The general drift of David Ehrlich‘s 1.7 Slate article about Jennifer Aniston‘s Cake is that it’s a “terrible movie” and therefore the Best Actress conversation about Aniston is unwarranted. First of all it’s not terrible — it’s underwhelming. I know what “terrible” tends to feel and taste like and Cake doesn’t qualify. I think it’s roughly in the same realm as Still Alice, and nobody’s calling that one “terrible” so…you know, c’mon. Second of all Aniston’s performance as a wealthy, scarred-up woman dealing with constant pain delivers, I feel, roughly the same degree of conviction and finesse as Julianne Moore delivers in Still Alice. You can disagree with me and that’s fine, but I really don’t think there’s a great deal of difference. So why, boiled down, is Ehrlich beating up on Aniston? Partly because he didn’t like Cake but also — let’s be honest — because (a) he doesn’t like the general idea of Aniston being in the Best Actress conversation, probably because he regards her as a lightweight interloper plus (b) he resents the aggressively funded campaign that has put her within striking distance of a Best Actress nomination. A female performance can win a New York Film Critics Award for meritorious reasons alone but to win an Oscar you’ve got to play ball. We all realize that, don’t we? Aniston is just playing her cards according to house rules. My 11.23 opinion: “At least Aniston really gives it hell. She can be quite deft and subtle when she wants to be, always letting you know what’s happening inside with just the right amount of emphasis.”

Can you imagine the response to an opening credit sequence like this today? Can you imagine the sea of iPhone and Android screens that would start lighting up after the first minute or so? Absolutely no sound for two minutes and 43 seconds (an eternity by today’s standards) except for a single barking dog somewhere in the distance.

There isn’t a lot of wiggle room in predicting the winners of tomorrow night’s (or tomorrow afternoon’s if you’re attending a West Coast viewing party) Golden Globe awards. It’s gotta be Birdman for Best Picture, Comedy of Musical, and Michael Keaton for Best Actor, Comedy or Musical. The set-in-stone rigidity of Julianne Moore winning for Best Actress, Drama, for Still Alice…of course. Poor, sagging-against-the-ropes Selma hasn’t a chance of beating Boyhood for Best Picture, Drama. How can the Best Director award not be won by Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater or Birdman‘s Alejandro G. Inarritu? J.K. Simmons and Patricia Arquette for Best Supporting Actor and Actress…yaddah yaddah. The most welcome HFPA gesture would be to hand Birdman‘s Antonio Sanchez the Best Score award, which of course would dispute the Academy’s unfair decision to disqualify his all-percussion score because (ungracious, nickle-and-dime reasoning) the film uses a few classical music passages.

By the late spring of 1969, Gene Hackman was in a pretty good spot. He had recently delivered strong supporting performances as a tough Olympic ski coach in Downhill Racer, as an astronaut in Marooned and as a sky-diving barnstormer in The Gypsy Moths. Perhaps Hackman didn’t seem fated for stardom but he was certainly looking at steady employment as a character actor. And yet he “nearly accepted the role of Mike Brady for the upcoming TV series, The Brady Bunch,” it says in his Wiki bio, “but was advised by his agent to decline in exchange for a more promising role, which he did.” Good God…can you imagine? Correction #1: the Patton line that Hackman quoted in his 2003 Golden Globes speech actually reads as follows: “I love it…God help me, I do love it so.” Correction #2: James Cagney‘s final line in White Heat is “Made it, ma! Top of the world!

There are great movie finales, or ones that end on a sum-up note that is fair, concise, honest, eloquent. And there are finales that do all that but also reach inside and push that button that you yourself don’t know how to find, much less push, half the time. A kind of sinking-in sensation in your soul. A sense of sudden wisdom and sadness and being oddly at peace with everything, including your own miserable self. This is how I’ve felt time and again during the last 90 seconds of Franklin J. Schaffner‘s Patton (’70), and particularly upon hearing the words “all glory is fleeting.”

