I wouldn’t say that Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” has fallen victim to presentism, as that sounds vaguely negative. Any way you slice it this new Hallmark version is a perplexing fantasy. The question arises, “To what end?”
Suggestion: Embrace reality — the researched and documented historical truth. It may seem difficult at times, but it’ll never let you down. Social fantasy is fine but it only gets you so far, and then what?
Paul King‘s Wonka (Warner Bros., 12.15) is obviously an exercise in charmed whimsical fantasy. But it is, apparently, set in 1950s England. (Clearly indicated by the cars and clothing worn by extras.) It serves as a prequel to Roald Dahl‘s 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
It’s not really 1950s England as it actually was, of course. It’s 1950s England by way of diverse presentism. And only a truly foul and poisoned person would even mention this obvious fact.
Timothee Chalamet, Keegan-Michael Key, Rowan Atkinson, Sally Hawkins, Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant and Jim Carter.
HE reader responses to yesterday's "Odious Hit Piece" indicate that my side (i.e., sensible centrists with a leftward tilt) has really lost the culture war, at least among the elite/urban/media-wise hipster types who comment on HE.
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Casting-wise, blackwashing has been a thing since the woke dambreak of ’16 or ’17. For decades Hollywood adhered to whitewash casting, and now that European paleface culture has been identified and discredited as the root of all social evils, the tables have turned — simple enough.
It’s a deal, okay, but a relatively small one. Not worth anyone getting into a twist.
True, Cressida Crowell‘s original children’s books were set in a Scandinavian Viking world, which for centuries has been a white-ass culture. (Just ask Kirk Douglas.) Ditto the 2010 Dreamworks animated version — white-ass Viking men and women from top to bottom. But the new social rules (including the doctrine of presentism) require that white-culture-based stories be reassessed and updated.
Casting directors understand that it’s politically safer to roll with diverse or multicultural mindsets, even if casting an actress of color as the heroine of a centuries-old Scandinavian saga defies any common understanding of Viking history.
Diminishing the visual presence of whiteness by going multicultural has been happening for six or seven years now (ratification of the Academy’s inclusion standards made it official in 2020). Politically speaking it boils down to this: if you don’t want industry people to give the side-eye, you need to play along.
Plus one other thing: Nico Parker was very good as the daughter of Pedro Pascal‘s Joel in HBO’s The Last Of Us.
Because of the always-urgent need for presentism by way of diverse casting, the forthcoming Tom Jones miniseries (PBS, 4.30) is going with a beautiful woman of color as Sophia, the main romantic interest of Solly McLeod‘s titular lead character. And that’s fine because Sophie Wilde is drop-dead dishy + well spoken.
In Tony Richardson’s same-titled 1963 farce, which closely followed Henry Fielding‘s 1749 novel, Wilde’s character was called Sophie Western and played by Susannah York. The blonde and beautiful Sophie was the daughter of Squire Western (Hugh Griffith) and the niece of the elderly Miss Western (Edith Evans).
It seemed like the right pitch, and if you ask me this was underlined by the fact that Paramount recently launched a billboard ad campaign that echoed what my piece said.
At a time when the old energy current between Hollywood and mainstream audiences seemed to be dropping left and right, Top Gun: Maverick had pumped new life into the spirit of things, and should be roundly celebrated for reaching out and connecting…for making something actually happen in theatres at a time when too many films seemed to be limping along.
A Best Picture Oscar for a movie that had not only restored faith in exhibition but in Hollywood itself.
The current Paramount slogan says it all: BELIEVE IN MOVIES AGAIN. Which translates to BELIEVE IN HOW MOVES WERE DURING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND BEFORE. Which also translates into BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE and the distinct possibility that more films like Top Gun: Maverick could pop the champagne as long as Hollywood takes heed and acts upon the obvious.
Which is this: Joe and Jane Popcorn are sick of instructional woke content (identity politics, progressive guilt-tripping, historical presentism, torture-rack flicks like Last Night in Soho, a general aversion to anything rooted in straight-white-male perspectives, movies that constantly hammer the Millennial-Zoomer BIPOC gay trans #MeToo boogaloo…films that insist that entitled white assholes need to be scolded blah blah).
Joe and Jane Popcorn to Elite Hollywood Wankers: Whatever happened to movies like The Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, Manchester By The Sea, Her, A Separation, Sicario, Leviathan, Hell or High Water, Call Me By Your Name, The Social Network, Superbad, Whiplash, The Witch, etc.? How about unwoke-ing your sorry asses and keeping it that way for the foreeeable future? And making more upcoming films like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s Air? And while you’re at it, fire the Woke Award-Season Mafia goons and all the kiss-asses who keep pushing movies that make people miserable.
