…is meaningless to me. It doesn’t mean squat to anyone. Entertainment Weekly has been a dead brand for a good 10 or 15 years, or since it began to primarily aim its coverage at young, none-too-bright women. (Which began back in the Bush years, right?) And now the print days are over. Things change. But boy oh boy I remember the buzz that came from reading semi-glossy magazines that were aimed at semi-educated urbans — i.e., pages and pages of stapled tree pulp with printed words and pictures. Printed newspapers also!

I was a steady (you could say dogged) EW contributor during the ‘90s heyday, but you don’t want to hear those dusty old stories again.

The entire quote is from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Sheri Linden, and it comes from a 12.9.21 “Critics Conversation” between herself, David Rooney and Liva Guyarkye….here it is:

Linden: “There’s a terrible loneliness at the heart of Ruth Negga’s remarkable performance [in Passing]. Clare’s vivacity is at once an expression of audacity and an act of hiding. In very different ways, Negga’s character and Kirsten Dunst’s tender turn in Power of the Dog reverberate with a nation’s calamitous history — Who is valued? Who decides? But it’s on an intimate, moment-to-moment level that these two performances tore my heart out.”

So Dunst’s Rose Gordon, a kind-hearted, hard-working mother of a teenage son (Kodi Smit-.McPhee) and recently married to Jesse Plemon‘s fleshy, ginger-haired George Burbank only to run afoul of his brother, the snarly, menacing Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and thereafter descends into alcoholism…how exactly does poor Rose’s plight mirror our shared “calamitious history“? I’m completely mystified as to what this means.

Rose’s story seems like a local matter to me…a family drama, a matter of Phil’s malignancy, a cattle-ranch issue. In what way does this reflect on anything national, then or now? Or state-wide even? Who apart from those who live and work on the Burbank ranch…who cares what poor Rose is going through?

Friendo: “Kim Kardashian looks good — you have to give her that. She allegedly lost 20 lbs. after getting Covid. This, either way, is how to be super-successful in 2022, by virtue-signalling while growing an empire. ‘I’ve chosen myself’ — no shit, sweetheart. As in ‘I’ve chosen my brand, my wealth, my obsessive self-attention,’ etc. She really did crack the code, didn’t she? She’s now the symbol of our modern Gilded Age. And, as ever, she does absolutely nothing in terms of innovation, ideas, creating, devotion, design…even adventure-seeking. Imagine all of her fans, most of them living in poverty, trying to be that. How could they ever?”

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“The big winner, nomination-wise, was The Power of the Dog…12 nominations, one for every person who saw it. Lady Gaga was a surprise, not being nominated, but the biggest snub in my opinion…I’m actually even angry about this, I’m kind of embarassed to say…[the biggest snub was] the unforgivable omission of Spider-Man: No Way Home.

“How did that not get one of the ten nominations? There were only 11 [half-decent] movies made this year. Forget the fact that [Spider-Man] made $750 million [domestic] and it still going. This was a great movie, and there were three Spider-Men in it! One of them was Andrew Garfield, and he was a Best Actor nominee.

“You’re telling me Don’t Look Up was better than Spider-Man? It most certainly was not.

“When did we decide that a Best Picture [nominee] always has to be serious? This was not the point when they started making films. Ben-Hur…chariots of leprosy. Frankenstein…a monster powered by lightning. Fantasia…Mickey Mouse on an acid trip. The Wizard of Oz…flying monkeys and a witch. These are great, classic, Oscar-level movies. There’s northing wrong with serious movies, a lot of them are fantastic and deserving, but when did ‘serious’ become a prequisite for earning an Academy Award?”

From Richard Rushfield‘s latest Ankler post, “Behold, The Incredible Shrinking Oscars…Again“:

“So the Academy exists to ratify the esoteric choices of guilds and 400 critics groups; critics who themselves are largely now unread, except by each other. But of course, it was impossible to hold the theatrical category to any viewership standards once the floodgates opened to the streamers, which are a black hole of information from which only glimpses of light emerge. And instead of taking public reaction into account, it’s just thrown out the window, and Oscar can become…another critics’ film circle?

“Which, if you’re looking at it from a perspective of honoring craftsmanship in cinema, is wonderful.

“If you’re looking at it from a perspective of maintaining a mass medium’s connection with a mass audience, then well, what would you say is the level of public excitement for one’s local critics’ circle announcements? Have you sensed an unfulfilled public demand for more of those?

“As one friend put it, ‘For years the promotion of movies and moviegoing was the collaboration of studios and the press. That’s over. The press has taken up streamers and indies to ‘save’ indies [the Eric Kohn / David Ehrlich aesthetic] and studios have all but said fuck it.’

