It was announced earlier today that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s Air, a fact-based sports marketing drama about Nike salesman Sonny Vaccaro, will receive a wide theatrical release from Amazon on Wednesday, April 5.

This will be Amazon’s first major theatrical effort since Mindy Kaling’s Late Night, a Sundance acquisition, opened and underperformed in the summer of 2019.

Question: Was I crazy for thinking that Air, in which Damon will play Vaccaro, would be an Oscar season thing?

Two possible answers: One, Air might not be as good as it needs to be to compete against other ’23 award-seekers. Or two, things are changing and the Oscar-chasing game ain’t what it used to be.

Air follows in the wake of Ari Aster‘s Beau Is Afraid, another seemingly high-pedigree feature film by a name-brand auteur that has forsaken an award-season strategy in favor of an April opening.

Things are changing and an April opening doesn’t necessarily mean what it used to mean — i.e., an interesting film that doesn’t quite make it, and therefore doesn’t have sufficient award-season mojo. Again, that’s a cachet that used to apply but not necessarily in a January 2023 context.

Explained by friendo: “As we learned in 2022, there is much less value in the Oscar race today…contaminated by woke critics and their anti-populist priorities, the Oscar brand is so bad that smart producers aren’t necessarily aiming for an Oscar association…it used to be that Oscar-buzz movies made money or at least enjoyed a certain elevated status…now it’s almost the opposite.

“Oscar movies have become about eating your vegetables and raising your social consciousness….fewer people are interested in them, because of the woke thing or whatever. Or because Millennials and Zoomers have become totally alienated from the brand.”

Let’s presume that Air is a highly-engaging, first-rate film. (It certainly feels like a humdinger.) It’s the first behind-the-camera collaboration between co-screenwriters Damon and Affleck (along with Alex Convery) since their Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting, on top of which Affleck, a proven helmer, is the director. Plus the story is about audacity and pathfinding (somewhat reminiscent of Bennett Miller‘s Moneyball) in the sports business, and…well, it sounds classy and cool and proletariat.

Plus it’s fortified by a cool-sounding cast (Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Marlon Wayans, Chris Messina). Plus it’s the first film produced by Affleck and Damon’s Artists Equity.

12 years ago Moneyball bought into the whole Toronto-premiere, critically-supported, award-season route. But today it was announced that Amazon will open Air on Wednesday, April 5th, or roughly two and a half months hence.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandrio: “I hear Air will have a longer theatrical window than Amazon Studios’ recent limited theatrical releases, before hitting Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories. It truly is a first-of-its-kind arrangement for the studio as Amazon will distribute the film globally, with Warner Bros. Pictures handling international as part of its distribution pact with Amazon’s MGM. Amazon Studios only had U.S. on Late Night, not global rights.”

Tuesday (1.24) aftermath, filed by N.Y.Post‘s Jane Herz.

Initial Monday (1.23) posting: Keep in mind that the Trans Cultural Mindful Alliance (TCMA), formed and staffed by a Norweigan group of trans activists, only came into being this month (probably only a week or two ago) and for all we know consists of a relatively small number of members. Or not…who knows? Maybe there are thousands of members. But I doubt it.

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The die is cast, and we’ll all know the Oscar nominations come Tuesday morning. It’s totally okay to respect and honor Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan in their respective categories while at the same dismissing EEAAO as a Best Picture contender. It’s all right, you can do this, nobody will raise an eyebrow, it all fits together.

Jeff and Sasha‘s latest Oscar Poker (recorded two days ago) is up and running. For love, for formula, for comfort and for the joyful shirking of 2022 Best Picture nominees that many respect but nobody really loves…be honest. It was another weakish year, and the only film that really bull’s-eyed according to its own self-=imposed terms was Top Gun: Maverick. Stop arguing! Within the prison cell of general Academy preferences TG:M is the only hot mama that truly sings.

