Then again 79% isn’t bad for a three-hour Japanese “Uncle Vanya” film about driving around in a red Saab and smoking a mountain of cigarettes. Four out of five popcorn-inhalers aren’t complaining.

Sam Loomis (John Gavin) and the Pheonix-residing Crane sisters (Janet Leigh‘s Marion and Vera Miles‘ Lila) were, of course, never in the same room together. But once you get past this and after you contemplate the fact that Lila has her palm pressed against Sam’s rib cage, you immediately consider the possibilities.

Could straight-arrow Sam have been two-timing Marion with a concurrent affair with Lila? No — that would have been too much, too reckless, too thoughtless for a financially pressed owner of a hardware store.

But after Norman Bates was arrested for the murder of Marion and Martin Balsam‘s Arbogast and the whole thing had been put to bed, could Sam and Lila have gradually become lovers? As a way of embracing life and renouncing death? This, to me, seems conceivable.

I always assumed that Peter Bogdanovich falling in love with and marrying Louise Stratten, the younger sister of his murdered lover Dorothy Stratten…I always thought he was motivated by the same spirit of renunciation and renewal — an attempt to replace the trauma of murder with the bloom of fresh love.

Contrary to the Getty Images caption, the woman with Nightmare Alley director-cowriter Guillermo del Toro at today’s Oscar Nominees Luncheon is not a “guest.”‘ She’s GDT’s wife and Nightmare Alley co-author Kim Morgan.

Earlier today HE reader “Mike” complained about my Santa Barbara Film Festival doings thus far. “Why the obsession with the festival’s back-slapping, glad-handing interview sidebars?,” he wrote. “What about the bread and butter? It’s a film festival, for Christ’s sake. Surely it’s not hard to see a couple a day and drop a few comments. What are your favorites so far?”

HE to “Mike”: “The back-slapping, glad-handing interviews ARE the festival’s bread-and-butter. Bringing brand-name celebs to town in the heat of Oscar season is what the SBIFF does — what it’s famous for.

“The films that show at SBIFF are always curated with care — Roger Durling and his staff do the best they can, and most are quality-level as far as it goes — but for various reasons the SBIFF never gets the pick of the litter. You would hope that they’d screen some of the more interesting Sundance titles, but they never do (and not for lack of trying).

Every so often there’s an interesting doc or odd foreign feature in the lineup. I take them as they come.”

Right now I’m watching Neil LaBute‘s House of Darkness, an eerie seduction drama with Justin Long and Kate Bosworth. Synopsis: “A man drives a woman home after they meet over drinks in a local bar. When she invites him into her home for a nightcap, the evening doesn’t follow the familiar path toward seduction.”

Later this week I’ll catch Justin Kurzel‘s Nitram, a drama based on the saga of Australian mass murderer Martin Bryant. Costarring Caleb Landry Jones, Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia,

Nitram had its big premiere at last July’s Cannes Film Festival; Jones won the Best Actor award. Pic received a limited theatrical release in Australia last September.

“It was one of those surreal moments when light entertainment mugs history. Vladimir Putin crooned the song ‘Blueberry Hill at a children’s charity benefit in St Petersburg in 2010, as a crowd of celebrities — including Sharon Stone, Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Gérard Depardieu, Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci – clapped along like they were in kindergarten.

“When the politician reeled off the opening line — ‘I found my thrill’ — thoughts of the Georgian invasion or the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko didn’t seem to be urgently popping into anyone’s head. Knowing what we know now, the spectacle plays more like Dr. Evil’s rendition of ‘Just the Two of Us’ but far less funny.” — from “Putin’s Hollywood pals – the stars who snuggled up to the Russian dictator,” a 3.7.22 Guardian piece by Phil Hoad.

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone is asking her readers to pick preferences among the ten Best Picture nominees. She’s asked me to ask the HE community to join in. Right now Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog seems to be leading, she says.

If you believe in fairies and if you care about doing your part to halt the scourge of homosexual panic in 21st Century cinema, please vote now. Within the realm of this small but culturally significant poll, only YOU can stop The Power of the Dog.

