Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Babel, the final installment in what some called his “trilogy of death” (the first two being Amores perros and 21 Grams), opened on 10.27.06. A morose if brilliantly woven tapestry piece about random fates, Babel earned $34,302,837 domestic and $135,330,182 worldwide. It collected seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director — for a while it looked like a winner) and won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama.

And over the last 11 years, the twitterverse has been reflexively shitting on it. Too grim, “misery porn,” schematically forced, etc. I was a devout Babel worshipper during the ’06 and early ’07 award season, but the negative aftermath has been so persistent over the last 11 years that my admiration has weakened or even lapsed. Against my own critical judgment and history, I’ve come to associate Babel with vibes and feelings that I’d rather not revisit.

What a blessing and a refreshment, then, to watch Fandor’s “Found in Translation, Part 1: Babel & the Global Hollywood Gaze,” the first of a three-part series. What a breath of fresh air to reconsider Babel without the residual Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic poison to contend with.

The title is the title, although the three-part essay is actually about the south-of-the-border rennaissance that began with the emergence of Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro in the late ’90s.

None of this year’s Best Picture nominees delivered anything close to the currents in Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants, particularly in those two scenes between George Clooney, Matthew Lillard and Judy Greer. Six years ago, feels like longer.

Posted on 1.26.17 from the Sundance Film Festival: Hollywood Elsewhere loves Icarus, the Russian doping doc that Netflix picked up two or three days ago. I’ve no striking observations or insights to add to the general chorus, but I can at least say that after a slow start Icarus turns into a highly gripping account of real-life skullduggery and paranoia in the sense of the classic William S. Burroughs definition of the term — i.e., “knowing all the facts.”

As noted, Bryan Fogel‘s two-hour film starts off as a doping variation of Morgan Spurlock‘s Super Size Me, and then suddenly veers into the realm of Laura Poitras‘ Citizenfour.

It doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know or suspect, mainly that (a) the use of performance-enhancing drugs is very common in sports (everyone does it, Lance Armstrong was the tip of the iceberg) and (b) there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Vladmir Putin and his top henchmen and the Al Capone mob of 1920s Chicago — lying, cheating sociopaths of the highest or lowest order (take your pick).

I was a little worried during the Super Size Me portion, in which bicyclist Fogel and Russian scientist Grigory Rodchenkov embark on a project with the goal of outsmarting athletic doping tests. It’s interesting at first, but it goes on too long. After a while I was muttering “so when does the Russian doping stuff kick in?”

Suddenly it does. Rodchenkov gradually admits to Fogel that he orchestrated a Putin-sanctioned doping program that gave the Russian athletes an advantage at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, which led to the winning of 13 gold medals.

A little more than two months ago, it was announced that Russia’s Olympic team had been barred from the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The reason for this historic, forehead-slapping decision can be found in Bryan Fogel‘s Oscar-nominated documentary Icarus, which has been paying on Netflix since last August.

Talk about a timely documentary with the South Korean games just beginning and Russia conspicuously absent from each and every event.

Icarus director Bryan Fogel during last night’s Netflix party at Hollywood Athletic Club; (r.) Icarus co-producer Andrew Siegman.

The reason for Russia’s removal from the 2018 Winter Games was initially explained in a 5.12.16 N.Y. Times report about a massive state-run doping program, which has been organized and then exposed by Grigory Rodchenkov, director of Russia’s antidoping laboratory during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

The Russian banning came after incontrovertible evidence, supplied by Rodchenkov, of “a brazen and pervasive state-run doping program that has likely tainted Russian results for the entirety of modern Olympic history,” as Vulture‘s Jada Yuan put in last year.

The story of how Rodchenkov came to confess his participation in this massive doping program, and how he was then forced to leave Russia for the U.S. in order to save his life, is the stuff of Icarus, which had its big debut at Sundance ’17 and was re-celebrated last night at Hollywood Athletic Club party on Sunset Blvd.

