Some may recall an early ’60s Lenny Bruce routine about Shelley Berman and the Chicago Shtarkers. It was about Berman performing on-stage at Mr. Kelly’s, a famed Chicago club, and getting more and more irritated by a couple of deep-voiced mafiosos who wouldn’t stop talking and interfering with his act.

Berman didn’t know they were mob guys, but that might not have mattered. In any event he finally blurted into the mike “Jesus, somebody shut these hoodlums up!”

Berman might’ve gotten walloped in a back alley, but the mob goons didn’t “hear” the insult. They may have physiologically heard the words “shut these hoodlums up” but psychologically they didn’t penetrate because “nobody would ever talk to them that way,” Bruce explained. So the taunt bounced off and Berman lucked out.

I’m mentioning because in a certain sense I was a mafia guy this morning as I was planning to attend a 10 am screening of Vice. The emailed invite said it would happen on Sunday, 11.25. (And it still will.) But like those Chicago goons, the 11.25 date (seven days hence, three days after Thanksgiving) struck me as so nonsensical that I waved it off like a house fly.

I did so because Los Angeles journos saw Vice yesterday, and why, I asked myself, would Annapurna delay showing Vice to New York City journos for eight (8) days? Nobody and I mean nobody handles an award-season roll-out this way.

You can’t offer a special peek to the L.A. crowd and then turn around and say to their NYC counterparts, “Just sit tight, fellas…we’ll show it to you next weekend so hold your horses for eight days.”

This isn’t the 1950s. Early showings of big-deal movies are always even-steven or favored-nation as far as the two coasts are concerned. So the date was a “mistake”, I told myself, and so I emotionally and psychologically rejected it.

I can be an occasional ditzoid about screenings, granted, but this was something else.

Herewith is Hollywood Elsewhere’s first flaky stab at a list of adult-friendly, quality-aspiring 2019 films— possible critical faves and perhaps even award-season contenders.

I realize that the market for “adult-friendly films that aren’t aimed at idiots” is getting smaller and smaller as the culture devolves and that the governing motto behind 90% of theatrical fare (or at least films released between January and Labor Day) is “you don’t have to be a drooling moron to enjoy this crap but it’ll probably help.” But we all have to hang in there and hope for the best.

We all understand that limited and longform series on cable and streaming are delivering much of the dramatic satisfaction these days, but nothing will replace top–tier theatrical features — i.e., those films which require a special vision and artistic discipline and have to deliver the whole package between 100 and 140 minutes, for the most part.

Things are always hazy at this stage but here are some 2019 stand-outs listed on the IMDB — listed partly in order of interest, and partly randomly. Please understand that I know nothing — I have double-checked only a few titles, and this is purely a paste job at this stage. Research, commentary, corraboration — it’s a process that will take several days to get right:

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman — A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa. (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons).

2. Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — A faded TV actor and his stunt double embark on an odyssey to make a name for themselves in the film industry during the Helter Skelter reign of terror in 1969 Los Angeles. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie).

3. Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man — An over-the-hill hitman faces off against a younger clone of himself. (Will Smith, Clive Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Benedict Wong).

4. Jon Favreau‘s The Lion King — CGI and live-action re-imagining of the 1994 Disney classic. (Voice-acting by Seth Rogen, Donald Glover, Alfre Woodard, Chiwetel Ejiofor).

5. Darren Aronofsky‘s Untitled Artificial Intelligence Courtroom Project — Allegedly about an artificial intelligence court case.

6. Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York [in limbo at Amazon, allegedly streaming sometime in ’19)

7. Untitled Harriet Tubman Project — The life of Civil War-era activist Harriet Tubman, who worked to liberate slaves in the American South by developing an a secretive system that allowed them to escape to freedom. (Viola Davis, Mike Gassaway)

8. J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier — Five friends team to take down a South American drug lord. (Charlie Hunnam, Ben Affleck, Pedro Pascal, Oscar Isaac.)

9. Mia Hansen-Løve‘s Bergman Island — An American filmmaking couple who retreat to Faro for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place. (Mia Wasikowska, Vicky Krieps, Anders Danielsen Lie, Joel Spira.)

