Posted by Sasha Stone on 11.11.25 (one day before my birthday): “You’ve heard people say Hamnet ‘wrecked’ them, that they couldn’t focus on anything else after seeing it. This will be true for many people, but not all, certainly not those who feel locked out by the intense emotion on-screen.

“But when you see the film for yourself you’ll see what I saw. Some of you. You’ll see how it was all the path to getting there, to where we understand the need for art. It is just a look between the two characters that says, ‘This is all I have because I couldn’t do anything else.’

“And in that moment, at least for me, I was not able to breathe. The choking sobs were too much for me, and I was overcome. That is catharsis, but it is also the way out of misery, the way out of grief, the way out of madness. We need art like we need oxygen. This movie shows us why. Zhao can see and she has the courage to say this, and she does so with minimalist discipline and an artist’s eye.

“Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing. Truer words were never said. Art, however, signifies everything. Hamnet is a masterpiece, and if not the best film of the year, one of the best I’ve ever seen. And suddenly, at least to me, the Oscar race just got competitive.”

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Film critic colleague: “You can get an AARP membership at age 50. Once upon a time you could get great rental car discounts with it. Now not so much. Also — the AARP magazine is the biggest print rag in the country. Plus it and the website pay phenomenally well. They pay $250 for 125 words. Do the math. They used to cough up a grand just to submit a list for their end-of-year roundup.”

HE to colleague: “‘Do the math’? I got $2.00 per word from Entertainment Weekly in the early to mid ‘90s.”

Colleague: “So did I except nobody earns that now. Okay, maybe a New Yorker writer.”

HE to colleague: “$2.00 per word in ’92 works out to $4.62 per word in the 2025 economy. What’s the per-word norm these days?”

Colleague: “Online, one is lucky to get 50 cents per word. In some cases it’s ten cents.”

Alternate headline: “Oldsters, AARP and Cunnilingus, Part 2.”

I’m happy to learn that Maria Muldaur is alive and well and still kicking and shimmering at 83. The way she sings “rohMAAHNNCE” in “Midnight at the Oasis“, a sex song if there ever was one, makes you wonder if the former Maria D’Amato might be some kind of earthy, twangy hick from Texas or Oklahoma or Arkansas. But she was born in Greenwich Village and attended Hunter College High School on the Upper East Side.

Maria married fellow Jim Kweskin Jug Band performer Geoff Muldaur in 1964. The same year a daughter, Jenni Muldaur, came along. Geoff and Maria’s marriage lasted until ’72.

True Geoff Muldaur story: I saw him perform with his band at the Westport Player’s Tavern in ’76 or ’77. The opening song was “Sloppy Drunk“, and Muldaur, playing acoustic guitar, was pissed at the audience for chatting and yapping so loudly he and his fellows could barely be heard.

Just before or just after the first song Muldaur leaned into the mike and said in a steady, mellow tone of voice, “I really hate you people…I do, I really do.” He was basically scolding them for refusing to look past themselves by showing a little respect and humility. I loved Muldaur for saying this because the folks in the tavern were acting like obnoxious twats…he was right. I clapped and went “go, Geoff!” and “”whoo-hoo!”

…but only five Oscar nomination slots in this category. So who will emerge as the weak sister…the odd man out at the end of the day…which performance will be cut loose from the pack?

The six Supporting Actor contenders are Jay Kelly‘s Adam Sandler, One Battle After Another‘s Sean Penn, Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard, One Battle After Another‘s Benicio del Toro, Hamnet‘s Paul Mescal and Frankenstein‘s Jacob Elordi.

Obviously one of the performances that will be shucked will be either del Toro’s or Penn’s. If they both get nominated they’ll probably cancel each other out so one has to go. It’s kind of absurd that Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw seems to have the most heat in this category, at least as far as the shameless Gold Derby whores are concerned. Except Penn’s performance has no depth or shading — he’s playing a robotic, stiff-necked marionette in starched military fatigues. I say cut him loose and hold on to Benicio.

HE’s preferences for the five slots are in this order: (1) Skarsgard in Sentimental Value (likely to win as a kind of consolation prize as the empty Coke bottles have seemingly decided en masse that Value can’t win Best Picture because it’s Norweigan…totally moronic thinking); (2) Mescal in Hamnet (the first screen performance that he’s given that I really and truly respect…it almost made me forget his licking-up-the-cum-droplets scene); (3) Sandler in Jay Kelly (his saddest and most soulfully resigned performance); (4) Benicio del Toro‘s Sensei in One Battle…(the only French 75 leftist I really liked in that film); and (5) Elordi in Frankenstein…2025’s biggest breakthrough performance.

Criterion publicist to Scott Mantz: “Before we set up your Zoom interview with Eyes Wide Shut dp Larry Smith, we need you to give us your solemn oath…”

Mantz to Criterion: “Sure, whadaya need?”

Criterion to Mantz: “We want your promise that you’ll never mention the word ‘teal’ during your chat.”

Mantz to Criterion: “Teal? Me?”

