Last night I caught a special little screening of Amazing Grace, the nearly 47-year-old Aretha Franklin gospel concert doc, at the Park Avenue screening room. It was hosted by producer-savior Alan Elliott and director Spike Lee, a huge fan of the doc who’s trying to generate interest in hopes of landing a nomination for a possible Best Feature Documentary Oscar.

Amazing Grace has qualified itself with two recent theatrical bookings, one in Los Angeles and another at Manhattan’s Film Forum. The latter booking is totally sold out so I’m glad I was able to attend.

Filmed over two nights (Thursday, 1.13.72 and Friday, 1.14.72) inside L.A.’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church (So. Broadway near 87th Place), Amazing Grace became an unfinished calamity when it became clear that director Sydney Pollack and his crew had captured 20 hours of footage without shooting clapper boards at the start of each take, which in the analog era made the footage impossible to synch in post.

Amazing Grace producer Alan Elliott, director Spike Lee following Thursday’s Park Ave. screening room showing.

How Pollack, who’d been directing features for six or seven years at the time, could have failed to realize that clapper-boarding was essential is one of the all–time great Hollywood mysteries. Maybe he felt it was more important to be unobtrusive — maybe he felt intimidated by the spiritual vapors and didn’t want to get in the way.

Elliott is the music-industry guy who eight or nine years ago finally synched the footage with digital technology. And yet despite this resurrection Franklin, who died from pancreatic cancer last August at age 76, was curiously opposed to letting the film be commercially released. Or even screened at film festivals. She legally prevented Telluride Film Festival showings in both 2015 and ’16.

After Franklin died her estate agreed to let the film be shown. Neon will distribute sometime in early ’19.

Amazing Grace is just as spirit-lifting as the early-birds have been saying. Classic rhythmic bass-throbby gospel, churning and turning and cranking it up…”Oh, my…oh, yeah! Oh, my…oh, yeah!” (That might have been my own private chorus.) I’ve been listening to Franklin’s singing all my life, but to watch her improvise and embroider and work through a song top to bottom, little beads of sweat covering her face and neck, her concentration fierce and unwavering — pure flight, pure emotion, pure reach-for-the-skies.

Franklin is supported by top-tier pros…maximum energy, discipline, coordination. The barrel-chested Rev. James Cleveland (who died at age 59 in 1991) at the piano. The Southern California Community Choir, led by Alexander Hamilton. And Franklin’s superb backup band — guitarist Cornell Dupree, bassist Chuck Rainey, drummer Bernard Purdie, organist Ken Lupper, conga player Pancho Morales — is as good as it gets. They were a kind of Wrecking Crew-plus; Elliott said last night they were the session guys for the 1962 recording of the Four Seasons’ “Sherry.”

The bass-heavy soundtrack sounded analog-y. You could almost hear the tape hiss. It did wonderful things to my rib cage.

Oh, and there are two or three shots of Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts clapping along from behind the back row. Exile on Main Street had been recorded at the time, but was yet to be released. Sticky Fingers had been in circulation for eight or nine months.

Amazing Grace should obviously, definitely be Oscar-nominated. With a 47-years-in-the-making narrative and arriving only four months after Franklin’s death, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt about this.

The IMDB’s claim of a 120-minute running time is incorrect; reviews have reported 87 to 90 minutes. I’m siding with the reviewers.

Elliott and Lee did a q & a after the screening. I captured about ten minutes’ worth on the iPhone.

When the subject of Oscar attention came up, Spike sounded a little bit ambivalent. He mentioned his heartbreak about Driving Miss Daisy having won the Best Picture Oscar over Do The Right Thing, “like it happened yesterday.”

After the q & a ended I asked Spike if he’s seen Green Book, which some have incorrectly said is similar to Driving Miss Daisy. He said he hadn’t.

I’ve said this 50 times, and here comes the 51st. There is, thank goodness, a genre called elevated horror (Hereditary, The Babadook, The Witch, etc.). There is also, sorry to acknowledge, low-rent, shrieky, electric-shock, horseburgers-with-onions horror. The latter, of course, is at least ten times more popular than the former. This is the country and the culture that we live in.

Michael Cohen to George Stephanopoulos: “He knows the truth, I know the truth, others know the truth, and here is the truth: The people of the United States of America, people of the world, don’t believe what he is saying. The man doesn’t tell the truth. And it is sad that I should take responsibility for his dirty deeds. I’m done with the lying…I’m done being loyal to President Trump.”

Here’s the transcript.

I almost feel as if I’ve seen this already, but the trailer for The Mustang is well judged. Obviously a healing-and-therapy movie, but intriguing. The director is Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, whom I don’t know. I’m sensing the right kind of vibes. Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruce Dern, Connie Britton, etc. Slated for Sundance, opening in March.

As seriously moved, enthralled or charmed as I am by Green Book, Roma, Vice, First Reformed, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Happy as Lazzaro, Capernaum, The Mule, Black Panther, First Man and A Star Is Born, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War sits at the top of the heap. (Setting aside the matter of the ending, which I’ve never let bother me.)

No other 2018 film rang my bell quite as loudly or distinctly. I don’t care what category it’s in — no other film is as concise and self-aware and visually glistening and fatalistic as Cold War. It’s pure silvery pleasure, perfectly distilled, the highest iteration of arthouse porn I ran into all year. And it offers the greatest female performance of the year, courtesy of Joanna Kulig.

