When it comes to handing out Oscars, the dumbest tendency among Academy voters is to honor the “most acting” — shouting, weeping, ranting, hair-pulling, howling. The second dumbest is a tendency to favor performances that involve heavy makeup and/or weight alteration.
Southern friendo to HE: 14 times the winners of makeup Oscars have won because they altered the appearance of a nominated actor (lead or supporting). Eight of those wins correlated with the actor winning. I’m going back to the 80s. But in terms of recent history, it’s five out of seven.
HE to Southern Friendo: What are the recents again?
Southern friendo to HE: The five are La Vie en Rose, Iron Lady, Les Miserables, Dallas Buyers Club and Darkest Hour. All I’m saying is that if Eyes of Tammy Faye wins makeup, Jessica Chastain has a damn good shot at winning Best Actress,
HE to Southern Friendo: That’s ridiculous!
Southern friendo to HE: Nevertheless.
HE to Southern Friendo: Matthew McConaughey lost weight for Dallas Buyers Club. No makeup.
Southern Friendo to HE: A friend did the makeup on Jared Leto and he won. Doesn’t matter about the weight. it’s a statistic, plain and simple. Like Film Editing nominations correlating with Best Pic winners.
HE to Southern Friendo: My God, the stupidity! Not you — the stupid Academy members who vote for makeup acting.
Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone is actually predicting (or half-predicting by way of an intuitive feeling) that Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart might be…well, a slightly more likely winner of the Best Actress Oscar race than some of us are supposing. Or so she suspects. Nobody knows anything, of course.
HE reaction: Olivia Colman won’t happen because (a) she recently won and (b) the stolen doll. Nobody’s really knocked out by Nicole Kidman’s decent performance as Lucille Ball — she’s fine but calm down. Jessica Chastain‘s Tammy Faye Bakker is…I actually don’t have any particular feeling for this good-enough performance, one way or the other. But I’m sensing meh. As for Stewart, she does a good job of playing a mad, haunted princess but Spencer itself is AWFUL.
That leaves Penelope Cruz and ONLY Penelope Cruz as the winner.
The Stewart comeback narrative (snubbed by SAG) is, I’ll admit, a narrative that the others don’t have. Also she’s youngish, hottish and gay. If she wins this would be stunning, staggering, unprecedented.
Friendo to HE: “Cruz is not winning. Zero shot. It’s between Kidman, Chastain and Stewart.”
HE to friendo: “If Cruz doesn’t win it’ll be because of sheer sloth of the part of Academy members. Too fucking lazy to pop the screener in and simply watch Parallel Mothers. Dilletantes!”
The jokes, material and general pizazz factor may be engaging and even hilarious come March 27th, but we all understand the reasons why Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes have been hired to co-host this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.
One, the wokeness factor — three women, two BIPOCS, the right kind of progressive attitude. (Don”t even dispute this.). And two, Film Twitter will leave them alone while any dude (or dudes) who might have been chosen would have been picked apart and savaged for this or that past misdeed, one way or the other.
“Every choice Hollywood makes, whether it’s hosting a show or casting a movie, is done out of fear — fear of bad headlines, fear of Twitter, fear of that wave of hysteria that made them get rid of their host in the first place.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, just a few minutes ago.
After the surprise Best Picture victory by 2016’s Moonlight (an identity-politics win that suffered from an inconclusive and strangely cast third act), progressive Academy members told themselves “no more Best Picture wins by white-guy directors!….the worm has turned!”
The following year Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water took the prize…a sexy monster flick about a homely and isolated woman’s sexuality, and created by the Mexican Orson Welles, an enormously well-liked fellow.
Eureka! We’re on a whole new path! The world transformed!
And then Green Book won the following year, and your extreme wokesters and BIPOCs totally freaked out…”Eeeeee!” A period flick (1962) about racial rapprochment between a thuggish Italian racist and an elegant gay pianist (essentially a parent-child road movie) was adored by Hollywood Elsewhere and tens of thousands of average sane people throughout the industry and the country but widely condemned by Film Twitter. To Spike Lee and many others on his side of the divide, the Green Book white-guy factor was intolerable…and yet it won! Wheeeeee! Wokesters can go fuck themselves!