I’m as startled and saddened as everyone else about the sudden death of composer Johann Johannsson. He was found dead yesterday in his Berlin apartment. Hugs and condolences to family, friends, colleagues and fans of this gifted artist, who was only 48.

Johann Johannsson during Toronto Film festival’s Theory of Everything after-party in September 2014.

I last spoke with Johannsson during the 2014 Toronto Film Festival, when he was doing interviews to promote his Theory of Everything score, which wound up winning a Golden Globe award in early ’15. An amiable fellow, obviously bright, etc.

We actually had our longest chat during the TIFF Theory of Everything after-party. I especially recall Johannsson reminding me about Alex North having composed a rejected score for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that it’s purchasable online.

I was totally turned around by Johannsson’s churning, disruptive score for Darren Aronofsky‘s mother!.

Johannsson’s last completed score was for Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene, which Universal will open on 3.22.

Who dies suddenly at 48?

Johnannson’s scores in no particular order: Denis Villenueve‘s Prisoners, Sicario and Arrival, James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything and The Mercy, Darren Aronfosky‘s mother!, Panos Cosmatos‘ Mandy, Davis’s Mary Magdalene.

Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein‘s I Feel Pretty (STX, 6.29) is basically about the power of a positive self-image. It’s about a plump, bordering-on-fat woman (Amy Schumer) who discovers a wildly positive view of herself after being hit on the head during a workout session. She suddenly sees a total knockout in the mirror. If she thinks she’s beautiful then she is, etc.

The premise is similar to that of John Cromwell‘s The Enchanted Cottage (’45). It was about a disfigured Air Force pilot (Robert Young) falling in love with a shy, homely maid (Dorothy Maguire), and how their feelings for each other transform them into handsome/beautiful, at least in their own eyes. The audience saw them as highly attractive also but the supporting characters in the film didn’t.

There probably isn’t any delicate, tippy-toed, politically correct way to say that the Schumer who stars in I Feel Pretty looks different than the one who starred in Trainwreck three years ago.

Note: Around 9:25 pm I somehow deleted this post on my WordPress iPhone app. I had to re-post all over again, but somehow the original comments were saved. I don’t know what happened.

Schumer in Trainwreck, which opened three years ago at South by Southwest.

Schumer in I Feel Pretty.

The only time I’ve ever seen those idiotic, irritating VHS scratches or static lines or whatever the fuck they are was on old, worn-down, VHS tapes that had recorded upon over and over. They never appeared on a store-bought or store-rented VHS tape.

John Gavin, who had only one truly decent role as an actor and, when you get right down to it, only one really good line in his entire career, has left this mortal coil. He was 86. Until today I never knew (or cared to know) that the tall, handsome, dark-complexioned Gavin was born Juan Vincent Apablasa, and that he was of Mexican and Chilean descent, and was fluent in Spanish at an early age.

Gavin’s moment in the sun came when he played Fairvale hardware store owner Sam Loomis, the randy boyfriend of Janet Leigh‘s Marion Crane, in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho (’60).

His one great line happened when Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) visited Sam’s store in search of Lila. When Sam realized the conversation was becoming too personal and agitated, he told store clerk Bob (Frank Killmond) to “run out and get some lunch.” When Bob said, “Oh, that’s okay, Sam, I brought it with me,” Loomis said, “Run out and eat it.”

The Rock Hudson-esque Gavin was also pretty good in Douglas Sirk‘s Imitation of Life (’59) and as the young Julius Caesar in Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus, although he always brought a certain chiselled stiffness to whatever he played.

Gavin almost stepped in as the new post-George Lazenby 007 in Diamonds Are Forever (’71), but that went south when Sean Connery was lured back with a grand payday.

5:45 pm update: Rose McGowan has apparently cancelled her previously scheduled appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, presumably due to the recent suicide of her former manager, Jill Messick.

Earlier: Two days after the tragic suicide of her ex-manager Jill Messick, Rose McGowan is due to appear on tonight’s Real Time with Bill Maher. If you were Maher, would you ask McGowan about that claim from Messick’s family that Messick was “victimized” and partly nudged towards self-destruction by certain charges alleged by McGowan? Or would you go easy in the name of sensitivity?

