…and she still is. One of our greatest minds, hands down.
Paglia: “Women should model their persona on me, and on fellow Amazon feminists of the 1960s, which is that you are responsible for how people treat you.”
HE’s Best Supporting Actor Keepers
The top five or six will do, thanks.
Stellan Skarsgard‘s flawed, charmingly neurotic, brazenly egoistic dad in Sentimental Value is likely to win.
Sean Penn‘s Lt. Col, Steven J. Lockjaw is a broad, stiff-backed caricature and not really a performance that yields any depth or sensitivity, but he’ll be nominated anyway because there’s a lot of lickspittle One Battle After Another kowtowing going on right now.
You know which OBAA player should be nominated in this category? Benicio del Toro‘s “Sensei”.
Paul Mescal‘s William Shakespeare in Hamnet will be nominated — I recognize this, no disputing.
Adam Sandler‘s Jay Kelly performance as a manager of a flaky big-name Hollywood actor deserves to be nominated, and he will be.
I sill haven’t seen Deliver Me From Nowhere, but it’s been obvious for several weeks that Jeremy Strong‘s performance as Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau…it’s been obvious from the get-go that he’d be nominated.
Try To Comprehend The Trump Ballroom’s Vulgarity
In my head the planned Trump ballroom, to be built where the now-eradicated East Wing of the White House recently stood, is an architectural hall of pus and fascist hubris.
Donald Trump is a temporary resident of a grand historical home that is owned by taxpayers. He didn’t have the right to mangle the traditional look of the place. He was obliged to respect the historical continuity aspect, and instead he said “fuck it, I’m going to Mar a Lago this place.”
In my mind the Trump ballroom is a spiritual kin of the giant Stay–Puft Marshmallow Man, whom we all remember from the totally unfunny third act of Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters.
Until the sudden bulldozing of the East Wing and the revealing of the ballroom’s architectural scheme, I had taken vague comfort in the notion of the Trump presidency being theoretically finite and, you know, at least potentially a done deal (i.e., history) as of 1.20.29.
But the Stay-Puft ballroom will probably endure, and that likely fact has deeply enraged me. My blood is boiling.
If Gavin Newsom wins in ‘28, it must be torn the fuck down. I’m serious. Bulldoze the damn thing and rebuild a new East Wing, one that will presumably exude a semblance of taste, restraint and proper decorum.
And if Newsom won’t destroy it, the French 75 should figure some way to dynamite it. This sounds crazy, I realize, but I would honestly not have a huge problem with Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Bob Ferguson using a drone to…I don’t know, drop a firebomb or something at 3:30 am.
“On Eighth Avenue, No One Can Hear You Scream”
I have a faint memory of Spy magazine running a smirk piece about the Manhattan-based Troma Entertainment, which made cheap-ass, Z-grade schlocksploitation horror comedies.
The article appeared sometime in the mid to late ‘80s, and was ostensibly written by a guy who wrote an actual script for Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, the predators who ran Troma.
Does anyone recall this article? Or was it published by someone else?
Obsessive Grain Fetishists
There’s something really and truly wrong with 4K Bluray enthusiasts who get almost sexually aroused by stand-out, golfball-sized grain. Or, as I’ve called it for many years, “Egyptian grainstorms” by way of delta swamp mosquitos.
I would love it if WHE would release a 4K Eyes Wide Shut in a boxy (1.37:1) format.
Best Wedding Scene Ignored By Pinterest Dingbats
The wedding scene that concludes The Best Years of Our Lives is easily the most emotionally affecting in Hollywood history…easily. And yet a list of the 15 Most Pinned Wedding Scenes on Pinterest ignored it in favor of…not worth mentioning. I’m not saying the people who voted are idiots, but they’re certainly ignorant.
HE’s Latest “OBAA” Takedown Is A Tough One To Dispute
…and it’s been staring us right in the face since Paul Thomas Anderson’s anti-rural-white-America epic opened four weeks ago on 9.26.
