I can’t remember when there was decent snow during the Sundance Film Festival but it feels like two or three years ago, at least. Climate change has been robbing this festival of its powdery snowfall vibe. Well, I leave tomorrow morning and Weather.com says serious snow will fall tomorrow (temps in the 20s and 30s) and then again next Sunday. So there’s that.

Is there anyone who would suggest with a straight face that Huma Abedin, special aide to Hillary Clinton, is in any way responsible for the appalling behavior of her husband, former New York Congressperson Anthony Weiner? Or that Abedin’s decision to marry a politician who turned out to be an online flasher is indicative of a character flaw on her part? Or that this episode somehow tarnishes Clinton on some level? I think anyone who would even hint that Abedin or Clinton might take a hit from Weiner, an upcoming doc that that offers an in-depth exploration of the grotesque sex scandal that forced Weiner to resign from Congress, is being tremendously unfair. Men are dogs, but a woman who stands by a dog when he’s gotten himself into trouble…well, that’s between the two of them but in my book that woman has done an admirable thing. People who don’t cut and run when the going gets rough are made of the right kind of material. And so the 1.19 N.Y. Times article by Amy Chozick and Brooks Barnes that more or less paints Anedin with a disparaging brush (“Film Shows Clinton Aide’s Own Struggle With Anthony Weiner Scandal“) is a fairly low blow. Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg‘s Weiner will have its world premiere next Sunday (1.24) at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

In his remarks about Steven Spielberg‘s 1941, director-screenwriter Mick Garris notes early on that Spielberg “is the guy who dared give me a career.”  This is Garris’s way of apologizing for his extra-gentle descriptions of 1941, which, let’s face it, is widely regarded as the most appallingly unfunny comedy in cinema history. Instead of calling it a disaster, Garris calls it Spielberg’s “least heralded” film. Stanley Kubrick‘s assessment, reportedly shared when Spielberg visited the set of The Shining, was that it’s “not funny but expertly made…you should have sold it as a drama.” The most Garris can manage is to call it “a little bit labored at times….[the comedy] doesn’t quite work all the way through.” You have to tell it straight when you do a Trailers From Hell essay or what’s the point? Who wants to hear diplomatic phrasings about a stinker that opened 36 years ago?

I finally saw Robert Eggers‘ The Witch last night, nearly a year after it premiered at Sundance 2015. It’s easily the most unsettling and sophisticated nightmare film since The Babadook. That’s a roundabout way of saying that the dolts who pay to see the usual horror bullshit will probably avoid it to some extent. Insensitive, all-but-clueless people tend to favor insensitive, all-but-clueless movies, and I’m sorry but The Witch is mostly too good for them — too subterranean, too otherworldly, too scrupulous in its avoidance of cliches. And because it goes for chills and creeps rather than shock and gore. This is the fate of all exceptional, extra-good horror flicks — they must suffer rejection by morons. Just ask Jennifer Kent.

This little creeper (which was projected last night at a 1.66:1 aspect ratio!) is set on an isolated farm in 17th Century New England, when the lore of witches and sorcery was at an all-time high. I was seriously impressed by the historical authenticity and the complete submission to the superstitious mythology of evil in the early 1600s and the panicky mindset of those God-fearing Puritans who completely bought the notion that demonic evil was absolutely manifest and waiting in the thicket. And I was entranced by Eggers’ slowburn strategy, which finally pays off in spades during the final 25 to 30 minutes. And I was fascinated at the allusions to sexuality as a kind of budding demon seed.

The focus is on a farming family of seven — a strong, devout father with a deep resonant voice (Ralph Ineson), a wiry, agitated, asexual mother with a mostly impenetrable accent (Kate Dickie), an intelligent and very hot mid-teen daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy), a younger brother disturbed by sensual stirrings (Harvey Scrimshaw), two toddlers (Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson) and an infant — and one of the most fearsome and persistent threats, never acted upon or spoken of but constantly flowing in the blood, is the animal energy of sex.

A release arrived earlier today about Spotlight’s Michael Keaton being named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in Paris. It’s a legit medal dating back to 1957; past recipients include Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood and David Bowie. One presumes that Fleur Pellerin, France’s Minister of Culture and Communication, decided to honor Keaton in concert with general interest in Spotlight, which is opening in France and other European regions between 1.27 and 1.29. In any event I wasn’t hugely interested until I saw this photo, which looks like something out of Eyes Wide Shut (shot by Larry Smith) with the gold and blue hues.

Glenn Frey has left the earth at age 67. Cool famous guys (Bowie, Rickman) in their late ’60s are dropping like flies. Everything in its own way and time and all that, but I’m very sad and sorry. Condolences to family, friends, fans.

