If I were Woody Allen I would re-dedicate myself to pushing on until I drop, if only to defy this Mark Harris prediction along with the Greta Gerwig/Rebecca Hall/Mira Sorvino chorus, which I’m sure is having its effect. I would (a) double down on my European financing options, (b) cast the best and bravest actors I can find, and (c) write a Crucible-like, On The Waterfront-ish allegory about a p.c. mob persecuting a woman who appears to be tainted on some level but isn’t in fact guilty of something she’s been accused of left and right. Allen needs to use this horror to propel his art, and (who knows?) go out on a bold note a la Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Yesterday’s “Oscar Bait Movie Is Over” piece, which arose from a discussion I had yesterday morning with Boston-based movie critic Jordan Ruimy, was easily one of the most revealing, finger-on-the-button sum-up pieces I’ve posted over the last year, if not the past two or three years.

Because while it began as a discussion of why The Post never got traction in the Oscar race, it wound up describing a major seismic shift in the way younger Oscar voters are seeing things now, as opposed to just five years ago when the old boomer-farty Oscar-worthy standards still applied.

Here are four comments, posted by Rosse Veneziano, filmklassik, Dr. New Jersey and Joe S. They re-articulate the basis thesis and sum it up nicely:

(1) RossoVeneziano: “There’s a new paradigm of Oscar baitness now, and The Post just doesn’t fit it. At all. Oscar-bait now means indie, socially relevant, ‘woke’ (or whatever new slang definition you wanna use for the same concept). Lady Bird and Get Out are 100% Oscar baits. No big-budget entertaining movie will ever win Best Picture again. Titanic today would never win. Never.

“Because Oscars are the new Spirits. Technical, artistic achievement means squat for the new-generation Academy. Best Director is the ceiling. For Best Picture they want politically charged messages and they wanna take a stand, and identity politics definitely drives their votes.”

HE insertion: Hence the head-scratchy Get Out fervor.

“The Post has the message but lacks a crucial element: identity. New members vote FIRST for the person — the movie itself is secondary. A vote for Lady Bird is mainly a vote for Gerwig, a vote for a woman to win it all. No one sees Spielberg as a revolutionary icon as he’s just another rich white guy. Uncool.”

(2) filmklassik: “A bit cheeky to say ‘never ever again’ (because who the hell knows), but yeah, in this particular cultural moment it is all about Tribal Identity. And what’s disturbing is, we have a whole generation now for whom Tribal representation is, to use one critic’s word, numinous. The under-40 crowd has invested Race, Gender and Sexuality with a kind of cosmic significance. It doesn’t mean a lot to them — it means everything to them. Indeed, much of their conversation and writing seems to always come back to it.”

(3) Dr. New Jersey: “A difference is I don’t think anyone making Get Out was thinking ‘Hey, this is Oscar material’ while everyone making The Post was thinking that very thing.”

(4) JoeS: “In a way, that actually reinforces RossoVeneziano’s post. Nobody was thinking Best Picture when Get Out came out last February. But then the whole indie vibe took over the landscape and it was cool to inflate this pretty good horror flick with social commentary into the awards discussion.”

Never forget that the real cancer of American culture is not Donald Trump, not really. The consequences of a grotesque, dementia-afflicted sociopath in the Oval Office have been terrible all around, obviously, but the fundamental ground-level evil lies in that sad mass of rural, low-information lowlifes who voted him in.

They’re in great pain, yes, but they’ve demonstrated time and again they’d rather slit their throats than vote for their own interests. Democratic process- and institution-wise they’re emotionally disturbed sociopaths. They don’t give a damn about anything but how miserable they feel and how much they hate the economic and social realities of the 21st Century, and the great tribal loyalty they feel for that swaggering, bloviating, golf-obsessed turd — a guy who almost certainly smirks or shrugs his shoulders at their plight in private, and is playing them like a violin.

What do you do when cancer has invaded your body? Do you say “well, I may not like what this cancer is doing but I have to at least respect it…we live in a Democratic system, after all, and cancer cells have as much right to live and thrive as I do”? Or do you get chemotherapy and radiation and surgically remove the damn tumor?

