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Demi Moore’s Best Actress Sympathy Narrative Is Bunk

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Bunk, I tell you! Don’t fall for it!

Scowly-faced Kris Tapley is basically asking “if Anora is locked in for Best Picture, why on earth would Mikey Madison not win the Best Actress Oscar?”

HE answer: I’ve said this two or three times but it has to be drilled in. Demi Moore is apparently going to win because SAG and AMPAS members have all accepted the narrative voiced by Moore after winning a Best Comedy/Musical Actress Golden Globe award five weeks ago (i.e., January 5th).

“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress,’ and at that time, I [took] that to mean that…I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in and I believed that,” Moore said. “That corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it, maybe I was complete, maybe I had done what I was supposed to do.

“And [just] as I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance. And the universe told me that ‘you’re not done.’”

For the sixth or seventh time, Moore’s narrative is dishonest. She was not forced into a popcorn box by mean old Hollywood executives. She walked right into that box of her own volition, and she totally reaped the spoils (mainstream fame, huge paychecks, flush lifestyle) until she aged out. And then she pivoted into a body horror flick just like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford pivoted into hag horror in the early ’60s.

In the ’80s and ’90s Moore went for big, attention-getting, high-paying roles in mainstream films, and she became rich and famous from this. She chose this path while the choosing was good.

I’ve never read or heard that Moore tried to prove her arthouse mettle by appearing in edgy Sundance films, and she never tried to be in a critically-approved, Cannes-worthy, outside-the-box feminist statement film, and certainly not in a body-horror film.

She only took the lead in The Substance when she calculated that she’d aged out (duhhh) and a role like this was her only likely shot at revitalizing her career.

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Finally Caught Excellent “Mistura”

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Yesterday afternoon I was prevented from catching a 3:20 pm Santa Barbara Film Festival screening of Ricardo de Montreuil’s Mistura. But I saw it this morning and lo and behold, it’s fully approvable — a fall-and-rise saga of Norma (Barbara Mori), a somewhat older elitist who’s forced to cope with personal upheaval by overcoming cultural prejudice while exploring the glorious riches of French-Peruvian cuisine.

It’s basically about survival through rebirth, sensual discovery and the shirking of shitty attitudes in the wake of a shattering divorce…quite a mouthful!

It’s also another sublime foodie film in the vein of Tran Anh Hùng‘s The Taste of Things (i.e., The Pot au Feu) and Sandra Nettlebeck‘s Mostly Martha.

Set in 1960s Peru (apparently Lima), Norma’s privileged life collapses when her husband’s infidelity results in her being cut loose from elite social circles. She attempts to restart her life as some kind of food entrepeneur or restaurant owner, but is first obliged to overcome certain cultural prejudices (social, culinary) she acquired during her well-heeled marriage.

This is one of those personal-struggle-and=growth films that feels wonderfully, culturally and organically alive.

May I admit to a prejudice on my own? I’ve never had much interest in visiting Peru or for that matter South America — I’ve only been to Argentina once, and that was 20 years ago. But now, thanks to Mistura, I’m thinking about making the trek someday. I feel slightly awakened.

Norma is a compelling character because of the realistic prejudices that define her early on, and because she taps into an inner moxie that helps her struggle through by grappling with a challenging but ultimately rewarding reality.

Norma’s butler, warmly played by César Ballumbrosio, serves as her coach and moral compass — a good fellow to have in your corner.

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Mediterranean Climate

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12 days hence HE will fly to Los Angeles for the Santa Barbara Film Festival (2.4 thru 2.15), and in so doing will enjoy a glorious respite from sub-Arctic Connecticut weather.

I’ll do roughly a week’s worth (2.5 through 2.12). As many films as I can fit in plus the 2.7 SBIFF screening of Kevin Costner‘s Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2 plus the Writers and Directors panels (2.8) plus Arlington events for Angelina Jolie (2.5), Ralph Fiennes (2.6), the 2025 Virtuosos (Kieran Culkin, Harris Dickinson, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez Ariana Grande, Clarence Maclin, Mikey Madison, John Magaro) plus Outstanding Directors panel (2.10) plus Timothee Chalamet (2.11) plus whatever else shakes loose.

