Nobody is more queer for movies dealing with neurofibromatosis than myself, but an instinct is telling me to give this puppy a pass…no offense.

Bill McCuddy: “Tuesday morning’s Academy nomination are going to lean into Maestro more than you think.”

HE to McCuddy: “Carey Mulligan will be nominated, of course. Anything above and beyond will be surprising but welcome. I’ve been a devout worshipper from the get–go, but so many people have a bug up their ass about it. “

…plus several other contentious topics, including a couple that resulted in vitriol and arguing.

Again, the link.

The 2024 Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday morning. But instead of predicting which films and performances will be included or snubbed, let’s try a different angle of approach. Best Picture-wise most Academy members vote for the usual political or social-pressure motives (DEI and merit being the top two) but the bottom line is that movies are voted for or approved of for deep-down emotional reasons.

Mainly because these movies have said something truthful and fundamental about life as we know it. Assessments which many of us have recognized or agreed with, and which have dramatized certain human behaviors which some of us may not approve of but are reluctantly acknowledged to be pervasive and on a certain level profound.

Here’s what the major Best Picture contenders are saying, more or less…

1. Oppenheimer — It’s magnificent to be a super-brainy genius and to apply your gift to the creation of something important or earth-changing, but don’t get so stuck on your particular vision of things that you wind up ignoring basic political realities and thereby self-destructing. And for God’s sake don’t behave like a crybaby when you’re in the Oval Office with the President of the United States.

Basic message: Once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in. Take responsibility for your actions, be a man, play your cards carefully, no whining.

2. Poor Things — Bella Baxter calls ’em like she sees ’em, but there has to be more to life than just furious jumping, unless of course you disagree. Don’t take Yorgos Lanthimos‘s weird imaginings too literally. There aren’t enough films that really invest in wackazoid fantasies. Enjoy them when they happen, and please ignore the last 15 minutes.

Basic message: Weirdness can be wonderful.

3. The Holdovers — Life has always been difficult and occasionally punishing, but at least there weren’t any woke fascists or social-media guillotines back in 1970. It takes a lot of work and energy to be a haughty and dismissive scold all the time, and sooner or later you’ll have to give that shit up. Listen to your heart from time to time and maybe things will open up for you…maybe.

Basic message: Don’t be a crabby asshole.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon — 100 years ago Oklahoma white men were very greedy and very foul, and we need to learn from the example of their century-old evil so we can be better people today. In line with this, it would have been very bad to tell a story of Oklahoma genocide with a white FBI agent in the lead role. To have done so would have been obviously wrong and racist. Plus it doesn’t matter if Eric Roth‘s original 153-page script was far superior to the film that Martin Scorsese ultimately made (“who didn’t do it?”). What matters is that Leonardo DiCaprio wanted to play an idiot, and he did that.

Basic message: Don’t be a greedy, homicidal Midwestern white guy.

5. Barbie — Pink is beautiful, misandrist social satire is delicious and all men are pathetic and boastful infants who can be easily manipulated if women are smart about it. Plus (a) it was glorious to wear pink to Barbie screenings last summer, and (b) hooray for Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig making all that dough.

Basic message: Is there one?

6. Past Lives — If a Korean-born woman has been in love with a very special Korean-born man since childhood, it makes perfect sense to try and bring it all together when the guy flies all the way from Seoul to pay her a visit in New York City. And it doesn’t matter (or shouldn’t matter) if the woman speaks Korean to the boyfriend in the presence of her American husband. And a movie about this odd triangle doesn’t have to wrap things up or provide any emotional closure. It just has to speak softly.

Basic message: Don’t marry for friendship, convenience and comfort — you’ll be sorry down the road.

7. American Fiction — White upscale book readers are suckers for street cred and Black authenticity. If you’re a smart writer of color you’ll exploit the shit out of this market, and you won’t sweat the particulars. Unless you’re a man of conscience, in which case you will sweat them.

