Hollywood Reporter get-around guy Scott Feinberg polled a fair number of Academy members about Joker, and got a fair number of mixed responses.

HE favorite: “I don’t know if it should be banned or it should be given every award.”

HE 2nd favorite (male member of the producer’s branch): “I saw this one at the Academy. I probably wouldn’t have seen it at a public theater. But wow, what a movie, huh? It’s hard to know where to start. Joaquin deserves an Oscar nomination — he blows the doors off the fucking place — and the cinematography was fantastic. Even so, I sure don’t want to see it again. I’m not an expert on mental health, but I’m sure there are a lot of people who will see the insane dancing after the killing as a sexy thing to do, and the worshipping of him at the end could also seem pretty cool to an insane person. As someone who was once held at gunpoint, I can’t get some of the images of gun violence out of my head. I’m very torn on this movie, but I’m glad I saw it.”

Variety‘s Jenelle Riley has reported that A24 will push Lighthouse lead Robert Pattinson for Best Actor and Willem Dafoe for Best Supporting Actor. Which strikes me as a slight “what?”

The size of their parts is fairly equal in terms of screen time and intensity, but if you ask me Dafoe’s performance is far more assertive and jabbing. He’s the feisty provocateur while Pattinson is mostly doing the simmering slow-boil thing with the death-ray glare. In short it’s mostly Dafoe’s show — between them he’s the one with the real shot. Plus he’s been nominated so often in this category without a win.

But A24 didn’t want to under-celebrate Pattinson’s work as so he’s up for a Best Actor nomination. Face it — “Rbatz” is looking at an uphill situation in the competitive company of Joker‘s Joaquin Phoenix, Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver, The Irishman‘s Robert De Niro, Pain and Glory‘s Antonio Banderas, Uncut Gems‘ Adam Sandler and The Two Popes‘ Jonathan Pryce.

I’ve been meaning to praise one of the strongest and most affecting aspects of Joker, which is Hildur Guonadóttir‘s musical score. It taps right into the primal, painful realm of Arthur Fleck, and never stops conveying that bad stuff is happening right now and that worse is on the way. A lot of bass, viola and cello. Guonadóttir says he wrote “much” of the score without having seen Todd Phillips‘ film. She also composed the excellent score for Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

USC student wokesters want John Wayne cancelled in absentia, or at least as far as a USC School of Cinematic Arts Wayne exhibit is concerned.

Mainly, I gather, because eight months ago the long-dead Wayne was targeted by progressives — not incorrectly — as a sexist, hawkish rightwing racist. Wayne’s objectionable views were part of a 1971 Playboy interview that resurfaced last February. Why this is blowing up now instead of last winter is anyone’s guess.

A week and a half ago a pair of SCA students, juniors Eric Plant and Reanna Cruz, made some noise on the USC campus by protesting the Wayne exhibit with a banner.

Eric Plant, Reanna Cruz and their anti-John Wayne protest banner. (Photo snapped by Leanna Albanese.)

USC Annenberg Media correspondent Leanna Albanese reported the protest on 9.27. “When you have an exhibit up that celebrates the idea and the legacy of someone that is blatantly racist, a white supremacist and directly says that he is a white supremacist…it seems as though SCA does not care about [its] students,” Plant told her.

“[The exhibit] being in SCA just makes me feel uncomfortable as someone who is Native American,” Plant explained. “Take down the whole exhibit. There’s no other way that this can be remedied. This is something that I’m going to fight for the entire time that I’m here.”

Three days after the Albanese story (or on 9.30) USC’s Assistant Dean of Diversity and Inclusion Evan Hughes announced that the Wayne complaint would be discussed at a meeting on 10.2, or eight days ago. I wrote Hughes a couple of hours to ask if any course of action had been decided — crickets.

I didn’t get into Martin Scorsese‘s recent assessment of the superhero (mostly Marvel) genre because he was only saying what any semi-intelligent film lover thinks, aside from the fact that certain Marvel films are, by the standards of the genre, seriously impressive (the first Iron Man and Ant Man, the first two Captain America films, Avengers: Endgame, etc.). My reaction was, “Okay, yeah…and?”

Scorsese: “I don’t see [superhero films]. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Two days ago Samuel L. Jackson had this response: “That’s kind of like saying Bugs Bunny ain’t funny. Films are films. You know, everybody doesn’t like his stuff either. I mean, we happen to, but everybody doesn’t. There are a lot of Italian-Americans that don’t think he should be making films about them like that. Everybody’s got an opinion, so it’s okay. It’s not going to stop anyone from making movies.”

HE to Jackson: People like what they like and are obviously entitled to their opinions…of course. And I don’t “like” each and every Scorsese film, by the way. I’ve never been a fan of Kundun, and The Age of Innocence and Bringing Out The Dead never quite rang my bell. But any friend, associate or acquaintance of Jackson’s who says he/she doesn’t “like” Scorsese’s films in general is an idiot, no offense.

And that alleged Italian-American complaint…seriously? The American Italian Anti-Defamation League thing is a half-century old, and there’s hartdly an Italian-American living in the northeast corridor who hasn’t accepted the mob association aspect as part of the price of doing business. Vito Corleone‘s photo is hanging on the wall of God knows how many Italian restaurants, Nino Rota‘s Godfather theme is often heard on the sound system, and everyone loves Joe Pesci‘s “what, I’m a clown, I amuse you?” riff from Goodfellas.

Monday, 10.7 bulletin: I’ve cancelled our Red Fox “tasting menu” reservation. Per Dave Billet‘s suggestion, we may order something in the pub, which has a separate a la carte menu.

Sunday, 10.6: I’m not into eating big, gut-busting meals these days. I’m not Mr. Creosote, and I never have been. But after making a reservation for Tatyana and myself at Middleburg’s Red Fox Inn & Tavern for Friday, 10.18, management called to make sure I understood the all-or-nothing terms of eating there that night.