But that was it. Older white guy movies were henceforth unofficially banned from serious consideration. Hence the dismissal of Martin Scorsese‘s brilliant The Irishman and the triumph of Parasite, despite the drunken scammers nonsensically letting the fired maid into the house during a rainstorm.
This was followed by last year’s triumph of Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland — proper gender focus, ethnically correct, white guy characters strictly marginalized.
It follows that Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog, a movie that average viewers are mostly (almost entirely?) dismissive of, will win for Best Picture and Best Director. Not because anyone “out there” cares about this grim, tortured, glacially-paced melodrama about closeted gayness on the open range, but because of the “Campion rules!” factor.
Adrien Lyne’s DeepWater (Hulu, 3.18) may be an intriguing sexual thriller, but it seems like an odd yesteryear thing — filmed before almost anyone on the planet had even heard of Covid ‘19, and a full year before Donald Trump decisively lost to Joe Biden in the election of early November 2020. And of course, the Ben Affleck-Ana de Armas affair was just kicking into gear, and Bennifer II was far beyond the horizon.
Due respect and sincere condolences upon the passing of producer-director Ivan Reitman, who was 75. This is a huge boomer death — one that will make a lot of people feel anxious and shaken, and prompt them to take a deep breath and wonder what might be around the corner.
Reitman’s hottest period was between the late ’70s and the late ’90s, and his biggest film, of course, was the original Ghostbusters (’84), which most of the world adored and which I hated from the get-go. And I really, really hated Ghostbusters II.
Reitman made his first big mark as the producer of National Lampoon’s Animal House (’78), which exploded all over — it was the first time the SNL brand (and particularly John Belushi) connected massively in movie theatres.
Reitman was first, last and always a director and producer of mainstream popular entertainments. He always sought to please, his stuff was always audience-friendly, and his instincts were not absurdly anti-highbrow but they were certainly tidy and middle-class. He was a smooth operator (especially from the mid ’80s on) and he knew how to coax and encourage good comic performances, but he never, ever went over any audience member’s head.
Which Reitman-directed films do I think were exceptionally fine or which I at least really liked (i.e., laughed with) and went “wow, that was really pleasurable and a profound home run”? Answer: None.
But early on Reitman made two dopey, infectious comedies of immaturity, Meatballs (’79) and Stripes (’81)…films that had a cool Bill Murray spirit…a stoner feeling, a fuck-it vibe. I was also satisfied by the three Arnold Schwarzenegger films — Twins, Kindergarten Cop and Junior. And I was half-okay with Dave, Father’s Day and Draft Day.
Can anyone name a line of dialogue from a Reitman film that has lived on for decades? I’ve just thought of one from Stripes — Warren Oates saying “lighten up, Francis.”
Reitman knew exactly how to make successful “Ivan Reitman films” but he never directed or produced a truly brilliant or profound knockout, or an emotional powerhouse in the vein of, say, Heaven Can Wait or Groundhog Day or Planes, Trains & Automobiles or As Good as It Gets or Broadcast News.
Okay, I take that back — Up In The Air (’09), which his director-writer son Jason did an excellent job with and which Reitman Sr. produced, was in that elite fraternity.
Reitman’s instincts were kind of Ron Howard-ish, only a bit more anarchic or semi-experimental or stir-fried. He wasn’t really a “heart” guy (not like Howard or Jim Brooks or even John Hughes) except in the case of Junior, a comedy about a guy who gets pregnant.
I’ll say more tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll modify what I’ve just written later this evening. I’m very sorry about Reitman’s passing; 75 isn’t that old.
This Rear Window fan poster was composed by Jonathan Burton. The immediate question, of course, is why does James Stewart‘s L.B. Jeffries, a Greenwich Village-residing photographer with a broken leg and a wealthy, high-society girlfriend (Grace Kelly)…why does Jeffries have a massivebaldspot, partially covered by greasy hair strands? Stewart wore his usual toupee in this 1954 classic. Is he half-bald because Burton himself is half-bald? What kind of illustrator does this? And what’s with the jugears?
