For our latest podcast, Jeff and Sasha discuss what the Best Picture horse race of 2024 might look like. It’s a long one but what the hell.

Sasha has been on an Oppenheimer research kick so that commanded much of the time, but we also flitted around with Killers of the Flower Moon, The Killer, Barbie, Maestro, The Holdovers, The Pot au Feu, Napoleon, Ferarri, The Zone of Interest, Past Lives, The Color Purple.

We recorded too early to discuss the outrageous French Connection censorship matter — that’ll be for next time. We also re-explained why Best Picture-wise, identity is pretty much all that matters today. There’s no accounting for taste among the low-rent, under-45 SAG-AFTRA crowd.

Again, the link.

Here I am on a Sunday morning, sipping coffee and feeling glum as hell about the films of Joel and Ethan Coen no longer being part of our world. They haven’t been, really, since Inside Llewyn Davis, the last bona fide Coen Bros. flick (low key, early ’60s folkie vibes, slurping cereal milk, Schrodinger’s cat). It opened almost exactly a decade ago (May ’13) in Cannes.

As we speak the only Coen flick on the horizon is Ethan’s Drive-Away Dolls (Focus, 9.23), a lesbian road comedy with Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Pedro Pascal (again!), Colman Domingo, Bill Camp and Matt Damon. Even irreverent Ethan is following orders from the wokester commandants.

The Coens’ last joint effort was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (’18), an anthology film for Netflix. My view is that Scruggs didn’t count because it wasn’t really a single-narrative “Coen Bros. film” that opened in theatres. Within that realm, Joel and Ethan have actually been M.I.A. since Hail, Caesar!, which came out in 2016 and was a bit of a disappointment. It was fine (Josh Brolin was excellent) but it also felt incomplete, plus Jen Yamato thought it was too white.

The Coens have always conveyed a sly, darkly humorous contempt for American culture, and one way or another they’ve always served that shit on a plate. Whenever they delivered a dark-funny-perverse scene, which The Big Lebowski and No Country For Old Men are chock the fuck full of, it was heaven. I miss those scenes. My life feels incomplete without them.

I “liked” but didn’t love True Grit (’10) all that much. It was basically about Jeff Burly Bridges going “shnawwhhhhr-rawwwhhrr-rawwrrluurrllllh.” It certainly wasn’t an elegant, blue-ribbon, balls-to-the-wall, ars gratia artis Coen pic — it was a well-written, slow-moving western with serious authenticity, noteworthy camerawork, tip-top production design and, okay, a few noteworthy scenes.

So let’s just call the last decade or so a difficult, in-and-out, up-and-down saga for the boys, but at the same time acknowledge that the Coens at least enjoyed two golden periods.

The first golden period was a four-film run…actually make that a three film run — Blood Simple (’84), Raising Arizona (’87), Miller’s Crossing (’90) and Barton Fink (’91). The Hudsucker Proxy (’94) was an outlier…a weird, half-successful, half-sputtering in-betweener that didn’t quite work and nobody really liked. Truth be told I never liked Raising Arizona either so let’s call it a two-film run.

The second golden period (’96 to ’09) was what earned them a place in film history — a 13-year, nine-film run that included Fargo (’96), The Big Lebowski (’98), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (’00), The Man Who Wasn’t There (’01), Intolerable Cruelty (’03), The Ladykillers (’04), No Country for Old Men (’07), Burn After Reading (’08) and A Serious Man (’09).

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From the 2023 Toronto Film Festival media accreditation application:

And let’s not forget the AP’s contribution to the current miasma.

Earlier today HE commenter Benjamin Wayne reported that a racially offensive passage in William Friedkin‘s The French Connection (one that contains two ethnic slurs, both spoken by Gene Hackman‘s “Popeye Doyle”) has been stricken from the Criterion Channel’s version of this 1971 classic.

I went on the Criterion Channel to verify and Wayne is correct — the passage is missing.

Click here or watch below. The excerpt starts at the 52-second mark.