If you want 2022’s actual best films, I posted them on 12.30.22: 1. Empire of Light, 2. Close, 3. Happening, 4. Vengeance, 5. She Said, 6. Emily The Criminal, 7. Christian Mungiu‘s R.M.N., 8. Top Gun: Maverick; 9. Avatar: The Way of Water; 10. Tar (despite the many irritations). But we’re playing an Academy game now.

Posted on 1.21.23: “Sasha Stone and I just finished an hour-long chat about Tuesday morning’s (1.24) announcement of the ’23 Oscar nominations, and the obvious fact that Top Gun: Maverick, which will certainly be among the chosen few, is the only prospective nominee that feels truly commanding. Authoritatively, I mean.

“Despite the familiarity and the formulaic strategy, TG:M is the only finalist that feels home–runnish…not to mention the achievement of having joined forces with Avatar: The Way of Avatar to save and even restore a classic, life-giving Hollywood dynamic (thrills, popcorn, warm seats) to exhibition itself…there’s no ignoring the metaphor.”

Again, the latest Substack link.

“But the penis is not the enemy. The enemy is misunderstanding.”

Sundance Friendo: “Landscape with Invisible Hand is said it’s a really fascinating project. I’m sure Cat Person will be annoying and stupid, but i have to see it ahead of the online discourse. And i really want to see The Eight Mountains and Other People’s Children.”

Two seconds after I saw this pre-Super Bowl spot sometime in early ’07, I was 95% certain that Barack Obama would be elected president the following year. No question. Dozens in in my liberal circle were stubborn Hillary fans and stayed with her until the spring of ’08. But I knew.

Gather round and time-trip with yours truly back to Saturday, 12.2.06 — the day of the press junket for Steven Soderbergh‘s The Good German, held on the 18th floor of Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria. I’m mentioning this because of an impression I had that day of costar Cate Blanchett, who kiddingly called herself “so old!” at the Critics Choice awards a few days ago but was all of 37 back then.

It was the doodling that got me. Holding a #2 pencil, Blanchett was doodling on a note pad as she answered questions, and my heart kind of melted when I saw this. Here’s how I described her:

“Blanchett was extraordinary. Honestly? I stared at her more than I listened.

“It was obvious within a minute or two that she was living deep in her own realm. One with little electric cracks of lightning. She looks down and does little fidgety things — pulling her wedding ring on and off, drawing a doodle on a note pad. It’s not that she’s shy or avoids eye contact, but a lot of the time she talks to the tabletop or her eyes dart around as she’s answering. (Always a mark of a fine creative mind.) Plus it’s been a while since I’ve heard her native Australian accent. She’s done so many different accents recently she could be channelling the Meryl Streep of the ’80s.”

Here’s the mp3 from the conversation, but again — it wasn’t what she said but how she said it. Here’s George Clooney’s interview.

The round tables (which also included Soderbergh) ended just after 1 pm. I took a snap of Blanchett’s doddle pad and a pair of Good German DVDs, but the image quality is atrocious by today’s standards.

The Good German got creamed by critics — 34%.

Posted on 11.27.06: “I’ve seen The Good German twice in Los Angeles, both times with seasoned industry types, and nobody’s gone into a dismissive neg-head chortle about it. Not in my presence, at least. The reactions have been…well, okay, muted but always respectful. No one I spoke to was deriding it or grumbling on their way out to the parking lot.

“Set in the post-World War II rubble of Berlin, The Good German is a very periodesque, Third Man-ish experience, but it’s not spoofy in the slightest. Except for the final scene it’s relatively earnest (as far as a film like this can be) and straight and about itself. It’s partly a tribute piece — a recreation of a military whodunit drama as it might have actually looked and moved if, say, Michael Curtiz had directed it in 1946 — and partly a Phillip Marlowe detetective story in uniform.”

2.16.06: “Pete Hammond tells me he was casually praising Clooney at a party last weekend for helping to keep the monochrome tradition alive with both The Good German and Good Night, and Good Luck, and Clooney answered, “Yeah, well, I think after The Good German that’s about it for the black-and-white thing.”

