Why do poor, underclass people or those of limited means snort coke, shoot heroin, become alcoholics and smoke cigarettes? Because they’re fully convinced things won’t get any better, because they want relief from the pain, and because they believe that “brief vacations” are worth the expense because at least they deliver that thing. I can remember feeling so down and despairing (in late ’79) that I briefly flirted with the idea of some kind of opiate release. I flirted with it. I can imagine being in such a bad place that I might do more than that if there was no let-up for months or years on end.

Spike Lee’s Instagram Explanation About Boycotting OscarsSoWhite: “Mean No Disrespect To My Friends, Host Chris Rock and Producer Reggie Hudlin, President [Cheryl Boone] Isaacs And The Academy. But, How Is It Possible For The 2nd Consecutive Year All 20 Contenders Under The Actor Category Are White? And Let’s Not Even Get Into The Other Branches. 40 White Actors In 2 Years And No Flava At All. We Can’t Act?! WTF!!”

HE Response: Idris Elba or even Abraham Attah should/could have been nominated for Beasts of No Nation — no question. And I wouldn’t have argued if Creed‘s Michael B. Jordan had been Best Actor nominated, no matter how unlikely that would have been given the competition in that category. But what black actor besides Elba was really and truly given the shaft this year? And what was the big fuckover last year? David Oyelowo as MLK? A strong, steady performance, okay, but I honestly didn’t feel that knocked out.

And on the Best Picture front, Academy voters had five slots to fill in. Is it really that much of a surprise that Creed and Straight Outta Compton didn’t occupy those five in sufficient numbers? If there had been had ten choices, they would have ranked seventh or eighth on most ballots — be honest.

Don’t kid yourself — Spotlight‘s ass was saved tonight when it won the Critics Choice award for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Ensemble.

That gut-punch feeling after The Revenant surged the weekend before last (winning the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama plus earning a better than expected $39 million when Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s film went wide) was alleviated or medicated away tonight. Not to mention last Thursday’s gulpy feeling after The Revenant landed 12 Oscar nominations compared to Spotlight‘s 6 (Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay)…temporarily forgotten. 

As Tennessee Williams once wrote, “Sometimes there’s God so quickly!”

Spotlight producer Steve Golin (l.) and the supporting team (r.).

Spotlight Best Supporting Actress nominee Rachel McAdams, Boston Globe reporter Sacha Pfeiffer accepting the Best Ensemble Award.

The cynical, know-it-all blogaroonies will try to dismiss or minimize the significance of tonight’s Spotlight comeback, and I won’t argue that the real test of the situation will come when the Producers Guild hands out its Daryl F. Zanuck award on Saturday, 1.23. 

If Spotlight takes the top PGA prize, champagne time. If The Big Short takes it, confusion and craziness. If The Revenant wins, back to that feeling of despair and defeatism for the Spotlight-ers. And if Mad Max: Fury Road pulls it out of the hat, whoopee for George Miller along with an even crazier sense of lettuce leaves being tossed in the air and landing every which way.

I’m only telling you that the Spotlight team (Rachel McAdams, Sacha Pfeiffer, producer Steve Golin, Open Road’s Tom Ortenberg but minus Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber and director Tom McCarthy) breathed a collective sigh of relief when they won the Best Picture trophy. The Critics Choice awards have proven a better statistical predictor of the Oscars than the Globes, and there’s nothing the cynics can say that will alter that. 

Cue Elton John‘s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”

A colleague has responded to yesterday’s post about an alleged edge enjoyed by Charlotte Rampling in the Best Actress race (“Feinberg’s Rampling Pushback…Yes!“):

“Don’t get on his high horse about Rampling. That would be a huge upset as 45 Years only has a single nomination — hers — and those in Best Picture nominees like Brie Larson or Saoirse Ronan have a much greater advantage historically since it is the entire Academy that votes. I love Rampling and have been one of her biggest champions since Telluride, but with not even a BAFTA or a SAG nomination and a movie that will more than likely be turned off by many voters who watch on DVD and won’t go for the slowness of it all, forget it. Many have voted for Rampling in the BFCA balloting to get nominated and now to win. But she won’t. Room, with its Best Picture, Director, Screenplay noms and now a surging box-office, has all the momentum for Larson. Only Saoirse could upset because of the love for Brooklyn.”

In a just posted State of the Union interview with Jake Tapper, Donald Trump claims that he has a “very great relationship with God.” As opposed to…what, a mildly fulfilling relationship with the Almighty? What Trump meant, I think, is that he has a Thomas Becket-like attitude. Trump respects God as far as interviews with the media are concerned, but he doesn’t worry about His judgment all that much, as he is fairly secure in the knowledge that God doesn’t judge anyone or anything. So in Trump’s mind they’ve agreed to leave each other alone.

