Professor Pamela S. Karlan: “So while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.” What’s so terrible about that statement? She wasn’t addressing anything that Barron Trump has said, written or done. She was addressing what Donald Trump can and can’t legally do, and saying that he’s not a king — big deal.

I’m told that 46% of the directors of the forthcoming 2020 Sundance Film Festival are women…cool. The highest percentage ever. And I’m sure the annual ten-day event (1.23 through 2.2) will be…I don’t what. Snowy? Wokey-wokey? Inspiring? A lot of whoo-whooing before each premiere screening? A sense of zeitgeist fatigue? A feeling of “here we go again”?

A Taylor Swift doc (Taylor Swift: Miss Americana). Julie Taymor‘s Gloria Steinem biopic, titled The Glorias. Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing He Wanted. Sean Durkin‘s The Nest. Viggo Mortensen‘s Falling. Rodrigo Garcia‘s Four Good Days. Nat Faxon and Jim Rash‘s Downhill. Brenda Chapman‘s Come Away.

But Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods, the Last Flag Flying-ish Vietnam gold-hunt film, won’t be there.

You know why? Because Sundance is a secular woke-spiritual get-together that has kinda sorta stopped mattering, and Spike knows Cannes is a better deal. He knows and I know that Sundance of 2020 is about itself — movies for the woke devotional — whereas the Sundance festivals of 2015 or ’10, ’05, ’00 or ’95 were about movies looking to ignite and connect and bust out and generate currents of serious consequence, and perhaps even some award-season action down the road. No more. That era has past.

Now the filmmaker deal is “come to Sundance to introduce your film to the Sundance friendlies, and maybe they’ll tell their Instagram friends about it when it starts streaming four or six or ten months hence…whenever. But you’re almost certainly not breaking out. You and your film are members of Sundance Village, and you’ll never, ever step out of that realm. Unless you’re Kenneth Lonergan or someone in that fraternity.”

If you believe in Sundance Village movies and the values that they stand for and/or are endorsing and seeking to bring about, then Sundance Village is for you. Buy your ticket packages, lay out the dough for the condo, buy your snow gear and your Southwest Airlines discount tickets.

But I know some people who aren’t going this year. Because they know that the high-voltage Sundance necessity of years past is ebbing, and that it won’t be a total tragedy if they don’t attend. Because they’ll see the hotties (there are always four or five) in good time. Maybe some will be streamable while the festival is underway.

10 or 15 years ago the slogan was “Sundance spelled backwards spells depressing.” Now it’s “Sundance spelled backwards means ‘does anyone give that much of a shit?'”

My honest attitude after attending for 25 or 26 years? I think I’ve conveyed that.

I went apeshit for Melina Matsoukas and Lena Waithe‘s Queen & Slim a couple of months ago, but I thought I’d reiterate for passion’s sake. And ask, of course, if the HE community concurs or what.

Please also read an 11.27 New Yorker piece by Jelani Cobb, called “The Powerful Perspective of Queen & Slim“:

Excerpt: “Queen & Slim is an extrapolation of thoughts that run through the heads of black people each time we’re called upon to mourn publicly, to request justice like supplicants, to comfort ourselves with inert lies about this sort of thing stopping in the near-future. That kind of insular honesty is rare in any kind of art but particularly perilous in cinema.

“This is a film that stands as strong a chance of being hailed and lauded as it does of being denounced and picketed, but it understands the inescapable fact that heroism is entirely a matter of context, that heroes need not be concerned with explaining themselves, and that [the film] — like the characters at its center, like the history it draws upon — stands a great likelihood of being misunderstood. And, gloriously, neither its writer nor its director appears to give a damn.”

10:37 am: Hollywood Elsewhere 100% applauds the NYFCC giving their Best Picture award to Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, but giving their Best Director award to Benny and Josh Safdie for Uncut Gems is absolute contrarian poke-the-hornet’s nest insanity. The honorable Scorsese has taken the top prize and Quentin Tarantino has snagged a kind of second or third prize with the screenplay award, but the NYFCC’s embrace of the Safdies is almost, within the realm of year-end award-giving, a kind of felony. I know more than a few people who hate Uncut Gems, or at the very least have found it infuriating or soul-draining. And here’s the NYFCC giving the brothers a bear hug and saying “yes, you did well, keep it up, more like this!”

10:18 am: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood‘s Quentin Tarantino has won the NYFCC’s Best Screenplay award. Check. Well-liked film, great dialogue, an unusual tale with a compassionate ending.

