Steven Soderbergh‘s Let Them All Talk begins streaming today on HBO Max. In my 12.3 review, I called it “a smart, reasonably engrossing, better-than-mezzo-mezzo character study that largely takes place aboard the Queen Mary 2 during an Atlantic crossing.”

I explained that it’s “primarily about Alice, a moderately famous, sternly self-regarding novelist (Meryl Streep) and her somewhat brittle relationship with two old college friends, Susan and Roberta (Dianne Wiest, Candice Bergen), whom she’s invited along on a New York-to-Southhampton voyage, courtesy of her publisher.

Tagging along are Tyler (Lucas Hedges), Alice’s 20something nephew, and Karen (Gemma Chan), an anxious book editor whom Tyler takes an unfortunate shine to. Also aboard is a David Baldacci-like airport novelist (Dan Algrant) whose books Roberta and Susan adore, and who’s far more engaging and emotionally secure than Alice any day of the week.”

Bergen’s performance, I said, is “definitely a Best Supporting Actress nominee waiting to happen.” I’d really like to hear if there’s any agreement on this point.

The following story (dated 12.10) has been reported by Rich Kirby for the Wilton, Connecticut version of patch.com:

Police are seeking the public’s assistance in their search for Michael Tannheimer, age 41. Tannheimer is white, with brown eyes and hair, [standing] 5’10” and [weighing] 170 pounds. He was last seen in Danbury wearing a blue t-shirt and tan pants.”

In mid December? It’s currently 46 degrees in Danbury, but yesterday it was much colder with snow flurries here and there.

Rolling Stone‘s David Browne reported on Tuesday that the cost of Universal Music Publishing’s acquisition of Bob Dylan’s song catalogue (roughly 600 songs) is “rumored to be around $400 million.” Others are speculating that the figure is closer to $300 million.

The buy also includes all the songs on “Music From Big Pink, The Band‘s 1968 debut album.

This allows me to re-post “Music From Big Rosey Beige,” tapped out six years ago:

During yesterday’s visit to Saugerties I stopped by the fabled “big pink” house to pay respects and take a couple of snaps. I’m speaking, of course, of the legendary abode where Bob Dylan and The Band recorded the Basement Tapes in ’67 and from which The Band’s “Music From Big Pink” album sprung in ’68.

And I must report the truth, which is that “big pink” is a lie — it’s not pink but a mild rose mixed with beige.

Pink is pink — an eyesore color for girly-girls. Shocking pink, punk-hair pink, pink underwear, Angelyne‘s pink Corvette, Elvis‘s soft pink Cadillac from the late ’50s. There’s also the realm of rose, which is a gentler, somewhat earthier, more natural shade. Mix rose with a bit of fleshy soft biege from the women’s make-up counter at Bloomingdale’s and you’ve got the color of “big pink.”

I understand that “big pink” sounds better than “big rosey beige” and that’s cool, but someone had to tell the truth and I guess it had to be me.

I missed Tuesday evening’s press-streaming window for George Clooney‘s The Midnight Sky. Then again it pops on Netflix tomorrow (Friday, 12.11) so…you know, all things in their own time.

I’m also feeling a certain measure of sorrow that the film has flunked with the aggregates — a dispiriting 58% on Rotten Tomatoes and a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God Metacritic rating of 54.

Clooney has described his film as The Revenant meets Gravity. My sense from the initial get-go (initial descriptions, stills, first trailer) has been doom meets gloom meets graybeard solemnity.

“…that everything’s gonna change now. That movie theatres are gonna become art houses and that the films that you and I make will only be seen on streaming. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

“For 4000 years, nothing has replaced the experience of being part of an audience. That experience, being in the same place when the lights go down, everybody laughing at the same time, gasping at the same time, [sharing] silence at the same time…” — The Trial of the Chicago 7 director-writer Aaron Sorkin in a 12.9 Variety chat with Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins.

As much as I personally believe and trust in Sorkin’s view, I strongly suspect that this age-old belief in the unique and unreplacable theatrical experience may be largely sentimental. Left to their own devices, people can be incredibly lazy and sloth-like. Not just during the last ten months, but eternally. I’m obviously talking about the under-40s.