Alternate headline: “Make Joe & Jane Popcorn Happy, And They’ll Return The Favor In Spades.”
My assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of last year’s Best Picture nominees, posted on 1.7.22, didn’t align with the Academy vote tallies. I don’t think I was right and they were wrong — I know it.
Once again: Every year Hollywood Elsewhere subjects the leading Best Picture contenders to the Howard Hawks measuring stick. The legendary director is famed for having said that a good movie (or a formidable Oscar seeker) always has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”
Hawks also defined a good director as “someone who doesn’t annoy you.” I wouldn’t want to sound unduly harsh or dismissive but I’m afraid that Kenneth Branagh‘s direction of certain portions of Belfast and particularly his decision to open with that vibrantly colorful prologue…’nuff said.
How do the leading 2021 Best Picture contender films (numbering nine) rate on the Hawks chart? Here we go…
Jane Campion‘s ThePower of the Dog: I’m sorry but despite the fine performances, the feeling of 1920s open-range authenticity, handsome visual compositions and carefully-honed pacing, this 126-minute film has no great scenes. There are a few intriguing moments, but none I would even begin to call highly impactful, much less “great.” You keep waiting for a killer scene (or two or three) to arrive, but it never does. Dog is more about the overall than this or that peak moment.
Reinaldo Marcus Green, Will Smith and Zach Baylin‘s King Richard: I could go on and on, but this 2021 Warner Bros. sports drama has more than a trio of stick-to-your-ribs scenes. One, the persistent Richard (Smith) persuades elite tennis coach Paul Cohen (Tony Gpldwyn) to check out Venus and Serena’s exceptional skills, and within a couple of minutes Cohen gets it. (“You taught ’em this?”) Two, Richard takes offense when Andy Bean‘s Laird Stabler, a colleague of the cigar-smoking Will Hodges (Dylan McDermott), tells him he’s done “an amazing job” in training his daughters. Three, the kitchen argument scene between Richard and wife Orascene (Aunjanue Ellis). There are at least two or three others (the Oakland tennis match finale, Richard comes perilously close to shooting a Compton gangsta, refusing the initial endorsement deal, etc.).
Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast. Again, a few diverting scenes but none that could be called outstanding or great. Branagh’s real-life dad may have been an appealing crooner who could dance fairly well, but Jamie Dornan‘s singing and dancing scene struck me as cloying and insincere and untrustworthy. It therefore qualifies, no offense, as a “bad” scene.
Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story. One, the opening shot of tear-down rubble and ruination on San Juan Hill, and how that feeds into the brilliant “Jets Song” sequence. Two, Corey Stall‘s dismissive rant about how the Jets represent the “can’t make it and haven’t moved to Long Island” crowd, and that in a very short while high-rise luxury apartment buildings will be hiring Puerto Rican door men, etc. Three, the neighborhood Scherzo sequence as Maria tries to make it seem as if she’s slept all night in her bedroom. If these aren’t great scenes they’re certainly damn good ones.
Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza has one great scene — the finale in which Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman finally embrace like they mean it. Otherwise the film is a bit spotty and meandering, but I respect the courage that Anderson showed when he included those two scenes involving John Michael Higgins‘ Jerry Frick and his two (i.e., successive) Japanese wives. Anderson knows the climqte out there, and had to realize that wokesters would come after the film for engaging in what some regard as crude racial stereotyping. But Anderson kept it in, partly because he was drawing on his own SFV experience and partly because he doesn’t believe in presentism, or so it seems.
Denis Villenueve‘s Dune. A captivating visual scheme and impressive production design elements do not, in and of themselves, constitute what anyone would call great cinema. Okay, perhaps on an overall aesthetic sweep basis but certainly not in terms of this or that scene.
Sian Heder‘s CODA has two appealing supporting performances (Troy Kotsur‘s randy dad, Eugenio Derbez‘s singing tutor), but no exceptional scenes per se, and certainly no great ones.
Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy gf Macbeth boasts excellent performances (Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Kathryn Hunter) and of course an impressionistic sound-stage environment blended with the classic Shakespeare text. At the same time I can’t honestly think of any particularly great scenes in the Hawks sense of the term. It’s an honorable film at the end of the day, certainly, but there’s no ducking the fact that it’s far less of an undertaking than Roman Polanski‘s 1971 version.
Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter falls more under the heading of “highly respectable, especially coming from a first-time director” than “a film which contains three great scenes and no bad ones.” Honestly? The scene in which Ed Harris visits Olivia Colman in her condo but doesn’t say boo about the doll lying on the patio table, except to note that it has water inside it. The missing doll is a huge thing on the island (reward money, posters stapled to trees) so Harris’s curious indifference to Colman being a doll thief is an odd call — I think it’s fair to argue that its a “bad” scene.
In sum, the only Hawks finalists are King Richard and West Side Story.
“Let’s really stick a fork in this sad, dying annual celebration of movies,” a 12.27 LAT editorial essentially says. “Let’s urge AMPAS and the TV academy to kill gender-based acting Oscars in order to satisfy the political goals of the trans community and their progressive allies.”
Everyone understands that the lore of the Academy Awards telecast is all but finished. The viewing audience been shrinking over the last several years, especially among Millennial and Zoomers and double especially since the disastrous, pandemic-sieged Soderbergh Oscars of April 2021.
My heart is broken over this. I used to feel joyful during Oscar shows; now there’s almost nothing. James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Billy Wilder, Cary Grant, Ernest Borgnine, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, William Wyler and William Holden are weeping in heaven and taking turns pounding the refrigerator door.
But in order to finalize the death process, the show needs one more kitchen knife shoved between the ribs, and the gender neutral acting initiative might just be the dagger point that does the job.
I said this last August and I’ll say it again: “If the Academy decides to go gender-neutral with the Oscar acting awards, the eclipse will be total and absolute, and I mean beyond the level of anything dreamt of by Michelangelo Antonioni.
“In a populist cultural sense as well as aesthetically, the Oscars will have announced to the Joe and Jane Popcorn public that after six or seven years of fiddling around with secular woke passions and priorities, the Oscars are truly no longer about engaging even a semblance of a mass audience, or certainly in any way that seems to matter.
“Yes, Virginia, the Oscars are about wokesterism, secular industry politics and (this is key) elbowing older, insufficiently progressive white guys aside…about a tiny cabal of progressive fanatics who are determined to de-popularize not just the Oscars but movies themselves.
If AMPAS manages to eliminate gender-based acting awards, Average Joes and Janes will simply walk away and stay away…the more impassioned among them (i.e., the Oscar torch-bearers and sentimentalists) will raise their fists and voices and say “stop this insanity, stop this bullshit…outside the woke realm men are men and women are women, and they generate different moods and expressions and ways of living and processing the ups and downs of living…stop this bullshit and come down to earth.”
All hail the death of the great American art form called movies…right? All hail the political instruction that has overtaken a significant portion of mainstream movies and the casting process altogether. The Oscars were launched in the late ’20s and are now, 95 years later, on the verge of completely erasing themselves from mass public consciousness. All hail presentism!
And why? Several reasons and factors are behind this, but in today’s context it boils down to this: the non-binary trans community wants to strengthen its political influence and power. And to accomplish this goal, one of the most populist, mass-outreach, Joe and Jane Popcorn aspects of the Oscar telecast — gender-based acting categories, which have been with us for nearly a century and in fact for hundreds of years beforehand — has to be dissolved.
What the overwhelming majority of movie lovers might prefer is not important. The aims of a small activist minority is what counts.
I was planning on taking a couple of Connecticut friendos to a showing of Sam Mendes‘ Empire of Light (Seachlight, 12.9) this weekend, except it’s primarily playing in Manhattan so I guess not. Empire won’t open wide until 12.23.
Searchlight is doing a gradual roll-out due to the usual concerns. Empire was critically roughed up during Telluride ‘22, and the current critic aggregate ratings — 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, 53% on Metacritic — have probably lowered audience interest.
Which means, of course, that it’s not very good…right? Wrong. Empire of Light is a bull’s-eye everything movie — delicate, mesmerizing, perfectly timed and balanced and calculated just so.
Set in an English seaside town (Margate) in the early ’80s, it’s a bittersweet, humanistic, somewhat gauzy tale of a short-lived May-October affair as well as a nostalgic recollection of movies and the exhibition business as they existed 40-plus years ago. Exactingly directed and written by Mendes in what I believe is his finest effort yet, pic contains yet another brilliant performance by the great Olivia Colman and an exciting mainstream-cinema debut from the obviously talented (and very good-looking) Michael Ward.
I haven’t yet seen Avatar 2: The Way of Water, but screw it…Empire of Light is HE’s choice for the absolute Best Film of 2022. Seriously, no question.
