I’d vote for either Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar against Trump in the general. Along with Bernie or Pete or Typewriter Joe. Any of them would be a huge improvement. But where’s the polling data that says Warren or Klobuchar would be a formidable Trump opponents? This is my concern.
Tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me I’ll wake up soon. And if not, stab me with a #2 pencil. Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite has won the SAG Best Ensemble Award, or the guild’s equivalent of the Best Picture award. As Beetlejuice would say, “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”
Which means the heat has been slightly turned down on 1917, which last night won the top prize (Daryl F. Zanuck award) from the Producer’s Guild, and there’s a better-than-decent chance that Parasite, a finely crafted, widely respected but far from masterful social-inequity drama hampered by crude writing during the second half, might win the Best Picture Oscar. Maybe. Possibly. You tell me.
The Academy can’t give it the Best International Feature Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar…no! They can’t do this!
Parasite lead actor Song Kang-ho said tonight that “the [film’s] story is about coexistence and how we can all live together…to be honored with a best ensemble, it occurs to me maybe we haven’t created such a bad movie.”
I’m sorry but that’s total bullshit. Parasite is about the greatly suffering underclass and the absolute indifference to their situation on the part of the super wealthy. The story is about how a poor family (dad, mom, son, daughter) manages to con a rich family into giving them all cushy jobs, and it ends with the bloody slaughter of three people (two poor, one rich) during a backyard children’s party. Has Song Kang-ho lost his mind?
SAG has also saluted the same acting contenders that everyone else has gone for…Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger, Brad Pitt, Laura Dern.
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So Renee Zellweger has it all locked down, right? That’s what I’ve been telling myself for four months now, or since I saw Judy at the Telluride Film Festival.
And I’d certainly say so now. Simply put, none of her competitors has the same sense of accumulated heat and coagulation. And no one else has Zellweger’s award-season narrative, which boils down to (a) went away then returned with a seriously risky role (for if she didn’t bring Judy Garland back to life in all senses of that term all bets would be off), (b) still glowing at 50, and (c) cheers for an actress who hasn’t lost her mojo.
Seriously — tell me how she’s going to lose.
I knew in my bones that Zellweger had this after attending the Judy premiere at the Academy four months ago (9.19). Full house, unmistakable emotional reactions, cheers and applause. (And a great after-party.)
SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:
I wrote the next day that for what it was worth “both the film and particularly Zellweger’s performance, all but locked for a Best Actress nomination, sank in a bit deeper. Not just the sadness and humor but the vigor of it. I was studying her more closely, enjoying the flicky facial tics and raised eyebrows and hair-trigger grins all the more. RZ slams a homer!”
There’s never been any question that Zellweger’s performance as the financially strained, worn-at-the-seams Judy Garland had that certain snap-crackle-awe. I felt that in Telluride, and especially the humorous spritzy side. We all know that performances of this type always end up nominated.
Judy is an adaptation of the Olivier- and Tony-nominated Broadway play End of the Rainbow, about Garland’s last few months during a run of sell-out concerts at London’s Talk of the Town.
I didn’t know or care much about personal problems, alcoholism and pharmaceutical abuse when I was a kid, but Judy Garland was the very first Hollywood star whom I associated with these issues. After seeing The Wizard of Oz at age seven or eight my mother (or was it my grandmother?) mentioned that Garland’s adult life was a mess. I never forgot that.
Garland had ten or twelve good years (mid ’30s to late ’40s) before the downswirl pattern kicked in. Stress, anxiety, pills, self-esteem issues. Garland was between 31 and 32 when she made George Cukor‘s A Star Is Born, supposedly playing a fresh-faced ingenue but occasionally looking like the battle-scarred showbiz veteran that she was. A barbituate overdose killed Garland at age 47, at which point she seemed 60 if a day.
When I spoke to Zellweger four months ago at the annual Telluride brunch, her appearance was anything but Garland-esque. She looked exactly (and very fetchingly) like a somewhat older but entirely vibrant and relaxed version of Dorothy Boyd, the lover and wife of Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. She looked like herself, I mean, and well-tended at that.
Zellweger was 26 or thereabouts when she costarred in that landmark Cameron Crowe film. 24 years have passed, and she still has some kind of serene, settled, casually glowing thing going on. If I didn’t know her and someone told me she was 42 or 43, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye.
Best Actress trophies from Golden Globes, Critics Choice, National Board of Review, etc. Not to mention the recently bequeathed Oscar and BAFTA nominations plus the forthcoming Riviera Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, etc. Timing, momentum, the curve of history…arrival.
In today’s Guardian (1.13) is a brilliant Jessa Crispin piece that basically says that critics have become so political-minded and have chugged so much virtue-signalling Kool-Aid that they’re not only opposed to telling the truth about films as a rule but are pretty much incapable of doing so.
The piece is called “Is politics getting in the way of assessing which films are actually good?”
Excerpt #1: “This was…the year media outlets like the New York Times and Vanity Fair insisted Little Women was mandatory viewing to prove you’re not a misogynist. Even GQ ran a piece implying how important it was men ‘support women’ by watching this film about some white ladies having a hard time during the civil war.
