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10:37 am: Hollywood Elsewhere 100% applauds the NYFCC giving their Best Picture award to Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, but giving their Best Director award to Benny and Josh Safdie for Uncut Gems is absolute contrarian poke-the-hornet’s nest insanity. The honorable Scorsese has taken the top prize and Quentin Tarantino has snagged a kind of second or third prize with the screenplay award, but the NYFCC’s embrace of the Safdies is almost, within the realm of year-end award-giving, a kind of felony. I know more than a few people who hate Uncut Gems, or at the very least have found it infuriating or soul-draining. And here’s the NYFCC giving the brothers a bear hug and saying “yes, you did well, keep it up, more like this!”

10:18 am: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood‘s Quentin Tarantino has won the NYFCC’s Best Screenplay award. Check. Well-liked film, great dialogue, an unusual tale with a compassionate ending.

9:57 am: Lupita Nyong’o wins the NYFCC’s Best Actress trophy for Us? Seriously? Eight parts wokester virtue-signalling, two parts serious regard for a noteworthy performance…trust me. Last year’s Best Actress award for Support The Girls‘ Regina Hall comes to mind. The NYFCC used to be the NYFCC — now it’s an organizational ally of Indiewire‘s wokeness gesture crusade. Good as she was in Jordan Peele’s interesting if underwhelming horror flick, Lupita basically delivered an intelligent, first-rate, Jamie Lee Curtis-level scream-queen performance with a side order of raspy-voiced predator doppleganger. Five out of 31 Gold Derby handicappers have Lupita on their lists, but no one has her in first or second position. I realize that the Best Actress field is regarded as a bit weak this year, but I would have gone with either Bombshell‘s Charlize Theron, The Farewell‘s Awkwafina or Judy‘s Renee Zellweger.

9:40 am: In another international-minded, anti-Gold Derby decision, the NYFCC has blown off Joker‘s Joaquin Phoenix, Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver and Uncut Gems‘ Adam Sandler to give their Best Actor prize to Antonio Banderas‘ minimalist, intriguingly layered performance in Pedro Almodovar‘s Pain and Glory. HE has no argument with this — it’s one of Banderas’s all-time best performances, and it won the Best Actor prize in Cannes last May — but understand that the NYFCC’s motive in choosing him was at least partly to give the bird to the Gold Derby gang.

9:12 am: Laura Dern has won the NYFCC’s Best Supporting Actress trophy, mostly for her tough divorce attorney performance in Marriage Story (and in particular that great monologue about how women are unfairly regarded by Judeo-Christian culture) and also for her Marmie in Little Women, a performance that I found…well, sufficient.

9:04 am: Joe Pesci‘s soft-spoken performance as Russell Buffalino in The Irishman has won the New York Film Critics Circle’s Best Supporting Actor award. There’s no question that Pesci delivers in a dead-calm, clean-pocket-drop way in Martin Scorsese‘s epic film, but how very NYFCC to single him out. Rank-and-file handicappers would have gone with Al Pacino‘s Jimmy Hoffa turn or Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, but whatever. Pesci rules today!

Earlier: In another snooty move, the NYFCC has blown off Roger Deakins‘ phenomenal cinematography in 1917 in order to give the Best Cinematography award to Claire Mathon’s lensing of Portrait of a Lady on Fire. A very handsomely shot film, no question, but not my idea of mind-blowing or wowser or whatever triple-cool superlative you want to use.

Earlier: The NYFCC’s Best Animated Feature award has gone to I Lost My Body. No comment as I lost my interest in watching animated films about a decade ago. Knowing that I will never sit through another animated film in the time I have remaining on this planet fills me with indescriable joy.

Daniel Craig looks leaner and tougher (i.e., younger) than he does in Knives Out, that’s for sure. But when he bungee-jumps off the aqueduct bridge in Matera…gentlemen! I’ve been explaining for years that hero protagonists diving off buildings, cliffs and high bridges is an infuriating cliche, and filmmakers don’t care…they just don’t care.

That includes No Time To Die helmer Cary Joji Fukunaga, who for the time being has put aside the Sin Nombre, Jane Eyre and Beasts of No Nation identity badge in order to become…you tell me.

Favorite No Time To Die touches: (a) Rami Malek‘s lizard skin and Phantom of the Opera mask, (b) heavily militarized Aston Martin, (c) Christoph Waltz‘s silver-haired Ernst Stavro Blofeld, confined Hannibal Lecter-style inside a thick plastic cell.

Otherwise the same old shite. It has to be. It can’t not be. 007 films are two parts Turkish heroin, one part ketamine, sprinkled with sugar and men’s cologne and fortified by corporate determination. Stunt guys are happy, paychecks all around.

I call bullshit on the flying motorcycle soaring like a hawk up and over a medieval city wall and crashing into a line of tourists. Steve McQueen‘s motorcycle leap over a hilly barbed-wire border frontier in The Great Escape…fine. But this thing? Update: Okay, they actually figured a way to make this happen with a specially built super-ramp and an Xtreme stunt guy, etc. But no one trusts what they see in a film anyway so who cares? It’s all bullshit.

