“The art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned and reduced to its lowest common denominator — ‘content.’

“As recently as fifteen years ago, the term ‘content‘ was heard only when people were discussing the cinema on a serious level, and it was contrasted with and measured against ‘form.’ Then, gradually, it was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form, or even cared enough to think that they should.

“’Content’ became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode. It was linked, of course, not to the theatrical experience but to home viewing, on the streaming platforms that have come to overtake the moviegoing experience, just as Amazon overtook physical stores.

“On the one hand, this has been good for filmmakers, myself included. On the other hand, it has created a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field, which sounds democratic but isn’t. If further viewing is ‘suggested’ by algorithms based on what you’ve already seen, and the suggestions are based only on subject matter or genre, then what does that do to the art of cinema?

“Curating isn’t undemocratic or ‘elitist,’ a term that is now used so often that it’s become meaningless. It’s an act of generosity — you’re sharing what you love and what has inspired you. (The best streaming platforms, such as the Criterion Channel and MUBI and traditional outlets such as TCM, are based on curating — they’re actually curated.) Algorithms, by definition, are based on calculations that treat the viewer as a consumer and nothing else.” — Martin Scorsese in a Harper‘s essay about Federico Fellini, titled “Il Maestro.”

After the Blake Lively Boone Hall wedding catastrophe of a few years ago, who could have possibly failed to understand that attending any kind of Antebellum South event was extremely unwise if not flat-out stupid? Bachelor contestant Rachel Kirkconnell nonetheless “went” there in 2018.

In a 2.9.21 discussion with Extra‘s Rachel Lindsay (herself a former Bachelor contestant), Bachelor host Chris Harrison tried to wave off Kirkconnell’s naivete while concurrently blaming “this judge, jury, executioner thing,” etc. Which of course landed Harrison in hot water, the result being that he’s temporarily withdrawn from hosting duties.

When will this finally sink in? Anything Antebellum is best ignored or avoided. Forever.

The Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively Boone Hall nuptials were obviously ill-advised, but nine years ago there wasn’t this instant socio-political condemnation thing associated with Southern plantations. 12 Years A Slave hadn’t even been filmed at that point. Eleven years before the Reynolds-Lively wedding a scene from Peter Chelsom and Warren Beatty‘s Town and Country was partly filmed on a storied Southern plantation. And Forrest Gump, of course, had been filmed on a similar Georgia plantation eight years before that.

A little more than five years ago (on 10.29.15) I joined Scott Feinberg and a friend of his for a scooter journey to Wormsloe, a Savannah location used in Forrest Gump. A three-century-old plantation with a long straight driveway shaded by an entwined canopy of moss-covered oak trees, etc. We didn’t attend any sort of planned event there, thank God — we just wanted to see it, take pictures, etc.

Four or five years ago, a certain multi-word mantra began to get around in entertainment-related journalistic circles. The mantra was this: “Get with the ‘woke’ Khmer Rouge program — embrace the notion that almost all straight white guys are evil or at least deplorable on some level, that people of color are blessed and need to be embraced and exalted every which way, and that the time has come for women who’ve been sexually harassed and/or discriminated against to be avenged — or forget about working as a front-line journalist.”

In short, the time had come for a little reverse discrimination against white males. Was this viewpoint justified? Yes — absolutely, abundantly and to hell with due process. Bully boys in powerful positions had earned this enmity for centuries, and now the tables had turned and a lot of powerfully corroded whiteys were hauled before courts (legal as well as Twitter-verse) and the general tone turned to one of condemnation and retribution.

Fairly or unfairly, the message was clear to every seasoned, semi-verified or would-be journalist or critic: talk the talk and walk the walk, or you won’t survive in this industry. Because a revolutionary mind wave, driven by Donald Trump nausea and Harvey Weinstein-esque repulsion, is spreading throughout liberal professions, and those who fail to sign on with enthusiasm will…uhm, have a difficult time of it.

My first significant taste of Khmer Rouge hysteria happened in the fall of ’17, as I was on my way to the Key West Film Festival. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich shrieked like a p.c. banshee when I tweeted to Jessica Chastain that an aspiring film critic not only needs to be talented, tenacious and willing to eat shit, but that it would “help” if he/she is “fetching.” Ehrlich was appalled that anyone would even suggest that an attractive appearance might have something to do with how you’re received in mixed company or by potential employers. I called him a delusional little bitch, of course. 18 months later Bill Maher set him straight.