The situation is that you’re either down for a three-course “Autumn tasting” dinner (roughly $100 per person with wine, not counting tip — $125 plus tip if you’re including dessert) or you might as well not come. Sorry but no budget-watchers or cheapskates.

HE response: “And what if I don’t want to stuff myself with your delicious, exquisitely prepared vittles…what if I just want to absorb the storied colonial atmosphere while eating a light salad and maybe sipping a bowl of soup? Why do I have to go along with your, no offense, totalitarian demand that I eat the locked-and-loaded dinner you’ve chosen to serve me, come hell or high water?”

Response from Red Fox courtesy lady: “Well, you don’t have to come to our restaurant, sir.”

Me: “Oh, I have that option, do I? Thanks — good to know.”

Posted on 11.6.12: “I always got a bigger charge out of Keith Moon‘s pounding and crashing than I did from Ginger Baker‘s, great as he was and is. Partly because Moon was crazier. But also because Moon’s snare-drum hits always struck me as metronomically, mathematically and microscopically more precise and highly charged than Baker’s…just by a tad. To me great drumming isn’t about being a wild man from Borneo…it’s about hitting the beat exactly dead center and exactly right according to universal law, over and over and over.”

A second whistleblower has come forward, presumably providing corroboration to the assertions of whistleblower #1 and weakening the Trump claim that whistleblower #1 can’t be trusted because he’s pushing second-hand information, etc.

And you know what? None of it matters in terms of the 2020 election because the pathetic backwater bumblefucks don’t care. They don’t care about rancid Trump behaviors because he’s the last (only?) bulwark against the cultural encroachment of people of color + LGBTQs. Or so their instincts tell them.

Read Monica Pott‘s “In The Land of Self Defeat” (N.Y. Times, posted on 10.4) and weep. These people are born to lose. They need to die out — that’s the only real solution.

Greta Thunberg‘s week-old, scrunched-face regarding of The Thing…perfect.

Variety critics Owen Gleiberman and Peter Debruge haven’t engaged in a genteel, hail-fellow-well-met, Marquis-of-Queensbury dispute about Joker — they’ve gotten into an actual argument. It’s like a mid ’60s slapdown between Pauline Kael and Bosley Crowther about Bonnie and Clyde. Gleiberman loves Joker‘s mad disturbing provocations while Debruge finds them rash and exploitive and even dangerous (i.e., “Phillips has given incel types a poster boy for the kind of toxic ‘it’s everybody’s fault but mine’ mentality“).

Favorite OG excerpt: “If you say you have trouble with films that create ‘sympathetic portraits of sociopathic characters,’ I guess that’s an argument. But it’s a terribly conservative one. The same argument, and outrage, was once used as a weapon against movies like The Public Enemy and Scarface, and you could easily wield it against a work of art like Bonnie and Clyde — as, indeed, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther famously did at the time.”

“But when you call Joaquin Phoenix‘s Arthur Fleck a ‘poster boy’ for angry self-pitying incel types, I do think you’re onto something — not about whether he’s going to become a hero to the basement-dweller brigade, but about the true, underlying reason why there’s been so much hostility to Joker on the part of film critics who routinely greet utterly processed comic-book films with a wan shrug of approval.

“The movie is being treated by those critics as if it were a two-hour advertisement for the toxic white male. It almost doesn’t matter whether the film is glorifying or condemning Arthur’s violence. Everyone knows that Joker is going to be a huge hit — and, more than that, a phenomenon — and the fact that it places a toxic white male at the center of the conversation is somehow being slammed as a violation of the New Woke Rules.

“The critics are saying: We’re done with characters like this! But they’re trying to wish away something that can’t be wished away. In doing so, they’re treating the rare piece of popular art with a genuine emotional danger to it, as if it were the enemy.

Plus he’s looking older and is, if you ask me, too old to cut the 007 mustard. He can pretend and all, but I don’t believe that a 51 year old guy can handle all that rugged stuff like he did in his 30s and 40s. Yes, I know — Sean Connery was 52 when he made Never Say Never Again (’83), but I didn’t believe that one either. Connery’s prime Bond period was in the ’60s, when he was in his early to mid 30s. When Roger Moore shot his last Bond, A View to a Kill, he was 57 or 58…way too long-of-tooth. Pierce Brosnan finished his 007 service at age 52 or thereabouts.

Posted on 5.23.19: “If Craig was required to just stroll around and say dialogue, fine, but 007 has evolved past the guy he used to be — an elegant smoothie who would occasionally punch or plug a bad guy with aplomb — to an X-treme pugilist martial-arts superman. Craig is 51 years old — five years past the normal prime period for a typically fit male.”

Set in a Scottish highland regiment sometime after World War II, Tunes of Glory (’60) is about a brutal battle of esteem between the retiring commander, Major Jock Sinclair (Alec Guinness). and his replacement, one Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow (John Mills). Right away the macho Sinclair, whom everyone in the regiment likes and respects, mounts a steady campaign of disdain and belittling against Barrow, whom everyone comes to regard as prissy, stiff and constipated. The war ends with a bullet and blood on the floor, and a ton of residual guilt.

Guinness and Mills were at their absolute peak. James Kennaway‘s screenplay, sharp and well-honed, was Oscar-nominated.

Wiki excerpt: “Guinness wanted to play Barrow, and John Mills wanted to play Sinclair. It took a meeting between Guinness, Mills and director Ronald Neame to straighten out why each was best suited for the role they had been offered. However, in his autobiography, Mills claimed that he brought the script to Guinness, and between them they decided who should play which role. At the end of the dat Guinness believed this performance to be among his best.”