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We all know that Hollywood Reporter contributor Gregg Kilday is really saying about the current Oscar nominees, and in particular those for Best Picture: He’s saying that 2020 (which includes early ’21) has been a dud movie year and a general downer for all concerned.

Everyone knows this and wants to move on and return to normal. All hail gains by women and POC filmmakers but nobody really loves the wokester progressive surge except those who’ve directly benefited. (And don’t forget that wokesters are the Robespierre-like architects of cancel culture.) Everyone’s morose and bummed and nobody gives a shit about the ’20 and ’21 nightmare because it’s an asterisk and a tragedy — a gloomy movie year defined by streaming and domestic hibernation and the slow suffocation of our souls…half-dying under a grim cloud.

Joe and Jane Popcorn aren’t exactly caught up in the thrill of the Oscar race, to put it mildly. Even professional Oscar watchers are having trouble maintaining a semblance of enthusiasm.

Kilday has posted five or six mitigating quotes that basically say “oh, no, this is a great year and streaming makes everything more accessible and we’re living through a great time.”

He’s also posted one honest quote from Unbroken producer Matthew Baer: “The grand slam for the Oscar best picture is a popular movie with artistic ambitions fulfilled. But given theaters were closed, popularity is difficult to judge. It’s ironic that this year Nomadland is a leading candidate because the business itself became displaced. Also, given nothing else matters in comparison to recovering from COVID, while winning an Oscar is the ultimate victory for artists, it will have less meaning in American culture this year.”

If theatrical was alive and thriving, the leading Best Picture contenders…well, who knows? But we all suspect the same thing, which is that they wouldn’t have stirred much in the way of crowds.

I have nothing novel or interesting to say about the original Romanoff’s…nothing at all. It was a famed Beverly Hills in-crowd restaurant that peaked in the ’40s and ’50s, and was frequented almost daily during this hallowed era by Humphrey Bogart, according to biographer Ezra Goodman. The owner, Michael Romanoff (1890 – 1971) was a character with a bit of a shady past. Some used the admiring, affectionate term of “con man”. He claimed to be descended from Russian royalty, but was actually born as Hershel Geguzin in Lithuania, worked as a Brooklyn pants presser, was deported to France in May of ’32 to serve time for fraud, etc. The movie crowd loved him. The first version of Romanoff’s, located at 326 No. Rodeo Drive (north of Wilshire), ran between ’41 and ’51; the second version (240 So. Rodeo Drive) ran from ’51 to ’62. Romanoff played a maitre’d in a studio simulation of Romanoff’s in A Guide for the Married Man (’67).

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Reminder: The 4K Psycho Bluray that was part of a 2020 Hitchcock 4K box set (9.8.20) will be purchasable as a stand-alone disc on 5.25.21. Don’t buy it!

Posted on 9.11.20: Last night I watched the new 4K UHD Psycho Bluray disc, and I’m very sorry to report that portions of it are grainstormed all to hell, and I mean totally smothered in swarms of digital micro-mosquitoes.

There were complaints here and there about the previous Psycho Bluray (the 2010 50th anniversary edition) being overly DNR’ed (digital noise reduction), and so the Universal Home Video grain monks (i.e., “the grainmakers”) went into the control room and took their revenge.

The new Psycho reminds me of that 70th anniversary grainstorm Casablanca Bluray that Robert Harris and Glenn Kenny were so stuck on, and which I hated.

The older DNR’d Psycho Bluray (which I can no longer find on Amazon) is much more pleasing to the eye. Yes, I know that the DNR’ed look isn’t what the film really looked like when it came out of the lab in ’60, and I couldn’t care less. All the surfaces and textures look clean and smooth and ultra-detailed, but now the Universal gremlins have injected hundreds of billions of throbbing mosquitoes into this classic Hitchcock film.

Plus there are some scenes in the newbie that appear way too contrasty. Steer clear of the 4K version and stick with the 2010 Bluray. If you don’t own a copy, buy one now.

By the way: As noted earlier, the 4K Psycho includes some excised material that had never been available before, including a brief glimpse of Janet Leigh side-boob as Anthony Perkins watches her undress through a peephole.

Also: The knifing of Arbogast (Martin Balsam) at the bottom of the stairs now includes two or three extra stabbing strokes. Except the sound of Arbogast’s “arrhhwwghhhh!” is oddly delayed. The knife plunges in a couple of times, but he doesn’t go “arrhhwwghhhh!” until the third stab. Brilliant.

