In a just-posted article, Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell discusses the gap between popular movies and award-worthy fare, which is more pronounced this year than usual. “We’ve [all] become accustomed in recent years to films that appeal to both art house and multiplex audiences landing on the critical radar for likely Best Picture nominees at the Academy Awards,” he writes. “By this time last year, The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road had leapt the art vs. mainstream gap, with The Revenant close behind them. All three were eventual Best Picture nominees.

“But that’s not happening in 2016 — not yet, at least.”

MCN’s David Poland agrees with Howell, and so does Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone. “If you ask [non-industry] people, most won’t have seen or even heard of the films that are up for the awards,” Stone observes. “The critics and the Academy tend not to think about whether the public likes the movie or not. But if you flash back to 2000, that mattered a lot. Films were awarded because they were well reviewed and well liked. Now it really doesn’t seem to be a requirement, which I guess is good and bad.”

The reason that the good, award-level stuff isn’t selling as many tickets as CG fantasy crap is partly traditional — Joe and Jane Schmoe have never been much for complexity or subtlety or social undertow. They just want a good ride, a few laughs. But it’s also due to the fact that with the rise of social media distraction and everything happening much faster, audiences are devolving more and more into the ADD realm. They want whiplash immediacy and intense stimulation and sweep-away dynamics, and in large part have simply become too coarsened to pay attention to films that require a little patience.

On 11.25 I posted a list of 26 excellent to very good films that have come out in 2016, and a lot of them haven’t made tons of money. (A few have yet to open.) But they’re not foo-foo films either — Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea, Damien Chazelle‘s La La Land, Denzel Washington‘s Fences, David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water, Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash, Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America, Paul Verhoeven‘s Elle, Peter Berg‘s Patriot’s Day, Robert Eggers‘ The Witch, Gavin Hood‘s Eye in the Sky, etc.

If general audiences wind up shunning or under-supporting some of these, it’s absolutely not the fault of the filmmakers. It’s because many are simply too thick and distracted to settle in, much less buy a ticket in the first place.

This morning Hollywood Reporter columnist and Founder fan Scott Feinberg tweeted the following: “The Founder is a great movie featuring an incredible performance by Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc. Why aren’t more people talking about this??”

My cleaned-up reply: “Because most people like their moral-ethical dramas to adhere to a black and white scheme, and The Founder boldly refuses to do this. It treads a fine ethical edge, allowing you to root for Keaton’s ‘bad guy’ despite reservations. It’s bravely refusing to cast judgment upon a hustler you can half-sympathize with, and at the same time allowing you to conclude that the McDonald brothers were stoppers who didn’t get it. And some viewers are uncomfortable with a film that half-endorses a finagling shithead while half-disapproving of the nice, decent guys.

“Speaking as a small businessman, I was frankly more on Ray Kroc’s side than the dorky, slowboat McDonald brothers, and I generally hate Republicans as a rule. I didn’t feel all that wonderful about taking Kroc’s side, but I couldn’t get behind the brothers. You have to work hard and push the rock uphill and play your cards wisely to stay alive in this world.”

Prior to Donald Trump‘s plane landing in Indianpolis yesterday for a political rally, a CNN producer was overheard joking with on-air correspondent Suzanne Malveaux about Trump’s plane crashing. The clip was captured by FTVLive. Exact quote: “That means his plane’s crashed…just kidding.” Malveaux reacted with a “whoa, too much!” expression and that was all. Until FTV leaked it, I mean.

I’ve been meaning to bring this up, and now it’s permissible. What if Trump’s life was to somehow end due to a plane crash, a Taco Bowl heart attack or, God forbid, an assassin’s bullet? Decorum and decency would require all of us to express some degree of regret and sorrow. But on a totally private, deep-down basis would you be grieving or (be honest) would you be muttering to yourself “thank you, God…thank you…I’m sorry for doubting you all these years”? I for one would be totally beside myself with grief. I would be sending floral wreaths to Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Rance Priebus, et. al.

