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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.

Why oh why would Academy honchos be seriously considering staging the 93rd Academy Awards at Union Station, the deco moderne-ish, not-all-that-cavernous railway station** in downtown Los Angeles? Especially when they could do the show from the soon-to-open Academy museum, which could use the promotion and has all kinds of indoor and outdoor spaces (300,000 square feet!) to fool around with…c’mon!

What, seriously, is so damn great about Union Station apart from the appealing early 20th Century design and the fact that many films have used it for period atmosphere?

Funded in 1926, built during the 1930s and opened in May 1939, Union Station is probably the most storied and nostalgic public access structure in all of Los Angeles. To me it’s a Fred MacMurray environment. I was down there three or four months ago, catching an early morning train to San Diego, and everything I saw, sat on, heard, touched and smelled said “Fred MacMurray, Fred MacMurray, Fred MacMurray.”

I understand the Academy’s affection for the MacMurray atmosphere, but at the same time they surely must realize that Millennials and Zoomers, viewers that the Oscar telecast needs in order to remain viable in the future, don’t give a damn about the guy.

It would be one thing if MacMurray mattered in the ’80s, which most Millennials and Zoomers have at least some vague recollection of (even though they mostly regard the Age of Reagan in the same light as the Dead Sea Scrolls), but he stopped being part of the cultural conversation when My Three Sons was cancelled in the mid ’60s.

Academy CEO Dawn Hudson to Millennials, Zoomers: “It’s not just that Fred MacMurray’s career was peaking when Union Station opened, but the fact that we all need to bring a little Fred MacMurray back into their lives in this, a time of continuing Covid depression and lethargy. We need that droll speaking voice, that overfed look, that hat, those baggy pants, that corrupted Walter Neff vibe.”

Is the Academy museum, slated to open on 9.30.21, still being worked on? Does it still have scaffolding and tarps and whatnot? Fine! Use that still-not-finished atmosphere for a sense of realism and a basis for jokes.

Deadline‘s Michael Fleming, posted five days ago: “Nothing is set yet, but sources [are saying] that Union Station is the venue AMPAS and ABC favor at the moment.”

Killer Fleming quote: “Will stars need to wear masks, even if they are properly distanced? Maybe not. It would be a far more visually appealing if masks weren’t part of the fashion.”

“If you don’t get the joke here, then you’re stupid. You don’t get subtlety, you don’t get humor, you don’t get perspective. And if you do and yet pretending that you don’t, just so you can have something to be pissed off at, then you’re….both ways you’re gross.” [to Larry Wilmore] “It’s an ad, that’s the point…it got your attention.” — Bill Maher during last night’s [3.12.21] Real Time.

Pivot‘s Scott Galloway: “[Ads like this] should be taken with the intent with which they’re given, and this [ad] was meant to highlight sexism. Unfortunately what we have and my industry is guilty of this, but we’ve created an industrial shaming culture. In which there’s money in dunking on people…making [a] caricature of comments, and then using that to extract an ugly place so you can get virtue points.

“Because the moment that you’re offended in our country, it means you’re right.”

There are two…well, one head-turning takeaway from Scott Feinberg’s 3.12 Kim Novak interview (audio + transcript) in the Hollywood Reporter. Plus there’s a vague refutation of a rumor about Novak having been Bill Cosby-ed by Tony Curtis during a late-night party in November 1957. Plus an interesting inference or two.

One, Novak’s fabled interracial “affair” with Sammy Davis, Jr. in late 1957, which was chronicled in a September 2013 Vanity Fair piece by Sam Kashner and discussed in an August 2017 Smithsonian article by Joy Lanzendorfer, wasn’t actually sexual**.

Lanzendorfer reported this on 8.9.17, Novak reportedly repeated the claim to Larry King in 2004, and she says it again to Feinberg in the current THR piece — no salami and, the article indicates, perhaps a hint of stalking on Davis’s part.

Vanity Fair art for Sam Kashner’s September 2013 article about the brief Novak-Davis alliance.

