To be perfectly frank, I fear that Variety (Claudia Eller, Cynthia Littleton) screwed the pooch when they offered a blanket apology to Carey Mulligan for that one paragraph in Dennis Harvey‘s 1.26.20 review of Promising Young Woman, despite editor Peter Debruge not changing a word of it during Sundance ’20 and no one else changing it for nearly a whole year after that.

Plus the faux pas of Variety not even allowing Harvey to write a follow-up to explain where he was coming from and to remind everyone that he LIKED Promising Young Woman.

I suspect that was a bad move in that it created empathy on Harvey’s behalf (and resentment of Variety‘s needless bludgeoning) among male Academy members of a certain age. All I know is that the buzz was building and building in Mulligan’s favor up until Kyle Buchanan‘s 12.23.20 N.Y. Times interview with her, and then a few days later came the Variety apology and then it all started to change. I know that the Carey momentum seemed to slow down if not stall after that.

I can’t believe that the Academy will give the Oscar to Viola Davis for lip-synching with a fat suit; I expect that despite Frances McDormand having won twice before, they might hand it to her. I personally would love to see the Oscar go to Mulligan, perhaps as a referendum on all her performances since 2009’s An Education as much as her work in PYW, but, like I said, I think Variety may have messed things up for her. Perhaps not but maybe.

HE to Academy members: It wouldn’t be fair to blame Mulligan for what Eller and Littleton did. She didn’t ask for an apology, remember. She just took issue, briefly, with Harvey’s alleged or perceived view that she wasn’t hot enough to play Cassie, the Promising Young Woman avenger.

Let’s imagine I had absolute power and a group of scientists and financiers came to me and said, “We can take Abraham Lincoln‘s blood from that Ford’s Theatre chair and clone him…literally recreate him head to toe…an exact duplicate, voice and all…do we have your permission to do this?”

My first reaction would be that the idea sounds more than a little macabre and that it’s probably better to leave well enough alone and that none of us can go home again, etc.

But in all honesty, a part of me would be intrigued by the idea of creating Abe 2.0. Not with any expectations that he would enter politics and become a statesman, of course. If I approved the cloning I would insist, in fact, that the creation of said being be shrouded in total secrecy and that he would be free to live his own life by his own steam and create his own personality and take any path that seemed appropriate, unhindered by anyone’s expectations.

But I would also think it fair that Abe 2.0 (who could end up as a CVS manager or an Uber driver or a basketball player) should be informed of his genetic lineage at age 30, I would think.

Why would I want our 16th President to re-experience the world a second time? Because I would want certain people to interview him and hear his voice — that would be one thing. And because he might take to writing or political activism, and I would want to know what judgments he might have about Twitter, Trump and QAnon, wokesters and the film assessments of Glenn Kenny and David Ehrlich. And secondly, where would be the harm? A person of exceptional genetic tendencies and inclinations would join 21st Century America along with tens of millions of others. How would that be a bad thing?

HE to commentariat: Which historical figures, if any, would you like to see cloned and re-introduced to planet earth?

The idiots who pay to see Fast & Furious movies aren’t going to turn in their idiot cards and develop a sense of taste any time soon. The F9 trailer speaks for itself. The people behind it — principally Justin Lin, the cyborg whore who’s now directed five of these fucking things — help found the satanic death monkey training school that Godzilla vs. Kong‘s Adam Wingard graduated from a few years ago.

Eternal shame upon the F9 cast members who are capable of feeling it: Vin Diesel (does anyone recall his genuinely winning performance in a sublime little Sidney Lumet film called Find Me Guilty?), Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron.

Excerpts from “Gleeful Action Porn Provides Glimpse Into Hell,” posted on 3.31.15:

James Wan‘s Furious 7 (Universal, 4.3) is, of course, a cyborg muscle-car flick made for people who despise real action flicks and prefer, instead, the comfort of cranked-up, big-screen videogame delirium inhabited (I don’t want to say “performed”) by flesh-and-blood actors and facilitated by a special kind of obnoxious CG fakeitude that grabs you by the shirt collar and says “eat this, bitch!”

I hated, hated, hated this film like nothing I’ve seen in a long time.

“What’s wrong with silly, stupid four-wheel fun?” the fans ask. What’s wrong is that movies like this are deathly boring and deflating and toxic to the soul. They’re anti-fun, anti-life, anti-cinema, anti-everything except paychecks.

