4:55 pm: What did I predict a couple of hours ago?

3:15 pm: The National Society of Film Critics hasn’t chosen its Best Picture winner yet, but you know these holier-than-Joe-Popcorn elitists are going to go with The Brutalist or Nickel Boys. They’re coming from a basic anti-pleasure principle.

A majority of NSFC voters preferred to support Sing Sing‘s Colman Domingo (60 votes) and secondly Adrien Brody (51 votes) for Best Actor instead of Conclave‘s Ralph Fiennes or A Complete Unknown‘s Timothee Chalamet…you can always predict which way the dweebs will blow.

HE supports the honoring of A Real Pain‘s Kieran Culkin, and I respect giving the Best Actress trophy to Hard Truths‘ Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

It’s because they know deep down that Average Joes and Janes have come to despise them for the most part, and they don’t want the public’s hate to become too enflamed.

They know that Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris not just because of the economy (which has actually been in fairly decent shape for several months now) and the border (which was too wide-open in ’21 and ’22, but was arrested in late ’23 and ’24) because they know that Averages Joes are sick to death of woke shit and therefore despise Hollywood wokeys with equal fervor, and they don’t want to exacerbate that situation.

Given this intense current of post-electoral loathing for Hollywood citizenry (but not the movies) they’re figuring it’s probably smarter to chill and sit on their hands and wait for the winds to shift.

Industry-ites are afraid to praise The Apprentice because they’re cowards…plain and simple. I’ve been saying for nearly eight months that it’s a truly excellent film with superb performances by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, but they’re afraid to acknowledge the quality because they don’t want to be seen as supportive of anything bearing any kind of Trump stamp, even though the film’s second half is quite condemning of the former and future president.

This riff was inspired by Steven Zeitchik’s 11.3 THR story:

Respect and affection for the Oogum Boogum guy, Brenton Wood, who passed yesterday (1.3.25) at age 83. Three hit singles in ’67 –“The Oogum Boogum Song””, “Gimme Little Sign” and “Baby You Got It” — and that was it as far as the big-time was concerned.

I’d more or less forgotten about Wood** by the turn of the century, but then Cameron Crowe used “Oogum Boogum” for an early scene in Almost Famous, and I was back on the train.

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The natural, obvious presumption when a talented accomplished person takes his/her own life is that a great deal of unhappiness, frustration and probably depression preceded it. I’m very, very crushed about this. The proverbial black dog has claimed another victim. Poor Aubrey Plaza must be going through hell right now. Deeply sorry.

And this is as it should be. Because of the horrible wacko karma that Jolie created when she hatched and orchestrated the virulent anti-Brad Pitt discord within her own family. She did this, and now she owns it.

Cynthia O’Neal‘s performance as Cindy, a chilly, highly perceptive opportunist and she-wolf wearing the clothing of a sexy, high-toned girlfriend, was astonishing. Her manner was cool and cynical and altogether commanding.

The odds are highly against the possibility of audiences ever seeing another performance of this type, especially given that women these days aren’t allowed to play users or takers — only victims and revenge-getters.

Born in 1934, O’Neal was 36 in this scene. She’s still with us.

I hope it’s also understood that poisoned relationship argument scenes like this will never be seen again either…not in movie theatres, not on cable or streaming. Fucked-up sexist characters like Jack Nicholson‘s Jonathan Fuerst have been outlawed.

Let history note that when it came to sentencing Donald J. Trump for his Stormy Daniels felony convictions, Judge Juan M. Merchan wimped the hell out.

He decided on “a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation“….shame….shame!

From N.Y. Times reporters Ben Protess and Kate Christobek:

1.4.25 update: I re-watched Moonstruck last night, and my basic feeling was that as effective as the performances and John Patrick Shanley‘s screenplay are, parts of it are a little too broad and on-the-nose. It’s a good film, but it could’ve been better if director Norman Jewison had toned things down somewhat.

1.3.25: Cher’s bulls-eye Moonstruck performance landed a Best Actress Oscar in ’88, and good for her. But the real reason she won was because of (a) the film’s dead-perfect poster, (b) a single line of dialogue that she said to costar Nic Cage — “Snap out of it!”, (c) a back-and-forth between Cher and Olympia Dukakis — OD: “Do ya love him, Loretta?” / Cher: “Ma, I love him awful” / OD: “Oh, God, that’s too bad”, and (d) the fact that Moonstruck‘s ensemble cast was spot-on to the nth degree.

So it was a group effort, really. Cher, Cage, Norman Jewison, John Patrick Shanley, Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello…they all won it together.

That’s Rob Camilletti, Cher’s 22 year-old “bagel boy” boyfriend, reacting to her win.

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What exactly is a movie musical? Wikipedia defines it as “a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film’s themes or characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline.”

Therefore James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown is obviously and unmistakably a movie musical. The songs aren’t personal-expression songs in a classic musical sense, and yet on another level they are, certainly in Bob Dylan‘s case. They also express themes and feelings that emanate from the social-political climate of the early to mid ’60s. It’s a magical mystical tour of that era.

The bottom line is that Mangold’s 141-minute film is wall-to-wall singing and performing. According to producer Fred Berger, Chalamet sings 40 Dylan songs in the film, and that’s obviously not counting the Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash songs that are also performed. (The Complete Unknown soundtack vinyl album contains 16 tracks; the CD version contains 23 tracks.)

Wicked is also a musical, of course, but a bit less of one in terms of the humber of stand-alone musical compositions. If you don’t count the orchestral opening and finale, 12 songs are performed by Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Goldblum and others.

And yet the insanely corrupt Golden Globe nominations have categorized Wicked as a musical but A Complete Unknown as a drama.

The Globe nominees for BEST MOTION PICTURE – MUSICAL OR COMEDY are Anora (sporadically hilarious but hardly a “comedy”), Challengers (doesn’t even flirt with being a comedy or a musical), Emilia Perez (obviously a musical), A Real Pain (contains amusing dialogue while while adhering to a light farcical tone), The Substance (an exploitation body-horror film) and Wicked (a full-on musical).