Posted on 8.7.13: If Gregory Peck had been clairvoyant and under the influence of a truth drug on the night he won the Best Actor Oscar for To Kill A Mockingbird in March 1963, he might have said, “Well, this is it…the peak moment. I’ve been lucky enough to play starring roles for the finest producers, directors and writers in the business for the last 18 years…Spellbound, Duel In The Sun, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Paradine Case, Twelve O’Clock High, Roman Holiday, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Moby Dick, The Bravados, The Big Country, Pork Chop Hill, On The Beach, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear…and it’s been wonderful. I’m saying this because for the next 40 years it’s going to be all downhill.

“Oh, I’ll make a few interesting films over the next couple of decades but my charmed career period is over and I know it. Some actors only get lucky for five or ten years. I nearly had 20. And for that I’m very grateful to the industry and especially to the public. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

This is a cruel topic to bring up, but who right now is in this position? Who out there is Gregory Peck in March 1963? In a good place and working all the time and maybe even peaking and financially flush, but the charmed, blue-chip glory days are basically over with nothing but gradually dwindling returns to look forward to.

Supplemental anecdote: During his acceptance speech after winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Witness, Earl W. Wallace (who co-wrote the Harrison Ford cop drama with Pamela Wallace and William Kelley) said “I have an uneasy feeling my career just peaked.” It happened 34 years ago, during the 58th Academy Awards telecast in ’86. Wallace says it at 4:55 [after the jump].

I obviously know nothing, but I’m sensing extra-ness in Peter Debruge‘s Sundance review of Edson Ota‘s Nine Days, filed at 12:25 am today:

“At the risk of overselling Edson Oda’s ultra-original, meaning-of-life directorial debut, there’s a big difference between Nine Days and pretty much every other film ever made. You see, most movies are about characters, real or imagined, and the stuff that happens to them, whereas Nine Days is about character itself — as in, the moral dimension that constitutes who a person is, how he or she treats others, and the choices that define us as humans.

“But Oda doesn’t stop there. In a film of dizzying conceptual ambition — Jean Paul Sartre‘s No Exit meets Michael Gondry and Charlie Kaufman‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — the Brazilian-born, U.S.-based writer-director wants to make audiences appreciate the little things, like the feeling of sand between your toes or the way your hand surfs the air when extended from the window of a moving car.

“To that end, Oda concocts an elaborate new metaphor for thinking about how souls are selected for the responsibility of life. And while no film can possibly be an antidote to suicide, this one poignantly reminds how lucky we are to be here: a planet full of lottery winners.”

I for one hate the feeling of sand between my toes. Dry sand, damp sand, beach tar…I hate that whole experience. When I’m near the shore I like to walk around in white laceless sneakers without so much as a single grain of sand getting involved, and preferably on paved pathways or boardwalks or pavement. Hey, I’m a city guy.

Jordan Ruimy disputes: “Nine Days is unwatchable. Maybe the worst movie I have seen at [Sundance ’20]. Pretentious drivel.”

This is far more interesting than looking at those overly wide, hard-to-zoom-in-on class of ’20 photos that popped yesterday. HE to readers: If you were Quentin Tarantino, would you wear a brown-and-yellow bowling shirt to an event like this?

“Wolficorn“, a private Los Angeles-based pilot, “took the flight radar data from Flight Radar 24 and entered it into Google Earth Studio in order to get a better idea of the flight path in the hopes it could provide a little more insight into [the Kobe Bryant tragedy].”

I was naturally intrigued to watch a decent visual simulation of the San Fernando Valley typography that Ara Zoboyan, the pilot of Bryant’s Sikorsky S-76B, was eyeballing as he steered the chopper and its eight passengers to their fate. Wolficorn stops the footage a few seconds before the simulated impact.

Comment #1 (Doug. W.): Inadvertently flying into IMC followed by loss of control due to spatial disorientation and loss of situational awareness…#1 killer for pilots. Very sad.”

Comment #2 (Neal B.): “[Zoboyan] tried to thread the needle between rising terrain and a descending fog/cloud base, and lost.”

