I heard last night from a guy who attended a Manhattan research screening of Gaby Dellal and Nicole Beckwith‘s About Ray, a drama about a teenaged girl (Elle Fanning) looking to transgender into dude-ness.  This is not about my guy’s opinion of the film but the opinion of an outraged transgender person who posted on Tumblr. [See below.] His/her view is that it’s “transphobic” for Dellal to have cast Fanning as the transitioning teen.  That’s because Fanning is cisgender, a term that basically means being comfortable with how you were naturally born.  It also means anyone who hails from a slightly larger group than the 96.2% of the U.S. population that doesn’t identify as LGBT.  Apparently the only acceptable casting would have been a transgender boy.  In Tumblr guy/girl’s eyes, the Fanning casting is equivalent to John Ford having chosen Henry Brandon to play “Scar” in The Searchers.  He/she also mocks Dellal’s explanations for why she cast an actress and why she cast Fanning, and states that “this movie is not for trans people but for cis people who pretend to care.”

Respect and compassion for the LGBT community is, of course, de rigeur for anyone with a heart and a brain, but identifying every non-transgender straight person in the world (i.e., everyone except for an undetermined fraction of 3.8% of the population that identifies as LGBT) as “cisgender” strikes me as a bit forced. A certain militancy or hyper-sensitivity from anyone representing a discriminated minority is to be expected and is totally cool and understood, but you also have to take a breath from time to time. There’s a special kind of oxygen on the planet Transneptune that’s a little different from the oxygen on planet Earth.

“I like clean sheets, fresh fruit, steaming hot showers, purring cats, Kooples T-shirts, nice-smelling soaps, Blurays and streaming high-def movies on Amazon and Vudu, motorcycles and scooters with full tanks of gas, Italian-made brown lace-ups, deodorants, Crew hair mold, electric toothbrushes, colorful socks right out of the dryer, Levi 511s, strong cappuccino, Aqua Velva after-shave lotion…that line of country. I don’t even want to look at a homeless person, much less watch a movie about one. Due respect for Maggie Smith but I’m just being honest here, which is more than can be said for many critics out there.” — a just-posted comment in a thread following yesterday’s riff about Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett‘s The Lady In The Van.

In a compilation of “out-takes” from Lane Brown‘s Vulture q & a with Quentin Tarantino, the director-writer says that Grantland‘s Mark Harris “may be the best film writer ever, when it comes to these historical, slightly critical books that he does.” In other words, Harris is very good at assessing not just films and filmmakers but their impact and importance in a broader social-historical context.

But if Harris is so admired and accomplished at this particular thing, why did he totally ignore the malignant 75-ton elephant in Tom Cruise’s living room when he recently wrote about the 53 year-old superstar in a Grantland career-assessment piece? As I remarked on 7.29, “How can Harris write a here-and-now assessment of Cruise and not even mention Alex Gibney‘s Scientology doc and the portrayal of Cruise as an enabler/promoter of an unmistakably venal, predatory and vicious-minded organization? Particularly with Gibney’s doc having aired only a few months ago? How can Harris ignore that and just say ‘ah, well, too bad Cruise isn’t interested in the meaty acting roles any more’?”

Director-writer Paul Haggis (Show Me A Hero) conveyed a similar complaint about the press in general in an 8.23 interview with The Daily Beast‘s Marlow Stern.

When Stern pointed out that the “conversation” about Cruise’s Scientology connection has “petered out”, largely due to Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation‘s huge box-office success, Haggis said that “we forgive anybody anything if they’re a movie star, I guess!” Stern added that Cruise didn’t even address Going Clear or Scientology during the press tour for Rogue Nation.

I’m starting to feel as if Ridley Scott‘s The Martian is being over-trailered. It happens a lot with big films. It’ll open five and a half weeks from now (10.2). At least I’ll be able to see it in Toronto in about two and a half weeks, but we’re talking another three weeks after that. I’m starting to get really annoyed at the guy who decided to use Jimi Hendrix‘s “All Along The Watchtower” because of the line “there must be some kind of way outta here.” That’s lame, man.

