The trick…okay, the intention is to post photos that connect on purely visual or aromatic terms, no matter who or what you might personally relate to.

A stark, impressionistic Macbeth of no particular era. Well, some time in the past but not necessarily 17th Century Scotland. The spiffy hallway design and window panes obviously argue against that. The hallway in particular could have been designed by Albert Speer. And what about those boots, eh? Fine 20th Century cobblery.

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Sometimes in the science of Oscarology it takes a few years to understand the political reasons (for all Oscar triumphs are political) behind this or that winner snagging a trophy.

Take the Moonlight win, for example. Thanks to Spike Lee’s refreshing frankness, we can now safely assume that the deciding factor behind Barry Jenkins’ film beating La La Land was about Academy members being able to tell themselves that #OscarsSoWhite had been squarely faced and responsibly negated.

But in the days following the 2.26.17 Oscar telecast, many were saying “of course!…of course Moonlight was obviously better than La La Land!…on top of which it was wrong for a white guy to love jazz.”

I didn’t feel that way, but the mob was on a roll.

“Putting Moonlight To Bed,” posted on 3.4.17: “This is several days old and yesterday’s news, but a 2.28 Hollywood Reporter piece by Stephen Galloway that derided the echo chamber of Oscar punditry and the failure of the know-it-alls to foresee Moonlight‘s Best Picture win (“Why the Pundits Were Wrong With the La La Land Prediction“) was wrong in two respects.

“One, whoda thunk it? Even now I find it perplexing that Moonlight won. A finely rendered, movingly captured story of small-scale hurt and healing, it’s just not drillbitty or spellbinding enough. I wasn’t the least bit jarred, much less lifted out of my seat, when I first saw it at Telluride. Moonlight is simply a tale of emotional isolation, bruising and outreach and a world-shattering handjob on the beach…Jesus, calm down.

“As I was shuffling out of the Chuck Jones I kept saying to myself “That‘s a masterpiece?” (Peter Sellars, sitting in front of me, had insisted it was before the screening started.) If there was ever a Best Picture contender that screamed ‘affection and accolades but no Oscar cigar,’ it was Moonlight. And the Oscar pundits knew that. Everyone did.

“So I don’t know what happened — I really don’t get it.**

“I’ve already made my point about Moonlight in the Ozarks. It’s just a head-scratcher. And two, Galloway’s contention that only pipsqueaks with zero followings were predicting or calling for a Moonlight win is wrong.

“As I noted just after the Oscars, esteemed Toronto Star critic Pete Howell and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Matt Atchity were predicting a Moonlight win on the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby charts. As I also noted, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone hopped aboard the Moonlight train at the very last millisecond, although she stuck to La La Land for her Gurus of Gold ballot. These are facts, and Galloway’s dismissing Howell and Atchity was an unfair oversight.”

** It wasn’t safe to say that Moonlight ‘s win was about Academy members covering their ass until Lee said this on 6.21.17. After that it was olly-olly-in-come-free.

The material is nothing special but for me, the Get Back Beatles playing Chuck Berry‘s “Rock and Roll Music” is easily the most rousing performance. It happens during episode #1 of Peter Jackson‘s 468-minute documentary, which premieres today on Disney+.

“The moments of inspiration and interest are marooned amid acres of desultory chit-chat (‘aimless rambling’, as Lennon rightly puts it) and repetition. There is a point, about five hours in, when the prospect of hearing another ramshackle version of ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ becomes an active threat to the viewer’s sanity.

“That is doubtless what recording an album is like, but for an onlooker it is — to use the language of 1969 — a real drag. Much opprobrium has been cast at Yoko Ono for her constant presence at Beatles’ recording sessions, but, after this, you marvel at her fortitude for sitting through them.” — The Guardian‘s Alex Petridis, posted on 11.25.

This falls under the heading of “vulgar performative egoism” — our private lives, marriages and pregnancy announcements transformed into a major live-stadium crowd event + a worldwide celebration of fame and performative happiness as a social media statement, endlessly shared and liked.

SURPRISE: A man was left stunned after the Orlando Magic basketball team helped his wife tell him the news that she is pregnant during their game’s “Kiss Cam” interlude on Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/aTmiCXInkf

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 25, 2021

The wokester fanatic view is that Thanksgiving signifies the beginning of the original Anglo abomination against Native Americans — genocide, cruelty, displacement, cultural arrogance. In the words of Maid‘s Mary Smith Metzler, Thanksgiving is “complicated.”

History.com: “The [50 year] alliance between the Pilgrims and the {Massachusetts] Wampanoag tribe, remains one of the few examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.“

This is “family day”, even if you have problems with most many of your brood. I’ve just eaten a dish of warm and spicy pumpkin pie and whipped cream…perfect. I can do very well without the other staples, thank you. The idea of eating yams, sweet potatoes, cranberries and creamed onions, no offense, is repellent.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. Except for the woke Millennial Twitter dogs, some of whom should (and possibly will) eternally roast on a spit in hell.

Nothing new here in terms of evidence or testimony — simply a statement by Michael Wolff that older Manhattan media people don’t believe the Farrow family’s accusation against Woody Allen while younger people automatically believe it — a generational divide thing. Which is somehow satisfying to re-post.

Deadline‘s Todd McCarthy, 2.1.21: “Jockey is the kind of story Sam Peckinpah might have been partial to in his quieter, Junior Bonner mode. [It’s] a little gem about an aging rider whose days on the racing circuit are nearing an end just as a youngster shows up who claims to be his son.

“The kind of timeless tale that could take place anywhere but is bolstered by its racetrack milieu and a very fine cast, this is a sparely written and beautifully performed piece that under normal circumstances would make the festival rounds prior to a specialty launch but these days will no doubt go straight to [streaming].