Note: The top video clip is an ECU of the Bates Motel parlor scene from the new 4K disc. The Egyptian mosquito grainstorm effect is obvious to the naked eye. The below video clip is an ECU of a scene from the 2010 Psycho Bluray — very little grain to speak of.

Rifkin’s Festival is definitely among Woody Allen‘s worst films. (Here’s my 2.12.21 review.) But if Allen had included a scene in which the 77-year-old Wallace Shawn is knocked down and swept along by one of those rogue waves that routinely smash against the fortified San Sebastian coastline, it would have been a whole different thing. Just the thought of Shawn and costar Elena Anaya marvelling at the choppy seas and then…WHUHSHHH! Obliterated, devoured, soaked…both of them squealing like piglets. I hated Shawn’s crabby, gnomish septugenarian, you see, so his getting all-but-destroyed by a wave would have been…kinda perfect!

The San Sebastian waves are famous. It was derelict of Allen not to include such a scene.

As of today, Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn is primarily known for three things. One, writing smart, sage, fair-minded assessments of films as they come along. Two, being one of the New York Film Critics Circle members who allegedly lobbied to give Best Actress trophies to Support The Girls‘ Regina Hall in 2018, and to Never Rarely Sometimes Always‘ Sidney Flanigan last December, and to bestow the NYFCC’s 2020 Best Film award to First Cow. And three, becoming possibly the first top-ranked film critic to actively push for the end of the career of a major-league filmmaker. Not saying this or that movie stinks, but “this guy needs to be erased, Goodfellas-style.”

I’m not certain if critics of past decades have advocated for this or that career to be fully and finally killed. Many looked the other way when certain screenwriters were blacklisted in the late ’40s and ’50s, of course, but that was a different thing. Maybe some influential critic of 60 or 70 years ago actually wrote “it’s time for the career of John Garfield or Abraham Polonsky or Carl Foreman to be suffocated” and I simply haven’t read about it. I’m just saying that I went “whoa” when I read the headline above Kohn’s article. Because actively lobbying for the final eradication of a filmmaker’s career…well, Kohn’s rep before today has always been that of a congenial, nebbishy, mild-mannered fellow…even-toned, comme ci comme ca, let the chips fall, roll with the tremors.

I have a discreet, longstanding relationship with the Movie Godz. They’re basically spiritual remnants of once-living filmmakers who hover and contemplate the filmmaking world. There are 12 as we speak. They all have Twitter accounts, of course, and are constantly refreshing. Once a month they assemble and hash things out, and sometimes they’ll share a thought or two.

All I can say is that during last week’s meeting, some said that they feel left out of things. Nobody cares who they are or what they think. Their frustration is so great that they’re now talking about cancelling someone or something because (I’m not saying this makes a great deal of sense) if they can destroy the reputation of a film or filmmaker, they’ll somehow feel more engaged with the 21st Century world, a good portion of which is driven by terror and intimidation.

Except that, unlike Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, they don’t hold with the idea of cancelling this or that individual filmmaker or actor for perceived moral or ethical crimes. They shared great relief, for example, that they didn’t get into the brief and idiotic Ansel Elgort flare-up that happened last June.

They finally decided that the best approach would be to cancel certain films retroactively…films that the world could have done without when they were first released, and which the presently-constituted film world would be better off not watching as we speak. As in “get rid of even the memories of these movies…eliminate their existence on Bluray, no streaming, no nothing.”

I’m not saying this is a good thing (HE believes that all films should be preserved and available for new generations to watch and react to) but if you happen to agree with the Movie Godz and feel that some films should be permanently exterminated, what titles would you suggest?

Yesterday afternoon Variety‘s Clayton Davis and Jazz Tangcay began a Twitter discussion about their favorite movie houses. There’s a certain strata of younger GenX, Millennial and Zoomer movie mavens who immediately default to scary movie houses when the topic arises. Hence Clayton’s mention of….now I’m forgetting but it might have been the Amityville house, something in that vein. And then Jazz kicked in with her favorite — “the house in Mother!“…scary Darren Aronofsky!

The Psycho house, The House on Haunted Hill, the huge gothic mansion in Robert Wise‘s The Haunting…some people just think this way.

