The least exciting Oscar awards of the 21st Century will begin at 5:30 pm Pacific, or four hours hence. The only cliffhanger among the major contenders is whether or not the over-and-settled allegations against Manchester by The Sea‘s Casey Affleck will give Fences‘ Denzel Washington a shot at winning his third Oscar. That’s it — the only situation that handicappers aren’t sure about. Along with whether or not Bill Paxton will be included in the death reel.

I’m betting on an Affleck win, which reminds me that I need to ban Bobby Peru from the comment threads.

HE will live-blog through the show, and then it’s off to the La La Land after-party at Soho House.

BEST PICTURE: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight.

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea (W); Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge; Ryan Gosling, La La Land; Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic, Denzel Washington, Fences.

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE: Isabelle Huppert, Elle; Ruth Negga, Loving; Natalie Portman, Jackie; Emma Stone, La La Land (W), Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins.

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight (W); Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water; Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea; Dev Patel, Lion; Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals.

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Viola Davis, Fences (W); Naomie Harris, Moonlight; Nicole Kidman, Lion; Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures; Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea.

BEST DIRECTING: Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, La La Land (W — Damian Chazelle), Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight.

In a reasonable, fair-minded realm of movie assessment (i.e., one not dictated by fear of saying something that might get you branded as politically incorrect), Jordan Peele‘s Get Out, a decent but far from perfect B-level horror film that explores subterranean racial animus among liberal elites, would have a Rotten Tomatoes rating of, oh, 85% or 87%. And a Metacritic rating in the mid to high 70s. It’s simply not good enough to have a rating in the mid to upper ’90s, and the idea of a horror-comedy with the sensibility of an ’80s-era John Carpenter or Wes Craven earning a perfect 100% score is flat-out ridiculous.

But that’s what Get Out has right now, and Metacritic has given it an 83% positive. This is what you would call an avalanche of generosity. Another way to describe it is a conspiracy of cowardice on the part of at least some of the critics out there. Yesterday I was all but accused of being an Imperial Wizard of the Southern California chapter of the Ku Klux Klan because (a) I called the premise nervy and intriguing for the first 45 minutes but (b) expressed regret that the film loses juice the more it embraces conventional horror tropes, and that the VFX are cheesy and the writing (particularly the ending) is sloppy.

There’s a clear difference between Alfred Hitchcock‘s handling of the runaway car sequence in Family Plot (’76) vs. the mountain road chase in To Catch A Thief (’55). For some reason the rear-projection footage feels bothersome in Plot (not to mention Barbara Harris‘s absurd over-reactions making things worse for poor Bruce Dern) but oddly natural in Thief. The fact is that Robert Burks‘ Oscar-winning VistaVision photography for Thief is handsome, beautifully balanced and easy on the eyes, and George Tomasini‘s editing makes the Thief sequence feel centered, relaxed and at peace with the universe. The reactions of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly to the various intrigues and impediments are just right; ditto the insert shots of Grant’s nervous hands. There’s a reason why To Catch A Thief is one of my favorite late-night comfort films and why I’ve never re-watched Family Plot (and I own a decent Bluray of it). Thief is smooth, elegant and comforting and Plot is not.

Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez is a good guy (I found him charming during a recent visit to Real Time with Bill Maher), but Hollywood Elsewhere regrets his victory over Keith Ellison for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison was the choice of the reformist Bernie Sanders/Michael Moore wing of the party, and Perez was and is more or less the candidate of the corporate-supported, business-as-usual mainstream Democratic machine. Perez beat Ellison on the second round — 235 to 200. Not a good thing. The Hillary Clinton apparatchiks have to be out out to pasture. Me to Roger Friedman during yesterday’s Spirit Awards: “What’s your reaction to Perez winning the DNC chair?” Friedman: “Perez Hilton is the new head of the Democratic party?”

You’re strong and pulsing and vigorously here, and then you’re dealt a bad card and you’re not. Bill Paxton, whom I ran into last May in Cannes at a screening of Mean Dreams, is gone. From “complications following a surgical procedure,” whatever the hell that means. The guy was only 61, and now he sleeps with the fishes. Paxton always projected an amiable, laid-back Average Joe type of vibe, and it just seems rude and cruel that his life has been stopped like a car hitting a telephone pole. “Game over, man…game over.”

