That “brutally honest” female sound branch member who shared her thoughts with THR‘s Scott Feinberg about the leading Oscar contenders sounds, no offense, like a none-too-bright. She’s clearly someone who lacks depth, devotion, curiosity and sufficient education. She admits she hasn’t seen half the films and performances up for this or that. She never saw Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed — “no interest whatsoever, I guess because of the subject matter, particularly during the holiday season.” Except for the fact that this Bressonian moral tale opened eight months ago. I don’t fault her for having done the nasty with Buzz Aldrin (“The only person I ever slept with just because of who he was…I just wanted to say, ‘I slept with someone who was on the moon'”). As the saying goes, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust into them.” She says she never saw At Eternity’s Gate. The last “brutally honest” guy didn’t see it either. Did any non-SAG member see At Eternity’s Gate?

Sorry for being under the ice and not reacting like a jackrabbit to the passing of the great Stanley Donen. The 94-year-old boyfriend of Elaine May was a supreme maestro of those robust, high-style, bursting-wth-color Hollywood musicals of the late ’40s and ’50s. Millennials and GenZ types are incapable of giving a damn about this luminous chapter in Hollywood history. Their loss, of course, but they don’t care about that either.

Donen’s peak creative period (late ’40s to late ’50s) was all about singing, dancing and dynamic, envelope-pushing choreography. It lasted almost exactly a decade, beginning with 1949’s On The Town (the first location-based musical, co-directed with Gene Kelly), continuing with the legendary Singin’ in the Rain (’52, also co-directed with Kelly), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (’54), It’s Always Fair Weather (’55), Funny Face (’57), The Pajama Game (’57) and Damn Yankees (’58).

Donen began to shift into light romantic comedies in the late ’50s, which led to a successful, slightly less flush decade — Indiscreet (’58), Once More With Feeling (’60), The Grass Is Greener (’60), Charade (’63), Arabesque (’66), Two For The Road (’67 — Pete Hammond‘s all-time favorite) and Bedazzled (’68).

A 15-year downshift period followed — Staircase (’69 — Rex Harrison and Richard Burton as a gay couple), Lucky Lady (’75 — a bust for Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman), Movie Movie (’78 — a dud), Saturn 3 (’80 — piece of shit sci-fi with Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel), Blame It On Rio (’84 — middle-aged horndog comedy with Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna, Demi Moore, Michelle Johnson).

18 years ago legendary publicist Bobby Zarem lured Donen to the Savannah Film Festival with a special career tribute. That was my first year at that festival, and Zarem invited me to dinner with he and Donen — just us three. I played it loose and casual, of course. I could have easily subjected Donen to 150 or 200 questions, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. He struck me as confident, casual, sophisticated.

To have lived a life as electric and bountiful as Donen’s and to have lasted 94 years…we should all be so lucky.

“There’s one tolerable moment during the last third of Alex Ross Perry‘s Her Smell. I’m reluctant to use the term ‘third act’ as the film has no story, much less anything resembling story tension, although there are five chapters or sections, each announced by snippets of 1.37:1 footage.

“The moment I’m speaking of shows a sober Becky (Elisabeth Moss) sitting down at the piano and gently singing Bryan Adam‘s ‘Heaven’ to her toddler daughter. Hollywood Elsewhere is very grateful to Perry for at least offering this small slice of comfort pie. Peons like myself (i.e., viewers who are unable to enjoy a film teeming with jabbering, wall-to-wall, motor-mouthed anxiety) need this kind of thing from time to time.

“85% to 90% of Her Smell is about enduring Becky’s brash, needling, abrasive behavior toward her bandmates (Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin), a trio of up-and-coming Seattle chick musicians (Cara Delevigne, Dylan Gelula, Ashley Benson), her ex-husband (dull-as-dishwater Dan Stevens), the record-label owner (Eric Stoltz, 56 during filming and eyeballing the big six-oh) and some kind of manager-agent character (Virginia Madsen), born 20 days before Stoltz).

