In HE’s judgment, the decision of the Critics Choice members to ignore the obviously superior Babygirl in the Best Picture category, not to mention failing to nominate Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in their respective acting categories, is a bad thing.

It is, in fact, conclusive proof that they’re mostly a congregation of prissy little status quo cowards ….subservient suck-ups, I mean, who haven’t the character or courage to stand up for a film that really and truly excites and provokes.

“Americans get the willies when it comes to strong sexual content,” a friend remarks. People like this are what’s wrong with the film world.

Conclave and Wicked landed 11 nominations each, and Anora — clearly the best of the bunch — only landed four noms.

Wicked is fine — I felt agreeably rocked when I caught the NYC all-media — but please don’t drop to your knees and give this YA girl fantasy the top prize…no!

The CC empties nominated The Substance for Best Picture but blew off The Apprentice? We all love Hugh Grant but nominating his Heretic performance while blanking Sebastian Stan‘s Donald Trump, not to mention Jeremy Strong‘s Roy Cohn in the supporting category? C’mon!

Quentin Tarantino: “What’s the difference between television and a good movie?

“The first season of Yellowstone is like a good movie, and I ended up watching three seasons of it. While I was watching it, I was compelled. I was caught up in it. But at the end of the day it’s all just a soap opera. A buncha characters, you know their back-stories, but it’s the compelling-ness of a soap opera. You’re caught up in the moments as you’re watching them, but you won’t remember it five years from now.

“The difference is, I’ll see a good western movie” — Winchester 73, The Bravados, High Noon, The Wild Bunch — “and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. I’ll remember this scene or that scene, and the fact it builds to an emotional climax to some degree, and that there’s a payoff. There’s not a payoff to this [Yellowstone-resembling] stuff.”

…in a way that totally contradicts or negates or at least counter-balances the way Paul Mescal is uncool. Look at Harris Dickinson barely holding his contempt for red-carpet journos in check.

And at 6’2″, he’s significantly taller than the 5’11” Mescal, who will play Paul McCartney to Dickinson’s John Lennon in Sam Mendes‘ extremely scary-sounding quartet of Beatle movies. Lennon and McCartney were roughly the same height, or in the general vicinity of 5’10”.

Harris Dickinson at the ‘BABYGIRL’ premiere. pic.twitter.com/UiiP2b3aIc

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) December 12, 2024

This is several months old but it lingers. Apologies to all the woo-woo-wokesters who will take offense.

This is relatively recent:

Gladiator II offered conclusive proof that Paul Mescal lacks any kind of natural commanding charisma…the kind of sexy juice vibe that lights up a room the second he enters it. At best he’s a subdued character actor pretending and failing to be a movie star. On top of which he kinda looks funny or even a little bit dopey with that hawk nose and pointy chin and all.

The good-looking, close-to-pretty Paul McCartney had that X-factor thing in spades, of course, in his long-gone youth, and he retains a smidgen of that today. The man has/had a quality that can’t be faked, and certainly not by an Irish jerkoff. It’s therefore grotesque to think of Mescal playing McCartney in a film…horrific, in fact…a Notre Dame gargoyle pretending to be a kind of silver-throated prince.

The only problem is that Efron, 37, is probably too old to play the 26 year–old assassin. Jake Gyllenhaal would also be an excellent fit if he was younger — alas, he was born in ‘80.

So who’s the most promising candidate who isn’t too old?

…President-Elect Donald Trump has bought off Kimberly Guilfoyle, 55, with an Ambassador to Greece appointment…a neat and tidy “shut up” payoff…signed, sealed, delivered.

Get thee to Athens, oh my aging Kimberly, where you will most certainly hook up with your next wealthy boyfriend.

At 38, Bettina is 17 years younger —- an obviously brighter future indicated for the nearly 47-year-old Donald Trump Jr.

Under-45s have no cable subscriptions, and they sure as hell haven’t been watching the Oscar telecast in increasing numbers over the past few years. So the Hulu add-on makes sense.

And if the Oscars really don’t want to be toast they’ll need to trim their sails in terms of the DEI wokey virus by raising high the roof beam carpenters while praising films about real-deal people and real-life currents minus any traces of bullshit AMPAS progressive instruction (some Anora, Conclave, A Real Pain and Babygirl action would be excellent antidotes).

