Please read, consider, re-assess if warranted:

I last considered 2020’s Best Picture contenders on 2.28.20 — pre-coronavirus, pre-shutdown, pre-widespread depression. A world that no longer exists and which may, at best, not be fully reconstituted for another year or so.

Exactly what films will actually open this year is anyone’s guess, but it’s probably safe to assume that many of the following will be “released” in some format by 12.31.20. It also seems as if Netflix is poised to finally win the Big One.

My top ten (or at least titles that smelled like hotties two months ago) are as follows: David Fincher‘s Mank, Aaron Sorkin‘s Trial of the Chicago 7, Ridley Scott‘s The Last Duel, Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater, Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story, Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde, Leos Carax’s Annette, Paul Greengrass’s News of the World and Terrence Malick‘s The Last Planet.

I was also touched and throttled by Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, which may open sometime this summer.

Two days ago L.A. Times handicapper Glenn Whipp offered his own spitball projections. Here are 13 that I didn’t include among my top ten, for a grand total of 23. Each of the following quickies contain my own two cents:

Francis Lee‘s Ammonite (period seaside sappho — a return to Portrait of a Lady on Fire territory — Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan / Neon). HE sez: Didn’t we all just do this? Performance noms, maybe, but the film itself?

Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods (Four black veterans return to Vietnam searching for remains of a fallen comrade, and for buried treasure / Netflix). HE sez: Yeah, maybe.

Denis Villeneuve and Timothee Chalamet‘s ‘s Dune (another adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi fantasy, the idea being to elbow aside the 1984 David Lynch version / Warner Bros., due on 12.18). HE sez: Sprawling geek-friendly genre fantasies generally don’t register with Academy members.

Michael Showalter‘s The Eyes of Tammy Faye. (Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as televangelist hucksters Jim and Tammy Faye Baker / Searchlight.) HE sez: Icky subject matter. Possible acting nomination for Chastain?

Florian Zeller‘s The Father. (Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in Sundance Alzheimer relationship drama / Sony Pictures Classics, 11.20). HE sez: Acting noms.

Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy. (Glenn Close‘s performance as Ma Bumblefuck is a guaranteed lock for a Best Actress nom. Adaptation of J.D. Vance’s best-selling memoir of Appalachian upbringing and despairing red-state mindsets / Netflix.) HE sez: Locked for Best Picture nom and, as mentioned, Close for Best Actress.

Charlie Kaufman‘s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. (Boilerplate: “A man takes his girlfriend to meet with his parents, but they find themselves going on a terrifying detour.” Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis / Netflix). HE sez: Kaufman is the most melancholy-minded, auteur-level filmmaker on the North American continent and perhaps in the whole world.

Edoardo Ponti‘s The Life Ahead. (Italian-language drama, directed and co-written by Sophia Loren‘s son. Based on 1975 Romain Gary novel. The legendary 85 year-old Loren plays a Holocaust survivor bonding with a 12-year-old Senegalese immigrant kid / Netflix). HE sez: Sounds classy. Everyone loves Sophia Loren, wants to see her back in the swing of it.

George C. Wolfe‘s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. (Adaptation of August Wilson ’20s-era play about exploitation of blues musicians by white-owned record company. Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman costar, produced by Denzel Washington / Netflix) HE sez: Almost guaranteed to land a Best Picture nom on guilt-trip aspect alone. Not to mention likely acting nominations.

After living in this town for 37 years and being enough of an Alfred Hitchcock junkie to have visited Cropduster Junction four years ago, you’d think I would’ve gotten around to eyeballing Hitch’s legendary Bel Air home at 10957 Bellagio Road. But I never did until last night around 7:30 pm.

It’s a spacious, well-shaded ranch-style home with a huge sycamore tree in the front yard, but with way too much paved concrete in the front and side areas. The cement makes it look like a small country club that expects heavy in-and-out traffic.

The home is right on top of a Bel Air golf course fairway, which is cool, but last night’s atmosphere was ruined by some asshole on the other side of the golf course blasting a Brittany Spears tune.

Hitch died here in 1980 — his wife Alma passed two years later.

Watch it with the sound off.

First half: Almost every foreground figure is black or female.

Trump emerges from shadow at 0:28-and suddenly foreground is all white and male except for Kim Jong Un and a supportive Melania Trump holding a Biblehttps://t.co/tSKInB4uhv

— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 2, 2020

Tara Reade‘s accusation of sexual assault against Joe Biden is offically kaputski. It ended this morning with a story by AP”s Alexandra Jaffe, Don Thompson and Stephen Braun. It says the following: “Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, says she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.