“Men’s supposed lack of interest in Little Women became the dominant narrative of the movie, implying it reveals the (alleged) lack of interest men have, in the words of the New York Times, in ‘see[ing] women as human beings’.
“It couldn’t possibly be that Little Women is just a bad movie — although it is. Little Women is one of those books that has been over-adapted, with five previous film adaptations, plus a miniseries, plus a theatrical production, plus an anime version, and on and on.”
Excerpt #2: “But if you insist that a movie is important, you don’t really have to deal with whether or not it’s good. You can shame people into seeing it as a political statement, rather than as an entertainment or cultural selection.
“Same with the ‘dangerous’ or ‘disturbing’ moniker, which got used on everything from Joker to the latest Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was marked down for everything from not giving its female costar Margot Robbie enough lines to its gratuitous violence against a female would-be murderer to its filming of women’s feet (fetishes are now dangerous, I guess).
“If a critic doesn’t like a film, labeling it as dangerous — and implying you might get killed if you go see it — is an attempt to keep people away.”
Excerpt #3: “Part of this language is the result of our commenting culture choosing to see everything through a political lens. There must be a political reason for Tarantino giving so few lines to a female actor in his latest film, and that political reason must be he does not respect or have any interest in women. There must be a political reason this movie doesn’t have the correct number of roles given to actors of color, and that reason must be that the director is racist.
I know Joker is “divisive.” Then again it’s grossed $1.067 billion worldwide ($334 million domestic, $732.7 million overseas) so I guess it’s not that divisive, right? And it is the most zeitgeisty of all the Best Picture nominees. And now it has 11 Oscar nominations. So what makes it an unlikely Best Picture winner exactly? An Oscar prognosticator who just arrived here from Mars would probably conclude that Joker has the Best Picture Oscar in the bag. And yet everyone continues to say “oh, no, no…can’t win, too dark, too anti-social, too diseased,” etc.
The Hammond organ track that made history. Ignore the horrific first 30 seconds and just cut to Al Kooper‘s story. 21 years old, June 16, 1965. Columbia Records, 799 Seventh Avenue, Studio B. It was included in Martin Scorsese‘s No Direction Home doc, but this is a more complete telling.
Boilerplate: “When Dylan heard Like A Rolling Stone played back, he insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix, despite [chief engineer] Tom Wilson‘s protestations that Kooper was ‘not an organ player.’ Dylan: “I don’t care who he is and what his experience level is…turn it up.”
BREAKING: Video emerges of @JoeBiden criticizing antiwar Dems, praising Bush for leading America into the Iraq War & promising he will support Bush's continuation of the war
"The president of the United States is a bold leader & he is popular…I & many others will support him" pic.twitter.com/Sx2zsdbSJV
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 12, 2020
When it comes to 2020 Oscar nominations, Hollywood Elsewhere is partly run-of-the-mill and partly…well, a bit peculiar. In some ways I’m a lot like Scott Feinberg, and more similar than not to Sasha Stone. But I’m everybody’s brother and son. I ain’t much different from anyone. Well, in some ways I am.
Advance warning: Bong Joon-ho‘s over-praised social dramedy will wind up Best Picture nominated (along with a locked nom for Best International Feature), but it must not and can not win in the former category…no!
Best Picture in order of likelihood: The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917, Parasite, Joker, Marriage Story (6). Outliers: Little Women (will a series of impassioned journalist columns and the ever-present Twitter fervor push it through?), Jojo Rabbit (too broad, too comedically tidy, lacking in boldness), Ford v Ferrari (respectable character-driven drama, excellent race-car footage), Knives Out (VERY clever, first-rate popcorn whodunit), Uncut Gems (an endurance test to sit through, the Safdies are sadists). (5)
Best Director in order of likelihood: Martin Scorsese, The Irishman; Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Sam Mendes, 1917; Bong Joon-ho, Parasite; Todd Phillips, Joker. (5)
Possible surprise omission: Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story (not much momentum over last four months, might fall by the wayside). Forget it: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit.
Best Actor in order of likelihood: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker; Adam Driver, Marriage Story; Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes; Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory; Taron Egerton, Rocketman.
Not happening: Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (nobody has said boo about Leo’s performance — all the heat has been about Brad).
Best Actress in order of likelihood: Renée Zellweger, Judy; Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story; Charlize Theron, Bombshell; Saoirse Ronan, Little Women; Awkwafina, The Farewell.
Shameful omission of the best female lead performance of the year: Mary Kay Place, Diane.
Forget it: Lupita Nyong’o, Us. Not a chance: Cynthia Erivo, Harriet.
Best Supporting Actor in order of likelihood: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Al Pacino, The Irishman; Joe Pesci, The Irishman (will cancel each other out), Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; Jamie Foxx, Just Mercy.
Not likable enough: Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes. Too broad: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit.
Best Supporting Actress in order of likelihood: Laura Dern, Marriage Story; Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers; Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell. (3) Possible: Shuzhen Zhao, The Farewell.
