Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman has scored 14 nominations for the forthcoming Critics’ Choice Awards, and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has been handed 12 noms.

Not to make any rash predictions, but do you know what this means? I’ll tell you what this means, given that the Critics Choice Awards have generally tended to mirror Oscar noms and winners. It means that the odds strongly favor The Irishman winning the Best Picture Oscar, and that Quentin’s film…who knows? Some kind of split vote outcome. Possibly a Best Director of Best Screenplay makeup…something like that.

The CC gang has given The Irishman noms for best picture, director, best actor (Robert De Niro), best supporting actor (Al Pacino and Joe Pesci) and best acting ensemble, among others.

The other heavyweight CC contenders are Little Women (nine nominations), Marriage Story (eight) plus Jojo Rabbit and Parasite (seven noms each).

The foodiest critics group in the world is now voting. This is who they are, what they stand for, what they care about most….toasted bagels and fruit and potato salad. No, seriously — they mostly care about defying Joe Popcorn mindsets. Which is cool.

HE acronyms (Yay), (Fine), (HRO) and (WTF) signify hearty approval, moderate approval, “huh, really?…okay” and “what the fuck?”

Best Film: Parasite / (HRO). Runner-Up: The Irishman. HE commentary: Parasite is a far lesser film than The Irishman, but the people who have been doing Parasite handstands since last May can’t be stopped. They know it’s a less-than-perfect film, but they won’t back off because it focuses on vast social inequity.

Best Director: Bong Joon-ho, Parasite / (HRO). Runner-Up: Martin Scorsese, The Irishman.

Best Actor — Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory / (Yay). Runner-up: Adam Driver, Marriage Story / (Fine).

Best Actress — Mary Kay Place, Diane / (Yay). Runner-Up: Lupita Nyong’o, Us. HE commentary: Insisting that Nyong’o’s scream-queen-meets-bug-eyed-zombie performance is award-worthy…I give up. It makes no sense to me. I never so much as flirted with the faintest fantasy that it might be an awards contender. In my mind it still isn’t. Nyong’o is a top-tier actress and she sold the dual-role thing, but genre-level performances don’t belong among award finalists. Because they’re defined by jizz-whiz and genre tropes.

Best Supporting Actor — Song Kang Ho, the father/limo driver in Parasite / (HRO). Runner-up: Joe Pesci, The Irishman. HE commentary: Due respect but Song Kang Ho’s performance is on the broad, over-emphasized side. It doesn’t begin to approach the skill and absorption factors in Al Pacino and Joe Pesci‘s supporting turns in The Irishman, and lacks the confident charisma of Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. HE preference: Torn between Pacino and Pitt, leaning toward Pacino.

Best Supporting Actress — Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers / (Yay). Runner-Up>: Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell.

Best Cinematography — Claire Mathon, Portrait Of A Lady on Fire and Atlantics / (Fine). Runner-up: Roger Deakins, 1917 (Yay). HE preference: Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse.

Best Production Design — Barbara Ling, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood / (WTF). Runner-up: Ha Jun Lee, Parasite. HE commentary: What was so noteworthy about the Once Upon A Time production design? Rick Dalton’s Cielo Drive ranch-style pad? The rickety shack that Bruce Dern‘s George Spahn lives in? Lighthouse production designer Craig Lathrop built a rustic 19th Century home plus a worn-looking brick lighthouse from the ground up — nothing in OUATIH or Parasite compares to this.

Best Musical Score — Dan Levy, I Lost My Body / (Fine) HE preference: Robbie Roertson, The Irishman.

Voting among members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, arguably the flakiest and most whimsically oddball major critics group in the country, is expected to begin at 10 ayem. Or somewhere in that vicinity. HE readers know the LAFCA drill. They’ll vote on five or six categories in the late morning, and then take a 45-minute brunch break, and then return to vote on the last four or five or whatever, including the Best Picture prize.

