In a recent post about leading Best Actor contenders, I mentioned Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in Adam McKay‘s Vice. My only remark was that “you don’t get nominated for putting on weight and wearing great make up.” A fellow journalist and award-season handicapper replied, “Since WHEN? Don’t bet against him.” HE to handicapper: I only meant that appearance and make-up are icing on the cake, and that a noteworthy performance has to come from the innards of an actor or it be not at all.”

Posted around noon by Vanity Fair‘s Julie Miller.

So far Matthew Weiner‘s The Romanoffs (Amazon Prime, 10.12) is getting pasted. The subhead of Ben Travers’ Indiewire review calls it “predictable and misguided,” and that the first two feature-length episodes “are so bad it’s almost unbelievable.” Collider‘s Allison Keene says that Weiner’s anthology series “ultimately makes a case for the Bolsheviks.” Variety‘s Caroline Framke tiptoes around what she basically thinks, which is that it’s not good enough.

I could smell trouble last July. As the series centers on separate stories about people who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family,” it seemed to be about characters “who (a) believe themselves to be hot shit in some primal, genetic way and (b) need the Russian royal blood association to augment a frail sense of self-worth.”

Remember laserdisc rot? Well, over the last year or two I’ve been noticing cases of Bluray rot. A scene will freeze and un-freeze and back again, etc. Removing the disc from the tray and wiping it down helps somewhat, but the syndrome usually returns. I don’t know why I thought Blurays would be somehow immune from the old laser rot syndrome, but I was wrong. It’s a little dispiriting to consider that all of my entire physical media library (yes, I know — an obsolete concept) will disintegrate sooner or later. Am I happy with high-def streaming? Sure, but I used to have this idea that Blurays deliver a better, denser image.

Sasha Stone‘s Oscar Season Rule #1 states that serious Best Picture contenders have to launch at Venice, Telluride and/or Toronto and then open in October or November, but never December.

[Correction: Sasha’s rule has only applied since the Academy pushed their date back one month, which they did in 2003. Before that late December was when films were released and considered for Best Picture. Now it all happens so fast that a December release can’t build the momentum it needs to win.]

But that sure wasn’t the case in 1979 when Kramer vs. Kramer opened on December 19th and wound up winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman) and Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep).

I’m just popping this in as a reminder of how good Hoffman was in his prime. He’s living in an apparent state of seclusion since the #MeToo Robespierres put his name on their Black List after he was nailed for being a little too feely or exploitively gropey-grope back in the ’80s, and I know he’s long had a general rep for being too self-possessed and caught up in his own mythology, but he was worth his weight in gold during the late ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

What was Hoffman’s last really good film? Meet The Fockers, right? And before that Wag The Dog. He shouldn’t have done Family Business or Hook. His last really, really big movie/performance was Rain Man, and that was 30-ass years ago.

It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.

Tamara Jenkins‘ Private Life (Netflix, 10.5) is a New York drama about a 40ish couple (Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn) having fertility problems, and turning to a young niece (Kayli Carter) to step in as a surrogate mom. It’s a decent enough film — alternately intriguing, flinty, sad, trying, amusing, probing — but it doesn’t know how to wrap things up.

Honestly? I saw it nine months ago and I can’t quite remember how it ends. I recall that Carter spoiler spoiler spoiler but I forget why. Something to do with forgetting to take care of herself, something that goes wrong due to immaturity or carelessness. Giamatti and Hahn grim up and spoiler spoiler spoiler or they’re going to keep trying….something like that. I can’t recall.

HE movie-watching rule #17: If you can’t remember how a film ends, it’s the film’s fault — not yours. I think I became so disengaged and so impatient for something to happen that I regarded as fulfilling or satisfying that I just tuned out after a while. I respected it but not much more.

A friend agrees completely. “My recollection is that Giammati and Hahn are just going to keep going after the film ends…they’re going to keep trying to conceive. Which is exhausting to even think about. A good film in certain ways, but sorry, it’s no The Savages.”

HE to readership: Name a film that you admire or respect but you can’t quite recall how it ends. You may have a vague recollection of the finale but not a precise one. Obviously thats’ a significant flaw on the film’s part, but you still think it’s pretty good.

Please God…this looks like possible proof that Judge Brett Kavanaugh lied through his teeth to the Judiciary Committee when he testified that the first time he’d heard about Deborah Ramirez‘s accusation (i.e., that he’d allegedly stuck his dick in her face) was when he read that recent Ronan Farrow-and-Jane Mayer piece in The New Yorker.

Can you imagine being on a friendly “yo, bruh” basis with any of these jerkoffs (women excepted)? The third-from-the-left guy…look at him!

