…and in so doing making it seem as if Focus Features’ decision to announce an early (11.28) streaming date a week and a half after the 11.10 wide-release launch…all I can tell you is that this early streaming detour made me feel badly..

To repeat, Focus will start streaming one of the best-written, best-acted and best character-driven films of the year on 11.28.

Focus platformed Alexander Payne’s universally-praised Oscar contender on 10.27 and then went wide (1478 screens), as noted, on 11.10.

Over-40s showed up (I caught it a week ago at a local AMC plex) but your texting, short-attention-span, snorting-at-rave-reviews Millennials and Zoomers didn’t flock (presumably unenthused about a film set in 1970 and preferring something more personally relatable) and the take so far is a passable but no-great-shakes $9 million and change.

The Holdovers is not a sentimental nostalgia trip. It authentically recreates that 1970-ish atmosphere, but it’s mainly about top-tier chops — witty writing, careful character building, wry humor and Payne’s ultra-refined filmmaking instincts.

Posted today by World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy:

…was a moderate realpolitik liberal by early ‘60s standards, and yet by the measurement of today’s political thinking (and certainly compared to the beliefs of the post-2017 censorious wacko left) he would have to be seen as a centrist and even in some respects a center–rightist.

In terms of lightning vibes, cool glamour and soaring oratorical panache JFK’s only equal was and is Barack Obama.

If George McGovern (the “Prairie populist”) had miraculously been elected in ‘72 he might have become, I believe, an inspirational Democratic president. His voice was twangy and his speeches often sounded platitudinous, but he had soul and integrity.

Or he could have suffered the unfortunate political fate of the recently widowed Jimmy Carter.

Bill Clinton, for sure, was and is another charisma prince and an exceptional wowser speech-giver, but administratively he was more or less an Eisenhower Republican.

…because some of her texts on the Israeli-Hamas conflict have implied an anti–Semitic bias, or so some have judged. And so the In The Heights costar has been jettisoned from the next Scream movie.

It’s fair to observe, I think, that there’s an apparent racial-ethnic factor affecting reactions to the Israeli-Hamas war.

If you’re a fair-skinned American or European Jew (fully or partly), you’re naturally going to feel an allegiance with Israel. If you’re from a culture of color that has experienced white avarice or white colonialism or white racism (Barrera is Mexican), you’re going to identify or sympathize with the Palestinian viewpoint.

There appears to be no way for an entertainment industry person to express limited support or at least compassion for presumably innocent Gaza Palestinians caught in the crossfire without taking a career hit.

You can’t say, for example, that “the 10.7 Hamas atrocity was satanic and that the responsible Hamas fiends must suffer the necessary consequences, but many thousands of non-combatant Gaza residents have since died from Israeli reprisals and many more thousands of non-combatants will die in the coming weeks, and that too is tragic.”

Apparently you can’t blurt this out without being regarded askance or getting dropped or cancelled.

This is what Barrera recently said:

But in other texts she implied what sounded to some like a form of racial bias — feelings and convictions in support of Gaza victims but also against Israel’s “white” government and its defensive (or suppressive) military policies

However unwise from a careerist perspective, what Barrera has said seems fairly close to what Barack Obama said on 11.5, Here’s a portion:

…in early June ‘17.

Allegedly snapped at a London party in 1957, when Cary Grant was around 53 and Sean Connery was 27. Connery was then filming (or had just filmed) Another Time, Another Place with Lana Turner. His hair was still reasonably thick, or at least not thinning.

I don’t believe that story about Bond producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli offering the 007 role to Grant roughly four years later, sometime in early ’61. The 57 year-old Grant had reached his dashing physical peak when he shot North by Northwest in ’58, and was at least ten years too old to play a hotshot British agent — Grant himself believed this. Plus Broccoli wanted Grant to commit to five Bond films, a proposition which Grant immediately declined.

Connery was hired to play Bond sometime between the late summer and early fall of ’61. Filming on Dr. No began in Kingston, Jamaica, on 1.16.62. It opened commercially later that year. Connery made it through the first two films without a full toupee, but was forced to wear one for Goldfinger.

1. Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro
2. Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers (a ’70s character-driven thing, yes, but an absolutely first-rate resuscitation of this type of film)
3. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things (rousing nutter filmmaking…bawdy, nervy, wildly imaginative and yet a tad over-praised at Venice and Telluride due to the hothouse atmosphere of those two gatherings)
4. Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction
5. David Fincher‘s The Killer
6. Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot-au-Feu (aka Tbe Taste of Things)
7. Michael Mann‘s Ferrari
8. Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant
9. Christian Mungiu‘s RMN
10. Ilker Çatak’s The Teacher’s Lounge (official German submission for Best Int’l feature)

11. Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest
12. Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer — first-rate film but I groaned at the one-hour mark, knowing there were two full hours to go…my soul softly wept.
13. Aki Kaurismäki‘s Fallen Leaves (Chaplinesque, slightly glum relationship comedy-drama..quietly touching performances from costars Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen)
14. Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie [manosphere pissnado demerit]
15. Cruise & McQuarrie‘s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One
16. Errol Morris‘s The Pigeon Tunnel (richly visual, beautifully scored doc about John le Carre…enveloping and rather dazzling)
17. Eric Gravel‘s Full Time
18. Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon
19. Matt Johnson‘s Blackberry tied with The Burial, a formulaic but satisfying courtoom dramas featuring Jamie Foxx‘s best performance since Ray.
20. Ari Aster‘s Beau Is Afraid

21`. Ben Affleck‘s Air
22. Jean-Stephen Sauvaire’s Black Flies.
23. Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike’s Last Dance
24. Nicole Holofcener‘s You Hurt My Feelings

Yesterday Deadline‘s Justin Kroll reported that James L. Brooks is planning to direct a new feature — his first since 2010’s How Do You Know, which unfortunately didn’t work out.

The Brooks project is called Ella McCay, and it sounds like some kind of West Wing-y type deal but set in a governor’s mansion. Politics mixed with a romantic current, I’m presuming, Brooks being Brooks.

The titular role will be played by 27 year-old Emma Mackey (Emma, Death on the Nile), whom HE approves of on a primal attraction level. The costars are Woody Harrelson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Albert Brooks. 20th Century Studios will distribute.

Kroll: “The film will follow an idealistic young politician (Mackey) who juggles familial issues and a challenging work life while preparing to take over the job of her mentor, the state’s longtime incumbent governor (presumably Harrelson).”

Take over the governorship at age 30 or thereabouts? How would that work exactly? Maybe the plot will have Mackey secretly take over a la Edith Wilson after Governor Harrelson falls ill. Maybe she’ll assume power after Harrelson is brought down by a sexual scandal (i.e., New York State’s Kathy Hochul taking the reins after Andrew Cuomo was torpedoed)…something like that.

Brooks’ heyday happened during the ’70s on television (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi), and in features during the late ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Nobody was more in love with the Brooks brand than myself — those brilliant, incisive, emotional empathy scenarios that wrestled with real-life adult stuff. Then again Brooks has been out of the game for 13 years, and his last film was a bust, and he’s now 83.

When you boil it all down, Brooks’ feature film rep rests upon four really good feature films — 1979’s Starting Over (which he wrote and co-produced along with director Alan Pakula), 1983’s Terms of Endearment, 1987’s Broadcast News and 1997’s As Good as It Gets. But really three as Pakula was in command of that Burt Reynolds-Jill Clayburgh romcom.

Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything (’94) was a disaster, and Spanglish (’04) didn’t pan out either. On the other hand he produced Big (’88), The War of the Roses (’89), Jerry Maguire (’96), Riding in Cars with Boys (’01), The Edge of Seventeen (’16) and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (’23). Brooks also exec produced Say Anything… (’89) and Bottle Rocket (’96).

Kroll reports that Brooks will produce Ella McCay along with Gracie Films producing partners Julie Ansell and Richard Sakai.

If and when The Beast persuades Tucker Carlson to become his 2024 vice-presidential running mate, two things will most likely happen. One (and it pains me to admit this**), Trump-Carlson would probably beat Biden-Harris. Especially with RFK, Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West mucking things up. And two, Carlson would probably mop the floor with Kamala Harris in the vice-presidential debate. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

Maggie Haberman to The Dispatch‘s Jamie Weinstein (11.20.23): “It’s a real thing that I’m hearing as a possibility. The likelihood of it I don’t know. I think there will be a pretty professionalized vetting process. Honestly, I know that might sound unbelievable, based on what we’ve seen from Trump historically, but Trump’s current political team is the best at least as a non-incumbent. There’s just a different level of control.

“I don’t think the Tucker thing is not real. I think the risk with Tucker Carlson and Trump is that Tucker Carlson is a star in his own right, and I’m not sure how Trump would contend with that.”