10. John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch — A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy Upper East Side family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson, Finn Wolfhard, Ansel Elgort)

11. David Michod‘s The King — (Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Robert Pattinson)

12. Garth Davis‘s A House in the Sky — A young journalist is captured in Somalia and held in captivity for more than a year. (Rooney Mara)

13. Untitled Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis Project — Believed to be musically themed and be set around the 1960s or 1970s. (Lily James, Ana de Armas, Kate McKinnon, Lamorne Morris)

14. J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: Episode IX — The conclusion of the new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. (Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, et.al.)

15. Marielle Heller‘s You Are My Friend — The story of Fred Rogers, the honored host and creator of the popular children’s television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tammy Blanchard)

16. Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse — The story of an aging lighthouse keeper named Old who lives in early 20th-century Maine. (Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe)

17. Pedro Almodóvar‘s Dolor y gloria — A film director reflects on the choices he’s made in life as past and present come crashing down around him. (Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Cecilia Roth, Asier Etxeandia)

18. Jonathan Jakubowicz‘ Resistance — The story of a group of Jewish Boy Scouts who worked with the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II. (Clémence Poésy, Ed Harris, Jesse Eisenberg, Edgar Ramírez)

19. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? — After her anxiety-ridden mother disappears, 15-year-old Bee does everything she can to track her down, discovering her troubled past in the process. (Cate Blanchett, Judy Greer, Kristen Wiig, Laurence Fishburne)

20. Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies — An ambitious young F.B.I. Agent is assigned to investigate iconic actress Jean Seberg when she becomes embroiled in the tumultuous civil rights movement in late 1960s Los Angeles, California. (Kristen Stewart, Zazie Beetz, Vince Vaughn, Jack O’Connell)

21. Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Copperfield (Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie)

22. Joe Wright‘s The Woman in the Window — An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors only to witness a disturbing act of violence. (Amy Adams, Wyatt Russell, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore)

23. Pablo Larraín‘s The True American — A Bangladeshi Air Force officer looking to make his way in the United States is shot by an American terrorist out to kill Muslims in the aftermath of September 11th.

24. Scott Z. Burns‘ The Torture Report — In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, CIA agents begin using extreme interrogation tactics on those they think were behind it. (Adam Driver, Jon Hamm, Jennifer Morrison, Maura Tierney).

25. Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing he Wanted — A journalist quits her newspaper job and becomes an arms dealer for a covert government agency. (Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Toby Jones)

Focus Features is releasing Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows on 2.8.19. The official trailer popped a couple of days ago. Here are excepts from my Cannes Film Festival review, posted on 5.8.18:

“Everybody Knows isn’t a bust but by Asghar Farhadi’s lofty standards it’s something of a shortfaller, particularly due to how the third act unfolds. It sure as hell isn’t About Elly — I can tell you that. It’s more on the level of The Past, although The Past, which some said suffered from a layered-onion plot that felt too soap-opera-ish, is a more satisfying film. And it’s slightly below The Salesman, and way below A Separation.

“But it’s still a Farhadi film, and that always means a character-rich, complexly plotted, proceeding-at-its-own-pace family-community drama — smartly written, always well acted — in which deeper and deeper layers of the onion are gradually peeled until the truth comes out.

“Set in rural Spain, it’s about the sudden disappearance of a character but it’s not an About Elly-level thing. At all. It’s actually about a kidnapping but that’s all I’m going to divulge. But Everybody Knows follows the Farhadi form by focusing on a large community of family members, friends, co-workers (i.e., a wine farm) and whatnot, and everyone, we soon realize, knows everyone else’s secrets. Well, most of them. And by the end, everything comes out in the wash

“But the story and especially the ending don’t echo all that much in a social-fabric or social-portraiture sense. All the loose ends are tied up for the most part, but it doesn’t quite get there. The film doesn’t expand or begin to play a bigger game.

“If a friend were to ask, I would say “actually it’s pretty good…it’s not Farhadi’s best and is probably his least commanding, but he’s such a brilliant, high-calibre filmmaker that even his second-tier movies are fully involving, always believably acted and quite the meticulous ride.”

Earlier today the first wave of Los Angeles critics and columnists saw Adam McKay‘s Vice (Annapurna, 12.25). The tweets say that Christian Bale is great as the demonic and Machievelllian Dick Cheney (but then we all had that idea from the trailer) and that the film itself is quite nervy, audacious, provocative.

