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When it comes to passionate love stories, there are two laws or conditions that make them seem especially memorable or magnetic. One, the best love stories are those which don’t end happily. (The late Sydney Pollack pointed this out time and again.) And two, love stories seem more passionate if the lovers never get around to actually doing it.

I’m not about to invest hours of research, but I’ll guess that a majority of anyone’s favorite love stories, from Wuthering Heights to Brief Encounter to Once, have been unconsummated. I would further guess that a list of popular love affair movies that have included actual sex would probably be fairly short.

I dove into this because it hit me this afternoon that one of the craziest and most erotically charged on-screen love affairs, the one between James Stewart‘s Scotty Ferguson and Kim Novak‘s Judy Barton (a.k.a. Madeleine Elster) in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo, never included the nasty. They made out under the Muir redwoods and along the Pacific coast and yes, Scotty did undress Judy/Madelyn after she passed out following a drowning attempt, but they never got down.

Who else abstained? Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, of course in Brief Encounter, as well as Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep in that 1984 remake, Falling In Love. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (’57). Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson in Lost in Translation. Humphrey Bogart‘s Phillip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall‘s Vivian Rutledge in The Big Sleep. Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn in The Rainmaker (’56). Robert Forster and Pam Grier in Jackie Brown. Michael Caine and Julie Waters in Educating Rita.

Others? Does it matter? I could go on and on.

The headline sounds a tad cynical but I mean it. Variety‘s Guy Lodge is right on top of what’s happening right now, and hats off for his being first. Because Dunkirk, a long-presumed Best Picture nominee, suddenly seems to be faltering and wobbly-kneed, and the great-guns assumption that Gary Oldman‘s broadly actorish performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour is locked to win is suddenly in question. It may be, in fact, that Oldman isn’t the front-runner any more, and that Call Me By Your Name‘s Timothy Chalamet might be elbowing him aside. Maybe.

That, at least, is what Lodge seems to be suggesting and what HE’s insect-antennae are conveying as we speak.

Today was the day I realized that Dunkirk, which almost everyone has had at the top of their Best Picture roster since last July, isn’t happening any more. The complaint about Dunkirk lacking a traditional arc and not delivering anything in the way of affecting mainstream emotion has always been out there, but now the critics aren’t standing up for it either. It may eventually be Best Picture-nominated (it seems inconceivable, still, that the Academy would brush it aside in this respect) but winning is out of the question. That much is certain, and what a shock to confront this.

Because in the back of my mind I’ve always been saying, “How can a film like Dunkirk, a film that delivers such amazing scope and intensity and you-are-there realism, and which swan-dives so grandly and decisively into a groundbreaking, time-flipping narrative approach…voters will have to come back to it in the end. It’s too powerful, too overwhelming to be dismissed.” Now I’m starting to realize that the Dunkirk current isn’t there, and that perhaps it never was.

It also hit me today that Chalamet is arguably more of a Best Actor frontrunner than Oldman, at least among the somewhat younger and more progressive, alive-in-the-present-tense crowd. The older, better-safe-than-sorry contingent has been hearing “Oldman, Oldman, Oldman” for several weeks now, but Chalamet has won Best Actor trophies with the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and that really means something. At the very least the Best Actor situation is now a horse race.

Lodge appears to believe that Chalamet is to the 2017 Best Actor race what Isabelle Huppert was to the 2016 Best Actress race — the most frequently awarded contender before Emma Stone came along and took the Best Actress Oscar. Maybe so, but at least things are suddenly more interesting.

Lodge responds: “Not saying that at all — just that the faction most inclined to vote for Oldman, as with Emma Stone last year, hasn’t chimed in yet.”

Luca Guadagnino‘s Call My By Your Name was the big winner in today’s Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards, taking the Best Picture trophy, splitting the Best Director trophy between Guadagnino and The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro, and with Timothee Chalamet taking the Best Actor prize. On top of which The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe won LAFCA’s Best Supporting Actor prize, and Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf won the Best Supporting Actress trophy.

Call Me By Your Name has now won two Best Picture trophies (LAFCA, Gotham Awards), and is likely to win the same trophy from the 2018 Spirit Awards, which has nominated Guadagnino’s film for six awards. Chalamet has won Best Actor from both LAFCA and the New York Film Critics Circle, plus a Breakthrough Actor award from the Gothams. Dafoe seems all but unstoppable with Supporting Actor trophies from LAFCA, NYFCC and the National Board of Review. Metcalf has taken the Best Supporting Actress awards from LAFCA and the National Board Of Review.

Earlier: I was talking to a friend last night about this morning’s Los Angeles Film Critics Association voting, and he went “Yeah, well.” What, you don’t think they’re influential or at least interesting? “I don’t know that anyone cares all that much,” he replied. “They always seem to go with off-the-wall picks. We’ll see.”

