Posted on 12.22.22:

In a 12.23 Free Press column by Nellie Bowles, she quotes David Mamet as he explains a renewed passion for cartooning and how he’s otherwise in “retirement” — an apparent allusion to having hung it up as a playwright or screenwriter or novelist. First, writers never retire, and Mamet knows that. And second, the Santa Claus cartoon isn’t that astute. Old-school liberals, centrists, center-rightists and respectable conservatives don’t get blacklisted for “crying” and “shouting.” They sometimes get shunned or cancelled for saying “I haven’t changed but you crazy-fuck lefties have.”

Matt Walsh is being entirely humane and logical here. The fat acceptance and body positivity movements are, at the end of the day, celebrations of lifestyles that lead to shortened lives. Or, put more bluntly, death. The recent passing of Jamie Lopez, 37, says it all.

In Martin Scorsese‘s The Aviator (’04), Cate Blanchett‘s impersonation of Kate Hepburn (that fluttery Bringing Up Baby laugh on the golf course) earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Seven years later Blanchett delivered another based-on performance, a financially fallen woman who was half Ruth Madoff and half Blanche DuBois, in Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine, this time snagging a Best Actress Oscar.

In Todd Field‘s TAR Blanchett plays an obsessive and emotionally ruthless orchestra conductor who gets eaten by cancel culture. It’s almost certainly her grandest and far-reachingest effort, and the first Oscar-heat performance that is entirely Blanchett’s creation — no echoes of perviously celebrated actress or notorious characters. And there’s really no way she doesn’t win her third Oscar for this on 3.12.23.

Partly because Blanchett’s competition is so comparatively underwhelming — nobody else is quite in her class.

Michelle Yeoh will be Best Actress-nominated for Everything Everywhere All at Once, but the film is a groaner, many 40-plus Academy members hate it, and Yeoh’s nomination will essentially be about her ethnicity…be honest. The EEAAO campaign is based on a DEI approval consensus. Ask yourself what the Academy reaction would be if EEAAO wasn’t about an Asian-American family (white folks don’t verse-jump as a rule but imagine it anyway) and if Yeoh’s character was a stressed-out 50something white woman played by, say, Laura Linney. Or by Jamie Lee Curtis with the IRS investigator played by Yeoh. Be honest.

There’s no question that Michelle Williams as the peculiar, emotionally eccentric mother in The Fablemans is a very broad and actressy performance. While Williams may be be nominated, the buzz has fallen away. I really don’t see her winning.

The most that Till‘s Danielle Deadwyler can hope for is a Best Actress nomination, because that’s as far as things will go.

I’ve heard people say that Margot Robbie‘s feisty, outsized performance in Babylon made them recoil, and given the negative reactions to Damien Chazelle‘s 1920s Hollywood epic I wouldn’t be surprised if Robbie is passed over.

Ana de Armas expertly did what she told to do in dramatizing the ache and trauma of Marilyn Monroe‘s sad life, but Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde is too deeply despised.

Viola Davis in The Woman King? No room at the inn.

I’ve been listening to Sarah Polley‘s podcast chat with Megan Daum (“The Unspeakable”). There’s a special focus, of course, on Polley’s Women Talking (UA Releasing, 12.23). Which many will respect but few outside of the feminist #MeToo take-power community is going to love…be honest.

Within its own realm Women Talking is a “respectable” effort, but it’s still a dialogue-driven political piece — a dimly-lighted, dusk-to-dawn discussion among several Mennonite women in a barn, about how they should respond to a series of horrific rapes within their community. The question is “do we stay or do we go?”

The question for critics is “where is the political upside for me if I say I have problems with this?” The answer is there is none, which is why almost all the critics (especially the wokester Branch Davidian types) have completely fallen for Polley’s film while insisting it’s a Best Picture contender

I know what Women Talking is, good and not-so-good, and that it’s aimed at a certain mindset and demographic even. Anyone who says “this film is just wonderful and eloquent and powerful and you simply have to see it”…if that’s all they say, they’re absolutely lying by omission.

From her first professional encounter with callous behavior on Terry Gilliam‘s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (’88), Polley has been very concerned about safety…safety on sets, protection from abusers. This is partly who she is, what she’s experienced…naturally she’s drawing from this well. She’s a serious person and a serious filmmaker.

It’s just that her film didn’t speak to my older-white-dude way of seeing things. It certainly didn’t reach in and touch me. I was checking my watch, waiting for it to end.

Women Talking‘s basic idea is basically “stand up to the pigs…condemn them, abandon them, isolate them.” Agreed! But the idea isn’t that a few sex-starved, cold-blooded Mennonite men are brute beasts, but that the overall patriarchy (straight white men) is to be regarded with extreme suspicion as too many white males seem amoral, heartless and exploitive. They probably need to be fought tooth & nail and perhaps even overthrown.

Last September a friend opined that Polley’s film is “almost comically male-hating.” When the wimpy and wimpering Ben Whishaw is the only male they can trust, you know what Polley is saying…”tearful, guilt-stricken-on-behalf-of-their-gender gay men are cool but forget straight guys!!”

Really? There isn’t one decent straight guy in the community who can be trusted? Not one regular dude who’s disgusted by the rapes and pledges to support the women? Imagine how the film could be spiritually and emotionally opened up, so to speak, if there was such a character. Or if a second straight male were to intrude only to speak skeptically about the assaults and argue against leaving.

Women Talking is oppressive because (a) it’s oxygen-starved and visually claustrophobic, (b) there’s no dramatic tension to speak of because from the perspective of the horribly brutalized victims it’s ludicrous to argue for staying, (c) the characters don’t sound like isolated Mennonites but smart, educated, worldly women playing their idea of isolated Mennonites.

Presumably some HE regulars have seen it and would care to weigh in?

Wednesday night Jody and I were having a light dinner at Terrain, and a guitar lady (late 30s, cute face, pleasant pipes) was singing the usual pop Christmas tunes.

But we were hearing too many kid-level songs (“Jingle Bells,” “Frosty the Snowman”), so I asked the waitress if the troubadour would consider something a little more adult-sounding. Like, say, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” — a once popular, more recently derided 1944 holiday tune about a hound’s crude attempt at seduction. Icky, yes, but at least an improvement over “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Our cheerful server pretended to be horrified — “Oh, she can’t sing that! Somebody’ll get mad.” Could you ask her to sing it anyway? I asked. Maybe she’ll brave it? The waitress said she’d pass along our request. Deaf ears. The thought passed.

But we ran into the singer as we were leaving and mentioned our interest in “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and to our surprise she said she was a fan and would’ve absolutely sung it, no prob. She seemed to simply like the idea of a Christmas holiday tune about possibly getting poked, and didn’t care about the 21st Century Harvey Weinstein creepitude**.

I’d forgotten that Alvin Lee, the fastest guitarist in the west, died in 2013 at age 68. Martin Scorsese was one of the camera guys filming this legendary Woodstock performance.

**

Word’s out, writing’s on the wall, all over but the shouting…we all love the smell of napalm in the morning.