If you’re going for mirth and wit at a white-tie dinner, it’s better to aim “in” rather than “out”…right? No direct punches, a light touch, etc. Because Donald Trump ignored this rule he got his ass booed tonight. But the Melania plagiarism joke worked.

This 30-second teaser for Vikram Gandhi‘s Barry (Netflix, 12.16), a modest but sharply etched character study of young Barry Obama‘s undergrad years between ’81 and ’83, rubs me the wrong way. It suggests that this small-scale, 104-minute film wallows in hagiography, and it really doesn’t. Yes, it focuses on Obama’s junior and senior years at NYC’s Columbia University when he was studying political science and grappling with his half-white, half-black identity. But Barry doesn’t foretell anything. It’s a “who am I?” flick about conflict, racism (both the benevolent and hostile kinds), hesitancy and uncertainty start to finish. It’s well acted (especially by Devon Terrell in the lead role), carefully made, nicely layered and observing of many small details.

I’m not understanding the 43% Rotten Tomatoes rating for Michael Moore in TrumpLand, which I saw this morning. It’s not earth-shaking or astonishing or even startling, but what do you expect from a 70-minute political comedy performance Moore gave only the weekend before last? (It was filmed on Friday, 10.7 and Saturday, 10.8, in Wilmington, Ohio.)

Critics want Moore to do his classic schtick, to keep going with his lefty-confrontationalist routine. They liked Bowling for Columbine, Sicko, Capitalism: A Love Story and Farenheit 911, and they want that streak to continue. And they don’t want the softer, friendlier, more up-spirited Moore of Where To Invade Next? and now Michael Moore in Trumpland, neither of which have much in the way of satirical teeth.

Except Moore is just as malleable and susceptible to growth spurts as the next guy, and he doesn’t seem to believe in looking back any more than Bob Dylan does.

The views in Michael Moore in TrumpLand are sharp and perceptive, but the film is mainly about…okay, fear at first but mainly warmth and mirth and mutual understandings. With that title you might think Moore would ridicule Donald Trump top to bottom, but his shortcomings — fish in a barrel – are barely alluded to. And Moore has nothing dismissive to say about Trumpsters. Naturally.  Where would that get him?

But he does go all in for Hillary Clinton, even to the point of supposing she may be a secret liberal humanist who’s just waiting to take the oath of office before revealing her true colors. Hillary may suddenly become FDR during his first 100 days, Moore is saying, by pushing a “whoa, where did this come from?” social agenda (Bernie-like, anti-corporate).

Moore imagines that this secret-Hillary thing may line up with the saga of Pope Francis, a cautious, moderate fellow when he was a cardinal in Argentina, but who surprised everyone by flying liberal humanist colors when he moved to Rome.

I found Michael Moore in Trumpland reasonably engaging as far as it went. I certainly didn’t dislike it or feel provoked or irritated in any way. It’s fine. Moore has always been my idea of a brilliant communicator and a clever charmer, and I really quite enjoyed watching what appeared to be a good number of gray-haired Trump supporters really listening and seeming to get what Moore was on about, and even allowing their emotions to surface from time to time.

The 2016 Gotham Award nominees were announced this morning, and I’ll tell you right now that Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea will almost certainly win four of the awards — Best Feature, Best Actor (Casey Affleck), Best Screenplay (Lonergan) and Breakthrough Actor (Lucas Hedges). The ceremony will happen on Monday, 11.28 at Cipriani Wall Street.

Here are the nominations — HE’s predicted wins are in boldface caps:

Best Feature: Certain Women (d: Kelly Reichardt, IFC Films); Everybody Wants Some! (d: Richard Linklater, Paramount Pictures); MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (d: Kenneth Lonergan, Amazon/Roadside); Moonlight (d: Barry Jenkins, A24); Paterson (d: Jim Jarmusch, Amazon).

Best Documentary: Cameraperson (d: Kirsten Johnson, Janus Films); I Am Not Your Negro (d: Raoul Peck, Magnolia Pictures); O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (d: Ezra Edelman, director, ESPN Films); Tower (D: Keith Maitland, Kino Lorber, Independent Lens); Weiner (d: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg, Sundance Selects and Showtime Documentary Films). QUALIFIER: If Edelman’s doc doesn’t win, Weiner might take it.

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: ROBERT EGGERS for The Witch (A24); Anna Rose Holmer for The Fits (Oscilloscope Laboratories); Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert for Swiss Army Man (A24); Trey Edward Shults for Krisha (A24); Richard Tanne for Southside with You (Roadside Attractions/Miramax). QUALIFIER: If Eggers doesn’t win, the Swiss Army guys might.

