FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: BIDEN GETS THE FORMULA EDITION

Absence of Malice!

 I was too busy with work to watch the State of the Union, but from the clips I’ve seen Biden was far from the doddering dotard Republicans and the prestige press (but I repeat myself) have spent years painting him as. Apparently their “pivot” is that Biden was on drugs! 

Given that the Trump White House pharmacy under the leadership of Dr. Ronny “Feelgood” Jackson was throwing around uppers and downers like beads at Mardi Gras, and that Tubby himself is an obvious user, you might say it’s projection, but I begin to think it’s the only explanation they can fathom. For why, in their view, would anyone get so excited about traditional Democratic policies that help less fortunate Americans get ahead? It’s got to be drugs! 

UPDATE. All the rightwing talking heads are getting into the act. Erick Erickson claims Biden's speech was "supplement fuelled." And get this, from the Washington Times:

A psychiatrist who has worked with elderly dementia patients said President Biden exhibited signs of stimulant use to mask cognitive decline in his amped-up, aggressive State of the Union speech on Thursday.

Mr. Biden, 81, often raced through his remarks with the speed of an auctioneer, loudly shouting his words despite having a microphone in front of him.

Speed and volume of speech can be a sign of using Adderall or another amphetamine, said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist based in Beverly Hills, California.

You can find Lieberman elsewhere on the internet calling herself "America's Psychiatrist" and posting gibberish like this:

As Lorenzo Semple DuBois said in The Producers: They try... ok, how they try! 

Readers of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down know that for years I’ve been doing sketches in which “The Formula” – a mix of cocaine, Adderall, ketamine, and Lord knows what – is used by Trump’s handlers to keep him upright. (I’ve even got a few with Biden in them; here’s one I think you might enjoy under the circumstances.)

The cherry on the SOTU Sunday was Senator Tradwife’s rebuttal. As has been pointed out, her delivery is only bizarre if you’re unacquainted with the “fundie baby” voice with which evangelicals project winsomeness to cloak their theocratic intentions. But maybe now that ordinary Americans have gotten a load of it on national TV they’re starting to realize how fucking weird that whole crew is. 

I mentioned Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, which is a subscriber service – but as usual on Fridays I have a few free issues for you joy-poppers.  Feast your eyes! 

First, another of my recurring features – political talk show Received Opinion with your host Bolt Upright – in which Bolt asks whether Kyrsten Sinema’s departure from public life (the less-remunerative non-lobbyist part of it, anyway!) is yet another example of the sad death of comity and compromise in Washington, which in Bolt’s view and the view of all network chuckleheads are values to be treasured above democracy, equity, and everything else. 

Also: My annual Oscar predictions! Yes, once again I’m indulging my sick interest in this festival of glamour and hubris!  I’m already getting cold feet about my Adapted Screenplay pick, but by and large I think I’ve got something worth risking $5 in a pool. (That statement implies no responsibility if you lose the house! Wager responsibly!) 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: ICE CREAM HEADACHE EDITION.

It's still funny to me that this kind of music can qualify
as "a tune that's been running through my head"
as if it were some pretty Tin Pan Alley number.

Happy March! The deeper we get into political campaign season (what, you didn’t know? It started after the consultants got back from their post-election vacations in 2023) the more fucked up things look. 

For example, you would think, nine months out from the general, that Republicans would try harder to tamp down the crazy. Didn’t at least the more politically exposed Republicans try to look normal about IVF after their lunacy was revealed by the Alabama Supreme Court decision – which, after all, merely followed their stated belief that life begins with the fertilized egg, even if it’s in a freezer? Sure, they also blocked a Senate vote to protect IVF, but one could read that as a tribute to the Grand Old Party’s grand old tradition of being obviously full of shit. 

But their shock troops are still going before the public with snakes flying out of their mouths:

Sorry, kid, our base demands child broodslaves! Either the smart Republicans can’t control these nuts or smart Republicans don’t exist. Or they think binding the small core of nutcakes who can be counted on to vote/insurrect on their behalf is so important that they have to back up whatever lunacies they demand, and count on voter suppression to carry the day for their candidates in elections. 

