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Not long ago a director friend mentioned that of all the things he liked about Mudbound, he was most impressed by Rachel Morrison‘s cinematography. It’s not poised or prettified, he said, but it has an au natural thing — a humid, plain-as-dirt, you-are-there atmosphere.

A relatively young dp, Morrison delivered her first major-league score with her lensing of Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station (’13). She also shot Daniel Barnz and Jennifer Aniston‘s Cake (’14) and Zal Batmanglij‘s The Sound Of My Voice (’11).

Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird has won the National Society of Film Critics’ award for Best Film of 2017. The A24 release is now that much closer to winning the Best Picture Oscar. The older fence-sitters who’ve been saying to themselves “but it’s just a teenage coming-of-age story!” will now be thinking twice.

Get Out and Phantom Thread were the first and second runners-up with Jordan Peele‘s film having lost by only two votes, according to Variety‘s Kris Tapley. Given that a healthy percentage of the NSFC members are Get Out wokers, coolios and p.c. disciples, I’m hugely relieved that this divine mathematical intervention has occured.

The wokers did, however, manage a majority vote when it came to the NSFC’s Best Actor award. Will L.A. Daily News critic Bob Strauss argue with a straight face that Get Out‘s Daniel Kaluuya truly deserves this honor? Maybe he will, but if so his fingers, trust me, will be crossed. I’ve been sensing from Kaluuya’s modest remarks over the last couple of weeks that he, too, feels it’s a bit much.

Kaluuya delivered three behaviors in Get Out — cool and collected, slightly scared and super-scared with his mouth open and tears running down his cheeks. Okay, okay…maybe I’m wrong. Maybe DK’s performance was more quake-shaking than what Timothee Chalamet, Gary Oldman, Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hanks and James Franco delivered. If I’m mistaken please forgive me. It takes me longer to come to these things.

The Shape of Water‘s Sally Hawkins won the HSFC award for Best Actress. The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe and Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf received the Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards.

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My first reaction to the trailer for Steven Soderbergh‘s Mosaic (HBO, 1.22), the narrative version of that interactive thing, was “who’s the fat guy?” Conviction, intense vibes. Devin Ratray played Bruce Dern‘s loathsome nephew “Cole” in Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska, but he’s mainly known for having injected poison serum into the American bloodstream with his portrayal of Buzz McAllister, the chubby demon with the flattop and warlock eyes from the Home Alone movies. His Mosaic character, Nate Henry, is described on the HBO Mosaic site as “chief detective of a small police force…who now has to face the toughest case — and choice — of his career.”

I ignored the Mosaic iOS/Android mobile app, but the six-episode series seems intriguing. Same content but minus the interactivity + the option to research documents. Garret Hedlund, Sharon Stone, Frederick Weller, Jennifer Ferrin, Maya Kazan, Beau Bridges, et. al.

HE’s own Nick Clement (aka “Action Man”) has posted a three-part, non-exhaustive q & a interview with director Phillip Noyce. It covers the span of Noyce’s 40-year career — Backroads, Newsfront, Dead Calm, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Sliver, The Saint, The Bone Collector, Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American, Catch a Fire, Salt, The Giver and the brilliant, still unreleased Above Suspicion.

Click on part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Noyce on his mindset as he began making Rabbit Proof Fence: “The biggest challenge was that I had to take all of the ‘Hollywood’ out of my system. I was making a film that literally would stand no chance of being financed on any sort of studio level, and in a way, that made all of us who were involved more and more determined to get it made. It was a story we needed to tell, not something we were doing for the paycheck.

“We ended up raising $6 million to get the film made, and one of the proudest things about the entire experience is that it’s the most profitable film I’ve ever been involved with in terms of how much it cost to make and how much it took in from sales. Not forgetting the hearts and minds that were changed all around the world.”

Since last May I’ve posted two European-created trailers for Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s short-listed Loveless (Sony Pictures Classics, 2.16), but this is the cleanest and most concise. A long procession of missing children dramas have been domestically released (Gone Baby Gone, Changeling, Bunny Lake is Missing, Without A Trace, Ransom), but American producers have never had the balls to make one with Zvyagintsev’s approach — a drama that focuses on efforts to find a disappeared boy, yes, but is mostly about why the boy might have escaped in the first place. A movie that weeps over his absence, but at the same time considers the all of it, and even half-sympathizes.

Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff has penned a delicious, dessert-like Hollywood Reporter piece that summarizes his process in absorbing the whole Trump White House magillah.

Axios’ Mike Allen is reporting that Wolff, due to appear on news shows this weekend as well as Morning Joe Monday morning, “has tapes to back up quotes in his incendiary book — dozens of hours of them,” including chats with Steve Bannon and former White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh.

A taste: “After the abrupt Scaramucci meltdown, there was hardly any effort inside the West Wing to disguise the sense of ludicrousness and anger felt by every member of the senior staff toward Trump’s family and Trump himself. It became almost a kind of competition to demystify Trump. For Rex Tillerson, he was a moron. For Gary Cohn, he was dumb as shit. For H.R. McMaster, he was a hopeless idiot. For Steve Bannon, he had lost his mind.

“Most succinctly, no one expected him to survive Mueller. Whatever the substance of the Russia ‘collusion’, Trump, in the estimation of his senior staff, did not have the discipline to navigate a tough investigation, nor the credibility to attract the caliber of lawyers he would need to help him. (At least nine major law firms had turned down an invitation to represent the president.)

“There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn’t stop saying something.

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There’s at least a modest body of opinion out there that Martin McDonagh‘s screenplay for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri deserves the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Alas, it wasn’t announced this morning as a Writers Guild of America nominee in that category because Three Billboards wasn’t produced under WGA jurisdiction, and is therefore ineligible. I understand the organizational motive, of course, but it’s still bullshit.

The Best Original Screenplay nominees are Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor’s The Shape of Water, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Steven Rogers for I, Tonya and Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani’s The Big Sick.

The Best Adapted Screenplay noms went to James Ivory’s Call Me by Your Name, Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber’s The Disaster Artist, Dee Rees and Virgil Williams’ Mudbound, Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game, and the Logan screenplay by Scott Frank, James Mangold and Michael Green.

Liz Hannah and Josh Singer‘s original screenplay for The Post wasn’t nominated either. Add this omission to SAG members declining to nominate the Post cast for an ensemble award, and you’re left with “man, The Post can’t catch a break.”

The 70th annual WGA award ceremony will happen simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles on 2.11.

Yesterday afternoon I posted a director-writer’s opinions and preferences about current Oscar contenders, limiting the discussion to the top six categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor & Actress). Late yesterday I spoke to a woman producer with many TV and feature credits, and who’s been duking it out in this industry since the mid ’80s. A very sharp, very savvy lady. I’ve re-ordered the sequence of some of her quotes, pruned and condensed some of them, and in some cases run them verbatim.

Best Picture: “Call Me By Your Name is really the best picture of the year. There’s an unreasonable resistance to it among some, that it’s ‘just’ a gay love story set in the lush scenery of Northern Italy…the first Academy screening was only a quarter-full…but coming from a heterosexual woman, it’s the most honest and powerful film of the year. It’s about finding out for the first time what love can be, and how life goes on when your heart is broken. I think people should just GO SEE THE MOVIE. I haven’t met someone yet who wasn’t knocked out.

(l. to r.) Timothee Chalamet, Luca Guadagnino, Armie Hammer.

“Realistically for the Best Picture Oscar, it’s probably between The Post and Dunkirk. Dunkirk is a stunningly well made film, but it lacks that big emotional content. You begin the story with the thread of an average soldier who is just trying to survive, but not ever knowing anything about him handicaps the emotional takeaway at the end. It may win because it’s a great true story, but the heartfelt connections to the characters are impeded by their vague never revealed histories. Tom Hardy and Mark Rylance do very well with little, but could have been so much more. The Post is probably the winner. Streep and Hanks are on the top of their game. And the heroic relevance of the story is inescapable. Spielberg delivers.

“The curious enthusiasm for Get Out is mainly a box-office vote. If it wasn’t a big hit, it probably wouldn’t be as prominent in the Best Picture conversation. Mudbound feels like a smarter, better shot…a more quality-driven picture with a stronger message as well as a strong woman’s voice, although it’s not as edgy or commercial. Either way Get Out, clever and entertaining as it is, does not belong in the same category as Moonlight, Twelve Years A Slave, Hidden Figures and Fences. All of these movies make Get Out look weak. If Get Out had come out last year, it probably wouldn’t have been nominated. These previous nominees are worthy Best Picture contenders; Get Out has skated in during a weak year.”