Comment #3 (David Stewart) “[So] if that was the route then it was suicide on a cloudy day with only 2.5 km of visibility. Why didn’t they just turn back? This really sucks.”

Comment #4 (wjatube): “No mystery what happened here. This tragedy was completely avoidable. Most helicopter services were grounded that morning due to the low cloud ceiling (even the police). Get-there-itis has killed once again. All for the sake of getting from John Wayne to Thousand Oaks just 90 minutes faster.”

CNN contributor Majahat Ali: “This is the pathetic insecurity of the spineless amoebas of men such as Mike Pompeo and the others in the Trump administration. This is a recurring theme with Pompeo. He really doesn’t like it when female reporters actually ask him questions, and are intelligent and do follow-ups. This time around he throws around f-bombs and brings out a map without countries. Whom should we believe…Mary Louise Kelly, a veteran journalist, or Mike Pompeo, who this month alone has lied to the American public about imminent threats. This man from Harvard has completely redefined ‘imminent’ in a way that is completely different from ‘imminent.'”

Republican strategist and author Rick Wilson (“Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump–and Democrats from Themselves“): “Mike Pompeo has become one of the high priests of Trumpism, and the core of Trumpism is a war on the media. Performative media hatred that they bring in on the daily.

“Pompeo knows, deep in his heart, that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if he had a ‘U’ and a picture of an actual, physical crane. He knows this is an administration defined by ignorance of the world. That’s partly him playing to their base, playing to their audience…the credulous rube who thinks ‘you’re the smart one, Mr. President, and the others are all elitists.’

“Pompeo is defining the office [of Secretary of State] down to the lowest possible level. This is [about] Trumpism corrupting everyone and everything that surrounds him. This is a graduate of both West Point and Harvard who knows much better than this. But this is the performative douchiness that [Trump acolytes] do to please Donald Trump. Pompeo knows these performances are going to be played and that Trump is going to see them and like them. That’s who he’s performing for — an audience of one. Pompeo knows that Mary Louise Kelly is a pro and not some DNC plant, but he wants to please Trump. This is a food chain inside Trump world. Whoever sucks up the most is the guy who gets the most rewards.”

Last night World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy shared some fleeting observations about the five Sundance keepers that have emerged over the last few days. Every Sundance festival delivers four, five or six head-turners, and usually during the first weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). It would appear (emphasis on the “a” word) that the only possible Joe Popcorn hit is Max Barbakow‘s Palm Springs, a time-loop romcom a la Groundhog Day with Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti and J. K. Simmons.

Four days left in the fest (although Tuesday is the last dependable day as things always start to run out of gas on Wednesday) and the hotties are (a) Florian Zeller‘s The Father (a film that puts YOU in the mind of an Alzheimer’s sufferer), (b) Janicza Bravo‘s Zola (a love-hate thang, crazy manic Floridian hijinks, idiot characters), (c) Palm Springs, (d) Lee Isaac Chung‘s Minari (hardscrabble Korean family survival tale, set in rural Arkansas) and (e) Bryan Fogel‘s The Dissident (exacting doc about the Saudi murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and a scathing portrait of the Trumpies who looked the other way).

12:30 pm update: A critic friend insists that Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman (Carey Mulligan revenge flick) belongs with the above. “It takes a little while to settle into a groove but eventually becomes dynamite. How can you ignore a 20-for-20 favorable rating on RT? It’s the one film here that I continue to think about.” HE response: “It sounded unappealing but if you say so, fine. One can never trust Sundance reviews as a whole as the general tendency is to be kind if not celebrative.”

The wipeouts include Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing He Wanted (“disaster”) and Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy (“Total disappointment…Zeitlin hasn’t grown up as a filmmaker”). Iffies and in-betweeners include Alan Ball‘s Uncle Frank (middle-aged NYC gay guy awkwardly comes out to bumblefuck family) and Sean Durkin‘s The Nest (slow-burn thriller, cultural isolation).

