for Sidney Poitier NOT getting a Best Actor nom for In the Heat of the Night 50 years ago, while costar Rod Steiger did and won the category.”

So 2017 is not the year of women pushing back at the patriarchy and sexual misconduct, and we’re still offering make-up apologies for #OscarsSoWhite?

“I don’t see it that way,” critic #2 replied. “Get Out overcame its genre stereotyping to become one of the most significant and talked-about films of 2017.”

For the 37th or possibly 38th time, Get Out is just a hooky genre film — a satirical horror-thriller that delivers a social metaphor message a la Don Siegel‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and is pitched squarely at mainstream liberals. That’s really ALL IT IS. But when you add the cheering section factor, Get Out begins to morph into this on-target, Bunuelian, capturing-of-a-zeitgeist film. Sizzle overwhelming the actual flavor of the steak.

A few hours ago I was pulling out of the Real D parking lot and onto Crescent Drive, and right in front of me — hah! — was a “President Nixon — Now More Than Ever” bumper sticker on a recent-model Beemer. I laughed, of course — best one of the day. I wasn’t fast enough to take a photo, but this 1972 bumper sticker is all over the web.

Richard Nixon was in some ways a resentful, paranoid and self-destructive fellow, and he’ll always have a shadowy rep for having inaugurated the “Southern Strategy” — i.e., conservative Republicans appealing to rural Southerners on racial grounds. But in other ways and certainly in comparison to the wildly intemperate Donald Trump, Nixon was almost a liberal moderate.

Six and half years ago I wrote that “if Nixon were to return to earth with the same mind and spirit and perspective that he had before he died in the ’90s but in the body of a go-getter Congressman from Southern California, and he’d probably have a tough time getting re-elected because he’d be considered too moderate, too thoughtful, too practical.”

I can’t say anything about Ridley Scott‘s All The Money In The World (Sony, 12.25), but I sure as hell saw it this afternoon.

I can at least say it felt like a special, very historic occasion, watching a brand-new, big-studio, major-league film that had just re-shot significant portions (i.e., all of Christopher Plummer‘s scenes, which happened mostly in England) less than a month ago. And then came the pleasure of talking to Scott right afterwards during a q & a and then over drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the lobby.

May I also say…? Okay, not allowed. But I was in a pretty good mood when the lights came up.

Ridley was asked about the high stress levels that came with the hasty re-shoot period (11.20 to 11.30). He replied, “If you don’t enjoy stress, don’t do the job…I thrive on stress. For me stress is [figuring] what to do on the weekends.”

What an adventurer, what an El Cid this guy is! He eats this shit for breakfast. A special Oscar is warranted, Academy members.

All The Money In The World director Ridley Scott talking to Bill Desowitz in lobby of Real D screening room following this afternoon’s 3 pm screening.

Rotten Tomatoes critics have given The Last Jedi a 93% approval rating, but this evening or near the end of the first full day of public screenings, Rian Johnson’s film has a 56% “like” rating from Joe and Jane Popcorn. Correct me if I’m wrong but this doesn’t seem like a good sign. Saturday update: 86,634 viewers have now voted, and the rating is at 57%.

The “likes” on almost all the other popular movies are in the 80s and 90s. 71,000 people voted, and I don’t see how a 57% or 58% “like” is anything but a huge whoa! for Disney, Johnson, Kathy Kennedy, Bob Iger, et. al.

Who saw it today and what was the room temperature as everyone was exiting the theatre?

Bill Maher and his Real Time pallies are family to me. I was just shooting the shit with Ridley Scott at the Real D screening room, but I don’t have a social clique to speak of and I don’t chew the fat with my Shenandoah Valley neighbors on my front porch and I don’t drink and socialize in Manhattan bars and cafes, which is another kind of “family” activity. All I have or had, I should say, on Friday nights was Real Time, but it’s currently on hiatus until mid January. And this is the time of year when you really value family get-togethers so I’m really not very happy about this.

