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Best Picture Contender as Hothouse Flower

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Last night Sasha Stone tapped out a longish paragraph [below] that explained the idea of a hothouse flower Best Picture contender. She was responding to people who were attempting to belittle the idea of Spider-Man: No Way Home being Best Picture-nominated.

My definition of a hothouse-flower Best Picture nominee is fairly generic — one that is frail and extra delicate, and can only thrive inside a glassed-off, temperature-controlled, lovingly pampered environment…a film that would sadly but instantly start to wither and die after being exposed to the raw and unruly elements.

The hothouse flower caregivers are the virtue signallers, the secular elitists, the Passing fancies, the Drive My Car raise-high-the-roof-beam carpenters, the friends of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Annette whisperers, the Green Knight worshippers, the festival wokesters, the precious misters and constant gardeners (Eric Kohn, Jessica Kiang, Justin Chang, David Ehrlich, Anne Thompson)…the Gold Derby whores (safety in numbers)…the Telluride lovebirds who oohed and aahhed over Spencer like parents smiling at a newborn infant.

I don’t happen to feel that Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter qualifies (I think it’s a real movie…a bit weird but true to itself) but every Kelly Reichardt film is, by natural default, a hothouse flower. And the biggest hothouse flower of the entire award season, of course, is Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog.

You can call Spider–Man: No Way Home this or that, but one thing you definitely can’t call it is a hothouse flower.

Friendo: “The reason [certain films] aren’t hothouse flowers is that they weren’t conceived and financed to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Not every ‘small’ or independent or foreign movie, made simply to be itself, is a hothouse flower. Parasite wasn’t a hothouse flower; what happened there was a fluke. But The Power of the Dog was most definitely conceived as Jane Campion‘s Return To Oscar Glory.

“Yes, it would be absurd for Drive My Car to be nominated for Best Picture. To nominate that movie — as the rich-kid fucks on Twitter are now advocating — would be insane. The rich kids want to kill the Oscars. They want to kill democracy. They want to kill everything.

“But not every smallish film of artistic reach that plays on the fall-festival circuit necessarily meets all the criteria for hothouse -flowerdom. Sure, those films are, by definition, being positioned as potential Oscar contenders. But partly it’s an aesthetic judgment. I feel like The Power of the Dog and Belfast are hothouse flowers in no small part because they fail as storytelling.”

Johnny Walker To Rescue

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If you know your Sterling Hayden stories, the one about being unable to deliver Gen. Jack Ripper‘s dialogue on Hayden’s first day of shooting Dr. Strangelove is perhaps the most familiar of all. But the story still sings.

Brian Wilson’s “Smile“

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Sutton’s first smiles began to happen just before New Year’s Eve. After five or six weeks of living and looking around and assessing things on her own. This is the first half-decent capturing of one of those moments, or at least the first I’ve been shown.

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Armie Hammer Onboard!

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They got rid of Armie Hammer in Taika Watiti‘s Next Goal Wins (replaced by Will Arnett). But Kenneth Branagh‘s Death on the Nile (.22), being an ensemble piece, had no choice but to keep him.

One problem: The “S.S. Karnak” looks like a CG creation. The cruiser in the 1978 version was “real”, but not this one. Branagh might have shot some footage on an actual floating vessel of some sort, but it doesn’t seem so. In fact it all looks fake, even the ancient Egyptian statues and whatnot.

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Floppy Bruce Wayne Hairstyle

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If you think about it, no previous Batman has had floppy, semi-longish, non-moussed or non-hair-sprayed hair. I love that RPatz’s hair is floppy and free. It’s a signifier of other forms of expressive Matt Reeves-style freedoms. Seriously, it’s a good omen. The Batman opens on 3.4.22 — nine weeks hence.

Set-Up & Payoff

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Almost all emotionally satisfying movies are about three-quarters set-up and one-quarter payoff.

I was explaining this a while ago in response to people dismissing Spider-Man: No Way Home. The viewer strategy, I said, is that you need to focus on the second hour and discount the mechanized, fan-service section that takes up the first 60 to 65 minutes.

“Brilliant way to assess a film,,,just ignore what sucks”, sneered “Michael2021.” To which I replied, “The first 65 minutes don’t ‘suck’— they’re just significantly different, delivery-wise, than the last hour. The first hour or so is all about situational set-up and boilerplate maneuverings.

“Do you like Warren Beatty‘s Heaven Can Wait (’78)? The impact of that film is almost entirely about the last 35 minutes or so, and really the last 20. The first hour is all set-up.

“Ditto Billy Wilder‘s The Apartment — the first hour or so is all set-up, set-up, set-up, and then the payoff happens during the last 30 to 40 minutes, and ESPECIALLY during the last 15 or 20.

“The last 20 to 25 minutes of Jerry Maguire is all payoff, payoff, payoff. Same thing with Almost Famous. How effective would Manchester By The Sea be without the last 25 to 30 minutes? Or the Zero Dark Thirty killshot finale? If you ask me The Social Network works because of that “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” finale.

“Name me an emotionally effective movie that doesn’t wait until the final act to start paying off…they all do this.”

Oswalt Apologizes For Chappelle Photo

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“I’m an LGBTQ ally, [and I’m] sorry, truly sorry that I didn’t consider the hurt this would cause, and the DEPTH of that hurt” — from Patton Oswalt‘s apology to the trans community for having tweeted or Instagrammed a photo of himself and Dave Chappelle, whom he’s been chummy with for 34 years.

Like howling mountain gorillas, the gentle and loving trans community jumped all over Patton for this. Let this be a warning to any and all performers or showbiz types who’ve been friendly with Chappelle in the recent past, or who would like to show affection for him in the future. We will pound your ass into pulp so don’t even THINK about it, bitch.

