Vicky Jewson‘s Close looks and feels like a reasonably servicable bodyguard-protects-rich-client action flick. “Loosely inspired” by the actual exploits of Jacquie Davis, one of the very few women to excel in the male-dominated bodyguard profession. Pic began principal photography in August 2017. Netflix will debut Close on Friday, 1.18.

It’s time to finally stop saying “two thousand” when speaking of any 21st Century calendar year, and start saying “twenty.” We are now in the year twenty-nineteen, and not two-thousand nineteen. Year after year people (including news anchors for CNN and MSNBC) have stubbornly insisted upon “two thousand” this and that. I’m asking everyone to please stop it. For the next 80 years we’re going to be in the twenties, not the two-thousands.

The pronunciation of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey screwed things up for God knows how many millions. I realize that the first year of the 21st Century had to be pronounced two-thousand, and of course the following year had to follow the Kubrick. (Nobody in that 1968 classic ever said “two-thousand one,” by the way.) But for too many years people have been sticking to that absurd verbal tic, and after 20 years of living in the 21st Century I really think it’s time to stop it once and for all.

We’ve now lived through two full decades in which the year has begun with the number 2. For a century before 12.31.99, the year began with nineteen-something. When John F. Kennedy was elected president no English-speaker ever said the year was “one-thousand nine sixty” — they said “nineteen sixty.” Years are always pronounced as a pair of two-digit numbers. The Declaration of Independence was signed in seventeen seventy-six — not one thousand seven seventy-six. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in eighteen sixty-five, not one thousand eight sixty five.

You don’t know what the term “aural torture” really means until you’ve been in a room with someone who’s slurping soup or eating yogurt and granola out of a glazed clay bowl, or who’s stirring a powdered drink in a glass.

I’m talking about a person who won’t stop stirring the soup over and over and rythmically at that…clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink. Or who feels the need to keep stirring and overturning the yogurt-granola mash…eat, savor, swallow and then clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink. Or someone who’s poured a packet of Emergen-C into a glass of water and then won’t stop stirring it…clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink.

I’m telling you that after listening to these clink-clinks for the 17th or 18th time and realizing that you’re going to be listening to them for the remainder of your life on this planet…this is when the insanity virus will begin to seep into your system, and after this point it will never leave you alone.

“Five years ago, All Is Lost premiered at Cannes to deserved acclaim. But when it opened later that fall, the film was a noteworthy commercial disappointment, and the awards magic never happened for Robert Redford. I think I understood why. All Is Lost was ingeniously made, and a true experience, yet the stark fact is that it was slow. Arctic, as effective as it is, may face a similar challenge (at least in the U.S.), precisely because of the rough-hewn, trudging-through-the-tundra, one-step-at-a-time honesty with which Joe Penna works. [It’s] the anti-Cast Away. Yet that’s what’s good and, finally, moving about it. It lets survival look like the raw experience it is.” — from Owen Gleiberman‘s Cannes Film Festival review, posted on 5.10.18.

…the heavier the anvil chained to the Academy’s ankle becomes.

Just remember that if the host that Donna Gigliotti, Dawn Hudson and John Bailey finally hire has the slightest uh-oh hiccup in his/her Twitter feed…if he/she shared some kind of casually thoughtless remark while bombed at a party or during a hung-over breakfast in 2005…if there’s anything in his/her history that the p.c. commissars can seize upon and run with, this person will become instant social-media mincemeat and then they will learn first-hand what truly profound suffering can feel like. **

Yesterday The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg posted a “Jesus, are they gonna choose somebody or what?” article.

Didn’t Feinberg once suggest Bill Hader? He’d be perfect. Now Feinberg is suggesting John Legend and wife Chrissy Teigen as co-hosts. Okay. I guess.

There is only one totally bulletproof ratings magnet who could handle the task with aplomb. I’m speaking of a guy who can be funny and urbane but has the common touch, and who writes like a scholar and is in business with Netflix and has excellent across-the-board relations with talent, and who most recently was the author of a Best Films of 2018 list that became the talk of the town. Yes, that’s right — Barack Obama. I’m perfectly serious. How could he lose if he took the gig? How could he not win?

I love this paragraph: “What is known is what the Academy and ABC, which broadcasts the Oscars, do not want. They do not want someone who is socially divisive (especially after the Kevin Hart debacle), having concluded that politically-outspoken hosts have contributed to the show’s ratings declines in recent years; and they do not want someone who primarily appeals to older viewers, who are likely to watch the show regardless of who hosts.”

What the hell does “socially divisive” mean? The primary definition, I presume, is “someone with a Twitter past,” but does it also mean someone who has feelings about the decline and corrosion of this once-proud nation due to the Cheetoh factor? About how streaming is now the moat popular way to watch films these days, and how megaplexes have devolved into serving almost nothing but Roman colosseum-type fare?

What the hell does socially undivisive mean? A silly billy who mainly likes to smile a lot and has no strong thoughts or feelings about anything? Emily Blunt or someone in that vein?

