An invitation to a Sunday, 12.4 afternoon screening of Martin Scorsese‘s Silence came in this afternoon, but the Broadcast Film Critics Award nominations have to be filled out and sent in by the evening of 11.29 (i.e., tomorrow). Paramount informed BFCA honchos some time ago that they wouldn’t be able to screen Silence for the entire membership in time for the 11.29 deadline, but I think the BFCA should ignore this logistical hurdle. Out of respect for Scorsese’s standing as a world-class filmmaker and his herculean efforts in finally making this film after years of struggle, the BFCA membership (which is filling out initial ballots today and tomorrow) should nominate Silence for Best Picture, sight unseen. (If they cut Star Wars: The Force Awakens some slack, they can certainly cut Marty some.) Once nominated, the BFCA can vote on Silence one way or another during final balloting, which has to be submitted by the evening of 12.9. Presumably the full membership will have had a chance to see Silence by then.

Last night a pair of posts about HBO’s vaguely infuriating Westworld series — one by Matt of Sleaford, the other by brenkilco — really hit the nail on the head. Together they explain why some viewers feel that good movies, which have to set everything up and pay off within two hours or so, are more satisfying than longform episodics. Here’s what they said in condensed form:

Brenkilco: “The problem with episodic TV narratives designed to blow minds is that the form and intention are at odds. A show designed to run until the audience gets tired of it cannot by definition have a satisfying structure. It can only keep throwing elements into the mix until, like Lost or Twin Peaks, it collapses under the weight of its own intriguing but random complications.

“Teasing this stuff out is easy. But eventually the rent comes due. Dramatic resolutions are demanded. The threads have to be pulled together. And that’s when things gets ugly.”

Matt of Sleaford: “Westworld is a puzzle-box show, which is kind of the opposite of a soap opera. Puzzle-box shows, like the aforementioned Lost and X-Files, can be fun to chew on while they’re progressing. But the solution is almost always anticlimactic. And though it may seem counterintuitive, puzzle-box shows are less effective in the internet era, because someone in the vast sea of commenters is almost certain to solve the puzzle before the end (see: Thrones, Game of).”

The 2016 Gotham Awards will start livestreaming from Cipriani Wall Street around…what, 8 pm Eastern? I’m still banking on Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea winning four of the awards — Best Feature, Best Actor (Casey Affleck), Best Screenplay (Lonergan) and Breakthrough Actor (Lucas Hedges).

Here are the nominations — HE’s predicted wins are in boldface caps:

Best Feature: Certain Women (d: Kelly Reichardt, IFC Films); Everybody Wants Some! (d: Richard Linklater, Paramount Pictures); MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (d: Kenneth Lonergan, Amazon/Roadside); Moonlight (d: Barry Jenkins, A24); Paterson (d: Jim Jarmusch, Amazon).

Best Documentary: Cameraperson (d: Kirsten Johnson, Janus Films); I Am Not Your Negro (d: Raoul Peck, Magnolia Pictures); O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (d: Ezra Edelman, director, ESPN Films); Tower (D: Keith Maitland, Kino Lorber, Independent Lens); Weiner (d: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg, Sundance Selects and Showtime Documentary Films). QUALIFIER: If Edelman’s doc doesn’t win, Weiner might take it.

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: ROBERT EGGERS for The Witch (A24); Anna Rose Holmer for The Fits (Oscilloscope Laboratories); Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert for Swiss Army Man (A24); Trey Edward Shults for Krisha (A24); Richard Tanne for Southside with You (Roadside Attractions/Miramax). QUALIFIER: If Eggers doesn’t win, the Swiss Army guys might.

Best Screenplay: Hell or High Water, Taylor Sheridan (CBS Films); Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman (Amazon Studios); Manchester by the Sea, KENNETH LONERGAN (Amazon); Moonlight, Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney; Screenplay by Barry Jenkins (A24); Paterson, Jim Jarmusch (Amazon Studios). QUALIFIER: Lonergan’s screenplay could lose to Sheridan’s Hell or High Water.

In Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove (’64), it is made abundantly clear early on that General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) is insane. The basic proof is Ripper’s adamant belief in what he calls a “monstrously conceived” Communist plot to inject fluoride into the U.S. water system. Those who insist on their own facts are, by any fair measure, detached from reality and therefore short of a 52-card deck. There are other signs of mental instability but surely the key factor must be a commitment to fantasy and imagination over anything else.

What’s the difference between Ripper’s delusion and the conclusions about the 11.8 election that were tweeted yesterday by President-elect Donald Trump? Trump stated that in the popular vote he ended up over 2 million votes behind Hillary Clinton because “millions” had voted illegally — a totally fact-free assessment. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump wrote.

