I tried uploading these clips early last evening from the Park City Marriott lobby but the wifi was too weak. Yes, I know — that hotel became my new best wifi friend only two days ago but I hadn’t tried the Park Regency’s 5G signal (I’d assumed it was private) until Friday night and discovered it’s actually pretty good. Casey Affleck‘s answer to the question “how did playing this quietly suffering guy make you feel?” is interesting. He knew what the questioner wanted (an emotional thing) but he didn’t feel entirely comfortable going there so he defaulted to a craft-and-technique response. Lucas Hedges‘ reply (after the jump) was more from the heart.

“The persistence of grief and the hope of redemption are themes as timeless as dramaturgy itself, but rarely do they summon forth the kind of extraordinary swirl of love, anger, tenderness and brittle humor that is Manchester by the Sea, Kenneth Lonergan’s beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama about how a death in the family forces a small-town New Englander to confront a past tragedy anew.

“That rather diagrammatic description does little justice to Lonergan’s ever-incisive ear for the rhythms of human conversation, as he orchestrates an unruly suite of alternately sympathetic and hectoring voices — all of which stand in furious contrast to Casey Affleck’s bone-deep performance as a man whom loss has all but petrified into silence.

“Giving flesh and blood to the idea that life goes on even when it no longer seems worth living, Manchester may be too sprawling a vision for all arthouse tastes, but Lonergan’s many champions are scarcely the only viewers who will be stirred by this superbly grounded and acted third effort.” –from Justin Chang‘s Variety review, posted at 8 pm Pacific.

It’s definitely been a crazy award season with Spotlight being the presumed Best Picture fave from Telluride until late November or early December, and then The Revenant taking three major Golden Globe awards — Best Picture, Drama, Best Director (Inarritu), Best Actor (DiCaprio) — and then Spotlight bouncing back with the usually predictive Critics Choice award for Best Picture, and now The Big Short blowing everyone’s mind by winning the PGA’s Daryl F. Zanuck award. 

Nobody knows anything, there’s no big favorite, it’s all a big toss-up, salad dressing on the floor.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s theory about why The Big Short won is nothing special, but it’s the first scenario that came to mind. The PGA members didn’t want to hand it to The Revenant because they figured last year’s Birdman win was enough for Inarritu, and they didn’t want to give it to Spotlight because it’s …what, too subtle or not dynamic enough or something? So they figured “fuck it, let’s give it to The Big Short…that’ll shake things up and make us seem more interesting than we are.” 

I honestly don’t think there was anything more to The Big Short winning than that. Two vague negatives translated into a “why not?” positive…that was it. And I’m saying that as a fan of Adam McKay‘s film.  Yes, I found it a little bit wonky and forced-marchy the first time, but the second viewing was the charm.

Some Sundance movies are applauded and whoo-whooed, and others just sink in and melt you down. They get you in such a vulnerable place that your admiration is mixed with a kind of stunned feeling, like you’ve been hit square in the heart. Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester-By-The-Sea, which played this afternoon at the Eccles, is one of the latter. It’s not an upper by any stretch, but in no way is it a downer. It’s really one of the saddest films I’ve ever seen, and if you’ve got any buried hurt it’ll kill you. This is 2016’s first slam-dunk Best Picture contender, and it will definitely result, trust me, in Casey Affleck landing his first Best Actor nomination.

Cast & crew of Manchester By The Sea following 3 pm Eccles screening. Director-writer Kenneth Lonergan is on far left.

During post-screening q & a (l to .r.) Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Kyle Chandler.

In part because 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.

I know what you’re thinking — “another grief recovery drama?” Trust me, it’s not that. For one thing its not about “recovery” in any usual, ordinary sense. And it’s about much more than that anyway, and the writing is just spot-on — masterful — in each and every scene. And it can be summed up in a stick-to-your-ribs line, spoken by Affleck’s Chandler, that everyone will remember after seeing Manchester sometime next fall: “I can’t beat it.”

Even though I have to change suites today at the Park Regency, which is always a pain in the ass, I’m planning to see four films today. 12 noon, Eccles: Sian Heder‘s Tallulah, a conflicted motherhood drama with Ellen Page and Allison Janney. One-hour writing break starting at 2 pm. 3 pm, Eccles: Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea, another parenthood drama with Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams and Kyle Chandler. 90-minute travel time from Eccles to Library plus a little tweeting. 6 pm, Library: Antonio Campos‘ Christine, a fact-based period drama about a Sarasota TV reporter who ended her life on-air, w/ Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts. 55-minute writing/tweeting break starting around 8:20 pm. 9:15 pm, Library: Elizabeth Woods‘ White Girl, a Manhattan-based coke-dealing drama with a no-star cast. Ends a little before 11 pm. Back to the pad by 11:30 pm, final filing, over & out.

From a review of Swiss Army Man by Variety‘s Peter Debruge: “The result represents not just independent cinema, but an emerging strand of what might be called ‘indifferent cinema’ — wildly iconoclastic personal visions whose creators don’t seem especially concerned about the ultimate commercial fate of their movies, so long as they ultimately reach those kindred spirits who groove to the same strange worldview.”