Anyway I understand some of you are here for Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies! OK, here’s the most recent edition of Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, on the scandal of Joe Biden eating ice cream. I would have thought this a two-day story at best but the clown corps is still ON IT (“Joe Biden's awkward ice cream moment has only put the US president under more pressure,” etc). I guess it will never end and the Republican National Convention will include a ritual detonation of a big tub of Häagen-Dazs.  

I will also remind you aesthetic types that I’m doing my annual Oscar movie reviews – with my latest that’s all ten Best Picture nominees sorted, with all of those essays free to non-subscribers, so if you want to prep for the big show March 10 now’s your chance. I also intend to watch and report back on some of the other nominated films. Watch that space! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TOO MUCH AIN'T ENOUGH EDITION.

Always liked these guys, glad they got back in the game.

Listen, I’ve never kept a dollar past sunset so I can be pretty tight-fisted, especially when it comes to giving out freebies to my bread-and-butter Roy Edroso Breaks It Down site. [Subscribe! Cheap!] But this week your cup runneth over – partly because I want you non-subscribers to get acquainted with some of that publication’s adorable features.

First, I’ve unlocked today’s installment of Fun Friday, which has become a regular week-ending post that prompts subscribers to talk about a specific type of pleasure in comments – for example, a moviegoing experience that the hecklers in the audience made memorable. Today’s edition is about things you love mainly or even simply because they’re old – or, rather, because their antiquity spurs nostalgia, either for your past or a past you never experienced. The real joy of these things – and this week is no exception – is our commenters, REBID’s secret weapon. Throw in your own comments if you like! 

Also, every year around this time I watch all the Oscar Best Picture nominees before the big show and write about them; this year I’m making all those essays available to non-subscribers. This week it’s on The Zone of Interest – and the post has links to the all my other open-access reviews as well. Nine down, one to go! 

This week’s final freebie is yet another in our series of Received Opinion with Bolt Upright episodes, in which political talk show clucks peck at the issues of the day. This week: How Joe Biden is oh so very old and disqualified while Trump is a dynamic imbecile. I know, it sounds just like the real thing, but you haven’t seen it chewed over by Bolt’s panel of pundits Peoni Doyenne, Chafe Dramaturgy, and Buff Toehold. Tune in! 

SUNDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN, SMILIN' THROUGH EDITION.

Will write soon about Maestro, which I liked, not least because
it treated me to several minutes of Bernstein's Mass, which I really love.

Yep, two days later than usual, but bountiful: Since the Oscar nominations are out, I’m going to make all my reviews of the Best Picture nominees available to non-subscribers. So far I’ve gotten through seven of the 10: Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Holdovers, Poor Things, Past Lives, American Fiction, and Oppenheimer. Will get to the other three and, who knows, maybe some of the non-BP contenders (like May December, for which my review is also available). Enjoy – these are so much less depressing than the political stuff, at least for me.

Actually, that ain’t necessarily so – the first of our weekly Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies is about sort of a happy occasion: The ejection of Ron DeSantis from the ranks of the Republican presidential contenders. There is much joy in my farewell to Meatball Ron because  he was so strenuously evil that he repulsed even the pigs who vote in Republican primaries – though our joy must be tempered because those same voters yet cleave to Fat Hitler.

 

And there’s some fun, too, in my bagatelle about the Trump White House pharmacy scandal – whereby we learn Trump’s factota (not even licensed pharmacists!) were shoveling large quantities of opioids and commercial drugs like Ambien (yes, the expensive non-generic) to persons unknown. It reminds me of my many sketches about Trump's relaince on "the Formula," a snortable mixture that makes him seem almost normal on the stump. It also reminds me of the Norman Ohler book Blitzed, about the rampant drug abuse in the Third Reich – particularly of the methamphetamine called Pervitin that was dished out like candy to Nazi soldiers. When I look at MAGA freaks like Giuliani and the Trump lawyer/MAGA moll Alina Habba, raving incoherently in front of the press, I feel like a lot of that crew’s otherwise inexplicable behavior may be laid to speed-and-downers cycles gone out of control.

ROY'S OSCAR PREDIX 2023 (FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY)

 [Oscar announcer voice] Before we get to the Oscar predictions, let us dispense with the last nominee. [/Oav] For my other Best Picture nominee reviews, see the previous post.