All to say that when it comes to reviewing Allen vs. Farrow, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering‘s four-part Woody Allen hatchet-job doc which totally pushes the Dylan-and-Mia view of things, there’s no way for critics in the employ of Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire and the Daily Beast to say anything except “hmmm, yeah, maybe, food for thought, who knows?, Allen is toast anyway and he’s probably guilty of what Dylan has long claimed, and this four-part investigation sure makes him look like the devil so he probably is.”

Do we all understand the basic dynamic? These critics are simply not allowed to disagree with the Mia-Dylan case or or quote from Moses Farrow‘s essay (“A Son Speaks Out“) or point out the Woody-exonerating facts. If they divert from the party line, they’ll be in trouble and they know it.

I haven’t seen Allen vs. Farrow (it premieres on HBO Max this weekend) but the hanging-judge reviews by Indiewire‘s Ben Travers and the Daily Beast‘s Marlow Stern speak for themselves. These guys were clearly wokester Woody haters before they watched the series. Then again the THR and Variety reviews don’t really come up for air either.

HE’s overwhelming impression is that the Dick-Ziering doc is a one-sided hatchet job. Elite wokester journas, to repeat, are so sold on and submerged within the faith of #MeToo deliverance and historical righteousness (which, on its own terms, is not disputed in the slightest by HE) that there’s only one way to review this four-part doc, and that’s by ignoring the facts and dismissing Woody’s denials and and Moses Farrow’s account of Mia’s psychology and behavior and what happened up at Frog Hollow on that day in August of ‘92. Haters are gonna hate. Deniers are gonna deny.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy: “Are you surprised by this? Imagine if a trade like THR or IndieWire would actually go against the grain and flat out say ‘this documentary is bullshit‘ and ‘it neglects facts and is one-sided”…the backlash would be so overwhelming that there would be calls for the writer to be fired. It’s fucking sad. Unless you operate your own site you’re basically committing career harakiri if you side against woke and #MeToo narratives.”

My first New York Film Festival was the ’77 edition. I was planning to move into a cockroach-infested Soho apartment on Sullivan Street, but in late September I was still sharing a home rental in Westport, CT. I forget how many films I saw but I definitely caught Wim Wenders‘ The American Friend (the big public screening was on 9.24.77), Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom (10.1.77) and Francois Truffaut‘s The Man Who Loved Women (ditto). All three were shown at 1.66:1.

If I recall correctly New York Film Festival director Richard Roud conducted a brief post-screening interview with Truffaut following the screening.

I was in awe of Roud, whose investment in nouvelle vague French cinema was storied by that point. I loved his deep voice and moustache, the smooth and off-handed way he spoke French, his continental cool-cat fashion sense and the constant smoking of what I assumed were unfiltered Galouises.

A Cahiers du Cinema contributor in the ’50s, Roud began running the Löndon Film Festival in ’60. He co-founded the NYFF in ’63 with Amos Vogel. Roud was a huge Jean Luc Godard enthusiast from way back, and I recall Andrew Sarris telling me that at one point that in his capacity as a NYFF board member he had to tell Roud and his co-enthusiasts that he couldn’t make it with Godard when his films took on an ultra-didactic political character in the early to mid ’70s.

Roud passed in 1989 at age 59.

This interview between Roud and Truffaut was taped right around the festival’s showing of The Man Who Loved Women. A longer version of the interview is on the Criterion Bluray of Truffaut’s Jules et Jim.

YouTube comment by “spb78”: “I’ll have to watch this full interview again on the Jules et Jim set, but if I’m correct in assuming there was no follow-up by the interviewer then what a wasted opportunity. Because the obvious question to Truffaut would’ve been ‘You articulated the auteur theory when you were a critic. Since becoming a filmmaker, do you still maintain this theory?’ Instead of telling Truffaut the theory is proven by his films, he should have asked Truffaut if making films validated his theory.”

Truffaut was 45 when the interview happened. He died of a brain tumor on 10.21.84 at age 52. My ex-wife Maggie and I visited his Cimitiere du Montmartre grave in January ’87.

…I thought about watching this so I could hate on it. Obviously because director-producer-writer-star Louise Linton, a Scottish actress who’s been around, has been married to Donald Trump‘s former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for three and a half years. Then I read some reviews, thought better of it, bailed. This despite HE’s own Joel Michaely, whom I’ve known since the late ’90s, having a significant costarring role.