Variety‘s Kris Tapley: “Christian Bale might be in line to receive his second Academy Award to date, for his uncanny portrayal of former Vice President Dick Cheney [and] the film packs an infuriating punch as McKay writes history with lightning yet again. The question [is] whether we’re ready to dissect it all.

“Is the movegoing audience — indeed, are Academy voters — ready to take stock of all this chapter in history with [today’s] depressing news glowing up at us from our mobile devices on a daily basis? It would be a hell of a time to hand someone an Oscar for portraying this particular man, and that takes nothing from Bale’s brilliant work.

“By the same token, Vice could be argued as the most urgent and important film in the race this year. One just wonders if the stomach is there for it.”

Indiewire’s Anne Thompson: “No matter what happens to Vice in the public arena, actors will adore this crazy political movie.” In other words, Thompson foresees possibly adverse reactions from Joe and Jane Popcorn, and possibly even from certain critics.

Some day, of course, there will be a rich, juicy Donald Trump movie for everyone to savor.

All through the season the Gold Derby no-accounts have refused to include Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed, easily and absolutely one of the year’s ten-best, on their Best Picture spitball lists. Worse, they’ve also declined to list Ethan Hawke‘s landmark performance as a projected Best Actor nominee. Both for the perfectly idiotic reason of isolating any film that opened before Labor Day as a non-starter.

And now their cavalier, herd-following way of thinking has been embraced by the 2018 Spirit Awards nominations with four or five nominations having gone to First Reformed. Which of course seals its Oscar fate.

From here on guild and Academy members will be saying to each other, “Yeah, Schrader’s film is obviously striking and quite the career comeback and Hawke may have delivered his career-best performance, agreed, but First Reformed is a Spirit Awards thing….not in our realm.”

Shame on the Gold Derby-ites for ghetto-izing this great Bressonian film and kicking it downstairs.

In case some Academy members haven’t noticed, mainstream theatrical fare has severely devolved over the past 15 years. Almost everything made by the big studios is aimed at families and submentals, and almost all adult material (except during Oscar season) has been shunted off to cable and streaming. So out of this desert comes (among other streaming companies) Netflix, which believes in backing ambitious, adult-level features…hooray!

Netflix has recently even caved on its standard financial scheme of streaming films right off the bat from day #1, to the extent that it won’t be streaming its prize Oscar pony, Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, until it’s played in select theatres for a couple of weeks. I’m sorry but that’s a highly significant concession for a company like this.

And some people are giving Netflix shit over this? Somebody actually accused their willingness to go theatrical of being a “con” because they’ll be four-walling?

Netflix is investing in real movies, for God’s sake. They’ve produced the latest Coen brothers film, which at the very least is diverting and handsome as hell to look at. They backed that problematic Orson Welles film, The Other Side of the Wind, and Morgan Neville‘s They”ll Love Me When I’m Dead. They may not be the most theatrical-minded people in the industry, okay, but we’re living in a streaming world now, for God’s sake…wake up! There’s a distinct shortage of good-guy outfits in the business right now, and Netflix is certainly one of them

I was inspired to post this by two recent irritating articles — Erich Schwartzel‘s 11.17 Wall Street Journal piece, “Netflix Sees Oscar Gold in Roma, but Hollywood Isn’t So Sure,” and Rebecca Keegan‘s 11.14 Hollywood Reporter essay, “How the Oscar Race Became a Referendum on Netflix.”

I could listen all day to vocal-free instrumental tracks. The instrumental version of Steve Miller‘s “Big Ole Jet Airliner” is, no exaggeration, heavenly. Ditto the instrumental track for the Beatles‘ “I’m Looking Through You.” Maybe it’s because I was in a couple of bands and I’m into the beauty of just the right chord changes strummed just the right way and at just the right time and…I don’t know, the whole glorious jangly-jangly of it all.

The across-the-board worshipping of the late Stan Lee and the corresponding corporate Marvel-ization of mainstream motion picture fare cannot be separated. Deny it or not, but these two things have happened due to an outgrowth of mass infantilization and the increasing influence of fanboy culture, which has been happening since the explosion of wide-release, teenage-catering entertainments (Jaws, Star Wars) in the mid ’70s.

It is therefore allowable for Bill Maher to have written what he wrote this morning about the Stan Lee effect. Just shut up and take it. We’re supposed to be be okay with differing opinions in our country so act that way.

