Jeff Wells

It’s only February 9th! There’s plenty of time for Joe Biden to collapse his re-election campaign and for the political system to cough up another Democratic candidate for President.

Consider what happened over a six-month period in 1968 — (a) President Lyndon Johnson, the presumptive Democratic candidate for re-election, barely out-points antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary (3.12.68); (b) New York Senator Bobby Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination (3.16.68); (c) Johnson quits in March, (d) Martin Luther King Jr. is murdered at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis (4.4.68); (e) RFK is shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (6.4.68); and (f) Humphrey is nominated as Chicago cops wallop demonstrators during the Democratic Convention (8.22 to 8.30).

The whole world changed…everything did. And between now and mid-summer (the 2024 Democratic Convention happens in Chicago between August 19 to 22) we can’t nudge Biden into retiring and install Gavin Newsom in his place?

The withered-old-man thing is obviously a huge and quite possibly fatal problem for Biden. Do we really want the country to be once again roiled and besieged by ludicrous MAGA turbulence, and allow this to happen over a single man’s obstinate refusal to face reality and step aside for the general good?

Biden is clearly declining and a much more frail and muttering fellow than he was even four years ago, and he wants to serve again until January ’29, when he’ll be 86?

Yes, it’s possible that a majority of voters might decide it’s better to send an obviously toxic, deranged and foam-at-the-mouth reprehensible authoritarian back to the White House rather than give Gavin Newsom a try, but I seriously doubt this would happen at the end of the day.

But dishonesty is even worse, and I’ve really come to believe in not skirting or ducking whatever’s happening of a significant nature as long as it connects or reflects on some level. No icky stuff, of course. This has always been a movie-related column but sometimes an occasional random confession is in order.

I’m just going to blurt this out. The results of this morning’s medical exam gave me pause. All my life I’ve enjoyed excellent health, and right now I feel robust and bulletproof. I feel like I’m 37. But an element of doubt or at the very least uncertainty has crept into the room. I’m not feeling spooked as much as…I don’t know, somber or something.

Nobody of any age is ever assured of blue skies and fair weather. We’re all playing it one day at a time, etc. Who knows what lies around the corner? I’ll leave it there, I think. Right now it’s all tutto bene. I just can’t figure a way to write this daily fucking column (“let it all hang out”) without at least acknowledging this. Curtly.

Amazon UHD streaming, not the 4K Bluray. Shot boxy (1.37) by Clifford Stine, but projected in 1.85 when it opened in June 1953.

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Did you know there was a 2014 Alzheimer’s movie called Still Alice, written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, and that no one has rewatched it since and yet Julianne Moore not only won the Best Actress Oscar that year but her win that was locked in tight from the very beginning of the 2014 Oscar season? The fix was totally in, and no one said “wait…do we have to give it to Moore?”

The answer was yes, they had to because her Best Actress competitors simply weren’t that formidable — Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night, Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything, Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl and Reese Witherspoon in Wild.

HE review excerpt:

HE to Kumail Nanjiani: You’ve smart, funny-witty and appealing every which way. Everyone hated The Eternals but that was Chloe Zhao‘s fault, not yours. You did nothing wrong. You were well paid, right? And you became slightly more famous because of the promotion? Let it go, move on, you’re fine.

…about the melting of the Charles Melton award-season bandwagon, which was basically a touchy-squishy thing from the get-go (South Korean identity plus symbolic empathy for victims of sexual abuse)…the sensitives tried to slip this in and were shut down by the sensibles. Another indication that woke insanity is gradually losing its hold? I’d certainly like to think so.

An excellent article about great casting feats was posted four years ago (1.14.20) on passionweiss,com. The title was “Creating and Awarding the Last 20 Years of ‘Best Casting Director’ Oscars”, and the author was Abe Beame (no relation to the New York City mayor of the mid ’70s).

Beame says one of the best-ever jobs of casting was Gail Levin‘s casting of Almost Famous. Levin is a Cameron Crowe homie from way back (We Bought a Zoo, Elizabethtown, Mean Girls, Vanilla Sky, Jerry Maguire, Empire Records, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape).

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…to the version that began to peek out 20 years ago…Birth (’04), Under the Skin (’13) and The Zone of Interest (’23).

Eight days ago my heart sank when it was announced that Justin Chang, a Millennial wokester with a particular focus on ethnic representation, will be elbowing aside New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, a young boomer whose writings have never seemed to follow woke doctrine.

I almost wept this morning when I re-read Lane’s 23-year-old review of Jonathan Glazer‘s Sexy Beast. It’s very sad to consider that this kind of writing (aloof wit, verve, panache) is, in a sense, being put out to pasture, at least within The New Yorker‘s movie realm…I just feel gutted.

