HE answer: There’s no way SAG/AFTRA and the New Academy Kidz would give a Best Actor Oscar to a white Italian actor playing a brute beast who slaps his wife around.
Joe Dante’s “Godzilla Minus One” Rave
I received this email from the great Joe Dante a few hours ago:
“I’ve just seen Godzilla Minus One, a 2023 Japanese kaiju film directed, written and visual effects by Takashi Yamazaki.
“Produced by Toho Studios and Robot Communications and distributed by Toho, this is the 37th film in the Godzilla franchise.
“See it in IMAX!” Note: HE will see it tomorrow afernoon.
“Set in immediate postwar Japan, this is arguably the best Godzilla movie since the 1954 original. Seriously, it’s pretty great! And a fitting run-up to the Big G’s 70th birthday!
“Dramatic and spectacular, with memorably rounded characters and pitched on a more emotional adult level than almost any kaiju movie.
“Even so, the verdict of the preteen kids in the Grauman’s Chinese restroom afterward was wild enthusiasm, and for a subtitled Japanese movie with grownup themes of guilt, loss and redemption.
“When the classic Godzilla theme music (composed by the late Akira Ifukube) kicked in during the exciting climax I was nearly moved to tears.
“Technically it’s amazing…the director was also in charge of the visual effects.
“If you’re a Monster Kid you won’t see a more satisfying movie this season.”
Crossed Swords: HE vs. Smallwood, Peru, DeGregorio
Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone, whose performance as Mollie Burkhart is basically a supporting role (i.e., a victim who does nothing to defend or save herself from predatory Oklahoma beasties), recently won Best Actress trophies from the Gotham Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle.
Her performance is admired in some corners, yes, but Mollie Burkhart was written by Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese in a very minimalist fashion, and there is very little risked or revealed on Lily’s part as an actress. There isn’t a single scene in which she goes hard or raises the room temperature or pours out her soul.
People seethe when I say this, but somebody has to cut through the crap: Gladstone won this week because of her ethnic identity (having been raised within Montana’s Blackfeet community and playing an Osage native) and because the woke mob has decided that it would be a fitting paleface apology gesture for a Native American actor to win a major Oscar. No amount of denial and tap-dancing will change what everyone knows and relatively few will admit.
If Lily was running a Best Supporting Actress campaign, she’d have it totally in the bag and I wouldn’t say boo. Because that’s the category that suits her performance, and the scope of her role.
The year’s finest Best Actress-level performances have been given by Maestro’s Carey Mulligan and Poor Things’ Emma Stone. These are serious knock-out performances…obviously…c’mon.
Non-white identity has been a pervasive award-season motivator (i.e., the support for this is commonly known as virtue signalling) since the woke mentality began to spread and take hold on a checklist basis in the mid teens. Non-white directors and actors have enjoyed elevated status for six or seven years.
This is the wave that Gladstone’s campaign is surfing upon, and why many under-45 SAG-AFTRA members and New Academy Kidz are planning on voting for her, despite her low-key, “good enough but no great shakes” performance as a wealthy Osage native whose family members are murdered by greedy white guys (oil money), and who is herself nearly killed.
The key element is that a Native American winning a Best Actress Oscar would be a first-time-ever thing and a kind of holy milestone in many voters’ eyes.
“New Academy Kidz Aren’t Concerned With ‘Whole Equation‘”, posted on 1.24.18:
“Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, Stacey Wilson Hunt and Chris Lee have posted a piece about the views and attitudes of the Academy’s new voters, all of whom were invited to join the Academy over the last two years and who constitute roughly 17% or 18% of the present membership. Of the 14 members interviewed, more than half were women and more than a third were people of color.
“I for one found it surprising if not shocking that the biggest concerns of the New Academy Kidz appear to be representation, representation and….uhhm, oh, yes…representation.
“Consider a quote from HE reader “filmklassik:
“’In this particular cultural moment it is all about Tribal Identity. And what’s disturbing is, we have a whole generation now for whom Tribal representation is, to use one critic’s word, numinous. The under-40 crowd has invested Race, Gender and Sexuality with a kind of cosmic significance.
“It doesn’t mean a lot to them — it means everything to them. Indeed, much of their conversation and writing seems to always come back to it.”
Carville Was On Fire
James Carville at 5:27 mark: “Republican Speaker of the House] Mike Johnson and what he believes is one of the greatest threats you have today to the United States. [Christian nationalism] is a bigger threat than Al-Queda. They’re funded, and they’re relentless, and they probably won’t win for a while, but they might. They don’t believe in the Constitution. They’ll tell you that. Mike Johnson himself says, what is democracy but two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner That’s what they really, really believe.”
Faint Smell of Bullshit
Because of this turgid, drooling, over-baked capsule review of May December (and I’m saying this as someone who’s struggled manfully to restrain my own turgid tendencies), I’ve decided to regard askance anything written by Travis Woods. He’s one of those writers who just jumps off the high-dive board and goes kersplash!! And I’ve suffered through May December so don’t tell me.
I’m not dumping on Woods out of malice, but to explain why I’m not buying this Brian DePalma story…no way.
Disney Is Throwing In Woke Towel
Two days ago Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted to having read the proverbial writing on the wall and more or less bullhorned the following “whoa, Nellie!” message to Disney wokesters, which I’ve conveyed here in HE-styled rhetoric:
“All right, enough, dammit…we have to face facts…the Critical Drinker has been right all along and we have to acknowledge the state of things, or at least I do…the new Disney law is “no more woke propaganda in our movies”
“We’ve clearly alienated Joe and Jane Popcorn in the parenting community and we really have to get back to being good old family–friendly Disney, and in case you’re not reading me, we’ll henceforth be re-assessing the advisability of using LGBTQIA and maybe even progressive femme-bot material in our animated features. We’ll be taking it one step at a time.”
