From Scott Feinberg‘s 1.28 Oscars Op-Ed — “Why Surprise Nominee Andrea Riseborough Is Unlikely to Face Sanctions for Unusual Campaign“:

“I don’t see how the Academy can penalize Andrea Riseborough because her friends and supporters have chosen to utilize [social media] platforms to champion a film or performance, especially when there is no evidence that they disparaged anyone else in the process. In the United States of America, we call this ‘free speech.’

“And to me, it’s particularly understandable why Riseborough’s friends and supporters adopted this approach. All of her higher-profile competitors who ended up not nominated on Tuesday — including Jessica Chastain for The Good Nurse (Netflix), Olivia Colman for Empire of Light (Searchlight), Viola Davis for The Woman King (Sony), Danielle Deadwyler for Till (UAR), Jennifer Lawrence for Causeway (Apple), Rooney Mara for Women Talking (UAR), Margot Robbie for Babylon (Paramount), Anya Taylor-Joy for The Menu (Searchlight) and Emma Thompson for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Searchlight) — had way more money spent on their behalf by the studios distributing their films.

“Riseborough’s friends and supporters had to act scrappier because they, unlike their competitors, didn’t have the resources NOT to.

“Christina Ricci: ‘So it’s only the films and actors that can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition? Feels elitist and exclusive and frankly very backward to me.’

“But beyond that, I think that the Academy should show a little faith in its own members. Riseborough’s friends and supporters didn’t have some magical potion that compelled other Academy members to vote for something, in the privacy of their own homes, that they didn’t actually like. They just mobilized voters to watch the movie so that they could, well, consider the performance at the center of it. And apparently, once voters did, they — like the critics whose raves propelled To Leslie to a 97 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes — were sold.”

Ringo Starr‘s version of Buck Owens‘ “Act Scrappier” is not purchasable, and is not on YouTube or Spotify.

Tom Verlaine, the Television singer-guitarist and all-around antiheroic late ‘70s punk icon, has passed at the definitely-too-young age of 73 — I’m sorry.

I saw Television play somewhere in Manhattan in the winter or spring of ’77. You might assume that the venue was CBGB, where I saw Patti Smith and Wendy O. Williams perform, but I honestly can’t remember. (I’ve actually seen Smith perform four times — CBGB, Westport Country Playhouse, Paris, L.A.’s Roxy). I felt throttled by Television’s punk metallic whateverism, but they were also the first band that made me feel like I’d somehow missed something, like I already was behind the times.

I bought “Marquee Moon“, but I didn’t like it enough to buy “Adventure“. I dropped out.

This morning’s “Riseborough Convulsions” comment thread turned into a pretty great boxing match — sensible, fair-minded folk vs. woke banshee Torquemadas.

And by the way, the fact that in voting for the Oscar nominations, Academy voters didn’t automatically default to Till Danielle Deadwyler (completely deserving) and Viola Davis (less so). Deadwyler aside they seemed to go more for merit than equity. This suggests that the French terror climate, which was going full guillotine two or three years ago, is gradually ebbing.

HE: “That’s not to say that Deadwyler wasn’t excellent in Till…she absolutely was and certainly merited a nomination, and probably would’ve landed one if only Michelle Williams had come to her senses and realized that her Fabelmans character (‘Ma Spielberg’) is an eccentric supporting character.”

Friendo: “Deadwyler’s performance in Till is good but overrated. There’s something too stentorian about it. And you, my friend, have seriously underrated Riseborough’s performance and To Leslie itself. You’ve said that you don’t like to spend two hours with that kind of character. But with all due respect, I don’t fully understand that, or at all chime with it.”

HE: “In Tender Mercies Robert Duvall does four or five minutes of drunken depravity and 110 or 115 minutes of gradual recovery. In To Leslie, Riseborough does a FULL HOUR’s worth of drunken depravity and then 45 or 50 minutes of gradual recovery. We get the depravity, guys! It’s a skipping vinyl record. What do we derive from an hour of depravity that we wouldn’t get just as fully from, say, 5, 10 or 15 minutes of the stuff? Enough already.”

