A 12.6.23 N.Y. Times piece about the dissolve, a classic but all but abandoned cinematic transition device, was posted a couple of days ago by M.D. Rodrigues. The article mainly focuses on Alexander Payne‘s elegant and artful dissolves in The Holdovers.

“Each dissolve is a dawdling ellipsis,” Rodrigues explains. “Over its course, feelings develop or disperse; life happens or doesn’t. With its slow, valedictory air, a long enough dissolve evokes the momentum of real experience.”

“One thing is going away, another thing is coming in,” Payne has observed. “I can’t explain it, but there’s something poetic and melancholy about it.”

But near the start of Hal Ashby‘s The Last Detail, however, a dissolve is used for comic effect. I chuckle each time I watch it.

Otis Young‘s “Mule”, an in-transit sailor, is ordered to report to the master-at-arms (i.e., top sergeant). “Tell the M.A.A. you couldn’t find me,” Mule tells the lower-ranked messenger. “”He knows where you are,” the seaman replies. “Oh yeah?….when you’re in the Navy, shirtbird, and in transit, nobody knows where the fuck you are so go tell that F.A.A. to go fuck himself, I ain’t goin’ on no shit detail.”

What’s funny is how Ashby starts the slow dissolve before Mule has fully delivered his rant. It begins as Mule says “so tell that F.A.A. to go fuck himself,” as if Ashby is saying to the audience “this isn’t worth your time…he’s just blowing off the usual steam…just another pissed-off sailor…blah blah.”

“Don’t let that no-good, candy-ass, numb-nuts, twinkletoes crybaby back in here.” — Harry S. Truman.

I remain semi-mystified why the fix has been in on Justine Triet‘s Anatony of a Fall. It won the Palme d’Or in Cannes last May, the momentum kept building after the early fall fall festivals, and now it’s swept the European Film Awards in Berlin, taking Best European Film, Director, Screenplay and actress for Sandra Hüller.

It’s an approvable film within its own realm, but it’s not earth-shattering. It’s been overpraised from the get-go. Sometimes you can just tell that critics and industry voices decided to give a certain film is getting a pass because it exudes the right kind of social bonafides, and that’s that. A strong feminist imprimatur.

Take this line from an Anatomy of a Fall review by Film Yap‘s Nate Richards (posted on 10.26). The subhead calls Justine Triet’s murder investigation drama “one of the most gripping and memorable movies that you’ll see this year”…that’s a 100% decisive nope.

Anatomy of a Fall is a thorough, exacting and meticulous (read: exhausting) “what really happened?” exercise by way of a courtoom procedural, and is certainly smart and interesting as far as it goes but let’s not get carried away…please.

Sandra Huller is excellent as a bisexual writer accused of murdering her angry, pain-in-the-ass French husband (Samuel Theis), but the film goes on for 152 minutes, and the cloying kid playing Huhler’s half-blind son (Milo Machado-Graner) lays it on too thick, and the loud and relentless playing of an instrumental cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” drove me fucking nuts. The more I heard it, the more angry I felt…”Why is Triet making me listen to this over-loud track over and over?”

Another highly dubious declaration from Richards: “What makes Anatomy of a Fall so compelling is that Triet and Arthur Harari’s script has you constantly battle with yourself over whether or not you believe in Sandra’s innocence.” Not so! No battle! I was never even faintly persuaded that Huller might be a murderer…not for a minute.

“We knew a [movie villain] of old by his Black Hat or his Black Moustache; and today by his white skin.” — a passage from David Manet’s “Everywhere An Oink–Oink.”

From Mark Athikatis’s Washington Post 12.7.23 review:

A just-released Wall Street Journal presidential preference poll has Nikki Haley running 17 points ahead of President Biden — 51% to 34%. That’s not a huge margin but the thundering rumble of mighty horses.

The Beast is also beating Gurgly Joe, but only by 47% to 43%. Biden and DeSantis are running even, 45% to 45%.

THR’s Scott Feinberg surely understands in the depths of his soul that he’s deeply disappointed (angered?) the Movie Godz by placing the three most admired, exciting and deserving Best Picture contenders — Poor Things, Maestro, The Holdovers — in the #5, #7 and #8 slots in his latest Oscar prediction column.

I realize that Variety’s Clayton Davis doesn’t approve, but American Fiction, as much as I adore the first 45 to 50 minutes and agree that it’s among the year’s finest, is not happening as a frontrunner. Pundit-wise it simply hasn’t caught on like some of us thought it might..