Basic message: Don’t worry about dumb white consumers.

8. Anatomy of a Fall — Brilliant female writers living in Grenoble need to watch themselves. Because if a certain hetero husband dies from a fall, the legal esablishment will automatically assume that the wife (Sandra Huller) pushed him and try to convict her of this, especially if she’s had a few same-sex affairs on the side.

Basic message: Beware of local male prosecutors with tennis-ball haircuts and cruel faces.

9. The Zone of Interest — The furtherance of evil has always seemed banal on this or that level, and the Nazis were no exception in this regard and especially in the ghastly matter of concentration camps.

Basic message: Read the writings of Hannah Arendt.

10. Maestro — Leonard Bernstein was a gay man who needed a beard marriage to prosper, and yet he cared deeply for his wife of many years, Felicia Montealegre. His intense devotion to music (conducting, composing) resulted in fame, adoration and great fulfillment all around, but what occupied his life and certainly affected his marriage were his relationships with young fellas.

Basic message: Don’t hurt your loved ones by “getting sloppy.”

A24 will open Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding on March 8th, just a few weeks hence. Delivers quite an ending a la Saint Maud. The question is “what kind of freaks?”

Two days ago (1.19) a Facebook tribute congratulated Tippi Hedren for having reached her 94th year (blow out the candles!) as well as her acting in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (‘63) and Marnie (‘64), among other efforts and creations.

HE to Hyland: She hasn’t out-lived this critic.

Hedren’s characters in The Birds and Marnie have always struck me as curiously prim, overly tidy mannequins. She fit that immaculate, early ‘60s department store window persona — not just conservative, but a bit chilly and brittle.

I’m sorry but you don’t believe for a second that either character has ever been possessed by a single erotic impulse.

Hitchcock was once quoted saying that Hedren “didn’t bring the volcano.” He wasn’t wrong.

Grace Kelly had a similar porcelain quality, but one always sensed an undercurrent of suppressed hunger and passion from her performances.

There’s nothing wrong with inhabiting or conveying a curiously chilly and brittle persona, but if that’s your main game there’s not a lot of range involved.

Try to imagine Hedren as Blanche DuBois — you can’t.

She radiates a certain cool officiousness, a real-estate agent vibe. As such Hedren has reminded me of many women of wealth and assurance that I’ve run into or have known in upscale circles. There’s nothing false or ungenuine about this.

Is the private, off-screen Hedren a woman of kindness, elegance, poise, compassion, etc.? Allegedly so and good for her. She’s lived a good, long, healthy life, and she loves her big cats.

But remember Mitch Brenner mentioning that salacious news item about Melanie Daniels having allegedly taken a nude dip in a pool surrounding a large Roman fountain? The instant he brings this up you say to yourself “no way…Melanie Daniels isn’t the type to disrobe in public, drunk or sober, and she never will be.”

And that’s fine. No disapproval — just a statement of fact. I wrote this as a retort to Tom Hyland.

Josh Margolin‘s Thelma, a Sundance headliner that I saw last night, is a mostly mild situation dramedy about the pitfalls, sadnesses and surprising turn-arounds of a chubby old biddy (the 94 year-old June Squibb, in her first starring role) when the going gets tough.

It makes for a reasonably decent sit, although I didn’t like it at first because of the hugely annoying Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus), who plays Squibb’s flaky-loser grandson.

Squibbs’ titular character is also 90something and, as you might presume, suffering from the usual intellectual and physical diminishments. Sissies need not apply.

Thelma is about the white-haired Squibb getting scammed out of $10K (which actually happened to Margolin’s real-life grandmother), and how she refuses to take this humiliation lying down and soon after becomes a dogged investigator and push-backer on her own steam and tenacity.

The reason I didn’t like Hechinger, whose dipshit Zoomer character has been told by his mom and dad (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) to look after Squibb and keep her out of trouble, is because his performance had me half-convinced that he was in on the scam. (I hate guys like Hechinger…I really do.)

