Not So Much Missing As Omitted

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If there’s a slight problem with A Complete Unknown, it’s that Timothee Chalamet’s Bob Dylan is a little too elusive and circumspect — too much of an artful dodger or a snotty sidestepper — to register in straight dramatic terms.

It needs at least one scene in which Dylan lays his cards on the table and says “this is what I want” or “this is who I fucking am or at least who I’m not any more”…something like that.

And if you ask me, Dylan’s rambling remarks at the Bill of Rights dinner at the Americana hotel on 12.13.63 (three weeks after JFK’s murder) are fairly declarative in this sense.

Martin Scorsese read from Dylan’s remarks in a passage from No Direction Home (‘05), his 208-minute documentary about roughly the same period in Dylan’s life that A Complete Unknown covers. Re-using this event — this scene, these words — would have added a little something to James Mangold and Jay Cocks’ upcoming feature.

Excerpt: “Man, I just don’t see any colors at all when I look out. I don’t see any colors at all, and if people have taught anything through the years [it’s] to look at colors. I’ve read history books, but I’ve never seen one history book that tells how anybody feels. I’ve found facts about our history, I’ve found out what people know about what goes on but I’ve never found anything about what anybody feels about anything that happens.

”It’s all just plain facts. And it don’t help me one little bit to look back.

“I wish sometimes I could have come in here in the 1930s like my first idol – used to have an idol, Woody Guthrie, who came in the 1930s. [Applause] But it has sure changed in the time Woody’s been here and the time I’ve been here. It’s not that easy any more. People seem to have more fears.

“There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore. There’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics.”

Critics Choice Rubes Play It Safe, Avoid The Bold

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In HE’s judgment, the decision of the Critics Choice members to ignore the obviously superior Babygirl in the Best Picture category, not to mention failing to nominate Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in their respective acting categories, is a bad thing.

It is, in fact, conclusive proof that they’re mostly a congregation of prissy little status quo cowards ….subservient suck-ups, I mean, who haven’t the character or courage to stand up for a film that really and truly excites and provokes.

“Americans get the willies when it comes to strong sexual content,” a friend remarks. People like this are what’s wrong with the film world.

Conclave and Wicked landed 11 nominations each, and Anora — clearly the best of the bunch — only landed four noms.

Wicked is fine — I felt agreeably rocked when I caught the NYC all-media — but please don’t drop to your knees and give this YA girl fantasy the top prize…no!

The CC empties nominated The Substance for Best Picture but blew off The Apprentice? We all love Hugh Grant but nominating his Heretic performance while blanking Sebastian Stan‘s Donald Trump, not to mention Jeremy Strong‘s Roy Cohn in the supporting category? C’mon!

Tarantino & Avary, Together Again…Yay!

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Quentin Tarantino: “What’s the difference between television and a good movie?

“The first season of Yellowstone is like a good movie, and I ended up watching three seasons of it. While I was watching it, I was compelled. I was caught up in it. But at the end of the day it’s all just a soap opera. A buncha characters, you know their back-stories, but it’s the compelling-ness of a soap opera. You’re caught up in the moments as you’re watching them, but you won’t remember it five years from now.

“The difference is, I’ll see a good western movie” — Winchester 73, The Bravados, High Noon, The Wild Bunch — “and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. I’ll remember this scene or that scene, and the fact it builds to an emotional climax to some degree, and that there’s a payoff. There’s not a payoff to this [Yellowstone-resembling] stuff.”

This Guy Is Cool

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…in a way that totally contradicts or negates or at least counter-balances the way Paul Mescal is uncool. Look at Harris Dickinson barely holding his contempt for red-carpet journos in check.

And at 6’2″, he’s significantly taller than the 5’11” Mescal, who will play Paul McCartney to Dickinson’s John Lennon in Sam Mendes‘ extremely scary-sounding quartet of Beatle movies. Lennon and McCartney were roughly the same height, or in the general vicinity of 5’10”.

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Soft Spot

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This is several months old but it lingers. Apologies to all the woo-woo-wokesters who will take offense.

This is relatively recent:

Paul Mescal’s Paul McCartney Casting in Mendes’ Beatle Quartet Is Flat-Out Tragic — A Major Perversion of A Respected, World-Famous Brand

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Gladiator II offered conclusive proof that Paul Mescal lacks any kind of natural commanding charisma…the kind of sexy juice vibe that lights up a room the second he enters it. At best he’s a subdued character actor pretending and failing to be a movie star. On top of which he kinda looks funny or even a little bit dopey with that hawk nose and pointy chin and all.

The good-looking, close-to-pretty Paul McCartney had that X-factor thing in spades, of course, in his long-gone youth, and he retains a smidgen of that today. The man has/had a quality that can’t be faked, and certainly not by an Irish jerkoff. It’s therefore grotesque to think of Mescal playing McCartney in a film…horrific, in fact…a Notre Dame gargoyle pretending to be a kind of silver-throated prince.