“Lake Arrowhead Is Scenic and Fragrant But…,” posted 5 and 1/3 years ago: “Before yesterday I had never visited Lake Arrowhead. High in the mountains (about 5000 feet), quite hilly, the scent of pine and wood chips, forests of towering fir trees, about 30 minutes north of San Bernardino.

“It seems wonderful when you first arrive, but then you start noticing things.

“Like the sparsity of sidewalks and bike-riding and general hiking paths — the town is strictly about cars, and big fat SUVs at that. Not to mention the blue-collar, vaguely bumblefuck atmosphere — you can immediately sense a downmarket culture that is at least somewhat lacking in educated, upscale sensibilities. I knew something was up when I spotted a couple of streetside banner ads celebrating the local ‘heroes’ who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan. On top of which many of the homes lack architectural integrity and have obviously been built with cheap materials. On top of which Lake Arrowhead Village is so overdeveloped that any concept of charm probably went out the window 50 years ago.

“In a phrase, the town lacks a certain refinement. It’s for people who like to eat at McDonald’s. It almost feels like some kind of low-security, blue-collar prison camp. The town that F.W. Murnau shot Sunrise in 90 years ago was a very different place, I’m sure. Many decades before the middle-American mob moved in and transformed this little mountain village into Mulletville. This is not a community that would appeal to Bernardo Bertolucci or Michelangelo Antonioni in their prime. Europeans do lakeside resorts with a lot more class and style.”

“The only reason I had any success was because of you. And I was grateful for that at that time.” — the late Sue Lyon to Stanley Kubrick, written and presumably sent sometime around ’95.

Saying that she was grateful for her limited success as an actress “at that time” (i.e., the ’60s and ’70s) indicates that perhaps she wasn’t so grateful for this chapter as she got older. Maybe. And why would it be so difficult to locate Kubrick’s mailing address, what with their history and all? Her former agent or agency couldn’t help? She couldn’t reach out to Kubrick’s producing partner James B. Harris (who’s still with us)?

Friends of Richard Rudman, to whom Lyon was married in the mid ’90s and apparently had ties with her at the time of her passing, expressed condolences on Facebook. Lyon was married five times, which suggests she wasn’t exactly a day at the beach. Rudman wrote a day or two ago that “she’s in a better place now, finally at peace and rest…” The suggestion is that things were rather difficult for Lyon toward the end, possibly due to poor health.

Today, tomorrow (Friday, 1.3), the weekend, Monday (1.6) and Tuesday (1.7). And that’s all the time there is to submit Oscar noms. Hubba hubba.

Click here to jump past HE Sink-In

Give Shia LaBeouf‘s Honey Boy an A for honesty, and an extra A for soul-baring. It warrants respect and admiration — for LaBeouf’s screenplay and lead performance (playing his own abusive dad), for the performances of Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges who play LeBeouf (called Otis Lort) at ages 12 and 22, respectively, and for the efforts of Israeli director Alma Har’el.

Since opening on 11.8, Honey Boy has been critically praised (Rotten Tomatoes 94%) and polled well with Joe and Jane Popcorn (91% on RT, an IMDB rating of 7.5.)

Honey Boy is a straight-up,  take-it-or-leave-it thing — half  cinematic therapy (LaBeouf wrote it in rehab) and half sordid family saga. It tells the truth about what Shia endured as a kid and what he’s grappling with now as a 33 year-old. And it’s no stroll in the park. But it doesn’t sidestep or shilly shally. It’s trustworthy.

SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:

We’ve all come to know the LaBeouf saga over the last 13 or so years, and how reactive and turbulent and issue-laden it’s been all along. He became a successful child actor at age 9 or thereabouts (around ’95) and then a 21 year-old marquee name with his lead performance in Disturbia and then, starting in ’08 or thereabouts, an obviously troubled hotshot with standout performances in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (’10), Lawless and The Company You Keep (’12), Nymphomaniac (’13), Fury (’14), American Honey (’16), Borg vs McEnroe (’17) and The Peanut Butter Falcon (’19).

Not to mention the arrests, altercations, conflicts, provocations. Over the last decade LaBeouf has become far better known for his issues than his talent or achievements.  By the term “issues” I’m alluding to what some have perceived as obnoxious, self-regarding behavior.  But that’s a fair call, LaBeouf has said.

“I don’t think you were wrong for thinking I was a dick,” he told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg a while back. Feinberg had confessed to feeling guilty for making dismissive assumptions about him in recent years as he repeatedly wound up in the headlines for all of the wrong reasons. “I think context is really important,” LaBeouf explained. “And I think what Honey Boy does is contextualize who I was publicly, and kind of plays on it. And I’m grateful it’s effective.”

