Wikipedia says that Denzel Washington‘s first screen appearance (albeit uncredited) was in Michael Winner‘s Death Wish (’74), when he was around 19 or 20. The below YouTube clip and a still that I captured [after the jump] seems to bear this out. Denzel played an aggressive, non-verbal thug who was shot by Charles Bronson‘s Paul Kersey. His bio says his first TV appearance was in 1977’s The Wilma Rudolph Story and that his first noteworthy screen appearance in Carbon Copy (’81) with George Segal.

I’m fairly certain I’m going to hate Josh Gordon and Will Speck‘s Office Christmas Party (Paramount, 12.9), but I have to admit I found this wrestling clip moderately funny. Jennifer Aniston as the office bitch, Jason Bateman as the same restrained, dryly sardonic guy he always plays in comedies, and Silicon Valley‘s T. J. Miller as the employee-friendly idiot, Clay Vanstone. I’m sorry but I laughed, watched the clip twice, etc. The all-media Arclight screening happens on 12.6.

Snickering about the National Board of Review has been a media pastime for decades, but for the most part their annual award choices, to be fair, have been fairly wise and spot-on. Today the NBR guys announced their 2016 awards, and Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea was far and away the big winner — Best Film, Best Actor (Casey Affleck), Best Original Screenplay (Lonergan) and Best Breakthrough Performance (Lucas Hedges). They also gave their Best Adapted Screenplay award to Silence, or more precisely to co-writers Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese. This in itself indicates that Silence might be a serious head-turner. Maybe. Here’s hoping.

Moonlight won two awards — Best Director (Barry Jenkins) and Best Supporting Actress (Naomie Harris). Hollywood Elsewhere respectfully disagrees with the NBR choosing Arrival‘s Amy Adams as Best Actress but whatever. Cheers to Jeff Bridges‘ gruff lawman turn in Hell or High Water, which resulted in the NBR’s Best Supporting Actor award. The Best Foreign Language award went to Asghar Farhadi‘s The Salesman — HE-approved. And Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America won for Best Documentary — check.

The only head-scratcher was the NBR’s decision to give a Spotlight award to the “creative collaboration” of Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg, which is mainly a nod to the efficiently spot-on Patriot’s Day. What the NBR should have done was give Berg-Wahlberg a special award for the finest, most crazily chaotic and realistic shootout sequence in years.

In the print edition of an 11.17 Variety issue is a cartographical Rules Don’t Apply promotion — a map of Hollywood landmarks circa 1958, which is when most of the film unfolds. (The map is also on the Rules website.) Within a parapgraph about RKO Studios, which Howard Hughes (played by Warren Beatty in the film) owned from 1948 through ’55, Katharine Hepburn is mentioned. Unfortunately, the Rules map spells her first name as “Katherine,” a misspelling which Hepburn notoriously resented. It’s doubly unfortunate considering that Beatty, who directed and produced Rules, was a huge Hepburn fan who went to great lengths to persuade her to play a small supporting role in Love Affair (’94), which Beatty starred in (and was directed in-name-only by Glenn Gordon Caron). Mistakes happen, yes, and I don’t want to further darken the cloud that’s already hovering above Rules Don’t Apply, but if Hepburn is looking down from heaven, she’d definitely be annoyed.

Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling has gone all in on Denzel Washington. The Fences director-star will receive the Maltin Modern Master Award on Thursday, February 2nd at the 2017 Santa Barbara Film Festival (2.1 thru 2.11). This is tantamount to Durling placing a Nick the Greek-like bet on Washington’s shot at landing a Best Director or Best Actor Oscar, or Fences itself landing a Best Picture Oscar…who knows? When “Nick” bets, the elite award-season blogaroos listen, and they in turn pass their excitement along to Academy and guild members. SBIFF tributes always inject an aura of heft, esteem and good favor, and the Maltin is the SBIFF’s highest honor. It’ll be a hot time in Denzelville that night…wine, excitement, a knockout tribute reel, hail fellow well met, etc. The last time Hollywood Elsewhere witnessed a Denzel q & a in front of an audience was in December 2007 at Harvard University. The Santa Barbara event will be an even bigger lollapalooza.

By the rules of our electoral college system (i.e., not by the popular vote), Donald Trump was legitimately elected as the nation’s president on 11.8. But his cabinet nominees so far, a rogue’s gallery of repealers, deniers and roll-backers, are an echo of the hard-line Communist apparatchik attitude behind the 1991 coup d’etat in the Soviet Union — a severe pushback against the moderately liberal reforms of the Gorbachev era (glasnost). The forthcoming Trump program represents the last dying power grab of the white, nationalist, corporate-centric right — anti-liberal, Republican, climate-change-denying, xenophobic, obstinate, polluting, racist, odious. A current list of Trump’s proposed cabinet members seems nothing short of ghastly to anyone with a vaguely humanist, semi-progressive attitude. The latest blood-drainer is Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price, a six-term, arch-conservative Georgia congressman who apparently intends to repeal or significantly gut the Affordable Care Act. These are the dark times. The earth is weeping, in shock. Every day brings a new permutation of the nightmare.

Hooray for Elle‘s Isabelle Huppert, who now has some momentum toward a Best Actress Oscar nomination. And hats tip to Barry Jenkins for his direction and writing of Moonlight, the appeal of which has expanded beyond its devoted critical-elite base and may steamroll right into the Film Independent Spirit Awards and beyond.