Mark my words — Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story is going to be equally fascinating and horrible. I actually admire Spielberg having the balls to try and make this work. At least he’ll be stretching. On a certain level you have to respect that.

“The most revealing element of [last] Thursday’s hearing was not Judge Kavanaugh’s response to sexual assault allegations — his denial was already well known — but rather his manner of delivery.

“It is perhaps unfair to expect Judge Kavanaugh, facing serious allegations that he asserts have slandered and disgraced him, to slow-play his response. But there is no civil right to serve on the Supreme Court. The question is not what is fair to Judge Kavanaugh but rather what is constitutionally healthiest for the republic. Judicial confirmation hearings are auditions for serving as a judge. Judge Kavanaugh showed himself to be up to fighting when attacked, but less so to judging dispassionately.

“Judge Kavanaugh had a choice between accelerating the combat — clearly President Trump’s method — and declining to join while still defending his name. The latter course would have accomplished dual goals: refuting the accusations while acting like an occupant of the office to which he aspires.

“Perhaps the F.B.I. will uncover useful evidence about what happened 36 years ago. But to advise and consent to his nomination, the issue the Senate must resolve is not merely how Brett Kavanaugh behaved in 1982. It is how Judge Kavanaugh comported himself in 2018, on television. Whatever else we can say, he did not act like a justice of the highest court in the land.” –from “Judge Kavanaugh Is One Angry Man,” a 10.1 N.Y. Times opinion piece by Greg Weiner.

Brett Kavanaugh was allowed to be angry. Dr. Ford wasn’t. Women grow up hearing that being angry makes us unattractive. Well, today, I’m angry – and I own it. I plan to use that anger to take back the House, take back the Senate, & put Democrats in charge. Are you with me? pic.twitter.com/c9DebKTQEV

— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) September 30, 2018

Will Hollywood Elsewhere attend the Hugh Jackman celebration in Santa Barbara on 11.19.18? I’d like to but we’ll see. The star of Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner (Columbia, 11.6) will be the recipient of the 13th annual annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, which will be held as usual at the Ritz Carlton Bacara.

Some of us are aware of the moralistic undertow in Jackman’s performance as Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart, and the fact that The Front Runner is a highly unusual film for its decision to present a canny, opportunistic infidel as a symbol of ethical decency — a politician with the usual egoistic flaws who nonetheless believes in governmental ideas and visions while keeping libidinal diversions in a box off to the side.

It also portrays the Miami Herald reporters and editors who made hay out of Hart’s mostly meaningless affair with campaign volunteer Donna Rice as…well, fellows who weren’t exactly advancing the cause of first-rate journalism.

It’s a movie that says “yeah, Gary cheated on his wife and so what? Because the real embarassment and the real mud came from what those journalistic bottom-feeders did to Hart and American political culture in the bargain.”

Out of 22 Gold Derby spitballers, why am I the only one who’s listed Jackman’s performance as one of the five most nominatable? I don’t know, but I can tell you for sure that most of the Gold Derby-ites are just following the pack mentality. On top of which a good portion of them probably haven’t seen The Front Runner…who knows?

Alexis Bloom‘s Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes is a frightshow. It leaves you with a shudder and a realization that Ailes, drooling fiend that he may well have been, really was a Luciferian visionary and a dark genius who turned Red America into a Nation of Crazy.

He was the reigning Machiavellian author of big-lie rightwing media for 20 years, the Pied Piper of Rural Dumbshit-ism, the pugnacious fat man who primed the country for the arrival of Donald Trump…a hustler who dipped his paintbrush into an apothecary jar of his own fears and paranoia (and perhaps some festering resentment toward his mother for infecting him with hemophilia as a young child) and embraced anger and aggression as primal fuel and sticking it to the liberal media machine as his guiding mission.

How engrossing is Divide and Conquer? Very. How detailed, probing and well-organized? Same. How depressing is it? Oddly, it’s strangely engrossing because Ailes was a real surface-to-air missile and a deranged motherfucker whose generator was always humming. He was never a dull man, and neither is this documentary. How much does it tell you that you didn’t know? Not that much but I didn’t care. What a demonic and diseased reptile Ailes was…a cookie filled with arsenic.

This photo could’ve been taken in Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai, Bangkok, Mumbai, Abu Dhabi, Manila, Seoul or Saigon. Clusters of titanic, impersonal super-structures have defined the look of expanding cities everywhere, but especially in Asia and the Middle East. If you ask me they deliver a gloomy, soul-less vibe.

In fact this photo was snapped in NYC — from a building on 10th Avenue and 41st Street, looking south. Much of the western region of Manhattan in the 30s and 40s from 9th Avenue to the Hudson looks like this. Good for “growth” and taxes, but it feels depressing and impersonal.