I have a 10:45 am appointment at the Norwalk DMV (new license and plates), and I’m chilling in a nearby Starbucks.  “Chilling” isn’t actually the word due to a  boom-box couple sitting 15 feet away.  They’re broadcasting (i.e., shouting, bellowing) their conversation, and every customer has no choice but to listen to the dude, who sounds exactly like Delroy Lindo as he turns on the charm.  The Delilah he’s flirting with is no broadcasting slouch herself.  They’re oblivious to the fact that the conversational noise they’re making is as distracting (and certainly as annoying) as a barking dog.  It all comes down to how you were raised.  If you come from a loud family, you’re going to follow suit as an adult.

Hearty congrats to Adam McKay (writer), Steven San Miguel (narrator), Bruce Herrman (editor) and Staci Roberts-Steele (producer).

Earlier today The View;s Whoopi Goldberg corrected a Daily Beast film reporter (i.e., the Baltimore-based Kyndall Cunningham) for saying she wore a “distracting fat suit” in Till.

I saw Till yesterday afternoon, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Whoopi looks seriously overweight. But not because of a fat suit. Whoopi’s shape is authentically her own.

“I have to say something because there was a young lady who writes for one of the magazines, and she was distracted by my fat suit in her review,” Goldberg said on Monday’s View. “Now, and I’m just going to say this. I don’t really care how you felt about the movie, but you should know that was not a fat suit.”

If a white male film critic had complained about Whoopi’s fictitious fat suit rather than Cunningham, he would be out of a job as we speak. If a white female critic had been the culprit, she would be in trouble but possibly still employed. Cunningham is safe due to being Black and a total wokester — political protection at its most thorough and fortified.

Goldberg to Cunningham: “I assume you don’t watch the show or you would have known that that was not a fat suit, but I just want to let you know that it’s okay not to be a fan of a movie, but you want to leave people’s looks out. So just comment on the acting, and if you have a question, ask somebody because I’m sure you didn’t mean to be demeaning.”

.@WhoopiGoldberg speaks on the importance of her film 'Till,' which premiered at New York Film Festival, and she addresses a claim that she wore a fat suit in the film.

"You should know that was not a fat suit," she says. "Just comment on the acting." https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/V7ULf3c8Pi

— The View (@TheView) October 3, 2022

The two suffering angels of the Best Actress race are Blonde‘s Ana de Armas and Till‘s Danielle Deadwyler. Both are based on real-life figures who lived 60-plus years ago — AdA’s Marilyn Monroe and Deadwyler’s Mamie Till.

It seems highly likely that both will be nominated but who knows? Perhaps voters will conclude that one suffering angel is enough.

Many dislike Blonde but everyone admires Ana de Armas’ lead performance — nobody’s blaming her for what they don’t like about Andrew Dominik‘s film. Methinks that many Academy members of color will vote to nominate Deadwyler as well as Michelle Yeoh, the likely Best Actress nominee from Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I can’t gauge who gives the most emotionally live-wire performance between them, but ethnic voters will probably regard them in a similar light (yay, team).

Who are the most likely contenders outside of these two or three? I’m presuming it’ll be The Fablemans‘ Michelle Williams, Cate Blanchett‘s Lydia Tar in Todd Field‘s TAR and Empire of Light‘s Olivia Colman.

That means, if I’m correct, that the following performances are looking at an uphill situation: The Woman King‘s Viola Davis, Babylon‘s Margot Robbie, She Said‘s Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande‘s Emma Thompson, The Wonder‘s Florence Pugh.

In sum, the six hottest contenders are Danielle Deadwater, Ana de Armas, Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Williams, Cate Blanchett and Olivia Colman.

HE faves, in this order: Cate Blanchett, Olivia Colman, Danielle Deadwyler, Ana de Armas, Michelle Yeoh. I haven’t seen The Fablemans.

In the wake of Saturday’s surprise screening of Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith‘s Emancipation, Apple has announced that the Civil War-era drama will open in theatres on Friday, 12.2, and begin streaming on Friday, 12.9.

Smith slapping Chris Rock on the Oscar stage several months ago was “bad form,” obviously, but only in a performative or ceremonial sense. Superficially uncool but at the same time revelatory.

