For the next couple of weeks Tatiana is visiting family (mother, son, sister) and old friends in Russia. She’s currently staying at 9 Tverskaya Street, just down the road from Red Square. By my humble HE standards, the place is a little too Kardashian. I like Moscow rentals that are more historical and old-school-ish — a residence that reeks of early 20th or late 19th Century, a pad that Vladimir Lenin or Sergei Eisenstein or Peter Tchaikovsky or Anton Chekhov might’ve lived in back in the day. But that’s me.

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At the end of this year Louis Malle‘s Damage will celebrate its 30th anniversary. I saw it when it opened, of course, but I’ve had a thing for this film since buying the Warner Archive DVD 11 years ago. I’ve probably seen it nine or ten times, and I really wish that an HD streaming version would be made available. as the DVD’s 480p resolution is unsatisfying.

Boilerplate synopsis: “Adapted by David Hare from the short, same-titled novel by Josephine Hart, this is a gripping tale of a desperate sexual obsession and scandalous love affair in upper-crust British social circles. Stephen Fleming (Jeremy Irons) has wealth, a beautiful, well-bred wife (Miranda Richardson), two younger children, an adult journalist son (Rupert Graves), and a prestigious political career in Parliament.

“But Fleming’s life lacks a certain spark of passion, and this emptiness drives him to an all-consuming, and ultimately catastrophic, relationship with his son’s fiancée, Anna (Juliette Binoche).”

No, I don’t personally relate to the idea of surrendering to obsessive sexual madness and self-destruction, and yes, the movie defies basic logic in terms of normal human behavior and priorities. But it’s one of the best cinematic explorations of that famous Woody Allen-ism, “The heart wants what it wants, or at least the loins do.” (Alternately: “You don’t choose who to fall into obsessive love with — obsessive love chooses you.”)

Another first-rate film that understands crazy doomed love affairs is Francois Truffaut‘s The Woman Next Door (’81).

Damage ends in death, devastation, downerism and ruin, but the first two-thirds are quite tantalizing in a crazy, well-behaved sort of way.

There’s a brief moment near the very beginning when Malle conveys the “lack of passion” aspect; he does this by having Irons gaze at his well-tended living room with a look of utter boredom. Please accept my apology for failing to properly frame the footage, but here it is:

A scene or two later Fleming meets Anna at a party, and the way they look at each other tells you it’s a done deal. It’s obvious they’ll be slamming ham within hours if not sooner.

Even in jest I’ve never heard anyone mention No Time To Die as a potential Best Picture contender. Never so much as fiddled with. But the same kind of pitch, obviously, could and should be made for Spider-Man: No Way Home. The copy would read “Spider-Man: No Way Home pretty much saved exhibition, you bastards, and it’s still saving it as we speak. So when you vote, show a little decency and respect for what this film has done. Because it didn’t just ‘sell tickets’ but generated repeat business. Because people truly love it, which is something that no other 2021 film has managed to do. Think about it.”

I’m sorry but Jon Finch‘s reciting of William Shakespeare‘s “tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy in Roman Polanski‘s Macbeth (’71) strikes me as far more moving (i.e., more bitter an∂ despairing) than Denzel Washington‘s version of same in Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth.

Finch delivers like a perfect British instrument — carefully measured. exquisitely phrased, a straight-up RADA version minus anything quirky or modernist or side-angled. Denzel, on the other hand, is doing it “the Denzel way”, which is fascinating in its unaffected manner but at the same time lacking sufficient passion — more of a tone of lament and defeat than anything else.

Don’t even talk about Michael Fassbender‘s 2015 version in this context. Don’t even bring it up. Not a chance.

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A few days ago Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling posted a chat with Parallel Mothers star and Best Actress contender Penelope Cruz. I meant to post it right away, but I let other stuff overwhelm and I failed to muster the discipline…my deepest apologies.

But this really has to be said and without equivocation to all Academy members: Penelope Cruz gave the deepest, richest, most emotionally fulfilling lead female performance of 2021…by far. Way, way above the realm of her illustrious competitors (Kidman, Gaga, Stewart, Chastain, Colman). You simply can’t watch Parallel Mothers and not come to this very conclusion. It’s not possible — not if you’re honest with yourself.

Remember that Penelope has already won 2021 Best Actress awards from the National Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the San Diego Film Critics Society as well as the Venice Film Festival’s Best Actress award last September.

I’m going to stick this post to the top of Hollywood Elsewhere this weekend, and there’s nothing in it for me ad-wise. The Sony Classics team has been minimally responsive to my words of praise over the last two or three months. This is just me, my action…Penelope Cruz is the absolute soul mama of 2021 Best Actress contenders.

Durling: “This is the greatest performance by an actress of 2021 and that she needs to be nominated! Nomination voting is happening as we speak and we need to get Penelope among the five! Listen to her answer the last question (23:25) about working with Pedro Almodovar, on the last day of shooting…so heartfelt.”

Daniel Roher’s Navalny (CNN Films) is an utterly fascinating study of Vladimir Putin’s nearly lethal persecution of chief opposition leader Alexei Navalny over the last two or three years. At Putin’s direction, Navalny (whose English is as good as Tatiana’s) is currently doing time in a corrective colony in Vladimir Oblast.

In 2020 Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk, Siberia with an agent called Novichok. He recovered in Berlin and returned to Russia in early ‘21. Russian government goons forcibly and brutally led away Navalny supporters at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport; security guys arrested Navalny when he landed.

The doc appears to reliably identify three thugs involved with the poisoning incident, names and all, in apparent cahoots with a Russian security cabal of some kind. The thugs infected Navalny by dosing his underwear. In a bizarre, breathtaking sequence, Navalny even impersonates one of the would-be assassin’s collaborators during a phone call (actually a series of calls) and extracts incriminating information.

Navalny is currently looking at a couple of decades in prison. The conspiracy is proven, it’s all out in the open, Russia is a sham democracy, Putin is a killer and none of it matters — Putin runs the country like a mafia boss, and Navalny is in a political concentration camp. So it goes.

The east-coast news outlets always over-sell coming snowstorms. Before it arrives it’s always a blizzard apocalypse and historic hardship on the way, and then the snowflakes begin and nine times out of ten it’s not so bad.

“Just an average snowfall,” says Jett (below and giving Sutton her very first snowstorm exposure).

Any way you slice it snowstorms are perfect before the snow trucks start scraping the roads, before the snow shovels and foot-prints disturb the purity and mess it all up.

“…and a large left contingent that refuses to call them out for this. [We’re] in this ridiculous new era of mind-numbing partisanship where if I keep it real about the nonsense in the Democratic party, it makes me an instant hero to Republicans.

“The same thing happened in reverse to Darth Vader‘s daughter, Liz Cheney, who is now a hero to liberals simply because she recognizes that Biden did not steal the last election….simply acknowledging reality is now seen as a profile in courage.

“When normal people read that San Francisco has basically legalized shoplifting, they think Democrats have gone nuts. It’s not my fault that that the party of FDR and JFK is turning into the party of LOL and WTF….making Mr. Potato Head gender-neutral and now an [Apple] emoji for pregnant men.”