“Little Women has found an audience, and it’s selling tickets. But it breaks no sociopolitical ground, and men don’t like it.
“If it earns Oscar nominations, how are the filmmakers to know that they are the result of the movie’s excellence, not of the campaign conducted by angry white women in the prestige newspapers? Perhaps the film may suffer the lowest fate of all in the outrage economy: to be understood, principally, as a work of art.” — from “Little Women’s Real Feminist Problem” by The Atlantic‘s Caitlin Flanagan.
If you have any sporting blood in you, you have to acknowledge that the pushback campaign — “What to do about the guys who don’t want to see Little Women?” — seems to have been tactically effective, and that Greta Gerwig‘s film may end up with a Best Picture nomination after all. Who knows? Not because the film necessarily deserves it, but because enough Academy members have been agitated or guilt-tripped into voting for Little Women.
Say what? Who says so? Because a majority of the Hollywood Foreign Press membership (about 90 people) voted that way? Phillips can’t just dismiss The Irishman with a wave of the hand. It’s a landmark film and a Scorsese gangster crescendo.
“[Sam Mendes‘ film] hasn’t had a chance to get out there yet (it opens wide this coming weekend). And when it does, maybe a rousing reaction on the part of audiences will bolster its awards mojo. My feeling, however, is that 1917, with its look-ma-no-hands! one-shot gimmickry (please explain to me why this is more than a stunt), is a video game for fanboys posing as a drop-dead serious war movie. I think it would likely prove to be one of the most joylessly dutiful and uninspiring Oscar winners in memory. To me, seeing Mendes get up there instead of directors who made far more indelible (and celebrated) movies this year just didn’t feel right.”
HE to journo pally: “1917 is a respectable soulful tech thing — a ‘Ready Player World War I’ cake with emotional icing. It saves itself with the final scene with the brother, and I liked the symmetry of the beginning and ending of taking a nap against a tree.”
Journo pally responds: “The final scene does get to you, but I think in a mechanical/symmetrical and rather rote way. I don’t find it a truly stirring or awe-inspiring war film.”
Raised-in-Russia Tatyana insists it’s uncouth to wear shoes in our home. Not doing so shows a lack of breeding and refinement.
“Okay”, I’ve replied, “but that’s exactly what I wasn’t taught by my middle-class, college-educated parents when I was a kid.” My dad would toss his loafers when he napped on the couch, but when people visited nobody followed suit…ever.
I was always told that only commoners sat around barefoot or with socks. The Beverly Hillbillies theme song ends with the singer saying “take your shoes off…set a spell,” etc. My earthy, Kentucky-born paternal grandfather used to say the same thing when we visited. I’m fairly certain that visitors to the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport were never urged to do this.
To me shoe-wearing is more socially acceptable because well-heeled shoes are more attractive to look at. (Unless you’re wearing whitesides.) Who wants to look at someone’s knobby toes, covered or uncovered by gold-toe socks? Depending on who you’re with, feet can be extremely problematic. There’s nothing better to wear in someone’s living room that a pair of nice Bruno Magli lace-ups.
The Writers Guild nominees have been announced, and yup, Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns‘ 1917 screenplay is among the Best Original Screenplay contenders. The other original script nommies are Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out, Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin Won‘s Parasite, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel and Katie Silberman‘s Booksmart; and Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story.
Best adapted screenplay nommies are Joker, written by director Todd Phillips and Scott Silver (based on characters from DC Comics); Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women (based on the lore of Louisa May Alcott’s novel); Taika Watiti‘s JoJo Rabbit, based on Christine Leunens‘ “Caging Skies”; Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, partly based upon Tom Junod‘s article “Can You Say…Hero?”; and The Irishman, based on Charles Brandt‘s “I Heard You Paint Houses” and written by Steve Zaillian.
The 72nd annual WGA Awards are set for Saturday, 2.1 — two days after final Oscar balloting begins, and three days before it closes.
Last night’s surprise awarding of two Golden Globes to 1917 — Best Motion Picture, Drama, and Best Director (Sam Mendes) — were not undeserved. Okay, amply deserved. 1917 is a knockout technical achievement that also delivers emotionally. The morning-after impression everyone seems to have is that this World War I epic (which Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips is calling “Ready Player World War I”) is now a serious Best Picture contender.
