It is Hollywood Elsewhere’s contention that West Side Story‘s Mike Faist is the most deserving contender for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He gave the only “wow!”performance…the only one that really popped or generated any excitement.

Most of the award-season sheep are predicting that The Power of the Dog‘s Kodi Smit-McPhee is the most likely winner of the Best Supporting Actor award. Basically for playing a deceptive little candy-ass…Benedict Cumberbatch‘s obscure object of desire and a passive, sneaker-wearing wimp with a hidden agenda up his sleeve. Are you telling me there was even a slight tremor of excitement about his performance after Dog popped last fall?

The sheep are resolute about Jane Campion winning the Best Director Oscar (we all understand this is totally locked-in), and just to fortify this they’re supporting as many Dog contenders as possible, and so Smit-McPhee gets a free ride on her coattails.

Bradley Cooper‘s “Jon Peters” in Licorice Pizza is not a supporting performance — it’s a cranked-up cameo. While Ben Affleck‘s congenial, low-key uncle in The Tender Bar is intermittently charming, his fake Long Island accent diminishes the performance — it reminds you that he’s acting. CODA‘s Troy Kotsur…if you say so. Because people have no taste, the broadness of Jared Leto‘s performance in House of Gucci makes it a likely nominee. Belfast‘s Ciaran Hinds delivered on auto-pilot — he could have played the kindly grandfather in his sleep.

I’m a huge Jeff Daniels admirer — have been for 40 years now, despite his having blown me off for an interview ten years ago. But even if you’re not a huge fan, this is one of the best career-recap recollections I’ve ever seen, and I don’t care if it’s two months old. Every engaging story delivers some kind of choice insight or kernel of wisdom or killer anecdote. (Jack Nicholson on the set of Terms of Endearment: “This isn’t Broadway — this is the pro game.”) I’m very sorry I never caught Daniels in To Kill A Mockingbird, and I apologize for the fact that I’ve never paid the slightest attention to Showtime’s American Rust, a Dan Futterman series that Daniels exec produced and stars in.

Nominees for the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures were announced this morning by the Producers Guild of America. And they blew off Spider-Man: No Way Home…brilliant! The PGA members, in league with the stodgy and harumphy Anne Thompson, Scott Feinberg and Steve Pond, aren’t letting an emotional explosion superhero flick into their little fraternity….no sirree!

But they have nominated Being the Ricardos, Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, The Power of The Dog, tick, tick…BOOM! and West Side Story.

The PGA snooties are 100% aware that most people who’ve sat through Dune were either dead bored or hated how it made them feel, or at least looked at their watch six or seven times. They know this, and they nominated it anyway because it was a big-vision CGI flick based on a seminal sci-fi novel. They’re also aware that the expertly produced Spider-Man: No Way Home levitated millions of ticket-buyers and sent them out smiling and ecstatic and ready to see it again. They know this for a fact and yet they blew it off. Because they’re foo-foo snooties. Because they’re lazy-minded dicks at heart.

HE to PGA voters: You honestly and sincerely believe that tick, tick…BOOM!, which was mostly agony to sit through, is a more worthy recipient of the Zanuck award than Spider-Man No Way Home? You realize you’re living in complete denial, right? You realize that celebrating the tiresome tick, tick…BOOM! over the mesmerizing whoosh of the second hour of Spider-Man is absurd, and that history will judge you fools and dilletantes?

The 2022 Producers Guild Awards ceremony will happen on Saturday, March 19.

Footnote: Sony has so far decided against sending out screeners of Spider–Man: .No Way Home. This may not be the cause it wasn’t among the ten PGA noms, but it was probably a deciding factor.

…but as far as Disney’s forthcoming Snow White and the Seven Dwarves remake is concerned, I’m afraid I do agree. With everything except Rachel Zegler being described as a woman of color. She may be vaguely olive-skinned but only faintly. She has rich dark hair and very fair skin — no significant difference between her and the classic Snow White of animated legend.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet, etc.

Thought #1: Last night Hollywood Elsewhere sat through Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, and I was more or less okay with it, minor issues aside. It’s a reasonably engaging two-hander about a 55-year-old woman (Emma Thompson‘s “Nancy Stokes”, who doesn’t look 50ish as much as her actual age, which is 62) and a handsome young sex worker (Daryl McCormack‘s “Leo Grande”). The widowed Nancy has led a rather sex-less and certainly orgasm-free life, and she’s hired Leo in order to sample the real thing.