Talk about flaky — the LAFCA website has a LATEST NEWS crawl on the top, and one of the headlines says “LAFCA names Moonlight as Best Film of 2016.”

10:57 am: They’re voting right now, the bagel-and-cream cheese-and-onions gang, and the first winner is…

11:13 am: Best Cinematography: Dan Laustsen, The Shape of Water. (Runner-up: Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049.) HE comment: What about Dunkirk‘s Hoyte von Hoytema?

11:25 am: Best Music/Score: Johnny Greenwood, Phantom Thread. (Runner-up: Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water.) HE comment: 1st runner-up support for Desplat plus dp Dan Lausten‘s win obviously suggests strong current for The Shape of Water. Will Guillermo’s erotic-aquatic fable take the Best Picture prize?

11:40 am: Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe‘s harried, exasperated but altogether decent motel manager in Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project. Runner-up: Sam Rockwell‘s effed-up deputy sheriff in in Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri. HE comment: Okay, fine.

11:51 am: Best Production Design: Blade Runner 2049‘s Dennis Gassner. Runner-up: The Shape Of Water‘s Paul D. Austerberry. Excerpt from my BR49 review: “Deakins has done his usual first-rate job here and everyone knows he’s well past due, but the real whoa-level work is by production designer Dennis Gassner and supervising art director Paul Inglis.” HE comment: Another Shape of Water runner-up vote! Clearly there’s a hardcore contingent that will vote for Shape of Water in any category, come hell or high water.

12:01 pm: Best Editing award goes to Dunkirk‘s Lee Smith. Runner-up: I, Tonya‘s Tatiana S. Riegel.

12:06 pm: Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf win LAFCA’s Best Supporting Actress award. Runner-up: Mudbound‘s Mary J. Blige.

12:17 pm: Winner of LAFCA’s Documentary/Nonfiction award is Agnes Varda and JR’s Faces Places. Runner-up: Brent Morgen‘s Jane, a doc about chimpanzeetarian Jane Goodall, which had its big L.A. premiere at the Hollywood Bowl.

[Brunch break] [HE nap break]

2:09 pm: For LAFCA’s Foreign Language Film award, a tie between Robin Campillo‘s BPM (Beats per Minute) and Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s utterly brilliant Loveless. LAFCA’s animated feature award went to The Breadwinner and not Disney’s Coco. The Best Screenplay award was won by Jordan Peele‘s Get Out. Runner-up: Martin McDonagh‘s screenplay for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

3:15 pm: LAFCA’s Best Picture of 2017 is Luca Guadagnino‘s Call me By Your Name — all is forgiven, no more bagel and cream cheese jokes until next year. Runner-up: The Florida Project. The Best Director Award is a tie between CMBYN‘s Luca Guadagnino and The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro. Best Actor is CMBYN‘s Timothee Chalamet (runner-up: James Franco, The Disaster Artist). The Best Actress award has gone to The Shape of Water‘s Sally Hawkins

Earlier: If I was there voting with Bob Strauss, Myron Meisel, John Powers and the rest of them, I would toast my bagel just so, going for a nice light brown color. Then I’d add a schmear of Philadelphia 1/3 Less Fat Cream Cheese, a few slim rings of red onion, a thin slice of lox, some diced Roman tomatoes.

What kind of oddball, left-field choices will the Los Angeles Film Critics Association share tomorrow (i.e., Sunday, 12.3)? If past award picks are any guide LAFCA will probably vote for someone or something of an eccentric cast. If nothing else LAFCA members will want to live up to their well-earned reputation as the quirkiest and foodiest of all the major critic groups.

As noted last year, LAFCA is the only prestigious film critic group that notoriously interrupts its voting process halfway through so the members can chow down on toasted bagels, scrambled eggs, potato salad, lox, cream cheese, cole slaw and red onions. Bon appetit! But LAFCA members have another reputation to live up to, and that is a determination to choose way outside the realm of semi-conventional, emotionally-centered thinking.

A nominee or two, I mean, that will win an award because of some kind of arbitrary, socially progressive, possibly Jen Yamato-endorsed notion or belief scheme of the moment. A choice, I mean, that will feel like the right kind of politically correct fulfillment or projection — a choice that will point the way and especially defy the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby-ites. Has LAFCA’s eccentricity reached a point of self-parody? Could some members be fearful of letting people down if they don’t give an award to at least a couple of unlikely contenders? Sure seems that way.