Best Screenplay: Hell or High Water, Taylor Sheridan (CBS Films); Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman (Amazon Studios); Manchester by the Sea, KENNETH LONERGAN (Amazon); Moonlight, Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney; Screenplay by Barry Jenkins (A24); Paterson, Jim Jarmusch (Amazon Studios). QUALIFIER: Lonergan’s screenplay could lose to Sheridan’s Hell or High Water.

Last night’s debate went pretty well, I thought. Hillary Clinton was cool, measured, on-point; Donald Trump was restrained for the first 20 or 25 minutes, as usual, and then turned blustery and spiteful. He didn’t actually say he wouldn’t respect the outcome of the election, but that’s how almost everyone is processing it. Trump’s end-game is not winning the election (of course) but continuing to stir the pot of belligerency in order to keep the deplorables riled and pumped and pining for Trump TV. The bottom line is that Donald has never been that quick or disciplined or even interested in being all that knowledgable. You know who is? Donald Trump, Jr., who delivered some spin after the debate ended. His on-camera patter is sharp, fast and feisty. Like Ivanka, he’s better than his father at this game.

It's appalling that a presidential nominee of a major party is undermining the pillar of our democracy—just because he hates losing. pic.twitter.com/ZQhoighCAl

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 20, 2016

Every so often I’ll briefly space out when talking to actors or directors in high-pressure situations. It happens infrequently, but it happens. Fatigue, social cowardice…something. I’ll stop listening for a few seconds, lose focus and briefly retreat into some private realm. And then I’ll snap back. 

I’ve never admitted this. At the same time it’s not a big deal. I’ve never embarassed myself or blown an interview because of these lapses. It’s just a small bug in the system.

It happened a few weeks ago when I was talking with Casey Affleck at a Manchester By The Sea party at the Toronto Soho House. I left my body for four or five seconds. Affleck noticed I was floating upwards and turned his attention elsewhere.

Three years ago I briefly spaced out when I was sitting next to David O. Russell and Jennifer Lawrence at an American Hustle party. “Jeffrey, why are you frowning?” Russell asked. “You’re sitting at the best table at the party.” If I had answered “I’m just having a space-out moment,” Russell would have felt insulted. I was angry with myself a bit later. Why did I do that?

My reaction to Maggie Chiu‘s People magazine story about Darren Aronofsky and Jennifer Lawrence “casually” dating is one of…what, casual acceptance? Mild amusement? Casually involved means…what, expecting things to be over in a few weeks? Darren is a seasoned zen smoothie from way back. HE approves of any and all relationships that bestow light and comfort and accelerate the pulse. I’m stuck, however, about what brand-blending name to use if they last a while. Lawnofsky?

DVD Beaver‘s Gary Tooze on Criterion’s One-Eyed Jacks Bluray, which pops on 11.22.16: “The colors are stunning…the restoration magnificently maintains the integrity of the film’s colors, and source density. Being hyper-critical it looked a shade thin to me in a couple of spots and very minor edge-enhancement. But for the most part this is an absolutely mesmerizing image in-motion. I was floored. Wow.”

1.85 One-Eyed Jacks frame capture as represented by DVD Beaver‘s Gary Tooze.

But to my eyes, the 1.85:1 frame captures that accompany Tooze’s review offer proof that the projected version I saw in Cannes was masked at 1.75:1 or possibly with an even boxier a.r. I know exactly and precisely what I saw on the screen at the Salle Bunuel, and those images definitely had more height than what Tooze is presenting here.

Posted from Cannes on 5.16.16: “The Jacks a.r. didn’t look like 1.85 to me — it definitely looked more like 1.75. Speaking as an ex-projectionist and an a.r. fanatic second to none I know exactly and precisely what 1.85 vs. 1.75 are shaped like, and I’m telling you there’s an ample amount of headroom in every shot. To my enormous relief Jacks didn’t feel cut off or cramped in the slightest. And that, to me, meant higher than 1.85.

Posted twelve years ago, feels like five or six: It’s built into our genes to show obeisance before power. It’s obviously a prevailing tendency in Hollywood circles, but hardly an exclusive one. Every culture, every species does the bow-down.

“I was speaking the other night to this know-it-all guy who goes to a lot of Academy screenings and parties, and we were talking about possible Best Actor nominees. We’d both just seen Ray and knew for sure Jamie Foxx was a shoo-in, but who else?