The film (97 minutes) is basically three sexual and very personal encounters in a hotel room, and one in a hotel bar. (Or something like that.) It’s an intimate, occasionally amusing, open-hearted exploration of an older woman’s sexuality and what a transformational thing good sex can be (nothing wrong with that!), along with the gradually building rapport between Nancy and Leo. It’s smoothly and nimbly performed, especially by Thompson.

Thought #2: But the 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating is all but meaningless, simply because most critics would be terrified of writing honestly about a film that ends with Thompson doing full-frontal nudity in front of a mirror. Nobody would dare say an unkind or unsupportive word. One critic has stated that Leo Grande “comes ring-fenced with the kind of bullet-proof worthiness that makes any negative criticism seem crass, glib and needlessly cruel.”

I don’t regard myself as cruel but I do lean toward candid, and I have to say…

Thought #3: Most of us, I suspect, have problems with older or overweight people performing nude scenes or sex scenes. Anne Reid‘s nude scenes in Roger Michell‘s The Mother (’03) were, for me, slightly discomforting. Kathy Bates did nude scenes in Hector Babenco‘s At Play in the Fields of the Lord (’91) and again in About Schmidt (’02), and the less said about them, the better. The middle-aged Dennis Hopper and Amy Irving were nude in Bruno Barreto‘s Carried Away, and that was no more or less comfortable than it sounds.

Thought #4: I wouldn’t want to see a nude scene with anyone who’s too old or saggy or out of shape. There are very few older actors whom I’d be willing to watch without clothing, but think about the possibilities. Imagine, for example, if Neil Young decided to star in a film that called for full-frontal nudity. I’d be terrified by that prospect. Imagine the horror of watching, say, Jack Nicholson as he looked ten years ago…imagine portly Jack with his gross animal…please! Let’s just forget the idea of older actors getting naked for any reason, except, perhaps, for muscular, rugged-looking guys like Harrison Ford but even then it might be a problem.

Thought #5: The idea of older women enjoying sex as much as any 17 or 22 or 38 or 46 year-old is great. Graying, neck-wattled women experiencing shuddering orgasms in their 50s, 60s or 70s sounds lovely and delightful…Hollywood Elsewhere fully approves. Just don’t ask me to contemplate their seen-better-days bods. And if an actress of Thompson’s age wants to do a full-frontal nude scene, fine. I just think it’s fair to ask them to first get a nice tummy tuck and boob lift. (My friends in Prague are excellent at handling both.) It’s fair to add that a woman’s navel should always be vertical or perfectly round, and it needs to be an “inny,” of course. But it can’t be horizontal, if you follow my drift.

Thought #6: The scene in the hotel bar involves an overweight waitress (Isabella Laughland‘s “Becky”) expressing curiosity and to some extent a slight degree of alarm about the relationship between Nancy and Leo. They initially lie to her by saying they’re meeting about one of them buying the other’s car, or something like that. And then they come clean. Becky is very involved and whatnot, and I was saying to myself “what has this waitress got to do with anything? Who cares what she thinks about Leo or Nancy’s sexuality or whatever? She’s just a waitress, and waitresses don’t count. Or this one doesn’t, at least.”

Thought #7: I have to admit that I got scared when I heard this movie was made with a “sex positive” attitude. That sounds a little too much like “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” The best sex is usually animalistic, runting, howling, raw, skanky, pervy, in some way objectionable. HE believes that the famous Woody Allen line — “Is sex dirty? Only when it’s being done right” — still applies.

Thought #8: Good Luck To You, Leo Grande has been described by many as a comedy. It is not that. Katy Brand‘s screenplay is brisk and amusing and allows for some self-lamenting humor on Nancy’s part, but that doesn’t make it a comedy — it makes it a mildly amusing, briskly-written character piece.

Thought #9: Sophie Hyde‘s film will go straight to Hulu. The target audience is expected to be older women. I guess so, but I can’t imagine any older woman being at peace with the sight of a female physique gone to seed. They know all about that on their own dime. People generally go to movies to escape their cares and woes, for the most part.