Last year, for example, the Yamato cabal brought about a decision to give the org’s Best Supporting Actress award to Certain Women‘s Lily Gladstone, mainly because Gladstone was playing a lesbian Native American (two p.c. check marks) who was obsessively in love with Kristen Stewart. Another what-the-eff was LAFCA handing its Best Actor award to Adam Driver for his portrayal of a quiet, poetry-loving bus driver in Jim Jarmusch‘s Paterson. Driver had delivered a gentle, honestly spiritual vibe, but the main reason that LAFCA voted for him was that they were psychologically and constitutionally incapable of voting for Manchester By The Sea‘s Casey Affleck, the front-runner by a country mile.

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There’s no question that certain currents in my life have been neurotic or obsessive. Perhaps the strongest neurotic theme has been a lifelong tendency (and I mean going back to my early childhood) to feel greater emotional attachments to movies and movie stars than to my own family members. Aside from my mother, whom I loved start to finish, I’ve always thought of my family relationships as unremarkable, and at times trying and downish. Certainly when it came to my father, brother and sister.

I first realized this when my father, with whom I had a conflicted relationship, passed in June 2008. (Here’s what I wrote the next day.) I realized then and there that I felt much sadder after the passing of Cary Grant, whom I’d long regarded as a kind of family member in a sense. I choked up when I heard about Grant’s passing on 11.29.86, and I remember feeling a pall in my soul for a day or two after. All my life he’d been my pal, my debonair uncle, my role model, a guy I’d always admired.

Snapped outside my parents’ home in Wilton, Connecticut, sometime around ’85.

Off-screen Grant was no day at the beach. I’d read that he could be a mood-swinger and a neurotic prick on a certain level, but that wouldn’t have dimmed my feelings if I’d tasted this first-hand. I felt a blood bond with the guy.

But when I heard about my dad’s death 22 years later (on 6.20.08) I felt…well, not a great deal. A little misty but only that. I felt relief for the poor guy, as he’d been seriously unhappy with the deteriorating quality of his life over the previous two or three years. And I felt a bit glum, of course, about his testy, often crabby manner when I was a kid, and how he’d inspired me to join Al Anon in the mid ’90s, but also how he’d inspired me to take a crack at writing and, later on, to embrace sobriety. Jim Wells was a fine, honorable fellow whom I admired and respected when I began to find myself in my mid 20s, but Cary Grant was kin.

I managed to shake Grant’s hand in early ’84 during an Academy after-party for George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey. Too many people were crowding around so a couple of pleasantries was the sum of our exchange. There was so much I could’ve said and shared.

I’m an odd duck and I know it, and my weirdnesses are my own. I’m presuming that few out there have felt a greater emotional alliance with this or that actor or musician or politician, even, than he/she felt for someone of their own blood or tribe. But if anyone has, please share.

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I don’t know what’s behind Bryan Singer‘s absence from the London-based Bohemian Rhapsody shoot over the last week or so, but I strongly suspect that it’s not due to a “personal health matter,” which is how a spokesperson has explained the situation.

Rhapsody, which will tell the saga of Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) and Queen and which is already being eyed as a 2018 award-season hopeful, has been temporarily shuttered due to Singer’s diverted attention, according to a 20th Century Fox statement released Friday. The term “unexpected unavailability” was also used to explain Singer’s situation.

via GIPHY

The 52 year-old director reportedly hasn’t shown up since the end of the Thanksgiving holiday, or over the last five days. It’s obviously possible that some health issue is a factor, but something doesn’t sound or smell right. Something else seems to be going on. There are rumblings…who knows?

Variety has reported that “a representative for the director said the halt was due to a personal health matter concerning Bryan and his family,” and that Singer “hopes to get back to work on the film soon after the holidays.” Okay, here’s hoping.

Bohemian Rhapsody director Bryan Singer.

Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury.

It doesn’t matter to me if Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene, which is slated to open domestically on 3.30.18, goes out as a Weinstein Co. or Focus Features release. The movie’s the thang, not the distributor. (There’s no Weinstein Co. logo at the end of this trailer, but a Focus Features logo does appear.) Davis’s film is presumably a feminist slant on the New Testament legend, written by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett, with Rooney Mara playing the reformed harlot Mary Magdalene.

It’s also a slightly revisionist take with Jesus Christ, who died at age 33, being portrayed by a 43 year-old Joaquin Phoenix, who actually looks like he’s 54.

It’s fascinating to contemplate a scene in which Jesus and Mary Magdelene (Rooney Mara) are chatting on a hilly Italian coastline (pic was shot in Matera, the Puglia region, Napoli and Sicily) and looking out at the Mediterranean. On top of which you can’t hear the dialogue. I defy HE readers to tell me what Mara and Pheonix are saying to each other starting at the 56-second mark. Mara: “Pisahtla minnup-minnupah kaht?” Phoenix (at 1:00 minute mark): “Nuhnwah sinkdat bad pitnyah puhtohit.”

Costarring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Apostle Peter and Tahar Rahim as Judas Iscariot. Pic will probably be released on 3.30.18.

