Oprah Winfrey‘s energy, compassion, discipline, business acumen and progressive views…her positivism, reach-out attitude, brains, confidence, phenomenal wealth…all of this would make her an excellent antidote to the Donald Trump poison if she were to run for President in 2020. Because she would almost certainly win.
I’d vote for Oprah without hesitation, without blinking an eye. Compared to the grotesque horrors emanating from the current White House occupant, President Winfrey would be a huge relief, a godsend…water from a mountain stream. Another headstrong leader, yes, but a sane one.
In mid-November ’16 Michael Mooresaid that Democrats “would be better off if they ran Oprah or Tom Hanks or…why don’t we run beloved people? I mean, we have so many of them. The Republicans do this.”
But at the same time I’m a little scared. Because Winfrey is a political neophyte, and she’d probably be looking at a steep learning curve, certainly in terms of D.C. relationships and practical politics. Remember how she said that she felt “hope” when President-elect Trump meet with President Obama 14 months ago? That was embarassing. Plus her ass has been steadily smooched by big media and tens of millions of fans since the mid ’80s, and keeping her cool and mounting a defense once the Republicans bring out their heavy artillery would be a new skill set for her.
We all know Oprah is brilliant and that she actually reads and is probably 25 times more knowledgable than Trump about the major issues, but I haven’t actually heard her specific views on anything. Maybe she should expound a bit on taxes, health care, military strategy, alternative fuels, climate change and North Korea before we all jump off the cliff?
Boiled down Oprah is the same kind of high-profile personality and political journeyman that Trump was/is — a self-made billionaire business person and a magnetic TV personality with a huge following. Winfrey would be the hopeful, progressive and inclusive side of this equation, but she’d be seen by many as a fundamentally Trump-ish candidate in the sense of being a political outsider with no I.O.U’s held by special corporate interests, etc. Okay, she’s in tight with liberal progressives, of course, but somehow this clan doesn’t feel as odious, at least not from my perspective.
Not long ago a director friend mentioned that of all the things he liked about Mudbound, he was most impressed by Rachel Morrison‘s cinematography. It’s not poised or prettified, he said, but it has an au natural thing — a humid, plain-as-dirt, you-are-there atmosphere.
A relatively young dp, Morrison delivered her first major-league score with her lensing of Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station (’13). She also shot Daniel Barnz and Jennifer Aniston‘s Cake (’14) and Zal Batmanglij‘s The Sound Of My Voice (’11).
What defines a really successful comedy? Being funny, of course, and preferably in a way that’s not too coarse or lowbrow. Clever, witty, feel-goody. You want it to be accessible enough for Joe and Jane Popcorn to have a good time with it, but you also want film critics to stand up and salute. And you definitely want it to turn a healthy profit. Some comedies do well with critics but not so much at the box-office. Or vice versa. And some fizzle all around the track — cruddy reviews, low grosses, unpopular with popcorn munchers, etc. Very few comedies hit it on all four burners.
Not everyone realizes that Amazon’s The Big Sick, which opened on 6.23.17 after debuting at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, has done exactly that. And this, by any fair standard, drops it into the Best Picture realm.
A dryly amusing indie comedy about ethnic issues affecting a relationship between Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani), a laid-back Pakistani comic, and Emily (Zoe Kazan), a spunky, willful white girl, The Big Sick managed a 98% Rotten Tomatoes rating and sold a shitload of tickets to Average Joes. It cost $5 million to make and earned $55 million worldwide, excluding ancillary revenue. Even if you throw in the “Hollywood bookkeeping” factor, you’ll still be well in the black.
The Big Sick has even become a top award contender in recent weeks. Holly Hunter‘s performance as Kazan’s mom has snagged several Best Supporting Actress nominations (the Independent Spirit Awards, several critics groups); ditto the screenplay (co-written by Nanjiani and wife Emily V. Gordon, and based on their actual romantic history) as well as the film itself being Best Picture-nominated by the Critics Choice Awards, the Satellite Awards and the Producers Guild of America.
Four burners plus the awards action makes five. Do I hear six?