“So in the Best Pic category, we have a cluster of films that were…flops, disappointments, underperforms, at best given a Gentleman’s C for COVID. And then a bunch of films whose audiences are total mysteries.

“To put it another way, is there any evidence that there is a single person under 40 on the planet who has watched a single one of these movies?”

From Paul Krugman‘s “What to Do With Our Pandemic Anger,” posted in the N.Y. Times on 2.7.22:

“America has done a very poor job of dealing with Covid. We’ve had more deaths, as a percentage of the population, than any other large, wealthy nation, with the disparity even wider during the Omicron wave than it was before. Why? Because so many Americans haven’t behaved responsibly”…senior among them Joe Rogan.

“I know I’m not alone in feeling angry about this irresponsibility, which has been encouraged by politicians and other public figures. There are surely many Americans feeling a simmering rage against the minority that has placed the rest of us at risk and degraded the quality of our nation’s life”…and my simmering anger at Joe Rogan is a part of this.

“Oh, and don’t tell me that how you behave during a pandemic is just an individual choice”…like Joe Rogan has said from time to time. “I don’t claim any special expertise in the science, but there seems to be clear evidence that wearing masks in certain settings has helped limit the spread of the coronavirus. Vaccines also probably reduce spread, largely because the vaccinated are less likely to become infected, even though they can be.

“More crucially, failing to get vaccinated greatly increases your risk of becoming seriously ill, and hence placing stress on overburdened hospitals.

“Also, think about the burden of proof here. You don’t have to have 100 percent faith in the experts to accept that flying without a mask or dining indoors while unvaccinated might well endanger other people — and for what?

“What this means, in turn, is that those who refuse to take basic Covid precautions (i.e,, Joe Rogan) are, at best, being selfish — ignoring the welfare and comfort of their fellow citizens. At worst, they’re engaged in deliberate aggression — putting others at risk to make a point.”

…and The Power of the Dog might be Roma. If you’re a seasoned adult with a realistic mindset, you might as well face this possibility. Mainly because immaculate craft aside, The Power of the Dog is a slow, grim slog (even its admirers admit this) and King Richard is “real”, heartening, inspiring.

The Green Book analogy came from a Pete Meisel HE comment, but now I can’t find it.

From Scott Feinberg‘s Oscar Nominations analysis piece, ppsted at 10:49 am:

There are a few good HE & Twitter comments, but the best chat thread about the Oscar noms and especially the Lady Gaga snub is at datalounge.com, the legendary gay gossip site.

Is it fair or accurate to call the 2022 Oscars the gayest so far? Or is it just another gay year in a no-big-deal way?

Obviously the gayest element in the 2022 Oscar constellation is Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog — at once a beautifully composed if slow-moving period drama and a morose and miserable wallow in the psychology of a smelly, self-loathing closet case named Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Most of the film is about Phil wrestling with wanting to fuck Peter (Kodi Smit McPhee), the willowy young son of Rose (Kirsten Dunst), who’s recently married his his brother George’ (Jesse Plemons). Alas, Phil never gets there. Peter, however, “gets” Phil at the end.

The only Dog fucking that occurs is between the fleshy, carrot-haired George and the alcoholic, puffy-faced Rose. This, no offense, is something most of us would rather not…uhm, dwell upon.

The Power of the Dog has been nominated for 11 Oscars. I’ve seen it twice; it’s such a joyful, exciting, life-affirming thing that I think I’ll watch it again this weekend.

And then we have the Oscar-nominated Flee, a Danish animated docudrama film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. It’s about a gay man named Amin Nawabi, on the verge of marrying a like-minded dude and sharing his hidden past for the first time, having fled his home country of Afghanistan for Denmark.

And then we have two openly gay actors, Kristen Stewart and Ariana DeBose, respectively playing straight women in Spencer and West Side Story….whatevs.

Let no press or industry person overlook the simple fact that for weeks and weeks Hollywood Elsewhere stood resolute and alone against the stiff winds of seeming indifference…the only name-brand columnist who stood up and waved weekly flags for the beautiful Penelope Cruz and her deeply rooted performance in Parallel Mothers. Who else consistently stood hard and faithful as much as I? Who else single-handedly generated a Cruz bandwagon on a week-by-week, never-say-die basis?

All the other award-season Yodas and semi-dispassionate handicappers were either Doubting Thomases or cautious fence-sitters…damp-finger-to-the-wind equivocators. If you want to make it in this business you have to have heart.

Penélope Cruz:

-Didn’t get a Golden Globe nod
-Didn’t get a Critics Choice nod
-Didn’t get a SAG nod
-Didn’t even make the BAFTA *LONGLIST*

And she STILL got the Oscar nom.