Furious 7 is odious, obnoxious corporate napalm on a scale that is better left undescribed. It is fast, flashy, thrompy crap that dispenses so much poison it feels like a kind of plague. Wan’s film is certainly a metaphor for a kind of plague that has been afflicting action films for a good 20-plus years.

In Act 3, Scene 2 of William Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus is asked by a crowd of alarmed plebians why he conspired to murder their leader. “T’was not that I loved Caesar less,” Brutus answers, “but that I loved Rome more.” By the same token I spit upon Furious 7 and the whole cyborg action muscle-boy genre not because I love sitting through cranked-up, power-pump, beyond-silly action flicks less (although my feelings of revulsion are as sincere as a heart attack) but because I love real action movies more.

Someone or some entity will step in and save H’wood’s Arclight plex and particularly the Cinerama Dome**. Some wealthy entrepeneur or digital distribution company (Netflix, Amazon, Quentin Tarantino) will save the day. The Arclight cinemas (including the ones in Sherman Oaks and Culver City) are central to the L.A. movie experience. They’re simply not allowed to permanently shutter…out of the question.

** The ultra-curved Cinerama Dome screen distorts the shit out of Scope films (2.39:1), by the way. It distorts the shit out of everything.

All hail director Richard Rush, who passed on 4.8.21 at age 91.

I met, interviewed and even hung out with Rush a bit during the 1980 promotion (spring and summer) of The Stunt Man — an audacious, whimsical turn-on that’s partly a sardonic comedy and partly a surreal meditation on the nature of “reality” and filmmaking. It was Rush’s one big triumph, or more precisely as a success d’estime within the community of hip know-it-all critics.

I was flattered to be invited to a special Manhattan Stunt Man gathering that included Rush, costar Steve Railsback and three or four elite journo schmoozer types — a boozy late-night hang that went into the wee hours. Out of this I became friendly (short termish) with Railsback’s wife Jackie (aka Jackie Giroux). Several weeks later I wangled a GQ assignment to interview Peter O’Toole, whose Stunt Man performance as director Eli Cross was one of his best, at his London home**.

Wiki excerpt: “Adapted by Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus from a same-titled 1970 novel by Paul Brodeur, The Stunt Man is about a young fugitive (Railsback) who lucks into a stunt double gig on the set of a World War I movie whose charismatic director (O’Toole) is quite the force of nature. Pic was nominated for three Oscars: O’Toole for Best Actor, Rush for Best Director and also for Best Adapted Screenplay.”

Nocturnal high-def Los Angeles in the early to mid ’40s…Gilda, The Outlaw, The Letter on theatre marquees. Hat stores, fur stores, Atlantic Richfield gas stations. A large spotlight mounted on a flatbed truck. Hundreds upon hundreds of mid ’40s autos parked curbside — a 2021 film set in this era couldn’t hope to deliver this kind of authentic realism. Downtown Los Angeles plus the mean streets of Hollywood. Video-like clarity plus simulated sound…fairly amazing.

“While it’s somewhat exciting to try to guess the killer, the series wastes potential to dig into its characters and their relationships, and the landscape is the more lasting feeling after finishing the final episode. It just leaves you with a noticeably detached feeling of, ‘Okay, well that’s done.'” — Candice Frederick, TV Guide.

“For all its unevenness, Mare of Easttown‘s strengths carry it through its many muddles.” — THR‘s Inkoo Kang.

“More than halfway through the series, there’s barely any momentum to the mystery, and the relationship drama is sprawling and unfocused.” — CBR.com’s Josh Bell.

“[While] commendably ambitious, the plot elements sometimes work against each other — too baggy to be a compelling crime thriller, too busy to flesh out all the characters — to make it truly satisfying.” — Empire‘s Ian Freer.

“A series that will have you less focused on solving the whodunit and more on experiencing the lives of these characters.” — Alex Maldy, JoBlo.

Does anyone know anything about David O. Russell’s untitled 1930s flick, which has been shooting for several weeks and may have wrapped? I know someone who worked as background actor a few weeks ago, but they didn’t know much. Wiki logline: “A doctor and a lawyer form an unlikely partnership.”

The 20th Century release (slated for ’22) boasts a big-name cast — Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola.

I haven’t re-watched Russell’s I Heart Huckabees since it opened 15 and 1/2 years ago (10.1.04). Now that it’s in my head, I might just do that.

