That third-act moment in Marriage Story when the beleagured Charlie (Adam Driver) stands up and sings Stephen Sondheim‘s “Being Alive” in a piano bar and in so doing draws on the pain and regrets and somber self-reflection that he’s been grappling with throughout the whole film…the second after Driver finishes the tune is where Noah Baumbach’s film should have ended. I had this thought upon during my initial Telluride viewing, and now Anthony Lane has stated the same in his New Yorker review. It would have been perfect since the cathartic summing-up in this Company song offers a symmetrical counterbalance to Marriage Story‘s beginning in which Charlie and Scarlett Johansson‘s Nicole recite lists of things they love about each other.

The HE community has had three days and two nights to consider the merits of Marriage Story, which won’t begin streaming on Netflix until 12.6. So?

(1) Everything that Anthony “Michael Corleone” Scaramucci says to Brian Stelter is accurate and ethical and straight on a plate; (2) With the impeachment proceedings starting Wednesday (11.13), will the Democrats put on a powerful, compelling impeachment inquiry?; (3) Why has Stelter gone from close-cropped tennis ball to shaved Yul Brynner sidewalls?

11.9, 2:25 pm: Simultaneous parties were thrown Friday night (7 to 11 pm or later) by the Apple and A24 guys. The Apple bash was hosted at the recently opened, bucks-up Edition hotel; the A24 soiree happened at the Sunset Tower. The Apple event was very pleasant as far as it went and certainly well-catered, but the atmosphere felt more corporate than Hollywood-y. The Sunset Tower affair was a relaxed and familial industry affair — Adam Sandler, Robert Pattinson, Waves director Trey Edward Shults, Colleen Camp, et. al. Beautiful outdoor pool, lots of cigarette and pot smoke, everyone just chillin’.

Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn has tut-tutted his way through an essay about the rank aroma of toxic masculinity in such award-season contenders as The Irishman, Marriage Story, Parisite, Honey Boy, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

Such ugliness, and so upsetting to wokesters who need their safe spaces, of course, and who may need to take breaks from these films in the lobby with, you know, neckrubs and counselling.

My favorite part is Kohn’s kicker paragraph, to wit: “If these movies all probe toxic masculinity from a male perspective, the season is poised to balance out with some of its most anticipated titles around the corner. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women adaptation and Jay Roach‘s Bombshell are both poised to address the other side of the equation.

“As moviegoers navigate a sea of toxic masculinity, these late-season entrants may deliver a lifeline — or at least the opportunity to widen the cultural frame. They can’t come soon enough.” Thank God…a lifeline!

I don’t want to speak out of turn or sound like a contrarian, but there might be a strain or two of toxic masculinity in William Shakespeare‘s Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Winter’s Tale, etc. I think it also appeared in the works of other playwrights, novelists, screenwriters and directors. Certainly over the last couple of centuries. Or am I mistaken?

If you’re the least bit invested in Trek lore, this “Inglorious Treksperts” chat with director, screenwriter, script doctor and creator of Sledgehammer and Bullet in the Face Alan Spencer is pretty good. Spencer reveals some stuff that most people don’t know. Like how Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and Twilight Zone maestro Rod Serling were friends, and how Roddenberry eulogized Serling at his funeral at the behest of the family, etc.

I’ve re-watched this scene 20 or 30 times, and could watch it another 20 or 30. Hell, make it 50 or 100.

I love the seven-second delay between the first mention of “old times” and the second, and especially Ben Johnson‘s decision to pick up a stick in the interim…perfect. The camera begins to track forward at the 54-second mark (“More than 20 years ago”) and begins its retreat to the original position at 1:53 (“I bet she’s still got that silver dollar”).

The Last Picture Show was shot in the small northern Texas town of Archer City, sometime in late ’70 or early ’71. Almost a half-century ago.

It may sound cruel to say this, but director Peter Bogdanovich never delivered a sequence as good as this over the rest of his career. It’s arguably the finest shot ever captured by dp Robert Surtees, although some would say his work on Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate was just as noteworthy.

According to Scott Feinberg‘s account of last night’s American Cinematheque tribute to Charlize Theron, David Oyelowo shared a curious recollection that happened during the making of Gringo, in which Theron and Oyelow costarred.

Oyelowo: “The first thing Charlize ever said to me was, ‘David, what is your opinion about anal bleaching?’ She’s the only person I’ve ever known who laughed so hard that she pissed herself…she ran out, I looked down at her seat and it was wet.”

Anal bleaching is funny on what planet? In what kind of upside-down, twisted-pretzel universe is the dampening of a canvas chair due to leaked urine…how is that even smirk-worthy?

Jokes “land” because they reveal or allude to some suppressed or unacknowledged truth about our shared experience. Mentioning that someone busted a gut about this or that is flagrantly unfunny. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, watching or listening to someone laugh hard is extremely unfunny if you’re not sharing in the mirth, which in my case is often.

Seth McFarlane, on the other hand, did allude to suppressed or unacknowledged truths. He joked that Theron “is proof that, at long last, African-Americans are thriving.” (Theron is from South Africa, grew up on a farm near Johannesburg) He also suggested that “‘Charlize’ sounds like a brand of champagne enjoyed by rednecks in Florida.” Well, it is kind of a girly-girl name.

