I’ve re-watched this scene 20 or 30 times, and could watch it another 20 or 30. Hell, make it 50 or 100.

I love the seven-second delay between the first mention of “old times” and the second, and especially Ben Johnson‘s decision to pick up a stick in the interim…perfect. The camera begins to track forward at the 54-second mark (“More than 20 years ago”) and begins its retreat to the original position at 1:53 (“I bet she’s still got that silver dollar”).

The Last Picture Show was shot in the small northern Texas town of Archer City, sometime in late ’70 or early ’71. Almost a half-century ago.

It may sound cruel to say this, but director Peter Bogdanovich never delivered a sequence as good as this over the rest of his career. It’s arguably the finest shot ever captured by dp Robert Surtees, although some would say his work on Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate was just as noteworthy.

According to Scott Feinberg‘s account of last night’s American Cinematheque tribute to Charlize Theron, David Oyelowo shared a curious recollection that happened during the making of Gringo, in which Theron and Oyelow costarred.

Oyelowo: “The first thing Charlize ever said to me was, ‘David, what is your opinion about anal bleaching?’ She’s the only person I’ve ever known who laughed so hard that she pissed herself…she ran out, I looked down at her seat and it was wet.”

Anal bleaching is funny on what planet? In what kind of upside-down, twisted-pretzel universe is the dampening of a canvas chair due to leaked urine…how is that even smirk-worthy?

Jokes “land” because they reveal or allude to some suppressed or unacknowledged truth about our shared experience. Mentioning that someone busted a gut about this or that is flagrantly unfunny. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, watching or listening to someone laugh hard is extremely unfunny if you’re not sharing in the mirth, which in my case is often.

Seth McFarlane, on the other hand, did allude to suppressed or unacknowledged truths. He joked that Theron “is proof that, at long last, African-Americans are thriving.” (Theron is from South Africa, grew up on a farm near Johannesburg) He also suggested that “‘Charlize’ sounds like a brand of champagne enjoyed by rednecks in Florida.” Well, it is kind of a girly-girl name.

Referring to her Oscar-winning performance in Monster, McFarlane said that “Charlize played a monster who committed unspeakable acts…Megyn Kelly.”

The best line alluded to Theron’s costarring role in McFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West (’14) as well as her romantic pairing with Seth Rogen in Long Shot, to wit: “Theron has made a cottage industry of playing a lover of guys named Seth who could never land her in real life.”

Tragedy is when Scott Feinberg slices his finger with a steak knife. Comedy is when Oyelowo is poking at a Ceasar salad while listening to McFarlane.

Take away the Atlanta Olympics bombing aspect and the suffering that poor Richard Jewell endured could be processed as a metaphor for what all obese people go through.

As I said last month, the guy was primarily found guilty of not looking like Cary Grant in the 1940s or Clint Eastwood in the ’70s or even Seth Rogen in Pineapple Express. A damp-skinned, flat-topped, moustachioed beach ball, Jewell initially looked and, in the opinion of some, behaved like a guy with issues. The very model of a neurotic loner, and out of this a certain zealous reporter for the Atlanta Constitution became convinced he was probably a wrong one, and then the FBI bought into this also, and before you knew it everyone was off to the races.

I saw Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out (Lionsgate, 11.27) the night before last…finally. The next day a certain p.r. hotshot asked what I thought and whether or not Johnson’s nimble, cuttingly funny script has a shot at a Best Original Screenplay nom.

I was planning to tell Johnson himself what I thought anyway, so I cc’ed him in my reply.

“I was expecting some kind of boilerplate Agatha Christie meets wokester sensibilities thing, but it’s actually fairly sharp and clever and funny. The spritziest, most efficiently assembled, fleet-footed Rian Johnson film ever. Amusingly acted and tightly written. A very slick and crafty package… nice!

“The teasing and misdirection moves are very well handled. I had a much better time with it than anticipated.

“So in answer to your question, yes, I think it does have a shot at a Best Screenplay nom.

“51 year-old Daniel Craig, playing the Hercule Poirot-type role, is in good shape, but he looks too old to be playing 007.

“I knew going in that [actor’s name] is the conniving bad person but it was still fun and diverting.

“Ana de Armas seemed to mostly be concentrating on looking pretty and doe-eyed and fetching. Everything she did and said in the film was about “am I looking good in the shot?”

“Incidentally, I HATED the cut of her pants cuffs, riding three or four inches above the sneaker line. Only hipster assholes wear pants that are cut like that. Are you telling me that Ana’s character, a Paraguayan woman who lives on a modest salary with her family in a grubby, smallish apartment, is going to wear HIGH-CUFF HIPSTER PANTS? I don’t think so!”

Johnson reply: “So happy you dug it, man. Though there goes our shot at a BEST PANTS nom.”

Why are those doltish, self-destructive, dumb-as-a-rock bumblefucks still with Trump? Because they despise wokester elites — i.e., those snide urban know-it-alls who seem to loathe white working-class folk, favor POCs in every debatable situation and are determined to push politically correct agendas ‘til the cows come home.

“How The Unsufferably Woke Will Help Trump,” an 11.8 N.Y. Times essay by Timothy Egan, spells it out plainly. Average Joes hate Film Twitter zealots **, and they can’t stand the Indiewire and Jezebel staffers of the world, and they’re willing to re-elect Donald Trump in order to fully express their disdain.

Thanks, wokesters! I hated most of you anyway but this adds a layer of icing to the cake.

The scariest part of Egan’s piece alludes to the apparent fact that for now Elizabeth Warren isn’t connecting with these hinterland slugs.

