A Criterion Bluray of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale‘s ‘ I Want To Hold Your Hand pops on 3.26.19. Set during the Beatles’ first visit to the U.S. in February ’64, it’s a screwball farce about several kids trying to slip into the Plaza Hotel while the Beatles were staying there and/or score tickets to their first-ever performance on Ed Sullivan Show.

Screwball farce is a very tough thing to get right, I’ve always heard. I’m not calling I Want To Hold Your Hand a “bad” film, exactly, but so much of the material doesn’t “land” that it’s exhausting after a while — it makes you feel like you’re on a comedic forced march. The tone feels pushed and agitated.

After catching an all-media screening in March of ’78 or thereabouts I distinctly remember saying to myself “good God…not seeing that one again.” The word must have gotten out because it flopped commercially — cost $2.8 million to make, earned $1.9 million in ticket sales.

18 months later I became a huge fan of Zemeckis and Gale’s Used Cars, which had a similar farcical tone but also a much sharper script. And funnier performances — Kurt Russell, Jack Warden, Gerrit Graham, Frank McRae, et. al.

I Want To Hold Your Hand‘s mostly female cast includes Nancy Allen, Susan Kendall Newman (Paul’s daughter), Theresa Saldana and Wendie Jo Sperber. The nasal-voiced Eddie Deezen is the stand-out, I suppose, but like everyone else he overdoes the hyper. Deezen’s best all-time performance happened five years later in John Badham‘s War Games, in which he played the spazzy “Mr. Potato Head” — see after the jump.

If the Academy’s expanded Best Picture nomination process (resulting in five to eight or nine nominees) were in effect in 1980/’81 and if the New Academy Kidz groupthink view that “exceptional genre films are award-worthy” had been in effect, it’s reasonable to presume that the following eight films would have been Best Picture contenders: Breaker Morant, Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Elephant Man, The Empire Strikes Back, Melvin and Howard, Ordinary People, Raging Bull and The Stunt Man.

No offense but I don’t believe that Fame and Private Benjamin — a pair of diverting, female-empowerment entertainments — would have been considered worthy of Best Picture consideration. Private Benjamin is the better of the two, I suppose, but I’m not sure that’s saying much. I saw it once and have never felt an urge to revisit.

If I’d been an Academy member marking my preferential ballot back then, I would have put Martin Scorsese‘s Raging Bull at #1 because it’s a blunt tool that nonetheless delivers delicacy, tragedy and the worst kind of aching, lonely-man anguish. Among the Best Picture hotties it was the most glamorously unglamorized, the least formulaic and the most against-the-usual-grain contender (raw, crude, earthy…the Florida jail-cell primal scream scene alone), the most flavorful (“I’m not an animal, I’m not that bad”, “Defeats its own purpose,” “I dunno whether to fuck him or fight him”) and the most…I don’t know, the most face-slappy or gut-punchy.

And I would have put Bruce Beresford‘s Breaker Morant as my #2. A Vietnam-metaphor drama about politicians and the military elite sticking it to rank-and-file soldiers in order to save their own necks — a kin of Paths of Glory (which at the time had been released 23 years earlier) and an equally-strong indictment. Arguably the finest hour of Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson.

My #3 would have been Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People. By today’s standards it would probably be called a “white people movie”, and could probably never be made today, and if someone were to make it anyway it would get hammered for dwelling in its own secluded realm, a lack of diversity, a portrait of white-bread neuroticism, etc.

I know that for a lot of people 1980 was a Raging Bull-vs.-Ordinary People year, but they’re closer in spirit that many would admit. Ordinary People was, in its own way, almost as full of anger and push-back, refrigerator-punching rage as the Scorsese-De Niro film. Except for the self-loathing “God hates me” factor, Raging Bull has never affected anyone emotionally — not really. Certainly no one I know, or, you know, anyone who parks their car in the HE garage. Okay, the jail-cell scene gets people.