Referring to her Oscar-winning performance in Monster, McFarlane said that “Charlize played a monster who committed unspeakable acts…Megyn Kelly.”

The best line alluded to Theron’s costarring role in McFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West (’14) as well as her romantic pairing with Seth Rogen in Long Shot, to wit: “Theron has made a cottage industry of playing a lover of guys named Seth who could never land her in real life.”

Tragedy is when Scott Feinberg slices his finger with a steak knife. Comedy is when Oyelowo is poking at a Ceasar salad while listening to McFarlane.

Take away the Atlanta Olympics bombing aspect and the suffering that poor Richard Jewell endured could be processed as a metaphor for what all obese people go through.

As I said last month, the guy was primarily found guilty of not looking like Cary Grant in the 1940s or Clint Eastwood in the ’70s or even Seth Rogen in Pineapple Express. A damp-skinned, flat-topped, moustachioed beach ball, Jewell initially looked and, in the opinion of some, behaved like a guy with issues. The very model of a neurotic loner, and out of this a certain zealous reporter for the Atlanta Constitution became convinced he was probably a wrong one, and then the FBI bought into this also, and before you knew it everyone was off to the races.

I saw Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out (Lionsgate, 11.27) the night before last…finally. The next day a certain p.r. hotshot asked what I thought and whether or not Johnson’s nimble, cuttingly funny script has a shot at a Best Original Screenplay nom.

I was planning to tell Johnson himself what I thought anyway, so I cc’ed him in my reply.

“I was expecting some kind of boilerplate Agatha Christie meets wokester sensibilities thing, but it’s actually fairly sharp and clever and funny. The spritziest, most efficiently assembled, fleet-footed Rian Johnson film ever. Amusingly acted and tightly written. A very slick and crafty package… nice!

“The teasing and misdirection moves are very well handled. I had a much better time with it than anticipated.

“So in answer to your question, yes, I think it does have a shot at a Best Screenplay nom.

“51 year-old Daniel Craig, playing the Hercule Poirot-type role, is in good shape, but he looks too old to be playing 007.

“I knew going in that [actor’s name] is the conniving bad person but it was still fun and diverting.

“Ana de Armas seemed to mostly be concentrating on looking pretty and doe-eyed and fetching. Everything she did and said in the film was about “am I looking good in the shot?”

“Incidentally, I HATED the cut of her pants cuffs, riding three or four inches above the sneaker line. Only hipster assholes wear pants that are cut like that. Are you telling me that Ana’s character, a Paraguayan woman who lives on a modest salary with her family in a grubby, smallish apartment, is going to wear HIGH-CUFF HIPSTER PANTS? I don’t think so!”

Johnson reply: “So happy you dug it, man. Though there goes our shot at a BEST PANTS nom.”

Why are those doltish, self-destructive, dumb-as-a-rock bumblefucks still with Trump? Because they despise wokester elites — i.e., those snide urban know-it-alls who seem to loathe white working-class folk, favor POCs in every debatable situation and are determined to push politically correct agendas ‘til the cows come home.

“How The Unsufferably Woke Will Help Trump,” an 11.8 N.Y. Times essay by Timothy Egan, spells it out plainly. Average Joes hate Film Twitter zealots **, and they can’t stand the Indiewire and Jezebel staffers of the world, and they’re willing to re-elect Donald Trump in order to fully express their disdain.

Thanks, wokesters! I hated most of you anyway but this adds a layer of icing to the cake.

The scariest part of Egan’s piece alludes to the apparent fact that for now Elizabeth Warren isn’t connecting with these hinterland slugs.

** partially for trashing Green Book. Which is a roundabout way of saying that bumblefucks hate guys like Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich and L.A Daily News critic Bob Strauss.

9:30 am update: I passed the DMV written test on my second attempt. But the people who created these tests are still conniving jerks.

Earlier: I’ve just failed the written test for a renewal of my California Class C driver’s license. I’ve been driving in this state without incident for decades. I know exactly what to do and not do when I’m at an intersection or whatever so don’t tell me. I use basic logic when I answer the DMV questions, but of course they’re chickenshit, nickle–and–dime trick questions with the intent of trying to confuse or delude the questioner.

Example: Fatigued or drowsy driving will not be prevented by rolling down the window, drinking/eating caffeine or sugar (or chugging a Monster), turning up the music volume or cranking up the air conditioning, but these activities will definitely mitigate drowsiness, especially chugging a Monster. I’ve saved myself from possible disaster more than once by Monster-chugging so don’t tell me. But the DMV fanatics don’t want me to answer this way, and will flunk me if I do. The whole test is like this. They’re just trying to mess with you.

Now I have to study the stupid manual and try again. If I fail two more times I’m dead. I hate these people. Not the attendants but the twisted creeps in Sacramento who created the questions in the first place.

The fact that Jennifer Lawrence and art dealer Cooke Maroney got married last month is not really my business. Obviously my mentioning it in the column makes it a matter of marginal interest…why am I writing this? The focus is Maroney’s neck beard. Failing to trim or shave neck-beard growth has always struck me, no offense, as an uncouth, swarthy, dock-worker thing. I guess not. Now it’s a sign of a free and untrammeled spirit. But if I was in a hiring position an undisciplined neck beard would give me pause, at the very least.