Last night Mashable‘s Jeff Sneider tweeted that “if i was a big celeb I wouldn’t agree to host the 2017 Oscars unless I was 99.9% SURE it wouldn’t be another year of #OscarsSoWhite…no upside.”

That got me thinking: What would it take for another #OscarsSoWhite outrage to ignite? We all have a pretty good idea which black films and performances are expected to wind up in the nominees circle. I frankly don’t see another scandal in the cards because they’re all likely to prevail.

There isn’t a blogaroonie alive who will argue that Fences isn’t assured of a Best Picture nomination. Yes, it’s dicey to predict without having seen Denzel Washington‘s film (the big all-media debut is three nights hence in Westwood) but c’mon — Fences, based on a highly respected August Wilson play, has an all-but-bulletproof pedigree. Performances aside, all Denzel has to do is frame it decently.

And we all know Denzel and Viola Davis are locked for noms in their respective categories (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress)…right?

Everyone understands that The Birth of a Nation is a non-starter, but if Nate Parker‘s Penn State thing hadn’t surfaced would there have been a bit of an outraged “what?” If it hadn’t been Best Picture nominated? I never thought it was good enough but I wonder.

Those who caught the Hidden Figures product reel event in Toronto suspect that either Janelle Monae or Taraji P. Henson are probably good for noms, although in what category I can’t say.

And everyone is agreed that Mahershala Ali is good for a Best Supporting nom for his all-too-brief performance in Moonlight.

You can’t stream Irving Pichel‘s They Won’t Believe Me, a 1947 noir in which Robert Young played a weak, disloyal, manipulative shit. I haven’t seen it in eons, but I vividly remember the final scene when Young, a wrongfully accused defendant in a murder trial, is shot dead by a cop when he tries to leap out of a courtroom window just before the verdict is read. Cut to close-up of the jury foreman reading the verdict: “Not guilty.”

Can anyone imagine a more noir-ish sounding title than They Won’t Believe Me? The world won’t cut me a break, won’t stop shitting on me, won’t trust me, won’t look inside to see who I really am, won’t give me a job or lend a helping hand, refuses to love me, etc. It’s the ultimate expression of despondency.

The only way you can see They Won’t Believe Me is on TMC and via a PAL DVD. No Amazon, no Netfix, no Vudu, no nothin’. On top of which a TCM commenter wrote 13 months ago that TCM “presented this great film noir in July and September from an abbreviated print running 80 or 81 minutes. Standard film databases list a 95 minute running time. I have a Turner Home Entertainment/Image laserdisc of this film that runs 94 minutes and 45 seconds, although the disc jacket says 91 minutes.”

I was taken by the film because Young was a consummate exuder of domestic serenity and middle-class assurance in two hit TV series, Father Knows Beast and Marcus Welby, M.D. In actuality Young was an unhappy, unsettled fellow who suffered from depression and alcoholism. In 1991, at the age of 84 or thereabouts, he tried to kill himself. And yet Young was candid about his personal issues and urged the public not to follow his example (i.e., boozing) and to seek professional help when so afflicted.

The target of the famous 1964 “Daisy” ad was Barry Goldwater, of course, but C.C. Goldwater and Tani Cohen‘s Mr. Conservative (’06) persuaded me that while Goldwater’s aggressive foreign policy instincts were extreme and that he was definitely wrong about mid ’60s Civil Rights legislation, he was a genuine Libertarian and therefore not too bad in certain respects. Also: To bend over backwards towards fairness, Donald Trump exclaiming that he’ll want the option of seeming unpredictable regarding nuclear weapons is a carbon copy of Richard Nixon‘s “Madman theory.” And keep in mind how Machiavelli once argued that it can sometimes be “a very wise thing to simulate madness.”

It’s been six or seven weeks since plantar fasciitis (i.e., acute right heel pain) became a daily factor in my life. I’ve applied every remedy I can think of short of seeing a podiatrist and getting acupuncture (Dr. Scholl’s, tennis ball/rolling pin, walking with a cane) and over the last week or two the pain has ebbed somewhat, and last weekend I was actually walking around without limping. I’m starting to consider the possibility that this thing might go away altogether by December or early ’17. All I know is that it’s been awful. Every day I gaze at people who can walk and run around without issue and think to myself, “You guys are lucky…I so envy you.”

One of the things I hate about this problem is the expression of friendly colleagues and acquaintances as they offer sympathy and support. They look at you and say “sorry, man…hope it gets better and you’ll soon be back to normal” but what they’re really thinking deep down is “wow, I’m glad I’m not you.” I remember thinking the same thing about Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell (1939 – 1984) when he started walking around with a cane in ’82 or thereabouts, i.e., “He’s on the way down.” I will rebound like Fred Astaire if for no other reason than to wipe those looks of mixed compassion off their faces.