Entertainment Weekly did one of those annoying Anonymous Hollywood Insiders Talk Oscar things where the kibitzers are obviously miserable alte kakers who can’t understand why black people are so pushy and the world has passed them by. (The “marketer” who said he liked The Banshees of Inisherin for “the sense of community… Don't we all just want to move there right now?” is my favorite). But one of the oldsters did get me to laugh by calling Top Gun: Maverick a “big beer commercial” and that stayed with me as I was watching it. I kept imagining Spuds McKenzie in Cruise’s role, transmitting not only his aerial combat instructions but also his love talk with Jennifer Connolly via a voiceover by Don LaFontaine. 

And why not? Maverick was made to be taken unseriously. Look, I’m sorry, I recognize it’s a quality product, and I loved the zoom-zoom and pew-pew, and if the fun macho posturing ain’t Only Angels Have Wings, for our low, mean age it will do. But its emotional content, like the relationship between Maverick and Goose’s son, Pinball or Dipshit or whatever it is (oh, OK, Rooster, guess you caught on pretty quick – what a disagreeable old man I have become), is just cheap – though, like the beer this all seems to be a commercial for, effective to its purpose (which is to make you care about what happens to these guys more than you would, say, the puppets on Fireball XL5) if you get down enough of it. I give director Joseph Kosinski much credit for catching me up on the Top Gun backstory without cluttering up the movie. And if I were invested in that backstory, I guess Maverick’s and Jennifer Connolly’s sub-Hallmark dialogue and Maverick’s and Val Kilmer’s cheesy version of Jack Nicholson’s and William Challee’s scene in Five Easy Pieces (it would be parody material if Kilmer weren’t actually sick, dammit) might be moving. For me, they were carefully planted chokepoints to keep Maverick from becoming Starship Troopers without the self-awareness. OTOH the climactic air battle is a honey and the editing is boss, but Hans Zimmer’s score – ominous and ethereal at the same time -- is the secret weapon.

OK, now my predictions:

Best Picture: Everything Everywhere All at Once. Unlike in previous years, I’m not taking any sucker bets in major categories this year – if I’m to be wrong, let me be wrong with the mob! It’s good, it’s funny and weepy, it’s the magic of the movies. If not: Maverick: Top Gun.

Best Actor: Brendan Fraser, The Whale. I’m not gonna pay twenty bucks to see Fraser’s actual performance at current streaming rates (ditto for Nighy, alas) but the odds are too great and the competition, while brilliant, too thin: I loved Aftersun but Paul Mescal’s is surely the most low-key performance ever nominated, and Austin Butler is too young (and, unlike young’uns like Daniel Day-Lewis at the time of My Left Foot, not convincingly showing more than an uncanny ability to impersonate). That leaves Colin Farrell, whose work I fear is too subtle to distract voters from lobbing a love bomb at the maltreated Fraser. If not: Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin. 

Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Like I said, no sucker bets. Blanchett broke down my resistance to her austere craft with Tár the way Meryl Streep did for me with The Post, but the Yeoh love-fest seems unbeatable. If not: Cate Blanchett, Tár.

Best Supporting Actor: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Nope, not fucking with this Tinseltown tidal wave of sentiment for Short Round’s comeback. If not: Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin.

Best Supporting Actress: Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin. Like everyone I love Angela Bassett but Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a funny-book movie and hers is a funny-book performance, full of brio but unidimensional. And as Heath Ledger showed, you can win an Oscar for that if it’s unexpected – not if it’s General Zod. (Also, way too much screen time.) If not: Bassett.

Best Director: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once. If not: Todd Field, Tár.

Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin. It sure sounds like writing (Irishness helps!). Plus it’s got jokes. The Tár script is downright novelistic in its detail and ambiguities, so it could go Field's way, but look, I'm trying to win here! If not: Todd Field.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley, Women Talking. Making it a chamber drama and making it watchable is a helluva thing. If not: All Quiet on the Western Front. 

Best Editing: Eddie Hamilton, Top Gun: Maverick. Not just for the zoom-zoom, pew-pew, either; the high-intensity conversations really pop, too. If not: Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Best Cinematography: James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front.  If not: Florian Hoffmeister, Tár.

Best Score: Justin Hurwitz, Babylon. If not: John Williams, The Fabelmans. 