And yet we all understand, of course, that what happened last night was as much of an anti-Netflix thing as anything else. In other words, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association decided to once again express a familiar lament — i.e., how dare Netflix and other streaming companies conspire to destroy theatres by using omnipresent high-speed internet to deliver movies to customers?
Remember also that exhibitors were unrealistic and mule-stubborn in their pre-release dealings with Netflix over The Irishman, insisting on a 90-day theatrical window when everyone knows that 97% of movies are done in theatres after six weeks or 42 days. What would you have done if you were Netflix? Waited 90 days (or until sometime in mid January) to stream The Irishman?
The mark of a truly worthy and/or profound film is not about technical audacity or atmospheric authenticity (The Irishman‘s de-aging CG, the magical Birdman-like editing of 1917, Once Upon A Time‘s impressive period dressings), but how profoundly it connects.
In other words, what counts is whether the message or impression that it’s conveying “lands”, and how that makes you feel. It’s also about adding some kind of fresh-seeming insight to the subject and/or discussion at hand.
Which of the following Best Picture contenders sinks in the deepest? There’s only one answer.
1917 basically reminds that war is carnage and slaughter, but that compassion between solders endures regardless — something that The Big Parade, All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory said in their own eras and in their own ways.
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood essentially says that (a) in the late ’60s second-tier Hollywood types were the lifeblood of this town, (b) Zen-cool guys like Cliff Booth may be lacking in political skills but they sure are good to have around when the maniacs come calling, and (c) wouldn’t it be nice to spare a real-life beautiful actress in her late 20s from a horrible death, retroactively-speaking?
The Irishman conveys the paradoxical notion that gangsters can’t survive without ice water in their veins, but that this same ice water drains them of recognizable humanity and separates them from other human beings. (You could actually say the same thing about people in other professional arenas.) Martin Scorsese‘s film also reminds that old age is not for sissies, and no matter how you slice it the assaults and indignities of old age — canes, grape juice, white hair, wheelchairs, assisted living and death itself — aren’t that far off and are patiently waiting their turn.
I understand how those with little or no concept of mortality (i.e., Millennials and GenZs) can regard The Irishman at a distance. I also understand how there are some out there who are just too thick or insensitive to appreciate the kind of fine aged wine that The Irishman is pouring.
But there’s no disputing that The Irishman is essentially “Wild Strawberries with handguns” (as Anthony Lane called it a few weeks ago), and there are no other Best Picture contenders with Ingmar Bergman-esque tonalities or aspirations. Think about that.
Think also about the fact that only one award-season film is saying that we’re all going to die (not just a dangerously high percentage of soldiers on the battlefield or actresses with tragic destinies but every last one of us) and that before we push on maybe we should pay more attention to the things that really matter. I’m sorry but that strikes me as a more fundamental and valuable observation than anything else on the table.
What an intermittently strange Golden Globes award show! Congrats to Joaquin, Renee, Brad, Laura and other winners. But big-spending Netflix suddenly appears to be looking at an uphill situation. Marriage Story is probably a lost cause (Laura Dern‘s likely Best Supporting Actress Oscar aside) but they need to somehow re-energize the Irishman campaign.
HE asked a seasoned director about what happened with the two big 1917 wins (Best Picture, Best Director). Answer: “Ambivalence towards Netflix. Hollywood and its denizens will not let Netflix win until they properly release their contenders. Plus 1917 arrived relatively late in the game. Recent impressions are stronger. Boldness of vision and concept.”
8:07 pm: The Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama goes to 1917? Congrats and well done, but who was predicting this? Text Message from Jett: “The Irishman is in trouble.” Netflix, in fact, was all but shut out. A lot of what was expected to happen didn’t happen.
8:03 pm: Renee Zellweger, as predicted, wins Best Actress, Motion Picture, Drama for Judy. What was Ricky Gervais‘s Harvey Weinstein joke? It was bleeped.
7:54 pm: Joaquin Phoenix wins the Golden Globe for Best Actor, Drama. Joaquin just got bleeped! JP: “I don’t want to rock the boat but…” JP got bleeped again! “We have to take responsibility upon ourselves,” etc. And then he gets played off. JP: “I know people say this but I really do feel honored to be mentioned with you,” etc. Maybe we’ll find out later on what he actually said.
