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Check-Out Conversation

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The 2026 Oscars will kick off Sunday evening. Finally. But there’s a whole world out there that doesn’t know or care about them. Zero. Donut.

On Saturday afternoon I spoke with two employees of Wilton’s Village Market — Linda, a friendly, somewhat older checkout person with big glasses and long brown hair, and Andrew, a blond-haired trainee who seemed about 19 or 20.

As of 3:20 pm, Linda didn’t know the Oscar telecast was a day away. Nor had she seen or even heard about any of the Best Picture nominees. Linda: “You’re talking to the wrong people.”

HE: “How about last year’s Best Picture winner, Anora?” Linda: “No, but thanks for telling me. Maybe I’ll stream it.”

I asked Andrew if he’s seen Anora. He looked at me with a flat, emotion-less expression. Eyes as dead as a shark’s.

I asked Linda if she’s ever watched the Oscars, and if they’ve ever made any kind of impression if she has. Yes, she said, but she mainly likes watching the red-carpet fashion parade. “Cool”, I said. “Nothing wrong with that.” And that was it.

This isn’t Linda and Andrew’s fault — it’s the film industry’s. I blame wokeism. We all know the alleged causes and the drainage factors, but for the last nine or ten years Hollywood has been camped out inside its own social-political rectum. All I know is that 15 years ago there was a monoculture out there, and supermarket checkout folks were at least passively aware of the Oscars and had maybe seen one or two Best Picture contenders, or at least had heard about them.

Things have changed…something’s missing. Linda and Andrew don’t care for a reason.

Should Have Called Out Teyana Taylor’s “Cat-face”, But “James From Corporate” Beat Me To It

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During my initial viewing of One Battle After Another I had an immediate problem with Teyana Taylor‘s obviously worked-on facial features, which look unnaturally inflated and scrunched and super-sculpted. But I chickened out. I was afraid I’d be accused of racist pigeonholing or something, so I kept my arrows in the quiver.

But while listening last night to Maureen Callahan’s 3.13 pre-Oscar interview with “James From Corporate”, I heard the term “cat-face” and immediately went “yes!…of course it is!…this is my turf and I should’ve said this last November, but I chickened out! Because I’m a candy-ass.”

Who am I to talk with my Prague eyelid and neck-wattle surgery plus my two hair-plug treatments, which happened in ’12, ’14 and ’15? Obviously I’m not one to talk. But I’m agreeing with James that Taylor’s injections and knife-styles get in the way of the reality of her Perfidia Beverly Hills character.

“James From Corporate’ to Maureen Callahan, 9:40 mark: “So my whole take with One Battle After Another starts with the miscasting of Teyana Taylor. I think a lot of people have an issue with this movie because the prologue doesn’t work [but] just her casting alone…

“I’m trying to find a better way to say this, but [my problem is that] her plastic surgery is very distracting. She has sort of like a cat face that resembles Lauren Sanchez. And it just doesn’t read to me at all as being authentic of a hand-to-mouth revolutionary as someone like of that world.

Callahan: “That’s a great point. She’s partnered in the film with her lover, Leonardo DiCaprio, and they are aggressively depicted as having no money.”

“James From Corporate”: “So yeah, where is she getting the money for this to look plastic surgery-ized, almost Kardashianized? So casting-wise Taylor is sort of anointed as someone new and important. I’m not sure who is behind this and who’s backing her, but Taylor really took me out of the movie. It took like another full hour for me to sort of settle into it. Although I really like the young actress, the daughter…Chase Infiniti.”

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Most Under-45s Have Never Seen This

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Last night I was inspired to re-watch The Year of Living Dangerously after writing about it two days ago. It’s still rich and magnificent and 100% genuine. You can really feel the Indonesian heat and humidity, and the Mel Gibson-Sigourney Weaver affair is one of the most erotically charged in film history. And Maurice Jarre‘s score — primarily the delicate, gently dancing theme that is often repeated — is perfect.

Nicholson’s All-But-Forgotten Cameo

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Before today I hadn’t mentally revisited Jack Nicholson‘s brief bit in Ken Russell‘s Tommy (’75) for decades. I hadn’t even thought of it, much less sat down and re-watched.