Rotten Tomatoes “Dog” Puzzler

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As we speak, the Rotten Tomatoes audience rating for The Power of the Dog sits at 82%, which is 15 points higher than it was on 12.5.21. 82% is also significantly higher than the current 7.3 Metacritic audience score; ditto the IMDB’s 7.0 rating.

Complicating the equation is the “250 +” audience ratings that resulted in the 12.5.21 score of 67% vs. “fewer than 50 verified ratings” that led to the current score of 82%.

In short, it would appear that the elimination of over 200 verified audience ratings resulted in the higher score. Maybe my calculation is somehow incorrect; I’ve certainly never claimed to be a master statistician.

If someone can explain how or why the current score is 15 points higher than the 12.5 score, please weigh in. I’m all ears.

Deepfake Lucy

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We’re all accustomed to deepfake tech, and we all know what the game is. I would have honestly been intrigued if Nicole Kidman‘s entire Lucille Ball performance in Being The Ricardos had been deepfaked. I know what the response is — deepfakes are okay for YouTube on laptop and smartphone screens, but the digital seams would show in a theatrical format. I might’ve bought that rationale five or six years ago, but I have my doubts in 2022.

Some Parents Aren’t Made For It

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Four months ago Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter played Telluride, and I missed every showing. Weeks and then months passed. I finally caught it last night on Netflix. I was vaguely afraid it would be some kind of opaque feminist downer, but it’s not.

The Lost Daughter is a visually agile, nicely edited, well-detailed grabber, and nothing if not emotionally and psychologically complex (if a bit curious). It’s more than competently directed and certainly well written by Gyllenhaal, who adapted Elena Ferrante’s source novel. It’s one of the best films by a first-timer I’ve ever seen. Hats off.

The core subject is that some aren’t cut out for parenting. Yes, including some moms. Some are simply too selfish or neurotic or sex-starved, or too irked by the endless demands of young children. Some are consumed by artistic visions of one kind or another.

Olivia Colman‘s Leda Caruso, a 50ish professor vacationing on the Greek island of Spetses, is one such mom. She has two daughters in their mid 20s, but it’s clear they haven’t a great deal of rapport with her. Leda wasn’t much for it when they were younger (the 20something Leda is played by Jessie Buckley) and her recollections of that time are stirred by watching young Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her temperamental three-year-old daughter, Elena.

Leda is a bit testy and distant at first, but she and Nina, who has married into a large and somewhat overbearing family, become friendly in a cautious sort of way.

Semi-spoiler: The story-tension aspect is driven by a very strange and perverse thing that Leda does early on. It’s selfish and sociopathic, but also tied into memories of her own young motherhood and the frustrations she felt saddled with.

25 years ago I wrote the following about One Fine Day, the George Clooney-Michelle Pfeiffer parent romcom: “Raising kids can be exhausting, at times even soul-draining…we all know this.”

Joni Mitchell couldn’t hack it — couldn’t surrender to mothering because she had so much in the way of poetry and songwriting inside her, so much raw material to pull out and shape and hone.

When I was 14 or 15 I recall being told by a good friend of my mother’s that “kids are a pain in the neck sometimes, and sometimes we need to escape that…if we’re honest with each other we admit this.”

When my father became an AA guy and was looking to confess his failings to those he’d hurt, he told me he was sorry but was never cut out for parenting. Not everyone is. I heard him, forgave him.

When Jett and Dylan came along I resolved not to be an aloof dad, and that wasn’t easy given that I had to write all the time. But I decided it would be better to err on the side of emotional closeness and leniency. Maggie, my ex, was the cop; I was the adventurer.

Whether or not you can roll with The Lost Daughter will depend on your ability to understand or at least accept the bad parent pathology that it puts on the plate.

Criterion Corrections (Real & Imagined)

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Late November 2021 Statement from Criterion regarding Citizen Kane 4K Bluray:

“Criterion had discovered there is a problem with the 1080p Bluray disc in all of our Citizen Kane editions. It affects the contrast in the feature film, starting around the 30-minute mark and lasting until the end of the film. The 4K UHD disc is not affected.

“We are in the process of manufacturing corrected copies and will be making replacements available to all of our customers. We hope to have replacement discs ready to ship before the end of the year.

“If you would like to exchange your disc, please send the Blu-ray disc 1 only (no packaging) to The Criterion Collection. Attn: Jon Mulvaney / KANE, 215 Park Ave South, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003.

“Our apologies for this inconvenience, and thanks as always for your support. Best wishes for a happy, safe, and wonderful holiday.”

Imaginary January 2022 Statement from Criterion regarding four teal-tinted Criterion Blurays — Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham, Sisters and Teorema:

“For the last four years, Criterion has refused to acknowledge that four Criterion Blurays of four classic films — Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham, Sisters and Teorema — have been teal-tinted, and in so doing the original color schemes of these films were essentially vandalized.

“Three of these vandalizations happened in 2018 — Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham and Sisters. The fourth teal treatment happened in early January, 2020, to Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Teorema.

“Criterion knew about these teal-tintings all along, but never admitted their existence. We have finally decided to admit our errors in this regard.

“We are in the process of manufacturing corrected copies of Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham, Sisters and Teorema and will be making replacements available to all of our customers. We hope to have replacement discs ready to ship before the end of the year.

“If you would like to exchange your teal discs for naturally colored ones, please send them (no packaging) to The Criterion Collection. Attn: Jon Mulvaney / COWBOY, BURHAM, SISTERS, TEOREMA / 215 Park Ave South, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003.”