** partially for trashing Green Book. Which is a roundabout way of saying that bumblefucks hate guys like Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich and L.A Daily News critic Bob Strauss.

9:30 am update: I passed the DMV written test on my second attempt. But the people who created these tests are still conniving jerks.

Earlier: I’ve just failed the written test for a renewal of my California Class C driver’s license. I’ve been driving in this state without incident for decades. I know exactly what to do and not do when I’m at an intersection or whatever so don’t tell me. I use basic logic when I answer the DMV questions, but of course they’re chickenshit, nickle–and–dime trick questions with the intent of trying to confuse or delude the questioner.

Example: Fatigued or drowsy driving will not be prevented by rolling down the window, drinking/eating caffeine or sugar (or chugging a Monster), turning up the music volume or cranking up the air conditioning, but these activities will definitely mitigate drowsiness, especially chugging a Monster. I’ve saved myself from possible disaster more than once by Monster-chugging so don’t tell me. But the DMV fanatics don’t want me to answer this way, and will flunk me if I do. The whole test is like this. They’re just trying to mess with you.

Now I have to study the stupid manual and try again. If I fail two more times I’m dead. I hate these people. Not the attendants but the twisted creeps in Sacramento who created the questions in the first place.

The fact that Jennifer Lawrence and art dealer Cooke Maroney got married last month is not really my business. Obviously my mentioning it in the column makes it a matter of marginal interest…why am I writing this? The focus is Maroney’s neck beard. Failing to trim or shave neck-beard growth has always struck me, no offense, as an uncouth, swarthy, dock-worker thing. I guess not. Now it’s a sign of a free and untrammeled spirit. But if I was in a hiring position an undisciplined neck beard would give me pause, at the very least.

“Justice and decency are carried in the heart of the captain or they be not aboard. It is for this reason that the Admiralty has always sought to appoint its officers from the ranks of gentlemen. The court regrets to note that the appointment of Captain William Bligh was, in that respect, a failure.”

— spoken by the great Henry Daniell, whose most widely appreciated performance was that of Mr. Mayhew, an instructing solicitor to Charles Laughton‘s leading counsel barrister, Sir Wilfrid Robarts, in Witness for the Prosecution (’57).

The inside word about Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy (Fox Searchlight, 2.28.20) has been so subdued and frankly somber that I forgot to post the trailer when it surfaced yesterday. I didn’t mean to ignore it — it just slipped my mind. It’s a re-imagining of Peter Pan, but it doesn’t appear to involve flying. Principal photography began two and a half years ago. Costarring Devin France, Tommie Lynn Milazzo and Shay Walker.

Action heroes making great, gravity-defying leaps across alleyways and narrow streets has become a bullshit cliche. It worked the best in The Bourne Ultimatum (’07), when Matt Damon leapt through the window of a Tangier apartment building, across a narrow alley and then crashed through a window of a neighboring building.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Nominations for the 2020 Cinema Eye Honors Awards were announced this afternoon, and all but three of the films are concerned with progressive social portraiture.

American Factory and Apollo 11 (a history doc which HE greatly enjoyed and strongly endorses) lead with 5 nominations. Aquarela, The Cave, For Sama, Beyoncé’s Homecoming, Honeyland and Midnight Family have 3 noms each. Not to mention 17 Blocks, The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, Ask Dr. Ruth, The Biggest Little Farm, Knock Down the House and Maiden.

The only nominee that delivers something a little different is Madds Brugger‘s Cold Case Hammarskjöld, a curious and sometimes perverse dig into a quietly horrifying South African saga about racism.

Once again A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name, easily one the strongest and most penetrating docs of the year, has been completely blown off. It finally hit me this morning that the reason for this is that mid-July dustup between Crosby and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, which ended with Feinberg throwing up his hands and Crosby walking out.

Wells to Feinberg: “I’m convinced that your Crosby contretemps destroyed the nomination chances of David Crosby: Remember My Name. You did nothing deliberately, of course, but the award-season chances of a really excellent film were nonetheless ruined because Crosby wasn’t adequately prepped about your boilerplate, cover-the-basics approach to podcast interviews. Particularly because you asked that question about he and Graham Nash having both had romantic relationships with Joni Mitchell.

“There’s no question that Eaton and Crowe’s doc was heads and shoulders above many if not most other 2019 contenders, but Crosby’s show of temper and obstinacy gave people a reason not to vote for it. Obviously Crosby should have held himself in check, but it’s really a shame. Talk about a conversational calamity. Tell me I’m wrong.”

From Mark Harris‘s “What Will the Oscars Make of Joker?,” posted on Vanity Fair site on 11.6:

“Joker represents, depending on who’s making the argument, one or more of the following: (a) the belligerence of an entitled, largely male fan base demanding that its preferred genre be rewarded; (b) the most stentorian case yet that comic-book-based movies can be grim, dystopian, R-rated, spandex-free CINEMAAAHH; (c) an example of the kind of high-grossing smash the Oscars must nominate in order to stay relevant; (d) exactly the kind of movie Martin Scorsese is complaining about; (e) exactly the kind of movie Martin Scorsese would be making if he were 40 years younger; (f) a shallow, cosmetic appropriation of 1970s New Hollywood style; (g) a reactionary sneer at anti-capitalist protests; (h) an embodiment of the Trump era in its vague, loud, constantly shifting rage; (i) the kind of risk that too few studios are willing to take with their precious intellectual property; or (j) being the victim of people reading too much into something. (I believe about half of these.)”

Trust me — (c) is what will matter to most Academy and guild voters, and sway their votes accordingly.