The most indelible moment from The Departed (1:10 to 1:16) arrives by way of Jack Nicholson‘s teeth. I saw Martin Scorsese‘s Best Picture winner four or five times in screenings and commercial showings (imagine that!) and people chuckled and tee-hee’d every time. 13 years ago — feels like eight or nine.

“Quentin Tarantino’s best, bravest and most confrontationally impudent movie since Pulp Fiction.” — Nigel Andrews, Financial Times.

“I could boil it all down and simply call the last half-hour a ‘happy’ ending, but it’s something more than that. I have my tastes and standards and you all have yours, but by the measuring stick of Hollywood Elsewhere the finale is really, really great. As in laugh-out-loud, hard-thigh-slap, whoo-whoo satisfying. Do I dare use the term good-vibey? And the very end (as in the last two minutes) is…naahh, that’ll do.” — from “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood Is…”, posted from Cannes on 5.21.19.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the work of a middle-aged director, one who looks back by looking forward, and who eschews the familiar for the new.” — Kirk Beard, Toronto Blade.

SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:

“A compassionate Hollywood fable of yesteryear…a comfort flick for bruhs who buy Blurays at Amoeba after catching a show at the Hollywood Arclight.” — Joe Popcorn.

“Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt deliver the most emotionally vulnerable performances of their careers as soon-to-be has-beens in 1969 Hollywood” — Dare Daniel.

“If Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood winds up taking the Best Picture Oscar on 2.9.20, it’ll be for a simple, sensible reason. Everybody likes it. I haven’t spoken to anyone who’s had anything negative to say about it. Not the slightest, most insignificant thing…zip. I shared a few mild gripes after catching it during last May’s Cannes Film Festival, but they’ve all pretty much evaporated. I’ve seen it three or four times since. I’ve become a follower.” — from”Tarantino’s Oscar Moment Is Nigh,” posted on 1.1.20.

Last night World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy shared some fleeting observations about the five Sundance keepers that have emerged over the last few days. Every Sundance festival delivers four, five or six head-turners, and usually during the first weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). It would appear (emphasis on the “a” word) that the only possible Joe Popcorn hit is Max Barbakow‘s Palm Springs, a time-loop romcom a la Groundhog Day with Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti and J. K. Simmons.

Four days left in the fest (although Tuesday is the last dependable day as things always start to run out of gas on Wednesday) and the hotties are (a) Florian Zeller‘s The Father (a film that puts YOU in the mind of an Alzheimer’s sufferer), (b) Janicza Bravo‘s Zola (a love-hate thang, crazy manic Floridian hijinks, idiot characters), (c) Palm Springs, (d) Lee Isaac Chung‘s Minari (hardscrabble Korean family survival tale, set in rural Arkansas) and (e) Bryan Fogel‘s The Dissident (exacting doc about the Saudi murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and a scathing portrait of the Trumpies who looked the other way).

12:30 pm update: A critic friend insists that Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman (Carey Mulligan revenge flick) belongs with the above. “It takes a little while to settle into a groove but eventually becomes dynamite. How can you ignore a 20-for-20 favorable rating on RT? It’s the one film here that I continue to think about.” HE response: “It sounded unappealing but if you say so, fine. One can never trust Sundance reviews as a whole as the general tendency is to be kind if not celebrative.”

The wipeouts include Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing He Wanted (“disaster”) and Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy (“Total disappointment…Zeitlin hasn’t grown up as a filmmaker”). Iffies and in-betweeners include Alan Ball‘s Uncle Frank (middle-aged NYC gay guy awkwardly comes out to bumblefuck family) and Sean Durkin‘s The Nest (slow-burn thriller, cultural isolation).

Screening today: Liz Garbus‘s Lost Girls (missing daughter, Long Island serial killer).

Again, the mp3.

Olivia Colman, Anthony Hopkins in Florian Zeller’s The Father.

Four days ago the brilliant Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday ran a piece called “The 34 Best Political Movies Ever Made.” Everybody has their own list of such films. I’m good with almost all of Hornaday’s choices, although I would have deleted Mean Girls and Born Yesterday in favor of Franklin J. Schaffner and Gore Vidal‘s The Best Man (’64 — that Lee Tracy performance!) and Michael Ritchie‘s The Candidate (’72).

For the sin of boredom Lincoln doesn’t make the HE chart, but you know what does? Paths of Glory, which is more about politics and class than it is about warfare.

Hornaday explanation: “There are titles not on this list that are sure to launch a million “How could you leave out…?” objections. Not because [this or that political film isn’t] worthy, but to make room for films that may be more obscure but are no less revelatory or fun to watch.

HE to Hornaday #1: “It’s funny and admirable that you decided on 34 films, which you’re not supposed to do, of course. Some say list pieces should only include ten noteworthies, and fewer will say 20. But you MUST use multiples of ten or five, and NEVER, EVER go beyond 25. 34 is hilarious!”

HE to Hornaday #2: “Gabriel Over The White House has faded in my memory, but I recall an actual trumpet (playing some kind of sad, melancholy tune) signaling the moral awakening of Walter Huston.