It’s a bit between Doyle and Roy Scheider‘s “Cloudy”, who’s nursing a wounded arm after being slashed by a drug dealer. Doyle: “You dumb guinea.” Cloudy: “How the hell did I know he had a knife?” Doyle: “Never trust a [ethnic slur].” Cloudy: “He coulda been white.” Doyle: “Never trust anyone.”

I’m sorry but cutting out scenes that are racially insensitive is a slippery slope. Once you start editing to spare sensitive ears where do you stop?

If and when The Criterion Channel ever shows Mel Brooks‘ Blazing Saddles (’74), will they edit out all the N-words? (I think the N-word is heard at least five or six times in the hilarious “the sheriff is near” scene.) If you watch Blazing Saddles on Max you’ll be treated to Jacqueline Stewart‘s introductory remarks, which acknowledge Brooks’ satirical intent while attempting to give context to the N-word usage. Why doesn’t the Criterion Channel do the same for The French Connection?

Excepting the scenes with Fernando Rey‘s elegant “Charnier” character, The French Connection has always been a coarse and crude film when focusing upon Doyle and Cloudy, which is at least 80% or 85% of the time. Doyle is a pushy and obstinate lead character who not only uses the N-word (once) but racially harasses the drug dealer who stabbed Cloudy by asking him if he’s ever picked his feet in Poughkeepsie. (Why not cut that scene out also?) Doyle’s barking, pugnacious personality represents the essence of Friedkin’s film, which hits hard in scene after scene and fairly flaunts its lack of sensitivity.

It’s one thing to warn viewers in advance about offensive or insensitive racial content, but eliminating entire passages is crude and uncool, especially in the case of a Best Picture Oscar winner.

I was recently urged by two friends to see Tina Satter’s Reality (HBO, 5.29), an 82-minute transcription drama about the June 2017 interrogation and arrest of Reality Winner, a contractor who bravely leaked classified info about Russian interference in the 2026 Presidential election.

Based solely on FBI transcripts, Reality is about an interaction between Ms. Winner (Sydney Sweeney) and a pair of kindly, soft-spoken FBI agents (Josh Hamilton, Marchant Davis). It’s mildly compelling in the sense that it’s certainly watchable and not boring, but at the the same time I wouldn’t call it earth-shattering. It’s engrossing as far as it goes. The first half-hour is completely banal, but it finally gets going…sort of.

I believed every minute of Reality (naturally) but Sweeney could be playing any 20something woman responding to any interrogation about anything of grave concern. She speaks to the FBI guys in what could be called “limited candid”…truths, half-truths, sidestepping, etc. Sweeney also speaks in a typical half-slurry vocal-fry manner, as many 20something women have been doing for the last 15-plus years. Her performance is perfectly fine but I didn’t believe she was fluent in three languages, as the actual Reality is. She seems too banal so I don’t honestly get the breathless praise.

I emerged from Reality, however, with a profound respect for what Ms. Winner did, which was to funnel classified proof to The Intercept about Russian interference, etc.

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I finally watched WHE’s Maltese Falcon 4K Bluray, which popped on 4.4.23. I’ve seen John Huston’s 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 detective yarn at least a dozen times (probably more), but the new 4K easily rules above all…darker than the Bluray but smooth and fine and wonderfully detailed with the most glorious mineshaft blacks your eyes have ever beheld.

It’s like monochrome dessert, this disc…pure wowser.

In damn near every close-up of Humphrey Bogart’s face you can easily see the glued-down foundational cheesecloth that secures his hairpiece. I really love this stuff — spotting any traces of cheesecloth, make-up, facial base or eyeliner that 1941 audiences never saw.

I also love the unmistakable reflection of studio lights in Bogart’s left eye…four, to be exact. There may be more than four reflected in his right eye; hard to be precise.

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From David Poland’s “What Becomes A Film Writer [in] 2023,” posted on 6.2.23:

HE to Poland: You bypassed Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty (‘55)…why? And David Lean’s 1957 Oscar–winner is titled The Bridge on the River Kwai. (Pierre Boulle’s original French–language novel (‘52) was titled “The Bridge Over The River Kwai.”)