Legend behavior, your faves could never, etc etc etc. pic.twitter.com/hOMOx9LSra

— Zach Gilbert (@zachbgilbert) February 8, 2022

From “Cruz, Cruz, Penelope Cruz, For Heaven’s Sake,” posted on 1.29.22:

A few days ago Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling posted a chat with Parallel Mothers star and Best Actress contender Penelope Cruz. I meant to post it right away, but I let other stuff overwhelm and I failed to muster the discipline…my deepest apologies.

But this really has to be said and without equivocation to all Academy members: Penelope Cruz gave the deepest, richest, most emotionally fulfilling lead female performance of 2021…by far. Way, way above the realm of her illustrious competitors (Kidman, Gaga, Stewart, Chastain, Colman). You simply can’t watch Parallel Mothers and not come to this very conclusion. It’s not possible — not if you’re honest with yourself.

Remember that Penelope has already won 2021 Best Actress awards from the National Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the San Diego Film Critics Society as well as the Venice Film Festival’s Best Actress award last September.

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Everyone thought Kristen Stewart‘s shot at a Best Actress nomination was toast. Spencer is roundly despised so how did she pull it off? Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman called it, I suspect, when he posted a 1.15.22 column titled “Why SAG’s Best Actress Snub May Have Done Kristen Stewart a Favor.”

The idea was that KStew‘s post-SAG-snub underdog status would create a different dynamic, and would wipe out some of the hostility that seems to follow her everywhere.

You also have to consider the apparent fact that the once-seemingly-unstoppable Lady Gaga seemed to almost torpedo herself.

HE commenter “adam,” posted an hour or so ago: “I do wonder if the actors roundtable sunk Lady Gaga’s chances. It was completely tone-deaf and all a little bit ‘why am I so brilliant and working at a 100 when all of the rest you are only working at 70 and not quite at my level?'”

All hail director, special-effects wizard and high-frame-rate advocate Douglas Trumbull, who has passed at age 79. His SFX bona fides include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of Life; he directed Silent Running and Brainstorm. I remember the 60 fps Showscan process….first saw it in ’83!

“Visit to Trumbull Village,”‘ posted on 8.10.18: “Restoration guru Robert Harris and I spent most of today (Friday, 8.10) visiting the legendary Douglas Trumbull — special-effects designer and innovator (Close Encounters, Blade Runner, Tree of Life), director of Brainstorm and Silent Running, the Thomas A. Edison of knockout movie concepts and visuals — on his sprawling estate in Southfield, Mass.

“The highlight was experiencing (watching sounds too bland) Trumbull’s Magi, a mindblowing digital 3D projection system that delivers images at 120 frames per second and hefty woofer shake under your seat, and which turns you around in a way that feels pretty damn unique.

Douglas Trumbull, Robert Harris outside Magi projection facility.

“Harris picked me up this morning at the new Danbury train station. (The old train station, located 150 feet to the east, is where Robert Walker‘s Bruno Antony disembarked in “Metcalf” in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Strangers on a Train.) We drove up interstate 84, over to Route 8, northwest on 44 and then due north on 272.

“We pulled into Southfield a little after noon. We stopped at the Southfield Store for a rest and a light lunch, and arrived at the huge Trumbull compound (four or five large residences, a “mad genius” workshed, a couple of soundstages, a projection facility, a couple of garages, meadows with grazing donkeys and goats and towering trees all around) at 12:45 pm, give or take.

“The Trumbull compound seemed larger than George Lucas‘s Skywalker Sound facility in northern Marin County. Try 50 acres. It’s homey and at the same time a kind of high-tech village. You need to drive to get from one end to the other.

“Full of energy and sharp as a tack, Trumbull led us over to a “Magi pod” theatre, which seats 60 and uses a large, curved concave screen. He explained that Magi integrates virtual reality and augmented reality (seat rumblings), and that it’s the kind of thing that could re-energize moviegoing in an era of fading cinema attendance.

Boilerplate: Magi captures and projects images in 3D, 4K HD and 120 frames per second. Trumbull has developed a prefabricated “Magi Pod” theater, as most theatres are incapable of delivering the right stuff. Magi Pods can be shipped and assembled in a week. Each seat faces the center of a 36-foot-wide by 17-foot-tall screen. A 32-channel, surround-sound system provides strong, needle-sharp audio. The system produces a picture that’s way more immersive than regular 3D or IMAX.

“Trumbull and a collaborator are writing a script called Lightship. I didn’t grill him on the specifics, but it’s some kind of high-tech, high-dynamic, eyeball-popping hair-raiser. Trumbull intends to direct Lightship with most of the principal photography to be captured in the compound.

“Harris and I pushed on a little after 3 pm, and were both back at our respective homes less than three hours later.

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