I’m presuming no HE regulars have had a looksee. But if they have…

According to a five-week-old analysis of Anglo Saxon racial attitudes (plus a corresponding color illustration) from Barnor Hesse, Associate Professor of African American Studies, Political Science and Sociology at Northwestern University, white people come in all shapes, sizes and moods, but too damn many of them are thorny little bitches who won’t get with the Critical Race Theory program and therefore need to be shaken and shamed and maybe slapped around.

I’ve considered where I belong on Hesse’s graph. The general urging is that wherever I might belong, I need to work on becoming a White Abolitionist. So first I need to self-identify, and then I need to look deep within, put on a hair shirt and really get down.

Is it okay if I identify as a White Contrarian, which is to say somewhere between White Benefit and White Confessional but at the same time a mild-mannered paleface who deeply resents the spreading of academic prosecutorial insanity that has wafted off campuses over the last 20 or 25 years and has led to automatic presumptions of white criminality and malevolence and the anti-racist progressive kneejerk culture of the N.Y. Times and some of the more absolutist portions of “The 1619 Project”?

Speaking as a reasonably progressive, left-center, fair-minded sort, I am respectfully refusing to fall upon the church steps and apologize for being an embodiment of absolute evil because of who my parents and grandparents were and where and how I was raised and what influences fell upon me, etc. So far I’ve lived through quite a journey and arrived at a spiritual place of my own, thanks very much. So if Barnor Hesse doesn’t like who I am or doesn’t think I’ve sufficiently progressed according to Khmer Rouge wokeness standards of 2021….well, what can I say? I can say “gee, Barnor, I humbly apologize” but somehow I feel that won’t be enough.

I just finished watching an Oscar handicap discussion between Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neill and Variety‘s Tim Gray.

I watched this discussion for one reason — to see what these four savvy insiders would say about the effect of the National Society of Film Critics condemning Variety for the Promising Young Woman apology and to what extent this influences Carey Mulligan‘s bid for a Best Actress Oscar. (I think she’s locked in all the more.) What did these four have to say about this hot-button issue? Nothing — they completely ignored it.

What I mostly got out of the back-and-forth was a refreshed Best Picture reading — i.e., Nomadland might be slowing down or even slipping while Trial of the Chicago 7 and Minari might be gaining ground. Is this true? You tell me.

Anne Thompson (Indiewire): “Nomadland is an anomalous movie, a road movie, a hybrid in which [many of] the crafts are not in there…but it’s still the strongest Best Picture contender…they love this movie. Chicago 7 is very very strong [and] a possibility…I’m not saying it will but it could take over Nomadland. Minari is moving up, totally surging…it is so strong [3 Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, 10 Critics’ Choice Movie Awards nominations, 6 Independent Spirit Award nominations + the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film]. One Night in Miami is steady as they go, and Ma Rainey too. Mank is going to be like The Irishman — a lot of nominations and we’ll see what it actually wins. Promising Young Woman is surging too.”

HE reply: No mention of Sound of Metal and Da 5 Bloods? Anne knows that Ma Rainey and One Night in Miami are mezzo-mezzo and not really going anywhere. She knows this, and yet she gives them the old college cheer. I too am sensing a slight slowing in the Nomadland force flow. It may be holding but it’s not building.

Tom O’Neill (Gold Derby) “Promising Young Woman is popping up in all kinds of places for Best Picture, [and this is] surprising us so we have to take it seriously here. It’s surging every which way.”

HE reply: “When Tom says he and his Gold Derby colleagues are surprised by the surge of Promising Young Womwn, he means that by his own sights he wouldn’t be picking it as a possible serious Best Picture contender.

