I’ll catch it tomorrow or certainly this weekend. My bad. No excuses.

Imagine driving through your own neighborhood and seeing all these dead bodies lying on the road, one after another. This is a common sight over there, I realize, but for some reason this video hit me extra hard.

My brother sent this to me. Town of Bucha northwest of Kyiv. The amount of dead citizens on one street alone…I just can’t even process. pic.twitter.com/KOSwISih6N

— Viktoriia 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@ViktoriiaUAH) April 1, 2022

An allusion to the ending of Invaders From Mars + a little sprinkling of Chris Nolan‘s Tenet…

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to provide examples of two kinds of “comic” performances. The first kind is a performance that’s intended to be comic within a comedic film, but in fact isn’t the least bit funny or even chuckle-worthy. The second kind is a performance that is, in fact, quite funny if not hilarious but in a weird, perverse way — a performance that you cant help but be tickled by even though it unfolds in a film that in no way presents itself as a comedy.

HE’s example of the first kind is Mindy Kaling‘s comedy-writer character in Nisha Ganatra‘s Late Night, a 2019 feminist relationship comedy. Kaling’s “Molly Patel” is hired to write jokes for Emma Thompson‘s (“Katherine Newbury’s”) late-night talk show, but (a) she isn’t the least bit funny, (b) she hasn’t the personality or attitude of a good (i.e., brilliant) comedy writer, and (c) she doesn’t deliver a single funny line. All Molly cares about is being respected in the work environment and not being treated as a token POC hire, which of course she is.

Why is it a struggle to believe that Molly (who has never before written professional-grade comedy and has mostly been hired because she’s a woman of color) is a comedy writer worth her salt? Because most jokes that “land” and actually make people laugh are always a little cutting and sometimes flirt with cruelty. A certain pointed irreverence is essential. Molly has none of that.

HE’s best example of the second kind of “comic” performance is Ben Kingsley‘s in Sexy Beast (’01). During a Four Seasons interview I told Kingsley that I regarded his “Don Logan” as one of the funniest I’ve ever seen in a film that obviously wasn’t a comedy, and he got it — he was delighted that I understood what he was going for.

I’m guessing that maybe 5% of those who saw Sexy Beast found Kingsley’s performance “funny,” if that. But that was partly the point — you had to have a perverse attitude about that kind of psychotic gangster character in the first place. Ian McShane‘s “Teddy Bass” wasn’t the least bit amusing, of course — he was an ice-old sociopath start to finish. As was Don Logan, except Kingsley went for something more — he pushed the energy and absurdity of that enraged character so that you couldn’t help but at least snicker. Especially in the very last scene, which is one of the “funniest” ever in this vein.

Other examples of either kind?

I was pedaling rather heavily on the bicycle last night. Standing up on the pedals and leaning into them to maintain a decent speed as I went uphill. It felt good to resist the G forces and push on with my formidable leg muscles.

The result, of course, is that my left ankle aches this morning. A bit stiff and sensitive and fuck me. This never happened when I was 47. I’m very fucking disappointed with that sore ankle now. I’m looking at it with disdain and muttering “are you a man or a mouse”?

Okay, I think this’ll do. I’m done. Let it go until AMPAS decides to suspend Smith (or not) on 4.18.

Originally posted on 1.1.22:

The 2022 Best Picture Oscar choices are still between Killers of the Flower Moon, Babylon, The Fablemans, Bardo, Avatar 2 and (if it manages to open in late ’22) Napoleon. Please advise which films need to be added to or dropped from the preferred list, and which films that I haven’t even mentioned should be added.

THE TOP TEN (one of these will win the Best Picture Oscar in March 2023):
“Killers of the Flower Moon” (Martin Scorsese)
“Babylon” (Damien Chazelle)
“Disappointment Blvd.” (Ari Aster)
“The Fablemans” (Steven Spielberg)
“Avatar 2” (James Cameron)
“White Noise” (Noah Baumbach)
“Bardo” (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
”Napoleon” (Ridley Scott — Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte — but will it be ready in time?)
“Elvis” (Baz Luhrmann)
“Canterbury Glass” (temporary title) (David O’Russell)

THE SECOND GROUPING:
“The Killer” (David Fincher)
“The Northman” (Robert Eggers)
”Bones and All” (Luca Guadagnino)
“Blonde” (Andrew Dominik)
“R.M.N” (Cristian Mungiu)

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“[Awards-wise] we’ve thrown out having anything to do with film…[some filmmakers] talk about movies as if its their job to correct social ills…[they see it as] their first job, and not their second or third,. There’s no excuse for the political correctness that has overwhelmed our culture.”

Tell it, dude!