My #4 would have been The Empire Strikes Back, and my #5 would have Melvin and Howard.

The remaining trio, in this order: Coal Miner’s Daughter (the third Best Picture contender that year to pass along a female-empowerment saga), The Stunt Man and The Elephant Man (i.e., primarily a production design effort).

Now I’m suddenly in the mood to stream Breaker Morant and Coal Miner’s Daughter. I love Tommy lee Jones in the latter — “Three ways to go in this town…coal mine, moonshine or move on down the line.”

Last night the American Cinematheque Egyptian screened William Friedkin‘s To Live and Die in L.A. (’85) and Ivan Passer‘s Cutter’s Way. Friedkin’s film has improved over the years — I realized this after watching the Bluray a year or two ago. William Petersen‘s William Chance is still a reckless sociopath, but he somehow seems less over-the-top, less of a bludgeoner than he did 33 years ago. Because society has undergone a coarsening, a degradation process since the Reagan era.

But I can’t stand Cutter’s Way anymore. I re-watched it after John Hurt‘s death and had to shut it off. Every engaging film requires viewers to invest in the main characters at least somewhat, but Hurt and Jeff Bridges are playing such sputtering, saliva-spewing losers. Not to mention the singular possessive title, which is a no-no ’round these parts. As I explained last September, the implication of a singular possessive title is that “the main character will be some kind of willful, egoistic, manipulative, obsessive type, and who wants to spend two hours with an asshole?”

If I’d been there last night I probably wouldn’t been able to focus on anything Friedkin or Kusama said because of a huge visual distraction. By which I mean they were both wearing sneakers with white midsoles, a 21st Century shoe design that I’ve previously described as “whitesides.” As I explained last month, walking around with a pair of whitesides equals instant social discrediting. Posted on 11.11.18: “White midsoles are about as 100% outre as it gets right now. There are so many different shoe styles, textures, color combos, tints and side-colors out there, but if you choose whitesides you’re no better than someone who wears Crocs. I’m not trying to be some kind of judgmental Torquemada but whitesides really don’t make it.”

Tiffany Haddish, Michelle Wolf, Chris Hemsworth, Hannah Gadsby, Rami Malek, Michael Strahan, Rachel Brosnahan, Sarah Silverman, Allison Janney, Terry Crews, Kanye West, Rosanna Barr, Matthew McConaughey, Ellen Degeneres…none of ’em. Bill Hader…seriously. He’d be perfect. Oh, that’s right, sorry…guys are out. Has to be a woman. Check.

At the 31st European Film Awards in Seville, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War has won four top awards — Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress (Joanna Kulig, who has been on my Gold Derby Best Actress slate for several weeks).

Lukas Dhont‘s Girl, another HE favorite, won the European Discovery Prize. Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name, which didn’t open in Europe commercially until last January, won the People’s Choice award.

I’m aware that some regard Kevin Connolly‘s Gotti as one of the 2018’s worst, but I’m not so sure. I finally saw it last weekend and my general impression was “okay, this could be better…all right, a lot better but at least it’s not painful to sit through.” Put another way: semi-dismissable but short of atrocious.

My most painful viewing experience of 2018 was Avengers: Infinity War, which I endured sometime around 4.23.18. It’s obviously lazy to re-post a review, but I don’t feel the fire today:

Less than ten minutes into Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Avengers: Infinity War (Disney, 4.27), I felt as if Josh Brolin‘s Thanos had leapt out of the screen and was sitting on my chest and blowing his stinking breath into my face. I also felt like a little kitten about to be given a bath in the kitchen sink. “Mew, mew…I don’t want to endure this…nooooo!”

But I had to because I wanted to experience the latest big Marvel flick, and I was seriously excited about…well, who knew but the death of Robert Downey, Jr.‘s Tony Stark had been rumored, and I wanted to at least celebrate this. Please. I was down with Iron Man a decade ago, but then Downey became the Reigning Marvel Paycheck Whore and for that he must pay.