Two and a half years ago Tatyana and I got married on La Piedra State Beach, which is way out in western Malibu and about a half-mile from the Trancas shopping center. Today we re-visited the exact same spot for old times sake, and did a little roaming around. We ran into a U.S.-born Russian woman named Irina, and she agreed to take a few shots.

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In his annual N.Y. Times Thanksgiving column, Kevin Dowd — Maureen Dowd‘s gray-haired, devotedly Catholic, liberal-despising, Trump-tolerating brother — assesses the Democratic field:

“Warren/Sanders: If you combine the support of the two billionaire-bashing socialists, they lead the field. You might consider vacationing in Venezuela before committing to them or they could run together as the End of Days ticket.

Biden/Bloomberg: Like Bloomberg, Biden has been forced to grovel and renounce all past career accomplishments on crime prevention.

Harris/Booker: They’re having trouble lighting the spark, even with some black voters.

Klobuchar/Buttigieg: They are the two least crazy people in the field, which means they have absolutely no chance.”

Kevin doesn’t hate Pete!

This is what’s known as an “obiter dicta” — words in passing that give the game away. Amy hasn’t a prayer so Kevin is basically saying Pete is the only credible Democratic contender who doesn’t make him throw up. Being called one of the “two least crazy people in the field” is another way of saying “Pete isn’t my guy but he has certain half-tolerable qualities, including a respect for people of faith.” You could take Kevin’s expression of limited support and turn it into “I guess if Pete won the Presidency, it wouldn’t be an absolute catastrophe.”

This implies that tens of thousands of other conflicted Trump fans out there might feel the same way. Think about that.

Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa is a strong supporting role — he doesn’t appear in The Irishman until the second hour, and there’s about 35 minutes’ of movie left after he departs. Agreed, Pacino’s performance feels like a co-lead but he’s not the main protagonist — Robert DeNiro’s Frank Sheeran has that burden.

Same deal with Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. He’s more cool-cat charismatic than Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, but he’s still the best friend, still bunking in that grubby trailer, still the guy driving his boss’s car, etc. Almost a co-lead, granted, but not the lead either. And that’s cool.

Willem Dafoe is definitely a co-lead with RBatz in The Lighthouse.

Jonathan Pryce is unquestionably playing the lead protagonist in The Two Popes — he and Anthony Hopkins are not co-leads.

Tom Hanks’ Fred Rogers obviously has more gravity and personality than Matthew Rhys’ Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and if Sony had chosen to run him as a lead, they could have sold it. But they decided against that.

I suspect that what Billy Dee Williams meant when he said he identifies as “non-binary” was that he doesn’t give a fuck who fucks who. He was basically saying “I’m easy.” But even if he meant that he’s indulged his womanly side in this or that way, I don’t think it matters all that much given his age. He’s past his sell-by date. If Lando Calrissian had offhandedly mentioned in 1980 or ‘83 that he’s had a little non-binary action, then we’d be talking headlines. But who cares when an 82 year-old guy says this?

2020 will be upon us in less than five weeks. A new decade, no more teens…is it possible that after 20 years of the 21st Century people might finally begin to identify the forthcoming years as twenty-something rather than two-thousand-whatever? When are people going to finally let that infuriating Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick-ism go?

Now’s as good a time as any to begin spitballing the 2020 films that might make a difference. Right now Hollywood Elsewhere is most looking forward to four, and a couple of these might not open before 2021. I really don’t know much.

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HE to Michael Musto and Hollywood Reporter Oscar soothsayer Scott Feinberg: We’ve got a major conflict between you two as far as Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women (Sony, 12.25) is concerned. La Dolce Musto has Greta’s film at the very top of his Gold Derby Best Picture spitball list, and yet Scott has relegated Little Women to his second-tier “Major Threats” list, which is a Feinberg euphemism for “don’t bet the farm.”

You guys are obviously on opposite poles. One of you is probably missing or sidestepping something, and that person may be Feinberg — who knows? I realize that a lot of progressive-identifying women want to see Little Women triumph, but I wonder if it has the horses.

I’m a “yes but” admirer of Little Women. A month ago I called it “highly respectable, nicely burnished, well performed, lusciously authentic,” etc. On the other hand it never quite finds a groove, the flashback device is a bit confusing, the manuscript of Saoirse Ronan‘s Jo is burned once too often (regardless of whether or not Louisa May Alcott wrote it this way — did she?) and Timothee Chalamet‘s character doesn’t know who or what he wants, and when told “no, sorry” he flips over like a pancake.

In other words, I’m basically with Feinberg.

Michael, this is your chance to deftly and gracefully withdraw as Little Women‘s biggest booster. You don’t want to be the Japanese solder hiding out in a jungle cave after U.S troops have taken the island in 1945.