Noteworthy Feinberg quote #2: “Further complicating matters is the Hart factor. Anyone who has been approached since Hart’s withdrawal knows — and knows that everyone else will know — that he or she was a backup option, a second choice. Moreover, people who might consider hosting in other years, such as Dwayne Johnson, are probably reluctant to accept this year, not wanting to look like they are benefiting from the misfortunes of a friend.”

I know some people have issues with Netflix, but Hollywood Elsewhere is genuinely grateful for their constant delivery all kinds of complex feature-length movies for adults.

Okay, so their selective investment in four-walled theatrical bookings for certain high-end films prior to streaming isn’t what it could be in the eyes of theatrical purists. Do I wish Netflix was more like Amazon in this regard? Yes. A friend said the other day that Netflix has conveyed to the industry that they don’t “need” the traditional give-and-take relationship that has existed between films and paying, popcorn-munching audiences for the last century or so, and that there’s something about the Netflix label that seems a little inorganic or over-digitized in this respect.

I’m not indifferent to these concerns, and yet I still say “thank God that a Daddy Warbucks entity like Netflix is investing, developing and streaming the kind of films and occasional longforms that I want to see” — Roma, Carey Mulligan‘s Collateral, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, Triple Frontier, The Irishman, etc. Yes, I know that serious streaming competition from Disney, Apple and others is just around the corner, and no one knows, of course, how this will shake out in five or ten and what kind of tremors or upheavals will result, etc.

Earlier today I spoke to an old friend about all of this, and I have to admit that I laughed when he drew a vague analogy between what seems to happen to newish Netflix features and what happened to the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t agree with the analogy because the above-mentioned upsides kind of balance everything out (or so it seems to me), but I guffawed all the same.

I would be down with two more Avatar films — a trilogy — but the idea of sitting through four upcoming Avatar films turns me right off.

The HFPA glamwhores will most likely give Lady Gaga two Golden Globe awards this Sunday — the Best Actress (Drama) award for her Star Is Born performance plus a Best Original Song award for “Shallow.” I know this, you know this, Paul Sheehan knows this, etc. But let’s be honest for a brief moment. All Lady Gaga did in A Star Is Born was give a slightly better-than-decent performance — she didn’t re-invent the acting wheel or blow the acting gates open, but she did a good job for a first-timer. But over the last couple of months the fact that she was somewhat better than pretty good has somehow morphed or transferred into a consensus that she had delivered a world-class, knock-your-socks-off performance.

Chuck Schumer says he asked Trump to give "one good reason" for continuing the government shutdown as while they debated their differences on homeland security. "He could not give a good answer." Via CBS. pic.twitter.com/FZO27K5R6T

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 2, 2019

I’ve said many times on this site over the last 14 years that there’s no organized community that’s more foul or diseased or deserving of being eaten by lions than rightwing Christians, and so any time I read anything that more or less agrees with this basic view, I tend to re-post it.

“I have attended dozens of Christian nationalist conferences and events over the past two years. And while I have heard plenty of comments casting doubt on the more questionable aspects of Donald Trump’s character, the gist of the proceedings almost always comes down to the belief that he is a miracle sent straight from heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord.

“I have also learned that resistance to Mr. Trump is tantamount to resistance to God.

“This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

“They want it all. And in Mr. Trump, they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership.” — from “Why Trump Reigns as King Cyrus,” a 12.31 N.Y. Times piece by Katherine Stewart.

Why would any self-respecting 40-plus male have the slightest interest in watching Matt Walsh, of all people, try to find romantic salvation with some poor woman in Europe? Look at him and the guy he’s playing — not my idea of handsome or even moderately appealing, red-haired, pale complexion, freckle monster, seriously balding, emotionally unstable (proposing on his knees to a 26 year old?), nobody you’d want to hang out with and certainly no one I could even remotely identify with.

I wouldn’t watch Under The Eiffel Tower (The Orchard, 2.8) on a bet.

You can be aloof or snide and dismiss the views of regional film critics. Who, be honest, will sometimes choose oddball award winners for eccentric outlier reasons, or to otherwise get themselves some big-city attention.

But you can’t dismiss a fact that Variety‘s Kris Tapley reported earlier today, which is that Ethan Hawke‘s performance in First Reformed has won Best Actor trophies from no less than 22 regional critics groups. Not to mention having already won Best Actor awards from the Gothams, LAFCA and NYFCC.

I’m starting to ask myself why Hawke isn’t the most likely Best Actor Oscar winner at this stage. Well, why isn’t he? Are you going to sit there and tell me with a straight face that Bradley Cooper‘s drawlin’, laid-back, booze-sippin’ Kris Kirstofferson impersonation was more emotionally affecting or galvanizing than Hawke’s spiritually bothered, booze-sipping small-town minister?

Tapley also reports that Vice‘s Christian Bale has won four regional Best Actor award, and Cooper and Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Rami Malek have won three each.