In terms of choosing the best or most award-worthy films and performances of 2021, most film aficionados (including professional film critics) are fairly conventional thinkers — easily seduced and led along, committed to familiar and unexceptional viewpoints, etc. Then there are the free thinkers who occasionally (but not always) assess films from a perspective of an earth-orbiting spacecraft or one circling around the moon. And that’s fine. The third category could be described as beyond earth’s gravitational pull but still tethered to the critic’s understanding of cinematic value, based on a lifetime of neurotic filmgoing.

And then there is the fourth category — film lovers who have lifted off the planet so often and gone so far around the bend and outside of our solar system, caused for the most part by extra-passionate wokeness (which includes a rapt belief in the wondrous and transcendent benefit of watching any and all films about POC characters, POC history and starring POCs) or anti-woke views, and who seem oddly committed to contrarianism for contrarianism’s sake (i.e., the Armond White syndrome).

Due respect but after pondering A.O. Scott‘s recently posted list of the most award-deserving films of ’21, I have to acknowledge the possibility that even within his bizarre arena of N.Y. Times woke-itude, Scott may be even more of an eccentric than White, and that’s saying something.

Yesterday Lysa Heslov, wife of The Tender Bar producer and co-writer (and longtime George Clooney pally) Grant Heslov, broke industry protocol by rebuking a couple of Facebook contributors who had posted negative assessments about the film.

Heslov’s main point was that the naysayers were mean and unconstructive, especially about an unpretentious small-town film that had been made from the heart. Last night I summarized what had happened. This morning I posted a thought about the difficulty of making even a mediocre film.

“It’s very hard just to make a decent or passable film that isn’t too bad,” I wrote. “Art isn’t easy, and it’s very difficult to cobble together even a moderately decent dramatic screenplay.

I know this from having struggled to write scripts in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. I also know this from having been a mediocre drummer in a no-great-shakes blues band. It’s very hard and uphill in a grueling sort of way to make a film that most would call moderately appealing.”

Seriously — the next time you catch a so-so or mildly disappointing film, you need to say to yourself “man, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears just to make that thing watchable…the filmmakers deserve at least a modicum of respect for that effort.”

Film critics rarely hear back from filmmakers after the posting of a negative review. However disapproving your assessment might be, filmmakers (especially big names) never dispute or push back. Certainly not in these crazy times.

Way back in ’93 an irate Bruce Willis called me at home after I’d reported that he’d irritated colleagues during the making of Striking Distance, but that was a different universe.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon Facebook contributor and college instructor Lizzie Finn bitchslapped George Clooney‘s The Tender Bar something awful. Synthetic and unengaging, she said. Cliched. Not much dramatic tension. Too much of a casual white-male perspective.

Very soon after, however, Lizzie heard back from Lysa Heslov, wife of Clooney’s producing & writing partner Grant Heslov. And Lysa pretty much tore Lizzie a new asshole.

Lizzie replied to Lysa with a kind of “whadaya whadaya?” riff. I just wrote what I felt and thought, she said. I didn’t expect to hear back from anyone inside Team Clooney. I figured George and Grant wouldn’t give a shit one way or the other. Plus they’re rich and famous so who cares?, etc. To which Lysa replied as follows:

Here’s Lizzie’s poison-pen review:

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If you listen to a typical 1.85 aspect-ratio fascist (i.e., a film enthusiast who has unfortunately subscribed to the movie-projection and video-mastering theology of Bob Furmanek), they’ll tell you that outside of the various widescreen processes that were birthed in the ’50s and early ’60s, 1.85 aspect ratios became the law of the land starting in April 1953.

For many years I have pointed out dozens of exceptions to that idiotic fascist rule. I’ve also explained that theatrical projection mandates of the ’50s and ’60s have no bearing on how films of the era should be mastered today for Bluray or streaming. The rule book has been more or less thrown out, and the only people who don’t seem to understand this (or are are stubbornly refusing to accept reality) are the Furmanek fascists.

The best explanation for aspect-ratio sanity (and against the Furmanek lunacy) was contained in a seminal Criterion Collection essay that was included on their On The Waterfront Bluray.

