Ever since Mel Gibson played the crazy, half-suicidal Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon (which I’m having difficulty accepting as a film that’s nearly 30 years old), I’ve been carrying the idea that Gibson himself is highly eccentric and wound-up. Because I knew Riggs wasn’t just a character on a page but close in spirit and temperament to Gibson himself. It was obvious.

Purer manifestations emerged when he began directing. Braveheart (’95), The Passion of the Christ (’04) and especially Apocalypto (’06) wallowed in beatings, bruisings and gougings of an intense, graphic nature. Because something in Mel just can’t resist going there.

And now, after a ten-year absence from directing, comes Gibson’s latest, Hacksaw Ridge (Summit, 11.4), and it’s nearly as bloody and gorey as the others. This despite a World War II-era story about a real-life pacifist, Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield), who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Battle of Okinawa without firing a single bullet.

It’s unusual for critics to break into applause, but that’s what they did at the end of a Hacksaw Ridge screening last week. This reaction is reflected in the film’s 94% Rotten Tomatoes rating. But I have to say that while Hacksaw is vivid and pounding and open-hearted, I don’t get the adoration. It’s basically another half-crazy movie made by a half-crazy helmer — blood and guts, overt “acting”, saucy sentimentality, small-town patriotism, on-the-nose emotions.

I’m not calling Hacksaw a bad film, but it seemed a bit much for my tastes.

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Year in and year out, Frank Perry‘s Play It As It Lays (’72) maintains its absence as a Bluray, DVD or via high-def streaming. No Amazon, Vudu, Netflix, zip. It aired on the Sundance Channel a few years year and then vanished. Every so often someone will post the film on YouTube, and eventually attorneys for Universal Home Video, which owns the rights the last time I checked, will have it taken down. It appeared again in August 2015 (and in 1.37!) and hasn’t been pulled after 14 months so here’s your chance.

Here, for the fifth or sixth time, is a lengthy assessment of the film, originally posted in ’03 and then re-posted in ’09. I especially admire Tony Perkins‘ performance as B.Z., a gay Hollywood producer with a kind heart and a flip attitude. I’ve long felt it’s the finest of his career, and probably the most reflective of his own manner and personality.

Miles Teller has been staying at the Marshall House since Sunday, and will take bows after tonight’s Savannah Film Festival screening of Bleed For This (Open Road, 11.4), which I saw and favorably reviewed at Telluride. Director-writer Ben Younger along with former world-champion boxer Vinny Paz, whom Teller portrays, will attend also.

I saw Teller a couple of days ago in front of the Marshall House. Shooting shit with fans, posing for selfies, etc. He was wearing shorts and a pair of flaming turquoise-blue cross-training shoes. He no longer has the blonde hair he was wearing last August for his role in Joseph Kosinski‘s Granite Mountain, so I guess that’s done. Yesterday he sat down for a Master Class (i.e., a sit-down discussion) with SCAD students.

This morning I tried to arrange a fast interview wth Teller (we’re both in town, our hotels only six blocks apart), but the word came back that Teller is “too busy.” Too busy posing for selfies, they meant. Or too pissed off about my “don’t be a pervert, man” posts. But that’s okay. He’s a live-wire actor who never bores. He just needs to keep being that.

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A few days ago it was reported that Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to the biography ‘Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll,” with Leonardo DiCaprio attached to produce and star. A little voice is saying DiCaprio should ease up on portraying real-life guys — Jordan Belfort, Frank Abagnale, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes. Plus he’ll never top his Belfort performance — he knows it, we know it.

If a Sam Phillips biopic is going to happen for sure, the best guy to play him would be a time-machine version of Dallas Roberts. Yes, the guy who played Phillips in that one burn-through scene from Walk The Line (’05). I believed 100% in that scene. Roberts was perfect, owned it. He was 34 or 35 back then, is now 46.

Yes, Phillips created the legendary Sun Records label and discovered nascent blues rockers like Howlin’ Wolf, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, and in so doing gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll. But his peak period only lasted five years (’51 to ’56). So the movie would be basically saying “this visionary Southern guy lived for 80 years and is a bona fide legend, but mostly because of a bright-burning period that began to draw to a close when Presley began appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was eight years before the Beatles arrived.”

Posted on 2.6.09 during my visit to Memphis: “I loved visiting the fabled Sun Studios because it hasn’t been expanded or glitzed up. It looks and feels a lot like what I imagine it used to be back in the ’50s. I bought an Elvis at Sun CD and listened to it twice during the 90-minute drive south to Oxford. ‘Y’heard the news, thayuhs good rockin’ tonight.'”

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So is the competition among Best Actor contenders a little weak this year, as a colleague recently suggested? When you get past Casey Affleck‘s performance in Manchester By The Sea (locked) and Denzel Washington‘s in Fences (likely), maybe.

The others comprise a roster of approvable-but-not-greats — Tom Hanks in Sully (sober, believable, sturdy), Ryan Gosling in La La land (skillful and affecting but the film belongs to Emma Stone), Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw Ridge (a respectable if “actorish” performance), Joel Edgerton in Loving (not up to Ruth Negga‘s level), Dev Patel in Lion (a decent turn but not as good as the little kid who stars in the first third) and Robert De Niro in The Comedian (which no one has seen).

Jonah Hill as former arms dealer Efraim Diveroli in Todd Phillips’ War Dogs.