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I’ve been complaining about muddy, murky movie dialogue for years, and enduring constant derision from the HE commentariat (“It’s your fault…hearing aids are cheaper now”). Will the shit talkers apologize now that the actual problem (bizarre sound-mixing habits) has been exposed? Of course not.

Vox copy: “Have you ever been watching a show or movie, and then a character delivers a line so unintelligible you have to scramble to find the remote and rewind? Or activate subtitles?

“Gather enough people together and you can generally separate them into two categories: People who use subtitles, and people who don’t. And according to a not-so-scientific YouTube poll we ran on our Community tab, the latter category is an endangered species — 57% of you said you always use subtitles, while just 12% of you said you generally don’t.

“Why do so many feel that they need subtitles? We got straight to the bottom of it in this explainer, with the help of dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick.”

“Shitty Bull Sound,” posted on 8.5.07:

Every now and then someone writes a looking-back-on-Raging Bull piece (like this one from the Guardian‘s Ryan Gilbey, a nod to the film’s re-release in England on 8.17). And they all report that Martin Scorsese‘s classic wasn’t tremendously popular critically or commercially when it first opened in November of 1980. But what’ s never mentioned is that moviegoers couldn’t hear many of the quieter dialogue scenes with any real clarity, even in the better big-city theatres. And that this almost surely had an effect upon the general reception.

I distinctly remember watching a public screening of Raging Bull in the Sutton Theatre on 57th Street just before Thanksgiving, and leaning forward and cupping my ears and getting angry as I asked myself, “Dammit, why don’t they turn the damn sound up?” I had this reaction every time Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci or Cathy Moriarty were murmuring or muttering their thoughts in their middle-class Bronx apartments, or when “Tommy” the mafia guy was laying things out in his two quiet scenes.

Raging Bull‘s sound was apparently rendered with an intentionally murky-crude quality so it would seem unaffected and working-classy — the idea being that naturalism was equivalent to a kind of aural muck. This almost certainly resulted in tens of thousands of ear-cuppings across the nation given that the sound systems in all but a few big-city theatres back then were atrocious, for the most part. By today’s standards, it was truly the aural Dark Ages.

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Around two or three weeks ago Tweetbot, purchased eight or nine years ago and my favorite Twitter app by far, stopped functioning. At first the alerts called it a temporary or pending situation. I didn’t investigate or even focus all that much on the problem — I figured it would eventually shake out. A few days ago Tweetbot began working again, and then not. Now it’s permanently neutered. Elon Musk has deliberately zotzed all third-party apps. Fucker.

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Sasha Stone and I just finished an hour-long chat about Tuesday morning’s (1.24) announcement of the ’23 Oscar nominations, and the obvious fact that Top Gun: Maverick, which will certainly be among the chosen few, is the only prospective nominee that feels truly commanding. Authoritatively, I mean.

Despite the familiarity and the formulaic strategy, TG:M is the only finalist that feels home–runnish…not to mention the achievement of having joined forces with Avatar: The Way of Avatar to save and even restore a classic, life-giving Hollywood dynamic (thrills, popcorn, warm seats) to exhibition itself…there’s no ignoring the metaphor.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is passionately supported (I’ll give it that) but on its own terms (reach, theme, imagination) and despite an excellent final line it drives sane people crazy.

The Fabelmans is basically a double that makes you feel more relieved than fulfilled when it ends.

For all the brilliance and audacity Tar underwhelms — Kubrick famously said that strong films connect for the feel rather than the think, and Tar is not much of a feeler.

The Banshees of Inisherin is also more weirdly thinky than feely.

I don’t know what Elvis is but it sure as hell is no triple or homer. The Bazzyness is draining.

Women Talking is an earnest whiff. Babylon, due respect, missed it. The corrosive cruelty delivered by All Quiet on the Western Front is unforgettable but not, in the annals of world cinema, unfamiliar.

At the end of the day Avatar: The Way of Water is more about knockout efficiency than the turning of a special key.