Best Director: “Luca Guadagnino deserves to win for Call Me By Your Name. His film is so beautifully shot. The actors are terrific, the music perfect. But Chris Nolan will probably win it for the scope and scale of Dunkirk. Guillermo del Toro‘s work on The Shape of Water was wonderful, inspired. Greta Gerwig did a fantastic job on Lady Bird, and I think she deserves to get nominated for telling a small story so incredibly well. Steven Spielberg will get nominated for The Post. Deserves it, quintessential pro. Mudbound‘s Dee Rees is the most deserving underdog this year.”

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Those Steve Bannon quotes, excerpted from Michael Wolff‘s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” and reported in today’s Guardian, are fairly wonderful.

Serving #1: “The three senior guys in the [Trump] campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”

Serving #2: “The chance that Don Jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero. They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

Serving #3: “You realize where this is going. This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first, and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner…it’s as plain as a hair on your face. It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”

Serving #4 (and my favorite): “[Team Trump is] sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five.”

A Machievellian Lucifer and demonic alt-right architect who totally had Donald Trump’s ear and back, a once-lordly, black-hooded figure who graced the cover of Time magazine turns around five months after leaving the White House and calls the Russki meeting “treasonous“?

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In years past The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and others have run articles that quote opinions from this or that anonymous Academy member about Oscar contenders. But they never run them until the nominations have been announced in late January. Hollywood Elsewhere feels it’s more worthwhile to run these opinions now, while the nomination ballots are still being mulled over.

This morning I spoke to a director-writer with several reputable credits. I’ve re-ordered the sequence of some quotes, pruned and condensed some of them, and in some cases run them verbatim.

Best Picture: “Definitely Dunkirk. I think Dunkirk was an exceptional job of directing. I thought it was an amazing picture, a David Lean-level thing, a throwback to another time. Big Picture filming. For years younger generations have been saying ‘yeah, we’re used to watching these things on iPads’ but Nolan is saying ‘no, no, you’re missing the point…these are movies for the big screen…you’re missing the point.’ And those people who’ve been saying that [Dunkirk] wasn’t emotional enough? If you didn’t feel the emotion during that last swooping shot of Tom Hardy‘s plane out of gas and gliding over the beach…if you didn’t feel the emotion in that shot…c’mon.

Sam Rockwell, Best Supporting Actor contender in Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

“I totally agree with you about Get Out. It’s a good movie, but it’s not a fucking great movie, c’mon! I wouldn’t be mad if it won a Best Screenplay Oscar, but it’s not a Best Picture! I have a daughter in the business [and] she loves it, thinks it’s a Best Picture [contender]. But if Get Out or The Post, which I don’t think is a very brave film…if these two win the big awards [the Academy] is going to be hurting itself because it’ll be all about politics. They’re going to devalue the Oscars [by turning awards-giving into] temporary, transitional political statements. They’re going to hurt themselves if the award choices are too political. They want to address #OscarsoWhite….okay, we get it, we get it.

“Dunkirk, Lady Bird, Shape of Water, The Big Sick. Or Phantom Thread or Call Me By Your Name. These are real movies. They are about themselves, planting their own flag. The political thing might be a factor with Call Me By Your Name. Some are reacting to #OscarsSoStraight…it’s an agenda film. I think a lot of people would vote for it, for that reason.”

Best Director: “Again, Nolan. I have a lot of respect for [Get Out]’s Jordan Peele…he’s just not my idea of a Best Director nominee.. I also thought that Guillermo del Toro‘s work on The Shape of Water…it was like watching an old cobbler work…he purposely kept the creature work to a minimum….it made me feel like I was watching the story of the projectionist in Cinema Paradiso or, you know, the filmmaking in Amelie….it was like when I was a kid, falling in love with filmmaking.”

Best Actor: “I loved Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour. Oldman without a doubt. I thought he was just great, just great. Despite that London tube sequence when Churchill talks with the passengers, which I thought was one of the worst things…it totally ruined the movie for me. I couldn’t believe how badly that was done. Some say Oldman is ‘playing’ Churchill rather than channelling him. Well, how do you portray Churchill and not do that? I also really like the kid from Call My By Your Name. He reminds me of Saoirse Ronan in terms of ability and vulnerability.”

