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Wednesday, 12.22, 3:50 pm: Last night I “slept” fitfully (not really sleeping, in and out, waking up about 16 times)) for nine hours. Then I got up, thinking I might be feeling “better”, but that notion quickly faded. An hour or so later I went right back to sleep. Just woke up an hour ago (3 pm). Sniffles, sneezing, a little bleary. But I’ve been sicker.

Anthony Quinn during the second-act interrogation scene in The Guns of Navarone: “I’m sick…I’m sick!”

Yesterday evening: My Covid test came back late this afternoon, and I’m infected all right. Omicron, I’m guessing, but who knows? All I know is that after.defying Covid since March of ‘20, my German genes have let me down. Omicron is more infectious than Delta or generic Covid — I know that much.

Jordan Ruimy found out earlier today that he’s been infected also. Ditto a producer friend.

I actually feel a lot better now than I did early this afternoon. My temperature was at 100 around 2 pm — then it went down to 98.9. Then it went up to 99.1. I feel a little weak and achey right now, but it’s like I have a mild flu. I had a Christmas flu last December, and it didn’t last for more than a couple of days.

6:40 am update: Same. A bit weak and a bit achey but not awful. I can feel an alien presence in my system. Cough persists but I have cherry-flavored cough spray that helps. You can’t sleep all that deeply with this damn thing so I’ve been lying here (fitful sleeping, in and out, floating on the surface of the pond) for nine hours. And of course I’ve got Tatiana furious at me — how dare you potentially spoil my trip to Russia? My Malibu producer friend and Jordan Ruimy and me and a certain Brooklyn-based journalist getting it at the same time means a LOT of people are suddenly infected. Omicron!

I’m triple vaxxed as we speak.

For years I’d known of Beatles roadie/manager Mal Evans but I never had a good look at the guy or felt more or less acquainted with his vibe and manner until I watched Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back last month.

He seemed amiable, nice enough, a decent sort. A big galumphy guy. Six-foot-six. Black-rimmed glasses. Adaptable, good natured.

As I’m not a Beatles obsessive, I somehow never read that poor Evans was shot to death by a couple of L.A. beat cops on 1.5.76. He was stoned and irate and holding a rifle and wouldn’t put it down when ordered to do so by the fuzz, so they drilled him four times. Instant cosmic consciousness, but what a weird way for a trusted friend of the Fab Four to slip this mortal coil.

I can’t recall if Evans’ bizarre death is noted in the 468-minute doc’s closing credits, but if not it seems like an odd omission. He was primarily a gofer but was also a peripheral part of the late ‘60s elite rock cosmology…peace and love and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi mysticism…all of that. And he went out like Tony Montana.

I’m triple vaxxed, but starting this morning I began to have feelings of profound fatigue. All I want to do is lie down and nap. I now have a temperature of 100 degrees. Plus I have a hacking cough. Obviously this could mean I have the big “o.” Or perhaps I’ve merely succumbed to a run-of-the-mill “bug” — who knows? I was just tested a couple of hours ago — results within 24 to 72. Plus I forgot to buy sour cream at Pavilions.

Behind every Hollywood Elsewhere post has been some form of pain. Certainly in the sense that one can’t recognize pleasurable, high-craft, top-of-the-line films without suffering through thousands of mediocre or awful films. (Truffaut: “Taste is a result of a thousand distastes.”) Plus: Every funny joke is rooted in some form of pain. Plus: Every mediocre or awful film is rooted in the belief that pain must be denied or avoided or laughed off, etc. The emptier or more shallow you are, the more banal your convictions, the more terrible your films are.

A somewhat old-school hotshot studio exec (i.e., not a straight-to-streaming guy) recently blurted out the following to The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield:

One unvaccinated 50something Texas guy has died from the Omicron variant. The first such publicly acknowledged death in the U.S. Panic in the streets! Terrible, ruthless Omicron has snuffed out the life of one…fucking…guy.

…in keeping the Oscar brand at least semi-alive and semi-relevant…if the Academy is interested in embracing at least some movies that really and truly connect with ticket-buyers…then the membership needs to shake itself out of its woke stupor and at the very least (a) nominate Spider-Man: No Way Home for Best Picture as well as (b) Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Remember all the hoo-hah when The Dark Knight wasn’t nominated for Best Picture and people said “this is a prime example of the Academy being out of touch with real audiences”? Well, we’re right back in that situation again, only more so. People deeply admired that Chris Nolan film, but I don’t recall them howling and cheering during the good parts.

If the Academy doesn’t at least recognize that No Way Home has hit the magic spot with audiences like no other film this year, they will deserve to be ignored and forgotten forever. If they ignore No Way Home they will have demonstrated to the audience — the people who still occasionally flirt with the idea of going out to a movie — they will have demonstrated that they don’t fucking get it….that they’re living on their own cloud, in their own little corner of the world.

I understand, of course, that the winner of the Best Picture Oscar will be either Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog, easily the grimmest downer among the leading Best Picture contenders, or Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast, a sentimental period flick that some people love for its kindly family vibes, or perhaps West Side Story or King Richard…one of these will win but if the Academy ignores the cheering in theatres happening right now across the country, it will deserve what happens as a result.

The wokesters have all but killed the lore of movies and the Oscars to boot, and if next March’s Oscar telecast is another Soderbergh-styled thing…forget it, the game will be 100% over.

Critical Drinker, 9:14: “Christmas truly is the time of miracles. When I think about how much I enjoyed No Way Home and what I liked so much about it, I can’t shake the feeling that despite all the flashy action scenes and snarky dialogue, this doesn’t really feel like a current-year Marvel movie. There’s no clumsy social commentary, no divisive political posturing, no overpowered and completely unlikable strong female characters and no mean-spirited deconstruction of legacy heroes and villains.