In a 12.10 chat with N.Y. Times chatcaster Kara Swisher, Warner Media CEO Jason Kilar has insisted that at least for the time being, the just-announced plan to stream all Warner Bros films on HBO Max is not locked in beyond 2021. And if you believe that one…

Honest viewpoint: Kilar is a smart guy. He’s certainly riding the back of the tiger, and he laughs from the heart. But he also laughs (and this bothers me) like a fraternity guy.

Back to Sorkin: If you had asked me yesterday when theatre began I would’ve said around 2500 years ago, with the birth of Athenian tragedy, or sometime during the 6th century B.C. This is when theatre became a “thing,” certainly in terms of specific creative visions.

I’ll tell you what it means. It means that the April 2021 Oscar telecast is not going to be some kind of downmarket, dumbbell, Vegas-friendly, Alan Carr-ish thing. It’s going to be smart, sleek, Soderberghian, sophisticated, economical, tailored to X-factor sensibilities, forward-looking, less-is-more-ish. It means that sorta kinda clueless Hollywood Blvd. tourists will not be invited into the Dolby auditorium because nobody wants to watch a bunch of jerks shooting the proceedings with their smartphones. It means that…I don’t actually know anything but with Soderbergh calling (some of) the shots, you know it’ll be some kind of Mr. Smartypants thang.

The greatest performances always allow for imperfect or awkward speech. Phrasing drop-outs, hiccups, stumbles, running out of breath, etc.

Prime example: Marlon Brando delivering Marc Antony‘s “friends, Romans, countrymen” speech in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Julius Caesar (’53). At 2:08 Antony, overcome with emotion, says “bear with me” to the crowd, and then “my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must puh…pause ’till it comes back to me.” Brando stuttering on “pause” is deliberate, of course, but it sounds and feels right.

Brando in The Godfather: “It makes no…it doesn’t make any difference to me what a man does for a living, you understand.’

James Caan‘s Sonny beating up Gianni Russo‘s Carlo in The Godfather (’72). At 2:52, after kicking Carlo a few times in the ribs, Sonny says, “If you touch (beat, catching his breath) my sister again, I’ll kill ya.” I’m presuming this wasn’t planned…Caan was tired from the exertion and just ran out of wind, and director Francis Coppola liked the realism.

Near the end of Paths of Glory Kirk Douglas doesn’t quite have enough lung power to say the word “again” — he barely manages to squeak it out — when he’s telling Adolphe Menjou “and you can go to HELL before I apologize to you now or ever again!”

Bill Macy‘s flubbed Boogie Nights line: “My wife’s on the driveway with an ass in her cock!” Paul Thomas Anderson left it in because it sounded like the kind of thing a genuinely flustered person would say.

From The Hill: New York Attorney General Letitia James predicted today on The View that President Trump will probably resign from office and then have Vice President Pence preemptively pardon him.

“He can preemptively pardon individuals, and the vast majority of legal scholars have indicated that he cannot pardon himself,” James said. “I suspect at some point in time, he will step down and allow the Vice President to pardon him,” she added.

YouTubers say (a) “I really think Trump’s gonna regret running for president…he ran to promote a failing brand, won by surprise, and thereby opened himself up to scrutiny where all his dirty deeds would be found”; (b) “Michael Cohen went to prison. No way Individual #1 won’t also do time. Seeing Trump in an orange jumpsuit and leg cuffs will be so damn satisfying”; (c) “Uh huh, here is why he’s afraid. Stick around, more after the commercials. Any of us can try to hide behind a thicket of lies, but the truth is always lurking about. And it never goes away”; (d) “MAAAN! She is not messing around!”; (e) “That lady is good…’Get him, girl!…get the whole stealing, lying, and inhuman numbs taking up space in this administration; (f) “I for one would not want Letitia James hot on my trail. She looks dangerous. Trump, your day is comin’.”