This is arguably the best Jake Tapper editorial piece he’s ever written and composed — Putin-the-brilliant-murderer has been coddled and approved of or certainly not strongly challenged by U.S. Presidents all along… Clinton, Dubya, to some extent Obama, and certainly Trump–nuts. They all looked the other way.

YouTube commenter: “I had no idea just how complicit the West had been in all of this until now. Now the world is reaping what it sowed, just like it did in 1939 after years of appeasing and half-trusting the word of an autocrat with a Charlie Chaplin mustache. It’s fairly trite to reference him at this point, but just read a little history on the Third Reich and the foreign policy taken with them and it is hauntingly familiar.”

For nearly three decades (all through the ’90s, aughts and most of the teens) the Spirit Awards were the Indie Oscars, and were held the day before the actual Oscars in that big, white, champagne-fizzy tent on the beach. And it was cool and fun…humor, warmth, good vibes. And we all basked in that (including yours truly).

And then two or three years ago the woke virus began to seep into the industry bloodstream and the Spirits began to get a little obsessive, sinking deeper and deeper into the theology of “diminish if not eliminate the toxic straight white guy power structure” and “it’s our turn”.

And then Covid hit and the Spirit gang decided to schedule the show much earlier than the usual Oscar weekend and….wait, what?

I’m covering the Santa Barbara Film Festival and had honestly forgotten the Spirits were even happening today. Was anyone paying attention? Did anyone watch? Impressions of any kind?

Congrats to HE’s own Simon Rex for winning the Best Actor trophy, and to Maggie Gyllenhaal (Best Director, Best Screenplay) and The Lost Daughter (Best Feature) and Zola lead Taylor Paige (Best Actress), etc. HE approved of Zola from the get-go. I also respected The Lost Daughter apart from the doll thing.

Spirit Award voters to the rest of the world: “We loved The Lost Daughter‘s stolen doll thing! It worked for us! And eff your negativity if it didn’t rub you the right way!”

A friend called a couple of hours ago to complain about how choked with wokeness the show seemed to be…”the woke-iest awards show that has ever happened…it was totally immersed in the party line…mostly Planet Uranus.”

“But what about Simon Rex winning?,” I argued. “He’s not a wokester.”

Friend: “He won because he played a toxic, bottom-of-the-barrel white guy asshole…they voted for him as a way of saying ‘we’ll vote for a white actor if he plays a piece of shit, which at least offers welcome instruction.'”

Best Feature — The Lost Daughter
Best Male Lead — Simon Rex, Red Rocket
Best Female Lead — Taylour Paige, Zola
Best Supporting Female – Ruth Negga, Passing
Best Supporting Male — Troy Kotsur, CODA
Best Director – Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter
Best International Film — Drive My Red Saab While Chain-Smoking Cigarettes
Best Screenplay — Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter
Best Cinematography — Passing
Best Editing — Zola
Best First Screenplay – Pig

Who better to cover the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s first-ever animation panel than a columnist who used to watch and even admire certain Jeffrey Katzenberg-sired animated features when the boys were young in the ‘90s, but has since avoided animation like the plague?

I have to say that I feel a tiny bit differently after watching and listening to the five Oscar-nominated animation hotshots who showed up today.

I will always feel vaguely annoyed or tortured by family-friendly animation features but I respect the semblance of soul and obviously serious craft that went into Encanto, Flee, Luca, The Mitchell’s vs. the Machines and Raya and the Last Dragon.

And having now spent a little time with the people who respectively created (or co-created) these films — Charise Castro Smith, Charlotte de la Gournerie, Enrico Casarosa, Mike Rianda and Jon Hall — I can honestly call myself an admirer.

Hall (ginger-haired, glasses) and Rianda (big personality, gray-haired) are the nerdy-looking guys on the right. Charlotte de la Gournerie is the blonde with the high-heeled sandals and the curly frizzy hair, Castro Smith is the short-statured brunette with the jean jacket, and Casarosa is the slender, non-nerdy guy with the big ears and graying goatee.

SBIFF honcho Roger Durling was a gracious and passionate interviewer, asking knowledgeable and thoughtful questions and making everyone feel respected and among friends.