Criterion to Mantz: “We’re serious, Scott.”

Mantz to Criterion: “Worry not! I’m your boy. I don’t think I even know what teal means.”

Remember that scene in Broadcast News when Albert Brooks‘ Aaron explains that William Hurt‘s Tom, while being “a very nice guy”, is the devil? We have a similar situation here. Mantz obviously doesn’t have hooves and horns and a long spiky tail, but…

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HE to Mantz on Wednesday afternoon, 11.19: “I’m watching your 30-minute chat with Larry Smith, and you don’t even mention the obvious teal-tinting on Criterion’s EWS 4K Bluray. Unless I wasn’t paying attention, you don’t even MENTION it!!  Nobody has ever had any problems with the brightness levels, as Larry mentions. It’s the fucking TEAL poisoning!”

[Note: Yesterday I shared my negative reactions with Mantz and, just to be sure, asked if he mentioned the word teal and/or asked Larry to comment about teal-ing. Scott ghosted me, of course. HE to Mantz: “I’m going to reasonably interpret your silence as confirmation that you never uttered the word.”]

“Larry says ‘the theatrical blues were the theatrical blues…we didn’t mess around with any of the main [color] structure’….bunk! That’s precisely what Larry and his ignoble Criterion cohorts have done. The vivid blue iron gates in that envelope-handover scene have been changed to somber subdued teal.

Robert Harris’s HTF review: “Are the blues deep rich blues? No. They do lean toward a teal.”

“Early on Larry says the film wasn’t color-timed or fine-tuned before it was released because of Kubrick’s untimely passing. Oh, yeah?  I spoke to EWS producer Jan Harlan a few months (or was it weeks?) after EWS was released, and he was very deeply involved. He really cared.

“But Larry is telling us…what, that Harlan didn’t try to finesse the color as best he could before the film was released in ‘99??  Nobody stepped into the color-correcting breach after Kubrick passed on March 7, 1999?  (EWS was released four months later — 7.13.99.) I don’t buy that. Nobody does.”

Larry also says that EWS “was too grainy,” a condition that he presumably remedied. And yet in his Home Theatre Forum review of the 4K Criterion disc, Harris writes “grain haters need not reply.”

Since when is Ryan Coogler’s Sinners a movie for old-timers, much less a highly recommended one?

It’s a drawling, drooling, blues-savoring, bloody-faced cunnilingus vampire exploitation film aimed at POCs and under-40 wokesters with TikTok accounts.

Are AARP execs aware that old farts of both sexes aren’t exactly into ravenous oral sex, and that the mere mention of this arcane sexual practice makes them uncomfortable?

And why haven’t you recommended Sentimental Value? Have you even seen it?

What else are you recommending to the walker-and-wheelchair set? Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom?

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Everybody messes up from time to time, myself included, but you can’t misreport when two 1974 classics were released, and in the lede paragraph yet!

You can only harvest what was captured by 75- or 80-year-old cameras back in the day…35mm film was what it was…there can be no glorious visual revelation from a 79-year-old Oscar winner…you just have to say “okay, good enhancement but mid ‘40s film technology was obviously of its time, and that’s as far as it went.”

HE to “riboleh”: That’s a nicely written report — hats off. But let’s get real. I presume you own the 2013 Best Years Of Our Lives Bluray, which looks truly great for a 35mm monochrome film shot in 1945 or thereabouts. (35mm is 35mm — Wyler’s film wasn’t shot in large-format VistaVision.)

Are you saying that the 4K enhancement you saw at the Academy museum represents a significant bump over the Bluray? If that’s what you’re saying, I don’t believe you. Due respect but it can’t be “whoa, baby!” better than the Bluray. A Greg Toland masterwork, yes, but it was just 35mm and you can’t transform this film into an ice cream sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

I really and truly respect one actor in this photo….Lakeith Stanfield, whom I really liked in Roofman and Die My Love.

Who’s the tall, dorky-looking guy with the jug ears? Callum Turner?

Where are Jacob Elordi and Timothee Chalamet?

Director Sidney Lumet and dp Owen Roizman, both wearing feathered wings and playing harps in heaven, have just heard about Criterion’s forthcoming 4K Network Bluray (due 2.24.26), and are almost certainly feeling very concerned about their classic 1976 satire being teal-colored.

Remember how Roizman freaked and pretty much hit the ceiling when William Friedkin played around with the color scheme in that bizarre 16-year-old French Connection Bluray? Roizman didn’t tippy-toe around the obvious, which was that the ’09 Bluray’s bizarre color scheme (bleachy, desaturated, high contrasty) was an outright desecration. Three years later a properly remastered, Roizman-approved version was issued on a subsequent Bluray, and thank God for gloriously happy endings.

If and when Criterion saturates Network with sickly teal tones, Roizman will go to management and demand that the clouds above Criterion’s NYC headquarters darken and rumble and secrete bolts of lightning.

Jamal Ahmad Hamza Khashoggi was murdered on 10.2.18 by agents of the Saudi government at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman..fact, period, end of story.