Pete Hammond (Deadline): “Well, something’s gonna win. My problem with all of this…prognosticating in this very weird season and not even quite a month away from the nominations…a lot of Academy members just haven’t seen this stuff. One person said they should send a Roku box or an Apple TV device to everyone because a lot her friends are watching these movies on their computers. I’m not sure that Nomadland is a computer movie [as] it’s very deliberately paced and you have to stay with it and get enveloped by that kind of a film. A critics favorite definitely, that can help it along but not always. I think The Trial of Chicago 7 has all the [classic] ingredients that make for a Best Picture winner, particularly when we watch the news and see what’s going on and how this movie is so prescient right now. Academy members like to be on top of something important….whether that [points to] Chicago 7 or Frances McDormand stacking boxes at Amazon…I don’t know. I do think that Minari with the wind at its back from the Parasite win last year. Minari…you saw the SAG nominations and all the nominations from the Critics Choice awards…that might be the consensus choice…it gets a good amount of number one votes but it gets a whole ot numbers twos. I loved Promising Young Woman personally….I think it’s a great movie. Mank may not be a #1 choice. I just talked to an Academy member…we disagree on Mank, he said. ‘You don’t like it?’ Yeah…you don’t? ‘Not really.'”

HE reply: Pete saying that “something’s gonna win” means he’s not feeling great surges of enthusiasm anywhere, about anything.

Timothy Gray (Variety): “The below-the-line people will vote for Mank and Trial of the Chicago 7. Sacha Baron Cohen seems like a front-runner.”

Hammond: “Some people think Nomadland is a great immersive movie, and another person I spoke to was looking at his watch half the time.”

O’Neill: “Let’s discuss the speculation about Chadwick Boseman having this wrapped up. Peter Finch and Heath Ledger are the exceptions to the role. I don’t think this is a lock at all for Boseman. On the other hand he’s ahead among Gold Derby critics.”

Hammond: “Boseman might get two nominations and that’s never happened. They might want to go with Anthony Hopkins for Best Actor and Chadwick for Best Supporting. I don’t know that Da 5 Bloods has [sufficient] levels of strength among Academy voters.”

Gray: “One Academy member told me ‘all due respect but he’s dead and doesn’t need it…I’m going to vote for someone who’s still with us.'”

#BREAKING: Former President Trump surprises supporters who gathered to celebrate Presidents Day by driving by in a motorcade in West Palm Beach, Florida. pic.twitter.com/dJ22CNG7fM

— Abhishek Saxena (@tagabhishek) February 15, 2021

Director-writer Michael Mann‘s Thief is a work of beauty for the most part, but it has two things wrong with it.

One, in the coffee shop scene James Caan explains his “this is who I am and how I operate” philosophy to Tuesday Weld. It’s basically a lesson he learned in prison — “nobody can hurt me if nothin’ means nothin’…if I don’t care about anything including myself.” It’s a variation upon Neil McCauley‘s “don’t get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”

Caan clearly isn’t lying or trying to sell Weld a bill of goods. He’s laying his soul flat on the formica table. But why would Weld want a serious home-and-kids relationship with a guy who lives by that kind of nihilist “nobody owns me” attitude? It makes no sense. He’s telling her “if anyone tries to crash my way of life I will grab a lead pipe and do the same thing I did in the joint.” This is a guy to have a casual week-to-week thing with, at most.

Two, the ending of Thief — Weld and kid sent away, destroy the house, kill Robert Prosky and his goons — fulfills Caan’s lone-wolf aesthetic, but it’s not satisfying from an audience perspective. Which is why Thief topped out theatrically at only $11.5 million instead of $20 million or higher.

Audiences knew Caan was an odd duck and a weird hardass, but they respected his craft and professionalism. The most serene and settled moment in the film is when the big extended-blow-torch safecracking job is finished and an exhausted Caan is sitting in a fold-up chair and smoking a cigarette. The film should’ve ended right there — a job well done. Ending Thief this way would have (a) qualified it as a major art film because it didn’t end on a plot point, and (b) made it more popular.

I honestly flashed on this during my very first viewing of Thief inside the old Magno Screening Room (now Dolby 88) in February of ’81. I literally said to myself at the end of the big-blowtorch scene, “This is it…end it here and it’ll be perfect,.”

Audiences didn’t want or need a resolution to the Caan-vs.-corrupt cops-and-gangsters subplot. What mattered was Caan affirming his El Supremo status as the greatest big-time thief in the Chicago area, and maybe beyond that.

I shouldn’t start the week off with this as it’s not a big deal, but at the :52 mark MSNBC’s Willie Geist gets it wrong, In the course of introducing Pennsylvania Representative Madeleine Dean, he pronounced her first name as “MahduhLEEN”. If you’ve ever seen Vertigo you know it’s pronounced Mahduhlehn. Here are two authoritative instructionals.