Best Production Design: All Quiet on the Western Front. If not: Elvis.

Best International Feature Film: All Quiet on the Western Front. If not: EO. 

Best Costume Design: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. If not: Babylon.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Elvis. If not: The Whale.

Best Animated Feature: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. If not: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.

Best Animated Short: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. I actually saw all five of these! And while I loved the wordless, two-color children’s book feel of Ice Merchants and the innovations of My Year of Dicks, I’m afraid the Apple Films Christopher Robin ripoff will get it. If not: My Year of Dicks. 

Best Live-Action Short: The Red Suitcase. If not: An Irish Goodbye. 

Best Documentary Feature: Navalny. If not: Fire of Love.

Best Documentary Short: The Elephant Whisperers. If not: Haulout. 

Best Sound: All Quiet on the Western Front. If not: Top Gun: Maverick.

Best Visual Effects: Avatar: The Way of Water. If not: Top Gun: Maverick.

See ya at the show! (PS I reserve the right to make changes until one hour to air time.)

UPDATE: Oh yeah that thing from RRR will win Best Song! OK, see ya at the show!

FINAL UPDATE: 16 out of 23 -- 70%, a passing score. I'll take it! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: 2/17/23.

While I produce five days a week of high-quality content at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (go over and have a look, subscribe if you like, it’s mighty good eating for the pennies it costs), productivity at the old alicublog plant has been down a while. I regret it, but between REBID and my other editorial work there’s not much room left for bodily functions, let alone the kind of funsies for which this site became known back in 1953, when “blogs” rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line and, due to their tendency to roll rather than locomote, wound up in the dustbin of history, a short distance down the road to oblivion and turn left. 

But sometimes a red flag can get this old bull to charge. Erick Erickson, a longtime figure of fun in the alicublog rep company, has an even more ridiculous than usual item up today. The headline is:

We Cannot Reject Sabotage On Rail Lines Just Yet

Let us tiptoe past Erickson’s long preliminary yammerings about how Joe Biden is trying to blame everything on Donald Trump (though given Trump’s rollback of rail freight safety features he’s certainly blameworthy) and Biden LIED about the CHINESE BALLOONS (“The Administration that lied repeatedly about the Chinese spy balloon wants us to trust them on it not being sabotage, just Trump”), and cut to the 19th graf:

The reality is these incidents are probably not sabotage. Buttigieg, for all his whining, has a point. There are many train derailments every year. We’re more sensitive to them now because of media exposure.

This is the next best thing to “it was all a dream.” 

So why was Erickson going on about sabotage? 

But the point is that this Administration regularly tries to blame Donald Trump for everything, has lied repeatedly in the past few weeks about the Chinese spy balloon, has done such a bad job dealing with these issues too many Americans now know the Transportation Secretary’s name, and we simply cannot believe them.

And if “we” (Erickson and his tapeworm, who I gotta say has his work cut out for him) can’t trust Joe Biden, maybe we’ll trust Erick Erickson’s self-refuting innuendos. Oh, and if you took the side-bet on “Hunter Biden’s laptop” being in the story? Collect your winnings. 

But the real prize this week is Peggy Noonan, who has been on fire (regrettably not literally) with her rambling silver-alert takes. This week’s starts with snipage at Nikki Haley, who recently launched her Vice-Presidential (whoops, I mean air-quotes Presidential) campaign:

On Wednesday Nikki Haley announced her presidential campaign in Charleston, S.C. I found myself thinking not about her candidacy but about the launch itself, which was creepily stuck in the past. A horrible, blaring song from a Sylvester Stallone sequel pumped her in as she strode out in the white suit and there were adoring fans on the rafters behind her, with whom she briefly interacted before turning toward the audience and doing the point—standing there and pointing to individual members of the cheering audience as if she knew them and was being natural. An introducer said she will “lead us into the future”; she added, “America is falling behind.” It was all so tired, clichéd, and phony. It was national politics as it has been done circa 1990-2023.

1990? How about the 80s, Peggy, when as Ronald Reagan’s handler you filled his mouth with uplifting bullshit and helped engineer spectacles like Nancy waving at Ronnie on the telescreen at the 1984 Republican Convention? That's when propaganda was propaganda, you young punks! 