After almost certainly getting urgent phone calls from publicists involved with her Best Actress campaign, 45 Years star Charlotte Rampling has stated that her recent comment about calls for Oscar diversity being “racist against whites” was a misquote of some kind. She told CBS Sunday Morning that her comments “could have been misinterpreted,” and that she “simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration. I am very honored to be included in this year’s wonderful group of nominated actors and actresses.” Rampling added that she’s “highly encouraged” by today’s announcement that the Academy will take drastic steps to double its numbers of women and minorities by 2020. “Diversity in our industry is an important issue that needs to be addressed,” she said.

I tweeted an hour ago that with the exception of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato‘s HBO Robert Mapplethorpe doc (Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures), the Sundance flicks I’ve seen and heard about so far have been grueling. These first 24 hours have been so depressing that I’m almost fantasizing about going home early if it keeps up like this. Not really but, you know, it’s a thought.

“Sundance spelled backwards = depression” — a phrase I first heard back in the late ’90s.

I wouldn’t want to calculate the spiritual costs of enduring another Weiner Dog, but that’s not showing sufficient respect for Todd Solondz — no one can send you to the bottom of the mud pit with such efficiency. Judging by reviews/tweets I’m just glad I had the foresight to avoid Swiss Army Man, the “flatulent dead guy” flick that also played at the Eccles.

The 82-minute pilot (described in Sundance notes as a “two-hour” pilot) for Hulu’s 11.22.63, which I saw this morning at 8:30 am, felt to me like a typical low-rent cable thing — a cheesy and slipshod wash that riffs on the Stephen King book rather than adapts it.  Why change the point-of-entry year from ’58 to ’60?  What’s with the crawling bug scene?  I was being hit over and over with “this isn’t as good as it ought to be.”  By the end I wasn’t unhappy that this “two-hour” pilot had run considerably shorter.  38 minutes of commercials?

The team behind Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures during post-screening discussion at the MARC.

Todd Solondz‘s Weiner-Dog, a morose and depressive slog about a dachsund passing from owner to owner and bearing the sins of mankind, screened at the Eccles tonight. It’s about futility, fuck it, banality, depression, ennui, emptiness, death, Down Syndrome and cancer. It’s definitely not about “what if?” Solondz reportedly told an interviewer today that he intended a blend of Au Hasard Balthasar and Benji. I’ve always hated Solondz and his dweeby, depressive attitude and particularly his attachment to depressive losers. I began hating this film early on, and it was agony sitting through to the end (which I was determined to do no matter what). Animal lovers…I was about to post a warning but they can fend for themselves. As Weiner-Dog began a woman sitting behind me was making that “awwuhhah” sound as the camera regarded the lovable dachshund, and I was muttering to myself or more precisely to God “please don’t make me listen to this woman make ‘awwuhhah’ sounds all through this thing.” Well, she stopped. (On this note Solondz was my ally.) At the very end an older woman sitting next to me was moaning “Why did he do that? Why did he do that?”

Hollywood Elsewhere and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg have been suggesting for quite a while that one way to reduce the Academy deadwood factor would be to weight the ballots of those who are working currently or have worked within the last 10 years vs. those who haven’t worked for the last 10 or 20 years and are more or less coasting.

In response to the current OscarsSoWhite narrative, which indirectly suggests that old Academy farts aren’t voting for African-American actors and filmmakers as much as they could or perhaps should, the following letter was sent today to Academy members at 12:26 pm from Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs:

“Dear [Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] Member,

“I realize the last few days have been tough for all of us, with so many voices in the mix.

“Last night, the Board of Governors made a series of courageous steps.

“Beginning later this year, each new member’s voting status will last ten years, and will be renewed if that new member has been active in motion pictures during that decade. In addition, members will receive lifetime voting rights after three ten-year terms; or if they have won or been nominated for an Academy Award. We will apply these same standards retroactively to current members.

“In other words, if a current member has not been active in the last 10 years they can still qualify by meeting the other criteria. Those who do not qualify for active status will be moved to emeritus status. Emeritus members do not pay dues but enjoy all the privileges of membership, except voting.

Charlotte Rampling is a woman of cast-iron balls. Instead of going along with the OscarsSoWhite narrative like every other liberal scared rabbit in Hollywood, she said in a 1.22 Europe 1 interview that “perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list” — which is more or less what I said in that Rory Carroll Guardian piece that popped last Wednesday.

Rampling went further by saying that complaints about the lack of diversity among this year’s Oscar nominees are “racist to whites.” She added: “Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted. Do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?”

You know what the reaction is going to be? Not that Rampling had the balls to speak her own mind, but that she’s hurt her chances of winning the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in 45 Years.

Repeating from Carroll/Guardian piece: “Jeffrey Wells, a veteran Los Angeles-based film blogger, said others shared his view that the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton and Michael B. Jordan’s’ performance in Creed, for instance, were not Oscar-worthy but that few would say so publicly.