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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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Last night I tweeted that the “Get Out might win Best Picture” thing is a bizarre enthusiasm that seems to be 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 sheer perversity’s sake, largely because it doesn’t exude traditional Best Picture criteria.

I was inspired by a conversation between publicist Daniel Plainview (i.e., ClooneyDisciple), senior Indiewire critic David Ehrlich and Atlantic associate editor David Sims.

Plainview began by tweeting that “the only movies I think have a chance to win Best Picture in the order of likelihood (as of 12/30): 1. Get Out, 2. The Post, 3. Lady Bird, 4. Dunkirk, 5. Three Billboards.” Ehrlich: “I don’t think 3 billboards has a chance.” Sims: “It has a chance if the [Oscar noms] match the enthusiasm the guilds are showing for it. Like, if [Martin] McDonagh gets a directing nom and it gets 2 supporting actor slots? Look out.”

Twitter photo of Get Out devotee & propagandist “Clooney Disciple”

Then Ehrlich said, “I think it’s Get Out, The Post and Lady Bird, with Nolan winning for directing [Dunkirk].” And then Sims asked, “Where is this Get Out resurgence coming from? I say this as someone who predicted it a while back [but] this all just stinks of a wide-open race to me…I need the noms to help sort things out!”

And then Plainview laid his agenda on the kitchen table. “I think it’s still pretty wide open,” he told Sims, “but Get Out is (1) genuinely beloved, (2 & 3) a political choice AND a woke choice, (4) a hit, and (5) the rare movie to actually benefit from being released forever ago — it’s only gained momentum in the cultural conversation over last 10 months.”

What he meant by calling Jordan Peele‘s film “political” and “woke” is that the Academy needs to demonstrate for a second year in a row that #OscarsSoWhite mentality has been expunged and wiped clean. He meant that while 2017 was clearly owned by strong, stand-up women and the #MeToo pushback against sexually inappropriate behavior, renouncing #OscarsSoWhite is still paramount.

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Penelope Cruz, Daniel Day Lewis during a promotional photo shoot of Rob Marshall‘s Nine, which no one wants to even think about much less recall or re-watch. I can barely remember a single scene from this 2009 Weinstein Co. release. I saw it once and put it out of my head. Okay, I remember DDL driving along Italy’s Amalfi coast in a hot sports car, heading toward Positano.

Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant during or after filming of Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (’46).

Marlene Dietrich in David O. Sleznick’s The Garden of Allah, which lost money.

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Last night I persuaded Tatyana to attend a 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia at the American Cinematheque Egyptian. She had never once seen it and was barely familiar with T.E. Lawrence, and I figured that despite the Egyptian’s so-so presentation it would be worthwhile for her to see it on a monster-sized screen with a big crowd of fans. I wasn’t delighted with the lack of truly sharp focus and that punch-through, extra-knockout quality that 70mm used to signify (but signifies no longer), but I didn’t mind it.

I was saying to myself over and over, “If only that amazing micro-sharp detail contained in the Amazon 4K streaming version of this classic David Lean film could somehow be projected…wow!”

Posted roughly a year go: “I shelled out $20 bills in order to watch Amazon’s 4K streaming version of Lawrence of Arabia, and I was really, seriously stunned by the miraculous detail.

“I’ve seen the restored, 8K-scanned Lawrence digitally projected via DCP under high-end conditions and at home via 1080p Bluray, and there’s no denying that the 4K streamed version (which is not real-deal 4K due to intense compressing, but somewhere between 2K and 4K) is really a cut above.

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“…that is not particularly acute.” In other words, fraying, undisciplined, wackadoodle.

From Ezra Klein‘s 12.29 Vox piece, “Incoherent, Authoritarian, Uninformed: Trump’s New York Times interview Is A Scary Read“:

“Imagine how we would react to literally any other president speaking like this. Trump has bludgeoned us into becoming accustomed to these kinds of comments but that, too, is worrying.

“This is the President of the United States speaking to the New York Times. His comments are, by turns, incoherent, incorrect, conspiratorial, delusional, self-aggrandizing and underinformed.

“This is not a partisan judgment — indeed, the interview is rarely coherent or specific enough to classify the points Trump makes on a recognizable left-right spectrum. [And] I am not a medical professional, and I will not pretend to know what is truly happening here. It’s become a common conversation topic in Washington to muse on whether the president is suffering from some form of cognitive decline or psychological malady. Whatever the cause, it is plainly obvious from Trump’s words that this is not a man fit to be president, that he is not well or capable in some fundamental way.”

This sort of thing always tests relationships that are grounded in commercial filmmaking, creativity and collaboration. This isn’t my business and I’m not a gossip columnist, but if I were Noah Baumbach I might be feeling….what, a bit twitchy about this? Not necessarily “resentful” but not, shall we say, entirely at peace. By the way: I never realized that Baumbach’s brilliant Greenberg (’10), which delivers a very particular kind of neurotic morose humor and which is known for being something of a bust, grossed more than the two Baumbach-Gerwig collaborations, Frances Ha (’13) and Mistress America (’15), the latter being a crackerjack modern-day farce a la His Girl Friday.