Speaking of bullshit, this seems to be about the only thing Noonan likes about Haley: 

In her speech she said some nice things: “Take it from me, the first female minority governor in history: America is not a racist country.” Everyone who scrambles over our border knows that; it is good when elites say it.

…until said scramblers-over-the-border get driven back over by Greg Abbott’s vigilantes or dragged up north to use as pawns in a cruel culture-war stunt. Honestly, I can’t imagine even her Republican readers don’t immediately think this. 

Then there’s a long grumble about those horrible ads on the teevee during the Super Bowl – they made America look like “a nation of morons” (don’t bother waiting for the penny to drop, guys), whereas back in the day they had Mean Joe Greene being all nice and cuddly for Coke and that was the real America, real Ronnie-and-Nancy koochie-koo kitsch, not this nutty, noisy stuff:

I’m here to say I’ve met America and that’s not what they want. What they want is “Help me live, help my kids live, help me feel something true.” 

Sorry, lady, but would you like a new car, soft drink, or diabetes management app? These are the damn ads. I’m convinced Noonan was just turned off by all the rock and rap (“the music shifted, screamed, and the mood became discordance”). It's a miracle the Journal kept her from fulminating on Rihanna. Look, Grandma, they aren’t pitching this shit to me, either, but I know better than to Blame Society.

Oh, but her closing… man; she gets on Will Smith and starts pitching to write his Oscar 2023 speech:

Here is how to turn that moment into something helpful. It doesn’t involve “image rehab.” It involves constructive honesty. Will Smith should walk in and say this:

“It is painful in life when you embarrass yourself. It is horrifying when you do it in front of tens of millions of people. Last year I did something bad to a guy who was just doing his job, and I am here to acknowledge it from the same stage—to admit that in attempting to humiliate him, I humiliated myself. I showed a number of things, including sheer bad judgment…

Two more grafs of this! I give it five barf bags! I doubt Noonan is even expecting the call (though I love imagining her on the phone, pinching her nose, and droning “This is Miss Noonan’s answering service”); I expect the play is to wait for Smith to deliver what promises to be a perfectly anodyne and expected (though less white!) apology-like spew, and then sigh contentedly: “Ahhh, he took my advice!”

ROY’S OSCAR PREDICTIONS, FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

Regulars will know that I have a childhood love of the dumb old Academy Awards and have been running my own annual predix for years, usually not very successfully but sometimes beating the spread in the Best Picture and Best Actor and other categories. Even if you don’t want the betting advice, you can just share my appreciation of the excellent nominees and the fun of the guessing game.

This year I’ve seen all the nominated films, and you can see my reviews at these links --Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Licorice Pizza, West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, CODA, King Richard, Belfast, The Power of the Dog, and Dune. 

I’ve also seen all the nominated performances and nearly all of the other major nominees -- which in my experience is actually not helpful for predicting, because I can be swayed by quality and pure enthusiasm into error. But I did my best, and included second-guesses. Onward! 

L Best Picture: The Power of the Dog. I don’t see any way around it. I keep hearing intelligent people -- including the New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan -- say that CODA will win Best Picture. But, quite apart from it being the absolute worst film of the batch, CODA doesn’t have the traditional profile of the five previous No Best Director Nominee Best Pictures (Green Book, Argo, Driving Miss Daisy, Grand Hotel and Wings). Some of those films are sentimental in some way, as is CODA, but they also have at least one established star or, at the very least, a grizzled old-timer lead or two. (Sorry, Marlee Matlin!) With its teen lead and funny-horny parents, CODA would be a run-of-the-mill YA picture but for the deaf angle, and I don’t think that’s enough, especially since the Academy has elected art films the past two years in row -- could they backslide into feel-good goo-goo-ga-ga for such an unworthy product? Not out of the question, but to me at best CODA’s more like Breaking Away -- a scrappy also-ran. 

The other real serious contender (though I wouldn't completely count out the sentimental-but-actually-good Belfast) is Dune, an impressive chunk of movie- and money-making. But this is the same Academy that hasn’t put up any Star Wars films for any serious awards since 1978. Since the days of five nominees, at least one Best Picture slot has usually been dedicated to a big, sleek Cadillac of a movie that shows lots of flash -- but these only win when you can take them to heart, and Dune is just too freakish for that. (You could say the same for The Shape of Water, a Cadillac/art film hybrid, but that was also a love story.) Plus, The Power of the Dog is just really, really good. [If not: Dune.]