I also honestly believe that the Empire of Light haters (including IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich, L.A Times‘ Justin Chang, The Telegraph‘s Tim Robey, The Globe and Mail‘s Barry Hertz) have done their readers a huge disservice. They’ve brought a terrible, brutal blight upon a film that they know is a first-class effort — as wise, particular and well-honed as they come.
The haters have shat upon on a film that many significant others are convinced is rich and fulfilling…they’ve crapped all over it because Mendes had the chutzpah (or the temerity?) to cast the young, Jamaican-born Ward as Stephen, a 20-something theatre employee who falls into a brief, tender affair with Colman’s emotionally unstable, far-side-of-40 Hillary…because a 2022 white filmmaker is not allowed to present a character of color according to the values of bygone eras….because woke presentism requires that black characters have to be strong, firm and formidable and that no racist hate can be visited upon them …and because it’s simply not cool, the haters seem to feel, for Ward’s character to engage in sexual congress (however brief) with an older, mentally unstable woman.
I know what this film is and how well it works, and I think the Empire of Light haters should be ashamed of themselves.
The thing that sparks or drives deep-down feelings when it comes to yay-nay reviews of films…that thing is often not honestly expressed or admitted to. The fact that nobody (except Barry Hertz) has expressed anger about the racial thing…about what some seem to believe is a manipulative and opportunistic attempt on Mendes’ part to use an affair between Colman and Ward to punch up some kind of contemporary current…the apparent fact is that the haters feel that Mendes’ film is sending out the wrong 2022 message. Don’t show us how bad things were 40 years ago for people of color; show us how much better things are today.
Green Book was attacked by the same crowd for telling its tale according to the social standards and values of 1962. The wokesters wanted it told and interpreted according to 2018 standards, and they went ballistic trying to kill it for that. It’s the same deal here.
It’s one thing for a critic to say that Empire of Light isn’t his or her cup of tea….that’s fine. But many of these critics are looking to kill Mendes’ film. They want it shunned and stomped upon, and that, to me, suggests that something else is going on. Either way the Searchlight people can hear the growling and smell the drops of blood.
Wokesters see themselves as white-knight defenders and protectors of BIPOCs and LGBTQs and all marginalized groups, and as infantile and obstinate as this sounds, I believe they hate this film because they simply don’t want to see Ward’s character becoming intimate with an unbalanced, Lithium-medicating white woman in her late 40s. Nor do they want to watch Stephen dodge the assaults of racist, Thatcher-era skinheads and cranky old codgers who resent his presence as a ticket-taker. Mendes is too good of a filmmaker to play the presentism game.
Before seeing Empire of Light I had trouble believing that such an affair, however discreet or short-lived, was likely between two such characters in 1980 England, especially with the National Front goons running around. I was in London in December 1980 and I felt it. I saw skinheads on the Underground and read the anti-immigrant graffiti and felt the vibe to some extent, but guess what? The movie sells it anyway. I was charmed into accepting the terms.
Because of Colman and Ward and the rest of the cast (especially TanyaMoodie as Stephen’s mom)…because of Mendes’ writing and direction and Roger Deakins‘s cinematography, and the soothing musical score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as well as the general aura of sublime, on-target realism…somehow it works. All of it. I believed every character, every situation.
Okay, every now and then it feels a bit emotionally forced or a touch on-the-nose. But not to any wounding extent. Because I was willing to forgive. It goes like that when you really like a film.
A friend is feeling depressed about the GenZ effect upon films. Their demand that POCS graced with presentism have to be featured in everything. If this doesn’t happen GenZ will destroy, attack and reject the film in question. We’re living through a 21st Century version of China’s Great Cultural Revolution in the ’60s. The idea that admirable non-white characters always have to be prominent no matter what, and that they have to be portrayed as “good” while white people are only allowed to be complex failures. By friendo’s estimation there have only been three 2022 films that haven’t been inclusivity-stamped to a fare-thee-well — Top Gun: Maverick, The Fablemans and The Banshees of inisherin. Any others that friendo is forgetting about?
Some critics have sought to dismiss Sam Mendes' Empire of Light (Searchlight, 12.9) because they’re unable to buy the curious but ultimately poignant bond between the two leads, played by Michael Ward and Olivia Colman. I myself was skeptical going in, but the fine writing, acting and overall period swoon effect (largely due to excellent production design plus Roger Deakins‘ handsome cinematography) won me over.
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