Bad Publicists Need to Apologize

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In the wake of Sebastian Stan being Best Actor-nominated for his Donald Trump performance in The Apprentice, new critical light is being shed on “those small-minded, quarter-inch-deep publicists who forbade their clients from participating in a Variety ‘Actors on Actors’ segment with Stan” last November.

Stan: “I had an offer to do Variety‘s Actors on Actors, [but] I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me. [I’m] not pointing at anyone specific, but we couldn’t get past the publicists or the people representing them because they were too afraid to talk about this movie.”

Paul Schrader once told me in an interview that “cowardice doesn’t require a conspiracy“…meaning that cowardice springs up naturally on its own…it’s a trait that’s built into people or certainly built into the less secure.

It goes without saying that none of the twitchy reps who kept their clients from chatting with Stan for the proposed ‘Actors on Actors’ segment will ever admit to having done so, and even if exposed they sure as hell won’t explain what exactly their thinking may have been at the time.

But if just one of these publicists were to come forward and make a clean breast of things by admitting to having wimped out, I would take my hat off in respect. What are the odds of this happening? Zilch.

From HE’s “Apprentice Is Pure Pleasure,” posted from Cannes on 5.20.24:

“‘All hail Sebastian Stan‘s Trump, a note-perfect capturing of this amiable, malevolent psychopath, who apparently exuded a certain naivete and behaved in a semi-understandable fashion and may have been half-human when he was working in a senior capacity for his father’s real-estate company in the ’70s.’

“Last May Variety‘s Tatiana Siegel quoted an ‘insider’ saying that ‘audiences may find The Apprentice to be an oddly humanizing portrait’ of Trump. Excuse me? Young Trump seems like a semi-tolerable fellow at first, but he gradually morphs into a fuckhead…a killer. The truth is that Abassi’s film is an oddly humanizing portrait of Cohn as it invites the audience to share Cohn’s sense of betrayal…you actually feel sorry for this icon of evil when Trump gives him the cold shoulder.

“Strong’s Cohn is magnificent — he should definitely win the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor prize, the size of the role be damned. Cohn to Trump at film’s halfway point: ‘You’ve got a fat ass. You should do something about that.’ Strong is wonderful!”

Which Films Should Be Included…

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…in the HE commentariat’s own version of “Box Office Poison,” the Tim Robey book that I just bought this afternoon?

Let’s say there are 20 or 24 chapters highlighting the same number of films. Which cinematic calamities should be fully examined for posterity’s sake? Not the obvious ones (Heaven’s Gate) but the most interesting, the least deserving, the most unfairly dismissed?

Everyone Admires “Emilia Perez” Star

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I’ve said repeatedly that identity campaigns have become passe. Lily Gladstone‘s was the last such campaign to have an impact. Nonetheless Netflix and Emilia Perez star Karla Sofia Gascon are currently riding this horse around the track.

The basic idea conveyed by Julian Sancton’s 1.11.25 THR profile is that Gascon is a “controversial” figure, which in the realm of respect and decency is a fringe fallacy. Gascon is certainly a historical figure, yes, but broadcasting the fact that she’s had to contend with online haters doesn’t enhance her brief. Who cares what ugly people are saying on social media?

Gascon has given an entirely respectable, emotionally forceful performance as the titular character in Jacques Audiard‘s audacious musical drama, although not (be honest) an Oscar-worthy one. Respect but no cigar. End of story.

“An Uh-Oh Moment for Karla Sofia Gascon,” posted on 11.2.24:

She’ll be Best Actress-nominated, of course, but in the blink of an eyelash our tectonic plates have shifted and…wait, what’s happening?…identity campaigns are no longer a compelling poker hand.

Or so says an 11.2 N.Y. Times article by Jeremy W. Peters and “Identity Trap” author Yascha Mounk in particular.

If you ask me Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone losing the Best Actress Oscar vote earlier this year to Poor Things’ Emma Stone was an early indication of this cultural-turning-the-road thang.

All Hail Jeff Sneider’s Oscar Telecast Suggestion

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For decades we’ve all been talking about (or denying the likelihood of) The Big One — the massive earthquake that might, God forbid, destroy much of Los Angeles a la Mark Robson and deliver a bruising blow to the entertainment industry.