W Best Actor: Will Smith, King Richard. I really liked his performance; that it was delivered under the hagiographic pressure of Richard Williams’ still-living and powerful daughters makes the achievement even more remarkable. This is a rich field but Will Smith is a beloved figure in Hollywood and these guys really want to give it to him. [If not: Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog.]

L Best Actress: Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter. This is a tough one. Penelope Cruz is fantastic in Parallel Mothers but even with her moments of maternal horror it’s simply too subtle a performance for the Academy. Nicole Kidman did a creditable Lucille Ball, right down to Ball’s control freakishness -- which deprives her of the big emotional scene(s) that might have advanced her nomination. Spencer is a weird movie and Kristin Stewart’s Diana meets its challenge perfectly, but I think the eccentricity of the project cuts against her. 

That leaves Colman and Jessica Chastain, who in The Eyes of Tammy Faye really kills it; her and the other actors’ playing style is broad but rich in emotional truth, and she makes a woman who’s mainly remembered as a figure of fun into a sympathetic and even, ultimately, heroic figure. (Who didn’t feel that last parallel clip of Chastain and the real Tammy Faye deep in their gut?) The only question is whether the Academy will reward that kind of bravura loser story; it didn’t with Margot Robbie and I, Tonya. 

Colman’s performance, like Cruz’s, is subtle, but the character is not just experiencing shocks but also having an extended breakdown that’s brilliantly delineated by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s script and direction (and Jessie Buckley’s eerie flashback performance). And Colman approaches it with the guts of a cat burglar -- I was at several points shocked by how ugly and blinkered she allowed her character to be, yet I always saw where she was coming from (if only in retrospect) and was rooting for her all the way. Also the Academy has shown with Hilary Swank and Frances McDormand (and Luise Rainer and Katharine Hepburn) that it doesn’t mind giving Best Actress to the same woman within the same decade. [If not: Chastain.]

W Best Director: Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog. [If not: Kenneth Branagh, Belfast.]
W Best Supporting Actor: Troy Kotsur, CODA. [If not: Ciarán Hinds, Belfast.]
W Best Supporting Actress: Ariana DeBose, West Side Story. [If not: Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog.]

These are the kind of sucker bets I usually miss, but not this year! I’m sticking with the conventional wisdom. (Here’s my demurrer, though: If some older voters felt themselves giving short shrift to CODA and the gooey sentiment it represents, maybe Branagh has an outside shot.)

W Best Cinematography: Greig Fraser, Dune. All five movies are beautifully shot but Dune, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Nightmare Alley are the least imaginable without their distinctive look. I would tip it toward Bruno Delbonnel, but the Academy may feel black and white is cheating. And Dune is the Cadillac of the bunch. [If not: Delbonnel, The Tragedy of Macbeth.] 

W Best Screenplay (Adapted): Siân Heder, CODA. It’s ludicrous, but if the news of a CODA groundswell is at all true, this will get past The Power of the Dog. (A spasm of insight would shift it to Gyllenhaal’s structurally brilliant script.) [If not: Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter.]

L Best Screenplay (Original): Adam McKay and David Sirota, Don’t Look Up. I was sure the backlash this film got from liberal know-betters would redound in the film industry, but this actually won the Writers Guild of America Award, among others. I guess it’s because Adam McKay does writing that really feels written -- almost as much as Aaron Sorkin, but he’s not up this year. [If not: Kenneth Branagh, Belfast.] 

L Best Film Editing: Myron Kerstein and Andrew Weisblum, tick, tick… BOOM! As the year’s big-movie nominee, Dune should tend to prevail in craft awards unless wildly outclassed, and I frankly admire that Joe Walker and Denis Villeneuve made sense of a convoluted story and kept the battle scenes intelligible. But the underdog rumblings for tick, tick… BOOM!, unlike the rumblings for CODA, make sense to me: It’s such a brilliant assemblage of a messy story (with a first-time director), and it catches the rhythm of both the music and the lead’s hyperactivity. [If not: Walker, Dune.]

