Last night Academy members received the following from Academy official Lorenza Muñoz, titled “FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
 for current Academy members about the new rules”:

Q: Why is the Academy excluding older members from voting?
A: We’re not excluding older members. Everyone will retain membership.


Q: But won’t older members lose their opportunity to vote for the Oscars?
A: These rules are not about age. In fact, under the new rules many veteran Academy members will retain voting rights.


Q: I thought you had to work in the last ten years in order to vote.
A: Working in the last ten years is one way to ensure you have voting privileges. Another way is to have been nominated for an Oscar. And a third way is to show that since you were admitted as a member you’ve worked in motion pictures during three ten-year periods. This means that the longer your career, the more likely you’ll qualify for voting.


Q: So we have to have worked for thirty years to keep the vote?
A: No. Let’s say you were admitted to the Academy in 1980 and you worked on one film in 1989. That covers you for your first ten years. Then you worked once in the ’90s, which covers you for your second ten-year term, and once again in 2001 for your third ten-year term. That’s only a twelve-year period, but you have worked in the three ten-year terms of your membership, so you’d qualify as an active member with voting status.


Q: Do these ten-year terms have to be consecutive?
A: No, they do not.


Read more

It shouldn’t take a genius to read between the lines of Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter review of The Birth of a Nation, which premiered in Park City yesterday afternoon. Keep in mind that every reviewer filing for a major outlet knew they had to write very carefully lest they be perceived as having a blockage of some kind.

Toward the end of his review McCarthy notes that The Birth of a Nation “offers up more than enough in terms of intelligence, insight, historical research and religious nuance as to not at all be considered a missed opportunity.” Parker did pretty well considering, he’s saying. The film has issues here and there but it’s not half bad.

“Far more of the essentials made it into the film than not,” McCarthy goes on. “Its makers’ dedication and minute attention are constantly felt and the subject matter is still rare enough onscreen as to be welcome and needed, as it will be the next time and the time after that.” Translation: Parker will be refining his abilities as he goes along and may quite possibly make a truly world-class film down the road.

We’ve all seen Sundance films before where the audience reacts more to the subject matter or a film’s political position, so what happened yesterday is no surprise.

Read more

There was an old rumor about the late Danny Thomas (yeah, I know — “who?”) that I used to laugh about at parties in my early 20s. The rumor was that Thomas liked prostitutes to give him “plate jobs.” (Don’t ask.) Except this was the kind of thing that needed to be left alone. It wasn’t something you ever wanted to read about in a major newspaper or, God forbid, hear discussed on TV or radio talk shows. It was one of those urban legends about a famous and powerful person that has always properly stayed “in the box.”

Ditto Mimi Alford’s icky story about having given JFK aide Dave Powers a poolside blowjob at Kennedy’s suggestion, and with the 35th President watching. I didn’t want to know any more than the basic details, thanks. It was just as well that none of the many tales about JFK’s sexual shenanigans were ever reported on during his administration. Reporters were less salacious back then, or at least more compassionate. Private, personal, nothing to do with the Oval Office…leave it alone.

Things are way different today. Public figures always need to keep things on the down low, of course, and only the morons tweet or text themselves into trouble. Former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner was one of these brainiacs — a firebrand liberal politician whose erections blocked any semblance of common sense, who wasn’t smart enough to understand the pitfalls of social media…a pathetic, self-destructive hound of the first magnitude. Bulging underwear photos, “Carlos Danger”…good God.

And the poor guy roasted himself on sexting alone. No adultery, no affairs, no Clarence Thomas-style sexual workplace harassment. All he did was behave like a total fool on his cell phone.

Read more

Robert Kohler tweeted today that by mining into soul-narcotizing boredom in her latest film, Certain Women, Kelly Reichardt is doing roughly the same thing with nothingness that Michelangelo Antonioni did with L’Avventura. Or something like that. I know that he suggested that Sundance viewers who are putting her latest film down are doing the same thing that the know-nothings did when Antonioni’s film premiered in Cannes 55 years ago. Okay, but I’m telling you that Certain Women has none of that undercurrent that Antonioni tapped into, and I know Antonioni’s early to mid ’60s films backwards and forwards. I’m telling you Certain Women is a flatline experience. I’m telling you that to me it seemed boring and listless and repetitive. It even felt vaguely horrific when you consider that some people who live in rural Montana are pretty much stuck there — i.e., no escape plan. With every Eccles-playing film so far I’ve stayed for the q & a, but not with Certain Women. I bolted during the closing credits.

Read more

I was sitting in the downstairs Library cafe and feeling a little bored, so I tweeted the following to Jordan Hoffman over his seemingly perverse love for curious Sundance films that have so far escaped my interest or attention, probably for reliable instinctual reasons.

And so began the thread…

Read more

Spotlight is a tribute and a true-life testament.  The Revenant is an icy, largely non-verbal, au natural pain poem.  The Big Short is a tutorial about guys who pain-profited.

Saturday, 1.23, 11:20 pm.

(l.) White Girl star Morgan Saylor, (r.) director Elizabeth Wood during last night’s post-screening q & a at Park City Library. There weren’t that many questions. Saylor’s character is presented as naive and stupid on a common-sense level. The movie is basically exploitation, a tawdry tale that I found quite frustrating. Variety‘s Peter Debruge panned it.

Immediately following today’s Holiday Village screening of Antonio Campos’ Christine — Sunday, 1.24, 1:45 pm.

It began showing around 10 pm last night, and what it’s done to Park City so far is beautiful at all hours.

Read more

I decided right away after yesterday’s Manchester By The Sea screening that I’d be seeing it twice before leaving Park City, and this morning’s 8:30 am screening at the MARC works schedule-wise so there you go. Then comes an 11:30 am p & i screening of Christine (which drew a mostly positive reaction on Twitter after last night’s showing at the Library; ditto Rebecca Hall‘s performance). A two-hour break and then a 3:30 Eccles screening of Kelly Reichardt‘s Certain Women. And then back to the Library for a 9 pm screening of Tim Sutton‘s allegedly Elephant-like Dark Night, which is more or less about the Aurora massacre.

Read more

I tried uploading these clips early last evening from the Park City Marriott lobby but the wifi was too weak. Yes, I know — that hotel became my new best wifi friend only two days ago but I hadn’t tried the Park Regency’s 5G signal (I’d assumed it was private) until Friday night and discovered it’s actually pretty good. Casey Affleck‘s answer to the question “how did playing this quietly suffering guy make you feel?” is interesting. He knew what the questioner wanted (an emotional thing) but he didn’t feel entirely comfortable going there so he defaulted to a craft-and-technique response. Lucas Hedges‘ reply (after the jump) was more from the heart.

Read more