Presumably everyone understands that the Oscars were created in 1927 and continue to exist to this day in order to promote the joys of moviegoing. They’re essentially about glamour and celebration and not necessarily the praising of lofty cinematic art (to say the least), and right now the film industry and exhibition in particular really need to be promoted because Joe and Jane Popcorn hate the fact that the Oscars and Hollywood films for the most part have totally gone down the woke rabbit hole.

The plummeting Oscar telecast ratings over the last few years translate into one sentiment and one sentiment only: “We hate you for turning into woke assholes.” There’s no escaping this fact. Award-season films are largely despised and/or ignored by a majority of ticket buyers.

And yet despite all this, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water have connected big-time. If there’s any cultural life or spiritual juice in the moviegoing experience today, it’s because of these two films.

Academy voters know that of the three likeliest Best Picture contenders, only one — Everything Everywhere All At Once — has earned decent theatrical coin ($103.9 million). If it wins Best Picture (which it won’t), it could be said that a populist favorite has prevailed. Except EEAAO is not a populist favorite outside the realm of Millennial and Zoomer taste buds. The fact is that people burdened with a sense of grounded cinematic calculus hate this ludicrous, all-but-impossible-to-follow fantasia by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. It drives them crazy, and the levels of loathing among GenXers and boomers are such that it can’t win. Of this I am dead certain.

This leaves the other two favorites, The Fabelmans and The Banshees of Inisherin, but Academy voters know that both are fairly weak sisters in a theatrical-revenue sense. Banshees has made $24.8 million; The Fablemans currently stands at $17.1 million.

Yes, I know — relatively modest box-office revenues (pre-Oscar) didn’t stop The Hurt Locker from winning six Oscars, but we’re living in desperate, do-or-die times. With the public having turned against Hollywood wokesters and despising their anti-straight-white-guy criteria, the Oscars have no choice but to run in the opposite direction of the infamous Steven Soderbergh Oscar show, which all but killed the brand after airing in April 2021.

The best message that the Oscars can send to the general public, in short, is “yes, of course we get it….we’ve been acting like self-regarding jerks, we’ve woked ourselves to death and you hate us for this…of course you do! We get it! And so, as a way of conveying this understanding, we’re happy to announce that the winner of the 2022 Best Picture Oscar is a film that you guys loved…a well-made, pro-level populist flyboy flick that even the snootiest critics admitted was a rousing, well-produced ride.

For God’s sake, Academy members — wake up by saving the industry and in the process yourselves. Do the right thing by saying the right thing by handing the Best Picture Oscar to one of the two best-loved films of 2022. Don’t go over the cliff like lemmings. Promote, celebrate, embrace.

I’ve never rooted for a movie to win Best Picture as much as Top Gun: Maverick. Probably won’t, but what an awesome moment that’d be at #Oscars. Saved the theater industry, gave it a jolt, unreal production, amazing movie. One of those you feel lucky to have seen in theaters. pic.twitter.com/UpDyPi8g4m

— Jeff D. Lowe (@JeffDLowe) January 6, 2023

Before a few minutes ago I’d never once seen any photos of the normal Marlon Brando around the time of shooting The Godfather. Sans Vito Corleone makeup, I mean. No bulldog jowls, no pencil-thin moustache.

Pics were snapped at the wrap party, which almost certainly happened in Manhattan on the weekend of 7.2.71, 7.3.71 and 7.4.71. (90% of The Godfather was filmed in the New York City region.) Francis Coppola‘s classic gangster flick shot in New York between 3.29.71 (Monday) and 7.2.71 (Friday). Shooting of the Sicily section began in late July and ended on 8.7.71.

Brando had celebrated his 47th birthday on 4.3.71. Vito Corleone was born on one of two dates — 4.29.87 or 12.7.87. The Godfather begins in 1945, when Vito was 58. He died on 7.29.55, at age 68. Not that old.

Bolt from the blue, shocked to the core — Lisa Marie Presley, the singer-songwriter and daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley who attended the Golden Globes two nights ago, is gone. She was 54.

