It happened during a June 1985 hearing about the nomination of William Reynolds to be Associate Attorney General. The Biden utterances begin at the 39-second mark. He was quoting a political adversary as a way of deploring their racial attitudes; context was obviously crucial in this instance. But if a U.S. Senator were to do the same today he/she would have to resign by sundown.
This is not an n-word thing. I’ve posted this because it’s quite striking how much sharper, younger and more vigorous Biden’s voice sounds…listen to him. Today his voice sounds soft and halting and grandfatherly with the coughing and whatnot. There’s no substitute for the aliveness of youth, or in this instance the larynx and voice box of a 40-year-old.
Apparently Kenneth Branagh's Death on the Nile (20th Century, 2.11) is (a) fairly mediocre but (b) not bad enough to be regarded as an albatross around Branagh's neck. It won't get in the way of his Best Picture and Best Director Oscar campaigns, I mean.
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Early tomorrow morning our suspicions and predictions about what the none-too-hip, stay-at-home-except-for-groceries, life-has-mostly-possed-them-by Academy members are preferring as far as the allegedly finest film accomplishments of 2021 are concerned.
I can attempt to describe the pit-of-hell depression I’m feeling about what will happen tomorrow, but I’m not sure I can do it justice.
All I know right now is the bottom line, which is that Hollywood Elsewhere has staked out three hills that I’m ready to die on or die for…three contenders that will have to be at least nominated for the Academy to maintain at least a smidgen of respect in my eyes.
Hill #1 is Parallel Mothers‘ Penelope Cruz for Best Actress — apparently a dicey situation but who knows? Hill #2 is Spider-Man: No Way Home for Best Picture — an apparent no-go despite the obviously necessary hosannah response to a single film having kept exhibition alive in late ’21 plus Anne Thompson saying last weekend that she’s heard that Academy members are having trouble coming up with ten nominations…God! Hill #3 is King Richard‘s Will Smith for Best Actor — a safe bet. (Smith will probably win, in fact.)
It would be outrageous, of course, if West Side Story fails to nab a Best Picture nomination, but it probably will.
Everyone is depressed about the Oscar noms…about life, the pandemic, wokesters working overtime to ensure that the Republicans will take the House and possibly the Senate next November, inflation, everything. Barring a huge surprise or two, the only thing anyone will be talking about tomorrow are the snubs. HE lives for the snubs.
Cutting to the chase, here are Sasha Stone’s predictions plus my own comments in the form of an NGE classification (i.e., Not Good Enough). What that really means is that an Oscar contender should ideally represent an exceptional or transcendent or highly combustible effort. If the effort in question is just respectable or professional or moderately approvable, then it’s not good enough for an Oscar nom. Another NGE factor is a contender who is very popular or even locked in for political reasons. (You know who I mean.) If a contender doesn’t have an NGE, it’s more or less okay in my book,
Best Picture
Belfast (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA/SAG/DGA/BAFTA pic) / no comment The Power of the Dog (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA/DGA/BAFTA pic) Licorice Pizza (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA/DGA/BAFTA pic) / NGE, although it’s okay Dune (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA/DGA/BAFTA pic) / NGE West Side Story (Globes+/Critics Choice/PGA/DGA) Don’t Look Up (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA/SAG/BAFTA pic) King Richard (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA/SAG) CODA (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA/SAG) / NGE tick, tick…BOOM! (Globes/Critics Choice/PGA) Being the Ricardos (PGA) Alternates: Nightmare Alley (Critics Choice), Drive My Car, House of Gucci.
Best Director
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog (DGA) Kenneth Branagh, Belfast (DGA) Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza (DGA) Denis Villenuve, Dune (DGA) / NGE Steven Spielberg, West Side Story (DGA) Alternates: Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley; Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up; Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
Best Actress
Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos / NGE Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter Lady Gaga, House of Gucci / NGE Jennifer Hudson, Respect Alternates: Rachel Zegler, West Side Story; Tessa Thompson, Passing; Kristen Stewart, Spencer.
Best Actor
Will Smith, King Richard Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth / NGE Andrew Garfield, tick, tick… BOOM! / NGE Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos Alternates: Leonardo DiCaprio, Don’t Look Up; Peter Dinklage, Cyrano
Best Supporting Actress
Ariana DeBose, West Side Story / NGE Caitriona Balfe, Belfast Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog / NGE Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard…SHOULD WIN!! Cate Blanchett, Nightmare Alley / NGE Alternates: Rita Moreno, West Side Story; Marlee Matlin, CODA; Nina Arianda, Being the Ricardos; Ann Dowd, Mass; Haley Bennett, Cyrano; Martha Plimpton, Mass.
Best Supporting Actor
Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog / NGE Troy Kotsur, CODA / NGE Ciaran Hinds, Belfast Jared Leto, House of Gucci…too broad, Al Pacino was better. Bradley Cooper, Licorice Pizza
Alts: Ben Affleck, The Tender Bar / NGE; Mark Rylance, Don’t Look Up / NGE; Mike Faist, West Side Story…SHOULD WIN!!; Jonah Hill, Don’t Look Up; J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos.