It can’t hurt to repeat that 1.66 aspect ratios were highly favored in England and Europe throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and in some instances even beyond. One example is Diva, the landmark 1981 film directed by the the recently deceased Jean Jacques Beineix. Without exception every DVD and Bluray of Diva (including the recent Kino Lorber version) has been mastered at 1.66.

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From Jeff Giles‘ “When Neon Owned the Night — glitz, grit and the vintage glow of urban America,” posted on 5.10.19:

“Before evolution hit a snag, and we reverted to slouching and staring at our phones, human beings walked with their eyes up, looking at things. In the countryside, people contemplated church steeples, maple trees, clouds. In cities, they gaped at neon — and it was everything.

“In 1898, the Scottish chemist William Ramsay was collaborating with an English colleague, Morris Travers, when he discovered an inert gas, naming it ‘neon’ after the Greek word for ‘new.’ He went on to win a Nobel Prize for his work, though it did not occur to him to use his discovery to sell theater tickets or beer.

“It was the French inventor Georges Claude who sensed a new industry in the offing. Mr. Claude unveiled a neon light at the Paris Motor Show in December 1910, and went on to create all manner of signs for clients.

“By the 1930s, New York was ablaze with color, and Times Square was an enormous flame toward which countless moths fluttered.

“‘Visitors, too, arrive in New York to witness the nightly Vesuvius-like eruption of light,’ Richard F. Shepard wrote in the N.Y. Times in 1987. ‘They may patronize the theaters, movie houses, restaurants and bars, or they may not, being content merely to walk between 42nd and 47th Streets taking in the brilliant show only a tilt of the head above them.'”

The below was shot by N.Y. Times photographer Sam Falk and published 12.11.48:

This bare-bones “Drive My Car” track, recorded on 10.13.65, was just posted on YouTube (1.14.22). McCartney’s bass track is heaven.

Due respect but the Toronto Film Critics Association (and I do mean this respectfully) have very little sense of their own identity or vision, at least seemingly…they’re just joiners, followers, Kool-Aid drinkers…”we’re on board too!…please include us!” Imagine at this stage of the game just toppling over like a bowling pin for Drive My Car after all the other elite snooties have done the same…imagine!

Four days ago I declared that Kristen Stewart‘s Best Actress campaign is all but finished after being excluded from the 2022 SAG Award nominations. A couple of hours later I asked “What Took KStew Down?”

The latest thing, suggested by Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, is that KStew is now an underdog, and may slip into Best Actress contention on the basis of people feeling sorry for her.

I’ve been a KStew admirer for a good 15 years, give or take. Her greatest, most culturally resonant performance is in Personal Shopper. (Olivier Asssyas!) But right now Stewart is almost certainly toast as a Best Actress Oscar nominee. “I don’t give a shit” did that, I suspect. Plus (I hadn’t considered this at first) there may be a hint of homophobia out there (not very much but a little bit).

The bottom line is that Spencer is a fairly ridiculous film. That AWFUL moment when Diana stumbles into the cafe and says “excuse me but I have to get somewhere….where am I?” Even as a metaphor for something or other, eating the sauce-covered pearl at the dinner table was appalling, and that drop-in-the-bucket Sally Hawkins moment (“By the way, speaking as a servant I love you”) was ghastly. Plus Stewart over-whispered her dialogue. Plus…I can’t continue.

Spencer simply isn’t likable or enjoyable (except during the final music sequence). It was AGONY to sit through. I wanted to throw fruit at the screen. Worse, I was surrounded by an adoring, cheering Telluride audience inside the Galaxy theatre. Torture.

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I’m not cheering the deaths of tens of thousands of unvaccinated idiots who’ve willfully put themselves in harm’s way. At the same time I can’t honestly say that I’m sorry they’ve gone to heaven (or possibly, if God was a judgmental Old Testament hard-ass, to hell). No offense but I regard these no-longer-with-us folks as dead weeds. The grassy lawn is better for their absence. They were too dumb to survive, and nature has had its way.