There are dozens of things to hate or feel irked by in this Birds of Prey trailer, but my principal objection is to Margot Robbie‘s extra-arch, super-meta, over-considered performing style. The tone of Cathy Yan’s film, “the first DCEU film and the second DC Films production to be rated R”, is obviously at odds with the downbeat noirish impressionism in Joker. Costarring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay Basco, Ali Wong and Ewan McGregor. Opens eight days hence, just around the corner.

Bernie Sanders’ recent poll surges have me worried and thinking something I never thought I’d admit to myself, much less post in this column. I’m deathly afraid of what might happen if the devotional blues, Bernie Bros and under-30s manage to enable Bernie to capture the Democratic nomination. I can’t believe I’m actually saying this but for all his gaffes, droolings, weaknesses and vulnerabilities I want Joe Biden to beat Bernie.

And I really don’t feel much enthusiasm for Joe. Does anyone?

I realize that my favorite guy, Pete Buttigieg, is done, but I’m furious that the race has come down to this. Neither of these geezers has that magic-wandy current. People don’t want a crusty Democratic socialist trying (and almost certainly failing) to push through Medicare For All — they just want a return to sanity and normality. Buttigieg could be that “normal” but he’s been gored so many times by African Americans and the progressive left that it’s a miracle he’s still standing.

I agree with Bernie for the most part. People want change. I would love to see this country turn into Finland. But I’m terrified of what’s happening now.

From “Democrats court doom by backing Bernie Sanders,” a 1./29 USA Today piece by Matt Bennett and Lanae Erickson:

Subhead: “[Sanders’] ideas are toxic outside blue America. He’s never won anything that really matters outside of Vermont, and all the available data shows his brand is a flop in red and purple states.

Excerpt: “Sanders has never won anything that really matters outside of Vermont, and all the available data shows that his ideas are politically toxic. Yet a week before primary voting begins, he is surging in Iowa, New Hampshire and California.

“Democrats now face a monumental choice. Deciding which presidential candidate should go head to head with Donald Trump is the paramount political calculation of our lifetimes.

“In the past, when Sanders has declared himself and his ideas to be ‘winners’ in red and purple areas, it has turned out to be demonstrably false. Democrats must not be fooled by him now.

Plus: “Don’t ignore reality: Democrats need to face facts about Bernie Sanders, his heart attack and his health.”

Rightwing outrage has gone viral about yesterday’s briefly hilarious CNN discussion between Don Lemon, Majahat Ali and Republican strategist and author Rick Wilson, which I also linked to yesterday.

Earth to rightwing asshats: Your stupid, self-destructive, bull-headed support of a sociopathic authoritarian crime-family president does confirm (or at the very least strongly signifies) an embrace of ignorance, idiocy and negative anti-urban, anti-awareness tribalism. You’re not wrong to loathe the politically correct Stalinist left but otherwise there is such a thing as bumblefuckery.

Yes, I’m confessing to somehow not paying sufficient attention to the ever-evolving, shape-shifting American vocabulary and thereby missing the emergence of “zoomer,” which is a much better term for GenZ-ers than GenZ. Freshly coined terms are almost always alive and pulsing before the Merriam Webster researchers get hold of them, but the following MW update was only posted six days ago. It also claims that “zoomer” dates back to 2016 so double my fine.

A 1.29 N.Y. Times report by Alison Krueger ranks high among the most synthetic capturings of the gutted spirit of the Sundance Film Festival. Over the last 30 years, I mean. Read it and gasp.

Krueger’s verse is about the profound emotional satisfaction that comes from wearing an exclusive Sundance ’20 limited edition “puffer” jacket. Manufactured by Canada Goose and worth roughly…oh, $850 or thereabouts, the gray-colored, Sundance-logo’ed jackets have been handed out to 400 directors and judges.

Krueger: “These filmmaker jackets are Sundance’s version of the Allen & Co. Sun Valley fleece, or the high school varsity jacket: a special badge of in-dom and status that advertises the wearer as part of a privileged group.

photo from Emily Pfeffer via Canada Goose and N.Y. Times.

“[It] turns out successful adults are as susceptible to the allure of free merchandise and what it signifies as any of us.

“’I am starting to see people who have one, and I know they are in the gang,’ said Erica Tremblay, a filmmaker who focuses on indigenous films. “I love being part of the group. We all understand what it took to get here and get the jacket.'”

All right, that’s it — Erica Tremblay‘s cred as a respected nativist filmmaker and documentarian lies in tatters. From here on when I hear her name I’m going to say “the salivating, in-crowd Sundance puffer woman?”

If I were in Park City right now I would be swollen with pride over the fact that I’m not wearing anything that even resembles a Sundance puffer. I would stride around town and ride the shuttle buses in my bulky leather motorcycle jacket atop an under-jacket with a big-ass scarf, black leather gloves and my black cowboy hat, and this outfit would essentially say…well, I’ve said it.

“Perhaps a poor, ill-favored thing, but mine own.” — William Shakespeare, “As You Like It.”

photo from Emily Pfeffer via Canada Goose and N.Y. Times.

