8:17 am on a sunny and warm Saturday morning, and four hours hence…the Spirit Awards! Yesterday a headline on a Gregg Goldstein Variety story proclaimed that the Spirits “offer a bold, inclusive alternative to the Oscars.” Nomination-wise, that’s true — more diverse, darker, tanner, gayer, cooler, irreverent.

And yet the major-category winners always seem to push back or comment upon the Oscar tip sheet. Plus the Spirit guys always seem to favor the big-marquee, name-value nominees who are also up for Oscars, or who have been snubbed by same. Bottom line: the Spirits are always looking to reach out to, include or at least not alienate those who are watching on the IFC Channel. And that means blanding it down or…you know, avoiding anything too curious or strange.

Example: Spotlight is favored to take the Best Feature award not just because the cast has already been chosen as the recipient of a Robert Altman Best Ensemble award (aping an identical award handed out by the Gothams) but also because of a general feeling that the Spirits need to counter-balance a notion that the Best Picture Oscar is The Revenant‘s to lose.

Another way to push back against the Oscars would be to give the Best Feature award to Cary Fukunaga‘s Beasts of No Nation, which the Academy membership brushed aside over the Netflix thing or, as Lawrence O’Donnell said the other day, probably due to racial bias, or to hand Fukunaga the Best Director award. Or give the Best Male Lead to award to Abraham Attah. But the Feature/Director scenarios aren’t as likely with the Spotlight competition. Marquee value.

“Let’s be clear: Trump is no fluke. Nor is he hijacking the Republican Party or the conservative movement, if there is such a thing. He is, rather, the party’s creation, its Frankenstein monster, brought to life by the party, fed by the party and now made strong enough to destroy its maker.

“Was it not the party’s wild obstructionism — the repeated threats to shut down the government over policy and legislative disagreements; the persistent call for nullification of Supreme Court decisions; the insistence that compromise was betrayal; the internal coups against party leaders who refused to join the general demolition — that taught Republican voters that government, institutions, political traditions, party leadership and even parties themselves were things to be overthrown, evaded, ignored, insulted, laughed at?

“Was it not Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), among many others, who set this tone and thereby cleared the way for someone even more irreverent, so that now, in a most unenjoyable irony, Cruz, along with the rest of the party, must fall to the purer version of himself, a less ideologically encumbered anarcho-revolutionary? This would not be the first revolution that devoured itself.

“We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past 7 1/2 years, and it has been Trump’s good fortune to be the guy to sweep them up and become their standard-bearer. He is the Napoleon who has harvested the fruit of the Revolution.” — from a 2.25 Washington Post op-ed piece by Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for the Post.

There’s a visual clue at the bottom of the latest Criterion newsletter about an upcoming Bluray…duhhh. The question is “why?” The Sony Bluray that popped in 2009 is totally fine. Yes, I’ve always wanted to see a 1.33 or 1.37 version with occasional 1.66 in-camera croppings rather than a 1.66 all-in, but…well, maybe this is a Criterion notion. An HE reader recalled this morning that he “had the Criterion Laserdisc of Dr. Strangelove” way back when and recalls “an explanation in the notes about how the aspect ratio of the B-52 sequences being 1.33:1 (?) was intentional. I’d assume they would carry that over to the Bluray.”

John Huston‘s Beat The Devil (’54), a public-domain title, has always looked fuzzy, worn-down, over-exposed and generally mediocre. There’s a version I recently streamed on Amazon that looks hideous. And yet I recently ordered an allegedly restored Bluray version from The Film Detective…hoping, desperate, fingers crossed. It arrived yesterday, and to my surprise this anarchic, ironic, laid-back comedy (which Humphrey Bogart allegedly hated) looked a lot better than any other version I’ve sat through since…well, forever. I first saw this thing on a black-and-white TV when I was 13 or something, and it looked like hell. Now it finally looks okay.

This puppy is better than tolerable and at times actually pleasing. It provides agreeable detail, a nice crispness and a silvery glisten, decent blacks from time to time. It’s been “cleaned up” as far as that goes. Okay, it looks slightly shitty here and there but only in very brief bursts. Warner Home Video’s The Big Sleep Bluray cost a lot more to do and is in much better condition, but TFD’s Beat The Devil gave me a better Bluray “bump” because of what I was expecting, which wasn’t much.

I called The Film Detective offices in Rockport, Massachucetts, to pass along my compliments and wound up speaking to Phil Hopkins, the company’s owner/president.  A longtime film collector. Hopkins mainly works with public domain and orphan films and supplies content to Turner Classic Movies, he says, among other companies.

Hopkins created the Beat The Devil Bluray, he says, from a 35mm print that he owns. He invested roughly 100 hours of dirt and scratch cleanup and removed about 500 scratches, partly with the liquid wet-gate process. He says that Beat The Devil‘s bleachy quality is not due to degraded elements but was, he claims, intended by dp Oswald Morris — “It was shot that way.”

Did I attend Wednesday’s all-media screening of Gods of Egypt? You might just as well ask, “So, did you jump into that cesspool you discovered last year when you were hiking in the outlying suburbs of Tijuana?” Imagine the nihilism and corruption that created this thing…imagine the self-loathing that director Alex Proyas must have felt this morning when he looked in his bathroom mirror. It was obvious from last November’s trailer that it was delivering a kind of super-CG poison. I’m sorry but submitting to a film like this just didn’t seem worth it, and I mean not even close.