Screening today: Liz Garbus‘s Lost Girls (missing daughter, Long Island serial killer).

Again, the mp3.

Olivia Colman, Anthony Hopkins in Florian Zeller’s The Father.

Imagine the instant death sentences that would be handed down if a distributor today was dumb enough to promote a film with a poster this leering, this brazen, this 4-3-2-hike. Alas, such images and attitudes were par for the course in the ’70s. (You had to be there.) Will the Khmer Rouge try to kill me for posting this image in an ironic historical sense? You can’t be too careful these days.

Dan Jenkins‘ “Semi-Tough” (published in ’70) was a raunchy account of the world of big-time pro football. Arrogant American behaviors, racial attitudes, Madison Avenue tie-ins, etc.

For some reason Michael Ritchie’s 1977 adaptation, which costarred Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson and Jill Clayburgh, was turned into a satire of Werner Erhard‘s Erhard Seminars Training (EST), which became B.E.A.T. in the film.

The poster, in short, lied its ass off, conveying literally nothing about what the film was actually about.

I saw it once in the summer of ’77 at the Westport Fine Arts. Didn’t mind it, chuckled once or twice, haven’t seen it since. Formerly viewable via Amazon Prime, but no longer. It just popped on Bluray.

A fatigued (possibly dispirited) Clark Gable during the filming of The Misfits. I read somewhere that Gable didn’t lead the healthiest lifestyle. A couple of packs of cigarettes per day, lots and lots of booze. Sooner or later that kind of living catches up with you. It caught up with Gable at age 59, on 11.16.60 — eight days after the election of JFK.

Burt Lancaster’s second Native American role, following Jim Thorpe, All-American. I’ve never seen this Robert Aldrich-directed film. I’ve always heard it wasn’t much. “Not only synthetic but, believe it or not, incredibly slow and dull.” — N.Y. Times review, 7.10.54.

The subhead of David Frum‘s “Bernie Can’t Win,” posted today in The Atlantic, speaks volumes: “But unless other Democrats take a page from his book — stressing the practical over the theoretical, the universal over the particular — they won’t prevail either.”

First four paragraphs: “’Left but not woke’ is the Bernie Sanders brand. If anybody failed to recognize it before, nobody can miss it now.

“Last week, the mega-podcaster Joe Rogan endorsed Sanders. The Sanders campaign tweeted a video of the Rogan endorsement from Sanders’s own account. That tweet then triggered an avalanche of disapproval from other voices in the Democratic coalition.

“Rogan is not an ally to the cultural causes that have come to predominate on the contemporary left. He even mocks many of those causes, while also dancing around conspiratorial thinking of the left and right fringes: 9/11 denialism, Obama birtherism, and speculation about dark deeds concerning Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.

“As The Atlantic reported in a memorable appreciation of Rogan back in August, Rogan is a voice for men:

“Guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and preordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw…Like lots of other white men in America, [Rogan] is grappling with a growing sense that the term ‘white man’ has become an epithet. And like lots of other men in America, [and] not just the white ones, he’s reckoning out loud with a fear that the word ‘masculinity’ has become, by definition, toxic.”

HE reaction: Rogan has “a growing sense that the term ‘white man’ has become an epithet”? Growing?

HE question: What presidential contender besides Bernie is a non-wokester who’s into stressing the practical and universal? Pete Buttigieg, bitches.

Four days ago the brilliant Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday ran a piece called “The 34 Best Political Movies Ever Made.” Everybody has their own list of such films. I’m good with almost all of Hornaday’s choices, although I would have deleted Mean Girls and Born Yesterday in favor of Franklin J. Schaffner and Gore Vidal‘s The Best Man (’64 — that Lee Tracy performance!) and Michael Ritchie‘s The Candidate (’72).

For the sin of boredom Lincoln doesn’t make the HE chart, but you know what does? Paths of Glory, which is more about politics and class than it is about warfare.

Hornaday explanation: “There are titles not on this list that are sure to launch a million “How could you leave out…?” objections. Not because [this or that political film isn’t] worthy, but to make room for films that may be more obscure but are no less revelatory or fun to watch.