Best Feature: Moonlight (d: Barry Jenkins, A24)

Best Documentary: O.J.: Made in America (d: Ezra Edelman, ESPN Films)

Best Actress: Isabelle Huppert, Elle (Sony Pictures Classics)

Best Actor: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea (Amazon Studios)

Best Screenplay: Moonlight (story by Tarell Alvin McCraney; screenplay by Barry Jenkins, A24)

Breakthrough Actor: Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch (A24)

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: Trey Edward Shults, Krisha (A24)

Breakthrough Series — Short Form: Her Story (creators: Jen Richards and Laura Zak, herstoryshow.com)

Breakthrough Series — Long Form: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (creators: Rachel Bloom & Aline Brosh McKenna, The CW)

Wes Anderson loves old trains. Who doesn’t? Especially the three-decker kind (which I’ve never heard of, much less seen in my life) with little staterooms and kitchens and pretty girls travelling alone. I haven’t been on a European train with an old-fashioned dining car (i.e, the kind with tablecloths and waiter service) since the ’90s. The things I like best about this H&M holiday spot are (a) the CG snow flurries, (b) “Conductor Ralph,” (c) the calligraphy for the sign “H&M Lines — Winter Express” on the train-car exterior (b) the general sense of realism within the train (the slightly rhythmic movement, shuttered windows, atmospheric fog, the hook snagging the mail bag and the small Christmas tree). An arrival at 3:17 am due to an 11 1/2 hour delay? Let me tell you something — I love arriving at exotic train stations after midnight and before dawn.

An invitation to a Sunday, 12.4 afternoon screening of Martin Scorsese‘s Silence came in this afternoon, but the Broadcast Film Critics Award nominations have to be filled out and sent in by the evening of 11.29 (i.e., tomorrow). Paramount informed BFCA honchos some time ago that they wouldn’t be able to screen Silence for the entire membership in time for the 11.29 deadline, but I think the BFCA should ignore this logistical hurdle. Out of respect for Scorsese’s standing as a world-class filmmaker and his herculean efforts in finally making this film after years of struggle, the BFCA membership (which is filling out initial ballots today and tomorrow) should nominate Silence for Best Picture, sight unseen. (If they cut Star Wars: The Force Awakens some slack, they can certainly cut Marty some.) Once nominated, the BFCA can vote on Silence one way or another during final balloting, which has to be submitted by the evening of 12.9. Presumably the full membership will have had a chance to see Silence by then.

Last night a pair of posts about HBO’s vaguely infuriating Westworld series — one by Matt of Sleaford, the other by brenkilco — really hit the nail on the head. Together they explain why some viewers feel that good movies, which have to set everything up and pay off within two hours or so, are more satisfying than longform episodics. Here’s what they said in condensed form:

Brenkilco: “The problem with episodic TV narratives designed to blow minds is that the form and intention are at odds. A show designed to run until the audience gets tired of it cannot by definition have a satisfying structure. It can only keep throwing elements into the mix until, like Lost or Twin Peaks, it collapses under the weight of its own intriguing but random complications.

“Teasing this stuff out is easy. But eventually the rent comes due. Dramatic resolutions are demanded. The threads have to be pulled together. And that’s when things gets ugly.”

Matt of Sleaford: “Westworld is a puzzle-box show, which is kind of the opposite of a soap opera. Puzzle-box shows, like the aforementioned Lost and X-Files, can be fun to chew on while they’re progressing. But the solution is almost always anticlimactic. And though it may seem counterintuitive, puzzle-box shows are less effective in the internet era, because someone in the vast sea of commenters is almost certain to solve the puzzle before the end (see: Thrones, Game of).”

The 2016 Gotham Awards will start livestreaming from Cipriani Wall Street around…what, 8 pm Eastern? I’m still banking on Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea winning four of the awards — Best Feature, Best Actor (Casey Affleck), Best Screenplay (Lonergan) and Breakthrough Actor (Lucas Hedges).

Here are the nominations — HE’s predicted wins are in boldface caps:

Best Feature: Certain Women (d: Kelly Reichardt, IFC Films); Everybody Wants Some! (d: Richard Linklater, Paramount Pictures); MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (d: Kenneth Lonergan, Amazon/Roadside); Moonlight (d: Barry Jenkins, A24); Paterson (d: Jim Jarmusch, Amazon).

Best Documentary: Cameraperson (d: Kirsten Johnson, Janus Films); I Am Not Your Negro (d: Raoul Peck, Magnolia Pictures); O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (d: Ezra Edelman, director, ESPN Films); Tower (D: Keith Maitland, Kino Lorber, Independent Lens); Weiner (d: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg, Sundance Selects and Showtime Documentary Films). QUALIFIER: If Edelman’s doc doesn’t win, Weiner might take it.

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: ROBERT EGGERS for The Witch (A24); Anna Rose Holmer for The Fits (Oscilloscope Laboratories); Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert for Swiss Army Man (A24); Trey Edward Shults for Krisha (A24); Richard Tanne for Southside with You (Roadside Attractions/Miramax). QUALIFIER: If Eggers doesn’t win, the Swiss Army guys might.

Best Screenplay: Hell or High Water, Taylor Sheridan (CBS Films); Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman (Amazon Studios); Manchester by the Sea, KENNETH LONERGAN (Amazon); Moonlight, Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney; Screenplay by Barry Jenkins (A24); Paterson, Jim Jarmusch (Amazon Studios). QUALIFIER: Lonergan’s screenplay could lose to Sheridan’s Hell or High Water.