On 1.15.24 Variety‘s Owen Gleibermanpolitely inquired about whether the Sundance Film Festival has surrendered the danger factor in its film selections. (Answer: Of course it has.)
Today (1.16.24) World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, in a piece linking to Gleiberman’s column, observed the same thing.
A year ago (1.29.23) former IndieWire editor/columnist Eric Kohn sniffed around and reported the same shit.
Boiled down, they all concluded that potential threats of wokester condemnation had so terrorized filmmakers that they don’t want to take chances. They wouldn’t dare.
Received this morning from a friend: “How long since you’ve seen Howard Hawks’ The Thing? (And yeah, he directed it. Of COURSE he did). But here’s the thing: The streaming versions available through Apple and Amazon are fucking CROPPED from their original aspect ratio of 1:37:1 to, I think, 1:78:1. Delightful!”
Screen captures of Apple streaming version:
Screen captures of The Thing Bluray images, taken from the Sony 4K 65-incher:
Posted early this morning: “And your advice is that I should now trim my rhetorical sails lest I cast a certain kind of shade upon the Stone campaign? Because I’m some sort of Darth Vader figure or something?
“Well, I yam what I yam — a straight shooter, a dealer of straight cards, no two-faced political games. Come what may, but at this stage of the game I’m certainly not going to shift gears and do some kind of Phase Two two-step.”
“It is worth noting that since 2018, only one Critics Choice winner has gone on to win the Oscar, and that’s Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, who won the SAG in what was an unpredictable, topsy-turvy year. That puts all eyes on the SAG Awards to decide the winner.
“Then again, Glenn Close also won the SAG before losing to Olivia Colman.
“Ultimately, this race will be decided, I think, by how strongly voters feel about two things. Making history with Lily Gladstone, getting that standing ovation and that wave of love and support from the Osage community, or their passion for Emma Stone’s performance. And that will come down to how much they like these movies. Vibrant, weird and funny vs. deep, reflective, a somber reckoning of our past.
“What might also come into play is that Emma Stone has already won an Oscar, whereas Lily Gladstone has yet to be nominated.”
With Emma “Bella Baxter” Stone having won the Critics Choice Best Actress award for her Poor Things performance, it now seems as if she stands a better-than-reasonable chance of snagging the Best Actress Oscar. Past Critics Choice votes have often been Oscar predictive so maybe. Here’s hoping.
This is even better than when Emma/Bella won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress — Comedy/Musical, because this time she was up against everyone else (Lily Gladstone, Carey Mulligan, Margot Robbie, et. al.) in the same category. It’s absolutely the right choice, of course, unless, like me, you were nursing special feelings for Mulligan’s Felicia Montealegre in Maestro, which led to turbulence and regret.
HE is not, shall we say, distressed that certain doubts and concerns about Gladstone’s Molly Burkhart performance were recognized and reflected, at least to some extent. Time and again I’ve said that Lily’s Molly Burkhart performance isn’t an appropriate Best Actress contender, considering that (a) Burkhart isn’t really a lead role and that (b) Martin Scorsese and Eric Roth‘s Killers of the Flower Moon script didn’t really give her any Best Actress-level scenes.
Not to mention the generally recognized view that quality of performance should always matter more than issues of identity.
Hearty congrats also to The Holdovers‘ Paul Giamatti for having won the Best Actor award.
Herewith the latest Oscar Poker (Sunday, 1.14.24), recorded hours before the Critics Choice Awards at Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar.
One question: Is there a chance that Emma Stone will overtake Lily Gladstone when the Critics Choice Best Actress award is announced this evening? Yeah, doubt it.
Diane English’s The Women, an ensemble farce about wealthy, ambitious ladies of privilege and particularity, was released in 2008 (i.e., over 15 years ago), and it truly represents a world that no longer exists. Sasha explains how it all changed while Jeff (who watched this remake of George Cukor’s 1939 original last night) patiently takes it all in.
Many of us recall when Roman Polanski won the Best Director Oscar for The Pianist in early ‘03, but a relative few recall the standing ovation (Scorsese, Nicholson, Nic Cage) that greeted this significant win. Today’s reactions are almost solely from the pitchforkers. With Polanski’s WWII-era drama about to be re-released next month, the torch-carrying villagers still want his head.