And here it is:
Even the ugliest, most deranged, most demonically boozy or druggy dad would have serious qualms about killing his own daughter, especially if the bad dad is a hardcore rightie, given traditional conservative beliefs (Charlie Kirk, etc.) in the sanctified rituals of parenting and fatherhood.
And yet Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw is such an impossibly racist fucktard that he somehow determines that his mixed-race daughter, Chase Infiniti’s Willa, has to be iced so as to eliminate biological proof that he once had sex with Willa’s African-American mother (Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills)…a paternity situation that would totally kill his chances of being accepted into a secret rightwing racist fraternity called the Christmas Adventurers Club.
This is what’s fundamentally and humanly wrong with One Battle After Another. There’s just no believing that this kind of psychopathic ugliness could prevail within the heart of even a fanatical rightwing hard-ass like Lockjaw….even the sickest, most racially diseased dad in the world wouldn’t clip his own daughter over a social-political motive.
Even if Lockjaw was so insanely devoted to racist ideology that he tried to nullify his own heart and shut off his own soul spigot in order to commit filicide, even the sickest bad dad would be so inwardly torn about the prospect of murdering his own that he probably couldn’t go there. Because deep down, even the worst dads are human.
And yet PTA has dramatically invested in this kind of venality. He believes that Lockjaw, being a racist pig and all, could be a daughter-killer. He bases the bulk of the film, in fact, upon this premise. (Not the 40-minute prologue set in 2008 or thereabouts, but the present-tense part.)
The problem isn’t just that silent Godly guidance and the better angels of human nature forbid such a diseased mindset at the end of the day, but that we, the ticket-buying, popcorn-inhaling, non-lefty extremists in the audience…we can’t and won’t believe this shit. It simply doesn’t add up in human terms. Filicide is simply a bridge too far in this context, and it just doesn’t wash.
Left progressives (who of course include many film-industry types and many if not most film critics) are buying it, of course, because they see hardcore, immigrant-arresting, ICE-resembling righties in starched military fatigues as inherently evil…to them a belief in Lockjaw’s inhuman scheme is a no-brainer and a no-sweater.
Even I, a sensible centrist, had half-accepted Lockjaw’s sick decision to slay his own daughter. I sat there in my movie-theatre seat and went along with PTA’s dramatic suggestion until, yesterday around noon, a friend flipped a moral switch by mentioning what I’ve written here. A lightbulb went on and I went “wow…yeah, of course…that’s a good one.”
Trump’s Fascist Ballroom
My first impression of Donald Trump‘s super-sized, east-wing-of-the-White House ballroom, which will be constructed over the next two or three years, is that it’s distasteful in a grandiose, fascist–palace sort of way.
If you ask me the architectural envisionings vaguely resemble that gleaming, palace-like structure of emphatic pomposity — am I thinking of Vittorio Emanuele II or Benito Mussolini‘s Palazzo Venezia? — located just north of the Foro Romano.
Renderings suggest an oversized, overreaching quality — the ballroom seems to want to compete with the scale of the main White House itself. The East Wing is supposed to be an adjunct structure, right? It’s not supposed to be an architectural competitor.
HE’s Supporting Actress Preferences in
Why is Teyana Taylor (aka Perfidia Beverly Hills in One Battle After Another) at the top of Gold Derby’s Best Supporting Actress contenders list? Be honest — her performance is nervy or pushy or flashy as far as it goes, but it’s not all that great altogether….please. So why is she in the #1 position?
Roofman‘s Kirsten Dunst is Gold Derby’s 22nd-ranked Best Supporting Actress contender….bullshit! One, in a fair and just world she would be in the Best Actress category, and second, she’s delivered in Roofman what could arguably be called her best big-screen performance ever.
Weapons‘ Amy Madigan is fifth-ranked on the GD roster, but she should be the #1 contender…hands down.
Sentimental Value‘s Elle Fanning is in the #2 slot…deserved!
Why is Wicked: For Good‘s Ariana Grande in the #3 position? People of taste and worldly experience don’t even want to endure the viewing of Wicked: For Good, much less trudge into the Grande weeds all over again in the wake of last year’s award-season campaign.
Sentimental Value‘s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is in fourth place…fine.
