Every so often I’ll write about the average person’s strange inability (refusal?) to sing the “Happy Birthday” song on key. It happened again last night at the home of director Phillip Noyce. 30 or so guests wished a good one to his beautiful wife, Vuyo Dyasi, but the singing hurt. And some of them were showbiz people, whom you might think would have some respect for the idea of hitting notes. Listening to that song being murdered is awful. I was standing next to two of the assassins, and I couldn’t even imitate how horrendously off-key they were. Imagine a Vietnamese water buffalo groaning while being repeatedly stabbed in the chest.

That aside, it was a lovely holiday gathering. Great people, good food and real Chicago-like temperatures (as it was partly happening in the back yard). Thanks for inviting me, guys.

Posted on 7.31.13: “I can’t sing like a professional or even a gifted amateur, but I can definitely sing ‘Happy Birthday’ on-key. Which is more than 97% of your Average Joes and Janes can manage. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to a table of restaurant revelers try to sing it and not hit a single true note. It’s pathetic. We’re not talking about singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ here. Bad singing is all about emotional timidity. Singing on-key takes a certain open-heartedness. You can’t be covert about it. All I know is that every time a table launches into ‘Happy Birthday’ I grimace and go “oh, God…here we go.”

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Two days ago North Carolina Republican legislators pushed through two bills that will hamstring Governor-elect Roy Cooper. Yesterday outgoing Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bills. A naked, venal power-grab by N.C. righties — what else is noew? Huffpost’s Julia Craven: “Cooper was up by 4,300 votes on Election Day and continued to rise in the count. Instead of bowing out graciously, McCrory asked that all provisional ballots be counted, formally called for a statewide recount and made brash allegations of voter fraud before finally conceding on 12.5.” Here’s a Daily Kos account of what happened on 12.15. A video capture of what happened after the jump:

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Life can be hard and cruel and sometimes shattering, but few have ever had to cope with the kind of mind-numbing horror that slapped Jackie Kennedy across the chops on 11.22.63. And then she had to carry the weight for everyone, the weight of that whole terrible four-day pageant, and somehow the after-vibes have never quite gone away, even with the passing of 53 years. Ask anyone who was over the age of ten back then (i.e., boomers who are now over 60) and they’ll tell you all about that day, that pall, that weekend, that ache-athon that was broadcast morning, noon and night for over 80 hours straight.

It was therefore brilliant and kind of brash for Pablo Larrain to avoid the usual-usual in the making of Jackie — to sidestep that mass memory and not deliver a rote recap of what Mrs. Kennedy, only 34 at the time, went through that weekend, but to make a kind of art film — to give her portrait a kind of anxious, fevered, interior feeling. And yet it’s a saga of strength and steel — a woman who held it together and led a nation.

Larrain called for a rewrite of Noah Oppenheim‘s original 2010 script, cutting out many if not most of the well-known figures who had speaking parts and pruning Jackie down to what it is now — intimate, half-dreamlike, cerebral, not entirely “realistic” but at the same time persuasive and fascinating.

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I remember going “yeah, not great but not bad” when I saw Martin Brest‘s Going In Style (’79). Gentle and melancholy in tone, it waded into old-age anger and loneliness and despondency while throwing in occasional gags. George Burns, who costarred with Art Carney and Lee Strasberg, gave the standout performance. The new version, directed by Zach Braff and costarring Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin, appears to go light on the melancholy, and seems to be into broad humor more than anything else. Warner Bros. will open it on 4.17.17; it was originally set for 5.6.16.

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“Snatched at gunpoint by a gang of kidnappers deep in the Amazonian jungle”? Yep, that’s the sort of thing that might just happen when an emotionally distraught 30something woman (Amy Schumer) takes a vacation in Ecuador with her mom (Goldie Hawn). Obviously a programmer. No one is allowed to mention anyone’s facial “work” (just ask Owen Gleiberman what happens when you do) so I guess I can’t say anything. Written by Katie Dippold (The Heat, Ghostbusters); directed by Jonathan Levine (50/50, Warm Bodies, The Night Before), and costarring Joan Cusack, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes and Christopher Meloni. 20th Century Fox is opening Snatched (originally Mother/Daughter) on 5.12.17.

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I began my 12.13 Rogue One review by saying “there are two aspects of Garth Edwards and Tony Gilroy‘s film that I was really and truly impressed by, and I can’t mention either of them. Well, I could but it would be shitty of me. The first weekend crowd is entitled to be surprised as much as I was last night.”

One of those admired elements, I can now say, is the film’s stunning digital reanimation of the late Peter Cushing, who “returns” as Grand Moff Tarkin, the highly mannered senior commander of the Death Star.

Why am I revealing this information on Friday afternoon with most Star Wars fans yet to see Rogue One? Partly because Variety‘s Kris Tapley and Peter Debruge have posted an article this afternoon (at 4:07 pm Pacific) about the Industrial Light and Magic CG that allowed for Cushing’s rebirth.

At least three fanboy sites (Cinema Blend, Screen Rant, Bustle) have also spilled the beans.