The man is living on his own fake-news planet, and millions of followers have probably bought into this. Campaign-trail bullshit is one thing, but when has a U.S. President-elect ever announced this kind of straight-faced investment in alternative facts? This is what tyrants and dictators do — this is Nero time. Tell me how it’s inappropriate to apply the term “insane” to Trump as this stage. I’m serious.

What’s the difference between Trump and President Mark Hollenbach in Fletcher Knebel‘s “Night of Camp David,” a 1965 thriller about a first-term Senator, Jim MacVeagh, who comes to believe that Hollenbach has mentally gone around the bend and needs to somehow be relieved of his duties? They seem similar to me.

New York/Vulture is throwing itself a Hollywood shindig on Thursday, 12.8, at the Sunset Tower Hotel. Many of the Oscar contenders will be there “to celebrate the launch of New York‘s first-ever Oscars issue,” the invite reads. But I was a bit surprised to read that the evening will be hosted by CEO Pam Wasserstein, publisher Larry Burstein, editor-in-chief Adam Moss, culture editor Lane Brown, editorial director Neil Janowitz and Hollywood editor Stacey Wilson Hunt. These five are cool, hard-working team players but what about Vulture columnist Kyle Buchanan? He’s the Vulture presence out here, the award-season blogaroo, the guy everyone knows and reads and says hello to at screenings, etc. It’s not a huge deal that Buchanan isn’t named as a co-hoster, but it does feel curious.

I’m respectfully sorry for Warren Beatty’s calamity. In my early October dreams I thought Rules Might Apply might eke out $15 or $20 million, and then linger in the conversation with a Best Supporting Actor nom for Beatty (who’s radiates a commanding wackjob quality as Hughes), and then perform decently as a streaming title along with DVD/Bluray. But that’s all gone now.

Yes, I’ll be vaguely irked for the rest of my life that he sidestepped me on the interview front despite my having pledged to write a neckrub piece that would gingerly avoid sharing my mixed feelings about the film (which is precisely what all the other interviewers did, flirting and basking while ignoring the elephant in the room), but I’m also truly sorry for that stomach-acid sensation that he must have felt last weekend, and may still be feeling this morning.

There’s a special Beatty tribute happening on Thursday night at the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara. There will be ample respect and affection in the room, of course, but everyone will be thinking about what’s just happened. Beatty’s only option will be to throw up his hands and laugh and tell a couple of jokes about having joined the legendary box-office flop club, like a good sport. It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

In my view La La Land and Manchester by The Sea are neck and neck. Okay, Manchester might be a very close second. Moonlight is right up there but it has no torque, no rumble in the engine, and so it has reason to be fearful of Fences, which may overtake it in a week or two. All hail Hell or High Water, the Texas shitkicker bank-robbing drama that everyone has admired all along and is thinking more and more seriously about. Hidden Figures is basically a feel-good uplift thing steeped in ’60s social realism (or vice versa), and that’s mainly why it seems to be positioned ahead of the vaguely similar Loving (50something years ago, racial segregation) as we speak. Jackie is a fascinating film, but it’s mainly about Natalie Portman‘s performance. I don’t really know what Sully is doing — do you? Silence will almost certainly wedge itself into the picture once screenings begin.

Earlier this evening somebody on Twitter described Westworld as “soap-opera perfection.” In my book that reads as sprawling, echo-chamberish, complex for complexity’s sake, extended for the sake of filling a second season, hall of mirrors, and Chinese boxes that keep getting smaller and smaller. And with host after host getting stabbed in the gut with a really big fucking knife. (Westworld is as queer for belly stabbings as Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive.) Tonight’s episode, The Well-Tempered Clavier, came close to pissing me off. It certainly tested my patience.

Robert DeNiro‘s late-campaign rant about Donald Trump (“He’s a punk, he’s a dog”) was unambiguously great. Then came the tragedy of 11.8, and on 11.22 DeNiro was suddenly in a conciliatory mood, at least to go by a quote posted by The Hill: “I would only say that we’re all waiting and hoping that [Trump] will lead the country in a way that’ll benefit everyone and benefit our neighbors around the world. That’s all. We’re waiting and hoping, and we’ll see.” I know what he was saying (i.e., “Let’s wait until he fucks up to criticize him”) but how can a punk and a dog who’s nominated some of the worst people in the world for cabinet positions “lead the country in a way that’ll benefit everyone”? A leopard with ADD doesn’t change his spots — why offer the benefit of the doubt to a beast? But in a just-posted Scott Feinberg interview in The Hollywood Reporter, DeNiro is back in his blunt mode. In the wake of Trump’s election, DeNiro says, “I feel like I did after 9/11.”