Review excerpt: “Huckabees shot right through my skull on Wednesday night and came out like some cosmic effusion and just sort of hung there above my head like a low-altitude cloud and sprinkling light rain.

“That sounds too tranquil. A movie this funny and frantic and this totally off-the-planet (and yet strangely inside the whole universal anxiety syndrome that we all live with day to day) can’t be that cosmically soothing. That’s not the idea.

“But it is soothing…that’s the weird thing. Huckabees makes you laugh fairly uproariously, but it leaves you in a spiritual place that feels settled and well-nourished. Variety‘s David Rooney said it was ‘largely an intellectual pleasure with a hollow core.’ Rooney has probably never been wronger in his life. Not because he isn’t smart or perceptive, but because he failed to do a very important thing.
He didn’t see Huckabees twice.

“This is one of those rare movies in which you have to double-dip it. You obviously don’t have to take my advice. Go ahead and just see it once and then say to yourself, “Well, that happened!” Just understand that Huckabees is, I feel, too dense and arch with too much going on to fully get it in one sitting.

“On one level it’s a kind of psychobabble satire; on another it’s the most profoundly spiritual Hollywood film since Groundhog Day. And the amazing-ness of it may not come together in your head…if at all.

“That’s how the first viewing happened, at least. I was initially into it on a ‘whoa…what was that?’ level and for the antsy, pedal-to-the-metal pacing…but it goes beyond that. The first time is the eye-opener, the water-in-the-face, the violent lapel-grabbing; the second time is da bomb.

In the early aughts Albert Brooks delivered an entertaining speech to some industry gathering of some kind (I seem to recall it occuring in Santa Monica). I somehow got hold of an audio tape of Brooks’ remarks, and transcribed some of them. And one of the stand-out portions, for me, was when he talked about watching Bob Hope on TV as a kid in the 1950s, and how his father would get really excited when an upcoming Hope appearance loomed, but when Hope did his act “you never laughed,” Brooks recalled.

I can’t say I ever found Hope’s movies (or most of them) all that funny either. I’d occasionally chuckle at one of his stand-up routines on the tube, but I rarely cracked a smile at his films. He wasn’t in the business of selling humor as much as attitude — basically the attitude of a smart, selfish, cowardly opportunist with an eye for the ladies and a perhaps a slight willingness to pocked illicit dough on the side. That was his persona.

And that’s why my favorite Hope film might be Beau James (’57), a more or less straight drama about New York City major Jimmy Walker.

Among the Hope “comedies”, there’s one I saw a long time ago that struck me as moderately funny — a silly WWII-era romcom called Caught in the Draft (’41). Don’t hold me to this as I haven’t seen it in decades, but it might be funny. One of the mildly amusing things is the name of Hope’s character — Don Bolton. (How can a movie about a guy with that name not be good for a chuckle or two? Don Bolton!) Sometimes it’s the inauspicious little sausage comedies that seem best in retrospect.

Directed by David Butler and written by Wilkie C. Mahoney and Harry Tugend, Caught in the Draft costars Dorothy Lamour, Lynne Overman, Eddie Bracken, Clarence Kolb and Paul Hurst. I’ve just discovered that Kino Lorber has a Bluray version for sale.

29 years after the release of Geoffrey Wright‘s Romper Stomper (’92), one of the most indelible, pared-to-the-bone, punch-kick-and-wallop flicks about hate groups ever made, I happened to re-watch an especially memorable gang-fight scene.

In this unfortunate era of #StopAsianHate, the scene feels cathartic as hell and even joyous in a certain sense. I would love to see such a scene reenacted in any present-day environment in which anti-Asian sentiment is presumed to reside.

It starts with six or seven skinheads (led by an astonishingly young and slender Russell Crowe) beating up on three or four Vietnamese guys in a family-owned pub. But word gets out immediately, and a large mob of furious Vietnamese youths arrive and beat the living crap out of the skinheads. Hate in and hate out. Bad guys pay the price. Glorious! Hashtags are well and good but, as Woody Allen said about Nazis in that MOMA-party scene in Manhattan, baseball bats really bring the point home.

Wiki excerpt: “Director John Boorman chose locations that were ‘stark’. The LAX walkway down which Marvin strode originally had flower pots lining the walls. Boorman had them taken out.”