9:57 am: Lupita Nyong’o wins the NYFCC’s Best Actress trophy for Us? Seriously? Eight parts wokester virtue-signalling, two parts serious regard for a noteworthy performance…trust me. Last year’s Best Actress award for Support The Girls‘ Regina Hall comes to mind. The NYFCC used to be the NYFCC — now it’s an organizational ally of Indiewire‘s wokeness gesture crusade. Good as she was in Jordan Peele’s interesting if underwhelming horror flick, Lupita basically delivered an intelligent, first-rate, Jamie Lee Curtis-level scream-queen performance with a side order of raspy-voiced predator doppleganger. Five out of 31 Gold Derby handicappers have Lupita on their lists, but no one has her in first or second position. I realize that the Best Actress field is regarded as a bit weak this year, but I would have gone with either Bombshell‘s Charlize Theron, The Farewell‘s Awkwafina or Judy‘s Renee Zellweger.

9:40 am: In another international-minded, anti-Gold Derby decision, the NYFCC has blown off Joker‘s Joaquin Phoenix, Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver and Uncut Gems‘ Adam Sandler to give their Best Actor prize to Antonio Banderas‘ minimalist, intriguingly layered performance in Pedro Almodovar‘s Pain and Glory. HE has no argument with this — it’s one of Banderas’s all-time best performances, and it won the Best Actor prize in Cannes last May — but understand that the NYFCC’s motive in choosing him was at least partly to give the bird to the Gold Derby gang.

9:12 am: Laura Dern has won the NYFCC’s Best Supporting Actress trophy, mostly for her tough divorce attorney performance in Marriage Story (and in particular that great monologue about how women are unfairly regarded by Judeo-Christian culture) and also for her Marmie in Little Women, a performance that I found…well, sufficient.

9:04 am: Joe Pesci‘s soft-spoken performance as Russell Buffalino in The Irishman has won the New York Film Critics Circle’s Best Supporting Actor award. There’s no question that Pesci delivers in a dead-calm, clean-pocket-drop way in Martin Scorsese‘s epic film, but how very NYFCC to single him out. Rank-and-file handicappers would have gone with Al Pacino‘s Jimmy Hoffa turn or Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, but whatever. Pesci rules today!

Earlier: In another snooty move, the NYFCC has blown off Roger Deakins‘ phenomenal cinematography in 1917 in order to give the Best Cinematography award to Claire Mathon’s lensing of Portrait of a Lady on Fire. A very handsomely shot film, no question, but not my idea of mind-blowing or wowser or whatever triple-cool superlative you want to use.

Earlier: The NYFCC’s Best Animated Feature award has gone to I Lost My Body. No comment as I lost my interest in watching animated films about a decade ago. Knowing that I will never sit through another animated film in the time I have remaining on this planet fills me with indescriable joy.

Daniel Craig looks leaner and tougher (i.e., younger) than he does in Knives Out, that’s for sure. But when he bungee-jumps off the aqueduct bridge in Matera…gentlemen! I’ve been explaining for years that hero protagonists diving off buildings, cliffs and high bridges is an infuriating cliche, and filmmakers don’t care…they just don’t care.

That includes No Time To Die helmer Cary Joji Fukunaga, who for the time being has put aside the Sin Nombre, Jane Eyre and Beasts of No Nation identity badge in order to become…you tell me.

Favorite No Time To Die touches: (a) Rami Malek‘s lizard skin and Phantom of the Opera mask, (b) heavily militarized Aston Martin, (c) Christoph Waltz‘s silver-haired Ernst Stavro Blofeld, confined Hannibal Lecter-style inside a thick plastic cell.

Otherwise the same old shite. It has to be. It can’t not be. 007 films are two parts Turkish heroin, one part ketamine, sprinkled with sugar and men’s cologne and fortified by corporate determination. Stunt guys are happy, paychecks all around.

There are three kinds of Robert Duvall performances. Many of us, I think, are most enthralled when he plays characters who say relatively little — sometimes just a few lines, sometimes nothing at all but always on the succinct side. When he turns it down and keeps most of it tucked inside.

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Seriously, look at Rami Malek. He’s like something out of a late ’50s Hammer horror film mixed with a 14 year-old kid on Halloween night.

The way I see it, I at least have the location photography to look forward to — suburban England, rural Norway, Budapest, Morocco, etc.

There’s only one thing that really matters when it comes to J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and it’s not (a) “is it a good or great film?” or (b) “does it have enough in the way of light-sabre duels?” or (c) “does it deliver a sufficiently emotional finale?” or anything in that realm.

No, what matters to Hollywood Elsewhere is “are there sufficient amounts of LGBTQ representation?”

I know that when I read earlier today that a hot romance between Oscar Isaac‘s Poe Dameron and John Boyega‘s Finn could not be counted upon…when I read this will not materialize in the forthcoming Disney release, I felt a stab of disappointment. I felt, actually, as if a lightsaber had punctured my heart.

