…in a reasonable, persuasive, non-obsessive, open-hearted way, I will certainly do that. But only for the right reasons. Just because I passionately want to hate a film doesn’t mean I will hate it. If a movie works on its own terms, so be it. I am capable of recognizing and acknowledging that. But if I can find a fair-minded way to dump on this fucking film, I will do so.

Not that it matters, of course. For the degradation of taste and the all-but-total elimination of adult ticket-buyers who are more or less down with the idea of driving to the plex to experience an occasional serving of smart, soulful prestige cinema…those appetites and that tradition are dead and buried now, and Kevin Feige is one of the guys with a shovel, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave.

For the 17th or 18th time, if I could cause the MCU to self-destruct by clapping three times, I would clap three times and shout “whoo-hoo!” while doing so.

You know that 90% of the critics are go-along whores…totally untrustworthy in the realm of superhero stuff…they don’t want to come off like negheads or outliers. Only haters like myself are trustworthy because we don’t give a shit.

“From hell’s heart I stab at thee…for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee…oh damn thee, whale!”

Congrats to The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield for teaming up with Janice Min in a brand-expanding venture of some kind. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tatiana Siegel will join the Ankler next month; perhaps others will climb aboard in due time.

The idea, I’m presuming, is to (a) build The Ankler into a multi-voiced mini-trade as well as (b) stand up to the competition posed by Puck and the jottings of their respected film guy, “What I’ve Heard’s” Matthew Belloni (also a Hollywood Reporter alumnus).

I regard Rushfield as a good hombre and a human being. We’ve met, chatted, exchanged. He tried to help me earlier this year when I was thinking about converting the self-built, stand-alone, brick-and-mortar home of Hollywood Elsewhere into a Substack condo unit. In ’18, ’19 and ’20 RR would occasionally end his columns with “Daily Wells” excerpts as “leave ’em laughing” kickers. That felt pretty cool — a tribute to my sardonic prose style or whatever.

Then RR decided to keep his distance after I briefly posted a friend’s analogy between Nomadland and Chloe Zhao‘s Oscar prospects with the effect of the then-raw and horrific news of the Atlanta massage-parlor shootings; Rushfield didn’t want any sort of taint rubbing off on The Ankler. (Thanks again to those who made this into a “thing”, including the reprehensible Jen Yamato and various other two-faced acquintances, colleagues and former friends whom I won’t name.)

I’ve always thought of Rushfield’s reporting and opinion pieces as catchy, brutally honest and perceptive, and always with a touch of dry humor. Everyone agrees. But he’s rarely touched the woke Robespierre terror thing in any kind of candid way, at least not in my limited perception. He alludes, of course, but, being an astute industry politician, never spits it out. If an alien from the planet Tralfamadore were to rely solely on Rushfield to learn about the state of post-2017 Hollywood left-religion culture and the bend-over-backwards, virtue-signalling, BIPOC-kowtowing that more or less resulted in the catastrophic Steven Soderbergh Oscar telecast last April…let’s just say that others are a tad more willing to go there.

Plus lately Rushfield has been Mr. Doom and Gloom about movie-watching in megaplexes. I’m not challenging his assessments in the slightest (he knows his stuff and always keeps close tabs), but he is a dependable deliverer of despair and despondency these days, certainly as far as the sagging fortunes of exhibition are concerned. Again — he’s not wrong but every time I read one of his riffs in this vein I want to pop a Percocet or maybe snort a little heroin. (I don’t drink.)

From his latest column about West Side Story‘s “bellyflop”: “That’s the thing here in my recent forecasts [about] the end of the film industry, I don’t necessarily mean it will cease to exist entirely. Just that the industry as we know it is doomed.

An hour ago a filmmaker friend sent me a link to Luca Guadagnino‘s O Night Divine, a 43-minute short made for Zara. I’ve watched about a quarter of it, and it’s very easy to settle into. Nourishing, inviting…flush digs on Christmas eve, and snow everywhere. Shot at some swanky hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, O Night Divine costars Alex Wolff, John C. Reilly (as Santa Claus!), Hailey Gates, Samia Benazzouz, Chloe Park, et. al.

My heart skipped a beat when I noticed this morning that the Criterion Channel is streaming Ken Russell‘s The Music Lovers (’71) as part of a Glenda Jackson tribute. And not because I’m a huge fan of this hysterical Peter Tchaikovsky biopic. (Is anyone?) But Douglas Slocombe‘s cinematography is fairly wonderful, and it’s never been offered in HD, and so I allowed myself to fantasize that the film might have been covertly remastered or re-scanned or up-rezzed in 1080p and that Criterion had something to do with this. No such luck — it’s the same old shitty 480p version that’s been around since 2011.

Of course I love Wes Anderson creations…of course I do! It’s just that many of my Anderson faves are his commercials, and those dozens upon dozens of YouTube parodies. Feature-wise I’ve always been and will always be fully respectful of Anderson’s brand or stylistic stamp, and that includes, believe it or not, The French Dispatch, which I had a mostly unpleasant time with at Telluride last September.

