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I’m aware of the post-PGA Green Book surge, and I agree that it’s probably a stronger preferential ballot contender than Roma. But I still think Roma will win the Best Picture Oscar, and for four reasons.

One, it’s a masterful smarthouse memory poem — a film that 5, 10 or 20 years from now the Academy can look back upon with serious pride. Two, a Roma win would spell out a huge fuck-you to the hateful, bottom-of-the-barrel opportunism of Donald Trump. Three, Alfonso Cuaron is very well-liked by everyone. And four, those perfect jet planes flying overhead, not to mention those enormously metaphorical dog loads in the driveway.

Sasha Stone says: “I disagree with Zack Sharf‘s assessment. I think Roma creeps up the ballot out of guilt and obligation and appreciation for craft, even if people don’t love it. I think Roma‘s best chance of winning is actually on a preferential ballot, and yet the Best Picture race remains wide open at this point. The only movies that have won anything so far are Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book and Black Panther, and none of them have Oscar nominations for Best Director. It’s a really crazy and unpredictable year.”

All this said, if Green Book wins the Best Picture Oscar this would surely be understood as an even bigger fuck-you to the p.c. wokester commentariat. I can’t think of a more delicious scenario than this. My pulse accelerates at the thought.

Torrential rains interfered with the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier today. In the late morning the 101 freeway was temporarily closed due to flooding. There were running rapids, vigorous streams, street ponds and even street lakes everywhere. I loved buzzing around inside my 2018 Volkswagen Beetle rental — such a smooth-running, well-constructed car, and with a great sound system.

Umbrellas were all but impossible to find. I was told “sorry, bruh” at three…make that four stores. I finally snagged one at the fifth.

Honored Riviera Award recipient Viggo Mortensen tried to drive up, but got stuck in Camarillo. Soon after he and travel-mate Ed Harris (who presented Mortensen’s award at the end of this afternoon’s ceremony) were heroically and adventurously flown to Santa Barbara in a private plane. The Riviera show, moderated by Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, was only delayed an hour.

Glenn Close, recipient of the SBIFF’s Maltin Modern Master Award, cancelled her 8 pm Arlington theatre show altogether — it will now happen tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) at 3 pm. Hmmm. If Mortensen could make it for a (delayed) 3 pm ceremony, why couldn’t Close get here in time for a show that would have started five hours later? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

The rain prevented four out of seven invited screenwriters (Green Book‘s Brian Currie, If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Barry Jenkins, The Favourite‘s Tony McNamara, Generation Wealth‘s Lauren Greenfield) from attending the annual Writers Panel at the Lobero. Moderator Anne Thompson had to make do with First Reformed‘s Paul Schrader, BlacKkKlansman‘s Kevin Willmott and A Star Is Born‘s Will Fetters.

I didn’t make it to the Producer’s Panel, but I gather it was also under-attended.

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The 2019 Sundance Film Festival “Nobody Gives A Shit” Awards, announced this evening:

U.S. Dramatic:

Grand Jury Prize — Clemency, director: Chinonye Chukwu
Directing — The Last Black Man in San Francisco, director: Joe Talbot
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award — Share, screenwriter: Pippa Bianco
Special Jury Award for Vision and Craft — Honey Boy, director: Alma Har’el
Special Jury Award for Acting — Rhianne Barreto in Share
Special Jury Award for Creative Collaboration — The Last Black Man in San Francisco, director: Joe Talbot

U.S. Documentary:

Grand Jury Prize — One Child Nation,” director: Nanfu Wang
Directing — American Factory, directors: Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency — Always in Season, director: Jacqueline Olive
Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker — Jawline, directed by Liza Mandelup
Special Jury Award for Editing — Apollo 11, director: Todd Douglas Miller
Special Jury Award for Cinematography — Luke Lorentzen for Midnight Family

Brent Lang‘s just-reported Variety story says that IFC Films has paid roughly $2 million for Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets, an Iraq War-related whistleblower drama that I caught a few days ago at Sundance ’19.