Just watch the first two minutes and 37 seconds of Leonardo DiCaprio and Fisher Stevens‘ Before The Flood, a climate change and global ruination doc that’s currently streaming on YouTube’s National Geographic channel. It uses Heironymous Bosch‘s The Garden of Earthly Delights to lay out a concise and effective introduction of the basic theme. This plus the handsome high-def resolution makes you want to watch the whole thing. Rotten Tomatoes has given it a 70% score.

Denzel Washington‘s Fences is having a big award-season kickoff screening on Saturday at 7pm at the Westwood Village. Denzel, Viola Davis and the rest of the cast — Stephen Henderson, Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson, et. al. — will sit for a post-screening q & a following the show. Right now the Best Picture race looks like a big three-way thing — La La Land vs. Fences vs. Manchester By The Sea. Saturday’s reactions (everyone recognizes that August Wilson‘s 1987 play is a classic but how will it translate in cinematic terms?) could obviously tip the scales one way or another. Fences will open on 12.25.

Viola Davis doesn’t look quite like herself here. The gray hair, her eyes…something digitized in her features. Denzel looks smooth as silk.

Yesterday’s (5.31) inconclusive Slate story by Franklin Foer had me for a while. It laid out several indications that some kind of private server may have been established between the Trump organization and the Russia-based Alfa Bank, and it sounded intriguing at first read. But Vox’s Timothy B. Lee has argued that Foer’s circumstantial evidence doesn’t quite add up.

“Foer and his sources aren’t the only ones who have been interested in the flow of traffic between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank,” Lee writes. “The FBI, the New York Times and other media organizations have all investigated the story. And so far none of them seem to believe that they’ve unearthed signs of a secret link between Trump and the Kremlin.”

Nobody on the planet is more queer than myself for color photos taken during the filming of classic black-and-white films. I just happened upon these four from Martin Ritt‘s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (’65). I’m not 100% certain they aren’t colorized. It’s certainly possible, given that the dominant color in three of these is the same brownish amber-gold, not to mention my suspicion that in actuality Peter Van Eyck‘s dyed hair was probably more white-ish than blonde-ish. I’ll nonetheless accept these for the time being. The shot of Richard Burton sitting in the prison cell looks like genuine color.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired domestic rights to Michael Haneke’s Happy End, which is almost certainly an ironic title. Said to be “a snapshot from the life of a bourgeois European family” and almost certainly some kind of cold, bitter serving. And that’s why we look forward to it! Damage will be done, throats will be slit. Haneke’s latest wrapped a few weeks ago and will probably turn up in Cannes next May. The plot particulars are unknown, but the European immigrant crisis may inform the backdrop. Philosophical press release quote: “All around us, the world, and we, in its midst, blind.” Happy End stars Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Kassovitz and Toby Jones.

In Mike Mills‘ 20th Century Women (A24, 12.25), Annette Bening has landed her best-written role since The Kids Are All Right, and she divvies it out in small, succinct portions, and in a relaxed and centered way. The upshot will be a Best Actress nomination. She won’t get more votes than La La land‘s Emma Stone (Scott Feinberg’s wildly enthusiastic projections to the contrary), but she’ll get a good run from all the praise and attention.

From my 10.8 review: Uproxx’s Mike Ryan has written that Bening is doing a “cover” of Frances McDormand‘s Elaine Miller, the headstrong mother of William Miller, in Cameron Crowe‘s Almost Famous. The difference is that 20th Century Women is told almost entirely from Bening’s viewpoint and not the kid’s.

Otherwise, meh. I got through 20th Century Women, but I never felt caught up or swept along or anything along those lines.

It’s basically a lefty, leafy period piece, set in 1979 Santa Barbara, about Dorothea, a thoughtful, laid-back, somewhat fickle character based on Mills’ mom (Bening). She’s a 50ish independent-minded divorcee who smokes too much, wears Birkenstocks, rents out rooms, holds down a drafting job and tries to get through to her son (the Mills stand-in, played by Lucas Jade Zumann, who’s supposed to be 15 but looks physically closer to 13) as he makes his way through early puberty.

Caught up as I was in yesterday’s discussion of hairy female legs, I didn’t mention the copy line on the new Vanity Fair cover that basically says “if Bob Dylan deserves a Nobel prize, why not Adele?” In response to which HE commenter “Mr. Sunset Terra Cotta” asked this morning if “anyone else felt as if the doomsday clock took a big jump forward when you saw that copy line? Even as a joke that’s a scary sign of how fucked up and narcissistic we are.” HE comment: The Vanity Fair front-cover copy writer, obviously female, is so caught up in her aggressively positivist, p.c. femme-Nazi bullshit that she actually half-believes Adele’s body of work approaches the value of Mr. Zimmerman’s. Words fail.