From Peggy Noonan's "The Boiling Over of America," Wall Street Journal, 6.9.22:
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Metronom, the debut effort by Romanian director-writer Alexandru Belc, is a spot-on, nearly perfect political drama about a pair of Bucharest-residing lovers in their late teens (played by Mara Bugarin and Serban Lazarovici) whose relationship is tragically perverted by Romania’s secret police.
It’s not a Cannes competition entry but part of the Un Certain Regard line-up, but if it were a competition film it would be a top Palme d’Or contender, at least in my book.
Set in October 1972, Metronom doesn’t particularly resonate with our present catalogue of political horrors, but serves as a time-capsule reminder of the beastly oppression of the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime, which ran Romania from early March of 1965 until Ceaucescu’s overthrow and execution on 12.22.89.
The story is principally told in personal, emotional and intimate terms, and is focused on the ins and outs of the relationship between Ana (Bugarin) and Sorin (Lazarovici). The inciting incident scene, which doesn’t happen until roughly the 45-minute mark, is a party in which they and their high-school-age friends listen to a Radio Free Europe broadcast by rebel DJ Cornel Chiriac (1941-1975).
Chiriac’s shortwave radio show, “Metronom,” delivered uncensored news from the non-Communist west along with contemporary rock music, and thus was feared and, as much as possible, suppressed by the Securitate.
As the party kids listen they decide to write a “thank you” letter to Chiriac for providing an anti-Commie view of the world, both topically and musically. Such an act, of course, was regarded by the bad guys as subversive and criminal, and so before you know it (and I mean while the party is still going on) the goons bust in, arrest the kids and take them down to headquarters to sign confessions about the letter.
Did someone rat them out?
That’s all I’m going to say about the plot, but what happens certainly has a significant effect upon Ana and Sorin’s relationship. Let’s just say that the last 55 minutes of this 102-minute film are quite chilling. This mood is complemented by Tudor Vladimir Panduru’s shooting style, which follows the standard Romanian-cinema aesthetic — plain, unfussy, longish takes.
I’ll admit that Metronom tried my patience here and there. Some shots seem to last too long. Bugarin’s performance is hard to read at times,. During the party scene there’s an announcement by Chiriac that rock superstar Jim Morrison has died in Paris, which is a problem given that the Doors frontman passed on 7.3.71, or roughly 15 months before the party scene in question. And near the end there’s a post-interrogation scene between Ana and her best friend Roxana (Mara Vicol) that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
But otherwise Metronom is quite riveting — an emotionally relatable story of state terror that sticks to your ribs.
My first post-PGA awards thought: “The emotional bounty aside, the competently-made CODA isn’t winning on its own cinematic merits. It’s winning because it’s the anti-Power of the Dog.”
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Cruel perversity runs through Adrien Lyne's Deep Water (Hulu, 3.18). That's what you feel more than anything else....the cold-blooded cruelty.
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All hail director, special-effects wizard and high-frame-rate advocate Douglas Trumbull, who has passed at age 79. His SFX bona fides include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of Life; he directed Silent Running and Brainstorm. I remember the 60 fps Showscan process….first saw it in ’83!
“Visit to Trumbull Village,”‘ posted on 8.10.18: “Restoration guru Robert Harris and I spent most of today (Friday, 8.10) visiting the legendary Douglas Trumbull — special-effects designer and innovator (Close Encounters, Blade Runner, Tree of Life), director of Brainstorm and Silent Running, the Thomas A. Edison of knockout movie concepts and visuals — on his sprawling estate in Southfield, Mass.
“The highlight was experiencing (watching sounds too bland) Trumbull’s Magi, a mindblowing digital 3D projection system that delivers images at 120 frames per second and hefty woofer shake under your seat, and which turns you around in a way that feels pretty damn unique.
Douglas Trumbull, Robert Harris outside Magi projection facility.
“Harris picked me up this morning at the new Danbury train station. (The old train station, located 150 feet to the east, is where Robert Walker‘s Bruno Antony disembarked in “Metcalf” in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Strangers on a Train.) We drove up interstate 84, over to Route 8, northwest on 44 and then due north on 272.
“We pulled into Southfield a little after noon. We stopped at the Southfield Store for a rest and a light lunch, and arrived at the huge Trumbull compound (four or five large residences, a “mad genius” workshed, a couple of soundstages, a projection facility, a couple of garages, meadows with grazing donkeys and goats and towering trees all around) at 12:45 pm, give or take.