I’ve seen The Big Sick three times, and each time it’s felt fresh and natural and sharp as a tack. It gains. After seeing it in Park City I called it droll humor for smarties and hipsters as well as dry and diverting. You never really know where it’s going, and that’s just how I like it. I loved the terrorist jokes (no, seriously), and it really does come together emotionally during the last 25%.
Nanjiani embroiders with a unique tone and sensibility, certainly within the realm of a modern American love story. He and Kazan hold things together for the first 40%, but it’s Hunter and Ray Romano (as Kazan’s dad) who bring it home.
The only thing that really “happened” this evening was that Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney were energized in their respective Best Supporting categories. Dafoe isn’t as inevitable as he seemed earlier this evening, and Janney is aggressively snipping at Laurie Metcalf‘s heels. The snubbing of Call Me By Your Name (Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, not to mention the film itself) made the HFPA seem timid and a bit dim. I don’t know how to assess the snubbing of The Post except to lump it in with the SAG and DGA blow-offs. Chris Nolan‘s brilliant Dunkirk was also dismissed, probably over the same old complaint about an ostensible lack of heart. For me the shunning of Jordan Peele‘s Get Out felt like a welcome respite from the incessant p.c. largesse-ing of recent weeks, and those candids of Daniel Kaluuya‘s subdued, almost forlorn expressions (“I’m good but let’s not get carried away”) won my respect.
8:07 pm: HE email to Call Me By Your Name‘s Luca Guadagnino: “You and your highly esteemed colleagues (Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, James Ivory, Peter Spears, Howard Rosenman, Sufjan Stevens) made the absolute finest film of 2017….hands down, no question, history will acknowledge. I will continue to say this over and over because it’s true. I love you and your facility, your gift. Onward, hugs, creations.”
8:04 pm: Barbra Streisand presenting the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama, and the winner is Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. Hugs and congrats all around, but I’d also love to hear from Chris Willman about this. Streisand won Best Director for Yentl 34 years ago, she reminds — the last time a woman won. Time’s up!
7:59 pm: Will Three Billboards‘ Frances McDormand or Shape of Water‘s Sally Hawkins win for Best Actress, Drama? McDormand wins! “I have a few things to say. I’m still not quite sure who the HFPA [members] are when I run into them, and they managed to elect a female president….just saying. Everybody brought their very best game to this one. The women in this room tonight are not here for the food — we are here for the work. Thank you.”
7:52 pm: Gary Oldman‘s chances of winning the Best Actor Oscar would have been down the tubes if he hadn’t won tonight, but he did. Golden Globe winner for Best Actor, Drama, and he forgot to thank director Joe Wright! And now, it seems, he’s a likely winner for the Oscar. C’est la vie, c’est la guerre. Timothy Chalamet, Oldman’s closest rival, will have many shots over the years and decades to come.
7:45 pm: The Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical goes to Lady Bird…of course! Greta Gerwig ascendant! The story of her life transformed. Hollywood Elsewhere totally approves. I remember that electric moment when I first saw it in Telluride.
My Telluride email to Gerwig: “By far the best, wisest, smartest, most emotionally resonant film I’ve seen at Telluride ’17. No question. I will say as much tomorrow morning. It’s the only real break-out and pop-through. And Saoirse Ronan, of course, for Best Actress. Loveless and First Reformed were also excellent, of course. But Lady Bird was/is the best of the bunch.”
7:35 pm: Lady Bird‘s Saoirse Ronan wins Best Actress in Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical. Well earned, fully supported, enthusiastically cheered. Everyone is getting pushed off too quickly, it seems. It’s 7:37 pm — the producers want this show over by 8 pm. It’s now 7:43 pm — they’re not gonna make it.
7:28 pm: HBO’s Big Little Lies wins for Best TV Movie or Limited Series. Watched two episodes, wasn’t delighted but didn’t mind it, couldn’t stay with it. If you ask me the awards onslaught (including the 2017 Emmys) is out of proportion to how good it really is/was. Who strongly disagrees?
7:18 pm: The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro wins Best Director award! “This fable has saved my life…The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water.” Guillermo tells the band to stop playing him off: “This has taken 25 years…give me a minute, give me a minute. I thank you [and] my monsters thank you.” Obviously The Shape of Water is going to win Best Motion Picture, Drama. 8:08 pm Update: Wrong!