Here are Hollywood Elsewhere’s top-five favorite movie homes: (a) Phillip Van Damm‘s semi-fictionalized Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home near Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest, (b) the sprawling Connecticut ranch-style home (French doors, sycamore trees) owned by Katharine Hepburn‘s wealthy mother in Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks and his wife “Slim” built a Bel Air home based on the Bringing Up Baby house, and called it “Hog Canyon”, (c) The side-by-side homes owned by Aurora Greenway and Garret Breedlove in Terms of Endearment, located on Locke Lane in Houston’s River Oaks neighborhood (which I actually visited in April 2006); (d) the Spanish-flavored Double Indemnity home, which I just visited a few days ago, (e) the elegant mountainside home owned by John Robie (Cary Grant) in Alfred Hitchcock‘s To Catch A Thief (Sasha Stone, her daughter Emma and I actually visited the Saint-Jennet home just prior to the 2011 Cannes Film Festival).

The second cluster of five (#6 thru #10): (f) The Evelyn Mulray home in Chinatown, located at 1315 South El Molino Drive in Pasadena; (f) the Leave It To Beaver-styled home in Nancy Meyers‘ Father of the Bride, which is just down the street from the Mulwray home at 843 So. El Molino; (h) Joel Goodson’s bordello home in Risky Business, located at 1258 Linden Avenue, in Highland Park, Illinois; (i) Lester Townsend‘s Glen Cove mansion (brick facade, long curved driveway) in North by Northwest, known in reality as the Old Westbury Gardens (71 Old Westbury Road, Old Westbury, New York, NY 11568); (j) Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten‘s Shadow of a Doubt home (904 McDonald Avenue, Santa Rosa).

Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine’s homes in Terms of Endearment, located on Locke Lane in the River Oaks section of Houston.

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“So maybe [the current Best Picture contenders] is the field we were always meant to have. Maybe this is the field we’re always going to have from now on, more or less. Let that one sink in, why don’t you?” — from 3.16 edition of Richard Rushfield‘s The Ankler — “Emergency Edition: Nom Com.”

This is easily the most emotionally affecting scene from Martin Brest‘s Midnight Run (’88), and generally speaking action road comedies don’t do this kind of thing at all. But Midnight Run, written by George Gallo, was different.

A violent chase-caper flick with a quippy attitude, fine. But a film of this calibre delivering this kind of emotion would be all but inconceivable today…be honest.

Robert DeNiro (as bounty hunter Jack Walsh) and Danielle DuClos (as DeNiro’s 12 year-old daughter Denise) handle the heavy lifting, making the most of non-verbal currents. But the silent-witness vibes from Charles Grodin (as white-collar criminal Jonathan Mardukas) and Wendy Phillips (as Walsh’s ex-wife) are poignant in themselves.

When Midnight Run opened 32 and 2/3 years ago somebody wrote that it was a hamburger movie that occasionally tasted like steak, but if you re-watch it (as I did a year or two ago) you’ll recall that it wasn’t that great, not really — that it was formulaic and goofy and rarely subtle.

But it was good enough to temporarily “lift all boats,” as the expression goes. Brest peaked four years later with Scent of a Woman (’92), and then he hit the rocks with Meet Joe Black (’98) and then Gigli (pronounced “Jeelie”).

Imagine how this scene might’ve played if Brest hadn’t cast DuClos or someone else on her level. Born in ’74, she was 13 when this scene was filmed. DuClos is now 46 — a crisp salute for excellent work.

Congrats all around but especially to the Best Director-nominated Chloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell and the ten-nominations-fortified Mank, not to mention surprise Best Director nominee Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round) and the Best Supporting Actor nom handed to Judas and the Black Messiah‘s LaKeith Stanfield (yes!)…and to HE fave Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal) for Best Actor. And to the concept of diversity in general. Definitely a spread-it-around year.

I decided at the last minute that I couldn’t arise any earlier than 4:50 am and even that was painful after crashing at 1:05 am…plus daylight savings time kicked in early this morning and thereby subtracted an hour’s sleep…I’ll finish when I finish…this is not a track and field competition.

I somehow hadn’t expected David Fincher‘s Mank to emerge as 2021’s double-digit nomination king, but congrats all the same. And Mank‘s Amanda Seyfried, whose prospects were looking a bit shaky, came through with a Best Supporting Actress nom! And cheers also to Netflix for landing 35 nominations in all.

Odd that Mank began with Jack Fincher‘s mid ’90s script, and yet that script, augmented by the great Eric Roth as well as Jack’s son David, wasn’t Oscar-nominated.

Special congrats to Sound of Metal‘s Paul Raci for landing a richly deserved Best Supporting Actor nom. I was worried about his prospects all along as awards-giving-group after awards-giving group kept blowing him off….thank goodness!