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The flagrantly political instinct to over-praise and over-celebrate Get Out — one of the most confounding and surreal episodes of mass derangement in any award season in memory — has caught fire among regional critics groups. Slightly less than a third of 33 regional critics groups have handed Jordan Peele‘s horror-satire their Best Picture prize.

The lemmings are leaping off the cliff, you bet, and for reasons that don’t really make sense to people who haven’t been affected by the “woke” virus, first and foremost being that Get Out is a popular, audience-rousing genre film that doesn’t begin to show exceptional chops or deliver “greatness” by any time-honored standard.

We’re talking about some kind of mind virus, propelled online and delivered through smartphones — a mass decision by younger Academy voters and the identity-politics crowd to radically up-end Best Picture criteria by supporting a film that no sane critic or prognosticator would have gotten behind ten or even five years ago.

“If you’re looking for more reasons to deplore the Get Out pack, the film was just named Best Picture, and Jordan Peele best director and screenwriter, by the North Carolina Film Critics Association, of which I am a member,” a friend just wrote me.

“I am with you on the whole Get Out issue. A good film but not even close to being a great one, advanced by p.c. critics. As my grandmom would say, ‘Feh!'”

For sensible-minded regional critics, this reality-defying, Wayne Fontana and Mindbenders movement is partly about regional wokers wanting to demonstrate solidarity with big-city brethren (“We get it, guys…we’re with you in spirit”).

The Get Out-ers are massing under a political conviction that never enjoyed overwhelming currency during the Obama or Dubya administrations, but which, in today’s highly charged political climate (and especially within ardent liberal circles), is absolutely paramount in their eyes: Best Picture awards should no longer go to the best or boldest or most affecting artistic achievement but to films that (a) are most deserving of Hollywood’s political-social merit badge award, and (b) reflect favorably on the critics’ own progressive convictions.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, the “Get Out deserves to win Best Picture” thing is mainly about (a) extending the #OscarsSoWhite guilt complex by supporting a politically “woke” film, (b) industry POCs doing their usual identity-politics bonding and (c) GenX and Millenial coolios wanting to crown a horror-satire genre film for generational-solidarity reasons (“We’re the new crowd and we have different standards for Best Picture achievement!”) as well as sheer perversity’s sake, largely because Get Out doesn’t begin to exude Best Picture criteria.

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I did a 48-minute chat earlier today with critic Jordan Ruimy (The Playlist, The Film Stage, We Got This Covered, The Young Folks, World of Reel). If you ask me the most interesting portion happens during the first eight or nine minutes, when we mainly discussed the “woke” support for Jordan Peele‘s Get Out. Again, the mp3. Here are selected transcriptions:

Wells: “This is a movie that traffics in social satire and horror, and basically says there’s a quietly malicious attitude that elite whites have toward people of color, and that they’re trying to turn them into zombies and make them into the kind of people they want…this is a weird metaphor because the same people who are loving Get Out are the people who are depicted in the film, the same malicious whites who are trying to manipulate people of color. The liberals with money and taste and who would’ve voted for Barack Obama a third time…these are the bad guys in the film and it’s this crowd…this liberal crowd is pushing Get Out the most.”

Critic Jordan Ruimy (The Playlist, The Film Stage, We Got This Covered, The Young Folks, World of Reel).

Ruimy: “We’re living in a very interesting time right now in film criticism. Back in the ’90s, even ten years ago it was such a different spectrum…and now political theory [has] snuck in, and any film you watch now you have to judge it politically, and that’s the way it’s going right now. And it’s very infuriating. Even though art should be political in a way. If Get Out had come out ten years ago, we would have totally forgotten it by the end of the year. We wouldn’t have even remembered it. That’s what’s really maddening about this whole thing.

“Do I think Get Out is a good movie? Yeah, I do. As I said I had one hell of a time watching it with a big crowd [at the AMC Boston Common plex]. But to go back to this criticstop10 site which has compiled over 388 critics list, and Get Out made 276 lists in the top ten. It’s also topped the most lists — 46 lists have it at #1. Most of the people who really rave about the movie are the Millenials. They always connect it to the woke movement and to the current political climate. If this were ’01 or ’02, and there was no woke movement, no critical theory…”

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