7:03 pm: It’s time for the big Oprah Winfrey tribute. A good, willful progressive with her priorities straight, but never forget what Winfrey said in the wake of President-Elect Donald Trump‘s visit to the Obama White House: “I just saw the two of them together, [and] I will say this: I just saw President-elect Trump with President Obama in the White House and it gave me hope. To hear President-elect Trump say that he had respect for President Obama, it felt that he had reached a moment where he was actually humbled by that experience.” This, ladies and gentlemen, is part of who and what Oprah is. Be honest. Irrefutable. That aside, Winfrey’s speech is heartfelt, show-stopping. Truth-slap to racism, paternal power and brutal men, whose “time is up.”
6:56 pm: Master of None‘s Aziz Ansari wins for Best Actor in TV Series, Musical or Comedy. Check.
6:53 pm: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Best Series, Musical/Comedy) is really doing well tonight. On my knees, I guarantee with all my heart that I’ll never, ever watch this…ever.
6:40 pm: Fatih Akin‘s In The Fade (a top Hollywood Elsewhere favorite along with Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless) wins for Best Foreign Language Film! Congrats to all concerned, and particularly Diane Kruger, who gave a world-class, drill-bit performance. Congrats to the formidable Fredel Pogodin, who handled L.A.’s In The Fade publicity and screenings.
6:37 pm: Martin McDonagh wins for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri — second setback for Lady Bird following Laurie MetCalf‘s unexpected loss to Allison Janney.
6:33 pm: Before presenting the Best Screenplay award, an out-of-the-blue tribute to Kirk Douglas, who’s 101 years old. Isn’t it great how age takes your legs away and shrinks you down to roughly half your size when you were in your prime?
6:28 pm: Allison Janney win Best Supporting Actress in I, Tonya! Second major upset of the night following Sam Rockwell win. I don’t think this means a damn thing, but credit is due. I, Tonya has its admirers, but it’s an ugly, ugly film — a wallow in a coarse social milieu.
6:22 pm: Coco wins Best Animated feature. No offense but Hollywood Elsewhere doesn’t do “animated.” But (a) congrats to all concerned, (b) takes all realms to make a world.
6:08 pm: Golden Globe for Best Actor, Comedy/Musical goes to James Franco! Like I wanted/predicted. Big hugs, applause, etc And he brings Dracula up on stage! “This was a movie about the best/worst movie ever made,” etc. Costar Dave Franco accompanies. Winner Franco getting played off. Franco brothers prevail — good one!
6:07 pm: Out of the shower. What’d I miss? Nothing.
5:57 pm: I’m sorry but I have to take a shower. If not now, when? The Golden Globe for Best Musical Score goes to Alexander Desplat for The Shape of Water. An omen of things to come? The Greatest Showman‘s “This Is Me” wins for Best Song….meh.
5:52 pm: Amusing and energetic Seth Rogen hyping The Disaster Artist at the mike. The actual Tommy Wiseau at the table. The reel runs, and before you know it we’re onto the next thing. Alexander Skarsgard wins for Best Supporting Actor, Limited Series, Big Little Lies.
5:44 pm: John Goodman is cool, of course, but isn’t Rosanne Barr a serious Trump supporter? Sterling K. Brown wins for Best Actor in a TV series, Drama, in This Is Us. The Handmaid’s Tale wins for Best TV Series, Drama.
5:32 pm: Rachel Brosnahan wins GG for Best Actress in a TV comedy, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. One of these days I’ll hear the name “Rachel Brosnahan” and go “of course!” The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Elizabeth Moss wins for Best Actress, TV Drama…great. Uhhm…Moss was excellent in Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square!
5:18 pm: Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor goes to Three Billboards‘ Sam Rockwell! Surprise, right? Slight upset. Willem Dafoe stunned. What does this mean? Probably nothing but goorah for Rockwell, and goorah for Rockwell have lost the weight he put on for Three Billboards. Rockwell gets played off…my respect for going on that long. A much more interesting acceptance speech than Kidman’s.
5:15 pm: Big Little Lies‘ Nicole Kidman wins for Best Actress in a Limited Series….blather, blather, thank you thank you, tearful nod to her husband Keith Urban, etc. God bless, thank you…zzzzz.