HE to Hornaday #1: “It’s funny and admirable that you decided on 34 films, which you’re not supposed to do, of course. Some say list pieces should only include ten noteworthies, and fewer will say 20. But you MUST use multiples of ten or five, and NEVER, EVER go beyond 25. 34 is hilarious!”

HE to Hornaday #2: “Gabriel Over The White House has faded in my memory, but I recall an actual trumpet (playing some kind of sad, melancholy tune) signaling the moral awakening of Walter Huston.

HE to Hornaday #3: “Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (’56) is about ‘50s Eisenhower culture in the tidy suburbs — vanilla complacency and conformity, robotically expressed assurances that everything’s fine, and no place for subterranean riffs and reflections from people like Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Arthur Miller, Chet Baker and Nicholas Ray. It’s about “the bland leading the bland.” In summary, I don’t see how a film about the muffling and narcotizing of the human spirit is political, but I guess it is on some vague level.”

HE to Hornaday #4: “Election‘s Tracy Flick is a resentful, ultra-determined, extra-carnivorous version of Richard Nixon. In ‘08 or thereabouts Hillary Clinton reportedly said to Reese Witherspoon that “everyone’s telling me about Tracy Flick!” She didn’t even realize she was being put down. I don’t think Matthew Broderick has been gradually exposed as the villain, as somebody (Matt Zoller Seitz?) recently wrote. Broderick is playing an angry stifled hypocrite and an overly emotional, sloppy-minded idealist — he finally decides to stop Tracy but unscrupulously. And he doesn’t even think to destroy the ballot that favors Flick but throws it into his own garbage basket!”

HE to Hornaday #5: “Congrats to the great WaPo illustrator Stephen Bliss!”

A colleague tells me that the latest 1917 diss, above and beyond the videogame criticism and in the immediate wake of Stephen King’s apology piece in the Washington Post, is that it’s too white. Because any and all things “white” are inherently evil and corroded and should be officially disapproved of.

It follows that Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood has to be painted with the same brush, at least according to the latest edition of “Wokester Rules and Regulations.” Because except for “Bruce Lee” and the Mexican parking guys at Musso & Frank it has no POCs in the cast. And therefore the only racially acceptable Best Picture contender is Parasite.

I’m reporting this with an eye-roll attitude, of course. I’ve done no calling or emailing about this. I’m just passing this crap along for a good laugh. I’m naturally presuming that relatively few Academy members are wiggy enough to buy into it.

But I’ll tell you one thing. The mindset that this passionately reviewed, widely respected Sam Mendes film, which is based on a war-story recollection from his grandfather, has to be denied the Best Picture Oscar for portraying a racially disproportionate or insensitive view of British troops in World War I**…this kind of p.c. lunacy is precisely the kind of thing that Average Joe voters are extremely fearful of in the wake of a liberal electoral triumph next November, and why a fair percentage will probably still vote for Trump, despite his sociopathic-crime-boss credentials.

** I haven’t yet found a comprehensive account of how many British soldiers of color fought in the WWI trenches, but a 9.22.17 Washington Post report by Michael Ruane contains some interesting figures. Quoting Library of Congress rep Ryan Reft, the article says that among U.S. troops “between 370,000 and 400,000 African Americans served during World War I,” mostly as “stevedores, camp laborers, [and in] logistical support.” Reft claims that “40,000 to 50,000” AA troops saw combat and “about 770 were killed.” American, that is. I don’t know from British.

On 1.14.20 author Stephen King stood up like a man and told the truth about the proper evaluation of excellence and award-worthiness in the realm of motion pictures. What was this brave and fearless statement? Simply that he “would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.”

Well, the wokester Khmer Rouge sure disabused King of that idiotic opinion, you bet! They jumped all over his ass on Twitter, and before you could say “oh, no, wait…holy shit!” King was on his knees, grovelling and mewing like a kitten and saying he was so sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. “Please, wokesters…don’t cancel me for being an older white guy…pleeeease!”

