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Robert Redford sorta knows me from way back. Not as any kind of acquaintance or favored journalist pally, but as a guy who’s been in the game since the early ’80s, and as one of the Oscar handicappers who totally fell for his solo performance in J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost.

I realize that Redford is more or less in a retirement mode these days and is only slightly involved in the Sundance Film Festival, if that, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to tell him of my Sundance troubles. So I sent along the following email on 1.3.19. No response so far, and that’s okay. At least I gave it a shot.

DATE: 1.3.19
TO: Robert Redford c/o Sundance Film Festival
FROM: Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere
RE: Sundance ’19 press pass

Bob,

This is way below your station and pay grade, but please take a couple of minutes and read this over.

After covering Sundance with a press pass for 25 years (since ’94) I’ve had my press accreditation for the 2019 festival denied by the Sundance powers-that-be. I’ll be attending anyway and catching films by the good graces of publicist pals, but it’s my presumption that my pass has been deep-sixed because I’m regarded as insufficiently “woke” in my general attitude as a film critic and columnist.

I’ve been told that it was a matter of making room for new journalists and that the number of press passes are finite, etc., but nobody believes that. My guess is that it more or less boils down to a high-school-level thing — the cool kids don’t like me any more and I’ve been elbowed out of the “in” crowd. Another way of looking at it is that I’ve been politically blacklisted.

Last year I conveyed a critical impression about the festival that may have riled a couple of people. I wrote that the festival has largely become a politically instructive experience as opposed to a festival about general cinematic excitement and stimulation. I said that Sundance ’18 felt to me like “a socialist summer camp in the snow.”

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Everyone laughed or sneered when Donald Trump announced his candidacy three and a half years ago. But when it became clear a few months later that he was connecting with the rural none-too-brights, people started to compare Trump to Lonesome Rhodes in A Face in The Crowd, the 1957 drama about the rise and fall of a country-boy demagogue and sociopath, played by Andy Griffith.

Trump is anything but “country,” of course, but he’s just as much of a media-attention whore and a bullshit artist as Rhodes became by Act Three of Budd Schulberg‘s script.

It could be argued that the fictitious Rhodes was a much savvier guy than Trump could ever hope to be, and that Trump is more of an unregenerate liar and a stone sociopath. And yet here we are in January ’19, and just like that woman at the end of Kazan’s film who says “why, he’s a monster!”, a fair-sized portion of the chumps who voted for Trump are scratching their heads and wondering why they fell for his act while pundits everywhere long ago agreed that Trump was Rhodes and vice versa. The analogy was undeniable in early to mid ’16, but now it’s a so-whatter.

In short Criterion waited way too long to release their 4K Bluray (due on 4.23.19). They should have released it right after Trump’s election.

On top of which I’m disappointed that they’ve chosen to present it at 1.85, which means they’ve sliced off the top (or bottom) of the 1.78:1 image that was delivered on the 2005 DVD version. But that’s what they do. Just as Marc Bolan loved to boogie, Criterion likes to cleaver.

Harry Stradling‘s needle-sharp, well-framed, occasionally atmospheric cinematography (he also shot Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire) has always looked great in previous formats; A Face In The Crowd should look extra snappy in 4K.

Please, please nominate Paul Schrader and Ethan Hawke in their respective First Reformed categories — Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. Don’t embarass yourselves by blowing off Hawke, who’s been awarded and nominated by everyone from sea to shining sea. Schrader is a living legend in his seventh decade, and First Reformed is his big comeback film — his best since Hardcore.

Please stand up to the SJW haters who’ve tried to torpedo Green Book — please tell these strutting lefty fascist bullies to go EFF themselves by nominating Peter Farelly‘s film for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor & Supporting Actor, etc.

Please temper your urge to go Roma, Roma, Roma all the way, at least as far as the Best Foreign Language Feature category is concerned. For the Best Foreign Language Feature of the year is — forgive me, Netflix — Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War. Really. It is. Consider the fact that the European Film Awards went Cold War, Cold War, Cold War all the way.

And do not fail to nominate Cold War dp Lukasz Zal for his gleaming monochrome cinematography. Ignoring Zal would be flat-out felonious.

Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which I’ve seen four times, is UNQUESTIONABLY one of the best films of 2018. Please nominate accordingly — Melissa McCarthy for Best Actress, Richard E. Grant for Best Supporting Actor, Heller for Best Director, etc.

For the sin of not connecting with Joe and Jane Popcorn. you’re planning to give Damien Chazelle’s First Man the cold shoulder as far as the Best Picture category is concerned. You know it, I know it. But you are going to nominate Justin Hurwitz for his magnificent score. Maybe you could squeeze out some additional love for this sadly unloved art film, which bravely forsakes the Ron Howard approach to a Neil Armstrong biopic in favor of an intimate “you are Neil” scheme?

Observation #1: Yesterday Critics Choice awards were well handled all around, despite the fact that some felt it was a tiny bit chilly inside. The organizers were counting on body heat to warm things up, which worked to some extent. The outside weather was nonetheless damp and blustery. Observation #2: Free cups of Ample Hills ice cream were handed out. I was a pig, helping myself to two cups. By the way: I can’t be the first person to interpret “Ample Hills” as a randy euphemism. As in Alfred Hitchcock‘s observation about Grace Kelly in a gold lame dress: “There are hills in that thar gold.” Did I choose the name “Ample Hills”? No.