It hasn’t happened yet, of course, but the various firestorm ravagings of the last six days (especially the Pacific Palisades Hiroshima blaze) have come damn close in terms of the numbing devastation…physical, historical, emotional, spiritual.

Last weekend it occured to damn near everyone that in the midst of all this shock and trauma, focusing on award season is suddenly, obviously a bad look.

Which is why Jeff Sneider’s suggestion to make the Oscars into a charity-and-compassion event sounds inspired.

Sneider: “It the Academy really wants to put its money where its mouth is, it should turn the Oscars into a telethon hosted by Conan O’Brien, backed by an army of A-listers. And I’m talking everyone — all hands on deck.

“If you’ve been reading Richard Rushfield’s thoughtful Ankler series on ‘How to Fix the Oscars’, one thing he’s absolutely right about is correcting the piss-poor attendance from A-listers. It shouldn’t matter if they’re nominated or not. Certain celebs need to make more of an effort to show their support, if only to signal that they care about the larger community.

THR‘s Steven Zeitchik has echoed Sneider in a post that appeared at 4:43 pm eastern:

“I think the show should be a giant all-in arts-based awareness-raiser of the kind done best in the 1980s,” he writes, “while also attempting to restore the spectacle of every Oscar decade but the last. A telecast that will at once provide the must-see qualities we all lament awards shows now lack while giving fundraisers the kind of shine they haven’t had in decades. Think Farm Aid meets the Titanic year.

“Here’s one way that could look:

“Every nominee comes with a plus-one — but it has to be someone who was affected by the wildfires. Could be a third-generation Altadena homeowner, could be a film person from the Palisades. As long as they lost something. Because it would be pointless to have this show and ignore loss.”

Back to Sneider: “This hypothetical Oscar telethon should, obviously, benefit every family and individual who was directly impacted by these wildfires, starting with those who experienced some loss of life, which should always be valued over property. As of now, the death toll stands at 25.

“Buildings, businesses and even communities can be rebuilt, but those 25 innocent people are never coming back. And that’s just awful to think about. The families of those victims need our help, as do so many others, and a global audience could be incredibly helpful in that regard.

“Meanwhile, if the Academy truly wants a viral moment, it will have first responders from the Los Angeles Fire Department on stage giving out the award for Best Picture.”

HE comment: I’m not so sure about this. I can see and heartily support various first-responders coming onstage and a spokesperson delivering the right kind of speech while urging charitable support, but announcing the Best Picture winner? Something about that feels a tiny bit off.

The 97th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 2nd — seven weeks hence minus a day.

Myth of Evil Lions

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Directed by Stephen Hopkins and written by William Goldman, The Ghost and the Darkness (’96) was one of those mediocre, big-studio, high-concept films that had a B-movie vibe. You could smell it before it opened, and once you saw it there was virtually no residue.

Goldman sold the idea as “Lawrence of Arabia meets Jaws“, but despite being fact-based (John Henry Patterson‘s “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo“, published in 1907) it passed along a cruel mythology — a notion that bad-ass lions were somehow analogous to the great white shark in Jaws, which is to say bringers of primal evil.

Val Kilmer played the heroic Patterson; producer Michael Douglas played an invented lion-killer character, Charles Remington — a grizzled, brawny, larger-than-life figure who seemed modelled on Robert Shaw‘s Quint. Like Quint, Remington is eaten at the end, but Hopkins missed an opportunity by not including a shot of Douglas’s bearded head — the camera doesn’t even glance at this final carnage.

Shot within the Songimvelo game reserve and with great difficulty, Hopkins called the Paramount release “a mess…I haven’t been able to watch it.”

It’s significant that a 1.12.25 Forbes article about the real-like Tsavo lions that inspired Patterson’s book doesn’t even mention the Paramount film.

Lions are today an endangered species, and one of the reason for their population decrease is sport-hunting. I’m convinced that The Ghost and the Darkness inspired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump (respectively 19 and 12 years old when The Ghost and the Darkness opened) planted the ideas that bagging a lion enhanced the masculinity of the hunter.

Erivo and Grande Are Nearly Munchkins

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I’ve stood next to Sharon Stone a couple of times, and she’s no statue-esque Sigourney Weaver, I can tell you…she was 5’8 when younger, and is probably closer to 5’7″ now.