I have a 10:45 am appointment at the Norwalk DMV (new license and plates), and I’m chilling in a nearby Starbucks.  “Chilling” isn’t actually the word due to a  boom-box couple sitting 15 feet away.  They’re broadcasting (i.e., shouting, bellowing) their conversation, and every customer has no choice but to listen to the dude, who sounds exactly like Delroy Lindo as he turns on the charm.  The Delilah he’s flirting with is no broadcasting slouch herself.  They’re oblivious to the fact that the conversational noise they’re making is as distracting (and certainly as annoying) as a barking dog.  It all comes down to how you were raised.  If you come from a loud family, you’re going to follow suit as an adult.

Hearty congrats to Adam McKay (writer), Steven San Miguel (narrator), Bruce Herrman (editor) and Staci Roberts-Steele (producer).

Earlier today The View;s Whoopi Goldberg corrected a Daily Beast film reporter (i.e., the Baltimore-based Kyndall Cunningham) for saying she wore a “distracting fat suit” in Till.

I saw Till yesterday afternoon, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Whoopi looks seriously overweight. But not because of a fat suit. Whoopi’s shape is authentically her own.

“I have to say something because there was a young lady who writes for one of the magazines, and she was distracted by my fat suit in her review,” Goldberg said on Monday’s View. “Now, and I’m just going to say this. I don’t really care how you felt about the movie, but you should know that was not a fat suit.”

If a white male film critic had complained about Whoopi’s fictitious fat suit rather than Cunningham, he would be out of a job as we speak. If a white female critic had been the culprit, she would be in trouble but possibly still employed. Cunningham is safe due to being Black and a total wokester — political protection at its most thorough and fortified.

Goldberg to Cunningham: “I assume you don’t watch the show or you would have known that that was not a fat suit, but I just want to let you know that it’s okay not to be a fan of a movie, but you want to leave people’s looks out. So just comment on the acting, and if you have a question, ask somebody because I’m sure you didn’t mean to be demeaning.”

.@WhoopiGoldberg speaks on the importance of her film 'Till,' which premiered at New York Film Festival, and she addresses a claim that she wore a fat suit in the film.

"You should know that was not a fat suit," she says. "Just comment on the acting." https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/V7ULf3c8Pi

— The View (@TheView) October 3, 2022

The two suffering angels of the Best Actress race are Blonde‘s Ana de Armas and Till‘s Danielle Deadwyler. Both are based on real-life figures who lived 60-plus years ago — AdA’s Marilyn Monroe and Deadwyler’s Mamie Till.

It seems highly likely that both will be nominated but who knows? Perhaps voters will conclude that one suffering angel is enough.

Many dislike Blonde but everyone admires Ana de Armas’ lead performance — nobody’s blaming her for what they don’t like about Andrew Dominik‘s film. Methinks that many Academy members of color will vote to nominate Deadwyler as well as Michelle Yeoh, the likely Best Actress nominee from Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I can’t gauge who gives the most emotionally live-wire performance between them, but ethnic voters will probably regard them in a similar light (yay, team).

Who are the most likely contenders outside of these two or three? I’m presuming it’ll be The Fablemans‘ Michelle Williams, Cate Blanchett‘s Lydia Tar in Todd Field‘s TAR and Empire of Light‘s Olivia Colman.

That means, if I’m correct, that the following performances are looking at an uphill situation: The Woman King‘s Viola Davis, Babylon‘s Margot Robbie, She Said‘s Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande‘s Emma Thompson, The Wonder‘s Florence Pugh.

In sum, the six hottest contenders are Danielle Deadwater, Ana de Armas, Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Williams, Cate Blanchett and Olivia Colman.

HE faves, in this order: Cate Blanchett, Olivia Colman, Danielle Deadwyler, Ana de Armas, Michelle Yeoh. I haven’t seen The Fablemans.

In the wake of Saturday’s surprise screening of Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith‘s Emancipation, Apple has announced that the Civil War-era drama will open in theatres on Friday, 12.2, and begin streaming on Friday, 12.9.

Smith slapping Chris Rock on the Oscar stage several months ago was “bad form,” obviously, but only in a performative or ceremonial sense. Superficially uncool but at the same time revelatory.

