For the most part Anne Thompson‘s assessment of the Best Actress Oscar race isn’t politically wrong. In all likelihood The Wife‘s Glenn Close, The Favourite‘s Olivia Colman, A Star Is Born‘s Lady Gaga and Can You Ever Forgive Me‘s Melissa McCarthy will be Oscar-nominated. No argument there.

But I’m not sure about Roma‘s Yalitza Aparicio. Because I don’t think she really steps up to the plate and performs her role as Cleo, the saintly maid — I think she very believably inhabits this passive character but she’s not really swinging the bat like Hank Aaron or Willie Mays — she’s not bringing her Vivien Leigh or Geraldine Page or Jo Van Fleet. She’s a little too quiet and still. The only time Cleo really steps up to the plate is during that third-act seaside sequence when SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER.

The actress who really and truly deserves the fifth slot is Cold War‘s Joanna Kulig. Her performance in Pawel Pawlikowski‘s period drama reignites the spirit of Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim along with a spritz of Gloria Grahame. A femme fatale songbird, an emotional force of nature, trouble from the word go.

I’ve had Kulig in my Gold Derby Best Actress roster for several weeks now, and the same status quo fuddy-duds who told me for weeks that Ethan Hawke‘s First Reformed performance could never land a Best Actor nomination until they were proved wrong are the same who’ve been telling me that Kulig can’t happen either.

Maybe she’ll make it and maybe she won’t, but I know Kulig is far more deserving of that fifth slot than Aparacio. And Thompson doesn’t even have Kulig listed as a long shot! C’mon!

…are not necessarily tragedies. They become tragedies only when the warning signs are ignored and reality checks are strenuously avoided.

To go by a just-posted Variety story (“Tiffany Haddish Bombs on New Year’s Eve, Fans Walk Out of Comedy Show”) and a recently-posted Instagram video, Tiffany Haddish may have to take certain steps (perhaps as many as 12 of them) in order to straighten things out. Maybe. Seems that way. Ciroc vodka, etc.

michfonte@luislucien: “It was horrible. She came out at 11, she was obviously wasted and just couldn’t put it together. It was honestly obvious she was unprepared and then she has the audacity to say that this won’t happen again, [and] that she’ll be prepared next time. How about this time?”

Around 9 am this morning Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn posted an analysis piece titled “Audiences Aren’t Getting Dumber, They’re Just Overwhelmed.” No offense to Eric, but I found a comment thread riff by a guy named “Jasper” (a nom de plume inspired by Chinatown‘s “Jasper Lamar Crabb“?) to be slightly more interesting.

“We’re living in oversaturated media times and it will only get worse, because everybody will [eventually] be a filmmaker, a studio and a distributor at the same time. All technology is going into this direction. Moving images will eventually be an ‘extension of man’ that Marshall McLuhan didn’t dare to dream of.

“Entertainment will always matter because life is actually pretty boring: Children are boring, jobs are boring, everything will bore you after a while…even sex. But cinema never gets boring, because it constantly re-invents itself and is open for new content.

“Moving Images are also a technique of creating ‘proof’ and to communicate your experience. For example take a look at “Camino-One feature length selfie” (2019).

“To see films on smartphones is okay if the films were made for smartphones to begin with. There are other films, of course, that were not intended to be seen this way. Perhaps they could carry a warning’ at the beginning or a ‘plan’ how to watch and show them?

“First Reformed should definitely be seen in a dark, big cinema full of people, otherwise it probably doesn’t work as intended.”

HE to Jasper Lamar Crabb: Good movies are about real life with the boring parts removed. Your job may be boring (sorry if that’s the case) but writing never is. Plus I’ve never found young kids to be boring. You know what’s vaguely boring? That short hiking film that you linked to.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s smackdown essay about Barack Obama‘s Best of 2018 roster (“What Barack Obama’s Year-End Movie List Reveals About Him“):

Excerpt #1: “I found it dispiriting — an example of caution masquerading as daring. The critically approved good taste that Obama displays in his list of favorite films is so impeccable that I kept combing through the list in search of a flaw in the diamond, a micro-glimmer of vulgarity or surprise, or just something a little offbeat, a dollop of idiosyncrasy that might tell us a bit more about who Barack Obama is, apart from someone with a platonically perfect record of movie fanship.”

Excerpt #2: “His taste in movies is so good that it’s too good for its own good.”

Excerpt #3: “It’s a bit strange to peruse Obama’s list for a glimpse of what’s inside his heart and mind, only to be confronted by the hive mind of the cinephile-industrial complex. Maybe that’s just who he is, but if you accept the list as Obama’s own, what it reveals about him is that he’s a man who instinctively focus groups his own taste to within an inch of its life.”

Excerpt #4: “Obama entitled his list ‘My favorite movies of 2018,’ but did he choose the movies he loved or did he get with the program? The most telling thing about his list is that there may be no difference.”

Posted on HE, 12.28.18: “Barack Obama‘s list of his favorite 2018 films reflect his sophisticated-cineaste sense of taste (he knows the turf) and eye for quality. It’s a list that Eric Kohn, Alison Willmore, Justin Chang or any scholastically correct, Sight and Sound-approved critic might have assembled.

“And yet I’m sensing that Obama chose these films very carefully, which is to say with a partial eye toward what the cool kidz on Twitter (i.e., the SJWs, the woke fascists) might say. Which is to say his list doesn’t seem entirely, real-deal honest.

“Obama’s list is partly ‘this is who I am’ and partly ‘these are the films that I know are the most critically approved and therefore the safest for me to include.'”

On this, the first day of 2019, a reminder that in choosing the best of the year and especially Best Picture, Academy and guild members are obliged to vote according to four criteria or lines of thought — (a) honoring unfettered quality, (b) voting in solidarity with megaplex ticket-buyers, (c) serving or following the industry’s woke political agenda, or (d) voting in order to tell the politically correct, beaver-hat-wearing lefty commissars to shove it for the sheer pleasure of saying that.

One, Academy and guild members can vote for the best or boldest or most affecting artistic achievement, which in today’s context would be Roma — let’s be honest. Or Cold War, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, The Favourite, Vice or Green Book. Or, if you’re into the slavish Wong Kar Wai tribute aesthetic, If Beale Street Could Talk.

Two, they can vote for popcorn-with-extra-butter megaplex movies, or films that have simply connected with the peon class (which Hollywood Elsewhere understands and feels a certain bond with) — A Star Is Born, Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book and BlacKkKlansman (partly a serious drama about America’s racial past but primarily a popcorn movie about a police caper).

Three, they can vote for films that embody or reflect upon Hollywood’s political-social merit badge mentality, and which also reflect favorably on the voters’ own socially progressive convictions. The recipients of these films would be Black Panther (which is also the only film in contention that qualifies as a Hollywood historical benchmark breakout flick, and is also a worldwide hit), If Beale Street Could Talk and BlacKkKlansman.

And four, they can rally behind Green Book as a protest vote against the lefty woke thought-police scolds who, outside of the entirely necessary and long-time-coming movement to push back against sexual predators as well as discrimination in all its forms, are trying to muscle everyone and push them around and tell them how to think and talk and in so doing are generally ushering in a climate of politically correct terror that is beginning to rival the ’50s Commie-witch-hunt days and has already summoned parallels to the French terror of the late 1700s,…the idea is to take the “woke” criticism of Green Book and turn the tables by telling those Stalinist goose-stepping SJW assholes to sorta kinda GO FUCK THEMSELVES. In a polite, jovial, fraternal way, of course.

Los Angeles is easily the dullest, most lackluster city in the world for celebrating New Year’s Eve. Give me Paris, Moscow….even New York City in the rain.

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Late Sunday afternoon: Drove northwest on Los Felix Blvd., took left on Catalina Street, parked the car at the corner of Catalina and Glencairn, hiked up to the top of the neighborhood and then onto the path to the Griffith Park Observatory. Spent 15 minutes looking at the view, taking pics, etc. Too crowded, too many commoners. And then back down the trail.

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Offering a hearty Hollywood Elsewhere thanks to everyone who gave their support this year (spirited reader opinion, general visitorship, HE-plus, etc.). Plus all the words of support regarding the Sundance ’19 blacklisting by the p.c. comintern. Hoping that most of you will enjoy a healthy, prosperous, generally happy 2019; hoping also that good luck and good fortune will smile upon many of you from time to time. Here are some images that have stirred the soup in years past:

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Forming an “exploratory committee” that will seek to determine or fortify what? We all know Senator Elizabeth Warren is running for president in 2020 so why doesn’t she just say “yeah, you’re right, I am”?

I love Warren’s progressive compassionate agenda but (a) I still resent her decision not to run against Hillary “my favorite all-time film is Casablanca” Clinton in ’16 — if she’d beaten Hillary in the primaries (Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have run if Warren had jumped in) we probably wouldn’t have President Trump now, and (b) I’m honestly worried about whether she’s scrappy and two-fisted enough to run against El Cheeto, who will campaign day in and day out on “Pocahantas, Pocahantas, Pocahantas.” Plus I’m concerned about her ability to win over rural independent-minded pudgebods. Plus she’s a boomer, and I think the anti-Trump majority generally wants someone younger — heir apparent Beto O’Rourke or maybe Kamala Harris.

Every person in America should be able to work hard, play by the same set of rules, & take care of themselves & the people they love. That’s what I’m fighting for, & that’s why I’m launching an exploratory committee for president. I need you with me: https://t.co/BNl2I1m8OX pic.twitter.com/uXXtp94EvY

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) December 31, 2018

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Three days ago Bill Wyman posted a homicidal hypothetical on Facebook: “If you could murder one fictional character (a character, not the author or actor in quick and painless fashion, who would it be?”

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]