After going to the cops and getting no help, Squibb locates the post office box address that she sent the $10K to by envelope. (A voice on the phone told her to do so or Hechinger would be in deep shit, and she bought it.)

She makes her way to a nearby assisted living facility to seek the assistance of old buddy Ben (Richard Roundtree), which boils down to Thelma borrowing his mobility scooter, except Ben won’t let her drive alone.

They visit the home of an old out-to-lunch friend, and during this stopover Thelma discovers and pockets a loaded pistol. (Not worth explaining.) They get back on the scooter and wind up at a gas station, but then Thelma forgets to engage the parking brake…

With Posey, Gregg and Hechinger in hot pursuit…Jesus, I can’t do this. What am I gonna do, spill the whole story?

Eventually Thelma and Ben get to the bottom of things, and I was quite amused to discover that the principal scammer is none other than the white-haired 70something Alexander DeLarge.

The situation is resolved a little too easily but by that time I had decided that Thelma is an above-average thing, not quite on the level of Little Miss Sunshine but occasionally so.

Thelma is not a comedy — it’s a half-and-halfer. It certainly declines to go goofy or silly. There are elements of real pain and stress and sadness woven in. Now and then it’s actually touching, which surprised me. I’m giving it a B-plus.

Roughly two months ago a very early draft of Eric Roth‘s screenplay for Killers of the Flower Moon (dated 2.20.17, or eight weeks before David Grann’s source book was published) turned up on a Reddit screenwriting forum.

Roth’s 153-page screenplay, which arrived in my inbox around 6 am this morning, was posted late last year by “Sheshat the Scribe.”

Anyway I finally read it this morning and holy moley…if Martin Scorcese had manned up and shot this version of the tale Killers would have been a much more engrossing kettle of fish.

No exaggeration — Roth’s early-bird script is approximately 17 or 18 times better than the film Marty finally made. Because Killers suddenly has a central character you can easily roll with (i.e., FBI guy Tom White, who Leonardo DiCaprio was originally intending to portray) as well as an actual point of view.

White isn’t just the resolute, soft-spoken, voice-of-the-prairie hero of the piece but a decent, honorable lawman with occasional moments of doubt and uncertainty, but finally a dude who stays the course, toughs it out and brings at least a semblance of partial justice to a sprawling and horrific murder saga.

In Marty’s film version White (played by Jesse Plemons) is reduced to a supporting character who appears at the two-hour mark.

Here’s how I put it to a screenwriter pally a couple of hours ago: “My God, what a truly compelling and fascinating film Killers of thge Flower Moon could have been. Hats off to Roth for some wonderful writing, sublime tension, terrific structure. It really lives and breathes!

“And what a great, soft-spoken, drillbit character Tom White is! His laconic, man-of-the-prairie dialogue is so spare and true and eloquent.

“If only John Sturges had directed this screenplay in his prime! Or Oliver Stone in the ’80s or Michael Mann, Chris Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson…Sam Peckinpah even.

“If only Marty and Leo hadn’t lost their nerve…if only they hadn’t been so scared of provoking the wokesters and suffering their ferocious wrath, i.e., “We’re done with white heroes! Only racists-at-heart would tell such a tale! And fuck David Grann!”

“My head was completely turned around by reading this, and Roth wasn’t even afraid of including racist cracker dialogue from time to time. (Brave.) And Mollie Burkhart actually conveys a certain gratitude (i.e., a slight smile) to White at the very end. I don’t know if Lily Gladstone even read this version of the script, but if so she almost certainly would’ve hated it.

“I wish I had read this six or seven years ago. It would have clarified a lot of things. Roth and Scorsese went with a woke version of Grann’s tale, of course, but in the early stages Roth truly did himself proud.”

If you weren’t much of a fan of Killers of the Flower Moon or even if you were, please read this early Roth draft — it’s a revelation.