The Salt Lake Tribune‘s Sean Means has finally nailed it down. The location of Park City’s all-new Ray theatre is the site of that big sports-equipment store (Sports Authority) that was there for years, a stone’s throw from the Holiday Cinemas.

The Ray’s upper floor is the location of a new Dolby-fied 500-seat theater. It’ll be roughly the seating capacity of the Library theatre and The MARC. The bottom floor will be for virtual reality razmatazz (i.e., VR, “augmented” whatever-the-fuck reality, mixed bullshit reality and outside-your-mind artificial bullshit intelligence).

Ray is located just across the parking lot from the “Yarrow” hotel, which of course has been called the Doubletree for the last couple of years. The 295-seat Park Avenue theatre, which is mainly for press screenings, is located inside that drafty establishment.

HE’s headline notwithstanding, the Ray is not named for the late Aldo Ray, a hot actor in the early to mid ’50s who was much loved by Harry Cohn. .

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Mark Wahlberg got the message — Twitter and the media-industry world had decided over the last two or three days that he had acted like a huge asshole for greedily exploiting the last-minute preparation to re-shoot All The Money in the World last November, and in so doing snagging a $1.5 million payday while costar Michelle Willams got zip.

And so he and his agency, William Morris Endeavor, have coughed up a $2 million donation in Williams’ name to the Time’s Up legal defense fund — essentially a “we’re sorry, will you forgive us?” gesture backed by serious dough.

I think Wahlberg has done the right thing here. He’s still who he is and many of his movies still suck eggs, but he’s stood up and atoned for his greedhead move and so has WME. Let it go.

“Over the last few days my reshoot fee for All the Money in the World has become an important topic of conversation,” Wahlberg said in a statement. “I 100% support the fight for fair pay and I’m donating the $1.5M to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams’ name.”

Joe Berkowitz‘s “Time’s Up, Woody,” an article that posted in yesterday (1.12) Fast Times, calls for a recognition of an ethical line in the sand. I’m speaking of a difference between supporting and applauding the #MeToo movement, which everyone favors, and rashly calling for the career death of an alleged predator who has never, in fact, been charged or even half-proven to be one.

I fully understand the impulse to stand with #MeToo and throw spears on its behalf, but when the facts don’t support your allegation or position, you spears are made of brittle clay and you’re standing on shaky ground.

This morning I sent the following to Berkowitz by email. I’m also posting it here:

“Joe — Based on what little I know about the Woody Allen case, it is my opinion that portions of what you wrote yesterday about Allen were sloppy, partly dishonest and ill-informed. Your piece also delivered a whiff of McCarthy-ism. You should really wade into the extensive, very exactingly researched Robert Weide defense that was posted in mid December.

“The Weide article is, by my sights, fair, balanced, scrupulous and very exacting. A significant part of what you wrote yesterday was not. IMHO portions of what you wrote yesterday were straight out of The Crucible.

“There’s also Weide’s 3-part Twitter response to “every low-information ‘expert’ who insists that #WoodyAllen married his daughter (adopted, step, or otherwise) or that she was underage when they got involved, or that he was ever a father figure to her. #IBelieveMoses,” not to mention his Twitter page for the latest slings and arrows. — Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere”

In response to Rebecca Hall’s statement about Woody Allen as posted today by Indiewire‘s Zack Sharf, I’m repeating what I posted yesterday in a piece titled “They’re At it Again.” Robert Weide’s 12.13.17 summary of the debatable 25 year-old allegations against Allen speaks for itself. For anyone interested in this matter, it’s certainly worth the 15 minutes it’ll take to read it. It’s all here. Any fair assessment of the facts suggests that Dylan Farrow’s accusation is, at the very least, clouded by uncertainty.

The Looming Tower (Hulu, 2.28.18) is a ten-episode miniseries about the ineffective tracking of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, due in part to actual blocking of this effort by the Bush administration. It focuses on former FBI agent and late counter-terrorism expert John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels). After leaving the FBI in ’01 O’Neill become the head of security at the World Trade Center. He died from the collapse of the North Tower during the 9/11 attacks. The series is exec produced by Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney and Wright. Futterman also wrote the script. The costars are Peter Sarsgaard, Wrenn Schmidt, Michael Stuhlbarg, Bill Camp, Alec Baldwin, Ella Rae Peck and Jennifer Dundas.

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