Sidenote: All hail Le Monde’s Arnaud Leparmentier, whose 11.29 article laid the situation on the line in a way that Variety or The Hollywood Reporter would never do.
Respect for O’Connor
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a Reagan appointee, was a moderate rightie — a “constitutional conservative” — but she was no Amy Coney Barrett. Nor was she Ruth Bader Ginsburg. My hazy recollection is that she wasn’t too bad overall. Regrets about O’Connor’s passing, but then again she led a full life and made it to age 93.
Punish The Stinking Bastards
HE agrees wholeheartedly with Michael Sherman, but his 12.1 anti-Disney Substack article doesn’t mention their forthcoming Snow White movie, which has been described by Rachel Zegler as being about Snow White becoming a leader in the medieval struggle for feminine fulfillment. New song lyrics: “If I’m lucky a prince will never save me / and I will then shape my own destiny.”
Shock To The System
I’m not saying that yesterday’s sudden loss of control of the facial muscles on the right side of my face and my mouth in particular…I’m not saying I look like Charles Laughton in The HHunchback of Notre Dame (‘39) but half of my facial features, which were fairly top-of-the-line when I was younger and at least pleasant in recent years…my looks are pretty much gone now, and if I was scheduled to see Sutton today I would be worried about alarming her. In the space of 24 hours I have suddenly become a mildly grotesque figure…I am now Richard III…dogs bark and howl as I pass by.
Before:
After:
Bonus points for anyone who can identify which film the above monster-in-the-mirror images are from. No, it’s not Martin Scorsese’s The Big Shave.
“Memory”: Mature, Absorbing, Not Half Bad
You go into a Michel Franco film (New Order and Sundown are recent HE favorites) with an understanding that dysfunction, severity and obsession will be served, and that some kind of rug will be be pulled out at some point. Franco doesn’t traffic in compassion and heartfelt currents as a general tendency; he does radical and harsh.
But that’s what I like or at least respect about Franco. He keeps the viewer on edge, and therein lies the tension.
So I was surprised when I saw Memory the other night and began to realize that it would be dealing the cards without the usual “uh-oh…when will the ferocious stuff happen?”
It’s basically a kind of strange-but-tender relationship thing…an acting-exercise drama about two damaged 40somethings — Jessica Chastain‘s Sylvia and Peter Sarsgaard‘s Saul — who probably shouldn’t get too deeply involved with each other because they have turbulent histories and are both too fucked up…Saul especially.
Memory is set in Brooklyn and you can really feel those down-in-the-weeds Brooklyn vibes. It settles into two families for the most part, and nobody’s really happy or steady or swingin’ from a star.
But the acting is so good and true…I felt immediately held and fascinated. I’m trying to think of the last time I saw a sexual relationship drama that had me thinking “wow, this might not end well and neither party seems to understand that…in fact it might end really badly.”
And yet things…I won’t say but this is easily the gentlest Franco film I’ve ever seen.
Sylvia is a cautious and brittle mom who works at an adult daycare center (a gathering of bruised and traumatized types) while raising the teenaged Anna (Brooke Timber).
Sylvia is wary of whatever might be around the corner, and so naturally she gradually gets involved — at first guardedly and tentatively, with Saul, who is clearly a bit weird but not dangerously so — a gentle, socially awkard beardo who’s plagued by some kind of dementia, and can’t seem to remember anything from the past.
Right away you’re wondering what semi-responsible woman (particularly one with a troubled parental and sexual history) would let this guy into her life?
The bottom line is that Chastain and Sarsgaard are quite the penetrators and dig-deepers, and for this reason alone Memory (Ketchup Entertainment, 12.22) is worth a watch.
Question: Why would a film distributor call itself Ketchup Entertainment? What if a similar operation called itself Mayonnaise Distribution? Or Miracle Whip Ltd.? Or Steak Sauce International? Or the Mustard Brothers?
Life is A Comedy, Written By A Sadist
Amazing news! Hollywood Elsewhere is a sudden, overjoyed victim of something that looks and feels like Bell’s Palsy.
All to say that this morning (six hours ago) I realized that the right side of my face had more or less frozen. I can’t smile on my right side — my upper lip just lies there like a limp prosthetic. If I sip coffee the coffee dribbles out of the right side of my mouth. I look like a guy in a Francis Bacon painting, or like Quasimodo. Plus my drooping right eye won’t completely close (no blinking to speak of) and won’t stop watering.**
If I can’t fix this my days of looking like a moderately attractive fellow are fucking OVER, man.
I tried my primary care physician and she told me to go Urgent Care, which isn’t going to remedy anything. I have an appointment with a facial paralysis specialist in Stamford early Monday morning, but Tatiana, who grappled with Bell’s Palsy seven or eight years ago, says I need to do something about this immediately as this condition can quickly degenerate. So I’ll take my computer along and post reactions to the NYFCC winners as things move along.
** I’m praying to God this is a temporary thing that will heal itself or otherwise go away.
Yesterday afternoon I was trying to get an imperfect lower-jaw veneer to fit correctly, and I pushed down upon it hard, which may have resulted in my natural teeth pushing down on facial nerves.
Update: The Urgent Care physican says it’s Bell’s Palsy, but a mild case of it. It’ll gradually go away, he says.
Bell’s palsy, defined as an acute peripheral facial weakness of unknown cause, has an annual incidence of 20 to 32 per 100,000. Most patients recover completely, with or without treatment, but 20% to 30% can have permanent facial weakness or paralysis.
Website: “A 10-day course of corticosteroids (prednisolone 25 mg., twice daily) started within 72 hours significantly improves the chances of complete recovery.”