Out of 31 Gold Derby experts, only four — Variety‘s Tim Gray, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Decider‘s Chris Rosen and myself — have stood up for Dolomite Is My Name‘s Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Her performance as Lady Reed is arguably the most touching and open-hearted of the year. In any category.

And 27 GD know-it-alls have blown her off. Nice one, guys!

Three other contenders deliver the intrepid beating heart thing. The Farewell‘s Zhao Shuzhen, who plays the ailing grandmother, Nai Nai. Bombshell‘s Margot Robbie, who portrays a fictitious Fox News comployee, Kayla Pospisil**, but in a stunned and shattered victimhood mode. And Richard Jewell‘s Kathy Bates, in her most noteworthy feature film performance since…what, Gertude Stein in Midnight in Paris?

The performances of the other three highly-rated contenders — Marriage Story‘s Laura Dern, Hustlers‘ Jennifer Lopez and Little Women‘s Florence Pugh — are all about spunk and spirit and strutting around. (Pugh delivers all this plus impudence.)

I respected Robbie’s performance and felt sorry for Pospisil (that awful scene in Roger Aisles‘ office), but at no time did I feel any kind of profound or meaningful kinship with her (mainly due to the rightwing thing). The emotional currents that seep out of Randolph’s Lady Reed are far more affecting, and yet Robbie has been included on 25 out of 31 GD lists. She’s obviously a bigger name that Randolph, but her performance isn’t in Randolph’s league. At all. Seriously.

Dern and Lopez are on pretty much everyone’s list. Shuzhen is on 17. Pugh is on 20.

The last time I checked performances that make you feel something deep and poignant are the ones that result in acting nominations…no? I guess gutsy and ballsy have more clout these days.

** Pospisil is a very strange last name. A mixture of a prescription drug and an opossum.

Decent tease. January 17th.

“Trump has never had the cities…right? Now he’s lost the ‘burbs. But he still polls well in the hamlets, whistle stops, one-horse towns, bumfucks and wide areas of the road.” Wait…”bumfucks?”

Yesterday The Atlantic‘s David Sims posted a piece titled “The 10 Best Movie Scenes of the 2010s.”

I agree with two or three of his choices, but it’s astonishing that one of Sims’ picks is the notorious Parasite scene when the fired maid rings the bell during the rainstorm and the drunken family lets her in. This is arguably one of the most confounding and unsatisfying scenes in any major 2019 film bar none, and Sims calls it one of the year’s best?

Consider a Zero Dark Thirty substitute. Actually three scenes that involve the final decision to send Navy Seals to Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden. I’m especially taken with the scene in which James Gandolfini‘s Leon Panetta asks his CIA advisors to state unequivocally and without “any fucking bullshit” whether Osama bin Laden “is there or is he not fucking there?”

The 1st runner-up is when Jessica Chastain‘s Maya tells Panetta that she’s “the motherfucker who found” the target, and Panetta, suddenly charmed and obviously amused, says “really?”

Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron‘s When Harry Met Sally is 30 years old. My view has always been that it’s an agreeable relationship comedy with underpinnings of recognizable emotional realism. It’s occasionally glib and schmaltzy, but what continues to save it are (a) Ephron’s dialogue and (b) Billy Crystal‘s delivery of same. The football-game confession may be the best scene. Mainly because the story of how Crystal’s ex-wife Helen broke up with him feels half-believable. People always lie about their motives for breaking up. They never lay their cards face-up. And movers never say anything to anyone.

Click here to jump past HE Sink-In

If Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood winds up taking the Best Picture Oscar on 2.9.20, it’ll be for a simple, sensible reason. Everybody likes it. I haven’t spoken to anyone who’s had anything negative to say about it. Not the slightest, most insignificant thing…zip. I shared a few mild gripes after catching it during last May’s Cannes Film Festival, but they’ve all pretty much evaporated. I’ve seen it three or four times since. I’ve become a follower.

To paraphrase the late Samuel Goldwyn, “If people like a movie, you can’t stop ’em.”

A Once Upon A Time in Hollywood win would also be an historical achievement of sorts. It would be the first time that an amiable, relatively plot-free, character-driven, laid-back attitude flick wins the big prize. Or, to put it more simply and given the fact that Tarantino’s film is about the B-movie realm of 1969 Hollywood, it would be the first “drive-in movie” to win this honor.

SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is not highly poised. It’s not “okay boomer” or high falutin’. It’s not a Stanley Kramer or Tom Hooper or a Baz Luhrman film. It’s a hang movie about nervous cats vs. psycho cats plus one supremely cool cat. It’s almost Cormanesque.

The Academy is a different deliberative body than it was ten or even five years ago. The New Academy Kidz, or the more diverse members who were invited to join the Academy over the last three years and who constitute roughly 20% of the present membership, are much more supportive of genre-type films (Get Out, The Shape of Water). This sensibility is a door-opener in terms of OUATIH‘s Best Picture worthiness.

