Meryl Streep let Donald Trump have it right between the eyes last night, deploring his “instinct to humiliate” and more particularly a “performance” he gave earlier this year that “stunned” her, she said, and “sank its hooks in my heart…not because it was good…there was nothing good about it…but it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth.
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter,” she explained. Everyone knew what she meant, but for those who’ve been living in a deep cave, the video clip is below.
One of Trump’s tweeted responses put Streep down as an “over-rated” actress. Really? Of all the retorts in all the gin joints in all the world, that‘s what he went with?
8:01 pm: Moonlight, to my surprise, beats Manchester By The Sea for Best Picture, Drama. I respect Moonlight but I politely and respectfully disagree with this decision. But this is America, folks. We like what we like and love what we love. Barry Jenkins: “Tell a friend, tell a friend, tell a friend.”
7:58 pm: Isabelle Huppert wins Best Actress, Drama — the second big upset of the night! (The other being Mahershala Ali‘s shutdown.) What happened to the Natalie Portman movement or groundswell or whatever? Best Actress Oscar Advantage: Emma Stone.
7:51 pm: Manchester By The Sea‘s Casey Affleck takes Best Actor, Drama…of course. Carved in stone, foretold by the Gods. And they’re playing him off! Casey rambled a bit, but he kept it real. The Fox party is totally in chit-chat, wallah-wallah, have-another-drink mode. Nobody except for myself, Variety‘s Kris Tapley and maybe seven or eight others are actually watching the show. They’re all checking Twitter for the latest.
7:45 pm: Six Golden Globe awards for La La Land with the winning of Best Comedy or Musical Feature, or whatever it’s called. Non-Dramatic bing bang hoo-hah.
Apologies for the cruddy resolution of the below video, but the absence of wifi in the Fox tent means I can’t upload a high-quality version.
Renowned cinematographer and HE wifi-provider Svetlana Cvetko.
7:35 pm: Emma Stone wins Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy…of course! I’ll listen to her acceptance speech later! Because I’m surrounded by champagne-buzzed, dressed-to-the-nines 30somethings going “yap yap yap yop yap yap yap yap….who won? Oh, Emmma Stone, whatever…yap yap yap yop yap yap yap.”
7:22: La La Land‘s Damien Chazelle wins for Best Director. Everything falls perfectly into line. Donald Glover, the Atlanta guy, wins for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical Series. Four Globe awards for La La Land so far — zip for Manchester (wait for Casey) and Moonlight.
7:11 pm: Four well-dressed 30somethings are standing five or six feet away and laughing and cackling and barking at each other (“Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!”) and totally ignoring Meryl Streep‘s remarks. They’re also preventing me from hearing what she’s saying. You guys…you’re so funny! And so well-dressed! Meryl’s against mixed martial arts? I’ll have to watch it on YouTube tonight. Missing most of the speeches and repartee mildly sucks.
7:00 pm: I’ll be able to appreciate the finer points of Viola Davis‘s shpiel when I see the re-broadcast. The sound is too sharp, too thin, too barky. I just heard her say the word “encapsulate.” I watch the flat screen, hear random words, recognize the famous and then check Twitter to see what just happened or what the punch line was. Oh, I see — she’s introducing Meryl Streep and her Cecil B, DeMille award. I’m really hoping Meryl lays into Trump in one way or another. Impressive clip reel.
6:50 pm: Claire Foy, whom I don’t know or, to be perfectly honest, have a lot of room in my head for, has just won a Best Actress award for The Crown, which I’ll probably never see. Just being honest. The Crown just won another award for Best TV Series, Drama. Okay, maybe I’ll give it a looksee when I get a break.
6:48 pm: The Night Manager‘s Tom Hiddleston beats The People vs. O.J. Simpson‘s Courtney Vance for Best Actor in a Limited Series, etc. Hiddleston is quite good in this Netflix series, which I didn’t frankly get around to watching until just recently, but every time I see him I think of that basketball T-shirt he wore with the words “I Love Taylor Swift” visible from a distance.
6:36 pm: Paul Verhoeven‘s Elle wins Best Foreign Language Film Award. HE approves! I can’t even remember if I predicted this, but I believe I might have.
Two days ago I agreed to tap out a 600-word piece for another outlet, one that had to be sent by late tonight at the latest. So I figured it made sense to get it done before heading out to the Golden Globe awards later this afternoon…wait, I have to leave in an hour. HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko and I are hitting the 20th Century Fox viewing party, which starts around 4:30 pm Pacific, which will turn into an after-party after the show ends around…what, 7:30 or 8 pm? There’s also an Amazon after-party I’m invited to, not to mention three or four others.
I did this last year and can report that the best part is when you’re just arriving. The space is fresh and spotless and freshly-vacuumed with nine or ten elevated flat screens showing the red-carpet interviews with various hors d’oeuvres being served and everyone greeting everyone else and feeling great about being there. Then the show kicks off, and the next two or three hours are diverting. Then it ends and a huge crowd streams in, the partying begins and the noise levels rise and rise higher, and after an hour of this I’m ready to bolt. Okay, 90 minutes. Here are my Golden Globe predictions.