“They all regard Becky with the same expression, a channelling of ‘oh, God…she’s gone over the edge…what can be done?’ and so on.

“To sum up, Her Smell is Perry punishment. An indulgent, highly undisciplined, 135-minute exercise in flamboyant behavior-acting for Moss. I will never, ever see it again.” — from my N.Y. Film Festival review, posted on 9.17.18.

Roughly four months ago I was so conflicted and distressed about my negative reaction to Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria that I chickened out by not posting on Hollywood Elsewhere classic. Instead I hid it behind the HE Plus paywall. I wouldn’t blame Luca if he resented me for writing what I wrote (which was actually a chickenshit equivocation) but if I don’t stick to my guns when the writing of a review feels awkward or painful, I’m not worth anything as a critic or columnist.

Here’s the half-assed review that I didn’t have the balls to post when Suspiria was about to open:

Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria (Amazon, 10.26) has brought distress and left me glum and conflicted. I’m torn by my admiration and affection for a great filmmaker and a wonderful human being and…well, my troubled responses to this strange detour film. It’s left me in a bad, self-doubting place, and as wimpy as this sounds I think my reactions to Suspiria are probably best left alone.

Am I chickening out? Yes, I am — sorry. But this is what happens when you know a guy who’s made a striking, complex film that’s put you in a weird place.

When I think of Luca I think of his kindness and spiritual warmth, his wonderful Italian humor, his home town of Crema, distressed palazzo interior design, empathy, generosity, sincerity, Call Me By Your Name, A Bigger Splash, I Am Love, Jonathan Demme, Northern Africa, that wonderful lunch we shared at that cliffside restaurant in La Spezia and a joyful dinner we had at a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles about a year ago. And I’d rather just focus on all that stuff for now.

Okay, I’ll share a few thoughts about Suspiria but just a few dots and jabs.

Suspiria is set in 1977, the year that Dario Argento’s original came out. The subject is a coven of venal, sadistic, cold-eyed witches up to no good in a shadowy corner of Berlin, and particularly inside a grayish, greenish, ultra-gloomy ballet studio.

It’s a movie about chills, cruelty, brutality, sadism and, for the requisite grand finale, the raising of a filthy, thorn-fingered devil or demon (a brother or a cousin of the Rosemary’s Baby devil who impregnated Mia Farrow).  

It has something to do with the demons and rank nightmares that are buried within the German psyche — World War II, concentration camps, ‘70s terrorism (Baader-Meinhof gang). What a coven of ballet-school witches have to do with Germany’s dark history, I have yet to fully understand.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe the witches and Germany’s ugly past are simply co-existing.  

In a last-minute 2019 Oscars prediction piece, N.Y. Times carpetbagger Kyle Buchanan is betting on two trophies for Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma — Best Picture and Foreign Language Feature.

Buchanan may be correct about Roma winning the Best Picture Oscar. 60% or 65% of my own insect antennae signals are telling me the same thing. First and foremost is the fact that Roma is a perfectly crafted, world-class art film. I’ve also stated that Roma is obviously in synch with current p.c. aspirations and representation sentiments among progressive-minded Academy voters, and that voters will most likely feel better the next morning if they give the prize to Cuaron’s film, etc. Plus it boasts the inclusion-and-representation symbolism of Yalitza Aparacio in the lead role.

What Buchanan apparently isn’t taking into consideration is the fact that he, Kyle Buchanan, lives, works, schmoozes, networks and chit-chats inside the blase liberal Hollywood cool-cat social bubble that everyone else is inhabiting (Hollywood Elsewhere included), and that sometimes the only way to really see through the Oscar confetti is to step outside that bubble and become Steppenwolf.

