Jeffrey Wells

Remember Scott Feinberg’s enthusiastic Angelina Jolie promotions? All the gush? Well, none of that panned out. No SAG or BAFTA noms…sorry. That’s because of the horrible recriminations against Brad Pitt by Jolie and the kids. It’s called karma.

In the comment thread for HE’s Best Films of 1986 piece (posted late last night), it was argued that Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge and Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, dual ‘86 releases about kids finding a dead body and debating what to do about it, are of equal classic stature.

River’s Edge technically isn’t a 1986 film but I let that slide. Shot between January and March of ‘86, it premiered at the 1986 Toronto Film Festival (9.10.86 — a month after Reiner’s film appeared in theatres) but didn’t commercially open until May ‘87.

Hunter’s film is far more haunting, not to mention realistic and mature — a major, deeply unsettling arthouse film about a zombie virus that had begun to permeate stoner teen culture (it’s based upon a 1981 murder that happened in Milpitas) in the early Reagan era. A couple of critics described it as a kind of moral horror film.

Based on a 1982 Stephen King novella, Stand By Me is basically a sentimental flick about adolescent friendship and the veil of nostalgia. I hated, hated, HATED the title (the revered 1961 Ben E. King song has NOTHING to do with the plot), and I sorta kinda despised the presence and performance of chubby-ass Jerry O’Connell, who was 11 or so during filming.

No offense but Reiner’s film, which I regard as no more than decent as it is pure popcorn, shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath with Hunter’s.

Will a BAFTA Best Picture win lock in Conclave’s frontrunner status and finally put an end to sick, delusional stateside fantasies that Wicked or Emilia Perez or, God forbid, The Brutalist might snag the golden Oscar ring?

The Brutalist, which received nine BAFTA noms this morning, is a film designed to make viewers feel awful. This is not a strongly contested opinion. I would feel differently if (this is an absurd fantasy) A24 had offered complimentary snorts of high-grade heroin to select viewers in order to lessen the glum mood, but that’s water under the bridge.

Conclave’s 12 BAFTA nominations have affirmed its leading heavyweight status, at least for now. And yet nipping at the heels of Edward Berger’s Vatican drama is Jacques Audiard’s diverting-but-not-good-enough Emilia Perez, which has landed 11 BAFTA noms…will you guys please stop this? Put a cap on it.

Both the Movie Godz and the Joe and Jane Popcorn community have spoken, and the time has come to put a respectful halt to the Perez hoopla.

There’s no questioning that it’s an audaciously conceived film (Mexican trans drug cartel musical) but without the second word in that five-word description there’s no way it would be a Best Picture headliner (voting for it makes people feel safer), and we all know this.

Not to mention those underwhelming RT scores (both critics and ticket buyers).

Queer’s Daniel Craig getting edged out of a Best Actor nomination by Heretic’s Hugh Grant is absolutely not right and certainly not cool. Craig’s performance as the William S. Burroughs-like lead character in Luca Guadagnino’s film is shattering.

And congrats to The Apprentice ‘s Sebastian Stan for landing a BAFTA Best Actor nom for his spot-on, half-sympathetic-during-the-first-half performance as Donald whack-ass Trump. Hooray also for Stan’s costar, Jeremy Strong, snagging a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Time and again guys with abusive tendencies have seemingly tried to immolate themselves — almost trying to taunt #MeToo women as an exercise in self-destruction. Please vent about my appalling sexual behavior on social media…please! This is how I want to die.

I’m fairly certain this famous Pauline Kael quote is from her New Yorker review of Barry Levinson’s Diner (‘82), although it could’ve been sparked by a scene in Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (‘81) in which Rourke, initially glimpsed lip-synching to Bob Seger’s “Feel Like A Number”, played a soft-voiced, settled-down felon who’d begun to think twice about…everything.

Rourke seemed to be in a state of charmed, almost magical ascendancy back then. I could go on and on about what happened or didn’t happen, but the glow had begun to fade by the late ‘80s. His last truly alluring performance that decade was in Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (‘87). Then came the early ’90s and boxing.

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Five months after THR published Rebecca Keegan’s 8.14.24 hit piece on Sasha Stone, which I described and commented on the very same day, Racket News’ respected reporter Matt Taibbi has jumped into the fray. Which is fine — better late than never.

I’m not going to recap Taibbi’s article chapter and verse, but he covers the whole messy affair, deftly and dryly and without using the terms “woke Stasi” or “woke terror” or anything in that general realm.

He basically trashes Keegan and her THR bosses for behaving like cloddish dickhead assassins…for whacking Sasha like some dude on The Sopranos by disingenuously pretending to take her facetious “white power!” tweet seriously, and then by calling around and basically poisoning her brand among distributors and award-season marketers and ad-buyers, and essentially assuring that her $200K annual income would be whittled down to almost nothing.