CNN corporate’s response to the producer quote: “An unfortunate and inappropriate remark was made by one of our producers off camera yesterday. We have apologized to the Trump transition team, and the producer has been disciplined.”

Listen to the Mica Levi‘s opening musical passage in Jackie. It’s the first thing you hear as the film begins, and it sinks right into your soul. It sets the tone for the whole film. I think it’s a more vital element than Natalie Portman‘s justly-praised performance. Listen and you’ll understand why an Oscar win is probable. Prior to Jackie Levi was best known for her soundtrack to Jonathan Glazer‘s Under The Skin. She’s probably best known in musical realm for her band, Micachu and the Shapes, and their album Good Sad Happy Bad. Born on 2.28.87, Levi is only a year and a half older than Jett.

A raunchy renegade vibe (cigarettes, ’60s Mustang, brewskis, sexual bump and grind) fortifies this Kristen Stewart video for the Rolling Stones’ Blue and Lonesome album, which pops today. But “Ride “Em On Down,” a 1930s Delta blues number, doesn’t sound blue and lonesome. I haven’t settled into each and every track, but I was expecting to hear something along the lines of “I Got The Blues” (off the ’71 Sticky Fingers album).

From a rousing speech by incoming Democratc Congressperson Jamie Raskin, delivered the night before last in Silver Spring, Maryland: “We will not let a cabinet of robber barons and white nationalists destroy everything the civilizing movements of the last century created. They can make a prepped-out Harvard Business School neo-Nazi strategize us into becoming Germany 1933. They can make an anti-public school activist [Betsy DeVos] the secretary of education. They can make Jeff Sessions the attorney general of the United States of America, but my friends, we are still here. They can put Goldman Sachs in charge of the Treasury Department, but we are still here. They can try to dismantle the EPA, but we are still here. They can put a fox in charge of every hen house — they can put the Joker, the Riddler, and the Penguin in charge of Gotham City — but we are still here, and we’re not going anywhere.”

Moonlight‘s Barry Jenkins is admired and respected by every industry and press person, but I suspect that he’s just won a pair of Best Director awards (from the Gothams last Monday night and the New York Film Film Critics Circle today) because of the New York foo-foo crowd, and that the real top-dog among the directing contenders is La La Land‘s Damian Chazelle. For whatever reason Manchester By The Sea‘s Kenneth Lonergan hasn’t won anything yet (he hasn’t even been nominated by the Spirit Awards), but when things settle down he might pull even with Jenkins. Maybe. For all I know Fences‘ director-star Denzel Washington is even or slightly ahead of Lonergan right now, but my gut tells me otherwise. Jackie‘s Pablo Larrain may also fall behind Silence‘s Martin Scorsese when the latter film begins to be seen by sizable crowds starting this weekend.

David Kelley and Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Big Little Lies (HBO, 2.19.17) is based on Liane Moriarty’s 2014 novel. The book was set in Australia; the seven-part series appears to be set somewhere on the California coast. The title of this post comes from a 7.3.14 Amazon book review by “Nitty Mom.”

The series is obviously aimed at women who read airport novels, and appears to be on the same spiritual level as The Girl on the Train.

From Nitty Mom’s review: “Madeline Martha Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon) is a mouthy, well-dressed 40 year old who lives in the same town with her ex-husband, Nathan (James Tupper) and his yoga-chanting, euphorically perfect second wife, Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz). Nathan left Madeline and their newborn infant 14 years ago, and while Madeline has re-married a wonderful man (Adam Scott) and has two children with him, it still hurts that their 14 year old daughter Abigail (Kathryn Newton) now wants to live with her ex and his wife.

“It would seem that Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman) has it all. She is a beautiful woman, married to a very wealthy man, Perry (Alexander Skarsgard) , and has two adorable twin boys attending Pirriwee Public School. What looks to be a perfect relationship to others, can become toxic when the couple is behind closed doors. This is a fact that is finally becoming glaringly clear, even to Celeste.