A friend caught No Escape some time ago, he said early last week. “How is it?” I asked. The first thing he said was “Well, the plot is ludicrous.” Then he turned around and said it’s not so bad in this and that way: “I didn’t mind it, it didn’t bother me that much,” etc. But you said the plot is ludicrous, I reminded. “Yeah, well, it is but…”

I saw No Escape last week at the West L.A. Landmark. I’m not going to explain the story — trailers have been playing online for six months. Hordes of Asian fiends looking to murder all white tourists in a nameless country that borders Vietnam, forcing poor Owen Wilson, his wife Lake Bell and their two daughters to run and hide and do whatever it takes to survive.

I got through it but it wasn’t easy. When I came out the publicist asked me what I thought. “It’s awful,’ I said. “Ohh, no!,” she said. “Wait…you’re telling me you think it’s okay? That it has redeeming qualities? Because I don’t believe you.”

When I got home I wrote this guy who told me about it and said, “Well, you were right about the plot being ludicrous.” No Escape is probably the worst film I’ve seen all year. Alongside Vacation, I mean. It’s easily the worst movie that poor Owen has ever been in. Pure exploitation dogshit. And poor Lake Bell! I felt terrible for her.

What a humiliation for these two! Smart, clever actors who write and know the world and have been around and are leading lives of curiosity and discovery, and then they agree to act in a piece of shit like this. Wow!

A q & a transcript between Vulture‘s Lane Brown and Hateful Eight director-writer Quentin Tarantino went up last night, and it has some really great content for just a plain old chit-chat. Here’s one of my favorite portions, which isn’t meant as a shout-out for David O’Russell‘s Joy but you might as well take it that way.

Brown: “And in fairness to blockbusters, nothing stinks worse than bad Oscar bait.”

Tarantino: “The movies that used to be treated as independent movies, like the Sundance movies of the ’90s — those are the movies that are up for Oscars now. Stuff like The Kids Are All Right and The Fighter. They’re the mid-budget movies now, they just have bigger stars and bigger budgets. They’re good, but I don’t know if they have the staying power that some of the movies of the ’90s and the ’70s did. I don’t know if we’re going to be talking about The Town or The Kids Are All Right or An Education 20 or 30 years from now. Notes on a Scandal is another one. Philomena. Half of these Cate Blanchett movies — they’re all just like these arty things. I’m not saying they’re bad movies, but I don’t think most of them have a shelf life. But The Fighter or American Hustle — those will be watched in 30 years.”

Brown: “You think so?”

Tarantino: “I could be completely wrong about that. I’m not Nostradamus.”

I’m sorry but I have this aversion to Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett‘s The Lady In The Van (TriStar Pictures). I know that my respect for Hytner, Bennett and Maggie Smith, who plays the title role, requires that I catch it when it plays at the Toronto Film Festival. But I really don’t want to hang with a homeless lady who lives in a van outside a playwright’s (i.e., Bennett’s) London home for 15 years. Only in plays or films are homeless people semi-endearing; the ones I’ve run into have all been an obnoxious pain of one kind or another, and you really want to spare yourself the aroma if at all possible.

I recognize the game that The Lady In The Van is playing. It’s testing the viewer’s compassion. If you wind up feeling some measure of affection for Miss Shepherd, you’re a decent person, and if you find her tedious or repellent then you’re a shit. Can I just call myself a shit right now and spare myself from watching it?

With the Gold Derby gang having begun to pull award-season predictions out of their ass, we might as well have fun by asking ourselves (with almost no firm knowledge about anything and with the b.s. factor piled higher than an elephant’s eye) a subversive question of sorts: Which of the presumably Oscar-friendly headliners may experience the hype-and-crash syndrome that befell Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, Ava DuVernay‘s Selma and Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood last year?

This is a fool’s errand as every film has its own path to follow and no two Oscar-season experiences are the same, but let’s play this stupid game anyway. For those who were living in caves in Northern India during last year’s Oscar season with no wifi access, here’s a recap of what happened with these three.