1. Steve McQueen‘s Mangrove — despite Amazon aiming it at the Emmys, it’s the best dramatic feature of 2020.
2. (tied for 2nd place) Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland and David Fincher‘s Mank.
3. Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (An Officer and a Spy) — Ignoring this brilliant film is cowardly and shameful on the part of distributors and everyone else who has looked away in fear.
4. Florian Zeller‘s The Father
5. Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7
6. Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman
7. Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost
8. Judd Apatow‘s The King of Staten Island
9. Lee Isaac Chung‘s Minari
10. Ryan Murphy‘s The Prom — Not a fan of the first 50 to 60 minutes, but I love how it ends. Made me choke up, in fact.

HE Honorable Mention: Chris Nolan‘s Tenet, Kornel Muncruczo‘s Pieces of a Woman, Charlie Kaufman‘s I’m Thinking About Ending Things, Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Greece, Cory Finley and Mike Makowski‘s Bad Education, Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow, George C. Wolfe‘s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Regina King‘s One Night in Miami, Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods. (9)

Legendary test pilot and flying ace Chuck Yeager died yesterday at age 97. In 1947 the 24 year-old Yeager became first pilot to break the sound barrier. Tom Wolfe‘s “The Right Stuff” (’79) mythologized Yeager — made him into the ultimate jet pilot cool cat. Sam Shepard played Yeager in Phil Kaufman‘s wildly overrated film version, which I hated from the get-go.

Wolfe’s book was an absorbing, insightful take on the Mercury Space Program, a governmental patriotism initiative that promoted personalities and heroism to sell itself to the public. Wolfe passed along the technical intrigues of the early flights and especially the seminal Chuck Yeager lore and how that cockpit attitude influenced every pilot who ever lived. The film, sadly, was a popcorn denigration — an attempt to make populist puree out of almost everything fascinating that Wolfe had reported and made humorous.

[From BennettInk, posted in January 2017] In a letter to his editor about “The Right Stuff”, which he was in the midst of writing, Wolfe explained that it’s not really a book about the space program. It turns out that it’s not even, really, about flying. It’s about the importance of status to men, and what happens when the rules of any status game change.

There had been a status structure to the life of U.S. fighter jocks before the space program, and it was clear to everyone involved. At the top of the pyramid were combat pilots, and at the tippy top were the combat pilots who found their way to Edwards Air Force Base, in the California desert, to test new fighter planes. The courage and spirit required not just to get to Edwards but to survive the test flights. The pilots themselves never spoke of [them], but they were at the center of their existence.

That unspoken quality was what Wolfe called the right stuff, and the embodiment of the right stuff — everyone knows it and yet no one says it — is Chuck Yeager. Hardly anyone outside the small world of combat pilots has ever heard of him. Here is how Wolfe, in a single sentence [HE — but which I’ve broken up into paragraphs], changed that:

“Anyone who travels very much on airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot…coming over the intercom…with a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down-home calmness that is so exaggerated it begins to parody itself (nevertheless!— it’s reassuring)…the voice that tells you, as the airliner is caught in thunderheads and goes bolting up and down a thousand feet at a single gulp, to check your seat belts because ‘it might get a little choppy’.

“Perhaps more fundamentally [it’s a] voice that tells you (on a flight from Phoenix preparing for its final approach into Kennedy Airport, New York, just after dawn): ‘Now, folks, uh…this is the captain
…ummmm…We’ve got a little ol’ red light up here on the control panel that’s tryin’ to tell us that the landin gears’re not…uh…lockin’ into position when we lower ‘em…now, I don’t believe that little ol’ red light knows what it’s talkin about….I believe it’s that little ol’ red light that iddn’ workin’ right’ — faint chuckle, long pause, as if to say, I’m not even sure all this is really worth going into — still, it may amuse you — ‘But I guess to play it by the rules, we oughta humor that little ol’ light…so we’re gonna take her down to about, oh, two or three hundred feet over the runway at Kennedy, and the folks down there on the ground are gonna see if they caint give us a visual inspection of those ol’ landin’ gears’ — with which he is obviously onintimate ol’-buddy terms, as with every other working part of this mighty ship—’ and if I’m right, they’re gonna tell us everything is copacetic all the way aroun’ an’ we’ll jes take her on in’.