For what really happened was that Smith, after pretending to be Mr. Chuckly Happyvibe for over three decades, showed us who he really was deep down — an angry, abused dude from West Philadelphia who was ready for violence at a moment’s notice. And what’s wrong with that? It’s who he is, and he finally broke through and told us that. Don’t we value honesty and confession?

One significant revealing by the Emancipation teaser is that apart from the opening shot (green leaf, red blood), the suggestion is that the film is largely in black-and-white with faint hints of desaturated color.

A part of me  genuinely sympathizes with Jordan Peterson’s tearful empathy for incels, and I therefore agree to some extent with Megyn Kelly’s “screw you” dismissal of Don’t Worry Darling‘s Olivia Wilde along with, to some extent, Matt Walsh‘s impressions of all of this, but we have to face facts about incels. 

Various understandings of who and what they are may be flawed, but there’s a certain common ground.  My understanding (take this with a grain) is that incels are lonely guys who are both (a) unattractive to women and who (b) haven’t made a great effort to be attractive to women. 

This is mainly (or at least partly) because they’ve given up.  They tend to live in their own realm (not a lot of socializing) and spend an inordinate amount of time at home with their computers.  They exist, of course, but they clearly don’t want to to be “in the game.”  And they don’t seem to want to take hints about how to fix this.

By all appearances incels don’t eat healthily, they don’t work out (i.e., are overweight) , they’re probably medicating too much (alcohol) and they tend to groom and dress horribly — the usual beardface thing, contemptible flannel shirts, baggy shorts, ugly T-shirts, lace-up sneakers with black socks (or no socks), backwards baseball caps and all the rest of that awful garb.  And their absorption in online forums and superhero realms verges on the neurotic, if not the diseased.

If I was a reasonably attractive straight woman I would run in the opposite direction and I wouldn’t stop running until I ran out of breath, and then I’d hail an Uber or a Lyft to put even more distance between me and these fucking guys.  

With a less desirable genetic inheritance and an even more punishing upbringing and minus the deliverance of movies and journalism, I could have been an incel.  I’m not indifferent to their plight.  But c’mon, man…God helps those who help themselves.

Don’t Worry, Darling, by the way, plummeted 75%  this weekend.  That means people really don’t like it.  And it’s not the craft levels — it’s a reasonably well made film and that’s obviously on Wilde.  The problem is with the third act, which leaves you with nothing and jettisons the whole “social focus on the ’50s” and the granddaughter’s inheritance from Martin Ritt’s No Down Payment. 

Don’t Worry Darling has earned $33 million so far.

HE’s big office romance…I’m sorry, I meant to say the emotionally devastating extra-marital affair that I fell into during my time as an in-office freelancer at People magazine and which continued until her husband found out a couple of years later…it was almost the emotional death of me. (The actual span was between early ’98 and the early fall of ’00…call it 32 months.) No relationship had ever brought so much heartache, hurt or frustration. Graham Greene and Tom Stoppard had nothing on us. I was a man of almost constant sorrow. I was so upset by one of our arguments that one afternoon I made a reckless left turn on Pico Blvd. and got slammed by a speeding BMW, and for weeks I told myself it wasn’t really my fault — it was the married girlfriend’s. Definitely a form of insanity.

Bones and All director Luca Guadagnino speaking at the Zurich Film festival, as reported by Variety‘s Marta Balaga: “The idea the U.S. wants to give to the world has a lot to do with the imagery they create about themselves. We have been sold this imagery like dope. I tried to go [to the States] and do what the great foreign filmmakers of the 1930 and 40s did. They immersed themselves into it.”

Guadagnino said he “doesn’t believe in looking for chemistry between the performers, calling it ‘American stupidity…it’s so ridiculous. The only chemistry has to be in the mind of a director towards his actors.”

Teasing his upcoming tennis movie “Challengers” and “An Even Bigger Splash,” now clocking in at over three hours, Guadagnino wondered if his characters are always driven by passion, not reason.

“I like Election by Alexander Payne. [Tracy Flick] is stubborn and knows what she wants, which is fantastic, but I don’t know if I could make a movie like that or be with a character like that.”

Luca’s next two films are Challengers, a Boston-shot tennis flick with Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, and An Even Bigger Splash, which Balaga says is “now clocking in at over three hours.”