There’s a whopping irony in the contrast between IFC’s modest buy and the $14 million paid by Amazon for Scott Z. Burns‘ The Report, which is also a fact-based whistleblower drama about exposing shifty, lying behavior on the part of the Bush-Cheney administration in the selling and prosecution of the Iraq War.

The Report is about Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) investigating, authoring and releasing a massive report on CIA torture.

Official Secrets is about real-life translator and British intelligence employee Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) revealing a U.S. plan to bug United Nations “swing”countries in order to pressure them into voting in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which of course was founded upon a fiction that Saddam Hussein‘s Iraqi government was in possession of WMDs and represented a terrorist threat.

The difference is that while The Report is plodding, sanctimonious and a chore to sit through, Official Secrets is an ace-level piece about pressure, courage and hard political elbows — a grade-A, non-manipulative procedural that tells Gun’s story in brisk, straightforward fashion, and which recalls the efficient, brass-tack narratives of All The President’s Men or Michael Clayton.

Official Secrets is exactly the sort of fact-based government-and-politics drama that I adore, just as The Report is precisely the kind of self-righteous, moral-breast-beating drama that I can’t stand.

Everyone knows that Spike Lee suffered a devastating career episode when arguably his best film, the racially charged Do The Right Thing (’89), which had won Best Picture awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Chicago Film Critics, was denied a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

The ’89 Best Picture nominees were Driving Miss Daisy, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams and My Left Foot. It seemed like a horrendous oversight to many that Lee’s film, which delivered profound racial truths, was blown off. Adding insult to injury (at least in Lee’s mind) was the fact that Driving Miss Daisy, universally regarded as a white person’s comfort film about racism, won the Best Picture Oscar.

That win and that snub has seethed in Lee’s mind ever since. I listened to him talk about it just a few weeks ago in Manhattan. It’s like “it happened yesterday,” he said.

Many have said that Green Book is 2018’s Driving Miss Daisy. Many have argued that Peter Farrelly‘s film could have been made in the late ’80s. I happen to believe in my heart that Green Book is a somewhat nobler and more-highly-crafted film than Driving Miss Daisy, and that it exudes a classy and honorable current, and that it works as an anti-Trump metaphor.

But I understand why Lee and others believe it’s Driving Miss Daisy 2. And I understand why Lee has apparent feelings of animus toward this Universal release. Unfortunate, but that’s apparently the way it is.

This has happened to me exactly twice in my life, but I live in fear of it happening again. I work very, very hard on the column. Always scanning, looking for triggers, drilling down, rewriting…always on the hunt for the mistake, the sentence that needs to rewritten or eliminated, whatever needs attention. Sometimes I overdo it. Sometimes I drink too much coffee or lemonade-flavored Monster or fail to get enough sleep, and as a result I’ve twice fogged out behind the wheel, as if I’m there but not there. I’ll spot a momentary danger of some kind (reckless driving, guy ahead of me suddenly braking, red light) but for some fatigue-related reason I won’t respond fast enough, because I’ve fallen into a kind of dream. And all of a sudden…shit!…almost a fender-bender. 99.8% of the time I’m the sharpest driver in the world (especially on the rumbling scooter hog), but when sneaky fatigue creeps in…well, I’ve said it.

Right after this portion of last night’s Rami Malek interview, Scott Feinberg brought up “the elephant in the room” — director Bryan Singer. I described Malek’s reaction last night — empathy for Singer’s alleged victims, a terse and steely dismissal of the director himself. We all understand the campaign narrative — Singer may have directed 90% of the film but he’s currently radioactive, so his contributions are dismissable.

It’s significant but unsurprising that the Santa Barbara Film Festival video team decided to lop off the portion of the interview in which Singer was discussed.

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About ten days ago I spoke to a friend who’d seen Bart Freundlich‘s After The Wedding, which was about to open the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

I asked for a brief assessment, and he said, “It’s what they used to call a woman’s picture.”

When I mentioned this remark a couple of days later, a Sundance colleague bristled and shuddered. “That’s a very uncool term today,” he said. “Very perjorative, very demeaning.”

