Jeffrey Wells

This locks in the forthcoming Oppenheimer Best Motion Picture, Drama win when you couple it with the Downey supporting snag…obviously.

Anyone wearing a burgundy or maroon tux gets an instant HE demerit.

All hail the Golden Globe wins by The Holdovers Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey, Jr. The halting of the Charles Melton blitzkreig is noted and appreciated.

Or at least when it was still hanging in there on its own follicular terms. The 31 year-old Sean Connery may have applied some kind of augmentation for Dr. No (a scalp darkener?) but what the camera saw was more or less what was there. (The first 007 “rug” appeared in Goldfinger over two years later.).

On top of which Dr. No (which was only a modest earner upon opening in late ‘62) and From Russia With Love (ditto) are still the best of the series — lean and rigorous and relatively modest in terms of scale and pushing the bounds of credibility. Plus there were no sensitivity police around to protect the Zoomer candy–asses from all that bruising sexism and rugged machismo, Mainly because (thank you, 20th Century!) Zoomers wouldn’t become a cultural force until roughly 2010.

A weak snowfall — enough for a generic whitening but I’m not foreseeing much in the way of sledding, snowmen, snowball fights. Weather media always oversells the proverbial approaching storm. Hype falls short.

The term “clear box” is synonymous with “story-less template,” which is how I put it the other day.

It should be understood that the 108–minute version of Ken Russell’s The Devils (‘71), which is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, was dissed by Russell and star Oliver Reed before their deaths. The franker British version, which runs 111 minutes, is the one to settle into. The Criterion Channel makes no mention of this, although it does offer a doc about the film’s censoring, titled “Hell on Earth: The Desecration and Resurrection of The Devils.”

HE has no problem whatsoever with BAFTA’s Best Supporting Actor long list excluding May December’s over-awarded Charles Melton — obviously a modest momentum-stopper.

May December also didn’t make BAFTA’s Best Film tabulation and helmer Todd Haynes has also come up short on BAFTA’s Best Director long list.

Why are the Brits ixnaying a film that American easy lays have been falling all over each other to praise? Whatever the reason, HE approves.

On its Best Film roster BAFTA has also stiff-armed Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, a tough break for a smart, engaging film that seemed semi-unstoppable after winning the People’s Choice award at last September’s Toronto Film Festival debut but estime–wise has drooped and under-performed ever since. THR’s Scott Feinberg is puzzled and a bit heartbroken.

And so, apart from respectful sympathy, I have nothing effusive or impassioned to share about the passing of David Soul, 80.

The only contact I’ve ever had with the Starsky brand was the 2004 Ben Stiller-Owen Wilson feature comedy, which was directed by Todd Phillips and costarred Vince Vaughn, Snoop Dog, Jason Bateman and Fred Williamson. Honestly? Even that is a fading memory. Pic opened two months shy of 20 years ago (3.5.04)

The original ABC Starsky & Hutch series ran for five years and change (April ‘75 to August ‘79).

Yesterday afternoon Variety’s Clayton Davis reported that AMPAS has officially classified Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Barbie script as adapted and not original.

While this is good news for The Holdovers as far as its chances in the Best Original Screenplay competish are concerned, it’s an unfair call.

Gerwig and Baumbach didn’t adapt a previously written Barbie story — they created a story out of a situational Barbie template.

Imagine if someone had written an original screenplay about Jesus of Nazareth returning to the earth in 2023 and becoming a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur. By the Academy’s thinking this would be classified as an adapted screenplay because it borrows from the lore and template of the New Testament.

But of course screenplays aren’t about templates but stories (initial intrigue, structure, tension, second-act pivot, third-act payoff). Using Jesus or Barbie as a central character does not a screenplay make.

In his latest THR Oscar forecast column Scott Feinberg is claiming that Past Lives helmer Celine Song is a more broadly popular Best Director nominee than Poor Things’ Yorgos Lanthimos, The Holdovers’ Alexander Payne and Maestro’s Bradley Cooper.

This is insanity! What kind of woke-ass, gender-focused sewing circle is Feinberg having tea with?

Past Lives is a nicely assembled but unsatisfying relationship film that doesn’t do the thing or bring it home (i.e., in crude terms it doesn’t let you come). It has been written off as a decent try by sensible industry folk, and yet Feinberg is allowing himself to be fiddle-fiddled by the A24 safe-space mafia…the identity fanatics who are whispering “we need a woman of color in the mix.”

Wanting to become a Catholic deacon is “better” than wanting to become a heroin addict or an Islamic terrorist, but in the realm of Shia LeBeouf it’s the same basic dynamic — an inability to trust his own mystical realm and an urge to submit to a stronger external current.

Meanwhile we all want to see Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio…seriously.

Otherwise all I can say is that (a) Zac Efron sure looks better without the buffed-up wrestler bod and that godawful Prince Valiant hair, and (b) award–wise Colman Domingo, due respect, isn’t happening,