In his latest THR Oscar forecast column Scott Feinberg is claiming that Past Lives helmer Celine Song is a more broadly popular Best Director nominee than Poor Things’ Yorgos Lanthimos, The Holdovers’ Alexander Payne and Maestro’s Bradley Cooper.

This is insanity! What kind of woke-ass, gender-focused sewing circle is Feinberg having tea with?

Past Lives is a nicely assembled but unsatisfying relationship film that doesn’t do the thing or bring it home (i.e., in crude terms it doesn’t let you come). It has been written off as a decent try by sensible industry folk, and yet Feinberg is allowing himself to be fiddle-fiddled by the A24 safe-space mafia…the identity fanatics who are whispering “we need a woman of color in the mix.”

Otherwise all I can say is that (a) Zac Efron sure looks better without the buffed-up wrestler bod and that godawful Prince Valiant hair, and (b) award–wise Colman Domingo, due respect, isn’t happening,

All Hollywood hiring practices are “performative.”

The primary goal has always been to make money, of course, and in the case of Barbie it didn’t seem unusually risky to tap into the mythology of a 60-year-old doll franchise and then give it a sassy progressive spin.

That said, nothing will weaken your standing or get you fired faster than your rivals sensing you’re trying to do something other than make money.

Ask yourself this: if you were the progressive-minded senior editor of a sweeping USC–funded study of Hollywood hiring practices regarding women and persons of color, and particularly if your report was created under the imprimatur of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, would you be inclined to be (a) critical or admonishing or punitive or (b) less so in that regard?

Three Fundamental Hollywood Laws: (a) nobody knows anything, (b) nobody wants to stand out by making bold creative decisions of any kind, and (c) you don’t need a conspiracy of cowardice given that cowardice is so deeply embedded in our DNA.

…you think first and foremost of a kind of gentle but vaguely flinty mindset (intelligence, insight, sensitivity). Then you think of drink-and-dial Miles Raymond in Alexander Payne’s Sideways (‘04). The current focus, of course, is Barton Academy’s ancient history professor Paul Hunham in The Holdovers (Payne + David Hemingson), but in a certain light Miles lingers because of what happened…a grievous wrong that must be addressed and corrected at long last.

…is not Bugsy Malone (‘76), for heaven’s sake. It’s Evita (‘96)…c’mon! I agree, however, that Albert Brooks’ greatest film is Lost in America (‘85).

Posted on 7.24.15:

A year ago Robert Eggers and HE agreed (almost) on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (’48):