The writing in LOVE is obviously first-rate (genuine, unforced, not too cute) and the acting seems fine…okay, pretty good. Everything seems right and harmonious except for one small element. In real life Paul Rust would be too dorky-looking to attract someone as hot as Gillian Jacobs. She looks like Kathryn Harrold, for God’s sake, and Harrold was a little too hot even for Albert Brooks in Modern Romance. No offense, Albert, if you’re reading this but you know what I mean. In the late ’70s WASPY, blue-eyed goddesses with killer cheekbones didn’t didn’t commit to anything long-term with clever-funny guys with Jewfros unless, you know, the guys were loaded. It happened, I suppose, but not that often. Once or twice in my observational experience.

Girls like Jacobs know what they have and the kind of guy they can land with a little luck and connivance. If Rust was lucky enough to pair up with Jacobs in real life it would be one of those odd relationships in which both parties realize that she’s doing him a huge favor. These always end sooner or later because the guy starts to feel diminished because he doesn’t feel he has any sense of equality; he feels like a waiter who’s been given an astonishing tip. These things also end because it’s always just a matter of time before she decides “okay, he’s cool and a good soul and not a bad lover, but that beak! Plus he’s neurotic and bothersome in about 17 or 18 different ways, and I know I could do better if I get out there and start sniffing around.”

The geniuses who directed last night’s Critics Choice Awards show refused to project video of the announcers and recipients on two monster-sized screens that hung above the stage. They chose instead to show this footage on four or five smaller monitors in the right rear of the seating area, which were easily viewable by only a portion of the audience. I was sitting so far back in the loser section (table #98) that Amy Schumer looked with a little white push pin with blond hair, and you know what happens? You don’t even listen after a while because the winners are over a football field away and you can’t even see their faces much less expressions, and so you wind up saying “fuck it” and just tweeting about stuff.

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Variety/Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg sat way up front and good for them, but table #98 was shit. Every person who sat at that table knew in their heart of hearts they’d been labelled as a temporary second- or third-stringer by the BFCA guys, but we did our best to ignore this. At least in conversation among ourselves. In my own private realm I felt humiliated and shat upon, but I could have rolled with the experience if the BFCA had only shown the faces on the two super-sized screens. But they couldn’t be bothered.

I’ve thought long and hard about the Shiznit’s “honest” movie posters, and the only one I even half-like is the one for The Revenant — not because it’s cool or clever, but because it condenses what a healthy percentage of Joe Popcorn types have been saying about it when they ponder the ads and the general rep. I’ve got the screener and have watched it four times, but I’m still planning to see it again in IMAX at the AMC Century 15. Just one more time for the heavy impact effect with Ryuichi Sakomoto‘s orchestral chords vibrating my ribs and organs.

HBO is airing The Godfather Saga, which is basically a commercial-free version of what was titled The Godfather Saga when it originally aired on network television in 1977, on 1.23. The 434-minute epic (a sequential telling of the Godfather tale ending with lonely Michael in the shadows outside his Lake Tahoe home, or minus the dubious material contained in The Godfather, Part III) is also streaming on HBO Now. Well, I just watched a portion of it and it looks like shit. They may be claiming it’s streaming in high-def, but it’s not. I know exactly how good this footage can look, being an owner of the restored Blurays of The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II, and what HBO Now is showing isn’t even close. It looks “okay” but at the same time drained and fuzzy and almost VHS-like.

A serious Bluray version needs to be prepared and released. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Posted in August 2011: I remember watching the 434-minute Godfather Saga on NBC some 34 years ago. It played four consecutive nights, and I stopped my life to take part in it. I was like a priest doing vespers. I knew I wasn’t watching a “better” version of the first two Godfather films, and that the Saga was just longer (including 75 minutes of previously un-seen scenes) and chronological, etc. But I loved sinking into the all of it, the sprawl of it.

“Most Americans really don’t like Donald Trump,” reports fivethirytyeight‘s Nate Silver, the respected guru of election analysis, in a 1.18 post. “[Despite] Rupert Murdoch’s assertion about Trump having crossover appeal, Trump is extraordinarily unpopular with independent voters and Democrats. Gallup polling conducted over the past six weeks found Trump with a minus 27 net favorability rating among independent voters, and a minus 70 net rating among Democrats; both marks are easily the worst in the GOP field. (Trump also has less-than-spectacular favorable ratings among his fellow Republicans.) As an aside, the only candidate in either party with a positive net favorability rating is…Bernie Sanders.”

Why do poor, underclass people or those of limited means snort coke, shoot heroin, become alcoholics and smoke cigarettes? Because they’re fully convinced things won’t get any better, because they want relief from the pain, and because they believe that “brief vacations” are worth the expense because at least they deliver that thing. I can remember feeling so down and despairing (in late ’79) that I briefly flirted with the idea of some kind of opiate release. I flirted with it. I can imagine being in such a bad place that I might do more than that if there was no let-up for months or years on end.