Hands down, Paxton’s finest performance was as the morally conflicted Hank Mitchell in Sam Raimi‘s under-appreciated A Simple Plan, which I’m going to re-watch today in tribute. Great performance, great film (and certainly Raimi’s finest ever).

Oscar telecast producers Mike DeLuca and Jennifer Todd have to slip Paxton into tonight’s death reel segment. C’mon, guys…you’ve got a few hours.

Paxton had a five year run as Utah polygamist Bill Henrickson in HBO’s Big Love, which I was half into for the first two seasons.

Paxton’s most commercial lead role was as Bill “The Extreme” Harding in Jon De Bont‘s Twister (’96). The most famous line of his career was “game over, man…game over” in James Cameron’s Aliens (’86) — his first noticable punch-through. Paxton’s second most famous line was spoken in Cameron’s Titanic — “I never got it…I never let it in,” and his third most famous line was spoken in Cameron’s True Lies — “I’ve got a little dick.”

Paxton’s very first screen role (uncredited) was in Jonathan Demme‘s Crazy Mama (’75), when he was 19 or 20. Six years later he played a nondescript solider in Ivan Reitman’s Stripes (’81).

The 32nd annual Spirit Awards were mostly owned by Moonlight, and oh, what a slog it was, realizing early on that Barry Jenkins‘ film would probably win every award it was nominated for — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney), Best Cinematography (James Laxton) and Best Editing — and having to sit there and just take it. A fine, affecting, well-made film that obviously got through to a lot of people, and the karma was right and the stars were aligned. No problem.

Manchester By The Sea‘s Casey Affleck and Elle‘s Isabelle Huppert took Best Actor and Best Actress awards, but both were foretold. Hell or High Water‘s Ben Foster won for Best Supporting Male (no prob but I would’ve picked A Bigger Splash‘s Ralph Fiennes) and Molly Shannon‘s mom-dying-of-cancer performance in Other People won the Best Supporting Female trophy.

Quote from my 1.22.16 Other People Sundance review: “There’s already a consensus that Molly Shannon, who plays a spirited suburban mom dying of leiomyosarcoma, will be Best Actress-nominated for a Spirit or a Gotham Award.”

Robert Eggers‘ The Witch won for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. And the great O.J.: Made in America won for Best Documentary Feature.

Excerpt from a 2.2.17 HE piece called “Little Bitch”: “That handjob is a very big factor in Moonlight. It’s really ‘the’ factor when you think about it. A more complete title would have been Moonlight: Handjob On The Beach.” Quip from Spirit Awards co-emcee John Mulaney during today’s opening monologue: “Basically the Spirit Awards are a secret handjob on the beach, but enough about Moonlight.”

(l.) Moonlight costar Mahershala Ali with a couple of ladies; (far right, barefooted) American Honey star Sasha Lane.

A four-day-old Film Stage piece (2.21) by Leonard Pearce reported that Woody Allen‘s Coney Island-set period film is titled Wonder Wheel — a childhood reminiscence piece, presumably in the vein of Radio Days.

The film “takes place in the summer days of the 1950s,” Pearce writes, but unless it covers two or more years the action takes place in 1950. The proof is in the lobby poster in the below still. With James Stewart, Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea costarring, the film is Anthony Mann‘s Winchester ’73, which opened on 7.12.50. The Brooklyn-raised Allen was 14 on that date.

The costars are Kate Winslet, Justin Timberlake, Juno Temple, Jim Belushi, Tony Sirico, Jack Gore, Steve Schirripa and Max Casella. Like everyone else I’m expecting a 2017 Cannes Film Festival debut.

Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet and Juno Temple in Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel.

Jordan Peele‘s Get Out, which I saw in the Grove yesterday afternoon, deserves points for blending racial satire with a current of Stepford Wives-like horror, and particularly for the low-key restraint that Peele deals during the first 45 minutes or so.

But while I respect the audacity behind (as Armond White has pointed out) a mix of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and Meet The Fockers with B-level horror, I found what Peele is saying about Obama-era relationships between upscale blacks and whites to be easy and specious. Plus I was seriously disappointed by the standard-issue blood-and-brutality chops during the last half-hour, not to mention Peele’s complete indifference to logic and consequences at the final fade-out.

The critics who’ve gone hog-wild over the racial-anxiety-meets-horror concept have overplayed their hand. They’re singing praises from their own p.c. echo chamber partly because — wait for it — the director-writer and the good-looking, smooth-cat hero Chris (played by Daniel Kaluuya) are African-American, and because the 2017 Film Critic’s P.C. Handbook absolutely forbids dissing or even questioning any kind of subversive genre-bender of this type.

