It’s not just Film Twitter that resides in a bubble; it’s a healthy majority of film critics. That aside, I respect Kristen Stewart‘s performance. She gave it her all.
It’s not just Film Twitter that resides in a bubble; it’s a healthy majority of film critics. That aside, I respect Kristen Stewart‘s performance. She gave it her all.
Last night Sasha Stone announced that after years of reluctance, she’s joined the Critics Choice Association — an accommodating, political-minded, awards-giving outfit whose leadership has recently come to believe they’ve supplanted the Golden Globes as the leading, default, go-to predictor of the Oscar awards.
And perhaps they have.
I was a CCA member for many years, going back to the mid or late aughts….I forget which. CCA honchos Joey Berlin and John DeSimio ejected me last March for a spurious reason that boiled down to a matter of political cowardice (theirs) in the face of woke hysteria.
I explained the deal in a piece I posted three months ago called “Hester Prynne Has Nothing on Yours Truly.” I quoted another person’s viewpoint, and posted it for an hour, and those beasts shot me in the stomach for it. So I stated unequivocally what I believed nine or ten months ago and what I believe today in my heart, which is that Joey and John and the people who pressured them are bad people (as in cowardly, hysterical, unprincipled, swinish, venal).
During a climactic sequence in The Bridges of Toko-Ri, a North Korean grenade lands near William Holden and Mickey Rooney in a muddy trench. Rooney lunges and throws it away before it explodes. Then another grenade lands — Rooney does the same and is killed when it explodes in his hand. If you were in that trench with Joey Berlin or John DeSimio, they would grab the grenade and throw it in your direction. Then they would toss their weapons, drop to their knees and beg the North Koreans not to shoot them.That’s not saying much in a town like Los Angeles, I realize, but there it is regardless.
Hollywood Elsewhere will catch an invitational screening of Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story at the Bedford Playhouse on Thursday, 12.9. Blue-chip restoration guru Robert Harris oversaw the technical projection and sound quality at this recently recreated cinema (633 Old Post Rd, Bedford, NY 10506), so it’s a safe bet that this screening will be as good as the one I caught at Manhattan’s SVA theatre a week ago.
Which reminds me: There’s no other award-season film out there that delivers as fully as West Side Story does. Emotionally, I mean. So because my eyes welled up three or four times, it’s more than likely that WSS will take the 2021 Best Picture Oscar. Yes, 59 years after the previous version, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, won the exact same prize.
I know everyone (myself included) said over and over that one West Side Story Best Picture Oscar was sufficient and that history doesn’t need to repeat itself and that it’s better to hand the big prize to another deserving film (but not The Power of the Dog — Jane Campion‘s Best Director Oscar is safe but that’s it). But I don’t see any way around a WSS win at this point.
If I had any discipline, I would’ve streamed Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Drive My Car by now. But the 179-minute length kept giving me pause. Now that it’s won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Picture, I feel an extra urgency to just sit the fuck down and watch it.
I’ve decided to catch it tomorrow afternoon at the Film Forum (3:50 pm) after lunching at Shuka (38 MacDougal St., south of Houston) with SBIFF honcho Roger Durling.
The HE community is hereby requested to post whatever Drive My Car impressions may be rattling around.
Easily the most obliging, “whatever man”, comme ci comme ca merchant Covid policy sign I have seen anywhere, ever. Snapped today (12.5.21) in Mountainside, N.J. 4:20 pm update: I’m driving around; heading back to Connecticut soon. That’s all she wrote until tomorrow morning.
We all understand that critics are total fools for Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog. (I’m a half-and-halfer — excellent craft, dullish story, pertplexing characters.) Joe and Jane Popcorn, on the other hand, are mostly negative — bored, appalled, “seriously?” This is partly because critics tend to be more thoughtful in their appraisals, and partly because they’ve been professionally instructed to admire all things Campion. Ditto the film industry. Campion is locked to win the Best Director Oscar early next year.
Longtime Kansas Senator, former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole has passed at age 98.
Dole was a classic Republican, or the kind of Republican that has all but disappeared from the Washington landscape. Another way of putting it is that Dole was a rational human being. I’m presuming Dole was disgusted by ex-President Donald Trump, and especially by what happened on 1.6.21.
Dole served in the House of Representatives for eight years (1961 to ’69), and represented Kansas in the U.S. Senate for 27 years (1969 to ’96). He served as Senate Republican Leader between ’85 and ’96. Dole and Jack Kemp unsuccessfully ran against Clinton-Gore in ’96. He also ran as Gerald Ford‘s vp nominee in the 1976 election — another losing effort.
Over the last hour I’ve been trying like hell to find a clip of former Sen. Al Franken imitating Dole (he did it at least once on Bill Maher‘s Politically incorrect in the ’90s), but I’ve failed. Norm McDonald‘s Dole was okay but not as good as Franken’s.
A little New Jersey couch action — Saturday, 12.4, 8:25 pm. Cait, Jett, Sutton, Jeff, Joey and Luna.
Ex-CNN headliner Chris Cuomo crossed ethical lines by helping his brother, ex-New York governor Andrew Cuomo, to dispute, challenge or circumvent the latter’s accusers in the realm of alleged sexual harassment. A very stupid decision, in short, to choose brotherly love over journalistic integrity. And now it’s time to pay the piper. So what should Cuomo do next?
If you have three reliable sources providing the same or corresponding information, you’re almost certainly on solid footing with your story. Then again if you’re writing about the private voting process for the 2021 New York Film Critics Circle awards, your story is automatically suspect because there’s an ironclad, “if you talk you die” rule among NYFCC members not to discuss the voting.
So in the matter of Jordan Ruimy’s World of Reel story about this subject, it apparently became obligatory among certain NYFCC members (Jason Bailey, Sam Adams, Allison Wilmore, Kate Erbland) to try and discredit the story and trash Ruimy, etc. Full court press.
My limited understanding is that Ruimy’s story is either (a) highly accurate as far as his sources relayed or (b) a mostly accurate summary of what happened, regardless of who said what and who disagreed and/or disputed.
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall‘s Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year’s Telluride...
More »7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when...
More »It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes...
More »The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
More »Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner‘s Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
More »For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg‘s tastiest and wickedest film — intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...
More »asdfas asdf asdf asdf asdfasdf asdfasdf