The other fundamental thing is that Once (as some prefer to call it) probably wouldn’t be a Best Picture contender if it was entirely about Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Rick Dalton, an insecure, downswirling TV actor who’s terrified that his career on the verge of flatlining. He’s all nerves and cigarettes and too many slurps of booze.

The joy of this film, in fact, is all about Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth, the Zen counterweight who slips the film into cruising gear. Cliff is Mr. Alpha Cool. His mantra is “I got this, don’t sweat it.” Unlike Leo, Pitt doesn’t strenuously “act” all over the place. His is a very settled and relaxing and old-fashioned vibe, and Once is Pitt’s moment…right here, right now, age 55, prime of his life. He’s gone beyond acting at this stage. He’s become a kind of…I don’t know, mystical presence or something. You don’t say “Brad Pitt” — you hum it.

One of the reasons Pitt is going to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar is because the Academy membership understands that it needs to offer a make-up for not giving him the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Moneyball. Pitt’s performance as Billy Beane was easily the best of the five nominated performances from 2011, and…I don’t want to talk about who won. But it was wrong.

A Reddit guy called “The HeyHey Man” has cracked the “why did Booksmart underperform?” code. He’s explained it clearly and succinctly. He’s gone where various sage industry analysts (such as the Indiewire gang) have feared to tred. And he waited almost eight full months to share.

In a nutshell, Olivia Wilde’s film failed to connect in a Superbad way because it wasn’t relatable enough for average middle-classers who live outside of the flush realms of politically correct, sexually ambiguous Los Angeles-for-teens. The elite high-school world in which Beanie Feldstein‘s Molly and Kaitlyn Dever‘s Amy operated was too tart, too wealthy, too swimming pooled, too Bloomingdaled, too Shangrila’ed, too fantasy’ed, too entitled.

HeyHey: “[After Booksmart opened] critics and film journalists/bloggers were wondering why the movie hadn’t reached a larger audience. I believe it’s the fact that Booksmart may as well be happening on another planet.

“How are we the audience supposed to place ourselves in the shoes of these characters when the vast majority of us have not, for example, frequented a posh house party in a mansion in an upscale LA neighborhood?

“I grew up as an upper middle classer and have never been to a house party like the one depicted in Booksmart. Not once. I’ve never stripped down to my underwear and jumped into a gorgeous backyard pool surrounded by palm trees with a bunch of other beautiful, scantily clad people. My parents never gave me or let me drive a $70k SUV. My high school didn’t look like some sort of modern art institute.

“All power to you if you grew up in this Hollywood fantasy world but I’m fairly certain 99% of us did not. And Hollywood wants to know why these movies aren’t hitting with audiences? Seems fairly obvious to me.

“Why did Superbad succeed when Booksmart did not? Why did it become a cultural phenomenon? Because the characters were relatable, and the situations, although exaggerated, also were.

“Ever been underage at a party in a strange house with older people you didn’t really know, and found yourself in an awkward situation? Oh, yeah. Tried to score booze with a fake ID? I never had one but a buddy did and it was always nerve wracking. Played videogames with friends in a basement and drinking the parents’ booze. Raises hand again. The things in that movie also all happened in relatively average middle class environments. Boom, people relate, and word of mouth is strong.

“Booksmart was fine but it wasn’t the comedic masterpiece I was led to believe it was by critics and journalists. The girls were great and the best moments in the movie were the intimate and honest moments between them but I couldn’t place myself really in any of the situations they found themselves in. It’s time for Hollywood to realize there is a whole lot of country, culture, and class out there. They need to figure this shit out.”

HE postscript: Of all the relatable elements that Superbad had and Booksmart lacked, “The HeyHey Man” didn’t mention one particular thing that he probably didn’t feel a profound kinship with or understanding of. You know what I mean. I’m reluctant to say it because the Stalinist commissars will raise their eyebrows if I do. Okay, I’ll spit it out. HeyHey didn’t relate to the sappho.

Every second represents a small explosion, a slight turn of the wheel, a possible change of direction. Ditto every minute, hour, day, week and month. The sun rises and falls each day, and the earth continues to spin while the train clatters along the track. There are more cosmic truths contained on the sharp tip of a sewing needle than anything Anderson Cooper could possibly dispense as he hosts the New Year’s Eve celebration telecast. The only people who genuinely believe that New Year’s Eve is some kind of meaningful hoo-hah that’s worthy of contemplation or celebration or anything along those lines are…I’m very sorry but I’m forced to say these folks are on the shallow, less thoughtful side of the equation. They’re celebrating with each other because they’re scared of the onrush of time. If there’s one international celebration that’s worth ignoring in this or that creative way (meditating, lighting an aroma candle, strolling along a Mulholland bike path, watching a restored ’50s film on 4K, crashing early), it’s New Year’s Eve.