I couldn’t get worked up yesterday about the passing of one of showbiz’s toughest, spunkiest, hardest-working troupers. Where’s the heartache in Rose Marie having lived a rich 91 and 1/3 years? That said, I want to see that newish documentary (trailered after the jump) about her. Sidenote: When Maximilian Schell made his 1984 doc about Marlene Dietrich, the legendary 83 year-old star refused to be photographed, presumably for reasons of vanity. I think she had the right idea.

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No, I don’t believe that “Disney is bracing themselves for the Han Solo movie to bomb,” as Screengeek’s Simon Andrews reported five days ago, citing “a source close to the film’s production.” (I don’t think producers or Disney execs would admit this to themselves, much less whisper it to confidantes.) And I don’t believe “they’re essentially writing Solo off,” that “the script is unworkable” and that “it’s going to be a car crash.” I think this is unreliable trash talk.

Possibly bogus Solo ad art that came out of Russia.

But I do believe and was saying six months ago that Alden Ehrenreich is the wrong guy to play the young Han Solo, and that the film, however it turns out, won’t get much charisma bounce from his performance. “A seemingly joyless, small-shouldered guy who lacks a sense of physical dominance (Aldenreich is five inches shorter than the 6’2” Ford) and whose stock-in-trade is a kind of glum, screwed-down seriousness,” I wrote last June.

I don’t know when the Solo trailer is going to pop, but it would have made sense to attach it to The Last Jedi, no? If it’s not debuting before the 12.31.17, it’ll almost certainly appear sometime in January.

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Six days ago Danny Peary posted a q & a with author, film historian, screenwriter and former Variety critic Joseph McBride. The main order of discussion was McBride’s 2017 book, “Two Cheers for Hollywood,” a compilation volume (64 essays and interviews) that I mentioned eight months ago in a piece called “McBride’s Way”.

Right in the middle of Peary’s piece is a 42 year-old photo of McBride, future Variety and Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy and directors Sam Fuller and Francois Truffaut. It’s a poorly cropped, bad-angle shot — you can only see one-third of McBride at far right — but it was taken in late ’75 at an event that McCarthy helped organize on behalf of the promotion of Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H.. McCarthy was handling publicity for the film as well as the so-called Oscar campaign for Best Actress contender Isabelle Adjani. At the end of the day McCarthy’s boss, the notoriously cheap Roger Corman of New World Pictures, paid for two FYC trade ads for Adjani.

(l. to r.) Francois Truffaut, Samuel Fuller (where did Sam find that Kiwanis Club sport jacket?), Todd McCarthy, Joe McBride.

McCarthy’s campaign was nonetheless successful. Adjani was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in early ’76 (although Louise Fetcher won for her Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest). In late ’75 Adjani won Best Actress trophies from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review, and from the National Society of Film Critics in early ’76.

McCarthy’s recollection: “The event happened at the AFI when it was still up at the Doheny/Greystone mansion. I invited all the great old directors in Hollywood, ostensibly to get them to rally around the film for Oscars but privately so I could meet them all. Attending alongside Truffaut and Fuller were George Cukor, King Vidor, Rouben Mamoulian, Alexander Mackendrick and numerous others like Buck Henry, Milos Forman, et al. Quite a night. This was the first time I’d met Truffaut, and while the film was screening we sat outside and all he wanted to talk about was Watergate — he felt he didn’t understand it and American politics sufficiently so he pumped me for endless information so he could better comprehend was going on.”

McBride on general cultural downturn and betrayal: “I feel I was betrayed by the movies, as I was by the Catholic Church, my parents, my schooling, and our government. It’s hard not to continue loving the movies I once loved, though, as well as some occasional new ones. My feelings about the medium today are highly ambivalent. I feel in a sense I went into the wrong profession.

“But my interests have always been broad, and I’ve incorporated them into my work. My biographies of directors range widely into sociopolitical subjects, and I recently have been branching out into books on other subjects besides movies. So I can’t regret the choices I made as a youth (once you make them, it’s almost impossible to turn back), but the art form I loved [has] been trashed and turned largely into moronic fodder for the adolescent male audience, [and that] makes me beyond sad.”

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I’ve watched the five-year-old MGM Bluray of Billy Wilder‘s The Apartment a couple of times and I’ve never said to myself, “This is nice but it could look better.” Well, I suppose the 2012 disc could do with a little less DNR heightening, but to my plebian eyes it’s always looked great — extra-sharp detail, rich array of monochrome tones, mine-shaft blacks.

Why then did I pop for the new 4K restored Arrow Bluray version, which will arrive at the end of the week? Because Arrow techs rolled up their sleeves and worked with the original camera negative to restore this 1960 film. They applied standard restoration techniques (dirt and scratch removal, image stabilization, etc.) and presumably delivered a more film-like final product.

But mainly I fell for the Arrow sell. I wanted to believe that I’d notice significant improvements over the 2012 Bluray (i.e., a “bump”), and so I invested in that dream, however likely that may be.

David Brook of blueprintrreview says “the remastered print looks fantastic — clean, detailed and featuring a beautiful dynamic contrast range.”

A critic with fanboydestroy reviewed the Arrow disc about ten days ago: “As I haven’t seen the MGM Bluray version, the new Arrow Academy restoration is probably going to be the go-to version for a while. Using a combination of digital and standard restoration techniques, the film looks phenomenal…all cleaned up for higher resolution 4K sets.”

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