Spike Lee to Variety: “Every 10 years, black people win a lot of Oscars. And then we read articles in Variety magazine and others, the black audience has been discovered. It’s a renaissance. Then there’s another nine year drought. It should be constant. I will put my money on this. The reason why what happened at the Oscars this year” — Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight winning for Best Picture — “was because the year before was #OscarsSoWhite. That was a bad look for the Academy. And they had to switch up, get more inclusion, get more people, try to get more diversity among the voting members. But what happened this past Oscars, you think that’s going to happen [next] year?”

By the same token, when mainstream Academy fuddyduds start seeing Call Me By Your Name this fall, they’re going to say “wait, whoa…we already gave the Best Picture Oscar to a gay film last year….we ain’t goin’ there again…not two years in a row!” And that would be a bullshit attitude to embrace. If for no other reason than the simple fact that Call Me By Your Name, which isn’t a gay film (although it is) as much as a northern Italian film about sensuality, family and community, is 16 times better than Moonlight.

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman and Peter Debruge have posted their best-of-2017 picks thus far. Tediously, they’ve restricted themselves to films that have opened commercially. Jordan Peele‘s absurdly over-praised Get Out, the kind of film that John Carpenter might have made in the ’70s or ’80s without a single critic creaming in his or her pants, tops the roster. They’re also fans of Miguel Arteta‘s audaciously conceived, reasonably decent Beatriz at Dinner, Michael Showalter‘s The Big Sick (one of my faves) and Edgar Wright‘s Baby Driver. I won’t repeat the others but they all fall under one of two headings — “not bad” and “huh?”

(/) Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino, star Timothee Chalumet during 2016 filming in Crema, Italy.

The real list (i.e., my own) is composed of the Best 2017 Films, period — i.e., not yet opened theatrically but which have (a) made big splashes at this or that festival or (b) have simply screened for press. They are, in this order, (1) Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name (Sony Classics, 11.24 — a Sundance ’17 wowser that should have opened in Cannes), (2) The Big Sick (Lionsgate/Amazon, 6.23 — Sundance ’17), (3) Matt Reeves‘ War For The Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox, 7.14), (4) Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless (Sony Pictures Classics, late 2017) and (5) Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square (Magnolia, late 2017). Okay, I’ll include Get Out but strictly in terms of it being a smart, noteworthy, socially reflective genre film — it deserves an upvote but calm down.

I haven’t seen Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project and I won’t see Baby Driver until tomorrow night.

Hats off to Western Built Construction, the general contractors who’ve been working on a huge, two-story, concrete-and-glass structure at the northwest corner of Melrose and Westbourne, which is near my place. I complained about some obnoxious lighting mounted on the rear of their building, and one of the WBC principals responded in a reasonable, mild-mannered way in a matter of minutes. Life should be so simple and easy in other realms.

“[Name] and [name] — I’m Jeffrey Wells, a Hollywood columnist (www.hollywood-elsewhere.com) and longtime journalist who lives near that massive, two-story commercial space you’ve been working on for…what’s it been, eight or nine months? I’m writing to complain about those three obnoxiously bright lights mounted on the rear of your building. I’m asking you to please replace them with lights that are quieter, amber-ish, toned down and not so aggressively bright.

“Right now these lights are a nocturnal eyesore. I don’t know the wattage but the level of brightness and intensity is ridiculous — the kind of lethal, industrial-strength lighting that might be used by a state prison or some warehouse with truck bays in the middle of nowhere.

“Westbourne Drive is a quiet residential street, and having lived here for many, many years I assure you there’s no need for that kind of illumination. We have no escaped convicts running around (or none that I know of) and there’s no need to have lighting so fierce and glaring that jets flying over Los Angeles at 35,000 feet can easily pinpoint the corner of Westbourne and Melrose.

“This may sound curious, but some of us believe that the night should be allowed to be what it is, which is to say allowed to be dark. You know, the way it was on the planet before guys like you and your commercial lighting schemes came along?

“Walk down Westbourne south of Melrose — each and every home is lighted quietly, softly, with a certain restraint. Your building is the only one using an aggressive state-prison aesthetic.