Should be nominated but won’t be: Julia Butters, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Unworthy contenders: Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit (because her character was hung?); Margot Robbie, Bombshell (because Roger Ailes humiliates her in that one agonizing scene?); Nicole Kidman, Bombshell (because she delivers a prim-and-proper performance that she could have performed in her sleep?).
Call me bullish, biased or delusional, but I refuse to take this man out of my Oscar predictions. pic.twitter.com/hgr0B6xrAr
— Zach Laws (@zachlaws) January 12, 2020
In a 1.11 Facebook entry, director Eugene Jarcecki (The King, Reagan, Why We Fight) posts some photos of various West Village retail shops that have shuttered and laments “the lie of a ‘booming’ economy…in Gentrification 2.0, where even the crappy soulless establishments that once replaced the original mom-and-pop places, even these onetime intruders can no longer survive.”
One of the photos was of the recently shuttered Vesuvio’s Bakery (or more precisely the Birdbath bakery inside the Vesuvio’s storefront) at 160 Prince Street. Devastating. I haven’t been to Manhattan since last spring, and had somehow missed the closing last August. Early 20th Century storefronts like Vesuvio’s are the heart and soul of what remains of the old West Village. This kind of thing has been happening in Manhattan for the last 20, 25 years. Earthy single-owner establishments have been dropping like flies, and with them the flavor and character of Sidney Lumet‘s Manhattan.
In ’78 and ’79 I lived a hop, skip and a jump away at 143 Sullivan Street. I was mostly miserable back then, and yet I felt so glad that my apartment was part of a living, breathing neighborhood composed of mom-and-pop businesses, and run by people with pugnacious New York personalities.
Eugene Jarecki anecdote: During the annual Sony Pictures Classics party in the middle of the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, I was talking to Jarecki about Why We Fight, which the festival was screening. We were engaged in the usual party chit-chat. And then I somehow shifted into a testy-bordering-on-hostile discussion with MCN’s David Poland, who was standing right next to me. “Whoa, wait,” Jarecki quipped. “This sounds like a real conversation…you guys actually have something to say to each other!”
Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom is a grotesque portrait of fascism unbridled, but it’s certainly no satire. A “satire” this cold and clinical inevitably morphs into something else. Salo is essentially a horror film about the practice of cruelty…cruelty and contempt taken to their final expression. And yet it’s certainly a tougher, harder, more unforgiving creation than Jojo Rabbit, and a much fiercer thing than Taiki Waititi ever thought to attempt. Talk about films that focus on a similar situation but exist in two completely separate universes. There’s a Salo scene in which the four brute fascists (Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti) are dressed in drag, looking like perverse middle-aged biddies with pearl necklaces, too much rouge, ornate hats and whatnot. Imagine if Jojo Rabbit had the nerve to be this dark, this diseased.
Posted three-plus years ago: “Can anyone imagine a more noir-ish sounding title than They Won’t Believe Me? The world won’t cut me a break, won’t stop shitting on me, won’t trust me, won’t look inside to see who I really am, won’t give me a job or lend a helping hand, refuses to love me, etc. It’s the ultimate expression of despondency.”
I’ve just watched this clip of TCM’s Noir Alley host Eddie Muller (aka “The Czar of Noir”) talking about They Won’t Believe Me, and reporting that screenwriter Jonathan Latimer‘s original ending had accused murderer Robert Young leaping to his death from a courtroom window, followed by the jury rendering a verdict of not guilty.
But the production code guys insisted that a person can’t commit suicide, Muller says, and so “a trigger-happy baliff” shoots Young before he leaps.
Posted on 11.2.16: “You can’t stream Irving Pichel‘s They Won’t Believe Me, a 1947 noir in which Robert Young played a weak, disloyal, manipulative shit. I haven’t seen it in eons, but I vividly remember the final scene when Young, a wrongfully accused defendant in a murder trial, is shot dead by a cop when he tries to leap out of a courtroom window just before the verdict is read. Cut to close-up of the jury foreman reading the verdict: ‘Not guilty.’
“The only way you can see They Won’t Believe Me is on TMC and via a Region 2 DVD. No Amazon, no Netfix, no Vudu, no nothin’.
“I was taken by the film because Young was a consummate exuder of domestic serenity and middle-class assurance in two hit TV series, Father Knows Beast and Marcus Welby, M.D. In actuality Young was an unhappy, unsettled fellow who suffered from depression and alcoholism. In 1991, at the age of 84 or thereabouts, he tried to kill himself. And yet Young was candid about his personal issues and urged the public not to follow his example (i.e., boozing) and to seek professional help when so afflicted.
The concluding line in this Catch 22 conversation between Lt. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) and Cpt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) was not written by original novel author Joseph Heller but Buck Henry. Heller reportedly approved.
Minderbinder: “Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.”
Yossarian: “What difference does that make? He’s dead.”
Minderbinder: “Then his family will get it.”
Yossarian: “He didn’t have time to have a family.”
Minderbinder: “Then his parents will get it.”
Yossarian: “They don’t need it, they’re rich.”
Minderbinder: (beat) “Then they’ll understand.”