It all happened over the last few hours. Priscilla Presley to People: “It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us. She was the most passionate strong and loving woman I have ever known. We ask for privacy as we try to deal with this profound loss. Thank you for the love and prayers. At this time there will be no further comment.”

“I know that my father would…be proud.” — #LisaMariePresley on “Elvis” at the @ElvisMovie party last night pic.twitter.com/6IaJtOtAUi

— Marc Malkin (@marcmalkin) January 9, 2023

LMP was hospitalized earlier today (1.12.23) following a reported episode of cardiac arrest. EMTs responded to Lisa Marie’s home in Calabasas, California.

What the hell happened? She was relatively young. LMP’s grandmother (Gladys) and father (Elvis) died in their early 40s. Her son Benjamin Keough died by his own hand in 2020. This is so sudden, so bizarre.

Lisa was born in Memphis in 2.1.68, nine months to the day after Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding.

Elvis died in August 1977, making 9-year-old Lisa Marie the joint heir to his estate alongside grandfather Vernon Presley and great-grandmother Minnie Mae Hood Presley. Following their respective deaths in 1979 and 1980, she became the sole heir and also inherited her father’s Graceland residence.

Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in New York City on Wednesday, 11.16.77. That very day I caught an afternoon show at Manhattan’s Ziegfeld theatre, and the instant that John Williams‘ music delivered the big crashing crescendo, concurrent with the appearance of the faded-yellow sandstorm vista in the Sonoran desert, the Ziegfeld’s massive sub-woofer speakers delivered a rib-vibrating whomp. Actually a combination of a whomp and a whoom. It was wonderful.

The shooting of When Harry Met Sally happened in mid to late ’88, when Billy Crystal was just turning 40 and Meg Ryan was 28 or thereabouts. Aline Brosh McKenna‘s Your Place or Mine is from the same romantic hymn book, except the would-be lovers are in their mid 40s — Ashton Kutcher is 44 and Reese Witherspoon is 46. Working from her own script, McKenna is making her directorial debut. She previously wrote The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses and Morning Glory. She knows how to make this kind of material work. The film opens on Netflix on 2.10.23.

If you insist on believing in some kind of sentient, all-seeing, all-knowing entity called “God” then I don’t know what to tell you. Have you ever considered becoming addicted to heroin? It’ll make you feel like Jesus’s son. Kidding.

Okay, let’s hypothesize that “God” is there and, heh-heh, “watching”. On second thought let’s not. Because as Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen said time and again, God doesn’t give a shit about you or your fate or the well-being of your family. Really. It’s not that he’s hostile to you and yours, but that he’s indifferent as to whether you end up rich or struggling or pregnant or dead from Russian shrapnel or whatever. He’s not in this.

Okay, yes — I’ve occasionally thanked God for good fortune or prayed for a fair shake, but it’s not meant with any sincerity. It’s a figure of speech.

I hated, hated, HATED Kelly Fremon Craig‘s The Edge of Seventeen. I’m not saying I’m already planning to get my hate-on for Craig’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate, 4.28), which is based on Judy Blume’s 1970 novel. I haven’t seen it and will naturally wait for a screening, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not feeing the negativity from afar. Because I can.

HE nemesis Benny Safdie plays the father of the lead protagonist, Abby Ryder Fortson‘s “Margaret Simon”. This whets my appetite, of course.

And they threw poor George Harrison into this?

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it’s indifferent.” — Stanley Kubrick, sometime in the mid ’60s.

From HE’s The Edge of Seventeen review, filed on 9.17.16: “In the words of John F. Kennedy, I do not shrink from the occasional responsibility of shitting on a teen-angst dramedy — I welcome it. I was frowning and throwing my hands in the air and exhaling and checking my watch less than five minutes in. Okay, The Edge of Seventeen became somewhat more tolerable during the last third, which is when neurotic characters in movies of this sort begin to fold and weep as they lay their emotional cards on the table. But God, that first hour! And the cliches! It poked and prodded and put me through long stretches of hell.”