Here’s how Buchanan assesses the Best Foreign Language Feature situation a la Sunday night:

“This is one of the strongest foreign-film lineups in recent memory, and in any other year, all of these movies would have the profile of a winner, including the Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, Lebanon’s moving Capernaum and Cold War and Never Look Away, which both scored cinematography nominations as well. (Cold War even cracked the race for best director.) Still, in a year when Roma could make history as the first foreign-language film to win best picture, it would seem outrageous for the movie to miss this prize on its path to victory.”

With Roma possibly fated to win the Best Picture Oscar, how the hell would be it be “outrageous” if it failed to win the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar? Why does it have to win both Oscars? Especially when so many have been swooning over Cold War, which should, I feel, win the Foreign Language Oscar in a walk?

From a three-month-old Hollywood Reporter Screenwriters Roundtable:

Bo Burnham: “The weapon that doesn’t seem to work is satire. Donald Trump is self-satirizing. He is his own art installation.” (Laughter.)

Paul Schrader: “Anybody who’s optimistic hasn’t been paying attention. For me it’s a mental health issue. It’s like choosing to live in a polluted space or drink polluted water — not enough time left in my life. I’m old enough to remember when [satirist] Terry Southern was thought to be implausible. And now we’re living in Terry Southern’s world.

Stephen Galloway: “Why write if you’re so pessimistic?”

Schrader: “It’s like [Albert] Camus said: ‘I don’t believe; I choose to believe.’ And we’re at a point now where there is no reason to hope, but you can choose to hope. And you can choose to write. It’s probably one of the few things left you have control over.

Eric Roth: “I’m enamored with words and the sound of words. And the director could fuck it up, I guess, but they can’t take that away from me.”

Burnham: “Writing is how we process the moment, not because it’s necessarily productive, not because it’s going to solve anything.”

The Film Independent Spirit Awards are about celebrating the finest lower-budgeted features ($20 million and under) in a given year. That has allowed for a whole lotta Oscar overlap over the last couple of decades as mainstream distributors (i.e., the folks who make and distribute expensive films for families with no taste and popcorn-inhaling knuckle-draggers) are 95% out of the Oscar-aspiring game, and so the Academy has focused almost entirely on Spirit-brand features.

Every so often a lower-budgeted Oscar nominee will have cost $25 million or thereabouts (i.e., Green Book) and is therefore ineligible for a Spirit Award, but generally the Oscars are the Spirits and vice versa.

There’s always more of a p.c. emphasis among the Spirit winners (diversity, representation, virtue-signalling) but over the last two or three years Academy and guild members have totally subscribed to the comintern mindset. Thus: “When talent and merit are replaced by representation, then we’re living in a world that doesn’t care about movies anymore.” — Brett Easton Ellis in a 2.19.19 guest column for The Hollywood Reporter.

This year, however, the Best Picture Oscar overlap is nil. The five Best Feature nominees at the 2019 Spirit Awards — Eighth Grade, First Reformed, If Beale Street Could Talk, Leave No Trace and You Were Never Really Here — are not nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. And only one of the Spirit nominees (the swoony, lovey-dovey, zero-story-tension, Wong Kar Wai-ish Beale Street) has arguably been nominated for p.c. reasons.

Here’s the HE rundown of some of the Spirit Swards — my picks for who or what should win vs. what will win.

Best Feature: Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade probably will win; Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed definitely should win. If Beale Street wins, you’ll know that the p.c. commissar mentality is really running the show this year.

Best Director: First Reformed‘s Paul Schrader has posted some edgy, non-p.c. observations on Twitter and Facebook from time to time, and so he has to be disciplined by the comintern with a no-win in this category. If you ask me You Were Never Really Here‘s Lynn Ramsay is the second most deserving nominee (after Schrader). Alas, the winner will probably be Debra Granik, director of Leave No Trace — a movie that was made solely for the Sundance/Spirit realm, a film that exists in its own little world.