Remember War Dogs? I know — not serious enough, released in August, a Todd Phillips film, etc. But if you ask me Jonah Hill was a remarkable stand-out as 20something arms dealer and stone-cold sociopath Efraim Diveroli. Not one of those “maybe” or “pretty good” performances, but extra-level. Really.

From my 8.17.16 review: “Hill’s rascally, conniving performance is the big reason to see War Dogs this weekend. Jonah, Jonah, Jonah…back in Superbad territory but with less schtick and colder blood. The highs, lows and demonic detours of a sociopathic, three-card-monte hustler!

“Jonah is in charge of the surge moments. Half the time you’re thinking ‘okay, this is good, moving along but where’s Jonah?’ or, you know, ‘what’s Jonah’s next big bullshit play gonna be’?

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Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s Cinema Society gathering for Neruda and Jackie director Pablo Larrain on Sunday, 10.30. Both films will be shown at the Riviera theatre (2044 Alameda Padre Serra, Santa Barbara) — Neruda (The Orchard, 12.16) at 10am, and Jackie (Fox Searchlight, 12.2) at 2 pm. In between guests will attend a reception at the Riviera Park Reflecting Pool for a luncheon and q & a with Larrain.

Yes, I’m queer for backstage color photos taken during the filming of classic black-and-white films. Yes, the Marlon Brando-in-Julius Caesar shot below is a fake — i.e., digitally colored. And yet the marble looks accurate; ditto the blood smears. And red wardrobe is, of course, often used on black-and-white films as it photographs well in that process. Yeah, it’s fake but I wish it wasn’t.

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Several weeks ago I tapped out a piece called “Whither La La Land‘s Encounter With Joe Popcorn?“. The gist was that (a) Tom Hanks was spot-on when he said “if the audience doesn’t go and embrace something as wonderful as this then we are all doomed,” but that (b) I was concerned about Bobby Peru‘s prediction that Damien Chazelle’s 21st Century musical (Summit, 12.9) will only do arthouse-level business.

La La Land director-writer Damien Chazelle (r.), Access Hollywood‘s Scott Mantz (l.) outside SCAD Trustees theatre prior to last night’s La La Land screening.

Well, I saw La La land again last night at the Savannah Film Festival, and while the audience was a mixture of elite film lovers (which all film festivals attract) and SCAD students, it went over like gangbusters. Cheering, whoo-whooing, a standing ovation for Chazelle. Three SCAD kids (two girls and a guy) were sitting next to me, and they were all having kittens. Delighted, emotionally affected, planning to buy the soundtrack and see it again with their parents, etc. Everyone in the house was blissed, floating.

Bobby Peru’s response would presumably be “naaah, people who go to film festivals are foo-foos…real popcorn types aren’t going to embrace this because musicals are regarded as arcane exercises in nostalgia, especially those that don’t feature major music stars.”

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Nobody has seen Robert Zemeckis‘ Allied (Paramount, 11.23), but the trailers have told us it’s a WWII espionage-and-assassins drama. But this new poster conveys a kind of swoony champagne vibe from High Society (’56). This is what Zemeckis wanted. Sexy stars, romantic vibes, perfect hair and wardrobe, Alfred Hitchcock‘s Notorious, etc. An aura of flush, pampered glamour.

Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra in High Society.

All hail the late Tom Hayden, reigning lion of ’60s-era activism, principal author of the 1962 SDS Port Huron statement, a Chicago 7 defendant and a California Assemblyman and Senator for almost 20 years. Hayden has passed at the age of 76 after suffering a stroke last year, and his absence is no small thing. Hayden was the George Washington of the rabble-rousing antiwar left from the mid ’60s to mid ’70s. The man was graced with exceptional smarts, vision and a pair of steel balls.

Hayden was also the only anti-establishment activist to marry a brilliant, sexy, major-league Hollywood actress — Jane Fonda. To the best of my knowledge no other SDS superstar, megaphone speech-giver or Chicago 7 defendant (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, John Froines, David Dellinger, Bobby Seale, Rennie Davis, Lee Weiner) even dated a world-class, Oscar-winning Hollywood headliner. I’m sorry but that means something. Hayden was a political star and his 16- or 17-year partnership with Fonda was a significant part of that lustre.

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With today’s announcement that Fences costar Viola Davis will compete for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar instead of a Best Actress trophy (which would have made sense given that she won a Best Actress Tony for playing the same character, Rose Maxson, in a 2010 Broadway production), the Best Actress race is, I believe, all but settled.

The falling-down reactions to Emma Stone‘s La La land performance at Telluride seven weeks ago made it clear to almost everyone that the Best Actress race would be between Stone and Davis, based on her earlier triumph and the storied reputation of August Wilson’s 1987 play. Then Natalie Portman‘s Jackie scored in Toronto and she became another peak contender. But now with Davis out it seems pretty obvious that Stone all but has it in the bag.

Why? Portman hits a ground-rule double or, at most, a triple. Stone hits a grand slam. It’s that simple.

It’s not just the skillfulness of her La La Land performance but the depth and exuberance and intensity of it. Portman’s Jacqueline Kennedy turn, which will almost certainly be nominated, is more poised and precise — the role as written doesn’t coax or require her to dig down and release an emotional gusher, not the way Stone does in La La Land.

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