But I am a genuine, whole-hearted fan of only a handful of Wes’s films — Rushmore (which I’ve always adored like a brother), Bottle Rocket, The Grand Budapest Hotel, the original black-and-white Bottle Rocket short, most of The Royal Tenenbaums. But I dearly love the Wes signage, specifically the shorts and parodies. The SNL Anderson horror film short is heaven.

I will always be on Team Anderson, and I will never resign. Partly because I’m 100% certain that one day he’ll reach into his heart and decide to broaden his scope, or perhaps even re-think things somewhat. (Wes is still relatively young.) He has to — artists have no choice. I just hope and pray he’ll make more of an effort to blend his hermetic Wesworld aesthetic with the bigger, gnarlier, more complex world that’s been there all along.

The 2022 Spirit Award nominations dropped this morning. Congrats to all nominees, but HE especially salutes the top nomination-getter — Janicza Bravo‘s Zola. Seven nommies = the almost certain winner of the Best Feature prize.

Otherwise, wokey-woke changes continue apace.

For decades the Spirits have been held the day before the Oscars, and were therefore wedded to that famous annual event. That’s over — the 2022 Spirits Awards will happen on Sunday, 3.6, or three weeks before the 2022 Oscars on 3.27.22. Which says, obviously, that the Spirits don’t want that linkage any more.**

Film Independent’s Josh Welsh: “At the Spirit Awards, we look for uniqueness of vision, original and provocative subject matter, economy of means, and diversity, both on-screen and off. Among [2022] nominees 44% are women and 38% are BIPOC…among the nominating committee members, 63% identify as women, 5% as non-binary, and 56% as BIPOC.”

More fundamentally: Remember the good old days (i.e., two years ago) when the Spirit Awards were widely regarded as the Indie Oscars? And when (excuse the following indelicate term) white-male filmmakers had as much of a shot at being nominated as anyone else? That’s history also. There’s always been more of a progressive p.c. emphasis among the Spirit nominees and winners (diversity, representation, indie contrarian attitude) but now it’s totally woke BIPOC feminist virtue signaling chitty-chitty-bang-hang. The only white guys who are allowed to be nominated are girlymen types (i.e., C’mon C’mon‘s Mike Mills).

East Coast f riendo #1: “Male feminists are allowed into Utopia. Just chop your balls off and you’re good.”

East Coast friendo #2: “It’s equity in practice. Achievement doesn’t matter. It makes them look good. It’s very Gen-Z on Tumblr circa 2013..”

“When talent and merit are replaced by representation, then we’re living in a world that doesn’t care about movies anymore.” — Brett Easton Ellis in a 2.19.19 guest column for The Hollywood Reporter.

In short, the 2018 “socialist summer camp in the snow” Sundance serum has spread everywhere — to New York and Toronto and pretty much every U.S. film festival except for blessed Telluride and Santa Barbara…all are now parroting the party line by favoring or appealing to your basic wokester SJW #MeToo BIPOC LBGTQ crowd (along with your garden-variety Lefty Snowflake Stalinist Sensitives) who are committed to overthrowing old norms and ensuring that independent cinema is generally more progressive and “representative” with fewer white guys of whatever age.

** Remember Spirit-Oscar overlap in terms of Best Picture nominees? That idea went south in 2019 when the five Best Feature Spirit nominees — Eighth Grade, First Reformed, If Beale Street Could Talk, Leave No Trace and You Were Never Really Here — weren’t nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Due respect and congratulations to the six women who earlier today were nominated for Best Actress by the Critics Choice Association — The Eyes of Tammy Faye‘s Jessica Chastain, The Lost Daughter‘s Olivia Colman, House of Gucci‘s Lady Gaga, Licorice Pizza‘s Alana Haim, Being The Ricardo‘s Nicole Kidman and Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart.

Five of the above were also nominated for the Golden Globe Best Actress award (i.e., Alana Haim didn’t make the cut).

The CCA nominated Haim for having tapped into something genuine and grounded and non-actressy, but CCA voters can’t tell me with a straight face that Haim gave a more affecting and relatable performance than Cruz did. C’mon…

All of the above connected (Gaga especially with paying audiences), but HE and the Movie Godz are again declaring that elbowing aside Penelope Cruz‘s just-right turn in Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers was a wrongo — it really was. There’s no question in my mind that Cruz gave the year’s finest female lead performance — none whatsoever.

Earlier today Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro reported that Adrian Lyne‘s Deep Water, a Ben Affleck-Ana de Armas erotic thriller that’s been sitting on the shelf for ages, is going straight to streaming on Hulu.

Based on a 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel, Deep Water was pulled last week from a Disney theatrical release (previously slated for 1.14.22), probably because it isn’t good enough and/or is regarded by Disney execs as a guaranteed money loser.

D’Allessandro didn’t report a streaming date.

Disney has had a rough experience with almost every inherited 20th Century Fox release. The Last Duel disappointed ($100 million cost, $30,2 million domestic), and then West Side Story flopped, and now this.

Poor Adrian Lyne — this would have been his first film to hit theatres since ’02’s Unfaithful.