Best Male Lead: Ethan Hawke of First Reformed should win and will win. I’m presuming that the Spirit committee that nominated Blindspotting‘s Daveed Diggs for this award was, on some level, kidding. That or they threw his name into the hat as a p.c. gimmee, knowing full well he couldn’t possibly win.

Best Female Lead: The Wife‘s Glenn Close will definitely win, and so she should.

You don’t want to cough or sneeze if you’re coping with ultra-painful rib trauma. So over the last five days (and, incidentally, for the first time in my life) I’ve mastered the technique of suppressing these urges. I swallow them, so to speak. A weird feeling but at the same time a relief to have “dodged the bullet.”

How am I doing? Incrementally better. I can raise myself out of a chair (or off the couch) without experiencing so much rib pain that I briefly flirt with the idea of suicide. That’s progress. Pain is still my constant companion — just not as acute. I still quietly moan from time to time. It feels better on some level to let it out like a two-year-old rather than maintain a stoic, Lee Marvin-like silence.

A Hollywood Elsewhere commenter who said something the other day about throwing me a few pain meds (or selling them to me) hasn’t gotten in touch via email or Twitter direct mail. I have no personal West Hollywood physician (because I’m more or less bulletproof except when I fall in the snow in the Sierra Nevada foothills), no drug-dealer friends or acquaintances.

I’m wondering yesterday if I’ll be up to attending the Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday. Shuffling along with my cane, etc. I’ll make that call on Saturday morning, I suppose, but in the meantime I’ll be picking up my press pass today in Deep Hollywood.

Five days ago (Sunday, 2.17) I slipped on some ice in the Sierra foothills, and fell hard on my back. The right side, which may have saved me. Nothing broken, cracked or bruised, but since that moment I’ve become the King of Pain.

I’ve been floating between three mindsets — anger at the agony, trying to fight off feelings of depression and trying to find ways to distract myself from this ordeal. But today I discovered a piece of Hollywood history that made me realize things aren’t as bad as all that. Or that they could be a whole lot worse. I’m still furious at my temporary fate, but when I think about poor Suzan Ball…

Click through to full story on HE-plus]

I’m sinking into my second viewing of Leaving Neverland (HBO,3.4 and 3.5), and there’s just no denying the drill-bit honesty of this film…no denial, no diminishment, tough as nails.

The millions who are still glomming on to the myth of Michael Jackson — that half-magical, commercially formidable, white-sock superstar aura that has persisted and expanded since his death on 6.25.09 — these millions who are still feeding off Jackson are about to experience a profound kick in the head from this four-hour doc.

What I mean is that the Jackson-guilt denialists are finished. Jig’s up. Once this four-hour doc hits HBO, forget it.

Leaving Neverland is a talking-heads horror film — an intimate, obviously believable, sometimes sexually explicit story of two boys — Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck, now pushing 40 — who became Michael Jackson’s special “friends” — i.e., lovers, masturbation buddies, fellators — while their more or less oblivious parents went along, thinking that the relationship was more of a kindly innocent bond.

Wake up: Jackson was a finagling fiend, a smooth predator, the kindest serpent.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin brought a playful ironic touch to their hosting duties. The 2010 Oscars were, of course, mainly about the triumph of Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker over James Cameron and Avatar. And about Joel and Ethan Coen‘s brilliant A Serious Man not winning anything. And about Jeff Bridges winning the Best Actor Oscar for playing a nicotine-fingered, beer-bellied drunk in Crazy Heart (in a fair world George Clooney would have won for Up In The Air). And The Blind Side‘s Sandra Bullock winning for Best Actress when it really should have been Carey Mulligan for An Education).

Hollywood Elsewhere won’t be catching Captain Marvel (Disney, 3.8.19) until the evening of Monday, March 4. Very few critics or columnists (if any) are more antagonistic to superhero movies than myself. If I therefore give Captain Marvel a thumbs-up review, it’ll really mean something. You really can’t trust the others. Well, you can but you know what they’re like.