We all know that Joe Rogan has been spreading disinformation about Covid and the vaccines, and has thereby played to the crazies. Rather than just look the other way, Neil Young has removed his music from Spotify, which funds Rogan’s show, and thereby demonstrated that he has balls of steel.

HE to Rogan: I love your show and will continue to listen, but the fact is that you and your ilk have extended the pandemic and made things worse. God knows how many people are dead because of your bullshit.

Hollywood Reporter‘s Clara Chan: “Spotify is in the process of removing Neil Young’s catalogue of music from its service after the artist published — then took down — an open letter with an ultimatum: deal with the vaccine misinformation coming from Joe Rogan’s podcast, or lose Young’s music.

“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” the spokesperson told THR.

“In his letter, which was originally published on his website Jan. 24, Young said, ‘I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. [Spotify] can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

In a 1.26.22 Hollywood Reporter interview with West Side Story costars Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose and Rita Moreno, Rebecca Sun, who has skin in the game of “sharing the perspectives and stories of the underserved,” offers the actresses a chance to firmly and unambiguously throw costar Ansel Elgort under the bus, once and for all.

The issue is that completely debunked bullshit charge about Elgort having sexually assaulted a 17 year-old named “Gabby” when he was 20, despite every piece of testimony (Twitter and otherwise) indicating that nothing resembling an assault ever happened and that the worst Elgort could be accused of was ghosting Gabby after being intimate with her.

That’s all it was — seven years ago he acted insensitively or callously and thereby hurt her feelings. Which he’s said he’s sorry for and ashamed of.

So do Zegler, DeBose and Moreno throw him to the wolves? In a manner of speaking, kind of.

The talented, good-looking Elgort (great singing voice) appears to be a pleasant guy, and he presumably behaved in an agreeable and considerate way during filming. The normal inclination among friendly costars would be to say “this isn’t my affair but to me, Ansel is cool…I like him a lot…he’s a true professional and an elegant man…he gets my up-vote.” But Zegler, DeBose and Moreno have all spoken dispassionately and absent any affection or consideration for the guy.

Zegler: “We made a movie two and a half years ago, and a lot has gone on in the world since then. A lot has changed very publicly, and privately as well. There’s been a lot of awakening.”

HE-Zegler translation: “Twitter has wanted Ansel dead and dismembered for 18 months now, and I’m not stepping into this. If his career is over, it’s over, but don’t make me an accessory after the fact. I’m not in this. Plus Twitter has decided that any relationship defined by a ‘power imbalance’ — Ansel was famous, Gabby was nobody — is an indictment in itself, and Ansel, who may or may not be an evil predator, will have to weather this storm on his own. I don’t know from the details, and I’m certainly not going to get detoured into a big Ansel discussion in this interview, which is about glorifying me, Rita and Ariana.”

DeBose: “Nobody really knows what’s going on in anyone’s head. Only the people who were involved in that situation know what actually went down.”

HE response to DeBose: “True, but if you’d read anything about this you’d at least understand that the intimate relations between Ansel and Gabby were consensual and legal by the laws of New York State, and that Gabby’s complaint basically boiled down to having her feelings hurt.”

Moreno: “I think it would have been absolutely horrendous and wrong for anyone to take sides in that matter. It’s not for me to make those judgments.”

HE-Moreno translation: “Leave me out of this, I’m looking for my second Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Ansel’s issues, whatever they may be, are not my affair.”

Perhaps later this year the New Beverly Cinema will program a superficially linked double bill — Phillip Noyce‘s The Desperate Hour and William Wyler‘s The Desperate Hours.

Five months ago Noyce’s film played at the Toronto Film Festival as Lakewood. Now it’s got a catchier title. Here’s my 9.21 review with the title switched out:

An adult all alone and on a phone, having to talk his or her way out of (or through) a tough, high-pressure situation. I don’t know how many times this set-up has been built into a compelling feature, but I’m thinking at least four**.

The very best is Steven Knight‘s Locke (’14), an 85-minute character study about a construction foreman (Tom Hardy) grappling with issues of personal vs. professional responsibility. Three years ago Gustav Möller‘s The Guilty, a gripping, Danish-made crime thriller that I just re-watched yesterday, delivered similar cards. Last weekend a same-titled remake, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, played at the Toronto Film Festival, and will debut theatrically on 9.24 before hitting Netflix.