This is real. Nobody’s kidding around here. There are actually people out there who will (probably) pay to wear Rag & Bone clothes borrowed from wardrobe stylings of previous Stars Wars films. (Choke, cough.) I would actually consider wearing Han Solo‘s outfit (vest, boots, tight jeans) from A New Hope — I could see myself in that.

It’s significant, I think, that at the end of this months-old Vanity Fair video that Mark Hamill talks about the joy and satisfaction of “giving Star Wars fans what they want,” or words to that effect.

Monumental, world-class cinema had never been about giving ticket buyers what they think they want because they don’t know what that is, not really. They only know what they liked before, and so an attitude of “give them what they want” amounts to a kind of creative death sentence.

It’s always been the task of first-class filmmakers (and innovators in other industries, for that matter) to deliver the next essential thing — to give the public what it will want once it sees and hears and understands what that thing is. [Video after jump.]

An hour from now (3 pm) I’ll be sitting down with Ridley Scott‘s All The Money In The World (Sony, 12.25), followed by a Scott q & a and then a sip-and-munch reception. Reactions are embargo’ed until Tuesday, 12.19, but I’m saying this again loud and clear to all responsible parties — don’t destroy or hide the Kevin Spacey footage. Please incldue it on the ATMITW Bluray.

Sony and Scott didn’t decide to re-shoot Spacey’s scenes with Christopher Plummer over aesthetic difficulties with Spacey’s performance. They did this due to understandable political reasons, but it’s not the craziest notion in the world that five or ten or perhaps 20 years hence Spacey might not be considered a total pariah, as he is now. History insists that Scott and Sony preserve Spacey’s performance and let history consider the merit of what he delivered.

Steven Spielberg‘s The Post had a big premiere last night in Washington, D.C. HE’s own Ann Hornaday, the Post‘s senior film critic and learned explorer of all things Hollywood past and present, conducted what I presume was a post-screening discussion with Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk and Bradley Whitford.

HE readers who recently took issue with Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson for calling All The President’s Men “sexist” should know that Streep is on the same page:

“Our history about The Washington Post [has been] largely formed by All the President’s Men, in which she doesn’t appear,” Streep said last night. “And she was responsible for the courageous stance that the reporters were able to take.

“I don’t think there’s a woman alive who hasn’t found herself at the pinnacle of her career and doesn’t feel in some way the imposter syndrome — insecurity. [Graham] was on one of the most brilliant people of the 20th century, male or female, [and] yet she still felt inadequate. I relate to that. I think many women can. And that’s a shame. That’s a shame.”

If you want a concise capturing of the Robespierre-vs.-Danton “terror” mentality out there, look no farther than Dee Lockett’s 12.14 Vulture piece about Matt Damon‘s apparent failure (in her view) to sufficiently condemn recently revealed episodes of sexual misconduct.

It is Lockett‘s assessment, in other words, that Damon has revealed a certain hedging, equivocating attitude in a 12.14 video interview with Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers.

Just as Maximilien Robespierre felt that Georges Danton had shown too much leniency toward the enemies of the French Revolution. He doesn’t quite get it, he’s not really with us, off with his head.

Damon totally condemns Harvey Weinstein and has no issue with Kevin Spacey being sent away, but he goes too easy, Lockett feels, on Louis C.K. and Al Franken. Damon also cuts Casey Affleck a break because they’re Boston friends from way back, and in that respect Lockett may have a point.

Lockett is essentially saying that Damon needs to be schooled and maybe bitch-slapped around because he hasn’t quite picked up the Rose McGowan flag.

But if you watch the video and read Damon’s actual quotes, he doesn’t sound immoral or ethically blinded. He sounds to me like a sane, honest and reasonable guy. Note: I’ve mashed some of Damon’s quotes together. Some aren’t posted in the sequence in which they were spoken.

Damon #1: “We’re in this watershed moment [about sexual misconduct], and I think it’s great…totally necessary. We’re so energized to get retribution, we live in this culture of outrage. [And right now] we’re in the bar fight stage of this thing, and that’s fine because that rage is deserved. But then what?”