“The Trumbull compound seemed larger than George Lucas‘s Skywalker Sound facility in northern Marin County. Try 50 acres. It’s homey and at the same time a kind of high-tech village. You need to drive to get from one end to the other.
“Full of energy and sharp as a tack, Trumbull led us over to a “Magi pod” theatre, which seats 60 and uses a large, curved concave screen. He explained that Magi integrates virtual reality and augmented reality (seat rumblings), and that it’s the kind of thing that could re-energize moviegoing in an era of fading cinema attendance.
Boilerplate: Magi captures and projects images in 3D, 4K HD and 120 frames per second. Trumbull has developed a prefabricated “Magi Pod” theater, as most theatres are incapable of delivering the right stuff. Magi Pods can be shipped and assembled in a week. Each seat faces the center of a 36-foot-wide by 17-foot-tall screen. A 32-channel, surround-sound system provides strong, needle-sharp audio. The system produces a picture that’s way more immersive than regular 3D or IMAX.
“Trumbull and a collaborator are writing a script called Lightship. I didn’t grill him on the specifics, but it’s some kind of high-tech, high-dynamic, eyeball-popping hair-raiser. Trumbull intends to direct Lightship with most of the principal photography to be captured in the compound.
“Harris and I pushed on a little after 3 pm, and were both back at our respective homes less than three hours later.
Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, a brilliantly effective thriller, opened stateside exactly 50 years ago today (12.22.71). Out of respect for the work alone, there should be, I feel, some way of praising this ultra-violent Dustin Hoffman-Susan George drama without necessarily trashing Peckinpah the man.
Peckinpah certainly earned his awful reputation, yes, and today’s #MeToo culture has nothing but contempt for him, but he also made three great films — Dogs, The Wild Bunch and Ride The High Country. You have to give him that.
I always argue that John Coquillon’s lensing of Straw Dogs is fast and centered and perfectly lighted, and that the editing (by Paul Davies, Tony Lawson and Roger Spotttiswoode) is master-class level.
I posted “Post–Straw Dogs Peckinpah Mess” on 4.22.21. In recognition of the film’s half-century anniversary, here it is again:
I was going to title this article “Cancel Sam Peckinpah,” but that might sound too extreme. Then again why not? The idea (one that I’m sure wokesters would agree with) is that by posthumously cancelling the late, impassioned, gifted-in-the-’60s, booze-addled, cocaine-snorting, notoriously abusive director and keeping him jailed in perpetuity, it would send a message to current industry abusers that they’d better clean up their act or else.
You can’t just cancel the residue of this horrible man — you have to erode and possibly even destroy the lives of those who’ve sought to keep his memory alive. Have you ever gotten down on your knees and tried to remove crab grass from your front lawn? You can’t fuck around. You have to be merciless.
And let’s not stop at Peckinpah‘s memory alone — let’s also cast suspicious eyes upon his film critic admirers, his biographers, his fans, the Criterion Collection execs who approved the Bluray of Straw Dogs, director Rod Lurie for his Straw Dogs remake, anyone who owns Blurays of Ride The High Country, Major Dundee, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Wild Bunch…you get the idea. Round ’em all up.
It goes without saying that if Peckinpah was somehow time-throttled out of the ’60s and ’70s and into the present environment that he wouldn’t last five minutes. So why not pretend that he’s still here and act accordingly? Why not send a clear and thundering message that Peckinpah-like behavior will never, ever be tolerated in this industry again? What does the fact that Peckinpah died 36 and 1/2 years ago have to do with anything? In a way he’s still “here”, still among us.
Okay, I’m partly kidding. Peckinpah was definitely a drunken, sexist, coked-up beast (particularly in the ’70s and early ’80s), but he did make a few brilliant films. If you know anything about the movie-making craft you know it’s damn hard to make even a decently mediocre one. Plus the annoying fact that life has never been especially tidy in the corresponding or delineation of great art vs. gentle people and vice versa.
I was inspired to write this by an HE commenter named “Huisache“, who posted the following in the “Duelling Thompson Sagas” thread:
Huisache: “With the exception of Straw Dogs all of Sam Peckinpah’s films are messes of one magnitude or another, with Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia the biggest mess of all.
“The Getaway is enjoyable but the Slim Pickens ending is emblematic of Peckinpah’s resort to just saying ‘screw it, how do I get out of this mess? It was just nailed on. Sam had a mess and he called Pickens for help and the old feller bailed him out with a glorious good-ole-boy bit.