Isaac felt the same way. In an apparent allusion to a physical relationship between Poe and Finn, the darkly attractive actor told Variety‘s Adam B. Vary that he “kind of hoped and wished that [same-sex issues] would’ve been taken further in the other films, but I don’t have control…it seemed like a natural progression, but sadly enough it’s a time when people are too afraid, I think, of…I don’t know what.”

What are all those straight Star Wars fans “afraid” of anyway? What’s so scary about love between passionate, trusting partners?

Isaac told Vary that the “ambiguity” of Poe and Finn’s relationship “might allow more people to see themselves” in Poe and Finn. “But if they would’ve been boyfriends, that would have been fun.”

And yet somehow the idea of Finn and Poe…there’s something about this image that doesn’t exactly say “Star Wars” to me. Am I being hurtful by sharing this thought? Am I standing in the way of a new evolving consciousness? I don’t want to be that person. I’m just, you know, an Empire Strikes Back kind of guy. Is there room for guys like me in the new Star Wars universe?

There is at least a note of assurance from The Rise of Skywalker‘s director. “In the case of the LGBTQ community, it was important to me that people who go to see this movie feel that they’re being represented in the film,” Abrams told Vary. “I will say I’m giving away nothing about what happens in the movie. But I did just say what I just said.”

“Sadly, Greta Gerwig’s much buzzed-about Little Women was completely shut out by the National Board of Review, not even making it on to the top films list.” — from Marc Malkin‘s Variety write-up about today’s National Board of Review award announcements.

In other words, Malkin is a Little Women fanboy and is personally disappointed that it didn’t even make the top-ten cut. Not necessarily a bad sign for the Oscars, but not a good one either.

“And then there’s Adam Sandler,” Malkin goes on. “The funny man didn’t win the Gotham for best actor for Uncut Gems — that went to Adam Driver for Marriage Story — but NBR gave him the top actor honor.”

Anyone who calls Sandler a “funny man” after his performances in Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, Reign Over Me, Funny People and The Meyerowitz Stories is being dismissive. He’s suggesting that Sandler is a dramatic dabbler. That or Malkin is implying that he’s not an Uncut Gems fan. (Neither am I.) Either way it’s unfair.

A couple of nights ago I finally saw Chinonye Chukwu‘s Clemency. There’s a lot of support for Alfre Woodard‘s performance as a death row prison warden coping with guilt. Her acting is effective on its own terms, but I found myself disengaging almost immediately from the script, and to some extent from the direction.

In the very first scene Woodard’s Bernadine Williams, who presumably was hired because she didn’t seem like the excessively emotional type, is seized by emotion as she stares at an execution gurney. A youngish prison guard emerges from a nearby room and says “Warden?” No answer. “Warden?” Ditto. “Bernardine?” he says, and then finally Woodard acknowledges the guy.

Right away I was muttering “bullshit.” No way does a chief administrator of a prison ignore a colleague, or become so lost in thought that she doesn’t hear a question. Cheap theatrical device.

The first execution scene (intravenous) begins a few minutes later. A Latino male is strapped down and sweating his last few minutes of life. The dosing begins with some uniformed dude overseeing the injection of lethal drugs. A couple of guards stand at the ready. Oddly, Woodard’s warden is also in the room, standing right behind the doomed convict and staring at him intently, like a distraught wife or a mother would.

I’ve seen several execution scenes in my life, and I’ve never seen a single one in which a warden hovers over the condemned like a nurse. And I didn’t buy it. It irritated me, actually.

So I’m only a few minutes into Clemency and I’ve already had two dropout moments. I was thisclose to turning it off, but I stayed with it. But I never really “came back in,” so to speak. It’s an okay film in some respects. It’s not awful. I was affected — diverted — by Richard Schiff‘s performance as a bitter bleeding-heart attorney. Clemency will be released on 12.27.19.

In 1972, this Getaway shootout sequence (Steve McQueen vs. seven or eight cowboy-hatted Texas schloombahs) wasn’t intense enough even by Sam Peckinpah‘s own standards of violence, which had been burned into the cultural psyche with Straw Dogs and especially The Wild Bunch. In my book Roger Donaldson’s 1994 remake was better in almost every respect, save for the fact that Alec Baldwin couldn’t hope to measure up to McQueen.

And if someone were to remake The Getaway today, the standing order would be “out-gun the Donaldson version by a factor of ten-plus. And while you’re at it, come up with a flying motorcycle stunt that out-performs that stupid-ass one in that No Time To Die trailer.”

And the dialogue would have to be rewritten, of course. When Sally Struthers‘ distraught character (“Fran”) cries “have you seen Rudy?”, the anonymous Texas gunman would have to reply in a less dismissive way.