“There’s something wonderfully old-fashioned about this film and its approach to story-telling. It reminded me of a time when movies united rather than divided people. It reminded me that superhero films are actually allowed to be fun and magical and uplifting…that they can be an escape from the cares and worries of the real world for a few hours…that they can still make people feel good. It’s almost like when you stop trying to push ‘the message’ and just concentrate on telling a good fucking story, people respond to it.

“If anyone in Hollywood still cares about entertaining their audience and making money, they would do very well to follow the example set by No Way Home. I fucking loved it, and I give it a whole-hearted recommendation.”

A Covid Omicron blizzard is descending upon Los Angeles…upon the entire world. Suddenly it’s the spring of ’20 all over again. The Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards (Thursday, 1.6.22) have been cancelled. The physical attendance side of Sundance ‘22 is almost certainly going south. The BAFTA tea has been cancelled. You name it, the plug is being pulled “out of an excess of caution”.

Wait…the 2022 Critics Choice awards telecast is going ahead with the show.

But tell me, please just tell me….where is the hard medical evidence that Omicron is wreaking terrible devastation in terms of overstuffed hospitals, soaring death rates, piles of bodies in refrigerated trucks, etc.? Where is the evidence that symptoms for fully-vaxxed infectees are any worse than those of a two-week flu, if that?

As usual, I’m blaming the bumblefuck vaccine refuseniks. Corner these ayeholes and forcibly inject them. Their howls of protest will be music to my ears.

From Dana Milbank’s 12.17 Washington Post piece that quotes a learned analysis that the U.S. is “closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe”:

“Things deteriorated so dramatically under Trump, in fact, that the United States no longer technically qualifies as a democracy. Citing the Center for Systemic Peace’s ‘Polity’ data set — the one the CIA task force has found to be most helpful in predicting instability and violence — Barbara Walter writes that the United States is now an “anocracy,” somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.

“’We are no longer the world’s oldest continuous democracy,’ Walter writes. ‘That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand, and then Canada. We are no longer a peer to nations like Canada, Costa Rica and Japan, which are all rated a +10 on the Polity index.’

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The Northman poster looks like a standee you might see in the Cannes marketplace in the basement of the Palais. Whatever Robert Eggers‘ forthcoming film may turn out to be, I hate the “sell” of it, which is aimed at the knuckle-dragging Games of Thrones crowd. The film is violent, yes, but it’s based on the story of classic medieval saga of Amleth (Hamlet), and the Focus Features marketers are trying to de-Shakespeare-ize it by aiming at the commoners. Come and get your mythical lone warrior revenge saga buffet…Jesus, it’s like a medieval Revenant mixed with a Mel Gibson movie. Bashings, howlings, bruisings, helmets, swords, axes, beheadings, amber-lit interiors, snowfalls, mud, grimness…blood in, blood out. What happened to the arthouse version of Eggers?

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has posted several research screening reactions.

Tatiana Antropova:

1. A Hero

2. The Power of the Dog

3. Drive My Car

4. Parallel Mothers

5. King Richard

6. Cyrano

7. The Worst Person in the World

8. Bergman Island

9. House of Gucci

10. The Card Counter

By “top” I mean the most nurturing, the most pleasurable, the most exciting…the 2021 films I felt best about having seen. Note: I’ve been shifting and second-guessing the order since yesterday afternoon (Sunday, 12.19). But I’ve pretty much stopped fiddling around.

I realize that putting Spider-Man: No Way Home in my fourth-place position is an odd call, given that I felt exasperated by the first 65 or 70 minutes. But the final 45 to 50 minutes really pay off, and I have to acknowledge what a bull’s-eye that felt like when I saw it two or three days ago with a cheering crowd.

I can’t honestly say that I felt “good” about having seen The Power of the Dog, although the high level of craft from director Jane Campion is obvious. Same deal with Red Rocket — didn’t enjoy watching it, knew all the while that director-writer Sean Baker knew what he was doing. I can’t say I felt “good” about CODA but I appreciated what it was trying to do and didn’t mind the effort.

I put Peter Jackson‘s 468-minute The Beatles: Get Back in ninth place because it’s really stayed with me.

Update: The disparaging remarks about King Richard and my possibly whimsical decision to put it at the top of the list are duly noted. It’s a sports saga, yes, but mainly a character piece — a study of a gnarly, obstinate fellow who was no day at the beach, and an examination of how character, determination and especially discipline can really make a difference in anyone’s life. I found it inspirational — a film of real value. It made me feel good, and if it didn’t make you feel good…well, okay.

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. Riders of Justice
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. The Last Duel

16. No Sudden Move
17. Titane
18. The Tragedy of Macbeth
19. Drive My Car
20. Summer of Soul

21. Being The Ricardos
22. Bergman Island
23. House of Gucci
24. Pig
25. Eyes of Tammy Faye
26. Nightmare Alley
27. The Power of the Dog
28. Red Rocket
29. CODA
30. Don’t Look Up

Critically hailed, grueling sits, films that made me feel drained or awful or sleepy: Belfast, Dune, C’mon, Cmon, Spencer, Annette, The Green Knight (and it breaks my heart to say this) The French Dispatch.

Still haven’t seen ’em: The Lost Daughter, Jockey

I haven’t seen Matrix: Resurrections but “I’ve got a feeling.”

Quo Vadis, Aida opened last March, but I regard regard it as a 2020 film.