Novak tells Feinberg that her much-whispered-about relationship with Davis had more to do with (a) Davis aggressively pursuing Novak — inviting her to join him for a Thanksgiving dinner with his parents in Los Angeles in late November 1957, and then surprising her by showing up when she invited him out of politeness to a family Christmas gathering in Chicago a month later, and (b) Novak not wanting to discourage Davis out of concern that a racial motive might be inferred if she flat-out rejected his advances.

Feinberg’s article also contains a between-the-lines inference that while Tony Curtis may have slipped Novak a Mickey Finn during a late-night after party at his Beverly Hills home (which he shared with then-wife Janet Leigh), Davis may have been “in on it” and perhaps was the guy who drove Novak back to her home, where she woke up in her bed stark naked the next morning, not having the slightest clue what had happened.

Feinberg excerpt: “One day, Novak left Paramount studios — still in her [Judy Barton] wig and green gown from Vertigo — to attend a charity dinner, where Tony Curtis invited her to an afterparty at the home he shared with Janet Leigh. Hearing that [director Richard] Quine would be there, she said yes.

“When she arrived, Quine [with whom Novak was involved to some extent] wasn’t there. But Davis was, and he offered to help her take off her wig.

“‘By the time he got it off,’ Novak recalls, ‘Tony Curtis had brought me a drink. I don’t know…I only had, I think, one drink there. But that’s the last thing I knew. I do not know anything afterward, cross my heart, hope to die. Don’t know what happened after that or how my car got back in front of my apartment.”

“Does Novak think someone spiked her drink? ‘I really do,’ she said. “I didn’t think of it then because people didn’t talk about things like that, but I could never figure it out…I’ve never blacked out in my entire life.’

“She adds, ‘I think Tony Curtis did it. I don’t want to think Sammy did that.’ And when she awoke the following morning? ‘I’ll just tell you the honest truth: I didn’t have my clothes on.'”

The “tell” is Novak saying “I don’t want to think Sammy did that.”

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Journo pally #1: “A bad omen for Cannes.” Journo pally #2: “France is a shitshow right now. There are protests every day for President Macron to reopen businesses.”

From 3.7 article by the Guardian‘s Kim Willsher: “Disinformation, distrust and rumors that are downright bonkers have turned what should have been a fairly routine operation into an organizational nightmare. Doctors like mine who have been allocated just 10 doses of AstraZeneca a week – all of which have to be administered in a 48-hour time frame — are spending valuable time and energy trying to drum up just 10 willing patients.

“The reasons for French vaccine scepticism have already been well documented: previous health scandals have sown doubts; the French distrust their politicians and Big Pharma and rail against being told what to do. President Macron’s ill-advised trashing of the AstraZeneca vaccine based on erroneous interpretation of the scientific data didn’t help.”

From “Europe Confronts a Covid-19 Rebound as Vaccine Hiopes Recde,” a 3.12.21 Wall Street Journal story by Marcus Walker, Bertrand Benoit and Stacy Meichtry:

“The European Union’s fight against Covid-19 is stuck in midwinter, even as spring and vaccinations spur hope of improvement in the U.S. and U.K.

“Contagion is rising again in much of the EU, despite months of restrictions on daily life, as more-virulent virus strains outpace vaccinations. A mood of gloom and frustration is settling on the continent, and governments are caught between their promises of progress and the bleak epidemiological reality.”

Once in a great while, a film will deliver a closing-credits theme song that is so off-the-mark that it almost destroys the emotional mood of the film that preceded it.

I’m talking about a film that has carefully and strenuously tried to make the audience feel a particular, hard-won thing, and then a stupid end-credits song comes along and pretty much betrays that effort.

I’m talking about bouncy, upbeat melodies that producers have inserted in order to persuade prospective audiences that the film is some kind of rousing, feel-good experience.

Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky‘s Marty ends happily, of course, but mostly this mid ’50s Brooklyn drama is a serving of downmarket, anti-glam realism. It’s mainly a study of people struggling with ennui, boredom and watching their lives slowly turn to salt. IMHO the “Hey, Marty!” song at the very end is an abomination.

