Last night a reader from Australia sent me a video file of Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ A Letter To Elia, which I wrote about yesterday. While talking about his initial reactions to On The Waterfront when he was 11 or 12, Scorsese mentions the beefy, weather-worn, working-class faces of the longshoremen in that film, and how he recognized this same coarseness from his own Little Italy neighborhood of the ’40s and ’50s.

There are several shots of similar-type faces in The Irishman — fleshy, primitive-looking mugs with incurious, steer-like eyes and slicked-back hair…faces that never would’ve fit in among the sophisticated, well-dressed smart set of any time period. Vaguely brutalist features, a little on the grotesque side, even gargoyle-ish. Faces with the same distinctive characteristics — half-ugly, half-creepy — that Federico Fellini used for Fellini Satyricon (’69). Okay, Fellini was a bit more extreme in this regard, but he was operating out of the same general ballpark.

That’s more or less the idea I’m trying to convey here…a similar stevedore aesthetic…the same servings of the same kind of genetic tendencies in On The Waterfront, Fellini Satyrican, Goodfellas,The Irishmen, et. al.

This may sound curious to some, but I’ve thought it over and honestly believe that Stephen Graham‘s intense performance as mobster Anthony Provenzano in The Irishman is more deserving of a Best Supporting Actor nomination than Tom Hanks for playing Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

Yes, I know — how dare I bump the deeply loved Hanks? I love him as much as anyone else, and I’m not disrespecting his gentle kindly goodvibe. But his brand has been largely about this for years, and there’s nothing all that extra or surprising or head-turning involved here. His Rogers performance is perfect, agreed, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that Hanks could do in his sleep. Whereas Graham’s “Tony Pro” is a cherry bomb. Hard, defiant concentrated. Remember his Baby Face Nelson in Michael Mann‘s Public Enemies (’09)? He was a mad man in that role.

I can’t bump Al Pacino (The Irishman), Brad Pitt (Once Upon A Time in Hollywood), Sterling K. Brown (Waves) or Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse) off my Gold Derby list, but I can bump Hanks. If there were six slots for Best Supporting Actor, I would naturally keep Hanks, but there’s only five. Sorry — not my rules.

Guess what? I just tried to put Graham on my Gold Derby list, and he’s not even listed as an option. HE to Tom O’Neil: Can you fix this?

Incidentally: When’s the last time I heard a British guy from a working-class background pronounce “book” in a way that rhymes with “mook” or “juke (box)”? I’m thinking of Ringo Starr in A Hard Day’s Night (’64).

At best, “Impeachment of Our Lives” was heh-heh funny a couple of times. Heh-heh this, heh-heh that. I kept waiting, waiting…fine, whatever.

For the first time ever, there seems to be at least a semi-realistic chance that lefty-moderate Pete Buttigieg will stand alone against The Beast in the 2020 presidential election. And thank God almighty for this possibility. If he snags the Democratic nomination, will Buttigieg win by a narrower hypothetical margin than if things had tipped, say, in the favor of Typewriter Joe? Yes, most likely, but honor, sanity and stability will still win the day. That or this country is self-destructively doomed beyond all measure.

Charlie’s Angels was always an odious, flagrantly fake concept — watered-down ’70s feminism, hotbod sex appeal, laughably unrealistic action. The original mid-to-late ’70s ABC TV series was always bullshit — I could never understand why anyone watched that empty-ass show. And the McG theatrical reboots — Charlie’s Angels (’00 film) and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (’03) were even stinkier, but they earned a combined box-office of over $500 million.

No such luck for Elizabeth Banks’ 2019 version, which is dead, dead, dead all over.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro: “In the wake of Terminator: Dark Fate’s failure at the B.O., and Paramount’s recent decision to make Beverly Hills Cop 4 for Netflix, we have the further breakdown of cinema IP in Sony’s Charlie’s Angels reboot, which is tanking with a godawful $8.2M opening, 3 stars on Screen Engine-Comscore’s PostTrak, and a B+ Cinemascore.”

The Angels collapse will “further spur a WTF reaction and anxiety among film development executives in town in regards to what the hell exactly works in this have-and-have-not era of the theatrical marketplace. Many will make the hasty generalization that old, dusty IP doesn’t work, or is now deemed too risky when it’s not a superhero project. However, moviemaking is an art, not a science, and annoying as it might sound, good movies float to the top, and this Charlie’s Angels reboot didn’t have the goods going back to its script.”

For years I’ve been trying to buy or stream Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ Letter to Elia, which I saw once at the 2010 New York Film Festival. It’s basically Scorsese talking about his worship of Elia Kazan over the decades, and “a delicate and beautiful little poem,” as I wrote nine years ago. It’s one of the most touching docs of this sort that I’ve ever seen.