7:45 pm: The Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical goes to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Expected! Julia Butters and Margot Robbie take the stage with Quentin Tarantino and others, but Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCapriodon’t take the stage. Odd.
7:37 pm: Awkwafina wins for Best Actress, Comedy or Musical. An actual predicted win aside from Pitt! Richly deserved except for those moments when she first arrives in China and can’t seem to stop herself from radiating gloom, which is not the idea as the family is trying to keep grandma from suspecting the Big Secret.
7:34 pm: Taron Egerton wins Best Actor, Comedy or Musical? What happened to Eddie Murphy, bruhs? 2019 has not been an Egerton year — it’s been a Murphy year. What just happened? Mendes, Egerton…what’s going on?
7:27 pm: Brad Pitt, as expected, wins Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. Pitt thanks Quentin, of course, as well as “LDC” and Tom Rothman “for his big balls.”
7:23 pm: Joker composter Hildur Gionadottir wins! I thought it would either be 1917‘s Thomas Newman or Marriage Story‘s Randy Newman.
7:12 pm: Richly deserved! Michelle Williams win the Best Actress, limited TV series, for Fosse/Verdon. MW: “Women, please vote in your own self-interest. We are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make [America] look more like us.” Bravo!! And congrats to Team Chernobyl for winning Best Limited Series of TV Movie award.
7:01 pm: The Golden Globe Best Director award goes to…1917‘s Sam Mendes? A very good film by a highly gifted director, but what just happened? Bong Joon-ho, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese supporters are slapping their foreheads as we speak. Where did this come from? Who had predicted it? Definitely a left-field win.
6:50 pm: Tom Hanks melts down over love for his family during his acceptance speech. Probably the most widely loved, most amiable fellow in the business. “Show up on time, know your lines and bring a head full of ideas. Check the gate! If the gate is good, then you move on. It’s the cold that’s making this happen. I’m not nearly this emotional at home. Thank you.”
6:40 pm: Unbelievable‘s Toni Collette should have won the Best Supporting Actress. That said, cheers to winner Patricia Arquette (The Act) for referencing the impending likely war with Iran and the Australian bush fires, and the absolute necessity of removing Trump later this year. Hooray also for The Crown‘s (and HE’s own) Olivia Colman for her win.
6:28 pm: For so many years songwriter Bernie Taupin looked like a handsome, good-looking music industry guy in a certain wispy and delicate way, and now he looks like Ernest Stavro Blofeld…like a bald Swiss banker or arms dealer. Congrats to Bernie and Elton for winning the Best Song award.
6:17 pm: Best Supporting Actress award goes to Laura Dern for Marriage Story. (And to a lesser extent for her performance in Little Women.) The saga of of Marriage Story is not about “a family finding their way for their child.” It’s about what the mother wants for her career and how much stress and expense the selfish father will endure to win as much time with his son as possible. Oh, and cheers to Fleabag for winning Best TV series award.
6:10 pm: HE doesn’t “do” animated, no offense, but congrats all the same to Missing Link for winning the Golden Globe Best Animated Feature award, or whatever it’s called.
6:05 pm: Ewan McGregor is wearing blacksides! White shoes with black soles. Quentin Tarantino, winner of the Best Screenplay award, mispronounces John Milius‘s last name. So this means OUATIH wins Best Feature, Comedy/Musical?
6:02 pm: Best Actor, TV Series, Drama: Succession‘s Brian Cox. Excellent actor each and every time. The show is fine. Not to my taste but fine.
5:44 pm: Kate McKinnon handing out the 2020 Carol Burnett award to the great Ellen DeGeneres. Good! A courageous champion and a genuinely witty comedian. That said, EDG’s haircut is too strict and under-cutty. The hair should be longer. And her eyes …well, we’re all getting older but the norm is to “do” something about that, no? It’s normal, expected, par for the course. Brilliant, super-confident riff on “I’m gonna keep it quick.” Plus: “I couldn’t have done it without my husband Mark.” Perfect, just right…cheers.
5:36 pm: And here comes the Parasite award!! Bong Joon-ho had this one in the bag for a long time. Take note, Oscar voters; You can nominate Parasite for Best Picture, fine, but that’ll suffice. Due respect and admiration for a very good film. In the international realm.