Who in the world would pay to see this thing? Then I remembered a young Hispanic couple standing in the Arclight lobby in late November of 2011. Here’s my description: “Early this evening a young Latino couple was looking at the digital lobby board inside Hollywood’s Arclight plex. The guy walked forward, got into line and turned to the girl. ‘You wanna comedy? Or…what, action? A comedy?’ The girl half-shrugged, seemed more than a bit bored. ‘I dunno…whatever,’ she said. He shrugged also, turned back to the board.” Right?

Weinstein co-honcho Harvey Weinstein to THR‘s Scott Feinberg: “I just can imagine Chris Rock‘s opening remarks. If anybody’s [planning on] boycotting the Oscars, don’t, because Chris Rock is gonna annihilate every one of us in the first 20 minutes of the show, and it will be well worth watching. It will be an Oscars to remember.” Worldwide response: Chris can annihilate all he wants, but the effect will be negligible if he’s not funny.

Most of the conversation is about Harvey talking about his life…the whole rich, religious, flamboyant, hustling, half-worshipping and half-assaultive sprawl of it. Except early on Harvey says his childhood was pretty great, or words to that effect. “Bullshit,” I told myself. “This interview is two minutes old and Harvey’s already sidestepping…he’s not really laying it down.”

Nobody who’s gone on to have a dynamic career or who becomes a big name or a world-class artist has done so because they were showered with love and security as a kid. Nobody with a burning need to be or do something in a big way has had a traditionally nourishing, mostly soothing, warm-glow childhood. They’ve been traumatically motivated by tough or “short” childhoods, which are most often about (a) economic anxiety, deprivation or desperation, and (b) emotional or psychological bruising or general anguish.

And they all wind up their mid to late teens or early 20s with an attitude of “I can’t do this shit any more…I have to create a kind of life that’s better or richer than what I had to deal with in my childhood…I have to erase or at least smother that pain.”

Deftly and yet plainly and succinctly, The Last Word‘s Lawrence O’Donnell described last night the syndrome of Academy voters dismissing this or that film at the moment when the screeners arrive. Quote: “Beasts Of No Nation is an ignorable story. Why is that? Because nothing in it speaks to them.”

In the frilly, elitist, politically correct realm of HE judgment-bringer Glenn Kenny, you’re either a pusillanimous lefty who’s terrified of saying anything that might vaguely smack of being out of step with the Twitter Stalin brigade or you’re a crude, insensitive right-wing thug. Hence he’s described me to the Toronto Globe & Mail Calum Marsh as “William F. Buckley crossed with Daffy Duck.” Yup, that’s me, all right — a William F. Buckley who believes in Bernie Sanders. Kenny has been dining out on his HE dart-throwing for some time now. There’s no dealing with him in any kind of rational way when it comes to political-cultural topics. Kennyisms!

Kenny qualifies via email: “Calum Marsh kind of fucked up my quote. The Buckley-Daffy Duck thing had nothing to do with what you actually say or believe but referred to how you increasingly sound on the Oscar Poker podcast.”

The second season of HBO’s Togetherness began last Sunday night, and undercurrent #1 was Michelle’s (Melanie Lynskey‘s) recent infidelity with silver-haired David (John Ortiz) and whether or not she should tell her husband Brett (Mark Duplass). I don’t know where this is going but co-creators Mark and Jay Duplass are obviously invested in the concepts of marriage and stability and are looking for ways to keep things together between Brett and Michelle. I can’t say I’m happy about that.

Near the close of season #1 I wrote about the best episode yet — “Party Time” — and what a glorious possibility it was that Brett and Michelle might amicably separate and agree to be friendly and cooperative co-parents of their kids. Please! So I was hoping that things would continue to gradually move in that direction.

Because Michelle, bless her, lives to drag everyone down into the hole that she lives in, and which she probably couldn’t climb out of if she wanted to. Because Brett and Michelle are in a San Quentin marriage with occasional furloughs. Because everything that draggy, down-headed Michelle touches turns to glum. And because I, the viewer, felt the clouds begin to part at the end of “Party Time.” 

I, the jury would love to see Brett discover a better, more tingly and euphoric life. Escape from the Lynskey…I’m sorry, the Michelle!

“Yes, I realize Brett might turn around and mesh together with Michelle for the sake of the kids, and that’ll be too bad but on the other hand…well, okay. I understand the impulse,” I wrote on 3.5.15. “I was more than willing to stay in my bad marriage for the sake of the kids so I wouldn’t blame anyone if this happens. But Brett and Michelle would be so much happier if they could drop the idea of making each other miserable and just forget about sex and just be with people they want to be with when there’s time.”

What do these guys know about the Oscar race that I don’t know? Nothing. Okay, maybe one or two things. Maybe Franklin Leonard, the Black List C.E.O. and founder, is ahead of the game in some respects. The rest, no offense, are political personalities who always tred carefully and cautiously. They’re all good people…people of character, accomplishment, charm and obvious intelligence: Vanityfair.com Hollywood editor Katey Rich, Vanity Fair executive West Coast editor Krista Smith, Fandango’s Dave Karger, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, Skydance Media senior V.P. of digital marketing Bladimiar Norman. But who besides Leonard understands the existential samurai-poet thing? If you don’t have a little bit of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in you, you’re not going to slay anyone with your opinions. That’s the bottom line.