“I saw the film when it came out and was living in the area where it was filmed in central Texas. I thought it a very enjoyable mess and the Pickens ending a hoot. But that’s all the film is — an enjoyable hoot. Acting like it’s some kind of worthy project is a bridge too far.
“I suppose Sam’s problem was his alcoholism and his anti-social personality disorder. Either way the guy had a hard time making the pieces fit into the holes.”
HE reply: “Thank you — 100% correct about the nagging ‘mess’ factor. Totally dead-on. That said, Ride The High Country, The Wild Bunch and, as you noted, Straw Dogs are not messes. And there are many reasons to respect Junior Bonner. And I’ve never even seen Noon Wine.”
By the way: At the end of The Getaway Slim Pickens’ character tells Steve McQueen‘s Doc McCoy that he makes around $5K annually, or roughly $31,683 in 2021 dollars. That works out to roughly $2640 a month — an impoverished lifestyle. McQueen offers Pickens $10K or over $60K in 2021 dollars for his beat-up, piece-of-shit pickup truck. Pickens figures they’ll pay more so he says “how about $20K?” or the 2021 equivalent of a bit more than $120K…for a shitty pickup truck! And then Ali McGraw counters with “how about $30K?” or the 2021 equivalent of a bit more than $180K…for a piece-of-shit pickup truck! That, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s known as a messy ending.
By “top” I mean the most nurturing, the most pleasurable, the most exciting…the 2021 films I felt best about having seen. Note: I’ve been shifting and second-guessing the order since yesterday afternoon (Sunday, 12.19). But I’ve pretty much stopped fiddling around.
I realize that putting Spider-Man: No Way Home in my fourth-place position is an odd call, given that I felt exasperated by the first 65 or 70 minutes. But the final 45 to 50 minutes really pay off, and I have to acknowledge what a bull’s-eye that felt like when I saw it two or three days ago with a cheering crowd.
I can’t honestly say that I felt “good” about having seen The Power of the Dog, although the high level of craft from director Jane Campion is obvious. Same deal with Red Rocket — didn’t enjoy watching it, knew all the while that director-writer Sean Baker knew what he was doing. I can’t say I felt “good” about CODA but I appreciated what it was trying to do and didn’t mind the effort.
I put Peter Jackson‘s 468-minute The Beatles: Get Back in ninth place because it’s really stayed with me.
Update: The disparaging remarks about King Richard and my possibly whimsical decision to put it at the top of the list are duly noted. It’s a sports saga, yes, but mainly a character piece — a study of a gnarly, obstinate fellow who was no day at the beach, and an examination of how character, determination and especially discipline can really make a difference in anyone’s life. I found it inspirational — a film of real value. It made me feel good, and if it didn’t make you feel good…well, okay.
1. King Richard
2. Parallel Mothers
3. West Side Story
4. Spider-Man: No Way Home
5. The Worst Person in the World
6. A Hero (Amazon)
7. Riders of Justice
8. No Time To Die
9. The Beatles: Get Back
10. Zola
11. Cyrano
12. Licorice Pizza
13. The Card Counter
14. In The Heights
15. The Last Duel
16. No Sudden Move
17. Titane
18. The Tragedy of Macbeth
19. Drive My Car
20. Summer of Soul
21. Being The Ricardos
22. Bergman Island
23. House of Gucci
24. Pig
25. Eyes of Tammy Faye
26. Nightmare Alley
27. The Power of the Dog
28. Red Rocket
29. CODA
30. Don’t Look Up
Critically hailed, grueling sits, films that made me feel drained or awful or sleepy: Belfast, Dune, C’mon, Cmon, Spencer, Annette, The Green Knight (and it breaks my heart to say this) The French Dispatch.
Still haven’t seen ’em: The Lost Daughter, Jockey
I haven’t seen Matrix: Resurrections but “I’ve got a feeling.”
Quo Vadis, Aida opened last March, but I regard regard it as a 2020 film.
…after staying with Peter Jackson’s 468–minute Beatles doc over a two-day period:
Somewhere during the third or fourth hour I began to feel a little bit Beatle–ed out. But I’d suspected that would happen so it wasn’t a big surprise and I knew I’d eventually…well, feel proud about having watched the whole thing. Which I am.
It’s basically fly-on-the-wall stuff. Quite interesting. A casual, shaggy, very cool hang. But after a while it loses a little something. Zero narrative tension, of course, but that’s built into the concept. It almost bores at times but not quite. Because I’ve never really seen or felt the Beatles this “unguarded”, this “just being themselves”, or smoking this much. I’ve never felt this much access to their inner vibe or sanctum, if you will.