Posted on 12.9.18: The year-end awards decided by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association are almost always outside the box. When they champion a film or a performance that I happen to share admiration for, I go ‘yay.’ But more often my reaction to their left-field picks is (a) ‘huh, really?…okay” or (b) ‘what the fuck?’ I will therefore signal my reactions today with either (Yay), (HRO) or (WTF).” Same deal today. Naturally I’m hoping for at least a few yays, but you know LAFCA.

I’m not saying LAFCA isn’t dedicated to celebrating quality (I was elated when they gave last year’s Best Actor award to First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke), but they have to do that LAFCA thing, that “hey, look at us, we’re nervy and different” between bites of bagels and lox and cream cheese and small chunks of fruit. Deciding to award some kind of arbitrary, socially progressive notion or belief scheme of the moment, I mean. A choice that will feel like the right kind of politically correct fulfillment or projection — a choice that will point the way and incidentally defy the Gold Derby-ites.

Outside the Amazon holiday party — Saturday, 12.7, 9:25 pm.

Marriage Story is partly but not precisely based upon Noah Baumbach‘s divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh, which occured between late 2010 and 2013. There are similarities and differences between the film and real life. Baumbach and JJL’s son Rohmer was born on 3.17.10. Leigh filed for divorce on 11.15.10, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was finalized in September 2013. That’s all I really know.

Some feel that Baumbach slightly tipped the sympathy scales in favor of his stand-in character, Charlie (Adam Driver), and a bit against the JJL stand-in, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson). I wouldn’t know much about that either.

As for any alleged Annie Hall analogy, Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) sweetened what happened between he and Annie (Diane Keaton) in his stage play. Baumbach’s film, on the other hand, indicates a less robust aftermath for Charlie than the one Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, his present partner, are currently enjoying. That’s all you can really say about any of this.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, which everyone saw a year or so ago and then flushed out of their heads after the 2.24.19 Oscar telecast, is back in the news. The arch period comedy has won three big trophies at the 32nd European Film Awards — Best Film, Best Comedy and Best Actress for Olivia Colman‘s portrayal of Queen Anne.

The other Best Film nominees were Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor and Roman Polanski’s An Officer and A Spy. It was nearly a foregone conclusion that Polanski’s film wouldn’t win anything because of the recent #MeToo Paris protests, so the race was basically between Pedro, Marco and Yorgos.

Pain and Glory‘s Antonio Banderas, who won the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor award last May, won EFA’s Best Actor award.

Ladj Ly’s Les Miserables, which won the jury prize at Cannes and is representing France at the Oscars, won the European Discovery award.

Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire won the European Screenwriter prize.

A little more than five months ago (or 6.29.19) I posted a Clockwork Orange piece called “Cold, Repellent, Oddly Beautiful.” One of the visual components was a video capture of the last 31 seconds of Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 masterpiece. No biggie, right? Nearly a half-century old.

Today I was advised by YouTube that “your video ‘Clockwork Finale’ was removed because it violates our sex and nudity policy.”

Really? The PG-13-ish conclusion of one of the absolute landmark films of the ’70s, directed by one of the most iconic 20th Century helmers violates their sex and nudity policy? And it took them five and a half months to notice this alleged violation?

The Dickensian fantasy sequence in question (i.e., Malcolm McDowell‘s Alex DeLarge and a young woman having if off in the snow as 19th Century London swells applaud) is mostly about suggestion. Hardly an envelope pusher.

YouTube’s message stressed that “because it’s the first time, this is just a warning. If it happens again, your channel will get a strike and you won’t be able to do things like upload, post, or live stream for 1 week. A second strike will prevent you from publishing content for 2 weeks. Three strikes in any 90-day period will result in the permanent removal of your channel.”

3:30 pm update: I tried refreshing YouTube repeatedly and was unable to access the main page for 90 minutes or so. I wrote them to say (a) seriously? and (b) if this is a warning why can’t I access YouTube? Ten minutes ago they removed the strike.

I’m having trouble finding the author of the below tweet, but for legibility’s sake it states the following: “A Streetcar Named Desire is about an abusive relationship that has been glorified as a passionate romance for decades. [Marlon] Brando‘s character is abusive to both his love interest and her sister, and when I first saw it in my twenties I was stunned that it’s lauded as this great film. No thanks.”