Natalie Portman‘s Jackie Kennedy dialogue is mostly discernible in this clip, but try listening to it in a big echo-y theatre (as I’ve done in screenings in Toronto and Santa Barbara). It’s a struggle. And yet every vowel and syllable that Billy Crudup (who plays historian Theodore H. White) speaks in this clip is perfectly crisp and clear. The fact is that a bassy baritone fortified by clean diction is easier to understand than the voice of a breathy female (Matt Zoller Seitz has described her speech as “a researched, considered, Marilyn Monroe-breathy impersonation”) mitigated by an upper-crust Rhode Island accent. I’m sorry but there’s a difference.

Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg‘s Patriots Day (CBS Films/Lionsgate, 12.21) is a fine, efficient, fact-based thriller about the 2013 Boston marathon bombing and its aftermath. As I wrote on 11.22, Berg tries to emulate the Paul Greengrass aesthetic, and he more or less accomplishes that with the help of dp Tobias Schliessler and the bouncy, brilliant editing is by Colby Parker Jr. and Gabriel Fleming.

The editing during the already-celebrated Watertown gunfight sequence between the Tasrnaev brothers (Alex Wolff‘s Dzhokhar, Themo Melikidze‘s Tamerlan) and local cops is easily one of the best of its kind. The worst violent action sequences around, hands down, are always found in superhero-fantasy films because you can never believe in the physics — it’s always the same CG body-slam razmatazz in which the adversaries never get tired or confused or hurt. But when a shootout feels as chaotically real and crazy as it does in Patriots Day, it really makes you sit up in your seat and lean forward.

Not that I’m immune to slick, well-choreographed gunplay (like that famous downtown L.A. bank robbery sequence in Michael Mann‘s Heat or that moment when Tom Cruise plugs a couple of street thieves in the space of three seconds in Collateral), but sloppy, chaotic action always feels best. The Watertown cops are scared and confused, especially due to the Tsarnaev’s tossing a series of grenade-like pipe bombs. Nobody knows who has the upper hand, and it’s all edge and anxiety and a lot of shouting and swearing. I’ve seen Patriots Day a second time because of this sequence, and I’m thinking of going back to see it again.

In an 8.12 EW piece about Morten Tyldum‘s Passengers, Sara Vilkmmerson wrote that Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, travelling on a luxury interstellar spaceship bound for the Homestead II colony 120 years away, are “two out of 5,000 souls traveling in suspended animation before they’re mistakenly awakened 90 years too early.”

Having heard from a Sony rep and confirmed that a version of Jon Spaihts‘ script that I read last summer more or less represents the finished film, I can say that Vilkmmerson’s synopsis is somewhat inaccurate.

In a new Vanity Fair cover story on Lawrence, author Julie Miller repeats the same vaguely misleading information, to wit: “Due to a mechanical malfunction, both characters wake up about 30 years into the 120-year voyage and struggle to survive while hurtling through space.”

The trailers have long made the “woke” part clear, but there’s more to Passengers than this. It won’t be cool to talk about it for a few weeks yet, at least until January sometime and even then spoiler whiners will hit the roof. But when the time is right, a discussion will be had.

In the same piece, however, Miller describes Darren Aronofsky’s Mother as “a home-invasion horror movie.” Until today “horror” has never been part of any description of this Montreal-shot film, which costars Lawrence, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domnhall Gleeson, Ed Harris and Javier Bardem. I should add that roughly a month ago I was told by Aronofsky that “the [Mother] title has not been reported correctly…that’s all I gotta say about that.”

Villery-Boch is a German company (based in Mettlach) that makes stylish ceramic dinnerware. I just popped for a pair of cool coffee cups (called Newwave caffe mugs on a Macy’s site). I first fell in love with this kind of thing at a Nikki Beach press luncheon in Cannes in May 2008. One you’ve sipped your morning coffee out of one of these, you can never go back to mugs. There are a lot of animals out there (especially on Twitter) who would never appreciate, much less spring for, this kind of thing, but I can only answer for myself. Either you get it or you don’t.

Snapped during a Cannes Film Festival luncheon in 2008.