It’s not often that identity politics & representation attitudes are spelled out as clearly as they were a couple of days ago on Facebook. [12.14 update: The author has asked me to remove a screen capture of same, claiming that it violates his privacy.] The curious thing is that the author puts down Black Panther in the course of defending it. It doesn’t need real “defending” — I’ve never assailed the craft levels (has anyone?). And I’ve said over and over that Black Panther is (a) an historical benchmark film that serves as a kind of grand totem for the social changes of 2018, (b) it’s the most socially grounded Marvel superhero flick ever made, and (c) the final hour really works.

The author also fails to acknowledge the obvious about Crazy Rich Asians, which is that it literally smothers the viewer in wealth-and-real-estate porn, and that if you have the ability to see through the bullshit attitudes and assumptions that these desperately insecure super-wealthy people are coasting on…if you allow yourself to focus on who these awful people really are deep down, Crazy Rich Asians will make you physically sick.

It’s awfully damn hard to make a film that even half-works. It’s probably just as hard to make something that stinks. Everyone is always trying to like hell to make a film that will do them and their parents proud. Even makers of dumbshit comedies and genre spoofs. So what does it take to make something that’s actually, seriously good? Serious talent or the ability to channel divine inspiration…whichever is available. And the ability of above-the-line creatives to keep sweaty, thick-fingered, Sam Spiegel-ish producer types as far away as possible from the creative levers.

Hardnose46: She looked like the ragged end of nowhere.

Aloof Urbanite: I’m beginning to think I’m underpaid.

Hardnose39: Got a match?
Straight-shooter: Don’t you ever have any?
Hardnose39: No — don’t believe in laying in a supply of anything.
[she hands him a match]
Hardnose39: Thanks.
Straight-shooter: Matches, marbles, money or women, huh?
Hardnose39: That’s right.
Straight-shooter: No looking ahead, no tomorrows, just today.
Hardnose39: That’s right.

From Peter Bradshaw‘s 9.12.18 Guardian review of James Marsh‘s King of Thieves: “The Hatton Garden safety deposit robbery of 2015, hilariously carried out by a bunch of geriatric criminals who tunnelled through a concrete wall, has been turned into an excruciating tongue-in-cheek film version with bus-pass movie icons in the leading roles.

“Screenwriter Joe Penhall and director James Marsh [have delivered] what can only be described as their less-than-finest work.”

The fact that the real-life geezer gang “fell prey to dirty tricks and backstabbing” suggests King of Thieves could have been a variation on Jules Dassin‘s Rififi (’55).

Almost a quarter of Rififi — 28 minutes, give or take — is consumed by the silent, word-less. music-free jewel robbery sequence. Let’s imagine that Marsh decided to throw caution to the wind and do the same thing with King of Thieves — maintain an absolute focus on the technical aspects of the job sans dialogue or diversion of any kind. The presumption is that ADD audiences would tune out and switch the channel, but would they necessarily do that?

There are two ways to process the absence of First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke among the SAG Best Actor nominees, which were announced yesterday — one likely, another less likely.

The less likely explanation is that the SAG-AFTRA membership somehow didn’t get the memo about Hawke being an undismissible contender, particularly after recently winning Best Actor trophies from the Gothams, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the San Diego Film Critics Society.

The more likely explanation is that the tastes and preferences of SAG-AFTRA members have devolved to the level of the People’s Choice Awards, and they just don’t get it. To paraphrase Hal Holbrook‘s Deep Throat, “The truth is that the typical SAG-AFTRA member these days isn’t all that hip and certainly not very sophisticated, and things just got out of hand.”

The fact that they nominated BlacKkKlansman‘s John David Washington, who is reasonably good as Det. Ron Stallworth but whose performance fell short of of blowing critics or audiences away, tells us this was almost certainly an identity politics vote. I liked Washington’s vibe in Spike Lee’s film and thought he pretty much held his end up, but c’mon.

Hawke was also blown off by the HFPA/Golden Globes, but you have to remember he only picked up serious heat a short while ago. Even the Gold Derby gang, my own finger-to-the-wind, sheep-herd group, was snubbing Hawke until the NYFCC vote. It was only five days ago when I wrote that the Gold Derby-ites “finally took the plunge when the Gothams and the NYFCC insisted that Hawke has heat.” ESPN’s Adnan Virk and I are the only award-season spitballers who were with Hawke from the get-go.

This afternoon I went back to the Smilow Cancer Hospital in New Haven to have my neck stitches removed. The problem, as previously noted, is that I had a basal-cell cancer tumor on an area behind my left ear, but there was a slight chance that I might have developed a bit of squamous-cell cancer, which is a little trickier than basal-cell, and that some of this, God forbid, might have infected my lymph nodes. So they took lymph node samples during the 12.4 surgery. If they’d found any issues I would have had to sit for radiation therapy.

Except the test came back negative all around. No squamous cell carcinoma, no lymph node problems, no radiation therapy…none of it. Plus they removed those awful drainage tubes today so I can actually walk around like a free man again.

Miserable Wanderer is a new feature of HE Plus — a travel column based upon real roaming-around adventures that have happened in my life, recently or years or decades ago:

One of the most difficult maneuvers I’ve ever faced in my life was being on a scooter in the world-famous Arc de Triomphe roundabout and moving at a pretty good clip while surrounded on all sides by antsy cars, and trying to figure a way into the outer lane so I could eventually escape this merry-go-round.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]