Again, HE’s top films of 2021:
1. King Richard
2. Parallel Mothers
3. West Side Story
4. Spider-Man: No Way Home
5. The Worst Person in the World
6. A Hero (Amazon)
7. RidersofJustice
8. No Time To Die
9. The Beatles: Get Back
10. Zola
11. Cyrano
12. Licorice Pizza
13. The Card Counter
14. In The Heights
15. TheLastDuel
Once upon a time progressive liberals were on the side of brave hearts, humanitarian beliefs, freedom of expression, the first stirrings of post-war beatnik culture, the Marlon Brando acting revolution, Jack Daniels and ginger ale, live and let live, and not intimidating people with terror and sometimes destroying their careers. Back then the Republicans were bringing the terror, not the left. So don’t try to goad me into believing that if Humphrey Bogart,Lauren Bacall, John Huston, Gene Kelly, Jane Wyatt, Richard Conte, Sterling Hayden, Danny Kaye, Paul Henreid, Shepperd Strudwick and the other good soldiers of 1947 were suddenly time-catapulted into 2021…don’t tell me they’d be arm-in-arm with the wokesters.
An excellent dealing scene (John Travolta and Eric Stoltz are a great team) but the dialogue between 2:45 and 2:56 is, like, way out of bounds according to 2021 standards. Even by Quentin Tarantino standards. Flirting with the realm of Joe Rogan’s Planet of the Apes story. The early ’90s were the early ’90s.
Nobody’s watched very much, ongoing Covid pall, no Golden Globes, delayed Critics Choice awards, no sense of box-office momentum, no sense of in-person screenings and in-person conversations, “after a while the Zoom stuff gets really old,” the crashing and burning of Kristen Stewart, the pro-Lady Gaga mafia, etc.
Anne Thompson #1: “Nobody likes Spencer, let’s be honest…critics liked it but the guilds don’t like it, it’s an art film and an acquired taste.”
Anne Thompson #2: “Steven Spielberg and West Side Story are fragile, at best.”
Anne Thompson #3: “You could say Lady Gaga is the [Best Actress] front-runner, but I refuse to believe that. In interviews she tries to convince you that she’s giving you the real Gaga, but she’s totally fake.”
The Academy members, it seems, are too blind and obstinate to understand that Spider-Man: No Way Home deserves a serious "thank you" for levitating theatrical, not just in terms of revenues but from the buoyantspiritofthefilm and the overall joy factor...if they don't understand that a single Best Picture nomination (oneoutoften!) is the least they can do to celebrate the fact that S-M: NWH delivered a spiritual booster shot that lifted all boats...if they're too old and out of touch to at least recognize what this film managed to do and thereby give it a Best Picture nomination in tribute, then you know what? Tohellwiththem. The Oscars are an island unto themselves and whatever happens, happens.
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Not too long ago the NAACP Image Award guys nominated Awkwafina for an “Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance,” partly for her doing a Black-speak thing. In formal professorial terms, Awkwafina’s crime is/was appropriating or making fun of African American Vernacular English, or AAVE**.
After being slapped around by humorless wokester scolds (particular Women of Color Unite founder Cheryl Bedford) for using a Blaccent for comic effect, Awkwafine has basically said ‘y’all can go fuck yourselves, and Twitter can blow me.”
Awkwafina: “Well, I’ll see you in a few years, Twitter — per my therapist. To my fans, thank you for continuing to love and support someone who wishes they could be a better person for you. I apologize if I ever fell short, in anything I did. You’re in my heart always.
“[But] I am retiring from the ingrown toenail that is Twitter. Not retiring from anything else, even if I wanted to, and I didn’t drunkenly hit someone with a shoehorn and now escaping as a fugitive. Also am available on all other socials that don’t tell you to kill yourself!”
…with people who pronounce Oregon as “Awrriginn.” It’s pronounced “OHRuhgone.” How could anyone possibly look at the spelling of that state and think “oh, yeah, sure…Awrriginn.” You’d have to be a bit of a cracker to say it that way.
[Posted on 11.22.18] When I watch Cary Grant in North by Northwest I’m always aware this was his crowning big-screen moment of the ’50s, his last great role and the last film in which he could make a case for looking late 40ish and perhaps a suitable sexual partner for Eva Marie Saint (he was 54 when Alfred Hitchcock shot NXNW in ’58 — she was 34), and after this he was more and more the silver fox and starting to go gently downhill with grace and elegance (nobody believed he was an appropriate romantic match for Audrey Hepburn in Charade) but heading there regardless, and of course destined to retire by the mid ’60s. So North by Northwest was really the last shining moment of his career…the last VistaVision moment when everything was truly in place.
Good or great movies deliver all kinds of payoffs. They don't need a big feel-good finale -- they can end quietly, modestly, shockingly, in a way that reaffirms the basics or like an Antonioni film. We all understand that this feel-good finish (from a film that opened a bit more than 25 years ago) is obviously not "real" -- it's a bowl of emotional showbiz soup. But it works, and if it had somehow opened last October or November (what contemporary movie star in his 30s could play the Tom Cruise role?) it would almost certainly be the leading Best Picture contender. Just ask Sid Ganis or Rod Lurie. It hit me just now that the only 2021 Best Picture contender that delivers something even close to what Jerry Maguire had (and obviously still has) is King Richard.
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Hollywood Elsewhere is hereby requesting all motivated Photoshop enthusiasts to try and construct a movie poster for the re-christened version of Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Drive My Car, henceforth to be known as “Duuude, Drive My Car!”
The idea is to mimic or otherwise re-use the basic poster art concept of Danny Leiner‘s Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) but nudging aside images of Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott in favor of Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tōko Miura and Masaki Okada.
The lead paragraph on the Dude, Where’s My Car? Wikipedia page says that “the film’s title became a minor pop culture saying, and was commonly reworked in various pop cultural contexts during the 2000s.” Indeed!
The basic idea is to make Justin Chang and the rest of the Drive My Car cabal seethe with anger.