From John Anderson’s Wall Street Journal review:
Tapped out in stages through the day…
Anderson is correct in calling Get Back many things (including occasionally tedious) rolled into one. 60 hours of footage boiled down to 468 minutes (nearly eight hours) — a chopped English salad of this and that song or conversation or mood jag, pieces of fun and improv and shaggy affectionate humor and experimentation, and so much smoking you’ll feel cancer seeping into your lungs. (There’s actually a warning about the smoking at the beginning of each episode.)
It’s never not interesting, and you gradually begin to pick up on things implied and unsaid.
Episode #1 covers the first seven days, and ends on 1.10.69. Most of it consists of casual, enjoyable playing of new and old tunes. The best musical performance by far is of an old standard — Chuck Berry’s “Rock & Roll Music”.
A fair amount of “Abbey Road” numbers are played in rough form.
The 16mm image quality is very good considering. The cropped HD scanning (16 x 9 aspect ratio) has a high-grade clarity. No noticeable grain to speak of.
It’s fascinating when cameras are focused on a verbal discussion while Paul McCartney’s first stabs at “Let It Be” are heard in the background.
Nobody except Linda Eastman (who drops by a couple of times) says a word to Yoko “black hole” Ono, and who could blame them?
George Harrison’s frustration with McCartney’s ego & dominant band-leading (which was conveyed in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s original half-century-old doc) is not especially readable here. George’s temporary departure was reportedly preceded by a big lunch-hour blowup between himself and the reportedly heroin-sedated John, but this happens off–camera.
There’s a fascinating discussion between Paul and others about how John and Yoko ‘s obsessive relationship prevented John and Paul from seeing each other and thereby composing together, and how Yoko’s constant presence led to a blocking of the old collaborative hormones.
There’s a SERIOUSLY MESMERIZING passage near the beginning of episode #2 in which John and Paul retire to the lunch room to privately discuss George having “quit” the band, but Hogg and his team have covertly planted a mike in a flower pot and so we hear every line, every word. And Jackson prints out the dialogue as it happens.
Once the Harrison-quitting episode is resolved, what little narrative tension the doc had is out the window.
12:30 pm update: Most of episode #2 (which runs 173 minutes) happens inside the newly created basement recording studio at Apple headquarters on Saville Row. This is where they record the “Get Back” album — not the worst Beatles album (that would be “Magical Mystery Tour”) but the second worst.
Seriously: Episode #2 is less interesting, a bit flabbier than episode #1. Do I need to watch the whole thing? Can I just jump to episode #3?
This will sound petty, of course, but somewhere in the middle of episode #2 (i.e., Saville Row recording studio) and for a couple of days, George Harrison begins wearing a pair of black high-tops with thick white laces. And they really look awful — about as far away from HE’s Italian suede lace–up aesthetic as you can get. Absurd as it may sound, those high-tops brought me down.
2:20 pm update: Episode #2 (173 mins.) has finally ended. Episode #3 (138 mins.) has begun. It’s been a long and winding road since I began watching this bear yesterday afternoon. With all due respect, I’m starting to feel a little John, Paul, George and Ringo–ed out.
3:45 pm update: The Saville Row roof concert is good. A little short (what is it, seven or eight songs?) but a crescendo of sorts. Observed by maybe 100 or so onlookers on nearby rooftops and whatnot. The delighted fans down below can’t see a thing. Two young policemen knock on the Apple door with noise complaints from older people, and insisting that the volume levels are too loud. Mal Evans takes them up on the roof. Their mindsets are so banal. ‘Twas ever thus.
I liked Jackson’s decision to use a horizontal split-screen presentation during the concert…three screens, two screens, occasional singles.
David Poland has called The Beatles: Get Back “the greatest art process documentary I have ever experienced.” I think it’s the greatest art process film since Curtis Hanson’s 8 Mile.
Altogether a historic achievement. I’m not sure how truly great or (if you’re reading Poland) Shoah-level it might be, but it’s one marathon-sized music epic that you probably need to submit to.
Peter Jackson says his greatest fear making The Beatles doc #GetBack was finding out one or more of them were “primadonnas or assholes.”
They were not. “They are good guys… It sounds so simplistic. But I’m so happy that the four Beatles turned out to be good guys. Nice guys.” pic.twitter.com/MgixYe46ds
— Kevin Polowy (@djkevlar) November 24, 2021
Pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, quoted by Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan: “Those saying ‘education’ is simply a proxy for racism, and that this result is proof that white or conservative parents really don’t want schools to teach about topics like slavery or give a complete picture of American history, have misread the full picture of parents’ anxieties.”