Lane‘s “Exiles,” posted on 6.19.21: “You will be relieved to learn that the title of Jonathan Glazer‘s Sexy Beast is dripping with irony. How could it be otherwise, given that the movie hails from England? Take Gal (Ray Winstone), charring himself like a fat salmon beside his Spanish pool. Gal used to be a London crook, and his wife, Deedee (Amanda Redman), used to be big in porno. These days, they have nothing to do but drink and dine with their good friends Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and Jackie (Julianne White), who share the leathery look of those who have weathered enough for one lifetime.

“But here comes trouble, in a neat, fast package: Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a man whose mere name, like that of Keyser Söze, is enough to bring any civilized company to a lurching halt.

“Don wants Gal to return to London for the sake of one more job. You would think that the heist itself, a raid on a safe-deposit vault, would be the core of the plot. Not so. What rouses Sexy Beast, against all expectations, is the central, Iago-like act of persuasion: one scene after another, in which Don sits or stalks around Gal’s villa and rails away at him, as if to show not that Gal’s defenses are breachable but that they were hardly defenses in the first place…just patches of softness, the pressure points of a sad slacker. The trailer now showing in theatres presents Sexy Beast as a thriller, which means that moviegoers may be heading for a surprise; what they are about to witness resembles nothing so much as Harold Pinter in a really foul mood.

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Obviously the Supremes are much more focused on the potential fallout from the highest court agreeing with the Colorado Supreme Court. They’re not even addressing the fundamental preventative reason that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was adopted in the first place, way back in 1868.

LIVE: Supreme Court hears Donald Trump’s appeal on Colorado ballot disqualification | REUTERS

This morning the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments in former President Donald Trump‘s fight to prevent being kicked off state presidential ballots for his actions involving the 2021 Capitol attack.

Last weekend’s Oscar Poker podcast was postponed due to Sasha being under the weather (cough, scratchy voice)….apologies. We recorded the current one (“Suspended Animation”) yesterday. Here’s the link.

Without an agenda or any sense of urgency, Sasha and Jeff acknowledge that there’s nothing to discuss about the Oscars other than the Best Actress situation (i.e., Emma Stone vs. Lily Gladstone) and that nothing will be finally and absolutely known until the SAG Awards on 2.24, which is two and a half weeks hence. (Good God.)

Sasha believes that the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and BAFTA awards are next-to-meaningless and that only when the big guilds are heard from we understand what the real sentiments are.

Sasha also mentions that now is the time for the various campaigners to turn up the heat and also for whisper campaigns, and Jeff asks “who is whispering anything about Gladstone?” because no one (and I mean NO ONE) has whispered a damn word. Because they don’t dare.

Again, the link.

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Today (2.7) The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jordan Hoffman posted a story about illegal streamings and at least one recent peek-out viewing of Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance in Manhattan.

Hoffman doesn’t mention last April’s private screening that was attended by resturateur Keith McNally and Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman, but he does acknowledge Will Sloan’s 1.15 Letterbox review.

Hoffman also mentions “a bar/event space in New York’s East Village [that] recently hosted an underground ‘NYC Premiér’ of Coup de Chance.” Maybe that’s how Sloan happened to see it?

In paragraph #5, however, Hoffman states that distribution-wise “nothing is in the works for Coup de Chance.”

I’m sorry but my understanding is that Hoffman is dead wrong about this. A distribution deal has been hammered out (at the very least involving streaming and possibly even a touch of theatrical). I was recently told that an announcement about same would happen sometime this week.

Hoffman also fails to report that Coup de Chance is currently streaming on illegal torrent sites.

Hoffman has, on the other hand, seen Allen’s new film (as I have), and has written the following: “This viewer is ready to declare common wisdom correct and say it is far better than Allen’s recent output.

“The lead performance by French actress Lou de Laâge is particularly good. Had this been a U.S.-based production in a parallel timeline, someone like Dakota Johnson would be getting accolades for it.

“The movie is similar in tone to Match Point or Irrational Man in its treatment of happenstance leading to life-altering experiences, the decision to commit murder, and the random distribution of justice.

“[So] it’s an interesting movie worthy of conversation given the importance Allen has in cinema. Maybe someday people in North America who would like to see it will be able to without sneaking around.”

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She may not know if Madame Web will be any good, but Dakota Johnson is certain that today’s streaming distributors are not ony scared of their own shadows but slow on the pickup.

“It’s Spelled Daddy-o,” posted on 9.10.23:

The more I read about Christy Hall‘s Daddio, the sorrier I am that I ducked it in Telluride. I was especially persuaded by Todd McCarthy’s Deadline review. I’m very much looking forward to the next viewing opportunity.

Pic is a two-hander about a grizzled New York City cab driver named Clark (Sean Penn) covering the verbal and cultural waterfront with his blonde 30something passenger (Dakota Johnson).

I should admit there was a specific reason why I didn’t see Daddio last week. It was because of the dopey Millennial spelling. If it had been spelled right I would have gone in a heartbeat.

Daddy-o is a beatnik anachronism. The root term (duhh) is “daddy” with a “y”. Daddio is for dingleberries.

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