HE to Hornaday #3: “Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (’56) is about ‘50s Eisenhower culture in the tidy suburbs — vanilla complacency and conformity, robotically expressed assurances that everything’s fine, and no place for subterranean riffs and reflections from people like Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Arthur Miller, Chet Baker and Nicholas Ray. It’s about “the bland leading the bland.” In summary, I don’t see how a film about the muffling and narcotizing of the human spirit is political, but I guess it is on some vague level.”

HE to Hornaday #4: “Election‘s Tracy Flick is a resentful, ultra-determined, extra-carnivorous version of Richard Nixon. In ‘08 or thereabouts Hillary Clinton reportedly said to Reese Witherspoon that “everyone’s telling me about Tracy Flick!” She didn’t even realize she was being put down. I don’t think Matthew Broderick has been gradually exposed as the villain, as somebody (Matt Zoller Seitz?) recently wrote. Broderick is playing an angry stifled hypocrite and an overly emotional, sloppy-minded idealist — he finally decides to stop Tracy but unscrupulously. And he doesn’t even think to destroy the ballot that favors Flick but throws it into his own garbage basket!”

HE to Hornaday #5: “Congrats to the great WaPo illustrator Stephen Bliss!”

The Irishman is the finest film of the year, and to my mind the most deserving recipient of the Best Picture Oscar. I know this can’t happen but I insist on repeating what I regard as an irrefutable truth. Because I’m shattered by what’s happened to Martin Scorsese‘s film as far as the conversation is concerned. In early December it was the film to beat. Best Film awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, New York Online Film Critics. And then it stopped.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Variety‘s Peter Debruge, filed from Park City, on Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy: “Eight long years after Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin brings that same rust-bottomed sense of magical realism to the legend of Peter Pan, reframing J.M. Barrie’s Victorian classic through the eyes of the eldest Darling.

“Wendy, as the indie-minded, not-quite-family-film is aptly titled, re-envisions its title character as a working-class kiddo raised at a whistle-stop diner, who witnesses one of her young friends disappearing on a passing freight train and a few years later decides to follow it to the end of the line, where runaway urchins don’t age and the Lost Boys live like The Lord of the Flies.

“Although the director’s feral energy and rough-and-tumble aesthetic make an inspired match for a movie about an off-the-grid community doing everything it can to resist outside change (that was essentially the gist of Beasts as well), cinema has hardly stood still since Zeitlin’s last feature.

“What felt so revolutionary in 2012 is no less visionary today, but packs a disappointing sense of familiarity this time around, like tearing open your Christmas presents to find … a huge stack of hand-me-down clothing. Or else, like watching a magic trick performed a second time from a different angle.

“While it’s a positive thing to get a more progressive Peter Pan story — with Peter as a Caribbean child and Wendy as a more proactive protagonist — the movie’s a bit too intense, and more than a little too arty, to suit young audiences.

“Sometimes there’s God…so quickly!” — Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams‘ A Streetcar Named Desire.

With Sam Mendes having won the top prize at the 72nd DGA Awards, 1917 is back in the saddle as most likely winner of the Best Picture Oscar. The Academy members who’ve been saying “yes, Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite is a very good film but take it easy” are throwing their hats in the air and popping champagne bottles as we speak.

If Bong had won the DGA trophy I would be hyperventilating and breathing into a paper bag.

Plus 1917 dp Roger Deakins has won the ASC award.

Wiki excerpt: Vincente Minnelli and John Houseman‘s The Bad and the Beautiful (’52) “was shot as Tribute to a Bad Man, but the studio (Dore Schary‘s MGM) began to worry it would be mistaken for a western.

“The title was changed to The Bad and the Beautiful at the suggestion of MGM’s head of publicity Howard Dietz, who took it from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“Houseman called it a ‘dreadful title…a loathsome, cheap, vulgar title.’ But when the film became successful “it seemed like one of the greatest titles anyone had ever thought of,” he admitted. “It’s certainly been imitated enough: anytime anybody’s hard up for a title, they just take two adjectives and string them together with an ‘and’ in between.”

More wiki: “At the time of the film’s release, stories about its basis caused David O. Selznick — whose real life paralleled in some respects that of the ‘father-obsessed independent producer’ Jonathan Shields — to have his lawyer view the film and determine whether it contained any libelous material.

“Shields is thought to be a blend of Selznick, Orson Welles and Val Lewton. Schary said Shields was a combination of “David O. Selznick and as yet unknown David Merrick.”

“Lewton’s Cat People is clearly the inspiration behind the early Shields-Amiel film Doom of the Cat Men.

“[Lana Turner‘s] Georgia Lorrison character is the daughter of a ‘great profile’ actor like John Barrymore (Diana Barrymore’s career was in fact launched the same year as her father’s death), but it can also be argued that Lorrison includes elements of Minnelli’s ex-wife Judy Garland.

“Gilbert Roland‘s Gaucho may almost be seen as self-parody, as he had recently starred in a series of Cisco Kid pictures. The character’s name, Ribera, would also seem to give a nod also to famed Hollywood seducer Porfirio Rubirosa.

