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Cheers and salutations to The Playlist‘s Jessica Kiang and Oliver Lyttleton for having posted the most comprehensive list of 2016 films that I’ve seen anywhere. I’ve been updating my own 2016 rundown (the most recent re-edit appeared on 12.30) so I’ve isolated 31 of Kiang and Lyttleton’s titles that I’ve previously ignored. Several are intriguing; about half seem minor-ish or less than fully wowser but let’s not pre-judge. I’ve listed them in order of highest HE interest. All synopses written by Kiang/Lyttleton. A reposting of most recent 2016 summary follows:

The Salesman (d: Asghar Farhadi) Cast: Sahahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti. Synopsis: Two actors perform in Arthur Miller‘s Death Of A Salesman.

The Discovery (d: Charlie McDowell) Cast: Rooney Mara, Nicholas Hoult. Synopsis: A love story set a year after the existence of the afterlife has been scientifically proven.

American Pastoral (d: Ewan MacGregor). Cast: Ewan MacGregor, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, Uzo Aduba, Rupert Evans, Molly Parker, David Strathairn. Synopsis: Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Philip Roth, this is the story of Seymour “The Swede” Lvov, a successful businessman, former high-school sports star and scion of a Jewish upper-middle New Jersey family, whose life gradually disintegrates in the politically turbulent 1960s.

Loving (d: Jeff Nichols) Cast: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Michael Shannon, Marton Csokas, Nick Kroll. Synopsis: The true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958, and then exiled from the state for the crime of getting married, and their nine-year fight to be able to return home as a family. 

Salt And Fire (d: Werner Herzog) Cast: Michael Shannon, Gael García Bernal, Werner Herzog, Veronica Ferres. Synopsis: Two men on opposite sides of a clash over an ecological issue in South America must put aside their differences and work together to avoid disaster when a nearby volcano presents eruption signals.

Julieta (d: Pedro Almodóvar). Cast: Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Inma Cuesta, Rossy de Palma, Nathalie Poza. Synopsis: The life of the titular woman, told between two time periods, 2015 and 1985.

Jackie (d: Pablo Larraín) Cast: Natalie Portman, Greta Gerwig, Peter Sarsgaard, John Hurt, Max Casella. Synopsis: The story of Jackie Kennedy in the first days following the assassination of JFK.

Certain Women (d: Kelly Reichardt) Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, Jared Harris. Synopsis: The story of the intersecting lives of three women in present-day Montana.

The Neon Demon (d: Nicolas Winding Refn) Cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcoate, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks. Synopsis: An up-and-coming model in Los Angeles becomes prey for a gang of beauty-obsessed peers who wish to drain her of her vitality and beauty.

20th Century Women (d: Mike Mills) Cast: Elle Fanning, Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Alia Shawkat. Synopsis: A story of three generations of very different women living in 1970’s Santa Barbara.

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James “Jimmy” Shaw, Jr., a moron, posted this accident video on his Facebook page two days ago. Carman Tse posted it a couple of hours ago on laist. It happened just over a year ago on the Angeles Crest Highway. Who speeds through a tunnel without knowing what the road will do once the tunnel ends? Shaw lucked out but what an asshole.

The Golden Globe Awards are happening Sunday at 5 pm Pacific. Predicting the final preferences of those 93 Hollywood Foreign Press Association members is, of course, lacking in dignity. Plus it lends an aura of unwarranted respect. But this is the world I live in and the business I’ve chosen so here we go:

Best Motion Picture — Drama: Carol, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Room, Spotlight. HE prediction: Spotlight. If A Big Surprise Happens: Won’t happen.

Best Director — Motion Picture: Todd Haynes, Carol; Alejandro G. Iñárritu, The Revenant; Tom McCarthy, Spotlight; George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road; Ridley Scott, The Martian. HE prediction: George Miller or Tom McCarthy — can’t decide. If A Big Surprise Happens: Ridley Scott.

Best Performance by a Motion Picture Actor — Drama: Bryan Cranston, Trumbo; Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant; Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs; Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl; Will Smith, Concussion. HE prediction: Leonardo Liver-Eatin’ DiCaprio. (Note: Jeremiah Johnson, the rugged outdoorsman portrayed by Robert Redford in that 1972 Sydney Pollack film, was famously nicknamed “Liver-Eating Johnson.”) If A Big Surprise Happens: Bryan Cranston.

Best Performance by a Motion Picture Actress — Drama: Cate Blanchett, Carol; Brie Larson, Room; Rooney Mara, Carol; Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn; Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl. HE prediction: Saoirse Ronan. If A Mild Surprise Happens: Brie Larson, but I’m sensing that the whole Room thing is deflating.

Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy: The Big Short, Joy, The Martian, Spy, Trainwreck. HE favorite: Trainwreck. HE prediction: The Big Short IF that film’s gaining momentum managed to penetrate the HFPA membrane. Almost As Likely: The Martian. although a rescue drama peppered with humor is most assuredly not a comedy.

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Los Angeles has been waiting for months for the current El Nino rains, which will last until Friday and are expected to deliver about three inches. More of this discomfort, please. Local news channels, of course, need to try and scare people. If they don’t do this nobody will watch. And so they’re talking about mudslides and anything else they can think of that will darken the picture.

I’m with the weepers. The rightwight gun culture is completely pathetic and sickening. The N.Y. Daily News editors have my complete respect and allegiance. Here’s hoping that a gun loon asks a question of President Obama and Anderson Cooper during CNN’s Town Hall on guns, airing Thursday at 5 pm Pacific. Gun culture is (a) 40% fear of the flanking, outnumbering and marginalization of rural conservative white-man culture, (b) 35% small penises and (c) 25% romantic attachment to the American legend of the solitary gunslinging stud (i.e., a lot of powerless pot-bellied white guys who want to be Alan Ladd in Shane).