Shame on the Best International feature nominating team for blowing off Andrei Konchalovsky‘s Dear Comrades, by far my preference among the contenders in this category.

Congrats to the five int’l nominees all the same: Another Round (Denmark), Better Days (Hong Kong), Collective (Romania…highly approved!), The Man Who Sold His Skin (Tunisia) and Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnia-Herzegovina…harrowing genocide film, only just saw it a week or so ago).

Remember the good old days when the New York Film Critics Circle was regarded as an occasionally predictive body as far as major Oscars noms were concerned? Before they moved lock, stock and barrel to Planet Woke? Their instincts proved prophetic as far as Best Director nominee Chloe Zhao and Best Supporting Actress nominee Maria Bakalova are concerned, but has anyone seen First Cow around lately? The NYFCC also went with Da 5 Bloods‘ Delroy Lindo for Best Actor and Never Rarely Sometimes Always‘ Sidney Flannigan for Best Actress.

Best Picture: The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Best Picture Blowoffs: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Regina King‘s One Night in Miami (respectful salute but it was never in the cards), Paul Greengrass‘s News of the World…which others?

Best Director: For the first time in history two women were among the five nominees — Nomadland‘s Chloe Zhao and Promising Young Woman‘s Emerald Fennell. Special congrats also to Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round (big surprise + high approval for an effort I didn’t get around to seeing until a week ago because I’m not a big fan of films about boozing). Plus Mank‘s David Fincher and Minari‘s Lee Isaac Chung.

Best Director Blowoffs: Chicago 7‘s Aaron Sorkin, The Father‘s Florian Zeller, Sound of Metal‘s Daris Marder, One Night in Miami‘s Regina King. With only five slots, a few had to fall by the wayside…sorry, due respect. The international Academy voter factor led to Vinterberg’s nomination, for sure.

Best Actress in a Leading Role: The United States vs. Billie Holiday‘s Andra Day (full respect for single best element in Lee Daniels‘ film), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom‘s Viola Davis (steamroll bluster — nom expected all along, won’t win), Pieces of a Woman‘s Vanessa Kirby (rounding out the pack), Nomadland‘s Frances McDormand (fritos!) and expected winner Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman.

Best Actress Blowoffs: None to speak of. Despite what Deadline‘s Pete Hammond projected a while back, The Life Ahead‘s Sophia Loren was never really in the running. Well, she was but without any noticable steamroll effect, at least not as far as HE’s insect antennae vibrations were concerned.

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Sound of Metal‘s Riz Ahmed (yes!), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom‘s Chadwick Boseman, The Father‘s Anthony Hopkins (certainly!), Mank‘s Gary Oldman, Minari‘s Steven Yeun.

Best Actor Blowoffs: Da 5 Bloods‘ Delroy Lindo, who might’ve had a chance if costar Boseman hadn’t tragically passed last August. The performance by The Mauritanian‘s Tahar Rahim was too quiet and modest to land a nomination. If HE was an emperor-dictator I would have given a nom to The Way Back‘s Ben Affleck — his boozy basketball coach has authority and conviction.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm‘s Maria Bakalova; Hillbilly Elegy‘s Glenn Close (HE predicted eons ago that she would be nominated and sure enough she bulldozed her way in, much to the chagrin of many elite critics) , The Father‘s Olivia Colman, Mank‘s Amanda Seyfried and Minari‘s Yuh-Jung Youn (funny, fire-starting grandma).

Best Supporting Actress Blowoffs: The Mauritanian‘s Jodie Foster (sorry, good performance, somebody had to be cut).

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: The Trial of the Chicago 7‘s Sacha Baron Cohen (yes!), Judas and the Black Messiah‘s Daniel Kaluuya (not as good as Stanfield), One Night in Miami‘s Leslie Odom, Jr.; Sound of Metal‘s Paul Raci (yes!) and Judas and the Black Messiah‘s LaKeith Stanfield (yes!). Who will win? Fascinating competish.

Best Original Screenplay: Judas and the Black Messiah (Will Berson, Shaka King, Keith Lucas & Kenny Lucas…go, Clayton Davis!); Minari (Lee Isaac Chung); Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell); Sound of Metal (Derek Cianfrance, Abraham Marder & Darius Marder); The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin). I’m presuming Sorkin will win this one as a make-up for not being nominated for Best Director.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Peter Baynham, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jena Friedman, Anthony Hines, Lee Kern, Dan Mazer, Erica Rivinoja & Dan Swimer); The Father (Christopher Hampton & Florian Zeller); Nomadland (Chloé Zhao); One Night in Miami (Kemp Powers); The White Tiger (Ramin Bahrani). HE predicts The Father or Nomadland to win.

