And the show starts in two hours…

“Jeff and Sasha delve into two newish streaming films — Chloe Domont‘s Fair Play (Netflix), a story about a financial-realm power couple (Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich) whose relationship falls apart when the woman is promoted over the dude, and Maggie Betz‘s The Burial (Amazon), a fact-based story about a scrappy lawyer, Willie Gary (Jamie Foxx), taking on a powerful corporation. It costars Tommy Lee Jones.

We also kick up the Killers of the Flower Moon dust, and particularly explore the potential Oscar fate of Lily Gladstone.

Here’s the link.

“American Fiction” (Amazon MGM, 12.15) is simply brilliant – a hilarious and incredibly intelligent crowd-pleaser. I may be jumping the gun a bit, but it's taking the top spot in my Best Picture rankings for the Oscars. #AmericanFiction #mff2023 pic.twitter.com/GFGcPlxWeN

— Mark Johnson @ Middleburg Film Festival (@MarkLikesMovies) October 21, 2023

If you have compassionate feelings about the current plight of God knows how many tens of thousands of Gaza residents and the likelihood that many of them will be killed when Israeli troops finally invade…if you recognize that the number of hardcore Hamas cadres who murdered 1400 Jews on 10.7 and who absolutely have to pay the price for this genocide…when you allow that these fanatics almost certainly represent a modest fraction of the total Gaza population…there has to be some way of saying “don’t slaughter innocent Gaza residents” without sounding like an anti-Semite…there has to be some way to do this.

This is apparently what Dave Chappelle tried to say in Boston the other night, but he’s being attacked for anti-Semitism regardless.

The problem this guy is talking about is called “sound attenuation” or “acoustic attenuation” (same shit).

@smunozmovies No disrespect to the Swifties but this had to be said #killersoftheflowermoon #scorsese #movietheater #swifties #erastour ♬ original sound – Sam | Movie Talk

From Anthony Lane’s 10.19 review of Killers of the Flower Moon, in which he expresses a preference for David Grann’s 2017 book rather than Martin Scorsese’s just-released film:

I have never forgotten the pain that I felt 15 years ago when an ex-girlfriend told me I wasn’t as slim as I had been a year or two earlier, and that I needed to drop around 10 pounds.

Nothing hurts like this. It’s agony — it cripples your very soul. Which is why there can be no forgiving Emily Blunt for what she said 11 years ago about that fat waitress. Apologies are meaningless at this stage. She needs to be cancelled permanently. Kidding.

I’m sorry but lime green walls, gold window curtains, midnight blue bed boards, orange lampshades and light teal padded benches? The Fifth Avenue Hotel’s interior designer pushes it too far, man.

Boiled down, colleges and universities are “asshole factories…day spas combined with North Korean re-education camps…colleges are the mouth of the river from which all manner of radical left illiberal…yes, illiberal…nonsense flows.”

That’s three hours and 26 minutes, fella…not 225 or three–forty-five.

Killers of the Flower Moon review with @Jerrythekid21 pic.twitter.com/0jIFfRNKsa

— Steven Cheah (@StevenCheah) October 19, 2023

With Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese has made one of the great historical and political dramas and one of the great marriage stories and, in the process, unites it both with his gangster movies and with his religious ones: https://t.co/ZbjpPGsvJU

— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) October 20, 2023

Paul Schrader to Sam Wasson in THR ‘oral history” piece about Morton’s in the ’80s heyday: “It was very relaxed — if you can describe a den of backstabbers and thieves as relaxed.”

The original Morton’s was a truly fascinating Hollywood power restaurant. Eating there on a weeknight in the late spring of 1981 (I was based in NYC but visiting Los Angeles for interviews) was one of the most exciting contact highs I’ve ever experienced, ambiance- and social atmosphere-wise.

Great food, excellent service, nothing but hot shots and cool players, beautiful women at the bar. Sitting at a nice table around 8 pm made you feel as if you were doing something really right in your life, and even that you might somehow live forever. You were right at the nexus of silky, aggressive coolness.

There were no woke Stalinist terror vibes back then…no gender pronouns, no trans stuff. Cool guys dressed like cool guys and various tiers of industry women (actresses, production execs, journalists, screenwriters) were quite fetching and formidable. Diners of all shapes and persuasions and income levels seemed happy, or at least made an effort to convince others that they were. Life felt wonderful in a certain sense.

I took a pretty lady there once in ’93 or ’94, hoping to score and at least get started in that regard. But she found the place intimidating; it creeped her out. So much so that she actually asked me in so many words, “Why did you bring me here?” (Unspoken answer: “Why do you think?”) After that I realized I was dead meat and never called her again.

Launched in 1979 by Peter Morton (co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe), Morton’s lasted much longer than your typical hot industry spot — a phenomenal 28 years. There were two locations at the corner of Melrose and Robertson — the elegant original building at the southwest corner (flush vibes, awesome paintings, darkly lighted) and then the southeast corner location where Cecconi’s currently sits.

The reason I’m mentioning the old Morton’s is that I can’t find a single decent photo of the sumptuous interior or the palm-shrouded exterior…only a couple of shitty, low-rez photos. Odd. I’m presuming that Peter Morton had an iron-clad rule about no paparazzi being allowed on the premises, but why didn’t he have his own photographer take discreet snaps for posterity’s sake?

The two best print articles about the Morton’s glory days of the ’80s and early ’90s were (a) Wasson’s THR piece and (b) Ben Stein‘s “farewell to Morton’s” piece for the N.Y. Times (“Time Runs Out on a Place to See and Be Seen,” 11.25.07).

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Apologies for the cruddy, out-of-focus photo.

Excerpt from Stein’s Times piece:

In the matter of Fargo, I’ve always regarded the awkward Radisson Bar scene between Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) and Mike Yanagita (Steve Park) as kind of an odd “ick.” As in “what’s wrong with this fucking guy? He’s so emotionally anxious and desperate to get laid, and he can’t even play his cards semi-honestly…and he keeps saying ‘oh, noooo.’ Plus he’s lying about his wife having passed from lukemia.”

Time and again I’ve asked myself “why is this bizarre scene even in the film?” It’s obviously not an essential component in the kidnapping plot or Marge’s investigation of same.