In terms of Golden Globe parties and whatnot, I’m feeling more jazzed about attending two Saturday events — a late afternoon La La Land gathering followed by an evening Paramount soiree — than the Golden Globe shindigs on Sunday. There’s no point in attending the after-events if you can’t get into a late-afternoon viewing party, and who wants to endure the shuttle-service delays (Century City to the Beverly Hilton) that interfered last year, and which will probably be repeated to some extent? (Variety‘s Daniel Holloway is reporting that “tremendous security” measures will be in effect, which sounds to me like the Ninth Circle of Hell.)

The big benefit of winning a Golden Globe award is that you get to sell the fence-sitters with your acceptance speech. Remarks that are especially eloquent, confessional or heartfelt tend to enhance or underline one’s Oscar worthiness.

HE’s predictions for the GG film contests:

Motion Picture — Drama: Definitely Manchester By The Sea. The Gold Derby gang is going for Manchester with Moonlight the runner-up. I just can’t see the gently affecting, perfectly respectable Moonlight prevailing over the emotional wallop of Manchester. For some reason Variety‘s Kris Tapley is predicting that Hacksaw Ridge will take the prize — nope.

Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy: Obviously La La Land.

Best Director: La La Land‘s Damien Chazelle.

Best Actor — Drama: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea.

Best Actress — Drama: A little man in the pit of my stomach is telling me the winner could be Elle‘s Isabelle Huppert, but I’m also thinking this little guy doesn’t get out that much. My consensus guess is that Jackie‘s Natalie Portman will take it. Tapley is predicting Arrival‘s Amy Adams….naaah.

Read more

According to an 11.11 fivethirtyeight report, roughly 57% (nudging 58%) of eligible voters cast ballots this year, which was slightly down from 58.6 percent in 2012 and 61.6 percent in 2008. A little less than half of that 58% — less than 29% of eligible voters — voted for Donald Trump.

That’s more than one out of every four voters, but less than one out of every three. Which makes the notion of a Trump mandate the stuff of fantasy, especially when coupled with Hillary Clinton‘s 2.9 million lead in the popular vote (65,844,954 or 48.2% vs. Trump’s 62,979,879 or 46.1%).

I continue to believe that support for Trump was and is largely about racial pushback — whites reading the writing on the wall and attempting to assert dominance one last time (“make American white again'”) over a changing nation that over the last 15 or 20 years has increasingly been defined by multiculturalism and politically-correct issues and criteria. On top of the general loathing for Hillary, I mean.

This opening of Risky Business clip is a reminder that as recently as the ’80s many filmmakers shot their films in an open-matte 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Even if you’re not a boxy-is-beautiful fanatic like myself, you have to admit there’s something very pleasurable about suddenly seeing all of that extra visual information on the tops of bottoms of the frames — information that has been steadfastly hidden since the forces of 1.85 fascism decreed 20 or 25 years ago that only 1.85 croppings of standard-Academy-ratio films would be offered for rental or purchase.

I don’t like acknowledging that Risky Business opened 33 and 1/3 years ago, but it did.

Filed on 8.10.13:

“Paul Brickman‘s Risky Business reflected and in some ways defined the early ’80s zeitgeist (Reagan-era morality, go for the greenbacks, the receding of progressive ’70s culture). And it brought about an ungodly torrent of tits-and-zits comedies, so numerous and pernicious that they became a genre that forever tarnished the meaning of ‘mainstream Hollywood comedy.’ But Risky Business was a perfect brew.

“The Tom Cruise-Rebecca DeMornay sex scenes were legendary, the vibe of upper-middle-class entitlement was delivered with natural authority, Joe Pantoliano‘s Guido is arguably a more memorable character than his Ralph Cifaretto in The Sopranos, and the opening dream sequence is just as funny and on-target in its depiction of encroaching doom as Woody Allen‘s Bergmanesque train-car sequence at the beginning of Stardust Memories.

“I had an invite to a special Risky Business screening at the Beverly Hills Academy a week before the opening, but I blew it off because a girlfriend was visiting that night and things were hot and heavy at the time. I wound up catching it ten days later at a theatre in Westwood, and I remember saying to myself after it ended, ‘Wow, what I was thinking when I missed that screening?’

Read more

Terrence Malick‘s Song to Song, a mid-Obama administration nostalgia flick (shot in 2011 and ’12) that nobody cares about, will be world premiered on Friday, 3.10 at Austin’s South by Southwest film festival.

Big deal — Malick’s film was largely shot in Austin (where he also lives, right?) so where else would the big opening happen? Plus the SXSW debut is only 7 days before the commercial unveiling on 3.17, and the film will almost certainly screen for big-city critics before 3.10.

I know this is asking a lot, but if Broad Green wants anyone to talk about Song to Song as a film of interest or possible excitement they’re going to have to assemble and release (gasp!) a trailer. And maybe even a one-sheet. The release of such materials would unfortunately violate the privacy and sanctity of the post-production editing process, which Malick has been enjoying for over four years, but sooner or later even artist-poet types have to meet the requirements of the market.