The domestically partnered Gerwig and Marriage Story director-writer Noah Baumbach are obviously the dominant award-season power couple, but Little Women‘s 12.25 release date is not what most handicappers would call particularly Oscar-friendly, at least by the way things have worked over the last decade or so.

I’m also sensing a bit of trouble waiting for Marriage Story, if you wanna know. Or more precisely for Baumbach.

Marriage Story will be Best Picture-nominated, for sure, but the dirty little secret of the pre-1917 Oscar community conversation is that the curious absence of a Spirit Awards Best Director nomination for Baumbach probably means something. A lot of us were surprised by this, as all along it’s seemed clear that Baumbach dug deep and has made his most compassionate and emotionally well-layered film. So what’s the issue?

All I can figure is that there’s some kind of whisper campaign than Baumbach cast his alter ego character, Charlie, in too charitable a light. That by depicting Scarlett Johansson‘s Nicole character as the angry, argumentative one who wants the divorce and takes the son to Los Angeles, he more or less stuck it to his ex-wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, while failing to acknowledge…let’s leave it there.

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I wouldn’t know what to say if I was talking to Awkwafina and Taron Egerton about movies. If she said “yeah, when I was young, I loved A League of Their Own…it was the first movie I remember seeing, and I watched Gorillas In The Mist every day, and I would cry for it when it wasn’t on”…if she were to say this I would nod politely and go “uh-huh…really?” but inside my mind would be melting over toast and becoming a grilled-cheese sandwich.

I would also react politely if Egerton were to say “for me it was anything with Michael Caine, and I was also obsessed with the Fucking Muppet Christmas Carol.” But inside I would be wondering if he and Daisy Ridley had ever gotten together and discussed the films of Cary Grant. No offense but it sounds like Egerton had an undernourished childhood.

Egerton is six days older than Dylan (dob: 11.16.89) and a year and a half younger than Jett (dob: 6.4.88), but by the time my boys were four or five they’d watched and enjoyed Lawrence of Arabia, T2: Judgment Day, Beetlejuice, A Nightmare Before Christmas, E.T., the Extra Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones films, The Birds, Kong Kong…they’d really gotten their feet wet.

HE to Awkwafina: “Have you ever watched The Bad and the Beautiful?”

The divorce issue in Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story is mostly geographical. The separating couple is Adam Driver‘s Charlie, a hotshot New York theatre director, and Scarlet Johansson‘s Nicole, a frustrated actress who, feeling un-heard by Charlie, wants to re-charge her career with a starring role in a new Los Angeles-based TV series. The question is where will their young son Henry (Azhy Robertson) principally reside? In Charlie’s N.Y. apartment or Nicole’s Los Feliz (or wherever the hell it is) home?

But it’s also a matter of culture and spirit, at least as far as Charlie is concerned. If he decides to move to Los Angeles for Henry’s sake, and at the same time re-launch and re-purpose his theatre-directing career out of that sprawling burgh, he will be accepting a certain degree of cultural diminishment. For L.A. has always been and always will be a second-tier hive in the theatre realm. New York, London and Chicago are the top theatre towns — Los Angeles is strictly a satellite. Or, if you want to be harsh about it, a kind of balmy Siberia. At best a try-out town.

If Charlie was a movie director, like Baumbach, it wouldn’t matter as much (and it might even prove fruitful to move to L.A.). But that’s not the shot here. Charlie is a BAM or off-Broadway or Tin Pan Alley guy, steeped and swaddled in NYC theatre culture and mainlining the creative thrill of it all. He can move to West Hollywood and make a go of a West Coast theatre career, sure, but in the minds of many producers, actors and theatre-loving elitists he’d be doomed to fringe status for as long as his Los Angeles residence is maintained.

In an 11.17 piece titled “Whose Side Is Marriage Story On?,” Variety‘s Owen Glieberman passes along the conventional view that in the long arc of the story, Charlie is revealed as the bad guy who needs to grow and change and re-think his priorities.

“Almost any argument, within a marriage, can be about something larger than that argument,” OG writes. “Marriage Story makes the audience feel blindsided, too, as we can’t help, at first, but sympathize with Charlie. Yet the world that’s churning inside Nicole comes rushing into the drama during the scene where she first consults Laura Dern’s divorce lawyer to the stars. In a monologue that becomes an extraordinarily spontaneous and expressive piece of acting, Scarlett Johansson articulates the reasons — the stirrings of Nicole’s heart, the workings of her mind, the place they interlock — for why the East Coast-vs.-West Coast conflict in her marriage embodied something so much bigger.

“It wasn’t just a power struggle about where they were going to live. It was about the primal issue of whether Charlie, wrapped up in his cushy bohemian life, actually heard her. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. And that’s the wound, the sin, the problem. That’s why they’re getting divorced.”

And maybe, all things considered, that’s for the best. Let the custody battle go and get on with your life (as a father and a dynamic creative being) as best you can.

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