Hilarious graph from the Variety story: “A Lucasfilm rep tells Variety that the filmmakers will not be discussing the nuts and bolts of what went into Cushing’s reprise until January, in order for audiences to see the film and enjoy it without being spoiled by details. But the implications raised by the bold achievement, and others like it, are another thing entirely — and they’ve been ringing throughout the industry for decades.”

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Updated on 1.1.17: The following is an update of a piece I originally posted on 12.9: With the addition of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma and a few others, Hollywood Elsewhere’s grand tally of high-end 2017 releases now comes to 80.

Of these I’ve listed 6 likely Best Picture contenders, a trio of high-end galactic thrillers, 23 pick-of-the-litter films from brand-name directors, 26 films of alternate interest plus 22 others of somewhat lesser distinction for a total of 79.

At least five of these have the traditional earmarks of Best Picture contenders — Kathryn Bigelow‘s Untitled Detroit Riots Drama, Chris Nolan‘s Dunkirk, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Charles James ’50s period drama, Alexander Payne‘s Downsizing and Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour, a Winston Churchill vs. Nazi war machine drama.

I would add Cuaron’s film, a Spanish-language Mexican family drama set in the ’70s, for a total of six, but the Academy will most likely consign it to the Best Foreign Language category.

Alfonso Cuaron during the Mexico City-shooting of Roma.

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Most people feel that home is where the heart is, but what they usually mean is a structure, a traditional provider of comfort and security…a two-story colonial, front porch, rose bushes, freshly mowed lawn, white picket fence, two-car garage, mounted basketball net. Yes, I have a home that I feel good about and invested in, and many other places, things and regular experiences (daily challenges, festivals, visits to great cities and exotic lands) that make me feel good about my life, but I swear to God this image here is the closest and most intimate representation of comfort for me. Where my heart is, my life is. I feel as close to this image as James Stewart‘s George Bailey felt about Bedford Falls.

The night before last I read Elyse Hollander‘s Blonde Ambition, the top-rated Black List script about Madonna‘s struggle to find success as a pop singer in early ’80s Manhattan. It’s going to be a good, hard-knocks industry drama when it gets made — basically a blend of a scrappy singing Evita with A Star Is Born — and if the right actress plays Madonna the right way, she might wind up with a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Maybe. Who knows?

This is a flinty, unsentimental empowerment saga about a tough cookie who took no prisoners and was always out for #1. No hearts and flowers for this mama-san.

Madonna and producer-mixer Jellybean Benitez, sometime around the release of her 1983 debut album.

The success of Blonde Ambition will depend, of course, on who directs and how strong the costars are, particularly the guy who plays Madonna’s onetime-boyfriend John “Jellybean” Benitez, whose remix and producing of her self-named first album launched her career, as well as her Emmys bandmate and previous lover Dan Gilroy. (No, I’m not referring to the director-writer who’s preparing to shoot Inner City with Denzel Washington in March — Madonna’s ex is/was a totally different guy.)

A Star Is Born‘s logline was basically “big star with a drinking problem falls for younger ingenue, she rises as he falls and finally commits suicide, leaving her with a broken heart.” Blonde Ambition is about a hungry, super-driven New York pop singer who, like Evita Peron, climbs to the top by forming alliances with this and that guy who helps her in some crucial way, and then moves on to the next partner or benefactor, but at no point in the journey is she fighting for anything other than her own success, and is no sentimentalist or sweetheart.

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Congrats to Mark Harris for having written what I presume will be a diverting essay about Hal Ashby‘s Being There — his first Criterion Bluray essay. The disc — a new and restored digital 4K transfer, supervised by Caleb Deschanel — will pop on 3.21.17.

I’ve just tweeted my feelings about this exceedingly dry, droll film, and I have to say that while Being There felt just right in ’80, I’m not so sure about now. In high places a man who speaks only in metaphors and parables would eventually be asked to speak bluntly, plainly, like a cab driver or a beat cop. You can play your Zen cards only to a certain extent — sooner or later people of substance and consequence would demand that you put up or shut up. Which is why at the end of the day, the single, solitary joke at the heart of Being There wears thin.

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The Academy’s occasionally shortsighted foreign language film committee has released a list of nine finalists for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, culled from a roster of 89 films, and, incredibly, they’ve blown off Paul Verhoeven‘s Elle — a critically acclaimed career rebirth for the Dutch auteur as well as a vessel for Isabelle Huppert‘s hailed lead performance, which has already won several stateside awards and nominations.

And yet they’ve approved (i.e., included among the nine) one of the most deeply loathed foreign-language films of the year — Xavier Dolan‘s It’s Only The End of the World, which was all but spat upon by critics when it played at last May’s Cannes Film Festival.

The committee has also tossed (a) Pedro Almodovar‘s Julieta (Spain), a well-respected midrange effort (I called it “a Joan Crawford mother-daughter hairshirt film”), (b) Palo Larrain‘s Neruda with Gael Garcia Bernal (i.e., “Where is that fat Communist?”) and (c) Gianfranco Rosi‘s Fire at Sea, which won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear last February.

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