But you can’t buy a stand-alone DVD or Bluray version, and you can’t stream it. It’s part of Fox Home Video’s Elia Kazan Collection, but I can’t find it anywhere. (In my home, I mean — I bought it in 2010.) Nine years ago it played on PBS‘s American Masters series, but right now there’s only a webpage.

The blockage presumably boils down to a rights issue. Two or three years ago I asked Jones why it’s unviewable (except for the box set), and he mumbled a non-response. I took that to mean that the absence of Letter to Elia is a conversational non-starter.

Posted on 11.24.10: “Letter to Elia is a personal tribute to a director who made four films — On The Waterfront, East of Eden, Wild River and America America — that went right into Scorsese’s young bloodstream and swirled around inside for decades after. Scorcese came to regard Kazan as a father figure, he says in the doc. And after watching you understand why.

“It’s a deeply touching film because it’s so close to the emotional bone. The sections that take you through the extra-affecting portions of Waterfront and Eden got me and held me like a great sermon. It’s like a church service, this film. It’s pure religion.

“More than a few Kazan-haters (i.e., those who couldn’t forgive the director for confirming names to HUAC in 1952) were scratching their heads when Scorsese decided to present Kazan’s special lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999. Letter to Elia full explains why, and what Scorsese has felt about the legendary Kazan for the last 55, going on 60 years.”

As someone who’s visited and hung out at the Hanoi Cinematheque two or three times, this birthday greeting (sent by an old friend) meant something. If only the artist in question had tried a little harder to (a) tilt the wall lettering a bit more to the left and (b) make the font stylistically align….oh, well. I only just noticed this. It got me.

Pete Buttigieg officially launched his presidential campaign on 4.14.19 — seven months ago. Most of that time he was fourth or fifth in various polls — well behind Biden, Warren, Sanders, etc. But he’s always managed to raise a lot of money. And then he decided to become a centrist in order to attract Biden supporters. And then he went after Warren on Medicare For All. And now, finally, he’s leading in Iowa and in third place in New Hampshire (or more precisely neck-and-neck with Warren and Sanders for second place). If it weren’t for African-American voters (who are more homophobic than the Twittering class will admit to), he’d be the clear frontrunner. I just think it means something that he’s finally getting through after all these months on the trail. It means he’s not a flash in the pan. It means that his path has been the opposite of Beto’s.

Does it ever occur to filmmakers that average people might not want to see what they’re preparing? Or that some journo-critics might want to run in horror? I didn’t even want to watch this 150-second trailer for A Million Little Pieces (Momentum, 12.6). The idea of sitting through the 113-minute feature version makes me shudder. Drunks and druggies are not interesting, and it takes a sober person to fully understand this. This dramatization of James Frey‘s real-life rehab travails…no thanks, not ever.

Except for his performance as Count Vronsky in Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina, Aaron Taylor-Johnson has always irritated me. Pieces will be his second collaboration with director-wife Sam Taylor-Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey); Nowhere Boy (’09) was their first.

Sidenote: His performance as the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy (’09) was affected and ungenuine, and I hated the film with a passion. Before they shot it I wrote that “they’d better get Lennon’s hair color right — light reddish-honey brown, and Johnson had better wear that signature Lennon schnozz…if they screw these things up they’re dead.” Guess what? Johnson’s Nowhere Boy hair was jet black, and they ignored the Lennon nose entirely. I wrote these turkeys off and never looked back.

Rob Reiner‘s Misery (’90) is a very well-known film. Ditto the 1987 Stephen King book that it’s based upon. In the annals of fiction “Paul Sheldon” is arguably as well known as “Jason Bourne” or “Vito Corleone.” And yet it never even occurs to the Barnes & Noble clerk that this angry crazy woman is doing a bit? The guy works in a book store and he doesn’t even know Sheldon’s name? And that (hello) there are no Misery novels in actuality? And what about the people standing around and pretending not to notice (but are surely listening to every word she’s saying)? This is what stands out for me — the coma-like passivity of the onlookers. Note: This performance was recorded eight years ago.

“The most devastating thing about the impeachment proceedings this week has been the knowledge that this is not just how Trump treats Ukraine but how he operates in every area of government: wheeling and dealing, threatening, malicious, disregarding the law, dismissive of the national interest, trampling on professionalism and integrity, small-minded, misogynistic, Russia-besotted, valueless, manipulative, untruthful, gross and contemptuous of his oath of office.

“I think the Senate has grounds to convict the president. It won’t. Trump will have to be dislodged the conventional way.” — from “How to Dislodge the Brute in the White House,” an 11.15 N.Y. Times column by Roger Cohen.