I have two questions about the firing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller off the Han Solo spin-off. One, why did producer Kathy Kennedy wait four and a half months to cut them loose with the film having begun shooting in late January or thereabouts? And two, what does it say about Kennedy’s hiring instincts that she chose a couple of guys whom she so disagreed with that “she didn’t even like the way they folded their socks,” according to Brent Lang‘s Variety story?

Kennedy, no doubt looking to shoot and construct the film along familiar lines, said in a recent statement that “it’s become clear that we had different creative visions on this film, and we’ve decided to part ways.”

This conflict wasn’t apparent to Kennedy after three or four weeks of principal photography? Or after several weeks of it? I don’t know the backstory but what kind of producer needs four and a half months to assess a flawed situation and then finally do something about it with filming two-thirds completed?

In my book this is the second big problem with the Han Solo flick, the first being the casting of Alden Ehrenreich as Solo. I explained my reservations in a 5.22.17 piece called “Ehrenreich Won’t Cut Han Solo Mustard“:

It was my reaction to Alden Ehrenreich‘s performance in Alexandre Moors‘ The Yellow Birds, which I saw at last January’s Sundance Film festival, that convinced me he won’t be a good Han Solo. He just doesn’t have that presence, that Harrison Ford cock-of-the-walk cool. There’s just something about Ehrenreich that feels guarded and clenched.

Alden Ehrenreich and Untitled Han Solo Film costars (including Woody Harrelson) in recently posted set photo.

I for one wouldn’t see Kyra Sedgwick‘s Story of A Girl (Lifetime, 7.23) with a knife at my back. It’s about a young girl (Ryann Shane) coping with unwanted notoriety from a viral sex-tape video, surreptitiously captured when she was only 13. It’s not the execution, which for all I know is pretty good or even expert, but the premise. In what way is cruel and odious behavior on the part of nearly everyone in a small community remotely interesting? I’m not surprised there was next to no interest when it screened the other day at the L.A. Film Festival, which in itself exudes a generally droopy vibe. Pic is based on a book by Sara Zarr.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Los Angeles Film Festival, where the turnout for the world premiere of Kyra Sedgwick’s directorial debut looks like this.” — Variety‘s Peter Debruge on Instagram.

“And how about Jon Voight, who plays Ray’s father/nemesis Mickey Donovan? In 2013 the Oscar winner (’78’s Coming Home) won a Golden Globe for the first season of Ray Donovan, but that was before he came out four-square for the most malevolent and deranged Oval Office occupant in the history of this nation. While Voight was snubbed by the Emmys last year, he could stage a comeback.” — HE-edited version of Sid Lipsey’s Gold Derby assessment of Voight’s chances.

My heart is down, his head is turnin’ ’round because Jon Ossoff didn’t make it. Yes, Georgia’s sixth district, an affluent, well-educated suburb of Atlanta, seemed like a prime arena for a liberal progressive to defeat a bland bullshit Republican like Karen Handel, but the sixth has been a safe Republican district since the dawn of the Reagan era. And as a N.Y. Times analysis piece noted, “it showed that Republicans skeptical of [President] Trump remained comfortable supporting more conventional candidates from their party.”

Miles “don’t be a pervert, man” Teller, who got into some kind of trouble in San Diego last weekend, plays a PTSD-afflicted soldier in Jason Hall‘s Thank You For Your Service (Universal, 10.27). Boilerplate: “As three American soldiers return from Iraq, they struggle to reintegrate with their families and adjust to civilian life while also struggling to forget their memories of war.” This sound way too generic and familiar — American Sniper (also written by Hall) meets Bruce Dern‘s story in Coming Home meets Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk meets Dana Andrews‘ nightmare in The Best Years of Our Lives meets Alexandre Moors‘ The Yellowbirds meets Paul Haggis‘s In The Valley of Elah. Costarring Haley Bennett, Beulah Koale, Amy Schumer, Scott Haze, Joe Cole and Keisha Castle-Hughes.