Taibbi:

Stone:

Here’s some of what I posted on 8.14.24:

…and which is mercifully drawing to a close as we speak. Again, better late than never.

Does anyone remember the infuriating 1970 Bob Dylan album, “Self Portrait”?

For me the loathing began with the album cover — Dylan’s grotesque, flagrantly crude painting of his face. That ridiculous nose, which looked like a moldy banana that had been run over by a car, and those cherry-red “Clutch Cargo” lips. You just knew the album would try your patience at the very least.

From “Ten Times Bob Dylan Was The Most Insufferable Man in Rock”, a 1.9.25 Telegraph article by James Hall:

From “Self Portrait” Wiki page:

For the last two or three years I’ve only been able to attend the Telluride Film Festival through the grace and charity of Sasha Stone, who’s been renting a large, centrally located three-bedroom condo. I’ve been on the couch, and gratefully so.

Alas, Sasha has decided against attending Telluride next September (she’s miffed about not being invited last year to the Patron’s Brunch) and so I’m out also. Even if I was bringing in a reasonable income the off-the-charts Telluride greed factor would make it impossible to rent on my lonesome.

And so after 14 years of attending glorious, soul-nourishing Telluride (my debut visit was in 2010) I’m planning on attending the Venice Film Festival for the very first time — 7 and 1/2 months hence. 

I’m also half-persuaded that I can’t do Cannes this year. We’ve lost our Old Town, Napoleonic-era, rue Jean Mero apartment and the local greedheads are just as bad as their Telluride counterparts.

I don’t think that early-bird viewings of Paul Thomas Anderson and Terrence Malick’s latest will be worth the pain. I’d still like to attend, of course, but I have no choice but to accept, etc.

Venice won’t be cheap either, of course. I’ll be once again passing the GoFundMe hat. As HE is entirely Patreon-free and wide open now, I’m hoping that the same generous followers who pitched in last year for Cannes ‘24 will repeat the favor. Excepting those whom I wished cancer upon, of course. I understand their reticence.

It appears as if it might make more financial sense to stay in Dorsoduro (my favorite Venice district) and each morning take the vaporetto to the Lido, and the return to Dorsoduro in the mid evening. 

Does anyone know anyone who plays it this way? A freelancer who pays his/her own way and has stayed in the city? I’ve been to Venice six or seven times over the last quarter-century but I’d like to ask them some questions. 

I’m not against staying on the Lido, mind, but it seems a lot pricier.

The Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki-like obliteration in Pacific Palisades over the last five-plus days has been so severe and traumatizing that people are probably emotionally incapable of accepting rational-sounding explanations for the fire-hydrant failures of last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Average Joes (especially the MAGA variety) don’t want to know from calm, plain–spoken assessments. They want to see heads lopped off and bouncing down the courthouse steps, and particularly those belonging to Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. It ain’t fair and they don’t care.

Meteorologist Jodi Kodesh, however, has offered a simple tutorial that explains what went wrong. It’s not complex rocket science. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported the same observations and conclusions.

What went wrong in the higher Pacific Palisades regions, Kodesh, WaPo and the WSJ say, was the sudden, massive drainage of the lower altitude trunk water line on Tuesday during the daylight hours, which in turn quickly lost pressure and couldn’t re-fill the three higher-elevation reservoirs.

The system simply couldn’t stand up to a maelstrom of this size and strength…the largely unprecedented wind-blown ferocity of the Palisades firestorm.

Even if the upper reservoirs hadn’t been drained the wildfire would have still overwhelmed.

The structure and system in place simply couldn’t stand up, to re-phrase, to the enormity of the fire…to the perfect storm of eight months of remote, bone-dry hill growth that should have been cleared…an overgrown tinderbox environment consumed by a massive inferno that tore through PP last Tuesday, starting in the mid-morning.

It’s also being claimed that there was a crucial six-and-a-half-hour delay last Tuesday on the part of Mayor Bass (who was then in Ghana) and acting mayor Marqueece Harris-Dawson in requesting federal assistance. The request allegedly wasn’t made until Tuesday at 5 pm. I’m not certain how sturdy or reliable this analysis of an alleged dereliction may be.

Then there’s the fire department budget cuts that were approved by Bass, coupled with an apparent administrative dispute between Bass and Fire Dept. chief Kristin Crowley.

…but she can’t hide.

This is exactly how the words have always sounded to me…and how they sounded to me five minutes ago when I listened to Sam and Dave’s r&b classic.

“Comin’ to ya on a death road / Good lovin’ I got a ton-load / and when you get it, you got somethin’ / So don’t worry ‘cause I’m comin’

“I’m a soul man / I’m a soul man / I’m a soul man / I’m a soul man.

“Got what I got the hard way / And I’ll make ya nervous each and every day / So huh-honey, don’t you fret / ‘Cause you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.“

Posted earlier today on Awards Daily: