From the lefty-progressive perspective things are looking good for the ’18 midterms. Trump is a louche sociopath who’s dirty to the bone, and every now and then God actually steps in and says “okay, I’m gonna put my finger on the scale and help out the good guys for a change.”

But lately I’ve become worried about hinterland pushback against the left. I’m even starting to worry that Trump might, God help us, be re-elected if a decent Democrat contender isn’t nominated, and right now there’s no rockstar in the wings. Not because swing voters will regard Trump as a first-rate President, but because some may be genuinely terrified of the alternative — of politically correct Stalinoids coloring the culture and pointing the finger every which way.

Attending the 2018 Sundance Film Festival is what put the fear in. As I mentioned on 1.21, it was like a socialist summer camp in the snow — insular, forward-thinking, politically correct, change-oriented, Time’s Up-embracing, POC and gay-celebrating. It felt a teeny-weeny bit oppressive. Like a shortage of oxygen or something.

I’ve been a lefty all my life and feel a deep-seated kinship with progressive ideals and goals today, but I’m genuinely scared about what lefties have been generating image-wise. By that I mean two impressions that have sunk in about what has felt at times like a cruel and dictatorial temperament.

One impression, which is arguably inaccurate, is that many lefties feel that whiteness is a genetically diseased condition, and nothing genuinely fair and benevolent can come from white people these days because there’s too much racism and horror in their history and so the historical ledger sheet has to be balanced. It’s not that whites have been asked to step back and let people of other shades run the show, but there seems to be a general sense that less whiteness will be a good thing all around.

A couple of days ago N.Y. Times film critic A.O. Scott wrote about interviewing artists and celebrities for the Sunday T magazine. The final paragraph reads as follows:

“The most challenging interview was with Greta Gerwig. When we spoke on the phone, she was in Sacramento and I was in Rome. The time difference was ridiculous, time was tight, and I felt a little awkward about the fact that I had just filed my review of Gerwig’s Lady Bird. I ducked into a doorway on a semi-quiet street and took notes by the light of a streetlamp.”

This took me back to “Adapt or Die,” an HE post from Rome that was filed on 6.2.17:

“The wifi at Hollywood Elsewhere’s Rome apartment (154 via Monserrato) is all but worthless, so I’ve been tapping stuff out at the nearby Barnum Cafe (Via del Pellegrino 87). A half hour ago the Barnum proprietors told me I’d have to take the Macbook Pro across the street as their place turns into an eating establishment around 8 pm or so. No problem. The wifi is strong enough to extend several feet beyond the cafe’s walls. So here I am, tapping away on a worn-down cobblestoned street that’s been here for at least 2000 years.”

The Black Panther sartorial thing is not for guys like me, and by that I mean X-factor movie guys. To me a movie is a movie is a movie — it’s not any kind of statement about representation or cultural celebration or any of that. It’s all about structure and believability and planting the seeds and delivering the right kind of third-act payoff, and that’s all.

Okay — if I could somehow buy an exact duplicate of Cary Grant’s three-button Savile Row suit from North by Northwest, I would wear it to a special screening at the Aero or Egyptian, but that’s as far as I could go.

The North by Northwest suit looks gray but is actually a kind of faintly blue-ish gray plaid. It was designed by Arthur Lyons at Kilgour, French & Stanbury.

Michael Musto: “I’m sticking with Three Billboards…Three Billboards for Picture, Guillermo Del Toro for Director plus Gary Oldman, Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell. Martin McDonagh will win Best Original Screenplay. I’m going with Laurie Metcalf for Best Supporting Actress. Three Billboards has some complexity and some deeply flawed characters…it’s more intricate and so I would say a knock above.” Tom O’Neil: But there is a lot of hatred for Billboards out there. But they’re gonna want to put that Lady Bird vote someplace, so where does it go?”

Laurie Metcalf, he’s thinking. But I don’t think she’ll win, as much as I think she deserves to.

“Mellow Wells vs. Irked Russell on Terrorists, San Bernardino, Gun Culture, Gun Controls, etc.“, posted two years and two months ago:

Then I segued into a riff about how movies tend to reflect the times and the culture they come from. I was thinking that the Quentin Tarantino brand, which has always included a swaggering, half-smirking, bordering-on-flippant use of violence at times, might not fit or reflect the post-Paris, post-San Bernardino culture now as well as it did the all-is-well Clinton ’90s.

I was thinking in particular of a 12.3 N.Y. Times survey piece I read this morning. Written by N.R. Kleinfeld and called “Fear in the Air, Americans Look Over Their Shoulders,” it basically observed that “a creeping fear of being caught in a mass rampage has unmistakably settled itself firmly in the American consciousness.” And I was wondering how that wink-wink grindhouse blood and brutality that colors the second half (and more precisely the final third) of Tarantino’s film is going to synch with that…or not.

Here’s a reasonably close transcript of our gun-and-culture discussion. I guess it wasn’t so much a discussion as a kind of argument, except it was more about Russell arguing with me than vice versa. I played it cool and made my points in a mild-mannered way. Listen and judge for yourself:

Wells: The Quentin cult, if you will, is, like, 23 years old, starting with Reservoir Dogs…right? Violence as attitude, violence as style, violence as fashion…not dealt with in an earnest, realistic way. The swagger thing.

Russell: Right.

Wells: And I was looking in the N.Y. Times this morning and this guy interviewed several people in the country in the Midwest and West. And with almost everybody out there, he reported, there’s a feeling of anxiety in the culture…when’s the next one?

Russell: So…uhm, uh, how do you connect the dots?

Alex Garland‘s Annihilation (Paramount, 2.23) is “trippy,” all right — a visually imaginative, microbe-level, deep-in-the-muck monster-alien flick. And it will bring you down, down, down. It will drop you into a stinking, crawling-insect swamp of your own regrets and fears and lethargies and nightmares, and will make you long for the glorious release of shooting yourself in the mouth.

It’s mainly a CG/FX show with creatures and Spielbergian space aliens and dynamic production design. It’s “inventive” in terms of the day-glo tree tumors and in a generally fungal, micro-bacterial, fiendish-mitosis sort of way, but it makes you feel like shit. It’s unrelentingly grim — basically a film about lambs to the slaughter.

Annihilation is based on a trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer that I will never read, but more precisely on the same-titled book that launches the tale.

It’s focused on Area X, a creepy, muddy lowland area somewhere in the Southern U.S. that’s been invaded and biologically inflamed by aliens. It’s surrounded by a kind of psychedelic wall made of some kind of blow-bubble liquid.

Five well-armed soldier women — a biologist played by Natalie Portman plus Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny — enter this realm on foot, hoping to figure out the root of it all and at the same time save the life of Portman’s husband (Oscar Isaac) who has escaped Area X but is all fucked up…lethargic, no memory, spitting blood, ridden with disease.

In the book it’s a team of four, not five, that goes in, and the women represent the twelfth such expedition. The eleven previous expeditions have all ended in death or erasure for all the participants. Who would be stupid enough to join the twelfth expedition under these circumstances?

Annihilation is imaginative in ways that might feel vaguely new if you haven’t seen Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Stalker (’79) or, more to the point, read “Roadside Picnic,” the 1972 Russian horror novel by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky that inspired the Tarkovsky film. Or seen the two American-made sci-fi thrillers — John McTiernan‘s Predator and James Cameron‘s Aliens — that came in their wake.

So it’s not precisely “new”, but it’s definitely a grade-A, above-average haunted horror film for sci-fi dweebs. But Joe and Jane Popcorn? Not so much.

“This is imaginative, that’s imaginative,” I muttered to myself last night. “Not that I give that much of a shit, but it’s imaginative.”

90th Oscar Awards co-producer MIKE DELUCA sitting at his desk in a moderate-sized office. Nicely decorated, delicate delighting, a tropical plant. DeLuca’s phone buzzes. It’s his assistant, LORNA DOONE.

DELUCA: Hey.
LORNA: Mike? Warren Beatty on two.
DELUCA: (beat) Really?
LORZNA: On two.

DeLuca hits flashing button.

DELUCA: Warren!
BEATTY: (To someone else) Hah, okay. (into phone) Mike!
DELICA: So what up?
BEATTY: Look, Mike, I want another shot.
DELUCA: (grimacing) Aww, come on, Warren.
BEATTY: I don’t mean presenting the Best Picture Oscar again. I’d just like to present another award for dignity’s sake. Actually, Faye and I together.
DELUCA: (uncomfortable) I…I don’t know.

BEATTY: We’d just like to come on, present some minor award, clean and neat, a couple of bon mots and exit stage left.
DELUCA: You feel bad about last year. I hear you.
BEATTY: I have almost 60 years in this business, Mike. Faye has over 55. Millennials and GenZs don’t know us, but the over 40s do. Okay, the over-50s. We have some standing in this industry. We just don’t want to go out like a couple of clowns.
DELUCA: I don’t think you flubbed it.
BEATTY: Remember what Kimmel said?
DELUCA: It wasn’t your fault, dude.
BEATTY: Kimmel said, “Warren, what did you dooo?” We just wanna come out and keep it simple and dignified. You and Suzanne can check the copy.
LORNA (obviously listening in) I think it’ll take strain off the show, Mike.
DELUCA: (caving) All right. But no hemming and hawing at the lecturn, Warren!
BEATTY: No hemming and hawing.

In the wake of Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain was basking in worldwide praise and a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as Maya, a CIA officer who was super-focused on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. She was sitting on top of the world. She won the Golden Globe Award Best Actress for this performance, and was thereafter hailed for her strong turns in A Most Violent Year (’14), Miss Sloane (’16) and Molly’s Game (’17).

And now she’s about to costar in a New Line horror film, i.e., a sequel to Andy Muschietti‘s It? If you were Chastain, would you go up against Pennywise at this stage in your career? Something happens to a dramatic actress’s brand when she descends into horror.

Chastain is doing this for the dough, of course, but think of what happened to Vera Farmiga when she switched from sophisticated adult dramas (Down to the Bone, The Manchurian Candidate, Breaking and Entering, The Departed, Up in the Air) to that four-year Bates Motel series and those Conjuring movies and Liam Neeson schlock like The Commuter. She’s in Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, true, but she’s mainly identified with pulp these days. She’s more or less regarded as a scream queen.

David Hare, S.J. Clarkson and Carey Mulligan‘s Collateral (Netflix, 3.9) is only 18 days away. A London-based crime thriller about an investigation into the murder of a pizza delivery guy. Set over the course of four days, it’s about Detective Inspector Kip Glaspie (Mulligan) becoming persuaded that the murder wasn’t some random thoughtless act.

Boilerplate: “Glaspie is caught up in a whirlwind investigation to track down the killer and uncover the darker underbelly behind the attack. Meanwhile, politician David Mars (John Simm) gets caught up in the drama through his turbulent relationship with his troubled and unpredictable ex-wife Karen (Billie Piper), and vicar Jane Oliver (Nicola Walker) is forced to conceal her affair with the only witness to the crime.”

This sounds potentially awesome. I adore smart and layered police procedurals, especially when written by someone as storied as Hare. And Mulligan just gets better and better — no stopping her.

I’m looking forward to finally seeing Eugene Jarecki‘s The King within the next few weeks. I’ve missed it twice so far — a somewhat longer version that premiered at last May’s Cannes Film Festival under the title The Promised Land, and a tightened version that played Sundance ’18 under the current title. Oscilloscope will be releasing Jarecki’s doc “later this year,” according to Variety‘s Dave McNary in a piece that ran on 1.17.

Jarecki says the Cannes version “wasn’t finished” and that people who’ve seen both versions have found it “hugely changed.”

Condensed logline: “A musical road trip across America in Elvis Presley‘s 1963 Rolls Royce, and a doc that explores how a country boy lost his authenticity and became a king while his country lost her democracy and became an empire.”

Extended logline: “Featuring cameos from the likes of Alec Baldwin, Chuck D, Emmylou Harris, Ethan Hawke and Mike Myers and set 40 years after Presley’s death, the doc is about Jarecki recalling the country Presley left behind. From the deep south to New York, Las Vegas and beyond, a tapestry of luminaries and unknown Americans join the journey, expressing themselves in words and song.”

Excerpt from David Ehrlich’s Indiewire review, filed on 5.20.17: “A documentary as sprawling and brilliant and flawed as the country it traverses, The Promised Land is a fascinatingly overstuffed portrait of America in decline.

“In the process, it’s also (a) a biography of the 20th century’s most famous musician, (b) a story about how a man became king of a democratic nation, (c) a nuanced analysis of cultural appropriation in a multi-racial society, (d) a southern-fried rock n’ roll performance piece, (e) a horrifyingly sober look at the rise of Donald Trump, (f) a closed-casket funeral service for The American Dream, (g) the best recent film about how the hell we got here and more. So much more.

Despite what Variety‘s Kris Tapley posted at the end of a 2.20 piece titled “Oscar Best Picture Winner Poised to Rout History,” Oscar balloting begins today (2.20) and finishes seven days hence (2.27). Tapley wrote that “final ballots go out Feb. 27.” In what descriptive or metaphysical realm are final Oscar ballots going “out” seven days from now? They need to be completed by that day and heading back “in“, no?

Hollywood Elsewhere feels obliged to remind Academy voters that giving your Best Picture vote to a film that doesn’t have the horses to even begin to qualify as the “best” film of the year by any seasoned criteria, despite the emotional chords it managed to strike in your chest cavity, is a perfectly natural thing, and you shouldn’t feel squeamish or hesitant about that.

Especially if you’re among the younger wave of Academy members, numbering 1457, who were invited to join in 2016 (683) and ’17 (774). You have earned your bones, newbies, and have a full and absolute right to get it wrong as much as those Academy members who gave the Best Picture Oscar to all those right-for-the-zeitgeist button pushers (Driving Miss Daisy, Chicago, The Greatest Show on Earth, Chariots of Fire, Crash, Forrest Gump, Around The World in Eighty Days) of the past. There’s no shame in this. Academy members have been embarassing themselves for decades. From time to time, I mean.

I guess I was wrong in stating yesterday that The Shape of Water is locked to win Best Picture. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe the “kooky” (Tom O’Neil‘s term) preferential ballot will allow a popular second-place contender to sneak in and take the prize. The beloved Guillermo del Toro is definitely assured of a Best Director win, and no one will steal pre-engraved Oscars from the four acting lockdowns (Oldman, McDormand, Rockwell, Janney), and the winner of the Best Original Screenplay will be…I’m undecided. Probably Get Out but Sunday’s Best Picture BAFTA win might have given Three Billboards some last-minute momentum. But all hail Call Me By Your Name‘s James Ivory, at least, for his guaranteed Best Adapted Screenplay win.

There are reportedly 6687 Academy members now, and the new crowd (1457) represents…what, 17% or 18% of the total?