In all fairness or likelihood, Glenn Close will almost surely be nominated for her performance as an old-school, decent-hearted Kentucky grandma in Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix, 11.24). Several times nominated before (and especially deserving of a win for her performance in 2018’s The Wife), never won. Alas, the naysayers (not against Glenn but the film or more precisely the trailer) are already assembling.

This decision is a stain on the reputation of NBC News, which has decided to reward Trump for walking away from a debate. It's not the first time NBC has let itself serve as Trump's useful idiot, but it may be the most egregious. https://t.co/kOVdmIi91W

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) October 14, 2020

Daniel Lombroso‘s White Noise (10.21, iTunes/Amazon) is an Atlantic-sponsored doc about alt-right racism. It focuses upon Richard Spencer, Lauren Southern and Mike Cernovich “as they ride a wave of racist ideas to viral fame,” etc.

But there’s a quick insert shot in the trailer which gave me pause. Southern is shown pasting a sticker to a wall that says “it’s okay to be white.” Which means, given that Southern is being depicted as a non-liberal, discriminatory, less-than-compassionate person, that it’s definitely not okay to be white — that there’s something inherently flawed or diseased or poisonous about being a descendant of white Anglo Saxon or European Germanic tribes.

In other words if you’re a WASP you’re not only in league with Southern and her ilk but you have a real genetic problem, and so you need to pick up a copy of “White Fragility” and go through anti-racism training and gather some birch branches and self-flagellate, etc.

I’m sorry but I don’t buy that.

From “Rosanna Arquette Oversteps,” an HE post from 8.7.19: “Speaking as an X-factor white guy from a middle-class New Jersey and Connecticut upbringing, I don’t feel repelled or disgusted by my Anglo-Saxon heritage and family history. I deeply regret the cruelty visited upon immigrants and various cultures of color by whites, but the fact that racist attitudes were common throughout most of the 20th Century and certainly the 19th Century doesn’t mean that white people (more particularly my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, reaching back to the mid 1800s) were inherently evil.

“By current standards the people I came from may seem insufficiently evolved, of course, but they were born into a certain culture and were dealt certain cards, and most carried the weight as best they could. They weren’t born with horns on their heads.

“Nor do I feel that elemental decency is absent in the majority of white people today. I feel profoundly repelled by the attitudes of your backwater Trump supporters, of course, but they are not me. I come from a family of ‘good’, well-educated, imperfect people who believed in hard work, discipline and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoons, and who exuded decency and compassion for the most part. I am not the devil’s spawn, and neither is my Russian-born wife or my two sons. I’ve witnessed and dealt with ignorant behavior all my life, but I’ve never bought into the idea of Anglo-Saxon culture being inherently evil. Please.”

…if and when Biden wins and Trump retires to Mar a Lago?

Friendo: “It’s probably too late to put [the woke] genie back in the bottle as an entire generation has been brainwashed by the gender-studies-and-identity-politics fascist-college-professor mafia, and the mainstream media has been infiltrated by this insanity as if eaten by termites. I grieve for all of this (and have for several years now), and I really do get it.

“[But eventually] backlashes are going to set in (did you see Bill Burr‘s opening monologue on SNL? — I was shocked that they allowed it). And once the fervor goes out of the whole idea of a ‘resistance’ (a term so despicable and narcissistic that it makes me almost physically ill), I think some of the wind may go out of the woke sails.

“Things go out of fashion, and then come back in. And vice versa. And wokeness, as destructive as it is, is nothing if not fashion. It has no more moral reality than buying a handbag to prove you’re cool.

“Basically, wokeness is white supremacy for hipsters. I assume that at some point people with IQs over 100 are going to start figuring that out.”

HE to Friendo: I have more motivation to despise the wokester totalitarian thought-police left than most. I’ve flirted with primitive fantasies I’d rather not speak of. Sometimes I feel as if I’m Travis Bickle talking to Peter Boyle in that scene outside the Belmore Cafeteria….”I’ve got some really bad thoughts.” Nobody despises these monsters like I do.

Trump is not a “bad” person. We’re all frightened and delicate children under the crust, but he’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen or heard of who seems a literal manifestation of evil…a sloppy, lying, toxic, terrified, improvising, totalitarian, foam-at-the-mouth blowhard brute of the lowest order. Silvio Berlusconi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Benito Mussolini, Augusto Pinochat, Kim Jong Un, etc.

It has always bothered me that some seem to see Biden-vs.-Trump in purely strategic terms. It’s a tennis match, a gladiatorial duel. Trump, they say, is merely a product, an agenda, point of view. These folks never seem to mention the moral necessity of banishing the demented, alcoholic uncle who’s blasting shotun holes through the walls and generally trashing the community. “Trump might win if he does this or that,” they say. “If people despise the left enough they might break for him,” etc. This is a moral issue, not a strategic one. It’s life vs. death. Trump is not a “bad guy.” He’s literally Satanic.