Anderson found 77% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats agreeing “we should acknowledge the terrible things that have happened in our nation’s history regarding race so students can learn from them and make the future better.” But parents were “alarmed” by “anything that seems to be deterministic about race, such as telling children their skin color will shape their future.” They are uncomfortable “with anything that feels like it is separating children by race.” They’re “also alarmed” by the learning loss that happened during the pandemic, and “upset” over efforts to gut gifted-and-talented education in the name of equity.
“Democrats have allowed themselves to be associated with — to become the political home of — progressive thinking. They thought they had to….[that] progressives would beat them to a pulp if they didn’t get with the program. They thought it would play itself out. This was a mistake. You can’t associate a great party with cultural extremism and not eventually pay a price.
What happened in Virginia, Noonan writes, translates to what a crusty political operative told her decades ago. “He had no patience for high-class analyses featuring trends and contexts,” she recalls. “When voters moved sharply against a party he’d say, ‘The dogs don’t like the dog food.’ Tuesday they vomited it up.”
I caught Stephen Karam‘s The Humans (A24, 11.24) early yesterday afternoon. It won’t open for another six or seven weeks, but it was reviewed out of Toronto so it’s fair to jump in.
This is a highly respectable, surprisingly “cinematic” adaptation of Karam’s 2016 play, which he’s filmed unconventionally by emphasizing distance and apartness and narrow hallways and deep shadows, with a particular emphasis on material rot inside the apartment walls and a general sense of architectural foreboding and claustrophobia.
All the performances are top-notch, especially Jane Houdyshell‘s. Her performance as the maritally betrayed, care-worn mother of two grown daughters (played by Beanie Feldstein and Amy Schumer) is almost Oscar-level. It needs an extra “acting” scene or two, but she’s very good.
As usual I had trouble understanding all of Feldstein’s dialogue, as she always seems to emphasize emotional tonality and a certain sing-song manner of speaking as opposed to adhering to the old-fashioned practice of (I know this is a bad word but I’m going to say it anyway) diction.
Oh, and I didn’t believe for a single millisecond that South Korean heartthrob Stephen Yeun would partner with Feldstein, a seriously overweight woman in her late 20s…a woman who is headed for serious health problems down the road if she doesn’t follow in her brother’s path and drop some serious pounds. Feldstein and Yeun just aren’t a match, not in the actual world that I’ve been living in for several decades, but along with “presentism” and color-blind casting it’s also become a “thing” to cast obese actors in this or that role and then require their fellow cast members to pretend that obesity is fine and normal and “who cares?”
Schumer is fine as the depressed older sister.
The warmest emotional moment comes when the murmuring, blank-faced, Alzheimer-afflicted June Squibb (as grandma) joins in and says grace. Twice. This plus the Thanksgiving “what we’re thankful for” moments at the table are the only emotional touchstones in the whole film.
Richard Jenkins, Houdyshell’s husband, confesses to having lost his job (and therefore — did I hear this wrong? — his pension and insurance) due to an apparently brief affair with a coworker. In short, after being with a company for X number of years, they decided to cut his head off and destroy his life because of a single workplace sexual episode. And then the two daughters, after hearing of this, have to lay their #MeToo-ish judgments on withered old dad, along with their natural resentment for his having hurt their mother’s feelings, etc.
May I say something? 74 year-old Jenkins is too old to have had an affair. The workout club manager he played in Burn After Reading, maybe, or the guy in The Visitor or the gay FBI agent in Flirting With Disaster but his Humans dad is way, way past it. Grey haired, paunchy, neck wattle…forget it. In movies as in life you’re allowed to have crazy extramarital affairs up until your early 60s (if you look good), but not beyond that.
Let’s be honest here — this is an “artfully” shot (oooh, look…80% of the time Karam keeps the camera a good 20 to 30 feet away from the actors!) but VERY morose film about some seriously depressed people whose lives are almost certainly on the way down with no hope of escape or redemption. It isn’t long before you feel stuck — imprisoned — in this apartment, and in Karam’s play. No tension, no gathering story strands….it’s just slow-paced conversational misery and confession and gloom.
The Humans is certainly not comedic. Yes, there’s an element of horror in the building itself — it’s a terrible, TERRIBLE place to have a Thanksgiving dinner in, much less reside in, what with the groanings and stompings and filthy windows and pus bubbles and canker sores on the walls. And it’s not just this family of seven that’s stuck in this horrible environment — we’re all stuck in it, and there’s no getting out.