Eighth Grade‘s Elsie Fisher was seated three or four feet from Hollywood Elsewhere during the Critics Choice awards.

Tatyana and makeup artist Jan Sewell, who worked on Bohemian Rhapsody and the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984.

Ample Hills ice cream stand.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said today she will run for president in 2020. “I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week,” the Hawaii Democratic congressperson told CNN’s Van Jones during an interview slated to air early Saturday evening on CNN’s “The Van Jones Show.”

A 37 year-old Iraq War veteran, Gabbard was elected to Congress in 2012. Seemingly more progressive than Texas Congressperson Beto O’Rourke and arguably as much of a high-charisma candidate as he, Gabbard currently serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She is the first American Samoan and the first Hindu member of Congress.

“There are a lot of reasons for me to make this decision,” Gabbard said. “There are a lot of challenges that are facing the American people that I’m concerned about and that I want to help solve,” alluding to health care access, criminal justice reform and climate change.

As Wednesday’s attempted torpedo takedown of Green Book made clear, all Oscar contenders need to delete anything and everything from their Twitter accounts in order to fully protect themselves. Because their enemies will search through their twitter histories for anything negative they can find find. Who knows which other films or contenders will be next?

Only one thing seems more or less assured, and that’s the fact that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma is totally bulletproof in this regard. Apart from the fact of its own cinematic excellence, Roma is adored by the wokesters. Twitter banshees have never taken shots at it, and they never will. Because they don’t want to. Because Roma has no indictable qualities.

Roma has all the heat, all the momentum right now. It didn’t suffer an embarassing Golden Globes loss a la A Star Is Born, but in fact triumphed. It will probably rule during Sunday’s Critics Choice awards. It will win at the BAFTAs. The Alliance of Women Journalists has saluted it. Roma is all alpha, all “forward ho!”…all win, win, win, win, win, win.

Somebody please explain how Roma can lose the Best Picture Oscar. Or how Cuaron can lose the Best Director trophy. I just don’t see how either scenario is possible at this stage. One plea to Academy voters: Give the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar to Pawel Pawlikowski‘s abundantly deserving Cold War, not Roma. Spread it around.

Last weekend I sat for my second viewing of Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’ Gate (CBS Films), which I’ve come to regard, no lie, as the finest Vincent Van Gogh flick ever made.

The difference between it and, say, Vincent Minnelli and Kirk Douglas‘s Lust for Life or Robert Altman‘s Vincent and Theo is a gentle but absolute communion with Van Gogh’s inner light. It’s not a tourist’s view of the man, but a portrait of an artist by an artist — a “you are Van Gogh” dreamscape flick.

In the view of many Willem Dafoe‘s performance of this gentle, conflicted, angst-ridden impressionist is his best since playing Yeshua of Nazareth in Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (’88).

When I say “many” I mean the National Society of Film Critics, who yesterday morning celebrated Dafoe’s performance as a top-tier achievement. That’s quite the ringing endorsement when you think of the competition. Dafoe’s Van Gogh also won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film festival, and he’s currently nominated for Best Actor prizes with the Broadcast Film Critics Association (i.e., Critics Choice), Alliance of Women Film Journalists and the San Francisco and Toronto Film Critics associations.

Let no one forget that Dafoe is a three-time Oscar nominee for his performances in Oliver Stone‘s Platoon (Sgt. Elias), E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire (Max Schreck) and Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project (the hapless Bobby Hicks).

From Manohla Dargis‘s N.Y. Times review of Schnabel’s film: “Few actors can look so frightening or so beatific in such rapid succession. Dafoe’s thin, coiled physicality suggests both fragility and determination, while his tensile face flutters with an astonishment of emotions that, by turns, suggest a yielding or off-putting sensibility. [And] Vincent’s agonies render moot the age difference between the character and actor; Dafoe is 63, and his deepest creases can seem like evidence of Vincent’s current and past suffering.”

At Eternity’s Gate is essentially a channelling of the dreams and torments that surged within Van Gogh during the final chapter in his life, when he lived in Arles and St. Remy de Provence. The film is more into communion than visions — intuitions, intimacy, revelations.

“Rather than a movie about Van Gogh, I wanted to make a film in which you are Van Gogh,” Schnabel said during a NY Film Festival presser that I attended.

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Alfonso Cuaron to Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allesandro: “My question to you is, how many theaters did you think that a Mexican film in black and white, in Spanish and Mixteco, that is a drama without stars — how big did you think it would be as a conventional theatrical release? It was not a cosmetic release…the movie opened more than a month ago and is still playing. That is rare for a foreign film. I think that is very unfair to say that. Why don’t you take the list of foreign films this year and compare the theatrical release to those things and for how long they’ve been playing? See how many are playing in 70 [millimeter.]”

HE to Cuaron: Netflix’s four-wall theatrical release of Roma plus all the festivals and the special 70mm engagements along with the streaming…cosmetic or not, this was the best possible way for Roma to have been released, all things considered.

This morning the Producers Guild of America revealed 10 nominees for their Best Picture prize (i.e., Daryl F. Zanuck award). The elite arbiters are freaking about the mildly mediocre but well-liked Bohemian Rhapsody being among them. For me the more appalling nominee is Crazy Rich Asians, which was included because of the all-Asian cast and the fact that it made boatloads of money. The other nominees are Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, The Favourite, Green Book, A Quiet Place (another outlier), Roma, A Star is Born and Vice.