Best Cinematography: Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, News of the World, Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7. The likeliest winner is…?

Best Documentary Feature: Collective, Crip Camp, The Mole Agent, My Octopus Teacher, Time. HE supports either Collective or Time.

Best Animated Feature Film: Onward, Over the Moon, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, Soul, Wolfwalkers. HE sez “no” to Soul.

And all the others…

Best Costume Design: Emma, Mank, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mulan, Pinocchio

Best Original Score: Da 5 Bloods, Mank, Minari, News of the World, Soul.

Best Live-Action Short Film: Feeling Through, The Letter Room, The Present, Two Distant Strangers, White Eye.

Best Animated Short Film: Burrow, Genius Loci, If Anything Happens I Love You, Opera, Yes–People

Best Documentary Short Subject: Colette, A Concerto Is a Conversation, Do Not Split, Hunger Ward, A Love Song for Latasha.

Best Sound: Greyhound, Mank, News of the World, Sound of Metal, Soul.

Best Production Design: The Father, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mank, News of the World, Tenet.

Best Film Editing: The Father, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Best Visual Effects: Love and Monsters, The Midnight Sky, Mulan, The One and Only Ivan, Tenet.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Emma, Hillbilly Elegy, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mank, Pinocchio.

Best Original Song: “Husavik” from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, “Fight For You” from Judas and the Black Messiah, “lo Sì (Seen)” from The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se); “Speak Now” from One Night in Miami; “Hear My Voice” from The Trial of the Chicago 7. HE supports Diane Warren‘s “lo Sì”.

Just before 5 pm Sunday afternoon Tatiana and I visited the famous Double Indemnity house. Described as a “Glendale” home in the film, it’s actually located at 6301 Quebec Drive, west of No. Beachwood Drive in the Beachwood Canyon area.

Talk about a home cursed with blood and deceit. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and her crabby, barking-voiced husband (Tom Powers) lived in this classic Spanish-style home. It’s also where insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) first met Phyllis and became smitten, and where he tricked her husband into signing a life insurance policy without knowing it. And it’s where he snuck into the garage and hid in the back seat of the Dietrichson’s car on the night of the murder. It’s also where Phyllis shot and seriously wounded Neff in Act Three, and where Neff shot Phyllis right back, point blank and killing her cold.

I was gratified that the house looks mostly as it does in the film, which Billy Wilder directed between 76 and 77 years ago.

The garage isn’t the same. Someone destroyed the twin arched carport entrances — now it’s just one big rectangular door. The front yard palm trees are gone, replaced by three cypress tree and some large bushes. A few 21st Century cars parked nearby kind of kill the mood; ditto a pair of big plastic garbage bins. The place just doesn’t feel quite as mythic in real life as it does in the film. But the fact that it’s 90% unchanged is cool.

We all have the same assumptions about tomorrow morning’s Oscar nomination announcements. So what might surprise us? Who or what might be snubbed? Put another way, which potential nominees are likely to cause the most chatter if they don’t receive a nomination? I’m not sensing any potential earthquakes of any kind.

Will ten (10) Best Picture nominations be announced, or will it be the usual seven or eight? I can’t dissect the whole rundown because…well, I’m a little fatigued by it all. Plus as it’s just after 3 pm and I’d really like to get some hiking in before dark.

But I’ll ask this: Given the across-the-board respect and admiration for Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7, why isn’t Sorkin turning up on more lists of potential Best Director nominees? I’m presuming that he’ll be nominated and that Promising Young Woman‘s Emerald Fennell might not be, but what do I knopw? I’d really like to see Darius Marder‘s Sound of Metal score a Best Pic nom, and I’ll be deeply disappointed if The Father doesn’t make the cut. Let’s leave it at that.

I’ll be up at 5:00 am like everyone else, and I probably won’t file anything until 7 or 7:30 am Pacific. One thing that’s fair to say about the ’20 and ’21 pandemic Oscar race, and that’s that there’s not a huge amount of passion in any corner. There are no hate campaigns a la the 2018 attempt to kill Green Book, no takedown attempts to speak of. Okay, I’ve heard about one but it never manifested.

Actor-producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas (The White Tiger) and singer, songwriter and actor Nick Jonas (Kingdom) will announce the 93rd Oscars Nominations in all 23 Academy Award® categories in a two-part live presentation on Monday, March 15 at 5:19 a.m. Pacific.