“I think this is a romcom….Bella falls in love with life itself!” Emma Stone wins Best Actress, Musical or Comedy for Poor Things. Excellent!

Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy winning Best Actor, Motion Picture, Drama…total Oppenheimer sweep, not just tonight but at the Oscars in a few weeks.

Why is it that I’m having extremely, intensely negative reactions to all the people in the ads? Which are all about travel, medications, B’way musicals, Stop & Shop, Aura, Secret, etc.

The guy playing Bob Marley in the biopic is much better looking than the real Bob Marley.

Oppenheimer’s Ludwig Goransson wins for Best Score…total Oppie sweep.

Billie Eilish looks like a freak…her outfit seems to be about a form of hostility. Or indifference.

Did Barbie just win a Golden Globe for making loads of money?

…so I bailed and haven’t returned. I’ve been told Season #2 is much better and I should give it another go. Congrats to Jeremy Allen White, for what it’s worth.

I was respectful of Anatomy of a Fall but never a huge fan. Too long, no real tension in the matter of Sandra Huller‘s possible guilt, hated the little kid Congrats all the same to Justine Triet.

Note to The Bear‘s Ayo Edebari and everyone else on the planet: “Never say ‘oh my God!'”

Anyone wearing a burgundy or maroon tux gets an instant HE demerit.

All hail the Golden Globe wins by The Holdovers Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey, Jr. The halting of the Charles Melton blitzkreig is noted and appreciated.

Or at least when it was still hanging in there on its own follicular terms. The 31 year-old Sean Connery may have applied some kind of augmentation for Dr. No (a scalp darkener?) but what the camera saw was more or less what was there. (The first 007 “rug” appeared in Goldfinger over two years later.).

On top of which Dr. No (which was only a modest earner upon opening in late ‘62) and From Russia With Love (ditto) are still the best of the series — lean and rigorous and relatively modest in terms of scale and pushing the bounds of credibility. Plus there were no sensitivity police around to protect the Zoomer candy–asses from all that bruising sexism and rugged machismo, Mainly because (thank you, 20th Century!) Zoomers wouldn’t become a cultural force until roughly 2010.

A weak snowfall — enough for a generic whitening but I’m not foreseeing much in the way of sledding, snowmen, snowball fights. Weather media always oversells the proverbial approaching storm. Hype falls short.

The term “clear box” is synonymous with “story-less template,” which is how I put it the other day.

Herewith the second Oscar Poker podcast of ’24. National Society of Film Critics Calls. The N.Y. Times vs. Taylor Swift. I’m a Cannibal, You’re a Cannibal. Random Golden Globe Predictions. What is life without a little suspense?

Again, the link.

It should be understood that the 108–minute version of Ken Russell’s The Devils (‘71), which is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, was dissed by Russell and star Oliver Reed before their deaths. The franker British version, which runs 111 minutes, is the one to settle into. The Criterion Channel makes no mention of this, although it does offer a doc about the film’s censoring, titled “Hell on Earth: The Desecration and Resurrection of The Devils.”

From a 1.4.24 N.Y. Times guest essay by Anna Marks, titled “Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do“:

“Whether she is conscious of it or not, Taylor Swift signals to queer people — in the language we use to communicate with one another — that she has some affinity for queer identity. There are some queer people who would say that through this sort of signaling, she has already come out, at least to us.

“But what about coming out in a language the rest of the public will understand?

“The difference between any person coming out and a celebrity doing so is the difference between a toy mallet and a sledgehammer. It’s reasonable for celebrities to be reticent; by coming out, they potentially invite death threats, a dogged tabloid press that will track their lovers instead of their beards, the excavation of their past lives, a torrent of public criticism and the implosion of their careers.

“In a culture of compulsory heterosexuality, to stop lying — by omission or otherwise — is to risk everything.

“American culture still expects that stars are cis and straight until they confess themselves guilty. So when our culture imagines a celebrity’s coming out, it expects an Ellen-style announcement that will submerge the past life in phoenix fire and rebirth the celebrity in a new image. In an ideal culture, wearing a bracelet that says ‘PROUD’, waving a pride flag onstage, placing a rainbow in album artwork or suggestively answering fan questions on Instagram would be enough. But our current reality expects a supernova.”

Question #1: When was the last time that a famous person was all-but-outed on the N.Y. Times editorial page?

Question #2: Even if Mark’s piece is unsubstantiated conjecture, and I have no way of knowing either way, her Times essay sets a new standard for invasive journalism. Can anyone imagine a gay activist calling out a closeted male celebrity in the same way? Shouldn’t closeted people (if indeed they are closeted) be left the hell alone?

Question #3: If you were Travis Kelce, how would you be feeling right now? What would be going through your head? Would you be shrugging it off with a chuckle? Or would you be saying to yourself “WHAT THE LIVING FUCK?”