I agreed, of course, but with the understanding that his remark was valid mostly in militant p.c. circles. You probably can’t say “chick flick” either. No female journalist would dare to use either term unironically, but if a male journalist was dumb enough to do so, Film Twitter would skin him alive. This despite the fact that “woman’s film” has its own Wikipedia page as we speak.

It would be almost as bad as when Viggo Mortensen said the “n” word a couple of months ago.

But in reference to violent action flicks or anything directed by Michael Bay, we’re still allowed to say “high testosterone guy movie.” Nobody (least of all guys) will attack you for saying that. Mainly because guys aren’t in the middle of a cultural movement — their identities aren’t being progressively redefined.

Right?

Everyone liked Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody after it opened on 11.2.18, but nobody thought he’d be a serious Best Actor contender until he won two awards a short while ago — the Golden Globe award for Best Actor, Drama on 1.6.19, and then the SAG Award for Best Actor on 1.26.

Now there’s a better-than-even chance that Malek will beat out Vice‘s Christian Bale for the Best Actor Oscar.

Malek is being toasted tonight with the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s Outstanding Performer of the Year Award. Yesterday I wrote festival honcho Roger Durling (aka “Nick the Greek”) to ask when he decided to try and book Malek.

“When did you decide that he was festival-worthy?,” I asked. “Before or after the Globes?”

Before, Durling answered.

HE: “So you booked him because of the popularity of the film, and then you lucked out when his winning streak began at the Globes?”

Durling: “We were actually after him since September but his shooting schedule made it difficult to confirm.”

HE: “Since September? But Bohemian Rhapsody didn’t open until 11.2, and it didn’t even screen for industry and journalists until 10.6. Oh, I get it — you’re just a Queen freak, and you knew the local audience would show up in droves. It wasn’t an Oscar-centric call like with Glenn Close.”

Sorry for posting a late reaction to Tony Gilroy‘s Velvet Buzzsaw (Netflix, 2.1), an upscale foie gras horror film that I saw three or four days ago in Park City. My reaction is that I liked it well enough. At the very least I was mildly amused, mainly because it embraces an effete, arm’s-length approach to horror. Because elevated horror is right up Hollywood Elsewhere’s alley — “horror” as social metaphor in order to reflect some problematic aspect of present-day culture or whatever.

VB is a riff about greed among the phony-baloney denizens of the art world, and how a trove of spooky, recently-discovered paintings by a deceased madman are somehow able to kill their owners or, you know, anyone trying to profit off them in some way. As the Wiki synopsis says, it’s about “a supernatural force enacting revenge on those who have allowed their greed to get in the way of art.”

The only thing that kept me from loving Velvet Buzzsaw is that I don’t see what’s so awful about art dealers and critics behaving and talking like phonies, or trying to sell overpriced “art” to filthy rich suckers, or any other aspect of this game. If you’re dumb enough to pay through the nose for questionable art, that’s your fucking problem. I certainly have no issues with art-world hustlers trying to fleece your sorry ass.

So I didn’t mind Velvet Buzzsaw. I wasn’t knocked out or enthralled or turned on, but I liked it well enough. I especially liked Jake Gyllenhaal‘s bisexual art critic, Renee Russo‘s art dealer and John Malkovich‘s over-the-hill painter, but at the same time I couldn’t fathom why Gilroy cast Zawe Ashton, who falls under the dual headings of “who?” and “not arresting enough’, in a secondary role.

But I have to be even more honest and admit that nothing I have to say could match Glenn Kenny‘s 1.30 N.Y. Times review, which is so perfectly written I can barely stand it.

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I kinda like the “big N” Netflix logo. I tried to find a YouTube capturing when I first noticed it a few months ago….zip.

SOME PERSONAL NEWS: Starting today there's a new logo animation before our originals. It shows the spectrum of stories, languages, fans, & creators that make Netflix beautiful — now on a velvety background to better set the mood.

And before you ask: no, the sound isn’t changing pic.twitter.com/itwYXRe6ZF

— See What's Next (@seewhatsnext) February 1, 2019