Starting in late summer and all through September, October and November, several Oscar handicappers had Unbroken at the top of their list of likely Best Picture candidates. Grit and survival in a Japanese POW camp, Coen brothers‘ script, Roger Deakins‘ cinematography…can’t be denied! And then Jolie’s film screened on Sunday, 11.30 at the WGA theatre on Doheny and it fucking collapsed. The air just whooshed out. High levels of craft but too labored, too Christian, too torture-porny. It was respectably reviewed and made $115 million domestic, but the Oscar game was stillborn when everyone realized it was more or less The Passion of the Christ revisited — a stealth Christian film.

I have this memory that in the ’90s and certainly in the ’80s, a mildly diverting, old-fashioned comedy like Peter Bogdanovich‘s She’s Funny That Way would have hung around in first-rate theaters or plexes for two or three weeks and then downshifted into sub-runs. Playing in respectable situations for 14 or 21 days gave marginal films an aura, a certain cultural presence. Now they’re a data burst on the way out the door. She’s Funny That Way is playing in two Laemmle theatre for seven days (mainly to get reviews and interviews from critics in thrall to the Bogdanovich oeuvre and legend) concurrent with VOD access. I didn’t care for She’s Funny That Way very much. It can’t hold a candle to Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig‘s Mistress America, which is much better at adapting the spirit of screwball comedy to the 21st Century. But I feel for and respect the people behind the Bogdanovich film, and I feel badly that it’s getting the bum’s rush. Two-day-old LexG tweet: “Remember when a 7-day run was like a HOLY SHIT embarrassment that denoted a real bomb, not the DEFAULT for 60% of theatrical releases?”

Edward Zwick‘s Pawn Sacrifice (Bleecker Street, 9.18) is a fact-based biographical thriller about the genius-level Jedi skills and curious obsessions of legendary chess master Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) and particularly Fischer’s world-famous 1972 face-off with Russian champion Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber) in Iceland. I purposely didn’t research Fischer before seeing the film late this afternoon; I just wanted Maguire’s performance to take me somewhere or not. It did, all right. It’s not the same kind of portrayal of mental dysfunction as Russell Crowe‘s Oscar-winning portrayal of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (i.e., no imaginary characters), but it’s in the same general ballpark. Maguire is more than convincing; he seems consumed, possessed. Schreiber’s Spassky also nails it nicely. The film depicts a period in which Fischer (who died in 2008 at age 64) was half unhinged and half holding it together. The screening happened at West Hollywood’s London hotel; a reception followed.

Pawn Sacrifice costars Michael Stuhlbarg, star Tobey Maguire at post-screening reception at London hotel — Sunday, 8.23, 6:05 pm.

Sasha Stone and I were all over the map when we recorded the latest Oscar Poker this morning, but two of the topics were (a) Amy Heckerling‘s Clueless having topped a Cinemafanatic poll about the most essential female-directed films, and (b) the Gold Derby spitball polls of users and “experts” about seemingly likely nominees for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, etc. Again, the mp3.

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has launched the 2015 Oscar season speculation with a poll of “experts” (which I contributed to last night) along with a user/reader poll. The users poll is mostly bullshit, of course, but it gives you a rough idea about which films and actors have the heat among the pseudo-informed, industry-watching outliers. I don’t know much more but I can offer some strong positive or negative suspicions here and there, particularly in the Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress categories.

Best Picture: The Revenant will most likely emerge as the industry front-runner before long, and it has the vague advantage of being an unknown until it starts screening around, I’m guessing, 11.20 or thereabouts. Having read the script and seen a live reading of The Hateful Eight, I have very little belief in its Best Picture chances. Joy and The Danish Girl are inevitable; ditto Carol and Steve Jobs. If you ask me the first-rate Brooklyn is also a fairly strong contender, but not so fast when it comes to Bridge of Spies and Suffragette. Forget Inside Out — it’s relegated to Best Feature Animation and that’s that. Nobody in my realm knows squat about Spotlight and Black Mass. I agree with Kyle Buchanan that Mad Max: Fury Road deserves a Best Picture nomination but who knows who that’ll play? Beasts of No Nation, an allegedly strong entry, will probably never snag a Best Picture nomination, given the gruesome subject matter.