Friendo: “Nope. Being a depraved drunk is much more dramatically interesting than being a pious person in recovery. Tender Mercies is, and always will be, a watchable but not ultimately all that interesting or even moving a film. It’s an austere art Hallmark card. I worship Robert Duvall but would take The Apostle a thousand times over Tender Mercies. The piety of that movie is precisely that we don’t see his character, Mac Sledge, drunk enough. That’s why Tender Mercies is the Oscar winner as glorified Sunday-school lesson.

HE: “I don’t like pious Christians either, but I felt safe and nurtured and taken care of by Tender Mercies. Andrea Riseborough’s performance, on the other hand, was a barefoot tour through Dante’s Inferno. Thanks but no thanks! I know ALL about being a drunk, thanks. Lessons from my father as well as own vodka-and-lemonade experiences from the early to mid ’90s.”

Today’s (9.28) discussion explored the woke pushback (i.e., Clayton Davis, Matt Belloni, Chinonye Chukwu and friends) against the surprisingly successful Andrea Riseborough Best Actress campaign, which will reverberate around for a while. I think it’s cool for a “little engine that could” movie to try to promote itself against the big entrenched distributors and their well-funded campaigns. Sasha doesn’t agree but there’s the fun of kicking things around. Here’s the link.

And here, as a bonus, is a 2.23.23 chat that somehow got lost in the shuffle.

Go straight to the 7:35 mark for the good shit.

If Hollywood Elsewhere had Roger Durling‘s job as director of the Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival, right now I’d be doing everything I could to add Andrea Riseborough to the SBIFF Virtuosos panel. She has to be included…no debate!

The current Virtuosos lineup includes Austin Butler (Elvis), Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), Danielle Deadwyler (Till), Nina Hoss (Tár), Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Jeremy Pope (The Inspection), Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once), and Jeremy Strong (Armageddon Time).

The Academy’s statement, by the way, is merely about straddling the gulf between (a) ass-covering and (b) placating the conversation.

Read Pete Hammond’s excellent “Much Ado About Nothing” assessment.

We’ve all been touched by that haunting Citizen Kane moment when the elderly Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) recalls glimpsing a beautiful young lass in a white dress on the Staten Island ferry. No conversation or eye contact — just a glancing whatever when Bernstein saw her and melted, and then the ferry pulled out and that was it…”I only saw her for one second and she didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”

Being the impressionable type and certainly a lot more impressionable than Bernstein, I’ve experienced several such moments over the decades. Probably dozens. But there was one in particular…oh, man. Early Clinton era, ’93 or ’94…yours truly inside West Hollywood’s Monkey Bar (8225 Beverly Blvd.), a highly magnetized, hard-to-get-into joint that had opened in October ’92 with a general understanding that Jack Nicholson liked to drop by now and then…probably the hottest place in California or maybe even the world that night. How do you calculate this stuff?

And suddenly my gaze fell upon actress Joan Severance, a total smoke show and a reasonably decent actress who was known for Red Shoe Diaries and Lake Consequence…around 35 at the time. Severance had risen from her seat at a well-located table and was staring at something or someone across the room, and my first thought was “she’s standing there because she knows everyone is looking at her and she loves the attention, and who can blame her?”

But my God, the beauty…those eyes, the cheekbones and that mouth, that exquisite jawline and the perfect hair and tanned skin…nothing happened and she certainly didn’t notice my marginal journalistic ass, standing at the bar some 30 or 40 feet away. But here we are 30 years later and this moment is a memory tattoo.

One reason I want to see Frances O’Connor‘s Emily is because of Emma Mackey, who has a bit of that Severance thing going on. She plays the titular role of “Wuthering Heights” author Emily Bronte.