The truth is that Get Out starts well, slowly building on the intrigue and intimations of bad stuff to come, but it gradually devolves the more the horror elements take hold. It’s just not that clever or well thought-out.

SPOILER: Peele’s central idea is that good white liberals (i.e., the kind who “would’ve voted for Obama a third time if we could’ve,” as Bradley Whitford‘s Dean Armitage, the father of Kaluuya’s girlfriend Rose, says early on) are liars — they’re just as racist as any rural Trump fan but with the ability to hide behind a facade of gracious, laid-back behavior. Moreover, their goal is to de-ball blacks who mix them with them socially and politically, and so blacks who ingratiate themselves with allegedly enlightened whites are being hoodwinked and led astray.

Peele isn’t exactly expressing a philosophy of black separatism, but he’s obviously saying “watch out for upscale whiteys…they ain’t on our team.” All of Get Out‘s horror and mayhem stems from this basic viewpoint.

As noted in today’s post about the 12th Annual US-Ireland Alliance’s Oscar Wilde Awards at Bad Robot, I asked for clips of honorees Martin Short, Outlander‘s Caitriona Balfe, Loving‘s Ruth Negga, Zachary Quinto and Glen Hansard. A montage reel arrived this evening — here it is:

If I had written the copy for this first-ever N.Y. Times ad, which will appear during Sunday’s Oscar telecast, it would read as follows: “The truth is that Donald Trump and his White House henchmen have given every indication since January 20th that they intend to respect only the views and concerns of the 26% of eligible voters who supported Trump in the 2016 Presidential election.

“The truth is that a key part of their agenda has been to declare war on the press, and that a major part of his effort is to push a Trump administration meme that mainstream news reporters and editors are entrenched suppliers of ‘fake news.’

“No news organization is without flaws or perfectly impartial, but over the last 15 or 20 years ‘fake news’ has been almost entirely a manifestation of the alt-right fantasy fringe (Alex Jones, Breitbart News, et. al.). If the Trump team has made one thing clear, it is their wholehearted support of alt-right values and agendas, as the executive branch ascension of former Breitbart honcho Steve Bannon makes clear. In league with this, the Trump White House intends to muffle the press as far as political circumstances and leverage will allow.

“The truth is that the Trump administration has given every indication that they intend to be an authoritarian, alt-rightist, racially repressive, anti-environment, corporate-kowtowing, would-be fascist regime — a team of thugs, dazzling in their belligerency, who will not only seek to undo just about every progressive, socially constructive or fair-minded thing that the Obama administration signed into law or brought about through executive order but ‘make America great again’ — an odious, dog-whistle pledge that smacks of racism, belligerency, arrogance and unbridled corporate favoritism.

“The truth is not hard to find or know. It is right there in front of anyone who wants it — discernible to anyone with an interest in using brain cells and not relying on the usual rural resentments, prejudices and simplistic notions that the wacko right has successfully exploited for too many years.

“But with some of the most odious people to ever orchestrate an executive branch agenda in the history of the United States, people regarded as the worst villains to control the levers of power since the darkest days of the Nixon administration (and let’s remind ourselves again that Richard Nixon was a far better man and Oval office occupant than Donald Trump could ever hope to be)…with such people determined to obscure facts and reimagine reality like never before, the truth is more important than ever.”

I’m sorry but Joseph Cedar‘s Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (Sony Classics, 4.14) doesn’t cut it. A smartly written, dialogue-driven drama about an elderly poseur and would-be financial hustler (well acted by Richard Gere), it intrigues for the first…oh, 40 or 45 minutes but runs out of gas by the one-hour mark, and then you have to sit there for the remaining 57 minutes. It began to irritate me more and more than Norman is never shown at his home or office — he’s constantly on the street or at some party or restaurant, always wearing the same camel’s hair overcoat, hat and bargain-basement scarf. He’s obviously headed for a fall sooner or later, and it’s not much fun to watch him double-talk and stumble around as the inevitable awaits. Thanks but no thanks. The supporting performances are flawless — Lior Ashkenazi, Michael Sheen, Steve Buscemi, Harris Yulin, Dan Stevens, et. al. Norman is an intelligent, carefully measured film and far from a wipe-out but I felt weaker and weaker as I watched it.