I haven’t seen Marty Supreme so I’ve no opinion about the sixth-ranked Gwyneth Paltrow‘s chances for a Best Supporting Actress nomination.
These seven actresses — Dunst, Madigan, Fanning, Taylor, Grande, Lilleaas, Paltrow — are the only serious contenders in this category thus far.
Filling Out “Gatecrashers” Form
And here are HE’s preferential Best Picture rankings as we speak…not Academy predictions but personal heartfelt preferences:
Best Picture: 1. Sentimental Value; 2. Weapons; 3. Marty Supreme (haven’t seen it, spitballing on blind faith); 4. Nouvelle Vague; 5. Roofman; 6. One Battle After Another; 7. Hamnet (haven’t seen it, trusting ectastic buzz); 8. Warfare; 9. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (haven’t seen it); 10. Jay Kelly.
Can I just spit it out? 2025 has been kind of a weak year. Feels that way, at least.
You know what I’m doing? I’m going with emotional default choices. I’m not thinking it all through — I’m basically asking myself “what’s the easiest, most defaulty choice I can make?”
There’s nothing lower in the universe than to try to predict what the Academy and guild goons are going to prefer. Go with your own heart and determinations!
“Poor boy, when you’re dead you don’t take nothin’ with you ‘cept your memories of having wasted your life while trying to predict who and what AMPAS members will vote for” — from John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.
Excerpt from HE’s 4.10.25 Warfare rreview: “One of the SEALS is Joseph Quinn‘s ‘Sam’, and while I felt terribly for the poor guy (in actuality, back in ’06) and his ghastly leg wounds (he moans and wails a lot and who could blame him?) but to be perfectly honest I was also whispering to Quinn, ‘I’m sorry for your character’s terrible pain but on another level you, Joseph Quinn, almost deserve it because you’ll be playing George Harrison for Sam Mendes, and you don’t even faintly resemble Harrison…alabaster skin, auburn hair, eyes that couldn’t be more different than Harrison’s deep browns.”
Surreal Explanation
JFK’s AI voice is perfect…”back theah…behind the fence on the grassy knoll.” Truly impressive.
“‘Cheap Texas Broads’ Meets Old-Man Feet“, posted on 6.2.22 but originally posted from Hue (Vietnam) on 11.19.13:
I was reminded of a famous JFK quote when I read Cathy Horyn’s 11.14.13 N.Y. Times piece about the legend and the whereabouts of Jackie Kennedy‘s pink suit (“a classic cardigan-style Chanel with navy lapels”) that she wore on 11.22.63.
In an interview with Death of a President author William Manchester, Mrs. Kennedy recalled that her husband wanted her to make a stylistic statement during their Dallas visit. “There are going to be all these rich Republican women at [a lunch they were scheduled to attend], wearing mink coats and diamond bracelets,” JFK told her. “[So] be simple — show those cheap Texas broads what good taste really is.”
In a subsequent dispute with publishers of Manchester’s book, Mrs. Kennedy managed to dilute “cheap Texas broads” into “rich Texas broads” and then “those Texans.”
I’m mentioning the original quote because (a) it makes JFK seem more human and less iconic and (b) because I relate to withering aesthetic judgments. It reminded me that Kennedy was capable of remarking how gauche or clueless some people dressed. It suggests that had he survived into his 90s and found himself at my rooftop restaurant in Hue — I realize this sounds like a stretch but it isn’t really — he too would have been appalled at the sight of old-man feet inside rubber and leather sandals. Not to mention the shorts and the golf shirts. Maybe.
Glenn Kenny: “One hears a lot of dumb, gratuitous and outright asshole-ish ‘JFK, c’est moi’ statements over the course of a lifetime, but this one really has a certain je ne sais quoi.”
6.6.22 explanation: I posted this four days before the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder, when historical perspective essays were flooding the internets. I was recoiling from the sight of sandaled old-man feet at this Hue hotel, and so my free-associating mind wondered “how would a 96 year-old JFK had reacted to such a sight?” I’m confident that he would’ve felt that even in Vietnam, ugly, unpedicured man toes should always be concealed.