Amy Zimmerman’s Daily Beast hit piece about Casey Affleck popped on 11.22 — five days ago. Thanksgiving weekend is a bad time to try and ignite discussion or gain traction. My first reaction was to leave it alone, and as of this morning I was still inclined to ignore it. But two journo pals have written me over the last two days, both asserting that “the takedown campaign has begun.” And yet so far, silence. But if others start hammering away on Monday and Tuesday, I guess there’ll be no stopping it and I’ll have to jump in whole hog. But I respectfully believe that it should stop here and now. Really. Let it go.

Affleck is described in the Zimmerman piece as having sexually harassed and intimidated to some extent I’m Not There producer Amanda White and dp Magdalena Gorka six or seven years ago. Affleck may have behaved unfortunately, but he didn’t do anything that would fall under the headings of “grotesque” or “ghastly” or “criminal.” While he may have acted in a boorish fashion, Affleck didn’t assault or hurt anyone, and while he was hit with a civil lawsuit (which he settled) he was never charged with anything. It was never on that level.

In an 11.4 N.Y. Times interview/profile of Affleck by Cara Buckley, Affleck was asked if he felt responsibility in the matter, and he replied that he did not. ‘It was settled to the satisfaction of all,’ he explained. ‘I was hurt and upset — I am sure all were — but I am over it. It was an unfortunate situation, mostly for the innocent bystanders of the families involved.'”

I believe in a separation of church (cinema) and state (personal lives of filmmakers, p.c. judgments about this or that incident of alleged bad behavior). I’ve heard stories about almost everyone in this town having acted in some kind of questionable or sleazy or abrasive manner at one time or another. It’s a slippery slope when you start saying “yeah, that’s a great film but the producer is an asshole or the lead actor betrayed his girlfriend or I got into a fender-bender with the screenwriter” or whatever.

I didn’t think that Roman Polanski‘s legal troubles in the mid ’70s should have anything to do with how good or award-worthy The Pianist was, but the online pitchforkers sure did. They tried to tar and feather Polanski that year (i.e, 2002) but he won the Best Director Oscar anyway.

Last night I watched a high-def streaming version of Lonely Are The Brave, and was dazzled once again by Philip Lathrop‘s immaculate black-and-white photography, and especially the exquisite balance in his framings. Lathrop also shot The Americanization of Emily, The Cincinnati Kid and Point Blank.

Posted on 7.29.12: “All my life I’ve been telling people that Lonely Are The Brave (’62) is one of Kirk Douglas‘s finest films, and that his performance as Jack Burns, an obstinate old-school cowboy, was his most touching. I said this to Douglas when I interviewed him 30-odd years ago in Laredo, Texas [i.e., fall of ’82], and he agreed with me. But have you watched it lately?

“I respect Lonely Are The Brave for what it does right. I love the plainness and the simplicity of it. I love Walter Matthau‘s performance as the sheriff who gets what Douglas’s Jack Burns character (or the Burns metaphor) is basically about, and who sympathizes with him. I love the widescreen black-and-white photography. And early on there’s a very well-handled scene between Burns and an ex-girlfriend, played by Gena Rowlands.

Somebody said yesterday that the enemies and victims of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship felt doubly infuriated by the fact that he lived to the ripe old age of 90. Some would have preferred, I’m supposing, a harsher fate. Like  the one that enveloped Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, the notorious Communist despot who was overthrown and machine-gunned to death (along with his despised wife, Elena) 27 years ago.

Ceausescu’s end happened on Christmas day, and began to be reported on 12.26. I was married then. We were all visiting Maggie’s family in Capitola, right near Santa Cruz. Dylan was a month old; Jett was a year and a half.

So after thinking about Castro yesterday I began to re-read summaries of the Romanian revolution, but I mainly focused on videos. [After the jump.] Footage of the execution of the Ceausescus actually missed most of what happened; the shooting began before the camera crew was ready. So I was surprised yesterday to come upon these two photos, which apparently are genuine. The clouds of plaster dust and the flying hat seem especially convincing. It looks like a clip from the final shoot-out in Sam Peckinpah‘s The Wild Bunch. An excellent job by whomever if the photos are fakes. They may have been on the web for ages but I never saw them until yesterday.

My first thought was that strictly from an aesthetic perspective these are the kind of brutal images that war photographers live for. Robert Capa would’ve given his eye teeth to catch something like this during the Spanish Civil War.