“Quentin Tarantino’s best, bravest and most confrontationally impudent movie since Pulp Fiction.” — Nigel Andrews, Financial Times.

“I could boil it all down and simply call the last half-hour a ‘happy’ ending, but it’s something more than that. I have my tastes and standards and you all have yours, but by the measuring stick of Hollywood Elsewhere the finale is really, really great. As in laugh-out-loud, hard-thigh-slap, whoo-whoo satisfying. Do I dare use the term good-vibey? And the very end (as in the last two minutes) is…naahh, that’ll do.” — from “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood Is…”, posted from Cannes on 5.21.19.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the work of a middle-aged director, one who looks back by looking forward, and who eschews the familiar for the new.” — Kirk Beard, Toronto Blade.

SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:

“A compassionate Hollywood fable of yesteryear…a comfort flick for bruhs who buy Blurays at Amoeba after catching a show at the Hollywood Arclight.” — Joe Popcorn.

“Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt deliver the most emotionally vulnerable performances of their careers as soon-to-be has-beens in 1969 Hollywood” — Dare Daniel.

“If Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood winds up taking the Best Picture Oscar on 2.9.20, it’ll be for a simple, sensible reason. Everybody likes it. I haven’t spoken to anyone who’s had anything negative to say about it. Not the slightest, most insignificant thing…zip. I shared a few mild gripes after catching it during last May’s Cannes Film Festival, but they’ve all pretty much evaporated. I’ve seen it three or four times since. I’ve become a follower.” — from”Tarantino’s Oscar Moment Is Nigh,” posted on 1.1.20.

Go to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and ask yourself, “Who am I? What am I? Am I a person of passion and conviction — a heartfelt Movie Catholic whose life has meaning because of the industry I love and work for — or am I just a go-alonger whose primary longing in life is to swim with the other fishies and thereby feel safe and secure?”

“Starting in about 2005, the number of democracies around the world began to fall, as it had in the 1930s. Authoritarians rose to power: Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Donald J. Trump in the United States.

“American democracy in the 21st century is withering.

“The Democracy Index rates a hundred and sixty-seven countries, every year, on a scale that ranges from ‘full democracy’ to ‘authoritarian regime.’ In 2006, the U.S. was a ‘full democracy,’ the seventeenth most democratic nation in the world. In 2016, the index for the first time rated the United States a ‘flawed democracy,’ and since then American democracy has gotten only more flawed.

“True, the United States still doesn’t have a Rome or a Berlin to march on. That hasn’t saved the nation from misinformation, tribalization, domestic terrorism, human-rights abuses, political intolerance, social-media mob rule, white nationalism, a criminal President, the nobbling of Congress, a corrupt Presidential Administration, assaults on the press, crippling polarization, the undermining of elections, and an epistemological chaos that is the only air that totalitarianism can breathe.”

— excerpted from a New Yorker piece titled “The Last Time Democracy Almost Died — Learning from the upheaval of the 1930s,” written by Jill Lepore and posted on 1.27.20.

“Because you love movies,” the latest Once Upon A Time in Hollywood ad says. This is a positive coded message. It means that serious fans of Quentin Tarantino‘s ninth film are relaxed and sophisticated enough to see past aspirational, vaguely academic notions about “cinema” and the learned attitudes they connote — they’re down with confident, engaging, cool-as-shit flicks.

In part because they know (and this is a sophisticated idea that’s been brewing since the Cahiers du Cinema days of future director Jean-Luc Godard) that some of the greatest and most satisfying big-screen experiences, not to mention those that have delivered great and lasting art, were made with the initial idea of being audience-friendly entertainments.

In short, a film doesn’t have to be artistically “serious” or pretentious to be worthy of critical admiration, and perhaps even win a Best Picture Oscar.

As I mentioned earlier this month, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood winning the big prize would be a unique historical achievement. It would be the first time in Hollywood history that an amiable, relatively plot-free, character-driven, laid-back attitude flick wins the big prize.

To put it more simply and given the fact that Tarantino’s film is a celebration of the B-movie realm of 1969 Hollywood, it would be the first “drive-in movie” to win this honor. A more on-point description would be “hangout movie“. In the vein, say, of Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (’98), which, until OUATIH came along, is arguably his finest and most engaging film of the last 20 years.

Perhaps the most precise analogy of all is Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (’59), which Tarantino has described as “the ultimate hangout movie” and which he’s been enthusing about for decades.

You could actually call Once Upon A Time in Hollywood a kind of Rio Bravo tribute. The parallels aren’t abundant, but they’re evident.

Rio Bravo‘s two main characters are John Wayne‘s “John T. Chance”, a gruff, mince-no-words Texas sheriff, and Dean Martin‘s “Dude”, the town drunk who used to be good with a gun. In Tarantino’s film Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth is a vaguely Wayne-like stunt man, driver and gopher — laid-back, steady, confident — and Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Rick Dalton is certainly a “Dude”-like actor — formerly a big TV western star with a top-rated series (Bounty Law), now beset with career worries and an alcohol problem.