Based on a 1959 Tennessee Williams play, the film version of The Night of the Iguana (’64), directed by John Huston, is rather awful, which is to say dreary and stifled. But I’ve always wanted to visit Mismaloya, the small Mexican beach village (just south of Puerto Vallarta) where it was shot. The main stars were Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon. Elizabeth Taylor hung around during most of the filming. Huston wound up buying a home nearby.
People stopped watching films on VHS when DVDs emerged, or sometime in mid ’97. Pretty much everyone had adopted DVDs by the turn of the century, or roughly 21 years ago. (The first DVD players were priced at $799 and up.) And yet a couple of days ago some ornery old codger posted a photo of his Alfred Hitchcock VHS library.
A quality of life statement…Budweiser, which gives you a nice happy buzz as you’re watching the game, believes in its brand and the well-being of horses, dogs and the people who give them food, shelter and love.
What would be the practical point of Ukraine military guys defending their country, if and when Russian forces invade? They’re not going to repel an obviously stronger and superior force. They’ll only succeed in getting wounded and killed + bringing about God knows how many civilian deaths. If the Russkis roll in, surrender.
A few hours ago David “take no prisoners” Polandposted a video interview with Sundown star and renowned character actor Tim Roth.
Roth’s first big score came from playing “Myron”, an emotionally volatile thug, in Stephen Frears‘ The Hit (’84). His latest role is the indifferent, nihilist-minded “Neil” in Michel Franco‘s Sundown, which instantly registers as one of the greatest-ever character studies of an older guy who just says “fuck it”.
Until, that is, Franco starts explaining why Neil has unplugged, which makes the film far less interesting. But let’s not dwell on the negative.
Roth thought #1: One of the highlights of Sundown is when Neil’s sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg), having returned to Acapulco following funeral services for their mother, finds him at a low-rent hotel where he’s doing nothing except sipping beer, hanging on the beach and fucking a pretty local woman he’s just met. “What the fuck are you doing?” she screams. “You lied about losing your passport…what is wrong with you?” And Roth just sits there and stares at her, not saying a word. Franco only shows us the back of Roth’s head during this tirade. Because Neil doesn’t give a shit, and has nothing to say.
Roth thought #2: If Sundown taught me anything, it’s never to visit Acapulco for any reason. Zero charm, overcrowded, shitty hotels, too much like Cancun.
Roth thought #3: A lady friend and I were walking along Blvd. St. Germain in ’02 or thereabouts, sometime in the early evening. Lo and behold we came upon Roth and a significant other, sitting at a cafe table and people-watching, etc. I smiled and introduced myself, explained that I’d just been in Cannes, complemented Roth on his most recent work, etc. The not-bright-enough woman I was with didn’t know Roth and asked what he did. Roth gave her a death-ray look; The mood went south immediately.
Roth thought #4: Roth, 60, is starting to develop a little bit of a bulldog jowl in his cheeks, right around the corners of his mouth. If I were him I would pop over to Prague and get this taken care of. A very slight “touch-up.” Just so he keep playing guys in their mid ’50s. More range and opportunity that way.
22 years ago Javier Bardem played Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban poet, in Julian Schnabel‘s Before Night Falls — a performance that launched his career. This year he portrayed another Cuban in Being The Ricardos — the band leader, conga-player and and TV comedian-producer Desi Arnaz, and the wokesters (including Variety’s Clayton Davis) gave him shit for it.
In response to this bullshit, HE hereby approves of Bardem playing any character from any culture in any part of the world who seems to speak with a Spanish or Mexican or any south-of-the-Border accent. He can play Spanish, Cuban, Argentinian, Chilean…he can play a Columbian immigrant living in the Bronx…he can play cops, drug dealers, heads of state, henpecked husbands from Rio de Jainero, a quadraplegic looking to humanely commit suicide…he can play an auto mechanic from Tijuana, a Venezuelan diplomat based in Washington, D.C., a smooth womanizer from Barcelona, drug dealers, arms dealers, a confused poor guy…he’s free to play anyone and everyone, including the voice of God.
