According to a 12.5 Long Beach Press-Telegram story, the nutty-nuns-gambling-in-Las Vegas embezzlement story wasn’t as completely crazy it sounds. Former teacher Sister Lana Chang and former principal Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper pilfered the $500K over the last decade, or the sum of $50K per year. If they travelled to Vegas twice annually they spent $25K per trip; thrice annually they went through an average of $16.5K. That’s not all that exorbitant. They probably kept going back in the hope of recouping their previous losses so they could pay back the missing funds. Questions: (a) did the nuns ever come out ahead?, (b) did they ever experience a George Segal-Elliot Gould California Split finale?, (c) what were their favorite games?, (c) did either of them count cards? Adam McKay needs to direct and write; Melissa McCarthy and Michelle Yeoh as as Kreuper and Chang.

(l.) Margaret Kreuper; (r.) Lana Chang.

It means something when an LQTM type like myself laughs out loud.

Everyone presumably recalls the fat Godzilla dust-up of 2014. Director Gareth Edwards insisted that Godzilla wasn’t fat but “big-boned”…bullshit. Now the question is whether Michael Dougherty‘s fire-breathing reptile in the forthcoming Godzilla, King of the Monsters (5.31.19) will follow suit. The teaser that popped last summer didn’t suggest anything, but the new trailer makes it clear Goddy is still a fatty. In fact, he might even have put on a couple of tons since his last appearance.

The fact that Godzilla, King of the Monsters has been directed and co-written by Michael Dougherty (Trick r Treat, Krampus) should give all potential viewers pause. The Warner Bros. release is about conflict between Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and the three-headed King Ghidorah.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s BFCA Nominating Ballot…submitted over the weekend:

BEST PICTURE
1. Green Book
2. Roma
3. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
4. A Star Is Born
5. Vice

BEST ACTOR – name AND film
1. Christian Bale, Vice
2. Ethan Hawke, First Reformed
3. Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

BEST ACTRESS – name AND film
1. Melissa McCarthy, Can you Ever Forgive Me?
2. Olivia Colman, The Favourite
3. Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – name AND film
1. Mahershala Ali, Green Book
2. Richard E Grant, Can you Ever Forgive Me?
3. Sam Elliott, A Star Is Born

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – name AND film
1. Amy Adams, Vice
2. Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
3. Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Wait…The Favourite is suddenly the most likely winner of the Best Picture Oscar?

The Critics’ Choice Awards, which in the movie realm are voted upon by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, have been the most accurate predictor of Academy Award nominations. There’s something about the non-elitist, emotional-pocket-drop BFCA mindset that seems to synch with the Academy. Remember when Spotlight was apparently losing steam in the 2015-2016 Best Picture race, and then to everyone’s surprise it won the BFCA’s Best Picture trophy? Spotlight won the Best Picture Oscar a few weeks later. I’m not saying that the Critics Choice and Oscar awards have always reflected each other, but BFCA and Academy members do seem to park their cars in the same garage.

If you go by the legend that the most nominated films tend to win the Best Picture Oscar, the fact that Fox Searchlight’s The Favourite corralled 14 Critics Choice nominations this morning — Best Picture, Best Comedy, Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos), Olivia Colman for Best Actress and Best Actress in a Comedy, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz for Best Supporting Actress, Best Acting Ensemble, Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay (Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara), Best Cinematography (Robbie Ryan), Best Production Design, Best Costume Design and Best Hair and Makeup — suggests that The Favourite might also turn out to be the most Oscar-nominated feature, and therefore (if you go by odds and tradition) the Best Picture Oscar winner.

All I can tell you is that this hit me in the stomach when I read the Critics Choice tally last night. Because as much as I admire The Favourite and as impressed as I am by Olivia Colman‘s brilliant performance as Queen Anne (not to mention the “supporting” performances by Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone), I don’t think The Favourite is slam-dunk Best Picture material, largely because the third-act doesn’t pivot or deepen the stakes of the story, let alone maintain the tension of the first two acts.

And because I’m more of a Roma, Green Book, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, First Man and First Reformed type of guy.

Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther was the second most nominated film with 12 Critics Choice nominations. Damien Chazelle’s First Man accumulated ten nominations. Adam McKay‘s Vice, Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born and Rob Marshall‘s Mary Poppins Returns tallied nine nominations each while Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma — which has seemed to many like the most esteemed and most arthouse-credentialed Best Picture contender — managed to assemble only eight nominations.

Slightly more dispiriting is the fact that Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book, seemingly the most beloved Best Picture contender (if you step outside of lefty fascist p.c.-scold circles) and easily one of the best acted and most finely crafted mainstream features of the year, ended up with only seven nominations.

Green Book is one of the year-end hotties, for sure, but a little man in my chest is saying “what’s going on here? Why are the films and performances that we know are the best of the year…why are they not faring as well as they should?”

HE approves of Ethan Hawke landing a Best Actor nomination for his First Reformed performance; ditto Paul Schrader for his Best Original Screenplay nomination. But the film itself should have been Best Picture nominated; ditto Alexander Dynan‘s 1.37:1 cinematography.

I’m seriously offended by the BFCA not having nominated Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me? as Best Picture, or Heller for Best Director. At least they nominated Melissa McCarthy for Best Actress and Richard E. Grant for Best Supporting Actor, as they should have.

Viola Davis should have definitely been nominated for her lead performance in Steve McQueen’s Widows, but she wasn’t.

You can sense a riveting, well-textured quality in J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier (Netflix). And an atmosphere of grit and sweat and heavy tropical air. A “rob the drug lords” plot may suggest the realm of an elevated programmer, but it feels like the first really exciting ride of 2019.