Producer friend: “Even though Rose is a victim whom I support, I think she went too far in bringing Jill into this. If I was Jill’s family, I would feel that Rose has some residual responsibility for Jill’s passing. It’s all too sad. I just hope Rose handles the Maher thing well and not in her usual manic way.” Me: “‘Residual responsibility’? If you accept that statement from Jill’s family, Rose’s comments about Messick to the N.Y. Times last October and in her Brave book prodded Jill toward suicide.”

Tonight’s other Real Time guests are Rep. Adam Schiff, Johann Hari, Richard Painter and White House journalist April Ryan.

Hollywood Elsewhere regrets having to leave Santa Barbara yesterday afternoon, and thereby missing last night’s SBIFF tribute to I, Tonya‘s Margot Robbie and Allison Janney, both of whom are Oscar-nominated in their respective acting categories. To judge by the clips Hollywood Reporter awards columnist Scott Feinberg did another swell job of interviewing. Robbie hasn’t a chance of winning Best Actress, as we all know — Three Billboards‘ Frances McDormand will almost certainly take it, although there’s a very slight chance of Lady Bird‘s Saoirse Ronan pulling off a surprise win. Janney, on the other hand, is almost guaranteed to beat Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf (my personal pick) for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

I don’t know for a fact that Rod Lurie’s deathbed director (i.e., a major brand-name helmer who begged Lurie to never work with a certain actor, according to Lurie’s account) was the late John Frankenheimer, and that the actor Lurie promised to never hire was Val Kilmer. But these are pretty good guesses.

Lurie described the late unnamed helmer as a “mentor” on Facebook yesterday, which is the same term he used in describing Frankenheimer in a 10.4.16 interview to promote Killing Reagan. (Quote: “My mentor was John Frankenheimer.”) When I asked Lurie about this, he said “no comment.”

Frankenheimer is on the record for having loathed and despised Kilmer after working with him on the horribly troubled Island of Dr. Moreau shoot in the mid ’90s. Frankenheimer has been widely quoted as saying “even if I was directing a film called The Life of Val Kilmer, I wouldn’t have that prick in it.”

Frankenheimer was also quoted as saying “I don’t like Val Kilmer, I don’t like his work ethic, and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.”

The late, great John Frankenheimer.

Frankenheimer, whom I knew slightly, died on 7.6.02. By that point Lurie, who apparently became chummy with Frankenheimer after writing something fair and respectful during a rough patch in Frankenheimer’s career (possibly during or after the Dr. Moreau debacle), was well situated as a feature director, having made Deterrence (’99), The Contender (’00) and The Last Castle (’01).

So let’s imagine Lurie sitting by Frankenheimer’s bedside sometime in early or mid ’02, except Lurie isn’t Lurie — he’s me. Speaking with my attitude, my philosophy, my sense of things.

Including the fact that I harbor no ill feelings about Kilmer. I helped report that “Psycho Kilmer” Entertainment Weekly article that ran in mid ’96, but I had a nice chat with him at a party he threw at his home back in ’04 or thereabouts. (He had just finished working on Oliver Stone‘s Alexander.) I ran into Kilmer again in the fall of ’11 while having lunch with Descendants costar Judy Greer. We waved and smiled as Kilmer sat at a nearby table. When I tried to pay the bill the waitress told me the check had been taken care of by “that man sitting over there,” except Kilmer had left by that point.

Anyway….

Frankenheimer: I want you to promise me one thing, Rod. I may not be around much longer, but I want to know that you’ll never, ever work with that prick. Please.

Lurie: Uh-huh.

Frankenheimer: Will you promise me this?

Lurie: No Kilmer?

Frankenheimer: I want your word.

Lurie: For what…the rest of my life?

Frankenheimer: We’re friends and I want you to promise me this.

Lurie: Look, John, I love you like a father and I’m sorry for what you went through, but you can’t…

Frankenheimer: What?

Lurie: You know as well as anyone that we all…

Frankenheimer: Rod…