My head is telling me that Gavin Wiesen‘s All Nighter (Good Deed, 3.17) probably isn’t all that great, but my gut is telling me “hold on, this might be okay.” Logic tells me that a film that began shooting in July 2015 and didn’t open last year probably has issues, but J.K. Simmons is a charismatic movie star, and he looks and sounds just right in this thing, not overdoing it, playing it dry and cool. This is the kind of role that Robert DeNiro used to play in his sleep. So maybe. Emile Hirsch is scaring me a little bit (vomiting at the dinner table bit is really bad) but a little voice is telling me this might have a little bit of a Midnight Run thing going on.

This trailer for The Lovers (A24, 5.17) suggests that long-of-tooth actors making movies about sexuality, eros and steamy love affairs isn’t such a great idea. I’m not frowning upon sexuality between past-their-prime types — I just don’t want to watch this kind of thing in a movie, no offense, just as I never wanted to even think about my parents doing it when I was a kid, much less see it, much less imagine my grandparents, etc.

I would actually be okay with a film about a 51 year-old guy having an affair if he looked like Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief. (Grant turned this age when he made Alfred Hitchcock’s film in 1954 and early ’55.) As it happens Lovers costar Tracy Letts is himself 51 (born on 7.4.65). The problem is that Letts looks a good 20 years older, partly because he’s all grayed out and bespectacled and far from ripped and because he has one of those two-week beards that look great if you’re 37 but less so if you’re 73.

That said, I’m fine with the still-attractive Debra Winger being in this but please don’t subject me to the presence of older guys with doughy bellies and milky skin wearing a bath towel. Nor do I want to see a movie about Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Harvey Keitel or John Malkovich having an affair. Ditto Johnny Depp now that he’s become Captain Fatass. But George Clooney or Brad Pitt would be okay.

Read more

Chris Pratt has always been likable and charismatic. I decided he was okay five years ago after catching his performance as an insecure baseball player in Moneyball, and doubly so after he played a studly musclebound Seal who smoked a couple of baddies in Zero Dark Thirty. I didn’t like it when he became a fatass in order to play Andy Dywer in Parks and Recreation, but his thinner incarnation allowed me to accept that he was probably the new Harrison Ford. And then I really fell for his routine two years ago in Guardians of the Galaxy.

But soon after an apparent weakness began to reveal itself — Pratt began to offer indications that he has no taste in projects.

He was okay in Jurassic World but I fucking hated the film. (Nobody with any judgment had any love for it — it was laughably ridiculous.) And then he starred in The Magnificent Seven, another piece of shit. And then Pratt lied through his teeth about the basic scheme of Passengers (the script for which he had called “the best I ever read”), and then Morten Tyldum‘s sci-fi epic was savaged by critics and seriously underperformed.

And then it began to sink in that Pratt is some kind of Christian Republican who likes to own and fire weapons and eat meat and drink beer and all that other alpha-male stuff. Which means he’s probably a Trump supporter. So basically Pratt is a congenial if moderately talented marquee name who’s good looking in a brawny, broad-shouldered, regular-dude kind of way, but is clearly no heavyweight in terms of talent or perception. Which means he’s more or less Lee Majors.

Yes, I’m sure he’ll be totally fine in Galaxy of the Guardians 2 (5.5.17).

Read more

If you’re a fool for the latest in UHD 4K HDR flat panels and you occasionally pay attention to the latest toys displayed at the annual Consumer Electronics Shows in Las Vegas (1.5 thru 1.8), you know that QLED (quantum dot display) TVs are all the rage, and that they’re generally regarded as cooler than OLEDs (light-emitting diode), which in turn are better than LEDs. The last time I checked OLEDs were ridiculously expensive, but the introduction of the even more absurdly priced QLEDs will bring OLED prices down. I couldn’t be happier with my Sony XBR-65X850C LED Smart 4K Ultra HDTV — a 65-incher with side speakers. I’m not even fantasizing about getting a bigger, better set. Okay, I am fantasizing about that but there’s no way I’d shell out for this. No way in hell.

Hollywood Elsewhere is attending a reception this evening for Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson‘s The Ivory Game, a respected Netflix doc about the ongoing assault on African elephants and their possible extinction. It’s on the Academy’s doc shortlist and is naturally hoping to become one of the five nominees.

A persistent view remains that Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America will snag the Oscar, but getting nominated adds cred and is no small accomplishment.

I was reminded last week that The Ivory Game is even more timely now that China has put an official timeline on ending sale of ivory. For decades China has been the biggest market for ivory, which is principally harvested with the killing of elephants and chopping off their tusks, but last week it announced a plan to phase out all ivory processing and trade by the end of 2017.

Read more

It was during the 1920s that the below-glimpsed Parisians and tourists sat and dined, sipped and strolled, lived and quarrelled. Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.

The element that you can’t help but respect in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (HBO, 1.7) is the honesty with which it regards the humiliations of aging and creeping illness as suffered by Debbie. She’s a trooper and a toughie, you bet, but the hill keeps getting steeper and thornier, and your heart goes out. Thank God for the fine comic relief of Carrie’s perspective, which includes relentless servings of candor.