“Paul Giamatti,” I said. “Who?” he asked. “The lead in Sideways,” I reminded. “He’s amazing, heartbreaking…and the film is masterful.”

“Yeah, he was good,” he replied. Uh-huh…not impressed. He’d seen Sideways and liked it, he said, but he had a certain criticism of something Giamatti did in the film that I’m not going to repeat. It was about something obscure that nobody anywhere has mentioned.

What he really meant, I suspect, was that he didn’t empathize with Giamatti and/or his shclumpy Miles character because he’s balding and chubby and a bit of a loser, and the guy wasn’t feeling the tribal urge to celebrate the splendor of Giamatti’s craft. Because for him, superb performances in and of themselves lack a certain primal current.

Then he started in about Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator. He’d seen the upcoming Martin Scorsese film (opening 12.17) and didn’t want to tell me much, but he liked Dicaprio’s portrayal of Howard Hughes…mostly. But he had a couple of beefs. One was that Leo doesn’t look much like Hughes, and the other is that he looks too young.

“He’s 29 now,” I reminded.

“He looks like a kid.”

“But does he get Hughes?” I asked. “You know, does he channel him?”

Michael Moore in Trumpland “doesn’t shock or enrage,” writes N.Y. Times critic Neil Genzlinger. “[For] Mr. Moore has basically made an earnest but not very entertaining pro-Clinton campaign film, occasionally funny [and] momentarily heartfelt when he takes up the subject of universal health care and the lives lost for lack of it.

“Moore’s [stage] performance in Wilmington, Ohio was filmed just as the 2005 tape that captured Mr. Trump talking about groping women was hitting the news; Mr. Moore’s stage material contains no mention of that controversy, which has since consumed the presidential campaign. So at this juncture his film is, if nothing else, a stark contrast to all that has transpired in the last couple of weeks. It’s surprising to hear someone extolling a candidate’s virtues rather than just harping on what’s wrong with the opponent — it’s surprising to hear, in other words, why we should elect someone rather than why we shouldn’t.”

High-profile Casey Affleck profiles are starting to pop up. They’re all saying his Manchester by the Sea performance (i.e., the sullen, broken-hearted Lee Chandler) is the crowning achievement of his career. 19 out of of 22 Gold Derby “experts” (myself among them) now have Affleck as the most likely Oscar champ in the Best Actor category. I’ve posted this a couple of times before, but ten minutes after Manchester By The Sea finished playing at Park City’s Eccles theatre on 1.23.16 I said Affleck’s performance was “locked” for a nomination. I knew what I’d seen and felt.

The only thing could get in the way is…well, Casey isn’t all that great at lightweight banter and fooling around and being glib on talk shows. It’s just who he is. He’s quiet but a good guy. That Stephen Colbert contretemps was hilarious.

Posted on 1.23.16: “Affleck has delivered the finest, most affecting performance of his life, and in part because he’s lucked into one of the best written lonely-sad-guy roles in years, and because the part, that of Lee Chandler, a Boston janitor and handyman struggling with a horrific mistake that has wounded him for life, taps into that slightly downcast melancholy thing that Affleck has always carried around. It’s like when Gregory Peck played Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird -— it’s one of those legendary perfect fits.”

Early last evening I attended a London hotel gathering for Jeff Nichols‘ Loving (Focus Features, 11.4), and right off the top had an easy chat with costars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga. I’ve been snippy about some of Edgerton’s work in the past (though not his performances in Animal Kingdom or his 2009 BAM performance as Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar), but after five minutes of party chatter that whole attitude melted away. If you like somebody, you can’t help it. I’m still no fan of The Gift (which Edgerton directed and costarred in) but he’s definitely off the HE shit list. That phase is over.

I couldn’t get a decent shot of Joel and Ruth, but I was at least able to manipulate this one, taken without flash, into looking semi-decent with the help of PicMonkey (i.e., Adobe Photoshop for dumbshits like myself).

After seeing Loving in Cannes last May I immediately predicted some Best Actress heat for Negga’s quiet, sad-soulful performance, and I wasn’t wrong. Right now she’s neck and neck with La La Land‘s Emma Stone, Jackie‘s Natalie Portman, 20th Century Women‘s Annette Bening, Elle‘s Isabelle Huppert and Viola Davis‘s not-yet-seen performance in Fences.

Negga was wearing some killer Rodarte slacks with safety pins up and down the left-leg seam. I told her that last weekend Kristen Stewart was wearing a Rodarte suit with the same safety-pin signature at the Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk premiere.

Ruth Negga’s Rodarte safety-pin slacks, worn to last night’s Loving party.