“’I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,’ Reade said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. ‘I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.’

“Reade said she described her issues with Biden but ‘the main word I used — and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment — I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation.’

“Reade described the report after the AP discovered additional transcripts and notes from its interviews with Reade last year in which she says she ‘chickened out’ after going to the Senate personnel office. The AP interviewed Reade in 2019 after she accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching. She did not raise allegations of sexual assault against Biden until this year, around the time he became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.”

Plus she’s cancelled the Fox News interview that was to have happened tomorrow (i.e., Sunday).

Pally to HE: “She’s such a fucking liar.”
HE to Pally: “If she didn’t complain about sexual assault through official channels in ‘93, this whole thing is OVER. ‘Chickening out’ doesn’t cut it.”
Pally to HE: “I was thinking about the actual thing she described, the assault taking place in some sheltered, semi-public area. Imagine being in public with ANYONE and sticking your fingers inside the woman — that would NEVER happen. In private, yes, but not in public. Her original story is like ‘I wasn’t wearing stockings because it was hot.’ She left that detail in — as if she’d thought about it and had to explain why he could have such easy access. Had she been telling the truth — if Biden had actually assaulted her — he would have invited her to his private office or a hotel and then starting kissing her, etc. Even Weinstein knew that. Practiced predators know they have to hide what they’re doing.”

No offense but calling Guys and Dolls (‘55) and The Music Man (‘62) “essential” is…well, curious. It’s actually bizarre. “Living on your own planet” also applies. I have to figure that the TCM programmer who threw these two in did so as token sop gestures.

Not for another year or, God forbid, eighteen months. The country will die if we do. Those with vulnerable immune systems [after the jump] obviously need to be extra-careful, but most of us…? More and more are thinking, “I’ll take Sweden.”

From Eric Kohn’s Indiewire review: “Albert Serra’s Liberté aims to shock and disturb viewers with a blend of graphic sex and S&M antics to spare, practically inviting some subset of its audience to walk out in the process. While Liberté is at times pornographic, nothing about it qualifies as porn in any traditional sense: The movie is a visual investigation into the roots of sexual liberation in societies steeped in repression. Watching it from start to finish is a means of engaging with the inquiry at its center.

“Serra, a cinematic character himself who parades around the festival circuit in dark shades making deadpan declarations, makes movies that dare you to operate on his wavelength — and then works overtime to make that investment worthwhile. The filmmaker once declared his movies ‘unfuckable’; now, he’s made the ultimate movie about fucking, and it’s fucking hilarious how well he pulls it off.”

Hotshot director Phillip Noyce (Above Suspicion, The Quiet American, Newsfront, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Clear and Present Danger, Dead Calm) and daughter Ayanda, taken relatively recently by Show Me What You Got director Svetlana Cvetko. Svetlana technically risked her life by snapping this and other shots, but I’m told she wore a head-to-toe Zamat suit the entire time.

The layout and graphics of the Criterion Channel are rather pleasing. Soothing even. Plus the film offerings are nicely curated (i.e., not too effete) and egalitarian. I’m still bothered that they won’t specify what format their films are being presented in — 4K, 1080p, 720p or 480p. They’re as forthcoming about formats as North Korea is about the actual health status of Kim Jong Un. (Who may unfortunately be alive, to go by today’s update.) I became a CC subscriber last night. Certainly worth it for $10 a month.

I’ve decided that the coolest sailing ship owned by a Hollywood hotshot was John Ford‘s USS Araner — 106 feet, 147 tons, a significant presence in Donovan’s Reef, now moored in Honolulu. (Ford bought her in 1934, sold her in ’71.) The second coolest is a tie between James Cagney‘s Swift of Ipswitch (bought in ’40, sold in ’58) and David Crosby‘s Mayan, which he owned for 45 years. The third coolest is Humphrey Bogart‘s 55-foot Santana (’45 to Bogart’s death in ’57).

Yes, I’d have trouble defining the differences between a schooner, yawl, sloop, sailboat, ketch and cutter. But I love the romance of the sea plus the idea of having enough time to sail away on one of these things, under whatever circumstance.

John Ford’s USS Araner (’34 to ’71).

James Cagney’s Swift (’40 to ’58).