In a 1974 interview with Sight and Sound‘s John Russell, Nicholson said he agreed to play Dr A. Quackson** because “Russell’s films intrigue me…some I like very much, some I don’t like at all, and I want to find out what makes them tick.”

** N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby described the character as “a vacuous Harley Street medical specialist.”

Maid of Orleans

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I respect Otto Preminger and George Bernard Shaw‘s Saint Joan (’57), but I’ve only seen it once and that almost certainly means something. I feel the same way about the Preminger as I do about Victor Fleming and Ingrid Bergman’s 1948 version of Joan’s tragic saga, which is to say “yes but…” Two years ago I described Carl Dreyer‘s The Passion of Joan of Arc (’28) as a lapel-grabbing, no-way-out masterpiece.

The one aspect of the Preminger that I really love and swear by is Saul Bass‘s poster art. Within its own realm, it’s a better thing that the film itself.

Somehow Humanizing Jeffrey Epstein

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Each and every day AI slop is relentless…a 24/7 feature on everyone’s phone, passive brain mush. But here’s an exception — a parody trailer for a droll, light-hearted Jeffrey Epstein satire, written in the voice of Woody Allen and shot by Vittorio Storaro with nice ’90s lighting.

But I can’t find an embed code to save my life, and it’s driving me nuts. Can anyone figure it?

If this was a trailer for an actual movie, I’d pay to see it.

Criterion’s Latest Teal Mischief?

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Three months ago I posted an “uh-oh” riff about Criterion’s 4K UHD Network Bluray. The thought was “dear god, what if the same Criterion vandals who teal-tinted Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut…what if they inject a similar greenish-teal flavoring into Network?” Pure speculation, of course, as the release date was three months off.

But now, with the new Network streeting six days hence (Tuesday, 2.24), a 2.13.26 review from Slant‘s Derek Smith rings an alarm bell.

Smith: “The color balancing leans toward teal, though that’s primarily limited to exteriors seen through the office building windows.” HE: So the amber-ish office interiors are okay, but don’t look too hard through the UBS windows with midtown Manhattan looking a bit…uhm, greenish.

On the same day (2.13) Criterionforum.org’s Chris Galloway notes the folowing: “The studio set sequences lean more neutral, daylight exteriors feel similar but warmer, and nighttime scenes carry a faint greenish tint consistent with other films of the era. Overall, the colors look superb…the best I’ve ever seen this film appear.”

I’ve asked four knowledgable and trustworthy veterans of the Bluray trenches (including DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze and Digital Bits’ Bill Hunt) if they’ve seen the Criterion Network…nope. So let’s hold our horses for now. Nonetheless Smith and Galloway have me sitting up straight.

Callahan Meditations

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I’ve been nursing a passing, passive interest in Ryan Murphy‘s Love Story (FX and FX on Hulu), a nine-episode saga of the mostly turbulent relationship between the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. and the tragically deranged Carolyn Bessette.

It popped on 2.12 (last Thursday) and, God help us all, is nine episodes long. I’ve been reluctant to watch this perversely-mistitled miniseries (John and Carolyn were off and on at best, and they half-despised each other) but my interest is…uhm, simmering.

Spurred on by this, last night I bought Maureen Callahan‘s “Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed” (Litte, Brown & Co., 7.2.24) and tore though several chapters.

Callahan, a truly excellent prose stylist and a blunt-minded, well-sourced reporter, strikes me as a feminist disciple of James Ellroy (“American Tabloid”). She seems possessed by an anti-rich-and-entitled-male agenda the size of a house. Not that the Kennedy-male tradition isn’t soaked with chauvinism, cold manipulation, blase indifference and a lack of sensitivity toward women, but Callahan really hates these guys. She certainly trashes all the significant Kennedy bros (principally Joe, Jack, Ted, Senator Bobby and today’s HHS Bobby Jr., John Jr., Michael Skakel).

I was searching, naturally, for the rage, the spilled milk, the dirt, the jizz, the “oh, my God!” raw stuff. Two excerpts stand out…excerpts that have been burned into my brain and will remain there for all eternity, even beyond my death.