For what really happened was that Smith, after pretending to be Mr. Chuckly Happyvibe for over three decades, showed us who he really was deep down — an angry, abused dude from West Philadelphia who was ready for violence at a moment’s notice. And what’s wrong with that? It’s who he is, and he finally broke through and told us that. Don’t we value honesty and confession?

One significant revealing by the Emancipation teaser is that apart from the opening shot (green leaf, red blood), the suggestion is that the film is largely in black-and-white with faint hints of desaturated color.

I’m sorry that Bros flopped — perhaps an understandable thing from a Joe Popcorn perspective but a deeply wounding thing from the viewpoint of the Movie Godz, given the generally excellent craft levels — tight script construction, naturalistic acting, revelatory writing, etc.

All I can figure is that people know Billy Eichner from Billy on the Street and Parks and Recreation, and they just didn’t want to watch him in flagrante delicto.

Over the last 20-plus years Average Joes and Janes have gone through a sea-change in their attitudes about gay people, but generally speaking they don’t want to pay $16 at the megaplexes to watch certain bearded guys doing certain things bare-assed.

Last weekend Bros producer Judd Apatow told CNN’s Chris Wallace that the gay community has been “underserved.” Did he mean in terms of sex scenes featuring bearded guys or hunky good looking ones like Luke Macfarlane? No offense and due respect but given what happened last weekend, the gay community should probably get accustomed to being “underserved” in this regard.

It probably wouid have been more comprehensive to say to Wallace that over the last 20 or 30 years the gay community has been slavishly catered to by Hollywood six ways from Sunday, and particularly by way of emotional investments in films and TV series, general glamorizing, image enhancements and political alignments.

Apatow’s response to Wallace about his preference for “just funny”, or the stuff that many comedies put into their first halves, because he lives an overworked and over-stressed life…that was funny.

Apatow also mentioned how his two daughters, Maude and Iris, never let him soak in any sort of satisfaction when a civilian compliment comes along. When some random passerby praises Apatow for one of his comedies, say, “as soon as he’s out of earshot they’ll make fun of that person for, like, ten minutes.”

…how pronounced are the reactions? Nobody is mild about it — it’s a hate-or-worship thing.

For a gripping account of the ghastly 1955 murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, and the despicable perversion of justice that followed, Stanley Nelson and Marcia A. Smith‘s The Murder of Emmett Till, a 2003 American Experience doc, is your best bet.

Having just seen and been moved by Chinonye Chukwu‘s Till (UA Releasing, 10.14), I’m actually planning to rewatch the PBS doc.

Partly (and I don’t mean this in a naysaying sense) because Till is not a tightly focused, chapter-and-verse procedural about the tragic facts, and that’s what I, a shameless just-the-facts type, more or less wanted the whole time.

Which is not to say Till is a problem film — it’s not. It’s just that it’s strictly focused on the agonizing ordeal of Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler), and about the dignity and resolve that this half-broken woman summoned in order to bring about a form of justice for her son.

Not legal justice, of course — not in the Jim Crow south of the mid ’50s. But the justice of history and all the facts being known.

Co-written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu, Till recounts the basics of Emmett’s Chicago life (sharing a home with Mamie, his colorful personality and natty clothing) before his visit to Money in late August of ’55, and how his expression of hormonal arousal (a wolf whistle) directed at Carolyn Bryant, a married 21 year-old storekeep, led to his killing by her husband and half-brother because he’d violated a sexual racial barrier.

The heart of the film is how Mamie dealt with this horrible occurence, and particularly her decision to reveal her son’s mutilated, bloated, bashed-in head to the world by opening the casket lid during his Chicago funeral. This was followed by her Mississippi testimony at the trial of his killers.

Till’s murder is aurally suggested but mercifully not shown.

Till is sad and penetrating and well acted up and down, but award-season-wise it’s mainly an acting showcase vehicle for the gifted Deadwyler, who will obviously be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. She channels three simultaneous currents — devotion, devastation, steel.

Till is deeply appalling and sadly factual. But it’s not a satisfying story because the actual story itself was unsatisfying. Not only were the bad guys not convicted but they even pocketed a fat fee when they admitted to killing Emmett in a Look magazine article.

If you want the kind of emotional satisfaction that results when the bad guys pay for their foul deeds, re-watch the fictional Mississippi Burning. But if you want to submit to a wowser, soul-deep lead performance, see Till.