Take away the guilt + identity factors and nobody really loves Killers of the Flower Moon — it’s a long hair shirt movie with a tiresome lead character. And Barbie has been showered with more than enough accolades, thanks.

The latest Gold Derby rankings are more accurate.

Jordan Ruimy: “GD-wise I honestly think The Holdovers should be #3. Ahead of Poor Things. Joe and Jane LOVE The Holdovers. Every non-critic I speak to cannot stop raving about it.”

One of the reasons that enthusiasm levels for Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders have been diminished all along is Austin Butler’s relentless, extremely off-putting chain-smoking. Nothing looks cheaper or pollutes an actor’s presence like smelly nicotine sticks. Marlon Brando knew this territory like the back of his hand, and never lit up in The Wild One.

HE to Butler: Never, ever go there again.

Note: “Austin Tucker” was a political consultant of an assisted liberal politician in The Parallax View (‘74).

Ryan O’Neal has died at age 82, presumably from cancer. It feels unsettling to acknowledge (or remind ourselves of the fact) that death doesn’t fool around, and because…well, a half-century ago O’Neal was quite the hotshot with golden-amber hair and a Prince of Malibu title and all the rest of it.

On 8.4.19 I wrote that I preferred to think of O’Neal as the guy he was in the early to mid ’70s, when things were as good for him as they would ever get.

I had two minor encounters with O’Neal in the ’80s.

The first was after an evening screening of the re-issued Rear Window** at West L.A.’s Picwood theatre (corner of Pico and Westwood) in late ’83. As the crowd spilled onto Pico O’Neal and his date (probably Farrah Fawcett) were walking right behind me, and I heard O’Neal say “that was sooo good!” Being a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, this sparked a feeling of kinship.

Four years later I was a Cannon publicity guy and charged with writing the press kit for Norman Mailer‘s Tough Guys Don’t Dance, which didn’t turn out so well. I for one, however, liked Mailer’s perverse sense of humor.

I did an hour-long phoner with O’Neal, and my opening remark was that he was becoming a really interesting actor now that he was in his mid 40s with creased features. He was too good looking when younger, I meant, and so his being 46 added character and gravitas. O’Neal was skeptical of my assessment but went along — what the hell.

In fact O’Neal’s career had been declining for a good five or six years at that point. He knew it, I knew it — we were doing a press-kit-interview dance because there was nothing else to say or do.

O’Neal’s last hit film had been Howard Zeiff and Gail Parent‘s The Main Event (’79), which critics panned but was popular with audiences. He had starred in four mezzo-mezzos before that — Peter Bogdanovich‘s Nickelodeon (’76), Richard Attenbrough‘s A Bridge Too Far (’77), Walter Hill‘s The Driver (’78) and John Korty‘s Oliver’s Story.

Consider this HE anecdote about some 41-year-old graffiti on an Oliver’s Story poster.

O’Neal’s career peak lasted for five years (’70 to ’75) and was fortified by a mere four films — Arthur Hiller‘s Love Story (’70), Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? (’72) and Paper Moon (’73), and Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon (’75). (The Wild Rovers and The Thief Who Came to Dinner, which O’Neal also made in the early ’70s, were regarded as mostly negligible and therefore didn’t count.)

Geoffrey Mcnab’s 12.8 Independent interview with Paul Schrader is a good read, but it’s paywalled. I’m not a subscriber but have managed to read it anyway. I don’t think I should share the link…sorry.

If you walk over and look them in the eye and ask them to please cut the crap, the AFI Sight & Sound gang will admit the truth.

They know that Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon is not one of his top-tier films. They know it’s basically a woke movie, a guilt-trip thing. They know that it has no character viewpoint other that “century-old Oklahoma white guys bad.” They know that Scorsese and Eric Roth decided to more or less abandon FBI agent Tom White, the central figure in David Grann’s 2017 book, in favor of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s dumbshit Ernest Burkhart, who isn’t worth the effort.

They know all that and voted Killers as the year’s top film regardless. Because they wanted to proclaim their belief and investment in the redemption narrative. It’s their way of saying “we get it Marty…you did your best under the circumstances and understandably felt that you couldn’t go with White as the champion…we get it and we support you and are on your side despite the fact that if we were voting on merit alone we wouldn’t have chosen Killers….you get that and so do we…plus we absolutely believe in the metaphor of Lily Gladstone‘s identity campaign for Best Actress…all hail our recognition of past sins and our attempt at absolution or at least forgiveness.”