5:10 pm: Calling out racism, sexism, hyprocrisy…all guys are vaguely guilty and some more so, that marvellous steely glare…Seth Meyers is such a bullwhip, so whip-lashy! Clever patter, kinda hate the man!
“Good evening, ladies and remaining gentlemen. Marijuana is legal and sexual harassment finally isn’t. For the males in the audience, this will be the first time in three months that it won’t be terrifying to hear your name read out loud. If it’s any consolation, I’m a man with absolutely no power in Hollywood.”
Didn’t I read Meyers wouldn’t be telling Trump jokes? “Remember when [Seth Rogen] was the guy making trouble in North Korea?” “Hollywood…Foreign…Press..the only names that would make Trump angrier would be the Hillary Mexico Salad Association,” blah blah.
“Harvey Weinstein will be back in 20 years as the first person who was ever booed during the ‘In Memoriam’ segment.” Doesn’t the late Harry Cohn have that honor?
The Golden Globe awards will begin at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern. Never forget that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association lives in its own little world, and that their picks are…well, they’re fine but not all that consequential. The only real benefit of winning a Golden Globe award is that you get to sell the fence-sitters with your acceptance speech. Remarks that are especially eloquent, confessional or heartfelt tend to enhance or underline one’s Oscar worthiness.
I’ll be posting my usual live-blog reactions to the winners as the show progresses.
Best Film, Drama: Not a single Gold Derby-ite is predicting a win for the most beautifully woven and emotionally seductive drama of 2017 — Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name. Allow me, then, to predict this, partly because it’s the only film to vote for and partly out of spite for the herd-voting mentality. The Derby-os are mostly predicting a win for Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water, which isn’t a “drama” as much as a romantic fantasy genre film –i.e., The Creature from the Love Lagoon. If Shape wins, great. But it won’t beat Lady Bird for the Best Picture Oscar.
Best Film, Comedy/Musical: The GD gang has almost unanimously predicted that Greta Gerwig‘s Lady Bird will win in a walk. HE agrees.
Best Director: The triumphant artist-poet who directed 2017’s finest film — Call Me By Your Name‘s Luca Guadagnino — hasn’t even been nominated by the HFPA so who cares? This is a joke. The Gold Derby-os are of the strong opinion that Guillermo del Toro will win. I for one would like to see Dunkirk‘s Christopher Nolan take it. Not would I mind if All The Money in the World‘s Ridley Scott wins as a gesture of respect for his last-minute nine-day re-shoot with Christopher Plummer.
Best Actor, Drama: There are more Gee Dees predicting a Gary Oldman win for his Winston Churchill than a triumph for Call Me By Your Name‘s Timothee Chalamet. I’d like to think that the relatively small group of HFPA voters might step outside the box and give the award to the younger contender. There really is no comparison between what the 22 year-old Chalamet pulls off in Luca Guadagnino‘s film vs. Oldman’s hammy, heavily-made-up performance in Darkest Hour. I’m predicting Chalamet, but I’m not confident that he’ll win.
I’m personally sad that the Fox Searchlight people have removed me from their Golden Globe viewing-party invite list, but I guess it’s not that much of a tragedy. Because I’ll be watching the show from home (5 pm to 8 pm), I’ll actually be able to hear what the presenters and winners will say. Last year the less-than-brilliant sound system inside the Fox Pavilion and the wallah-wallah from the guests, especially during the final 40 minutes or so, resulted in my missing 80% of the material.
Now I’ll have to hike over to Century Park West at 8:15 pm and wait in some long, snaky line for the slow-ass shuttles, and then the shuttles will creep down Santa Monica Blvd. at a snail’s pace, and then we’ll all get dropped off, blah blah.
I was there in the Hilton lobby just after the show ended last year. There was a horrible, mile-long line in the Hilton lobby just to get into the Amazon-bound elevators. [Video after the jump.] But Hollywood Elsewhere and the loyal and resourceful Svetlana Cvetko are not line-waiters. We knew what to do! Picked up our wristbands, found a staircase, took a deep breath and walked up the eight flights (i.e., 16 staircases divided by a landing). Ingenuity, lung power, determination, aching calf and thigh muscles.