J.C. Chandor (All Is Lost, A Most Violent Year) is a first-rate director, and the Mark Boal script, which dates back to ’09, is tense and tightly constructed., or so I recall. Chandor has a co-writing credit. Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund. I want to see this in a theatre. It feels formidable.

Eight years ago Tom Hanks signed to do an earlier version of Triple Frontier under director Kathryn Bigelow. Johnny Depp was also attached or at least interested. There was talk at the time of changing the title to Sleeping Dogs. In late ’12 it was reported that Bigelow and Boal had put the project aside. Hanks would have played Affleck’s role.

“So they were grinding after all, those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her…”

Get Out suggested that Jordan Peele‘s schtick is social-metaphor horror with a racial stamp. The good guys (Daniel Kaluuya, Lil Rel Howery, Lakeith Stanfield) were near-victims of the white liberal hypnotist cultural predators (Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones). I’m not presuming that Peele’s Us (3.15) will be cut from the same cloth, but we can probably assume that some sort of social metaphor will be woven into the fabric. Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke are the good guy parents, and one of their good-guy pallies is played by Elizabeth Moss. But who are the “shocking visitors”? Earlier today Wilson Morales suggested it might be a Mother!-type deal. Others have suggested we may find echoes of Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games. Thoughts?

Star Wars geeks have emptied out the Columbia Sportswear Company’s inventory on STAR WARS EMPIRE CREW PARKAS. But look at the design! Dorky bright blue? If you’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back you know that Harrison Ford‘s Ice Planet of Hoth parka is much cooler looking — a smoky bluish gray, off-white scarf, left-breast insignia. If I was a serious Star Wars fan I might consider buying a decent-looking replica of the Han parka, but not this nickle-and-dime knockoff.

Despite the Sundance press pass hangup that I revealed three days ago, I’ve decided that I’m too enthralled with too many Sundance ’19 films to let this situation slide. For 25 years Sundance has been an annual shot in the arm for me — an event that saves me from the monotony of the Oscar race and gives me a few new films to focus on and perhaps derive excitement from. So I’m going to head up there and see what kind of tickets I can grub from publicists. Maybe I won’t see as many films as I’d like to, but at least I’ll be roaming around and giving it the old college try. I’m on the right side of this issue, and it just doesn’t feel right to lie down and acquiesce.

You don’t know what you have ‘til it’s gone. I’ve never had any diseases or compromising ailments or chronic issues, and I don’t have a damn thing wrong with me now except for what happened five days ago. I’ll maybe succumb to a fever now and then, but otherwise I’m bullet-proof. Been that way all my life. But now, right now, I’m living in a kind of prison, a recuperating-from-surgery purgatory. First-rate digs, all the comforts and I love my Sony 4K HDR 65-incher, but I’m still behind bars in a sense.

I can walk around and drive and do whatever, but I’m saddled with plastic drainage tubes, a potato-sized neck swelling under my left-side jaw, surgical staples, a certain amount of stiffness and pain, etc. And I have to carry around a Prevena 125 device and a plastic liquid-deposit balloon. Some of the staples are being removed on Tuesday, the 11th; the remainder will be removed on Tuesday, 12.18. This too shall pass and blah-blah but for the time being it’s a trial.

At least I’ve got imminent Manhattan screenings of The Mule and Amazing Grace — that much to look forward to.

The year-end awards decided by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association are almost always outside the box. When they champion a film or a performance that I happen to share admiration for, I go “yay.” But more often my reaction to their oddball picks is (a) “huh, really?…okay” or (b) “what the fuck?” I will therefore signal my reactions today with either (Yay), (HRO) or (WTF).

I’m speaking for the world here. I’m speaking for every man, woman, child and dog on the planet earth. LAFCA awards are partly if not largely about their own challenge-to-conventional-thinking tradition. I’m not saying they’re not trying to salute quality, but they have to do that LAFCA thing, that “hey, look at us, we’re nervy and different” between bites of bagels and lox. Especially in this era of p.c. terror and intimidation by SJWs and virtue signallers — an era that seems to be rivalling the Commie-witch-hunt era of the late ’40 and ’50s.

Best Picture: Roma / (Yay)
Runner up: Burning / Nope — shoulda been Cold War.

Best Director: Debra Granik, Leave No Trace / (HRO)
Runner up: Alfonso Cuarón, Roma / (Yay)

Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed / YES! All is forgiven, including the food break bullshit (bagels, lox and onions) — Hawke can’t be denied an Oscar nomination for Best Actor now.
Runner up: Ben Foster, Leave No Trace / (WTF)

Best Actress: Olivia Colman, The Favourite / (Yay), fine but Melissa McCarthy is way, way better (and with a better-written role) in Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Runner up: Toni Collette, Hereditary / (Yay)

Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk / (HRO) — King is the populqr p.c. choice and there’s no disputing she gave a good, commendable performance, but Vice‘s Amy Adams delivers more of an arresting, leap-off-the-screen jolt.
Runner up: Elizabeth Debicki, Widows / (HRO)

Best Supporting Actor: Steven Yeun, Burning / (HRO)
Runner up: Hugh Grant, Paddington 2 / (WTF)
HE comment: They blew off Mahershala Ali‘s note-perfect, crowd-pleasing performance in Green Book because the p.c. elites have condemned Peter Farrelly‘s film because it had the audacity to tell a 1962 story by 1962 standards, and because it doesn’t pass along the progressive ethos of 2018. But there’s no excuse at all — none — for blowing off Richard E. Grant‘s performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Screenplay: Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty, Can You Ever Forgive Me? / (Yay)
Runner up: Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara, The Favourite / Approved