One of the things I loved about the great Mike Nichols was that he was a great Jewish fretter, a creative worry-wart. I adore that quality in people; I worshipped the late Sydney Pollack for the same trait. It hit me this morning that Nichols died just shy of four years ago, but let’s pretend it’s been five so I can justify re-posting my 11.20.14 obit. From “Nichols Was The Man, Especially From ’66 to ’75“:

Nichols’ film-directing career, which was flourishy and satisfying and sometimes connected with the profound, lasted 40 years, or from the mid ’60s to mid aughts. Nichols had a touch and a style that everyone seemed to recognize, a certain mixture of sophisticated urban comedy and general gravitas. His first gusher was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff in 1966, and his last truly excellent film was HBO’s Angels in America. If you add Nichols’ brilliant early ’60s stand-up comedy period with Elaine May he really was Mr. King Shit for the better part of a half-century.

But his most profound filmic output lasted for eight or nine years, or roughly ’66 through ’74 or ’75 — a chapter known for a certain stylistic signature mixed with an intense and somewhat tortured psychology that came from his European Jewish roots.

Longtime Nichols collaborator Richard Sylbert, whom I knew fairly well from the late ’80s to the early aughts, explained it to me once. Nichols had developed that static, ultra-carefully composed, long-take visual approach that we saw in The Graduate, Catch 22, Carnal Knowledge, Day of the Dolphin and The Fortune, and this signature was, Sylbert believed, what elevated Nichols into the Movie God realm.

And then Nichols suffered a kind of crisis or collapse of the spirit after the failures of Dolphin and Fortune, and he withdrew from feature films for eight years, doing little or nothing for a certain period and then focusing on plays for the most part. He rebounded big-time with Silkwood in ’83, but the way he shot and paced that successful, well-reviewed drama showed that the great stylistic signature of his mid ’60s to mid ’70s films was no more. The ever-gifted Nichols never lost his sensitivity or refinement, but the anguished artist phase had ended.

Despite the Houston Chronicle endorsement, Beto O’Rourke is currently too far behind Ted Cruz to be elected on 11.6. But at least he’ll be free to launch a 2020 Presidential campaign. For those who haven’t signed up for HE:plus (thanks!), here’s the entire Beto O’Rourke riff that I posted on 10.18:

The hour is getting late and the Democrats need somebody strong and flinty to run against President Trump, and the more I kick it around the more I realize it has to be Beto. The Texas Senate race has nationalized him in a positive light. He’s been a U.S. Congressman for five years. He has the moxie and the aura, and there’s no time like right now.

Nobody else in the Democratic field has that stand-up, here-I-am, take-it-or-leave-it quality…that lean and burnished tonality…that alpha mojo charisma that Beto has. He’s 46 now, 47 and 48 in 2020. Why the hell not?

A choice between a 21st Century Kennedy-like figure, a tough fourth-generation Irishman…an unapologetically liberal, principled, tenacious and patriotic Texan who knows how to skateboard and used to be in a band vs. a lying, bloated, dessicated, hopelessly corrupt, egotistical sociopath and dictator-coddling traitor who will be 74 in June 2020…are you kidding me?

Who else can it be? A voice is telling me that Elizabeth Warren, storied and committed and admirable as she is, might not win against Bluster Cheeto (impassioned granny schoolmarm vs. bellowing alpha bull in a china shop). Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are too old. Sen. Kamala Harris isn’t that well known, and there’s something about her that’s a little too admonishing and prosecutorial (i.e., threatening to hinterland male bumblefucks). And there’s something about Sen. Corey Booker that feels more like vice-presidential than presidential timber.

I’m not saying I have an ability to be “happy” or even an interest in going there, but I’d be a lot unhappier if I didn’t have my weekly Real Time with Bill Maher fix. An oasis of sanity, serenity and agreeable stimulation in the midst of storm-tossed seas and p.c. hornets in the brain. Maher’s occasional rants about overly sensitive Millennials…thank you! Not to mention the #MeToo Robespierres, who may or may not have ignited a conservative pushback surge in the wake of the Kavanaugh calamity**.

It’s a shame that so many big-name liberals are too chicken to come on Maher’s show. Kudos to the conservatives who’ve become regulars.

** Clarification: Brett Kavanaugh is, was and always will be a right-wing, pig-eyed partisan who lied through his teeth during the confirmation hearings and shouldn’t have been nominated to the Supreme Court in the first place, not only because he almost certainly attempted to rape Christine Blasey Ford when he was 17 but because he didn’t have the character during the hearings to acknowledge the possibility that something may have happened and admit that he was an alcoholic animal back then, and that he’s sorry for having been a flawed youth. Instead he chose belligerent denial.

Every so often I find myself feeling oppressed if not depressed by the constant stream of inspirational slogans on Facebook and Twitter. Believe in yourself, love yourself before anyone or anything else, amazing things are just around the corner, you have a special gift that the world needs to discover, etc.

I’ve been through down cycles and appreciate the value of positive thinking. Hell, I even went to church in 2005 to pray for HE advertising revenues. But there’s something about self-helpy “you can do it!” slogans that rub me the wrong way. I’m more of a wry humor type of guy. “Everything is funny as long as it’s happening to someone else”, “Start every day with a smile and get it over with”…that line of country.

Hollywood Elsewhere has recently been operating out of the Fairfield County-New York City region, and this has involved taking trains into the city. Which has been fine and even pleasant in certain ways. For roaming around and occasionally getting myself to the Westport train station I’ve been using the rumbling Kawasaki beastie. But given the extremely cold temperatures that descend upon this area at the end of the year (not to mention the truly horrific temps of January through March), I decided a few days ago to purchase a beater for local cruising.

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I missed Lukas Dhont‘s Girl in Cannes last May, but I caught it last night at a special Peggy Siegal screening at the Quad.

Stop the presses — this Belgian submission for Best Foreign Language Film felt like the most assured, immersive and delicately effective drama about a transgender person that I’ve ever seen in my life, or am likely to see in the future. It’s the kind of film that could have conceivably been awful if it had been written or directed by the wrong kind of button-pushing American director (Dan Fogelman, say), but it feels deft, assured and totally right with Dhont at the helm.

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This is a month-and-a-half old, but if you want to immerse yourself in a peppy, smiley-faced, award-season discussion rife with shaky vibes, social uncertainty and a suppressed white-knuckled terror that dares not speak its name…a subtle sense of anxiety about possibly saying the slightly wrong thing in an indelicate way that might get you crucified on Twitter if you aren’t very careful…listen to this Collider discussion about diversity, representation and the New Academy Kidz.

Not that Scott Mantz, Jeff Sneider and Perri Nemiroff (easily the most terrified member of this trio) actually use this HE-coined term, but but they’re basically saying “look, guys, it’s all well and good for Academy and guild members (not to mention the people behind the Gotham, Spirit and BFCA awards) to argue about what constitutes true excellence and/or serious cinematic merit, but there’s a new attitude in town and the basic foundation of this attitude is that diversity and representation are just as important, consideration-wise, as the notion of quality, which may be just a code term for the kind of movie that old boomer fuddy-duds are always voting for, and you know what we mean….movies like The Post and The King’s Speech and maybe even Green Book…that line of country.

The New Academy Kidz are mainly about pushing the graying fuddy-duds off to the side and establishing new criteria in the selection of Oscar winners, and their most important standard is diversity and representation, diversity and representation and diversity and representation. They probably have no argument with a diversity-and-representation movie that also contains what the fuddy-duds would call ‘quality’ (whatever the hell that actually means) but the most important thing for them…well, I’ve said it. For they are the New Academy Kidz, and if Mantz, Sneider and Nemiroff don’t describe them and discuss their concerns in exactly the right way, they’re going to come for them in the dark of night and THEN THEY WILL KNOW WHAT PAIN AND TERROR TRULY ARE.

Because all media people are wimpy, mealy-mouthed liars who push fake news about Trump and the right, it’s an excellent thing to cheer and laugh about a belligerent Montana Congressman having assaulted a Guardian reporter a few months ago.

Imagine actually believing this, especially in the wake of Trump’s half-assed equivocation about the Saudi Arabian complicity in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Nate Jones‘ “How the Media Would Have Covered the Events of A Star Is Born,” posted this morning on Vulture, is very funny and spot-on. It spoils the whole film but how can the fifth version of an oft-told showbiz tale possibly be spoiled? (I’m including 1932’s What Price Hollywood? in the rundown — without it there have been four Star Is Born films.) My favorite is the N.Y. Post headline.

A friend: “One of the movie’s biggest flaws is that it doesn’t exist in the world in which stories like this are written and passed around on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.” No one has any privacy anymore, but Bradley Cooper‘s film kind of ignores this fact. And now Jones has added an element of reality.

How many ways are woke critics sprinkling raindrops of love upon Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk (Annapurna, 11.30)? Answer: They’re workin’ it hard.

In Toronto I wrote that Beale Street is “a decent film in a sluggish, warm-hearted, ‘I love you baby’ sort of way. The two leads, Stephan James and Kiki Layne, are highly appealing in all respects, not the least being that they’re physically beautiful. And I agree that Regina King (who plays Layne’s mom) might land a Best Supporting Actress nomination, but no win.

“Beale Street is all about mood and faith and dreamy lovers giving each eye baths. It has no narrative tension or snap, no second act pivot or third-act payoff or anything in the least bit peppy or spunky, much less reach-for-the-skies. It’s languid and sluggish and awash in feeling that isn’t pointed at anything but itself, which is to say Jenkins’ scrupulous loyalty to James Baldwin‘s 1974 novel.

“Not a disaster but definitely minor. James Laxton‘s cinematography and Nicholas Britell‘s musical score are probably the two best elements.”

A tweet this morning from Variety‘s Guy Lodge: “Every petal of memory here is perfectly placed, nested just so, each unfurling the other like the network of a rose. Swoonsome romanticism also teems with hot sociopolitical anger; both literal and sensually inventive in its allegiance to Baldwin.”
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Less-than-sincere HE response: “I agree, and it’s so deeply satisfying, I might add, when things don’t break Fonny’s way in terms of his Puerto Rican accuser and he accepts a deal to do several more years in the slam for a crime he didn’t commit. But that’s okay because Tish and the family love him so much. Life is unfair, life is cruel but love endures. Or something like that. And when all else fails, there’s that gentle, amber-lit Wong Kar Wai vibe to soothe everyone’s spirits.”

Is there anyone out there who hasn’t seen Cristian Mingiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (’07)? Or who doesn’t agree with the general consensus that it’s absolutely a genius-level, world-class drama that’s about much more than a couple of women trying to obtain an illegal abortion in socialist Romania in the late ’80s? (Although it certainly is that for starters.) The Criterion Bluray pops on 1.22.19

Let me guess: In giving Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 classic a 4K digital restoration, the Criterion guys are going to make it look darker and inkier, like they did with Rebecca and Only Angels Have Wings…right?

This morning I wrote a friend about Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed and the intensely Bressonian lead performance by Ethan Hawke, and how only a few short months ago they both looked like potential Oscar contenders. All the critics called First Reformed a major comeback for Schrader, remember, and all those smooth journos who interviewed Hawke spoke of his performance in hushed tones.

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