Before delivering his opening monologue at tonight’s Golden Globe awards telecast, the joyously judgmental, ironically smart-assed Seth Meyers had better wise up. Because his faux-ironic, nyah-nyah, finger-pointing bullshit is about to get old.
I’m saying this because attitudes have suddenly shifted about the #MeToo beheadings, and about Meyers, whose “Closer Look” essays on Late Night with Seth Meyers have revealed a guy who’s been having the time of his life with the Robespierre-like terror of the last several weeks. Let no one doubt that Meyers has been chowing down on this big-time, and has never indicated the slightest hint of a conflicted attitude about it.
The preying showbiz fiends who’ve made life miserable for so many women for so many years have been disciplined big-time, and there can be no response other than relief that the world is now becoming a kinder, more compassionate and less oppressive place. Predatory dino behavior hasn’t been permanently cancelled, but the perps are scared and hooray for that specific effect.
“You can be sure that this weekend at the Golden Globes, Hollywood celebrities, not exactly known for their independent thinking, will turn the red carpet into a #MeToo moment replete with designer duds,” Merkin begins. “Many have promised to wear black dresses to protest the stream of allegations against industry moguls and actors. Perhaps Meryl Streep will get grilled — again — about what she knew about Harvey Weinstein. The rest of us will diligently follow along on Twitter, sharing hashtags and suitably pious opprobrium.
“But privately, I suspect, many of us, including many longstanding feminists, will be rolling our eyes, having had it with the reflexive and unnuanced sense of outrage that has accompanied this cause from its inception, turning a bona fide moment of moral accountability into a series of ad hoc and sometimes unproven accusations.
I’ve always noticed that the MGM Bluray is very slightly horizontally compressed or squeezed from the sides — faces are just a tad narrower than they should be. One comparison looks at a shot of an office lobby with a kind of global sphere on a pedestal. Obviously spheres are supposed be perfectly round, but the sphere in the MGM Bluray is clearly oblong.
An essay called “Season of Assumption” was posted earlier today (1.6) by MCN’s David Poland. He begins by saying that “there has never been less plain talk in an Oscar season,” and then he dribbles the basketball for 19 or 20 paragraphs until he finally scores at the end.
“With ‘white movies,’ 10 or so crash and that leaves 30 in play,” Poland says. “In ‘POC movies’ you lose one and you’re down to three. Detroit gets waylaid and you’re down to two. Mudbound gets Netflix-sidebarred and then there’s only Get Out. And suddenly, the entire issue of race at the Academy comes down to a horror-comedy-thriller from a first-time director.
“That’s crazy. No matter how much you love Get Out or see the social discussion as the focus of the film…whether it gets nominated or not…crazy. It’s also crazy to argue that if Get Out isn’t included in the Best Picture nominees that racism is primarily responsible.”
Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird has won the National Society of Film Critics’ award for Best Film of 2017. The A24 release is now that much closer to winning the Best Picture Oscar. The older fence-sitters who’ve been saying to themselves “but it’s just a teenage coming-of-age story!” will now be thinking twice.
Get Out and Phantom Thread were the first and second runners-up with Jordan Peele‘s film having lost by only two votes, according to Variety‘s Kris Tapley. Given that a healthy percentage of the NSFC members are Get Out wokers, coolios and p.c. disciples, I’m hugely relieved that this divine mathematical intervention has occured.
The wokers did, however, manage a majority vote when it came to the NSFC’s Best Actor award. Will L.A. Daily News critic Bob Strauss argue with a straight face that Get Out‘s Daniel Kaluuya truly deserves this honor? Maybe he will, but if so his fingers, trust me, will be crossed. I’ve been sensing from Kaluuya’s modest remarks over the last couple of weeks that he, too, feels it’s a bit much.
Kaluuya delivered three behaviors in Get Out — cool and collected, slightly scared and super-scared with his mouth open and tears running down his cheeks. Okay, okay…maybe I’m wrong. Maybe DK’s performance was more quake-shaking than what Timothee Chalamet, Gary Oldman, Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hanks and James Franco delivered. If I’m mistaken please forgive me. It takes me longer to come to these things.
The Shape of Water‘s Sally Hawkins won the HSFC award for Best Actress. The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe and Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf received the Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards.