Will Hulu streaming energize the Oscar brand? Will the emerging new wave (enuf with the intolerable wokey) sink in before it’s too late?

And so September 5 is getting bumped down to sixth place, and Blitz down to seventh place, etc.

“Babygirl is an erotic thriller that is, unlike so many which came before, both erotic and thrilling. But what makes it novel is that the thrills are derived from the eroticism itself.

“Sure, much of the narrative thrust (hah) is borne of our lead not wishing to be caught by her family and colleagues in a sordid workplace affair, but that’s an afterthought to the focus of the film: two horned-up adults messily trying to reconcile their mutual animal attraction while also navigating and negotiating one another’s kinks.” — Scullyvision, 12.7.24.

Bob Dylan’s huge sprawling Malibu home (7118 Birdview Ave., which is close to Point Dume) is not presently threatened by the ongoing Malibu Fire (aka Franklin Fire).

The Franklin fire had been in the general vicinity of Malibu Canyon, Serra Retreat and Pepperdine University, but who knows what’s happening now?

The fire ignited just before midnight last Monday, and had consumed nearly 2,600 acres as of noon today. At one point it nearly tripled in size in just one hour. The containment factor is zero as we speak.

…in favor of a grayish hat that…I don’t know, kinda looks better. I need a head-warmer for the next few months and I just got sick of the black hat…time to let it go.

Two weeks ago (11.26) I posted a Twitter reaction to James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (Searchlight, 12.25). I was free this morning to post a longer review but I couldn’t get into it. I felt I’d already said what was important in concise form, and that expanding with more words and sentences wasn’t full necessary on this particular day. Maybe tomorrow.

A Complete Unknown has at least three great scenes (more actually) so it definitely meets the Howard Hawks test. The first knockout is when Dylan sings “Song for Woody” to Woody Guthrie in his hospital room. The second is Dylan trying out a half-writt4n song before Pete Seeger (Ed Norton) and his family. The third is Dylan playing “Blowing in the Wind” to Joan Baez in his or her Manhattan apartment, which is preceded by her “you’re kind of an asshole” line. The fourth is when the chorus of boos and howls greet Dylan and his electric bandmates at the ’65 Newport Folk Festival. I could go on.

I like this passage from Owen Gleiberman‘s Variety review:

“A Complete Unknown is a drama of scruffy naturalism, with a plot that doesn’t so much unfold as lope right along with its legendary, curly-haired, sunglass-wearing coffee-house troubadour hero. Yet the feel — the effect — is that of a musical. You’d assume that might be true of any classic rock biopic, but in this case the film, with its beautifully haphazard song-cycle structure, truly is about Dylan and his music, and how the music changed everything.

“Each new song is a dramatic episode, whether it’s Dylan performing ‘Masters of War’ in the Gaslight Cafe just after the Cuban Missile Crisis or trying out ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ with Baez in [her] living room or singing ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ at Newport, where the audience, by the end, sings along as if it was a song they always knew.”

This morning a friendo shared the excitement conveyed in Gleiberman’s rave. I asked him “what say ye to the pisshounds who are calling it a folkie jukebox musical or a lounge-act movie?”

Friendo response: “I only know that I loved watching it and am haunted by it. I haven’t read any of the other Complete Unknown reviews, but here’s what what the pisshounds are saying — they’re saying that boomer culture must be bashed, and that white-male rock culture must be bashed — we must take this all down a peg. So they’ll find a reason.”

My pre-Thanksgiving reaction was that I felt compelled to forgive its primarily structural, non-lethal shortcomings. I certainly felt an urge to brush them aside while chatting with a smattering of the AMC Lincoln Square cool kidz (including the Hoboken-residing twin Oscar Expert bruhs) while outside theatre #7.

The tail end of the final sentence should read “so much of Unknown is spot–on, the real thing, a bell ringer. I was sorta kinda emotionally melting during the first half hour or so — literally on the verge of tears. Yes, I’ve been deeply invested in Dylan my entire life so I’m especially susceptible but still…