“Jackie Bouvier Kennedy“, page 41:

“Carolyn Bessette Kennedy“, page 283:

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Can’t Believe I’m Doing This

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A total waste of time and money…willfully submitting to spiritual pollution.

Is it fair to call Melania Trump a “trafficked zombie whore of a First Lady”? I’m only mentioning this because I half-chuckled when I read this description…sorry.

Not To Beat A Dead Horse

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Reid Rosefelt on Facebook: “Even though I don’t know her, it pains me to see Blake Lively being attacked with snarky comments online by people who have never had any direct encounter with her. If there is somebody who had an issue with her on a movie, well, okay, let them have their honest say. But a lot of what I read is anonymous people on the internet. Just piling on, being mean. Because they can.”

HE to Rosefelt: Blake Lively is deeply loathed for trying to use a good portion of her (i.e., principally Ryan’s?) considerable wealth and power to try and murder the career of the far less famous, much less powerful Justin Baldoni.

Was her cut of It Ends With Us more commercial than his? Apparently so, but she certainly steamrolled and dragon-ed and butch-bossed her way into basically snatching away Baldoni’s film. They rubbed each other the wrong way? Apparently so, but this happens from time to time. Sensible people usually say “okay, THAT happened” and move on with their lives. But not Blake.

All I know is that Lively has almost certainly earned whatever grief she may be coping with now. She’s been using pumped-up #MeToo hyperbole as her knife or cudgel, and has scarred herself as a troublemaker. And now she’s basically “unemployable”, as a recent trade headline stated.

Who would be so clueless or reckless as to want to work with Blake now? If she had any practical sense she would have let this battle go last year and just moved on. Her point had certainly been made, but she’s STILL hammering away as we speak. (Team Baldoni also.) The Manhattan court date is four months away, and then the appeals will kick in. God help us all.

Posted on 10.8.12: If you want to know how radiantly aware and plugged-in Blake Lively is, read this excerpt from Ben Affleck‘s Details interview with Mark Harris:

“When I was doing The Town, I’d tour the actors around Boston,” Affleck tells Harris. “I was with Blake [Lively], and I saw Matt’s childhood home. And I said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s where Matt grew up.’ And she said, ‘Who?’ And I said, ‘Matt Damon.’ And she said, ‘Oh my God! You know Jason Bourne?!’ She really didn’t know. And I thought, ‘There it is. The first age of people who are adults who missed the whole Matt-and-Ben propaganda campaign!’ Mostly, it just made me feel old.”

Lively, born in August 1987, was ten when Good Will Hunting came out and also when Affleck and Damon won their Best Screenplay Oscar, so she wasn’t paying attention. But she never once heard or read about their collaboration and friendship in the years that followed? And when she got hired to be in The Town (which came out in ’10), she never went online to learn about Affleck’s past? Even if she’s not engaged or curious enough to do online searches, her agent or manager never gave her the rundown? Breathtaking.

Dirty Movies of Yore

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A New Beverly tribute to the Eros, a stroke-house that operated out of the same auditorium between ‘70 and ‘77, will launch on Monday, February 2nd. A grim place but mere tumescence has always been a tonic in itself. The films are mostly hard-R grindhouse fare, all released in the ’70s.

The Eros became the Beverly Cinema in ‘78 or so. Quentin Tarantino took ownership in 2007, rechristening it as the NewBev.

Of the 23 films showing throughout February, HE approves of relatively few.

Marco Vicario‘s Wifemistress (’78) with Laura Antonelli (a sublime object of desire for relatively well-educated thinking men of the ‘70s) and Marcello Mastroianni.

Nagisa Oshima‘s In The Realm of the Senses (’76), of course.

Roger Vadim‘s cynical and depraved Pretty Maids All In A Row (’71)…Angie Dickinson has a couple of fetching nude scenes, or is it just one? And she was just turning 40 to boot. (Dickinson reached inside and truly touched the heart of Junior Soprano, aka “Johnny Ola”.)

Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Arabian Nights (’74) isn’t all that good, but it’s not bad.

Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione‘s Caligula (’79) is trash.

Deep Throat (’72) is absolute garbage…I felt so sorry for poor Linda Lovelace being “coerced” into blowing all those low-rent, homely-ass guys.