If you’re really good at something, which maybe 2% or 3% of the population has been lucky enough to discover and nurture, why would you want to quit doing it? Daniel Day Lewis has announced he’s finished with acting for good this time, but why? Not because the pay sucks, I’m sure. Because he’s bored? Get un-bored, get shut of it. Because at age 60 he’s found something more noble or nourishing to devote his life to? Great — but what is that? Is it because he finds acting too taxing or draining? Because he can’t stand the unreality of being paid to pretend to be someone else? If DDL can’t abide his life or his work, fine. But he can’t just plotz and lie in a hammock or walk the earth like Kane in Kung Fu, getting into adventures and shit.

If DDL has run out of gas an an actor, he has to man up and do that thing in some other chosen realm. He has to do that thing that we all have to do because we have no choice because God and life demand it, and because those who wimp out or run away from that struggle are, no offense, ignoble and cowardly.

Is this a Steven Soderbergh– or Frank Sinatra-style retirement? I understand burnout — it happens — but I don’t respect people who’ve been lucky enough to find a calling — to connect with the universe with a rare and beautiful gift that they’ve found within and made into something that has touched people worldwide — and then just walk away from it. 

Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt: “A man should be what he can do.” Wells to DDL: You have a duty to go, to be, to strive, to create, to become, to dig in and reach for something better or even wondrous within. Abandoning the struggle is a sin. We’re here only a limited time and then we’re dead, for God’s sake.

Lewis will make the Oscar season rounds one last time in late November and December to discuss what may be his final role, as 1950s fashion designer Charles James in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Phantom Thread (Focus Features, 12.25).

What caused Lewis to snap and say “fuck it”? Was it the extraordinary task of making Charles James come exactingly alive under the demanding PTA? Was it a sense of existential engulfment? Did he suddenly buckle at the thought of sitting for a Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute at the Arlington?

Over the last 18 years Sofia Coppola has confined her directorial focus to a world that she knows like the back of her hand — a realm of privileged, apolitical younger white women living in a well-tended world provided by family or marriage, and not getting laid all that much. The Virgin Suicides (’99), Lost in Translation (’03), Marie Antoinette (’06), Somewhere (’10), The Bling Ring (’10) and The Beguiled (’17). (I’m ignoring A Very Murray Christmas, which I hated.)

My favorite was and still is Somewhere, in part because it felt Antonioni-esque, and because the main character (Stephen Dorff‘s) is ill-defined in a nihilistic sort of way. I admired the ballsiness of Coppola investing in his melancholia while avoiding a three-act “story”.

The Beguiled opens this Friday (6.23). I wasn’t exactly blown away when I saw it in Cannes. “Whoa, calm down on the ‘terrifically entertaining’,” I said to a friend. “It’s pretty good, but not all that different from Don Siegel‘s The Beguiled (’71). Less heated with more emphasis on suggestive humor. And shorter than the Siegel version by 11 minutes, 94 minutes vs. Siegel’s 105. Which I rather liked.

“Yes, the apple pie scene is amusing if not quite ‘funny’. I think Nicole Kidman barking ‘get the saw!’ was meant to challenge Faye Dunaway shouting ‘get the axe!’ in Mommie Dearest.”

Mattel has introduced 15 new Ken dolls with traits that reflect the world of 2017 — seven skin tones, eight hair colors, nine hairstyles, etc. (There’s even a man-bun Ken.) But they’ve chickened out by only coming up with three body types — original, slim and “broad” (i.e., husky). If they really wanted to reflect present social realities Mattel would have also created a fat-ass Ken (i.e., out of shape, jowly, beer belly). A year and a half ago a Daily Mail piece noted that social media convos were calling for a dad-bod Ken. Lord knows chubby, corpulent characters have been pushing their way into TV serials, comedies (Seth Rogen, Michael Chernus), animated features (the obese Boy Scout kid in Up, fat Snow White in Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs). Obviously a distasteful trend, but the culture has tipped in this direction. In hetero circles it’s a relatively rare thing these days to run into an original Ken, much less a slim one. Bod-wise, we’re living for the most part in a Joaquin Phoenix world.