Only now can this year-old story be passed along freely and openly. Correction: Tatiana’s first line of dialogue should read “when was the last time you had the wallet in your hands?”

The following true-life encounters occured during the Santa Barbara Film Festival. The first happened a year ago; the second in ’15 or ’16. It follows that most of what happens during my annual SB visits is uneventful; we only pass along the stand-out stuff.

Story #1: I was in the checkout line at Ralph’s on Carillo. A giggly party girl and her friends were buying four huge bottles of something alcoholic. Either the booze was pale yellow or the bottles were tinted that way. Didn’t see a label or sticker.

I asked the checkout guy, “What is that stuff?”

“Bocca,” he said.

“Bocca?” I repeated. I thought it might be some exotic liqueur. “Never heard of it.”

Actually I had in The French Connection — Tony Lobianco’s Brooklyn-based heroin dealer was named Sal Bocca. Roy Schieder: “Our friend’s name is Bocca. Salvatore Bocca. They call him Sal. He’s a real sweetheart.”

The girl and her pallies paid for the Bocca, and the guy packed the bottles in ordinary paper bags, which struck me as insufficient given their size and weight.

“How do you spell that?” I asked. The checkout guy ignored my request, but he looked at me sideways. “You never heard of Vocca?”

“No,” I insisted while offering a half-shrug of apology. Ping. “Oh, you mean vodka?”

“Yeah, man…vodka.”

“Oh, sorry. I misunderstood. Sorry.“

In fact, the checkout guy, who was (and undoubtedly still is) of Latin descent and spoke with a slight accent, was pronouncing his vees like bees. I learned that in Spanish class when I was 15. When you say “vamonos,” for example, the vee is pronounced as a blend of vee and bee.

Which partially explains the confusion. But vodka is pronounced “vahdkuh” and this guy was delivering too much of an “oh” sound. So just between us, it was mostly his fault. I’ve been saying the word “vodka” my entire life so don’t tell me.

Story #2: I was staying for a night (Saturday) at the Cabrillo Inn. I awoke around 6:30 am. I naturally wanted my usual cup of morning mud. There was no coffee-pot heater in the room so hot tap water would have to suffice. I turned on the faucet and waited. And waited. It didn’t happen — never even turned warm.

So I dressed and went downstairs with my day-old paper cup and my Starbucks Instant and strolled into the complimentary-breakfast room.

Some 50ish guy (a tourist from Chicago, he later explained) was standing inside and giving me the once-over. Two women were preparing things; they weren’t quite ready to serve. All I wanted was some hot water so I asked for that. In a minute or two, they said. I nodded and waited.

The Man From Windy City thought I had somehow overstepped. Chicago guy: “Why don’t you ask the hotel manager?” Me: “What’s he gonna do?” Chicago guy: “That’s what he’s here for.” Me: “What’s he gonna do, push the emergency hot-water button?” Chicago guy: “He could get an engineer to fix the pipes.” Me: “At ten minutes to seven on a Sunday morning? Yeah, that’s a possibility.”

It was obvious this guy was a couple of cards short of a full deck and not worth conversing with, especially after he said, “You’re being a dick.” For asking for some hot water? Or pointing out that his “ask the manager” idea was ridiculous?

Me: “Thank you. In your company, sir, it’s a pleasure.”

Things went downhill from there, and then we both decided to take a break and breathe easy. Then we got back into it.

Chicago guy: “Are you attending the film festival?” Me: “None of your business.” (I’m sorry but Midwestern tourists irritate me, especially when they offer unwarranted opinions and double especially when they’re wearing shorts and sandals and talking with a twang.) Chicago guy: “This is my first visit to California.” Me: “Great.” Chicago guy: “Can I take your photo?” Me: “No, you can’t take my photo.”

Then he did the old “heh-heh” chuckle thing, as if to say it’s all amusing and rolling off his back. So I imitated his chuckle and pretended to be him, accent and all: “Boy, this fella sure is a character and he sure is particular…heh-heh!”

A minute or two later he came over and tried to shake my hand. I declined. “What are you, a Christian?,” I asked. “Keep it. Convert to Satanism.” Chicago guy is 50something and this is the first time he’s ever visited the West Coast?

I should have shrugged it off and shaken his hand. He was a jerk, but also a bigger man. I was being a grump.

The breakfast room lady gave me a cup of steaming hot water. I thanked her, grabbed a breakfast roll and left.