Daryl F. Zanuck‘s The Longest Day, a 178-minute epic about the D-Day invasion of 6.6.44, is a battle-and-adventure flick. The idea was to deliver thrilling feats of daring, valor and aggression on the part of Allied invaders without pelting the audience with too much blood or gore. Saving Private Ryan, it wasn’t. 4,414 Allied soldiers were killed that day; 2,000 died on Omaha Beach alone. Yes, the film ignores the body count while emphasizing the “we can do it!” spirit, but I wouldn’t say it plays like an Allied forces pep rally. Until, that is, the awful Paul Anka song that closes the film (the banal lyrics were sung by the Mitch Miller singers) is heard. I’ve no doubt that veterans of the actual invasion were appalled by it.

I’ve never forgotten how perfectly handled the ending of Titanic was, and how Celine Dion‘s “My Heart Will Go On” (music and lyrics by James Horner and Will Jennings) completely ruined the after-vibe. The closing-credits song should have been an Irish tune of some kind, something that alluded to the thousands of men who built the ship at the Harland and Wolff yard in Belfast. Instead audiences were yanked out of 1912 and thrown into a saccharine pop-music girly realm. Yes, the song was hugely popular and that millions still associate it with Titanic‘s emotional current. But the last 20 minutes of James Cameron‘s film were so much richer and deeper than anything summoned by Dion’s singing…it just makes me sick to think of it.

Other ending-credit songs that damaged or diluted the films they were composed for?

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Friendo: I just watched this remarkable conversation again, taped on 5.11.68. Portions of it sound like it happened last night.

HE: Yeah, “portions.” Brando suggested that everyone should donate 1% of their incomes to MLK’s organization — an idea that melted the second it passed his lips. Like many superstars Brando was living in his own world. Compassionate and kind-hearted and far-sighted but at the same time isolated, pie in the sky, affluent indulgence, Tahiti man.

Why, incidentally, is this in black and white? The Tonight Show began broadcasting in color in September 1960.

If a 96 year-old Brando was somehow still with us, he would probably be seen more for his historic failings and foibles than his views on racism, and even if he was respected by Millennials and Zoomers he’d certainly be no fan of cancel culture fanaticism. Marlon might’ve even become a regular HE commenter. His handle could’ve been “budomaha” or “Jor-El.”

The May ‘68 reality was a full worldwide tilt (convulsive Paris protests, Prague spring, spillover from January’s Tet offensive in Vietnam, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash“, LBJ dropping out) and driven by Herbert Marcuse, Howard Zinn, the expanding psychedelic Beatles brand and the exposing of Sexy Sadie, the New Left, the wonderful abundance of cheap pot and LSD, great music and nonstop libertine celebrations. The US was engulfed that year by upheaval, confrontations, anti-war demos, urban riots, SDS, burning cities, RFK’s murder…’68 was the most tumultuous year of the 20th Century.

And what did it all produce in the end? Middle-class horror and a conservative pushback, the election of Nixon and the creation of anti-left domestic operations, the murder of Fred Hampton and a prolonging of the war until the final US withdrawal in April ‘75.

Brando obviously believed in civic consciousness and doing the right thing, but his personal life was mainly (to go by Peter Manso) about whims and urges and appetites. His career had been downswirling since Mutiny on the Bounty. He reignited in ‘72 and ‘73 with The Godfather and Last Tango. Then he went down again. He looked pretty good in ‘68 but by the mid ‘70s he’d became an irrevocably rotund Buddha figure — a prisoner of late-night ice cream raids, driven on some level by self-loathing.

But yes, certainly, of course…sitting on Johnny Carson’s couch that night he sounded clear-eyed and morally righteous and ahead of the curve.

Friendo: And then the assassination of Bobby Kennedy a month later. But what’s interesting here is the noncontroversial Carson drinking the Kool-Aid, which was huge and also a risk for him as the King of Late Night, appealing as he was to his core conservative audience of golf-playing, plaid-pants-wearing milquetoast breadwinners and their Susie Homemaker wives.

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