Now there’s Phillip Noyce‘s The Desperate Hour, which stars Naomi Watts as Amy, a widowed, small-town mom reacting not only to news of a Parkland-esque high school shooting, but to the possibility that her sullen and estranged son Noah (Colton Gobbo) may be involved in some way.

Nearly two-thirds of this 84-minute film (47 minutes) are focused solely on Amy and her iPhone in a remote wooded area. We’re talking about a torrent of smooth steadicam footage plus several overhead drone shots and some elegant editing (kudos to Lee Haugen), plus Watts stressing, emoting and hyperventilating her head off — a one-woman tour de force.

Right away I was thinking Noah might be the shooter, and that, you bet, made me sit up and focus all the more. And that’s all I’m going to say.

My second reaction was about Amy’s iPhone, and what an amazing reach it has. She’s in a woodsy area a few miles from town (I didn’t catch how many reception bars were showing) and yet she experiences only a couple of signal drop-outs, and she’s watching all kinds of video and whatnot without a hitch.

I was also impressed by her iPhone’s battery — what power! (I never leave home without a back-up battery for my iPhone 12 Max Pro — I have too many active apps and the battery is always draining hand over fist.)

Despite all that’s going on at the high school and having to juggle all kinds of incoming info, Amy continues to jog during most of her phone marathon.

If there’s one thing that viewers will be dead certain of, it’s that Watts will stumble and suffer an ankle injury. I was telepathically begging her not to. HE to Watts: “C’mon, stop…don’t…there are all kinds of obstacles on your forest path and you obviously need to focus so just start speed-walking”…down she goes!

The pace of The Desperate Hour is very fast and cranked up, and Amy is nothing if not resourceful. She manages to persuade an auto mechanic whom she doesn’t know to supply crucial information about Noah’s whereabouts, as well as info about a possible shooter’s name and contact info. All kinds of conversations and complications ensue, and you’re always aware that Chris Sparling‘s script is determined to increase the stress and suspense factors.

Most of these efforts felt reasonable to me, or at least not overly challenging or irksome. The Desperate Hour is a thriller. I didn’t fight it. I accepted the rules and requirements.

Living, the Ikiru remake that played Sundance ’22 last weekend, has been acquired for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics.

Directed by Oliver Hermanus and adapted on the page by Kazuo Ishiguro, this modest British period drama stars the great Bill Nighy. He’ll almost certainly be among the Best Actor contenders, and will almost certainly be on the award-season campaign trail starting next fall.

Living is a fine, honorable, occasionally touching film but not, I submit, the masterpiece that some have called it. It didn’t strike me as some kind of enhancement or special strengthening of the original 1952 Akira Kurosawa classic; it struck me as maybe a little more than a tasteful remake, but not much more than that. I respect and approve of Living. Can we let it go at that?

In a Best Picture Oscar spitball piece, IndieWire’s Anne Thompson has called Spider-Man: No Way Home a “long shot”. She has this deeply emotional, hugely successful Sony release in 20th place — a lower ranking than those shared by THR‘s Scott Feinberg or TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, but in the same ballpark.

Thompson’s top-ten noms are purely about safety, purely about raising a damp finger to the wind and adding her voice to the chorus of conventional thinkers.

I know that I speak for hundreds of industry veterans by saying that the elite Feinberg-Pond-Thompson mindset being knocked off its axis would be absolute heaven.

Please consider clapping your hands in order to tell this crew how full of shit they are. Peter Pan author James M. Barrie once urged audiences to clap in order to keep Tinkerbell alive — I’m asking the same thing here. Vote for the millions of younger ticket buyers out there, for those who’ve paid to see S-M: NWH more than once because it pushes a button that they wanted pushed before they knew it. Vote to show respect for a film that falls short of profound art but which really turned them on. That means something.

If Blanche Dubois had the floor, she would urge the following to Academy and guild members: “Don’t hang back with the snoots!”.

I’m not talking about which Best Picture contender is “better”, whatever that means. I’m talking about how a Spider-Man Best Picture nomination would startle these smug know-it-alls, those handicappers from the land of stupor. I’m talking about the sheer pleasure of this prospect.

Oscar nomination voting begins two days hence — Thursday, 1.27.22. Voting ends on Tuesday, 2.1.22. The nominations will be announced on Tuesday, 2.8.22, with the ceremony happening on Sunday, 3.27.22 — roughly eight weeks away.