I began my life feeling very angry at God for giving me such a miserable life in suburban New Jersey and especially giving me such strict, hard-nosed parents, particularly a mother who made me go to church every damn Sunday. Then in my teens I went through a period of mocking and taunting him. Then I embraced and worshipped Him as a result of my mystical LSD trips in my early 20s. Then I came to a Trump-like understanding that God is, depending on how lucky or unlucky you are in terms of parental or tribal lineage and birth location, at best impartial about whether you’re living a happy or miserable life.

Then again God does give you the freedom to become someone like Donald Trump or David Bowie or whomever. If you want happiness and you’re not living under a horrible dictatorship, orchestrate your own version of it without making things worse for others.

This is nothing more than a couple of sharpies trying to gin up interest in a Best Picture race that is not as wide open as they’re suggesting. Pete Hammond thinks the real comers are Spotlight and The Big Short because they have nominations in directing, writing, acting and editing. Hammond and O’Neill, in fact, believe that Spotlight is rebounding, and maybe so. And no one will be happier about a Spotlight win than myself. But if The Revenant sweeps or wins big at today’s Critics Choice Awards, which has historically mirrored the Academy more than the HFPA, its momentum will be all the stronger. It has 12 nominations, is going great guns at the box-office, Revbros, etc.

I’ll be driving over to Barker Hangar around 3 pm today. The show kicks off at 5 pm.

Listen to Michael Musto: Journalism films “never win,” he notes, and when you look hard and long The Revenant looks like a safer bet to win Best Picture. “Slog equals best picture…did you snuggle up to 12 Years A Slave? Did you cuddle up to No Country For Old Men?” Kudos to Musto for describing Mark Rylance‘s Bridge of Spies performance as “recessive.” On top of which Sasha Stone has predicted a no-win for Spotlight because of some BAFTA shortcoming.

Six or seven weeks ago some blowhard over-simplistically suggested that reactions to The Revenant might divide along gender lines. The idea came from first-hand observation and first-hand heresay, but it was wrong, terribly wrong, to generalize like this. The guy who tweeted this silly, shoot-from-the-hip notion suffered hate and hyena-bites for weeks, and rightly so. We’re all free-thinking individuals under God’s immense sky, and to suggest that gender might have a little something to do with our reactions to this or that film…well, it’s just despicable when someone says something like this. And the fact that we haven’t yet seen a revgirls hashtag is…well, it’s just fucking meaningless.

From The Guardian‘s Carole Cadwalladr: “Alejandro González Iñárritu’s idea was for it to look as real as possible. Which would have been magnificent if there was something in the way of a story or any meditation on the nature of retribution or anyone — anyone — that you could give one toss about, but there’s not. So the landscape is chilling and the violence is pointless and the whole thing is meaningless. A vacuous revenge tale that is simply pain as spectacle. The Revenant is pain porn.

It’s evident that Creed director Ryan Coogler pays close attention. He’s the kind of guy who feeds off anything of value, anything that makes him sharper or more attuned. An Oakland dude, educated but no elitist, couldn’t be a dweeb if he tried. You can feel the spark, the nerve, the engine…he types fast and furious like Justin Chang. Coogler will never be anything or anyone other than himself. A fan of Precious and Inglourious Basterds, he’s one of those guys who will always make movies for audiences, but he also has that keen hunger thing, a taste for heights and expansion. But after Black Panther, he’d be wise to get into something more personal or, you know, maybe in a Fruitvale Station-ish vein. More of a real-deal people movie. Heroism and triumph can turn stale at the drop of a hat.

Despite all the things that are cloying, miscalculated, rightwingish or even grotesque about Michael Bay‘s 13 Hours, I still say it’s a thrilling, expertly assembled actioner. Please weigh in, and share observations about the crowd you saw it with, what they were saying afterwards, what friends have said, etc.

Yesterday Variety‘s Elizabeth Wagmeister quoted producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, offering some admiring words about Donald Trump. “Listen, he’s an interesting, very successful man,” Bruckheimer said during a Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, where Bruckheimer was plugging the Fox series Lucifer. But he didn’t call himself an out-and-out Trump supporter. “I like ’em all,” he said of the various candidates. “I want to see who comes out ahead and I’ll support who I believe will be best for our country. The American people will decide who they want to support.” I can think of a lot of things to call Trump, but “interesting”?

The trailer for Love, Judd Apatow‘s Netflix relationship series (ten episodes to start) starring Community‘s Gillian Jacobs and sketch comedian Paul Rust, is the only tolerable one that’s popped in the last couple of days. (There are actually two trailers.) Rust “co-created Love with Apatow and TV writer Lesley Arfin (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Girls),” it says here. The costars will include Charlyne Yi, Brett Gelman, Bobby Lee, Dave Allen, Chantal Claret and Andy Dick. The series begins on 2.19.