It sure as hell is along with everything else worth cherishing…romantic love, freshly-shined shoes, a perfectly tuned six-cylinder engine, purring cats on your lap, world-class wifi, general ecstasy, feelings of absolute security, exquisite guitar playing, momentary pride in a difficult achievement, warm sunshine, the balm of friendship and camaradarie, the sight of snow-capped mountain peaks against a sparkling blue sky, perfect glasses of pineapple juice, Everett Sloane‘s girl in a white dress on the Staten Island ferry…don’t get me started. All of it streaming past, leaves on a mountain stream, nothing to have or hold. Either you savor your passing delights as impermanent and all the more valuable for that, or you don’t.

Sometime during last night’s Real Time With Bill Maher they flashed a poster of While You Were Sleeping, a romantic drama costarring Bill Cosby and Sandra Bullock. Searching around for a screen-capture as we speak. If anyone’s already grabbed it, please forward. Update: The below image courtesy of HE reader “Jery October“…much obliged.

Thanks to HE reader “Jery October”

Has there ever been a choreographed gun battle in the history of motion pictures in which an armed bad guy runs towards the cops who are firing at him? As if he’s trying to…what, tackle them?

Around 1:45 pm I visited the Hollywood DMV office on Cole Avenue to once again, for the third time, try to pass my written motorcycle test. 12 or so multiple choice questions (I think), and all you need to do to pass is get nine of them right. I got four wrong and failed. So I renewed my temporary car driver’s license in the main room (I’m trying to get a combination car and motorcycle license) and went back into the Alcove of Agony and took the written test again. I failed it for the fourth time. But consider one of their fucking questions. They show you an overhead drawing of a motorcycle cruising alongside three or four parked cars, and I mean parked really close together, 9 or 12 inches between bumpers. Question: “Which possibility is the most dangerous to a motorcycle operator? (a) one of the cars pulling out, (b) a pedestrian walking between the cars and into the street? or (c) a car door suddenly opening?”

Julianne Moore deserves to win her all-but-guaranteed Best Actress Oscar for her bravura performance in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, and not so much for her earnestly skillful turn in Still Alice, which is basically slow-drip cyanide. Does anyone remember Maps? It broke last May in Cannes, played again in Toronto and then was kind of forgotten about. It shouldn’t be. This is apparently the first U.S. trailer for the Focus World release (opening on 2.27).

For what it’s worth (and I know this will surely fall on deaf ears as far as you-know-who is concerned) but despite last night’s Selma shutout in the BAFTA nominations….well, that’s a pretty bad sign, isn’t it? Not even a Brits-need-to-stick-together nomination for Best Actor contender David Oyelowo? That doesn’t seem….uhm, fair. Oyelowo’s MLK performance is definitely accomplished enough for Oscar consideration. Anyway I really wouldn’t mind at all if Selma manages to score a Best Picture nom…honestly. And the way this might happen is from a sympathy that AMPAS voters might feel over the numerous attacks upon its historical veracity. Selma has become a punching bag, and once that kind of thing reaches critical mass people sometimes say to themselves “okay, enough already…historical filmmakers always distort and this was no different…cut the poor film a break.” Is there any chance of this happening?

I am one of the biggest softies when it comes to offering forgiveness. Selma has been taken out to the woodshed. Director-uncredited cowriter Ava DuVernay has, I would presume, learned her lesson. At the end of the day Selma is good enough to warrant a Best Picture nomination. It can’t win and is no one’s idea of monumental cinema, but it’s gotten enough right and stirred enough people in the right way to deserve this honor.

“There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serial-killer people to do oppressive things over which they have no control. Or that Iraqis might be fully realized human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and family, and anguish in the murders of their children. Or that you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry. Or that many truths can be true at once.” — from Lindy West’s 12.6 Guardian piece about the real Chris Kyle, the late sniper portrayed by Bradley Cooper in Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper, which a fair number of Academy people are apparently liking and intending to vote for, or so I’m told.