This on-target Martian commentary is arriving a little late. The Honest Trailer guys always wait until a film has been out a fairly long while…right? They never seem to post when a film is fresh and alive in the conversation — always when it’s all but played out. The Martian opened on 10.2. If the Honest Trailer guys had any balls they would have posted by early to mid November.

http://11foot8.com/, a site run by Jurgen Henn, documents the dozens of truck-top shavings and decapitations that have occured due to an especially low train-track bridge in Durham, North Carolina — a clearance of 11 feet, 8 inches. Here’s the official YouTube page.

We’ve seen at least one previous teaser for Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash. I wasn’t all that stirred before but now I am. The perverse erotic thriller premiered last September at the Venice Film Festival but won’t open stateside until 5.13.16. (It popped commercially in Italy last November and will arrive in English theatres on 2.12 — maybe I’ll be able to buy a Bluray soon.) Tilda Swinton as Romy Schneider and Matthias Schoenaerts as Alain Delon; costarring Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson.

Last night I attended a reception for Trumbo star and Best Actor contender Bryan Cranston. It happened at the Ross house, a spacious, overwhelmingly swanky abode located high above Laurel Canyon (2155 Mount Olympus Drive). The party followed a screening of Jay Roach‘s film, which began at 7:30 pm. Cranston, who looked a good 20 years younger and a whole lot healthier than he does in his Dalton Trumbo guise, was gracious and friendly to all. The film played as well as it did when I caught it last September in Toronto. “There’s nothing wrong with being an intelligent, pruned-down, HBO-level biopic — an above-average portrait of the Hollywood blacklist era, and a better-than-decent capturing of one the most gifted and industrious blacklisted screenwriters ever. A moustachioed, sandpaper-voiced Cranston portrays the stalwart titular hero; I felt completely at home with the guy. Trumbo was one of the most gifted wordsmiths in Hollywood history — a winner of two screenwriting Oscars (Roman Holiday, The Brave One) during his under-wraps period, and also the author of A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Cowboy, Spartacus, Exodus, Lonely Are The Brave.”

Trumbo director Jay Roach, star Bryan Cranston — Monday, 1.4, 9:45 pm.

From McCabe and Mrs. Miller‘s Wikipedia page: “Robert Altman‘s film was originally called The Presbyterian Church Wager, after a bet placed among the church’s few attendees about whether McCabe would survive his refusal of the offer to buy his property. Altman reported that an official in the Presbyterian Church called Warner Brothers to complain about having its church mentioned in a film about brothels and gambling. The complaint prompted a name change to John Mac Cabe but it was finally released as McCabe & Mrs. Miller.”

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This morning Hollywood Reporter award-season analyst Scott Feinberg offered five suggestions that would make the Oscar awards “even better” — i.e. less infuriating, less old-fogeyish, a little speedier. Here they are along with my yay-nay remarks:

1. Guarantee 10 best picture nominees culled from two separate periods — January 1st to June 30th and July 1st to year’s end. Right now almost all award-contending films are released after Labor Day, in part because the blogaroonies are often reluctant to favor any award-quality films released in the spring or summer (Ex Machina, Love & Mercy, Mad Max: Fury Road). Feinberg says this would “incentivize studios to release quality films throughout the year, since a movie would have just as much of a shot at being remembered for a best pic nom in March as it would in September.” HE comment: Good idea but how many nominees would come from period #1 and how many from period #2? HE correction: The first period should be from January 1st to August 31st, and the second from Labor Day to New Year’s Eve.

2. Tighten the Academy membership rolls by withholding voting priveleges to members who haven’t worked in ten years. This addresses the same old “get rid of the deadwood” problem that has dogged the Academy for decades. HE reaction: Taking away voting priveleges would be seen as disrespectful or even insulting to veterans. Two or three years ago I suggested that all members should be allowed to vote, but that ballots should be weighted based upon work history. If a member has worked within the past decade, he/she gets three points per vote. If he/she hasn’t worked in over a decade but less than 20 years ago, he/she gets two points per vote. If a member is a major-league dinosaur and hasn’t worked in over 20 years, he/she gets one point ver vote.

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Has there been a foreign-language film more praised by American critics and industry groups than Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul? 11 critics groups have honored this narrowly focused but hugely unsettling Holocaust flick as 2016’s finest foreign language entry, and general expectations are that more honors are likely. It has a 93% and 89% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively. On 12.18 The Guardian‘s Andrew Pulver asserted that Saul was the flat-out best of the year. Before I saw it last May in Cannes my attitude was “another one?” But Saul flattened me. It’s a mind-blower, a groundbreaker. Everyone recognizes this.

Except, to go by recent scuttlebutt, the Academy’s Foreign Language general committee, which numbers 300 or thereabouts. The rumor is that in mid-December the general committee declined to include Son of Saul on their short list of contenders, and that it had to be “saved” by Mark Johnson‘s executive committee (numbering 20), which added Saul and two others film to the general committee’s short list of 6 for a grand total of 9.

Two well-placed sources — Johnson along with Sony Pictures Classic co-president Tom Bernard — have cast doubt upon this story. Bernard, whose company is distributing Son of Saul, offered a four-word reply: “Don’t fall for rumors.” Johnson, who is obliged to respect the confidentiality of the process, says the following: “I guarantee you nobody actually knows which ones we added. I’ve heard all kinds of speculation. Trust me, nobody knows, and I would be very suspicious of whoever was talking to you last night.”

Johnson would only confirm that, per custom, three 2015 foreign language films were added by the executive committee to the short list of 6.

Johnson emphasizes that the general committee, of which he is also a member in addition to his executive committee duties, “saw 80 movies this year in a period of just over two months,” and that “we finished our screenings in mid-December.”

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