Does everyone understand that a very similar complaint could have been voiced by an enforcer of Mao Zedong‘s Great Cultural Revolution of the ’60s and ’70s?

The Social Network‘s David Fincher obviously should have won the Best Director Oscar and not The King’s Speech helmer Tom Hooper. God, what were people thinking back then? If not Fincher then either The Fighter‘s David O. Russell or Black Swan‘s Darren Aronofsky should have taken it.

I accepted the Best Director nom corralled by True Grit‘s Joel and Ethan Coen, but I never felt the enthusiasm. I would’ve felt better about The Ghost Writer‘s Roman Polanski being nominated instead.

The triumph of The King’s Speech was one of the most depressing events of my Oscar-handicapping life. Almost as bad as when Best Picture Oscars went to The Artist (again — what were people thinking?) and Chicago, and on the same level of awful as the Best Picture wins by The Greatest Show on Earth (’52) and Around The World in Eighty Days (’56).

While surfing around yesterday for clips of the late, lamented Ron Leibman, I came upon this HE YouTube clip from The Hot Rock. Robert Redford is no comedian, but his expression after saying “Afghanistan Bananistan” is one the funniest moments in 20th Century cinema, right up there with Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. I’m posting this to explain to delusionals that he’s not saying “Afghanistan Banana Stand.”

Because of black twitter antagonism towards the 97% honorable, brilliant and pragmatically positive Pete Buttigieg, Democrats will almost certainly be stuck with Joe Biden as the ’20 nominee.

I grind my teeth about this every day. Speaking as a generally fair-minded white-ass liberal with a cosmic undercurrent, I haven’t felt this kind of eye-rolling alienation — alienation bordering on antagonism — toward the black community since the day of the O.J. Simpson not-guilty verdict (10.3.95).

I know how certain wokesters will respond to this, but as an American citizen I’m allowed to say what I feel on a bone-marrow level. I hate the idea of Biden being the nominee. I’ve no choice but to accept it, but I really, really hate it. This is like hearing from the rank-and-file that Stuart Symington is sure to defeat Jack Kennedy in the ’60 Democratic primary race, except Symington was 59 in ’60 and Biden is 77…yeesh.

The late Ron Leibman was as much of a TV and stage actor as a film guy. My first impression was that he was brilliant at playing funny eccentrics.

For me his first three film roles were the keepers. Sidney Hocheiser, the brother of George Segal‘s Gordon Hocheiser, in Carl Reiner‘s Where’s Poppa? (’70). Murch, the exuberant car enthusiast and helicopter pilot in Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock (’72). And the resentful, pissed off Paul Lazzaro in George Roy Hill‘s Slaughterhouse Five (’72).

These and the role of labor organizer Reuben Warshowsky in Martin Ritt‘s Norma Rae (’70) for a solid fourth.

Leibman won a Tony and Drama Desk Award for playing Roy Cohn in Angels in America. He snagged an Emmy Award for playing the lead in a short-lived crime drama series Kaz. Leibman is allegedly best known for playing Jennifer Aniston‘s “rich, short-tempered” father on Friends.

There’s no disputing that this Vogue cover shot of Greta Gerwig and her son Harold, shot by Annie Leibovitz, is kind of ravishing, and that her moss green, semi-transparent Valentino dress is quite the visual component, blending perfectly with the grass and soil and all. Whoever chose the dress did the right thing.

I guess the only question I have is what exactly makes Greta a Hollywood “heroine”? A standard definition says that she’s “a woman admired or idealized for her courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.” Well, she’s co-written some fine films with partner Noah Baumbach, directed one very good film (Lady Bird) as well as a follow-up that’s seriously loved in certain many quarters of the industry (Little Women), and she’s arguably the leading 30something woman director right now, and that ain’t hay. I’m just not certain that “heroine”…well, I don’t want to argue.

Just to put things on a fair and equal basis, which male director right now could fairly be described as being on Gerwig’s level — i.e., heroic?