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All The Money In The World director Ridley Scott flew to Rome and re-shot Kevin Spacey‘s scenes with Christopher Plummer between 11.20 and…are they still shooting? If they are the task will surely be completed by today or Thursday, 11.30 or Friday, 11.1. And then they’ll have two weeks to edit in the new footage before screening the film for press by Friday, 12.15. Astonishing yeoman work by Scott and his team, and an extra round of applause for Plummer.

Update: Variety is reporting that a “rough” version of All The Money in the World will screen in New York next Monday, 12.4, for members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. in order to qualify for Golden Globes consideration. Sony/TriStar Pictures still plans to screen the finished film for domestic press by 12.15, as previously expected, or perhaps even earlier than that.

HE to Scott: Said this before, saying it again. Please, please don’t toss the Spacey footage. He turned out to be a creepy predator, okay, but he’s also a brilliant actor. Don’t throw history into the trash bin. Include the Spacey performance as a Bluray extra.

After last Saturday’s “2018 Hotties” post, I added several titles and then tried to reorganize the whole thing. Right now I’ve got 20 strong-sounding features, a good percentage of which could end up as awards-bait fall releases (The Irishman, Roma, Back Seat, First Man, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Wife). Plus 7 upmarket genre films plus 13 likely standouts from (in no particular order) Benh Zeitlin, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laszlo Nemes, Clint Eastwood, Garth Davis, Richard Linklater, David McKenzie, Joel Edgerton, Robert Zemeckis, Wes Anderson‘, John Curran, Jennifer Kent, Paolo Sorrentino and Paul Verhoeven.

That makes for a total of 40 noteworthy 2018 films to look forward to, of which maybe 20 or 25 will deliver the real goods…who knows? But the year is already looking pretty nifty. And none of these fall under the category of mind-melting, idiot-brand, superhero franchise CG Asian-market slop. And yet I am looking forward to Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther as well as Peyton Reed‘s Ant Man and the Wasp.

Topliners: 1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Bobby Cannavale, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano); 2. Adam McKay‘s Backseat (Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell); 3. Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, a space drama about NASA’s Duke of Dullness, Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke); 4. Saoirse Ronan in Mary, Queen of Scots (w/ Margot Robbie, David Tennant, Jack Lowden, Guy Pearce); 5. Clint Eastwood‘s The 15:17 to Paris (Jenna Fischer, Judy Greer, Bryce Gheisar, Alek Skarlatos, Thomas Lennon, Jaleel White, Tony Hale, P.J. Byrne).

6. Steve McQueen‘s Widows (Viola Davis, Cynthia Erivo, Andre Holland, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Daniel Kaluuya, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell); 7. Terrence Malick‘s Radegund (August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqvist, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jürgen Prochnow, Bruno Ganz; 8. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma (Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf, Yalitza Aparicio, Daniela Demesa, Enoc Leaño, Daniel Valtierra); 9. Jacques Audiard‘s The Sisters Brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, Rutger Hauer, Riz Ahmed, John C. Reilly); 10. Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk (Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Teyonah Parris, Regina King, Colman Domingo, Brian Tyree Henry, Diego Luna, Dave Franco).

11. Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody (15-year period from the formation of Queen and lead singer Freddie Mercury up to their performance at Live Aid in 1985) w/ Rami Malek, Ben Hardy, Gwilym Lee, Joseph Mazzello, Allen Leech, Lucy Boynton. 20th Century Fox, 12.25.18; 12. Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife (Glenn Close‘s Best Actress campaign + Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Annie Starke. Max Irons); 13. Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On The Basis of Sex; 14. Gus Van Sant‘s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (costarring Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Jonah Hill, Jack Black, Mark Webber); 15. Felix von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell and Timothy Chalamet.

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A 4K Criterion Bluray of Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones (’63) will pop on 2.27.18. A rompy, infectious, occasionally bawdy 18th Century comedy-adventure, it was one of the first critically respected films to break the fourth wall. Or was it the first? To audiences in JFK’s America it was really quite the amusing stunner when Albert Finney interrupted a conversation with some 18th Century character to glance at Richardson’s lens and offer a side quip or two.

Full of rude energy and goaded by the spirit of the British New Wave, Tom Jones also used jumpy handheld photography, freeze frames, whimsical narration and, as I recall, at least one instance of speeded-up photography. It felt like a prank, a lark, a mad bomb, and it completely jettisoned the steady-as-she-goes, well-regulated tone of mainstream cinema that was par for the course back then. On 4.13.64 it won the 1963 Best Picture Oscar along with Oscars or Best Director (Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.

A 2014 Backstage piece listed 14 films that broke the fourth wall (Annie Hall, Funny Games, Fight Club, Amelie, High Fidelity, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, etc.) but didn’t mention Richardson’s film…weird.

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