I promised yesterday that I wouldn’t spoil any deaths in this film, but can I at least say that (a) the wrong guys die, (b) not enough guys die, and (c) you can’t trust a Marvel film to deliver death with any finality because Kevin Feige doesn’t respect death any more than comic-book creators respect it, which is not at all. Or woundings, for that matter. The MCU mostly regards death and serious physical injury as a tease, a plot toy, something to fiddle or fuck with until the apparently dead character comes back to life, etc.

President George Bush deserved the shoe and more for igniting the greatest foreign-policy blunder in U.S. history and creating ISIS in the bargain. But I have to admit that his seemingly half-amused expression during the shoe-throwing, which indicated a certain “bring it, I can duck it” attitude, is only thing he did that I found…well, half-appealing.

The most recent CNN/SSRS poll says former vice-president Joe Biden (reliable comfort factor, gaffe-y, neck wattle) is still way in front of other prospective Democratic presidential contenders. Now at 30%, Biden is 16 points ahead of Bernie Sanders, who ran nobly and bravely in ’16 but won’t be happening in 2020…he didn’t do well with POCs in ’16 and nobody wants a president who’ll turn 80 in his first year in office. That leaves the surging Congressperson Beto O’Rourke (9%), significantly ahead of Sens. Cory Booker (5%) and Kamala Harris (4%) and way ahead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (3%).

Dominic Cummings, the chief instigator and architect of the 2016 Brexit initiative, probably did more to negatively affect the English economy (partly by tapping into corresponding attitudes about immigration) than any other British subject in the 21st Century.

The only person I can think of who ignited a similar economic calamity was the late Howard Jarvis, whose 1978 campaign for Proposition 13, an anti-tax initiative, adversely affected the California economy for years to come.

The slightly curious thing is that Cummings’ facial features are arguably more appealing or, you know, conventionally agreeable than those of the otter-faced Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Cummings in Brexit.

A co-production between HBO and UK’s Channel 4, Brexit will debut on HBO on 1.19.

Hollywood Elsewhere has almost no issues with the winners of the 2018 Boston Online Film Critics Association film awards, and in fact applauds the top two decisions — the Best Picture prize going to Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here, and the Best Director award to Ramsay. Ditto the Best Actor and Best Actress trophies going to First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke and Hereditary‘s Toni Collette.

BOFCA’s Best Foreign Language Film prize went to Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma — I would’ve given it to Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War.

Best Picture: You Were Never Really Here

Best Director: Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here

Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed

Best Actress: Toni Collette, Hereditary

Best Supporting Actor: Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Screenplay: Paul Schrader, First Reformed

I can’t be bothered to type out the rest; it’s all available on BOFCA’s website.

A friend recently gave me a Samsung 4K Bluray player. It was an extra unit he had lying around so “here, enjoy…Merry Christmas.” I’ve so far watched 4K discs of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Revenant, but I’m not going to start buying 4K Blurays until they start issuing 4K remasters of large-format classic films (70mm, Ultra Panavision 70, VistaVision), which they’ll probably never do. However, I noticed today that the Samsung 4K player up-rezzes regular 1080p Blurays to 4K resolution. This afternoon I was watching my Bluray of Robert Harris‘ Spartacus restoration, and it looked significantly sharper and more refined on the Samsung 4K than it does on my regular Oppo Bluray player, which is five or six years old. Plus the Samsung generates much louder sound.

Jett had some professional-grade photos done last weekend at the Long Island City studio of a friend, Ted Ou-Yang. Ted is also a Universal Life Church pastor or minister or whatever the correct term is; he married Jett and Cait on 9.22.17. Ted is clearly a pro — he used just the right amount of light and shading in this shot, plus the high-detail threading in Jett’s gray sweater is fairly amazing.

A hot-shot with Believe Digital as well as a talent manager, Jett turned 30 seven months ago.