Have white Academy members voted according to certain biases and blind spots over the years? No shit, Sherlock. I will never forgive those who voted to give the Best Picture Oscar to The Artist, The King’s Speech and Chicago, and that’s regardless of their ancestry, pigmentation or income levels.

Then again should every older-white-guy Academy member who voted to give the Best Picture Oscar to Moonlight be congratulated for showing an absence of these biases and blind spots? Well, not necessarily because in that case a lot of whiteys wanted to counter-balance the #OscarsSoWhite thing, and figured a Moonlight win would partially get them off the hook.

But in a neutrally just and fair world nobody should vote for anything because of guilt or out of some kind of subconscious need to make political amends. They should vote for a Best Picture contender or nominee because it happens to be, by the yardstick of the Movie Godz, an excellent film. Period.

As in the case of Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, which I instantly recognized as a world-class effort when I saw it in Telluride on 8.30.13. Or in the case of those who lazily or carelessly voted for Argo or the History Channel-ish Lincoln instead of the far more vital and envelope-pushing Zero Dark Thirty or Silver Linings Playbook.

King spoke truth to Twitter power when he said that “only quality” should matter — a statement King now says he “mistakenly thought was noncontroversial.” For his sins he was taken out to the Twitter woodshed and lashed with a strap of leather. He’s still carrying a few crimson welts, still bent over a bit.

With the memory of that punishment in his mind, King doubled-down today with another mea culpa — a Washington Post opinion piece titled “The Oscars Are Still Rigged In Favor of White People.”

Which they are. Changes have obviously been instituted (i.e., “the New Academy Kidz”) but the proportion of white vs. POC Academy members remains unfair and disproportionate, especially if you compare actual numbers and percentage charts in the matter of the Hollywood workforce. Or so I gather.

But as unfair and lopsided as things still are (no one’s disputing the statistics or denying that the playing field has to be further levelled), this shouldn’t enable or give license to Academy members to vote for a slightly-less-good film because it was made by the right people and/or the right reasons, or vote for a slightly-less-riveting performance because the right actor performed it. When the choices are put before you, you’re obliged to vote for the best.

I know it’s a terrible thing to say in the present context, but King was more accurate than not the first time.

From TMZ Sports: “L.A. weather was extremely foggy Sunday morning, and law enforcement sources tell us even LAPD air support was grounded because of it. Flight tracker data shows Kobe’s chopper appeared to first encounter weather issues as it was above the L.A. Zoo. It circled that area at least six times at a very low altitude — around 875 feet — perhaps waiting for the fog to clear.

“The pilot eventually headed north along the 118 freeway before turning to the west, and started following above the 101 freeway around Woodland Hills.

“At around 9:40 AM they encountered more weather — as in seriously heavy fog — and the chopper turned south. This was critical, because they turned toward a mountainous area. The pilot suddenly and rapidly climbed from about 1200 feet up to 2000 feet.

“However, moments later — around 9:45 am — they [slammed] into a mountain at 1700 feet. Flight tracker data shows they were flying at about 161 knots,” or 185 mph.

Wiki excerpt: In general aviation, scud running is a practice in which pilots lower their altitude to avoid clouds or instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The goal of scud running is to stay clear of weather to continue flying with visual, rather than instrument, references.”

“The pilot of the Kobe crash chopper was Ara Zobayan, a 20 year flying veteran and a certified flight instructor, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. He had been flying aircraft in Southern California for 20 years, records showed. He worked as a helicopter instructor for Group 3 Aviation in Van Nuys, and the company has posted photos of numerous students he has trained to fly helicopters over the years.”

In short, pilot error caused the death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter and six others yesterday morning.

In psychological terms, when a super-rich, high-powered celebrity with a Type-A personality wants something done, it’s a very rare subordinate who will tell him/her that achieving this goal will involve dangerous risk and that he/she will therefore decline. Nine out of ten subordinates will put caution aside and do everything in their power to deliver what the celebrity wants. Because doing so involves the least resistance and offers the potential of great reward.