The Rio Bravo villains are the ranching Burdette brothers (Nathan and Joe) and their gang; the baddies in Tarantino’s film, of course, are the Manson family and particularly Tex Watson, Susan Atkins (aka “Sadie”), Linda Kasabian (“Flower Child”) and Patricia Krenwinkel (“Katie”).

Rio Bravo concludes with the drilling of the Burdettte gang by John T. and Dude (aided by Walter Brennan‘s “Stumpy” and Ricky Nelson‘s “Colorado”), while OUATIH ends with the walloping, face-mashing, pitbull-chewing and flame-throwing incineration of the Manson ogres by Cliff and Rick.

And both films are mainly about…well, talking shit and sizing up the situation and to some extent dealing with kindly Mexican fellows (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez‘s “Carlos” in Rio Bravo + the car attendants at Musso & Frank whom Cliff tells Rick not to cry in front of) and wondering what’ll happen down the road. Basically marking time with sweat and anxiety mixed with occasional fraternal chillin’ and the mopping of brows. Plus Dude and Rick fretting over their respective alcohol issues.

Posted on 12.20.19: Running to escape death can look or seem ignoble, and a father’s natural urge to shield his kids from harm is surely as noble as it gets.

Alas, most of us (except for glory-of-the-human-species fellows like Bobby Peru) are genetically inclined to avoid being killed. “Run for your life” is a very strong instinct, and being faced with imminent death tends to bring out the primal. Most of us would hightail it when a mountain of snow is approaching, and I don’t think there’s much to debate here.

Any guy who says “in this horrible situation I would hug my wife and kids in the last few seconds we have before being smothered to death”…anyone who insists they would not try to escape suffocation is almost certainly lying.

Question for Julia Louis Dreyfuss’s character and for that matter her two kids: A huge terrifying avalanche is getting closer and closer and you just sit there? You have legs and leg muscles at your disposal, no? A massive wall of death is about to terminate your future and your reaction is “oh, look at that…nothing to do except watch and wait and hope for the best”?

Posted on 8.7.13: If Gregory Peck had been clairvoyant and under the influence of a truth drug on the night he won the Best Actor Oscar for To Kill A Mockingbird in March 1963, he might have said, “Well, this is it…the peak moment. I’ve been lucky enough to play starring roles for the finest producers, directors and writers in the business for the last 18 years…Spellbound, Duel In The Sun, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Paradine Case, Twelve O’Clock High, Roman Holiday, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Moby Dick, The Bravados, The Big Country, Pork Chop Hill, On The Beach, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear…and it’s been wonderful. I’m saying this because for the next 40 years it’s going to be all downhill.

“Oh, I’ll make a few interesting films over the next couple of decades but my charmed career period is over and I know it. Some actors only get lucky for five or ten years. I nearly had 20. And for that I’m very grateful to the industry and especially to the public. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

This is a cruel topic to bring up, but who right now is in this position? Who out there is Gregory Peck in March 1963? In a good place and working all the time and maybe even peaking and financially flush, but the charmed, blue-chip glory days are basically over with nothing but gradually dwindling returns to look forward to.

Supplemental anecdote: During his acceptance speech after winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Witness, Earl W. Wallace (who co-wrote the Harrison Ford cop drama with Pamela Wallace and William Kelley) said “I have an uneasy feeling my career just peaked.” It happened 34 years ago, during the 58th Academy Awards telecast in ’86. Wallace says it at 4:55 [after the jump].

I obviously know nothing, but I’m sensing extra-ness in Peter Debruge‘s Sundance review of Edson Ota‘s Nine Days, filed at 12:25 am today:

“At the risk of overselling Edson Oda’s ultra-original, meaning-of-life directorial debut, there’s a big difference between Nine Days and pretty much every other film ever made. You see, most movies are about characters, real or imagined, and the stuff that happens to them, whereas Nine Days is about character itself — as in, the moral dimension that constitutes who a person is, how he or she treats others, and the choices that define us as humans.

“But Oda doesn’t stop there. In a film of dizzying conceptual ambition — Jean Paul Sartre‘s No Exit meets Michael Gondry and Charlie Kaufman‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — the Brazilian-born, U.S.-based writer-director wants to make audiences appreciate the little things, like the feeling of sand between your toes or the way your hand surfs the air when extended from the window of a moving car.

“To that end, Oda concocts an elaborate new metaphor for thinking about how souls are selected for the responsibility of life. And while no film can possibly be an antidote to suicide, this one poignantly reminds how lucky we are to be here: a planet full of lottery winners.”

I for one hate the feeling of sand between my toes. Dry sand, damp sand, beach tar…I hate that whole experience. When I’m near the shore I like to walk around in white laceless sneakers without so much as a single grain of sand getting involved, and preferably on paved pathways or boardwalks or pavement. Hey, I’m a city guy.

Jordan Ruimy disputes: “Nine Days is unwatchable. Maybe the worst movie I have seen at [Sundance ’20]. Pretentious drivel.”