Best Picture noms won’t amount to anything when it comes to Women Talking and The Woman King, of course (Anne Thompson pretty much admits this in the piece), but being nominated in and of itself will serve as nice bellringers and keepsakes.
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I’m guessing that Romeo and Juliet costars Olivia Hussey, 71, and Leonard Whiting, 72, are being asked right now by their business managers and agents to think about submitting to psychiatric evaluation. Just a guess.
2023 Goodies & Ixnays
Identifying the top ten films of 2023 is fairly easy. I’ve assigned a certain random order, but the directors (in the same order) are Ridley Scott, Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese, Bradley Cooper, Chris McQuarrie, Chris “infuriating sound mix” Nolan, Luca Guadagnino, David Fincher, Ari Aster and Roman Polanski.
The most likely Best Picture winners (Oscar to be handed out in March of ’24) are obviously Napoleon, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Holdovers, Oppenheimer and Maestro.
What am I missing at far as the likely creme de la creme are concerned? I’ve listed 51 films here — there are several I’ve ignored. A little more comprehensiion is required.
Utterly Safe Bets (10)
Napoleon (Apple, undated)
The Holdovers (Focus, undated)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/Paramount)
Maestro (Netflix, undatedf)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (July 14)
Oppenheimer (July 21)
Challengers (August 11)
The Killer (Fincher/Netflix, undated)
Beau Is Afraid (A24)
The Palace (Roman Polanski)
Respectable Sounding (6)
Megalopolis (if it opens in ’23…who knows?)
Steve McQueen’s Blitz
Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)
Poor Things
How Do You Live?
May / December (Todd Haynes)
Decent Potential (3)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June 30)
Barbie (July 21)
The Zone of Interest
Possibles but Cuidado (8)
Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Feb. 10)
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Feb. 17)
Chevalier (Apr. 7)
Renfield (Apr. 14)
No Hard Feelings (June 23)
The Flash (June 23)
Next Goal Wins (Sept. 22)
Dune: Part Two (Nov. 3)
Hairdressing by Karen Asano-Myers, Roxane Griffin
“Four aging pallie-wallies (played by Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field) travel to Houston to watch their hero Tom Brady and the New England Patriots play in the 2017 Super Bowl.”
It’s important to understand that 80 for Brady (Paramount, 2.3) was produced by Brady, and that he also costars in it.
Pic was shot by the great (and in this instance slumming) John Toll (Almost Famous, Tropic Thunder, Braveheart, The Thin Red Line, The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall).
Remember Rod Tidwell?
There was only one acceptable reaction to the traumatic, life-threatening injury suffered last night by Damar Hamlin. Everything had to stop in terms of the game. Football and “the game must go on” stopped mattering. Anyone who so much as mentioned the concurrent question of whether the game would be replayed or forgotten about was all but beaten senseless by Twitter gorillas. The biggest such episode was triggered by a single tweet by veteran sportscaster Skip Bayless). It was unanimously suggested that Bayless needed to be cancelled, stomped upon, drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, etc.
Hamlin is reportedly okay or at least stable, but when things appeared to be touch and go, his Buffalo Bill teammates were visibly distraught. I saw some weeping. Except — hello? — this mishap was a result of the normal playing of a football game. Football is intended to be the most violent professional sport of all, a game that routinely calls for brutal tackling, bruising, body-slamming. Players occasionally get hurt or even knocked unconscious, and nobody bats an eye when they do.
Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest (it was a freak occurence) and was a heartbeat or two away from death, and was saved on the field by fast-acting medics. Thank God he survived, but the expectation of violence and the threat of serious injury…well, isn’t that partly why people pay to see football games?
Remember that climactic scene in Jerry Maguire when Cuba Gooding, Jr.‘s Rod Tidwell was knocked unconscious during a Monday Night Football game between the Cardinals and the Dallas Cowboys? Everyone was extremely anxious and concerned for Rod, and thank God he came to. But what if he hadn’t recovered and had slipped into some kind of coma? Would the game have been forgotten about out of respect for poor Rod and his wife and kids? Put it this way: If you were the screenwriter and Rod slipping into a coma was an irreversible plot point, would you have cancelled the game out of compassion for the poor guy? I honestly don’t think that would or could have happened in the world of 1996 and Jerry Maguire.
Hamlin’s physical survival is obviously the most important issue, but at the same time no one is allowed to even mention other aspects of this situation…no other considerations. Last night’s Twitter mood was unmistakable. If you stepped out of line and talked about anything else besides the paramount issue of Hamlin’s health, you were vermin and deserved to die.
No Way, Sneider!
I’m okay with Los Angeles magazine’s Jeff Sneider calling Bros the third best ’22 flick of the year (it was #29 on my own list). But he’s not allowed to put My Policeman in second place, or right after his #1 pick, Top Gun: Maverick. He can’t do that! My Policeman occasionally really blows, and yes, I’m aware of the redundancy.