There are several Hollywood landmarks we’ve all heard of or peeked at — John Barrymore‘s Bella Vista, Beachwood Canyon’s Wolf’s Lair, the beige-pink Godfather compound (i.e., Jack Woltz‘s horse’s head home) on No. Beverly Drive, Guillermo del Toro‘s “Bleak House,” the Double Indemnity house.
And now, at the northeast corner of Fairfax Ave. and Wilshire Blvd., there’s a new one — “Woke House” or, if you will, “Inclusion and Equity House,” otherwise known as the Academy Museum.
It’s the Temple of Hollywood Redefined — the emphasis being partly on Hollywood lore and glamour, but mostly about identity and inclusivity and progressive cultural ideals and the Academy’s commitment to fulfilling same. About how Hollywood is a much better industry now than it used to be, and how we should all celebrate that fact. (But not too much!) The past is represented, of course, but the museum is mainly about doing the right thing for people who used to be benched on the sidelines or were made to wait in line out in the parking lot.
Welcome, film lovers, and thank you for your $25 ticket purchases, but never forget that you’re now in a place of wokester instruction.
Among the museum’s “guiding principles” is to always remember the sometimes sordid, colorful past, and to always be mindful of the Jonathan Shields legend (i.e., sometimes the best films are made by heartless sons of bitches) in The Bad and the Beautiful, and to remember that making great films has always been a grueling, uphill struggle…to never forget the scandals and suicides and cover-ups, and to recall that after seeing Sunset Boulevard Louis B. Mayer huffily told Billy Wilder than he had bitten the hand that fed him, and that Wilder’s immediate response was to tell Mayer to go fuck himself…to remember that during the ’50s the industry looked the other way as several honorable screenwriters were blacklisted and forced to work in Europe…to never forget that Jack L. Warner hated Bonnie and Clyde, and that producer-star Warren Beatty had to beg him to re-release it, and only then was it celebrated…that in the late ’50s Sidney Poitier was unable to rent a Beverly Hills home due to racist real estate agents, and that he was at least able to stay at the Chateau Marmont…that 20th Century Fox boss Daryl F. Zanuck used to carnally impale aspiring actresses every afternoon in his 20th Century Fox office…that local men and women of color were hired to portray Skull Island natives in King Kong, and that they were probably glad to get the work, even though it meant wearing bone necklaces and grass skirts….to never forget the endless oppressions and exploitations and greedy conflicts and deviant devotions that have always been at the heart of Hollywood creativity…oh, wait, I’m sorry…this is from an old Graveline Tours pamphlet.
The museum’s actual guiding principles are (a) Illuminate the Past, Present, and Possible Futures of Motion Pictures and the Academy, (b) Embrace Diversity and Be Radically Inclusive, and (c) Educate, Provide Inspiration, and Encourage Discovery.
The Embrace Diversity thing has a drop-down menu, and one of the mission statements says that the museum intends to “foster an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and anti-sexist culture built on transparency and accountability that ensures that all staff, communities, audiences, and partners are treated with respect.”
Jesus H. Christ already!…I feel I’m being scolded and swatted on the hand with rulers by woke nuns!
From Sasha Stone‘s “No Time (for Movie Theaters) to Die”: “But I see where the Academy is coming from. They are trying to address the needs of people who have been left out for far too long, [and] they can afford to depict themselves and their story any way they want to.
“For instance, when Sacheen Littlefeather accepted the Best Actor award for Marlon Brando in 1973, she was booed. The stunt was mocked and derided back then for bringing politics into the awards. It was embarrassing for the Academy. But all of these years later, she is celebrated in the Academy Museum as a point of pride. And indeed, when you watch her speech now she seems like a time traveler from 2021.”
There’s a large room in the museum that celebrates Oscar recipients, and Littlefeather’s speech is one of the highlights. Flatscreens show various winners celebrating their big moment, but not that many. You’d think that acceptance speeches by world-famous Oscar winners would be front and center. But for the most part the room focuses on people of color and historic moments of inclusivity. Sidney Potier, Rita Moreno, Gone With The Wind‘s Hattie McDaniel, Sayonara‘s Miyoshi Umeki, etc. (Where’s the Minari grandma, Youn Yuh-jung?) Plus Dimitri Tiomkin accepting an Oscar for his High and the Mighty score, Tatum O’Neal accepting a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Paper Moon, etc.
Yes, I covered the same turf in “Please Don’t Call It The Death Star” (9.21).
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