Hollywood Elsewhere and producer Victoria Wisdom happily schmoozed at two pre-Golden Globe parties today — a La La Land soiree at Ciccone’s West Hollywood followed by a Paramount gathering at the Chateau Marmont. La La attendees included Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, director-writer Damian Chazelle, composer Justin Hurwitz; the only headliners I noticed at the CM were Arrival‘s Amy Adams and Paramount honcho Brad Grey, although I heard Florence Foster Jenkins star Meryl Streep was around. Then I got back and assessed the photos, and I have to say I’m getting fed up with the occasionally cruddy quality of my iPhone 6 Plus technology. I looked at a Canon Powershot G5X a couple of days ago at Samy’s on Fairfax — a better device than the old Powershots of five or six years ago, for sure, but $700 and change? A tax deductible purchase but I flinched all the same.
(l. to r.) Ryan Gosling, La La lyricist Justin Paul, composer Justin Hurwitz, producer Marc Platt, Emma Stone at Ciccone’s — Saturday, 1.7, 4:35 pm. (Murky, muddy, nowhere near sharp enough — fail.)
Damien Chazelle, Victoria Wisdom. (Very unhappy with photo quality.)
Chazelle, La La Land costar John Legend. (Ditto.)
Chateau Marmont men’s room.
Victoria Wisdom, Tom Hiddleston.
(l. to r.) Paul, Hurwitz, Stone, lyricist Benj Pasek.
Jimmy Fallon, who will emcee tomorrow night’s Golden Globes award telecast, will be on Hollywood Elsewhere’s shit list for the foreseeable future (forever?), and I’ve mentioned him in this context so many times I don’t think I need to explain it again.
“[Perhaps] you already know what to expect [tomorrow night]: a star-studded opening number with ambitious tracking shots, singing, dancing, costumes, impressions, fawning odes to the nominees, silly audience play, and scattershot jokes in which the punch lines are never more than gentle pokes.
“This instinct is coded inside Fallon’s DNA. He’s the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. He’s the ratings leader. He’s a television star in his own right. But more than anything, he is Hollywood’s No. 1 fan, a man-boy saddled with a pop culture obsession who believes life is a karaoke machine inside a frat house where everything is awesome and everyone plays board games before pounding back midnight shots from the fountain of youth and declaring mad love for one another.
“In this cloud of arrested development, Fallon is the affable ringleader. He hugs. He high-fives. He giggles. He claps like a trained seal. He never offends.
Emma Stone’s handlers won’t admit it, but one of the motives behind this Rolling Stone cover is to appeal to the Academy’s geezer horndogs. Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has said time and again that this voting bloc often (always?) votes for the Best Actress nominee who looks the hottest. Not my notion — just an apparent fact of life.
My La La Land Bluray arrived yesterday — thank you, powers-that-be!
The storied Formosa Cafe, which has been in operation since 1939, shut its doors about two weeks ago, according to a just-posted L.A. Weekly article by Dennis Romero. The venue’s license was suspended in October due to unpaid taxes, Romero reports. The real reason, I suspect, is the big expanded shopping area that was built to the east of the Formosa, which has drawn most of the foot traffic. The Formosa is as important to Los Angeles culture as the Pacific Ocean, Venice Beach, the Hollywood Bowl, Mulholland Drive, Stone Canyon and Disney Hall. It’s a major tragedy to lose places with this kind of history, charm and character, but L.A. does this all the time. I went down to Santa Monica Blvd. and Formosa Ave. last night to see it with my own eyes. It’s dark, all right — a sarcophagus. Then again someone might come along and re-open the place. Maybe.
On top of the Formosa closing my favorite Vietnamese restaurants, both under the moniker of 9021Pho, have also shuttered. Both branches (one in Beverly Hills, the other at 7950 Sunset near Fairfax) went suddenly dark within the last week or so. The website says there are also 9021Phos in Sherman Oaks and Glendale — I don’t know what their situation is.
Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson, co-directors of The Ivory Game, a respected Netflix doc about the ongoing assault on African elephants and their possible extinction, at last Wednesday night’s reception in Beverly Hills. Pic is on the Academy’s doc shortlist and is naturally hoping to become one of the five nominees. The Ivory Game is more timely now that China has put an official timeline on ending sale of ivory. For decades China has been the biggest market for ivory, which is principally harvested with the killing of elephants and chopping off their tusks, but on 12.29 or thereabouts it announced a plan to phase out all ivory processing and trade by the end of 2017.
From Maureen Dowd‘s 1.7 N.Y. Times column, “White House Red Scare”: “The capital has never been more anxious about its own government. The town is suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder. This guy is really going to be president. No one knows what is going to happen, but they know it will be utter chaos and that the old familiar ways have vaporized.
“The city has the panicked air of a B-horror movie where the townsfolk stand stock still, bug-eyed and frozen, too frightened to flee, waiting for the creature.”