Friendo: “There’s no such thing as a sure thing. But there’s something that even the polls and studies don’t measure — that the nation seems exhausted by Trump. It’s like living with a drug abuser. After a while, you just want out.”

To judge by this trailer, Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix, 11.24) is a highly charged soap opera about domestic family values. An argument between women, basically…not a male authority figure** in sight. Glenn Close‘s “Mawmaw” vs. Amy Adams‘ druggy, puffy-faced mom with young-and-chubby J.D. Vance (Owen Asztalos) and older, ready-to-move-on J.D. (Gabriel Basso) in the middle.

Guess who saves J.D. and encourages him to find his own life outside this ghastly downswirling culture, and to seek higher ground?

Close is obviously a Best Supporting Actress contender as she checks at least three boxes — unflattering physical transformation, yokel accent, long overdue. She’s clearly doing something that holds your attention. And she’s playing the savior. “Supporting” because I’ve been told over and over that “Mawmaw” is not a lead.

…in well over a decade. You can’t stream it for some reason. So I bought a Canadian Bluray a week or so ago. It arrived today…162 minutes! I began watching a half-hour ago, and it’s all just flooding back in. It’s glorious, perfect, a gift. The day is saved.

Simon Wincer‘s Operation Dumbo Drop (Disney, ’95) might be the only family-friendly Disney film I’ve ever half-liked. Not a great film, but a likeable, well made effort that holds back on the cutes. And for my money Ray Liotta really scores because he plays it completely straight, and then occasionally angry to great comic effect. It definitely didn’t deserve a 31% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Danny Glover, Denis Leary, etc. Did I take part in the press junket? Yes. Have I seen it a second time over the last 25 years? No, but I could.

I saw Sofia Coppola‘s On the Rocks (A24/Apple, 10.23) about a week ago, and I’ve been waiting for the spirit to seize. But nothing’s happened, and the reason is that it’s fine as far as it goes. I didn’t dislike it and don’t feel the slightest urge to put it down. It’s an occasionally amusing, reasonably decent father-daughter relationship film (Bill Murray, Rashida Jones), but it does leave you wishing it had put a little more on the plate.

It’s a marital-suspicion dramedy (“Is my husband cheating on me?”) served in a faintly bouncy, mildly entertaining fashion…okay, sometimes more than mildly. It looks good, Coppola’s script feels smooth and assured, it looks and feels well produced and has a cool Mexican detour section toward the end (i.e., a visit to Las Alamandas Resort in Jalisco, which is between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo) and it’s a little jaunty now and then, which is fine.

But if Murray wasn’t playing the wealthy, soft-spoken, amiably rakish dad, On The Rocks probably wouldn’t work all that well. When Murray’s on screen, it’s a fun film. When he’s not, you’re waiting for him to return. The other two principals — Jones and Marlon Wayans as Jones’ successful husband — don’t have the X-factor. They’re sufficient but Murray is the only one with any real charisma.

The best scene is when a couple of Manhattan cops pull Murray over for driving recklessly in a classic red sports car (Jones is riding shotgun) and…okay, no spoilers.

Honestly? I understand that Coppola has more or less written about her own life on some level and that Jones is the stand-in and all, and that the film is self-portraiture to some degree. I get all that. But On The Rocks would’ve been better if it had been mainly about Murray and if Jones and her possibly unfaithful husband had been a side-plo of some kind.

Incidentally: Murray’s all-white hair looks perfect, but he’s also wearing a partial rug of some kind; his trademark bald spot is missing. That or he’s been to my Prague guy.

I’m still giving On The Rocks a passing grade because it’s pretty good. It never pissed me off or made me feel irritable or bored. I’m giving it an affectionate B-minus. It’s agreeable.

Hollywood Elsewhere agrees with Wolf Blitzer (“Madame Speaker, I have only the greatest respect for you…”) and disagrees with Nancy Pelosi. People can’t wait until next February for new federal stimulus checks. (Which would be what…$400 per week rather than $600?) My heart goes out to everyone who’s panicking, struggling, worrying about everything.

82% of Americans and virtually every economist agree that we needed a new relief bill weeks ago. Congress please pass this for the American people. Nancy Pelosi say yes – this is a big win for millions of families who are hurting right now. pic.twitter.com/b5mbnot9bh

— Andrew Yang🧢🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) October 12, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett regarding the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges: “I have no agenda, and I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not ever discriminate on the basis of sexual preference. Like racism, I think discrimination is abhorrent.”

Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono: “Sexual preference is an offensive and outdated term. It is used by anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice. It is not. Sexual orientation is a key part of a person’s identity.”

Barrett: “I certainly didn’t mean and would never mean to use a term that would cause any offense in the LGBTQ community. If I did, I greatly apologize for that.”

>
I would expand the UD definition as follows: “The act of being very pretentious about how much you care about a social issue, and also about your willingness to severely punish those whose views about this or that issue are, in your judgment, insufficient in terms of exhibiting their progressive bona fides or, you know, being on the “right” side of an issue with the “right” people. Example: Indiewire‘s punitive coverage of anything related to Woody Allen.”

Sometime in the late ’70s a girlfriend and I caught a Mort Sahl set on the North Shore. I forget the name of the club but it was in Revere, Swampscott, Lynn…one of those towns. We arrived 15 minutes before showtime, and my heart stopped — the room was one-third filled, if that. I felt so badly for the poor guy, but you know what? Sahl came out and did his show as if he was playing to a packed house at Carnegie Hall. Which deeply impressed me. As I sat and listened and laughed, I was thinking “wow, nothing but class…this is how a professional plays to a nearly deserted room.” Grace under pressure, never say die, the show must go on.

Perhaps the Motion Picture Academy should consider the Mort Sahl example in the face of Oscar killjoys like Washington Post columnist Alyssa Rosenberg and The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield.

They’re both saying that the Academy needs to deepsix the 4.25 Oscar telecast, primarily because there won’t be enough viewers because theatres are closed and because streaming doesn’t have that schwing and because there won’t be enough in the way of serious Oscar contenders.

They need to say that to Chloe Zhao, David Fincher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Frances McDormand, Delroy Lindo, Aaron Sorkin, Sascha Baron Cohen, etc. Go ahead, Alyssa and Richard — write or call or text these guys and say “Sorry, bruhs, but we think the Oscars should be cancelled because almost everyone will be watching your work via streaming, which makes us feel uneasy because this isn’t the way it’s always been, and because…well, we don’t want to sound callous but we don’t think your work is good or significant enough to merit awards attention.”

Image totally stolen from Sasha Stone’s Awards Daily.

Rushfield: “The question isn’t, Should they cancel the Academy Awards? The question is: What the hell can they possibly be thinking [by] not canceling it?

“The reason why,” he says, is “BECAUSE THERE ARE NO MOVIES [THAT] MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE HAVE SEEN! How do you have a celebration of movies when there are no movies?

“You may have noted over the past few years that Oscar’s transformation into a celebration of quirky and independent films only seen by a handful of people hasn’t exactly done wonders for the viewership. This drift has succeeded in chasing away a giant swath of Oscar’s audience, which is roughly half of its peak 20 years ago.

“Given that, how do you suppose the viewership will react when they put on a show not only celebrating films seen by a small number of people, but films seen by no one?”

HE to Rosenberg and Rushfield: Because I went to sleep dreaming life was beauty, and I woke up knowing that life is duty. Grownups aren’t allowed to go “waahhh” when things are tough. You don’t get to pull the plug on a 92-year-old annual awards show because it’s raining outside or there aren’t enough movies or there aren’t enough people in the room. You do it because you need to hold your head high and make the best of whatever the situation is…period. The torch must be held aloft. Think of the eternal flame that’s been burning over JFK’s grave for nearly 57 years. Allowing it to go out is unthinkable. The general attitude about the Oscar telecast should be no less steadfast.

Okay, maybe the lineup isn’t so hot this year for obvious reasons. Yes, it’s unfortunate that Deep Water, Dune, The French Dispatch, In the Heights, The Many Saints of Newark, No Time to Die, Top Gun: Maverick and West Side Story have been withdrawn and bumped into ’21. But only about a third of these titles, if that, had any real shot of being Oscar-nominated in whatever category.

2020 will always be remembered as a weak year, the Covid plague year…agreed. But it is what it is, and many excellent films are being streamed and shown at drive-ins, and let’s face the fact that streaming is the way things are these days and where a good portion of the business is going. Do I love this? No, I’m a theatre-and-popcorn guy, but it’s how things are.

Consider the wise words of Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, in a 10.12 piece called “Cancel the Oscars? How About We Reimagine Them?” In a nutshell: “The Oscars are representative of the year in film. This year that means film via streaming, but it’s still the year in film. This is an opportunity to test that out because streaming is the future, like it or not. It’s also a good chance to award some women and women of color, since that also has to be dealt with. It’s also the last year where they don’t have to name ten films so it also fits in that way. They only need five.”

Variety‘s Clayton Davis has also spoken eloquently about this — the piece is called “Why Moving Ahead With the Oscars Is the Right Thing to Do.”