Critics Choice bada-bing: All hail the Best Supporting Actress triumph of The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and all hail the defeat of May December‘s Charles Melton by Oppenheimer‘s Robert Downey, Jr., who gave a great Salieri performance.
If they did, they’d get behind Nikki Haley in Iowa and elsewhere. Because she would almost certainly prevail against Biden in the general. But it won’t happen. Because their MAGA heels are dug in for The Beast. Reminder: HE is not a Haley supporter because of her statement about pardoning that criminal sociopath.
A random, straight-from-the-shoulder discussion from earlier today (transcript):
Friendo: The biggest problem with Killers of the Flower Moon, which I’ve just watched for the fourth time, is that after all Lily has suffered and been through…after all that she doesn’t rip into Leo at the end of the film. The whole point of having the FBI involved is that we’re invested in their story so when they get the bad guy it’s satisfying. So we naturally expect some sort of catharsis from Lily. But it never comes.
HE: Correct. Lily is even gentle with dumb-ass Leo during their final scene. She gently caresses his cheek and listens to his regrets without saying shit, or saying much. Zero catharsis. Zero satisfaction.
Friendo: They set us up for a showdown at the end, which is the only reward for enduring her suffering. You need that scene…payback, revenge, retribution
HE: The idea seems to be that Lily’s spirituality doesn’t allow for any retribution or condemnation. It’s too coarse for her. She’s at one with the Spirit Gods.
Friendo: So either she’s ignorant and stupid. Or it’s bad writing.
HE: Inconclusive story strategy, I would say. Unsatisfying finale.
Friendo: Leo was in cahoots with men who killed her whole family, and then he poisoned her himself for months? Any intelligent person would flip out at a man who did that.
HE: Marty Scorsese and Eric Roth didn’t see it that way.
The first shave is always very pleasurable, granted, but you can feel a very slight diminishment during the second shave — not as sharp or clean. And the third shave is the same or even slightly worse. The fact is that cheap plastic razors (also made by Gillette) work almost as well over the course of, say, eight or even ten shaves.
Why do I keep shelling out for these shitty, over-priced Gillette cartridges that are good for only one great shave? Because I like holding the metal Gillette shaving device. (What should I call it?) It feels good in my hand. I like the weight of it, and the little grooves and micro-bumps allow for a better grip. Otherwise the cartridges suck eggs.
From a 7.12.09 piece called “The Art of Paycheck Acting”: “The Towering Inferno was entertaining crap when it opened [in 1974], but Paul Newman and Steve McQueen are honorable and oak-solid in their starring roles. This is impressive given that neither actor has a real part to play — they were just paid to show up and go through the Irwin Allen paces. They knew it then and we know it now, but they deliver the goods anyway. That’s professionalism and star power.
“There are four ways that brand-name actors deliver straight-paycheck performances in mediocre big-studio films.
“One, they do it straight and plain and cruise by on chops and charisma, like McQueen and Newman. Two, they do it straight and plain and don’t cruise by on chops and charisma — they sink into the movie like quicksand and then suffocate. Three, they behave in an extremely mannered and actorish way as a way of telegraphing to the audience that they’re totally aware that they’re in a crap film. And four, they go beyond mannered and waaay over the top (like Jon Voight in Anaconda) and turn their performances into inspired farce.”
“In the new disaster blockbuster TheToweringInferno, each scene of a person horribly in flames is presented as a feat for our delectation. The picture practically stops for us to say, ‘Yummy, that’s a good one!’ These incendiary deaths, plus the falls from high up in the hundred-and-thirty-eight-floor tallest skyscraper in the world, are, in fact, the film’s only feats, the plot and characters being retreads from the producer IrwinAllen’s earlier PoseidonAdventure. What was left out this time was the hokey fun.
“When a picture has any kind of entertainment in it, viewers don’t much care about credibility, but when it isn’t entertaining we do. And when a turkey bores us and insults our intelligence for close to three hours, it shouldn’t preen itself on its own morality. Inferno knocks off some two hundred people as realistically as it possibly can and then tells us that we must plan future buildings more carefully, with the fire chief (embodied here by SteveMcQueen) working in collaboration with the architect (in this case, PaulNewman, who appears to be also the only engineer — in fact, the only person involved in the building’s construction or operation above the level of janitor).