Hell-bent terrorists aren’t stupid, and they know what an opportunity they’ll soon have. Their goal is to provoke the U.S. into such a rage that the wrath of the powers-that-be will descend upon the Islamic-Muslim community like nothing seen before and create a U.S. vs. Islam war, and they know that Trump and his hair-trigger appointees are perfect foils in this regard. Another terrible attack is almost certainly going to happen, and when it does…God help us. Along with all the other horrors (climate destruction, diminishment of health care, Russian alliance) that are waiting in the wings.
A friend forwarded a piece (which I won’t link to) written by a “pissed-off liberal” about being flooded with emotional melt-down memories of ’60s nirvana days. “An earnestly felt if overwritten first paragraph,” I replied, “and then the piece devolves into the usual litany of cliches. No sober perspective, no ‘I can see clearly now’ assessments”…just a dreamy memory pool.
“No, it wasn’t that either…it was ’66 and half of ’67. That’s all it was.” — Lem Dobbs line from The Limey, as spoken by Peter Fonda.
Dobbs was saying that the ‘mid ’60s current was serene and cosmic and gentle and heavenly when the hippie thing first hatched in early ’66 (if you lived in really charmed circles the seeds were discernible in ’65) but it got worse and worse as it spread out from the charmed realms and elite circles (musicians, academics, writers, poets, adventurers) and filtered down into the broader social realm. The spiritual elan and property values began to fall and fall along with the hygiene levels.
27 members of the august National Society of Film Critics have given their Best Picture award to Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight — a nicely woven, entirely admirable small-scale drama about timidity, cowering, sexuality, nurturing and acceptance. Never saw that one coming! The critical dweeb elite has been creaming over this film since Telluride, and there’s nothing wrong with their having done so. The film is good, Barry is cool, the A24 guys have refined taste buds, etc.
But a bigger headline is the fact that the NSFC has given the great Isabelle Huppert its Best Actress award for her performances in Elle and Things To Come. Huppert power! The Best Actress runner-ups were 20th Century Women‘s Annette Bening and Toni Erdmann‘s Sandra Huller (who’s actually quite good in an otherwise mostly tiresome film).
And — surprise of surprises! — the Viola Davis inevitability factor in the Best Supporting Actress race has been temporarily halted by the NSFC’s decision to give their trophy to Manchester By The Sea‘s Michelle Williams…amazing! Not to mention richly deserved. Almost every other critics org (except for those eccentric, food-obsessed LAFCA guys, who went for Certain Women‘s Lily Gladstone along with maybe two or three other outliers) has bowed down to the Davis blitzkrieg.
The NSFC’s Best Supporting Actress runners-up were Gladstone and Moonlight‘s Naomi Harris.
Manchester By The Sea‘s Casey Affleck — undimmed, unbowed, inevitable — has won the NSFC’s Best Actor trophy. Fences‘ Denzel Washington and Paterson‘s Adam Driver were first and second runners-up.
Moonlight‘s Mahershala Ali continues to run the table with this, his latest Best Supporting Actor trophy, which, boiled down, is basically about giving “Little” a swimming lesson in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Miami. Good dad, kindly nurturer, gentle vibes…Ali wins. (And Manchester‘s Lucas Hedges, who gave the year’s best supporting performance, wins zip.)
The NSFC’s Best Supporting runners-up are Hell or High Water‘s Jeff Bridges followed by Nocturnal Animals‘ Michael Shannon.
Manchester By The Sea‘s Kenneth Lonergan has won their Best Screenplay award with Moonlight‘s Barry Jenkins and Hell or High Water‘s Taylor Sheridan occupying the first and second runners-up positions.
Moonlight‘s James Laxton has won the NSFC’s Best Cinematography award. The runners-up are La La Land‘s Linus Sandgren and Silence‘s Rodrigo Prieto (bravo!).
In a pinch I could maybe, possibly have sex with a warm, oven-heated apple pie (or a pumpkin or pecan pie), but never, ever would I get down with a piece of mushy fruit. Because of the possibility of stinging pain caused by citrusy, acidic juices…hello?
For some reason this doesn’t stop Elio, a 17 year-old twink type from a wealthy Italian family, in Andre Aciman‘s “Call Me By Your Name“, a 2007 gay romance novel that is well respected by critics and celebrated in gay circles. And so Elio fucks a cut-open peach. Moreover, after Elio is “finished” with it, he gives the peach to Oliver, his object of off-and-on romantic obsession, and Oliver wolfs it down, slurpy juices and all. Or something like that.
Call Me By Your Name costars Armie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet.
Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino.
This is one reason, at least, why Luca Guadagnino‘s film adaptation of Aciman’s book, which costars Armie Hammer as Oliver and Timothee Chalamet as Elio, is currently a hot topic of conversation.
Call Me By Your Name will premiere a little more than two weeks hence at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
The film is said to be Brokeback Mountain-ish — sexually frank but at the same time a refined, emotionally affecting period drama set in Italy. Maybe a little Luchino Visconti-ish, maybe a touch of Pier Paolo Pasolini…who knows? The screenplay is coauthored by Guadagnino (who directed last year’s A Bigger Splash and who also has a remake of Suspiria in the pipeline), James Ivory and Walter Fasano.