A high-profile, middle-aged husband (45) and wife (41) whose issues led to a recent separation (followed by a subsequent rapprochement) are further rocked by the wife’s discovery last March of the husband’s brief affair with a 25-year-old climate activist who bears a strong resemblance to the wife and is certainly the same physical type.

This needn’t be a terrible Shakespearean tragedy. A rupture of trust, obviously, but more of a passing thunderstorm than Krakatoa, East of Java. Younger men (under 50) are dogs and may act upon this if marital discord is an ongoing issue, and especially if the other woman is 20 years younger.

Be honest — hurtful things occasionally happen in some marriages, but the smart play is to lick your wounds and give it another shot. My Mad Men dad indulged in an episode in his mid 40s, and was busted when the girlfriend wrote a note. Thinking of the kids and contemplating her husband’s dog-like instincts, the wise wife will follow the usual script, which is to make their lives an agonizing hell for a few months and then gradually let it go.

An alleged Clint Eastwood quote, according to a famous actor who ran in the same circles: “Show me a hugely attractive, impressively accomplished, stupendously beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a longtime husband or boyfriend who’s tired of fucking her.”

“Since the Academy opened the gates and invited many younger or international members in, things have changed dramatically in terms of what they consider ‘important’ [qualifiers for the Best Picture Oscar].

“It’s hard to argue against the idea that identity matters more than anything else, and identity vis a vis the new reversed hierarchy of the internet. What does that mean? Well, the old hierarchy, driven by the free market, good reviews and the ticket-buying majority, was mostly controlled by THE PATRIARCHY. Specifically, the WHITE MALE PATRIARCHY. Even more specifically, the WHITE, MALE, HETERONORMATIVE, CIS-GENDERED PATRIARCHY. 

“The internet mostly reversed that hierarchy as GenZ, birthed from the loins of Tumblr circa 2012 and helicopter parents like me, came of age. What that means is that they feel good when anyone but the WHITE, MALE, HETERONORMATIVE, CIS-GENDERED PATRIARCHY wins. A woman, a woman of color, a transgender person, someone who is disabled. And the list keeps getting longer.

“Any film or filmmaker representing any view of life that doesn’t represent the view of the American white majority — that’s what they want. 

“I know this bothers people when I talk about it, but for them it’s really all about inclusivity and progress. It isn’t just virtue signaling but something deeply felt, a religion of sorts, as we saw when Everything Everywhere All At Once won everything everywhere all at once. It was a kind of religious rapture. So when people are deciding what movie they think should win, they are judging it from inside that utopian bubble, as opposed to how it used to be decided: box office, quality, alpha male prowess and who was King for a Day.” — posted by Sasha Stone on Friday, 6.2.

…are still directed by too many white guys. Seven out of ten. Only three of HE’s ten are directed by non-whites — The Pot au Feu‘s Tran Anh Hung, Past Lives‘ Celine Song (both Asian) and The Color Purple‘s Samuel Bazawule (aka “Blitz the Ambassador”).

Which is significant because there’s a large segment of the Academy for whom identity is everything…just saying.

The most likely contenders, in order of likely or already discerned quality:

1. Maestro — dir: Bradley Cooper
2. The Holdovers — dir: Alexander Payne
3. The Pot au Feu — dir: Tran Anh Hung
4. Oppenheimer — dir: Christopher Nolan
5. Napoleon — dir: Ridley Scott
6. Ferarri — dir: Michael Mann
7. The Zone of Interest — dir: Jonathan Glazer
8. Past Lives — dir: Celine Song
9. Killers of the Flower Moon — dir: Martin Scorsese
10. The Color Purple — dir: Samuel Bazawule (aka “Blitz the Ambassador”)

Maybe But I Kinda Doubt it: Barbie — d: Greta Gerwig; Saltburn — d: Emerald Fennell; The Killer, d: David Fincher; Poor Things — Yorgos Lanthimos; Next Goal Wins — d: Taika Waititi; Pain Hustlers — d: David Yates; White Bird — d: Marc Forster; Leave the World Behind — d: Sam Esmail; Dune: Part Two — d: Denis Villeneuve.