[Posted on 10.29.22] “My Policeman (Amazon Prime, 11.4) is a tepid and morose gay tragedy, set in late 1950s England. And Harry Styles‘ rote performance as Tom Burgess, a sexually repressed gay policeman, is not a burnisher. Ditto David Dawson‘s as Patrick Hazlewood, a museum curator who becomes Tom’s lover and a rival for his affections in the matter of Emma Corrin‘s prim and proper Marion, who Tom marries because he needs a beard, which is a shitty thing to do.
“But Marion evens the score down the road. Shittily, I mean.
“Give Styles credit for bravely and energetically committing to some fairly graphic sex scenes with Hazlewood (kiss-slurping, panting, blowing, ass-fucking) but as I said in an earlier post, Styles is hot but Hazlewood isn’t, or at least not hot enough for me.
“There are some pretty guys whom straight guys can at least imagine having some kind of vague intimate contact with. Mick Jagger in Performance was one. In True Romance Christian Slater‘s Clarence Worley says that he could’ve fucked the young Elvis Presley. But one look at Hazlewood and I went “nope.” Cold eyes, dorky haircut, emotionally needy and greedy.
“I had a good laugh, however, when Dawson/Hazlewood hooks up with some anonymous guy and they decide to get down in an alleyway. They’re busted by a pair of bobbies before anything happens, but just before Dawson is about to drop to his knees the recipient drops a magazine on the damp pavement so Dawson won’t chafe his knees and his trousers won’t get wet. Thoughtful.
Similar Hair, Mouth, Nose
Obviously Ronan Farrow owns his own history, biology and style choices, but my very first thought upon seeing this vacation photo (seemingly taken on the beach in Baja California) is that he looks a lot like Tatiana. Tell me I’m wrong.
Tatiana agrees: “Haha, yes, there is something :-))”
Just Another Fan In The 22nd Row
I would never dispute that Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde isn’t a serious art film. It’s intensely dislikable but completely, paradoxically respectable. It can be accused of exaggerating the dark aspects in Norman Jean Baker‘s life, as Joyce Carol Oates’ 22 year-old source novel did, as well as inventing some out of whole cloth. But it was all of a piece — a pitch-black downer.
Will I ever watch Blonde again? I can say with absolute assurance that I will not. But I will gladly watch this clip of Marilyn Monroe‘s visit to The Jack Benny Show in September 1953. It sells the bullshit, of course, but she’s a total pleasure to watch and listen to. She wasn’t inwardly happy, of course, but she convinced the public otherwise. Look at her expression when the audience is loving her and laughing at the humor, etc. She was happy in a certain sense!
HE to Blonde spoiler whiners: This post discusses the August 1962 death of Marilyn Monroe, which is what Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix streaming, 9.28.22) ends with.
HE to friendo #1: “Yesterday I slogged my way through Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde, which I regard as artful torture porn. And then I happened upon a Matt Lynch tweet that analogized Blonde and a landmark 1988 film, and the instant I read it I said ‘yes!'”
“I’m thinking not just of the incessant dismissals and degradations and spiritual uncertainties, but the anguished and agonized relationship between the main protagonist and the elusive ‘father.’
“Just as Willem Dafoe sips a goblet of sacramental wine before submitting to his final fate, Norma Jean swallows alcohol and barbiturates before her final episode of passion at her Fifth Helena Drive abode (the delivery man, the fuzzy tiger, the shattering note). And like Dafoe’s Jesus, a spectral Marilyn smiles and separates from death, and greets the immortality that she still enjoys today a la Andrew Dominik.”
The Weapon Is Indictments
2023 is underway and rolling along, Donald Trump has been out of office for nearly two years, and there’s really no reason to delay or pussyfoot around any more. He has to be flattened like a pancake…like a raccoon run over by an 18-wheeler. Charges need to be filed no later than 3.21.23. Sooner would be better.
“America first” MAGA patriot rather have anti-American, war criminal Vladimir Putin as president over President Biden. pic.twitter.com/FCpQa9LGTA
— Republicans against Trumpism (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 1, 2023
Three Days Later
Has anything changed as far as the Best Picture Oscar death of Everything Everywhere All At Once is concerned? Since last Friday morning, I mean? Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think so. THR‘s Scott Feinberg killed its chances last Thursday (12.29) when he listed Top Gun: Maverick as the #1 likeliest winner. That was it, end of story, guillotine drop.
The following morning we hashed it all out. Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and myself, I mean. Here it is, all 43 minutes worth.
Sleeping Mummy
I have an idea for a special photo-driven app or website. For a fair fee I will use your photos to create a funeral home lying-in-state photo. I will dress you in a black suit-and-tie or Pope’s robes. Think about it — nobody ever contemplates their after-death appearance (i.e., how they’ll look when their friends come to pay their respects). Now they can!