“The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning,” Maher wrote. “Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess.

“Someone on Reddit posted, ‘I’m so incredibly grateful I lived in a world that included Stan Lee.’ Personally, I’m grateful I lived in a world that included oxygen and trees, but to each his own. Now, I have nothing against comic books — I read them now and then when I was a kid and I was all out of Hardy Boys. But the assumption everyone had back then, both the adults and the kids, was that comics were for kids, and when you grew up you moved on to big-boy books without the pictures.

“But then twenty years or so ago, something happened — adults decided they didn’t have to give up kid stuff. And so they pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature. And because America has over 4,500 colleges — which means we need more professors than we have smart people — some dumb people got to be professors by writing theses with titles like ‘Otherness and Heterodoxy in the Silver Surfer‘. And now when adults are forced to do grown-up things like buy auto insurance, they call it ‘adulting’ and act like it’s some giant struggle.

“I’m not saying we’ve necessarily gotten stupider. The average Joe is smarter in a lot of ways than he was in, say, the 1940s, when a big night out was a Three Stooges short and a Carmen Miranda musical. The problem is, we’re using our smarts on stupid stuff. I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important.”

HE context entry #1: Remember what Watchmen creator Alan Moore said nine years ago, to wit: “The average age of the audience now for comics, and this has been the case since the late 1980s, probably is late thirties to early fifties — which tends to support the idea that these things are not being bought by children. They’re being bought in many cases by hopeless nostalgics or, putting the worst construction on it, perhaps cases of arrested development who are not prepared to let their childhoods go, no matter how trite the adventures of their various heroes and idols.”

One, he doesn’t have that X-factor snap, that fizzy-chemistry thing. Two, he reminds me of Gary Lockwood in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and voters have always been more inclined to support candidates who remind them of Keir Dullea. And three, you can’t pronounce “Swalwell” trippingly on the tongue. “Walwell” would be bad enough, but the addition of an “s” forces your teeth, lips and tongue to go into contortions.

From Max Boot‘s “Did Matthew Whitaker Compromise the Mueller Investigation?,” posted by Washington Post on 11.15:

“Whitaker can do great damage even if he does nothing more than read all of Mueller’s files — as he now will have the right to do — and share that information with the White House. Sure, he would be risking impeachment or even prosecution for obstruction of justice, but Whitaker is not someone who has exactly exemplified devotion to the rule of law: He believes that Marbury v. Madison, the seminal 1803 case establishing legal review of legislation, was wrongly decided, and he has said that only Christians should serve as judges.

“There is already cause for concern that Whitaker may have tipped off the White House. On Thursday, Trump tweeted, ‘The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation.’

“Trump has never used the phrase ‘inner workings’ before. Maybe he was just spouting off. Maybe he was reacting to information shared with him by witnesses Mueller has interrogated. Or maybe he has suddenly gained a vantage point on the ‘inner workings of the Mueller investigation’ that he did not have before Whitaker’s appointment.

“In this hour of peril for our democracy, it is imperative that Congress rush to the ramparts. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refuses to move legislation that would protect Mueller. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has belatedly said he would refuse to support judicial confirmations until that legislation is brought to the floor, but his threat will not be effective unless he is joined by at least one other Republican. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) actually introduced legislation to protect Mueller, but now he doesn’t see the need for it and even says Whitaker doesn’t need to recuse himself.

“Studios To Push For Early Home Release in 2019.” So read the headline of a Brent Lang Variety piece that was posted earlier today. In other words, sooner or later day-and-date home streaming of new films will be a common option.

Setting the right price will obviously be a key factor (I’m guessing it’ll be $25 or $30 for either a single day’s access or a 12-hour window) but when it happens, something crucial in the American movie experience will begin to dissipate. And the ultimate effect will be, I believe, devastating.

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The blood naturally runs cold when you hear the “c” word, but when it comes to skin cancers 95% of the time it’s not a huge issue, and certainly not what anyone would call a threatening one. But the thing I’m dealing with — basel cell carcinoma with a little hint of squamous cell carcinoma — will involve a little down time on 12.4 so I may as well come clean and talk about what a careless, oblivious asshole I’ve been and how I got myself into this mess.

Well, not a “mess” but, you know, a kind of pain-in-the-ass situation.

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