“The director Henry Whitfield (Leo G. Carroll) is a ‘difficult’ director modeled on Alfred Hitchcock, and his assistant Miss March (Kathleen Freeman) is modeled on Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville.

Jon Stewart‘s Irresistable (Focus Features, 5.29) is about a small-town mayoral election that is ramped up and complicated by big-city tactics and pricey consultants.

Right away I was reminded of Daniel Petrie‘s Welcome to Mooseport (’04), a political satire that costarred Ray Romano and (in his last screen role) Gene Hackman.

In Stewart’s film a hotshot campaign strategist (Steve Carell) decides to assist a retired ex-Marine colonel/farmer (Chris Cooper) in a run for mayor. Things turn brutal and scrappy with the emergence of a carniverous Republican rival (Rose Byrne).

Directed and written by Stewart. Costarring Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, CJ Wilson, Will Sasso.

Last night Parasite maestro Bong Joon-ho sat for a Santa Barbara Film Festival interview with THR‘s Scott Feinberg. Brad Pitt drew a lot more people the night before last, but whaddaya expect? Plus Feinberg asked the right questions. A splendid time was had by all.

Besides being a brilliant director, Bong is a total film monk with an encyclopedic mind — he knows as much about Budd Boetticher, Samuel Fuller and Ida Lupino as any effete film nerd you could name (Glenn Kenny and David Ehrlich included). And so your heart goes out to him. His English is rudimentary (he mostly spoke in Korean with a translator by his side), but he’s sharp and articulate and often amusing. Feinberg didn’t ask Bong if he gets high (or if he uses a bong when he does), but he’d be a good guy to get ripped with.

Bong Joon-ho is a serious Hitchcock-DePalma devotee who knows sophisticated film language and choreography like the back of his hand, but let’s be honest — his instincts as a storyteller and scenarist are broad and populist-popcorny. Whammo visual impact elements (look at how gifted and clever I am!) always come first. He’s not Christian Mungiu.

This was HE’s final SBIFF dog-and-pony show. I’ll be pushing on at 11 am and heading back to West Hollywood. Thanks for much to Roger Durling, Sunshine Sachs p.r. and the first-rate SBIFF staffers who make this festival run so smoothly and efficiently.

Producer pally to HE: “We all know that Sundance has changed. The exciting, culture-defining current and buoyancy are long gone. I used to enjoy Sundance despite its rigors. But that was another time.

“Attacking Sundance in your column for the umpteenth time not only isn’t going to make any big difference, and at some point what it will do is finally exhaust your readers so much that they will turn away, stop reading, and leave.

“You’ve made your point. Now stop. Just cover what you think is relevant and stop attacking the festival. Remember that no matter what the festival may represent today” — i.e., the spirit of HUAC of the late ’40s and early ’50s, except persecuting white guys instead of commies — “there are filmmakers there who have worked for years and given up much to fulfill their dream of getting their film made and seen there, and they should at least should be appreciated.”

From Michael Fleming’s Deadline column, posted at 9:28 am today: “The 2020 Sundance Film Festival gets underway today, and it has been the toughest market to handicap in a good long time.

“Conversations with buyers and sellers point to a lack of obvious star power in the slate of pictures available for acquisition. It could well be a quiet market, meaning that the sums could be modest with dealmaking for most films lingering beyond the festival.”

Translation: Who wants to pay serious money for feminist slash POC slash LGBTQ wokester films that will stream and quicken no pulses and then vaporize?

Distribution chief quoted by Fleming: “All of us used to come to Sundance making bids that were based on estimates of what a movie might gross, and how much money it would cost to market it, and wins and losses were determined by subtracting purchase price. Now, it’s impossible to grade these films that are acquired by the streamers, because box-office is about the least important metric. It has become very difficult to compete when one of them really wants a film.”

According to Jill Chamberlain, author of “The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting“, Casablanca could have been a slightly better film if Humphrey Bogart‘s Richard Blaine had been more emotionally demonstrative.

Blaine, she says, is a little too taciturn and reserved, and that “a lot of modern audiences, particularly younger people, don’t even get what happened. Younger people don’t get it because he has such a tough outer shell.”

[Partial paraphrasing]: “Jimmy Stewart would have let us see the hurt. We need to feel [Blaine’s] inner struggle…he doesn’t articulate that, the dilemma he has, the weight of the world’s fate on his shoulders…we don’t see what’s going on behind the mask…we have to read between the lines quite a bit. Bogart won’t let us feel his pain.”

Earth to Chamberlain: It’s precisely because Blaine’s true feelings are buried under a crusty and cynical shell that the character is so memorable. The whole film would collapse if Blaine were to weep and quake with pain a la George Bailey on the snow-covered bridge in It’s A Wonderful Life.

Does Chamberlain believe that the finale of Only Angels Have Wings would have been more satisfying if Cary Grant‘s character had unloaded emotionally like Tom Cruise does at the end of Jerry Maguire? I wonder.