Nancy Reagan was the toughest, closest and most trusted adviser of her husband, Ronald Reagan, during his California governorship and U.S. Presidency. I never had any strong opinions about her one way or the other. I didn’t dislike her as much as I didn’t care. Except, of course, when she launched her infamous “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign in 1986, which nearly everyone regarded as an embarassment.

But my heart went out to her one day in the summer of 2013. It happened inside Alex Roldan hair salon, which is on the first floor of the London hotel in West Hollywood. She was driven from her Bel Air home to the salon every two or three weeks, my hair guy told me, but at age 92 she was obviously frail and her legs were apparently gone. I recognized the syndrome as my mother, who passed in 2015, was going through similar woes at the time.

Two people — a personal assistant and a hair salon employee — were trying to help Mrs. Reagan move from a shampoo chair into her wheelchair, and it was taking forever. I was about ten feet away and was on the verge of offering to help. It wasn’t my place, of course, so I just stood there and watched. The poor woman. Old age offers very little dignity, and no mercy at all.

Not only did the “owner of the car forgot to set the parking brake,” he/she also forgot to put the car in park or at least leave it in gear.

Whoa! Watertown Police say an unoccupied car rolled down a hill around 11 a.m. and jumped the curb landing on Main St by Echo Lake Rd. No injuries. There were no cars passing by either. The owner of the car forgot to set the parking brake & was issued an infraction. pic.twitter.com/i3McjGxd7I

— Carmen Chau (@CChauFOX61) December 12, 2021

I woke up this morning to the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations, and quickly succumbed to the same mixture of lethargy and depression that everyone else is feeling.

Not so much about the Globes — will anyone care which films they’ll celebrate? will their picks influence anyone or anything in any way? — but the CCAs.

I was primarily upset when a friend predicted this morning that the box-office collapse of West Side Story had dented its award cred (“Nobody likes to vote for a loser”) and that the odds seem to favor a Best Picture win for Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast. With the CCAs, I mean.

When I heard this I went “wait…what?”

West Side Story is still the same emotionally affecting, inventively shot and cut, extremely well-made film it was before last weekend’s box-office calamity. It really is the superior contender out there, certainly by my sights.

The Globes won’t have their traditional NBC telecast because of the angry industry boycott over a previous lack of black members, but their show, set for 1.22.22, will be streamed.

GG Best Motion Picture, Drama: Belfast, CODA, Dune, King Richard, The Power of the Dog. HE personal pick among these five: King Richard. Likely winner: I can’t say it…don’t ask.

GG Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy: Cyrano, Don’t Look Up, Licorice Pizza, Tick, Tick … Boom!, West Side Story. HE personal pick among these five: West Side Story. Likely winner: Don’t ask.

I am swallowed in lethargy…drowning in the stuff. I used to feel such excitement for this and that awards contender. I used to be a big rooting fan of awards season favorites. I would cheer and whoo-whoo! when my “team” won. I was in heaven when Green Book won Best Picture and all the would-be wokester assassins seethed and muttered “curses!” Their rage was my joy.

Now there’s…I was going to say “nothing” but what I mean is that there’s not very much. I’m not feeling anything right now. The West Side Story collapse knocked the wind out of me.

CCA Best Picture nominees: Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, tick, tick…Boom!, West Side Story. HE personal pick: West Side Story. Likely winner: I can’t say it. (The show will air on Sunday, Janary 9th.)

I’ll get into the actor nominations and likely winners later. I’m too depressed to sift through it all now.

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone:
“It’s so many things at once. It’s COVID, primarily. It’s the comfort and isolation and security people have found in their homes this past year, with no desire to leave. It’s inflation — that is going to impact how people spend their money on stuff like movies since it impacts their gas prices and their grocery bill. Finding that extra cash to go out and sit in a movie theater probably isn’t a major priority at the moment. Richard Rushfield has been tracking the demise for a while now, with stories like “Will Movies Survive?” And “The Disappearance of Hollywood as We Know It” and “The Twin Plagues of Moviedom’s Assisted Suicide.”

HE Honestly? I don’t care how on-the-money Rushfield is with his doom-and-gloom assessments about how theatrical is basically finished, or certainly for people like me. I’m getting really fucking sick of hearing how horrible everything is, and how doomed we all are, and how the animals are doing their share and then some to bring this about.

Back to Sasha: “We can be aware of what’s happening. We can watch what’s happening. But probably only something like the news of West Side Story’s dismal box-office could provide that moment of ‘oh wow, everything really has changed.’

“It breaks my heart. There is so much content being produced every day that is occupying the attention spans of people that might have previously gone to the movies. At least we know teenagers are still going to go to the movies — for something to do on a Saturday night, for a place to go where their helicopter parents won’t follow, a place to go to make out. Parents will also still take their kids to the movies. The movies that will continue to thrive will be animation, fantasy, horror and genre movies.” HE comment: “That’s so sickening! We are truly witnessing the downfall of the “good movies are usually supported by smart audiences” holiday aesthetic. We are spiralling into decline. The end of a way of life.

Sasha: “I was hoping West Side Story would be our deus ex machina. Looks like we’re going to need a bigger boat.”