5:33 pm: And the GG award for Best Actress in a TV series, Musical or Comedy does to Phoebe Waller Bridge, Fleabag. I’ve watched…uhm, two episodes.
5:28 pm: Gervais quips, “As you know the meal tonight was all vegetables. As are the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press.” Not funny.
5:26 pm: Stellan Skarsgard, whom I spoke to last night at the Lionsgate party, wins the supporting actor award for his Chernobyl performance. Funny guy. Good Milos Forman imitation. Congrats to the Succession guys for winning Best TV Series (Drama). I’m not allowed to say that I stopped watching early in the game because I couldn’t care less about the snakes, vipers and lizards. Throw them all into a volcano pit.
5:10 pm: Russell Crowe wins Best Actor in TV format for The Loudest Voice. He’s not at the ceremony because of the devastating Australian bush fires. Jennifer Aniston reads a statement from Crowe stating that global warming is a prime cause for what’s happening down under. He’s right.
5:03 pm: Ricky Gervais doesn’t care. “Many people of color were snubbed [in the Globes Nominations]. But the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press are very racist…and nothing can be done about that.” Or words to that effect. Plus the Epstein joke. A lot of pop-outs — is NBC bleeping him?
Robert Altman-wise, I could watch California Split and The Long Goodbye once a year for the rest of my life. Ditto M.A.S.H., The Player, Thieves Like Us, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and A Wedding. But I’ll probably never watch Popeye ever again. It’s been almost four decades since I saw it (once) but that’s enough.
I have this recollection of Giuseppe Rotunno‘s cinematography being lazy as fuck — just watching the action from a distance, way too reliant on zoomed-in wide and medium shots. Harry Nilsson‘s musical score was kind of a flatliner, no? Ditto Jules Pfeiffer‘s screenplay. I always heard that Popeye was a big cocaine movie, and that this was part of the problem. Legend has it that Robin Williamsdidn’t get along with Altman. It wasn’t a financial bust — having cost $22 or so million, it made $60 million worldwide. But an impression lingers that it was basically a misconceived failure because of an ill-suited director.
I was told during last night’s Lionsgate’s pre-Golden Globe party that a Knives Out sequel is in the works. It would focus on Daniel Craig‘s Hercule Poirot-like character, debonair private detective Benoit Blanc. The idea would be to launch a franchise that would just keep going and going and going and going and going and going and going. Director-writer Rian Johnson is already at work on the followup. I could have reported this as few hours ago, dammit, but now The Hollywood Reporter has scooped everyone. Fuck a duck. Knives Out has made something like $245 million worldwide thus fair, and it still has legs.
Last night Team Elsewhere (Tatyana and myself) attended another great pre-Golden Globes party, a Lionsgate bash with Knives Out and Bombshell luminaries (Charlize Theron, HE’s own Rian Johnson, Toni Collette (particularly great in Netflix’s Unbelievable), Chris Evans, a less-than-fully-recognizable Ana de Armas) in attendance, and once again orchestrated by the great and garrulous and huggy-touchy Colleen Camp.
Plus Stellan Skarsgard, Billy Zane and some choice hotshot journos (Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, N.Y. Times “Caroetbagger” Kyle Buchanan, Daily Mail‘s Baz Bamigboye, Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman, Variety‘s Jazz Tangcay, Awards Daily TV and movie guy Clarence Moye).
It was cacophonous and a bit crowded but curiously relaxing…just a perfect, honeyed, shelter-from-the-storm vibe up and down…all tony amber and candles and low-light shadow and hors d’oeuvres every which way. Okay, the music was a bit loud.
Prior to the event we chilled with Phillip Noyce and Vuyo Dasi at the San Vicente Bungalows bar — smallish, quiet, darkly lighted, intimate, low-ceilinged. We were greeted by maitre’d Dimitri Dimitrov (formerly of the Sunset Tower bar-restaurant).
BTW: This being January 2020 and all, Tatyana and I have long since forgotten about that bizarre July 2017 episode when a Chateau gatekeeper wouldn’t allow us to visit on our own steam, possibly because they didn’t like the cut of my white pants.