W Best Original Score: Hans Zimmer, Dune. As important as the unified visual style of Dune is, I can’t imagine it without the score -- it’s mixed way loud whenever no one is talking and with its blend of noises and actual music it really carries the far-outness of the thing -- it's practically an athletic composing performance.  [If not: Jonny Greenwood, The Power of the Dog]

L Best Art Direction: Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau, Nightmare Alley. Dune has a great unified vision but so do all the contenders, and -- well, the nearly-expressionistic Nightmare Alley sets are just too good. Also, in this category, the past trumps the future. [If not: Adam Stockhausen and Rena DeAngelo, West Side Story.]

W Best Make-Up: The Eyes of Tammy Faye. [If not: House of Gucci.]

W Best Song: "No Time to Die," No Time to Die, Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. [If not: “Sometimes You Do,” Four Good Days, Diane Warren.]

W Best Sound: Dune. [If not: West Side Story.]

W Best Visual Effects: Dune. [If not: Oh who are we kidding.]

W Best Costume Design: Cruella. [If not: Cyrano.]

These I am really, really just guessing at:

L Best Animated Feature: Flee.
W Best Documentary Feature: Summer of Soul*.
W Best International Film: Drive My Car.
L Best Live Action Short: On My Mind.
W Best Documentary Short: The Queen of Basketball.
W Best Animated Short: The Windshield Wiper.

Place your bets [not with me, I’m unlicensed] and see you tonight! (Oh BTW, cutting eight categories from the telecast including Editing, Score, and Production Design is straight-up bullshit.)

*UPDATE: One hour since posting, I have already copped out on the Documentary Feature category -- I figure if they give Flee Best Animated Feature they'll feel they've done their bit, while Summer of Soul is a blast of joy that people really want in their lives. OK, I'll stop fiddling with it! 

UPDATE 2, 7:20 pm: Just letting you true vipers know they've started giving out the pre-ceremony Oscars and I'm doing great: Got Best Sound, Best Doc Short, and Best Animated Short right!  They gave Best Live Action Short to Riz Ahmed's anti-racist anti-fascist The Long Goodbye, which I thought was too pushy-prop but apparently they liked it. (I did like the rap, though.) So I'm three for four so far, hooray! 

UPDATE 3, 7:45 pm: But now I'm fading! Dune took Best Editing and Best Production Design. But it also won Best Score and The Eyes of Tammy Faye won the makeup award. It's not too late for me to pull it out.

UPDATE 4. Three hosts is [said with a rich lady gangsta lilt] attrition by addition [dance move]. 

UPDATE 5. That's just a matter of timing. Look, by herself Schumer is a stitch, especially making fun of Leonardo DiCaprio and young girls. The Steve Martin gag still works! 

UPDATE 6. After Ariana DeBose's speech I feel like a little theater kid sitting on the floor in front of the TV sniffling. Brava! 

UPDATE 7. I'm doing great but am mainly commenting on Twitter -- to the extent possible, because I want to relax and enjoy these. But you know me -- I'm a kibbitzer. 

UPDATE 8. Someone should have told Will Smith that Frank Sinatra never smacked people around when the cameras were rolling.  

UPDATE 9. Well. I still think CODA is a drag, but one of the venerable Oscar traditions is bitching about how Oscar doesn't know what it's talking about, and my 73% score is not so bad. So, really, we're all winners! From Hollywood for Ugly People, Good Night! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Mike Watt on bass so you already know, right?

•   I’ve done it, I cry with a hearty mad-scientist laugh -- I’ve seen all the 2022 Best Picture Oscar nominees! This makes me feel swell and, along with the other category nominees I’ve seen, it makes me feel qualified to make predictions, as I do every year, usually without great success (though sometimes with!). If you return here Sunday afternoon I will have those predictions for you, for entertainment purposes only. 

Meantime I have unlocked all the reviews of the 10 nominated films I did at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down -- here are links: Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Licorice Pizza, West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, CODA, King Richard, Belfast, The Power of the Dog, and Dune. 

•   This is a good week for REBID releases -- the SCOTUS hearings one and the convoy update are also open. Don’t expect much of this for a while, though -- I need more paid subscriptions and here I am giving it away like a good-hearted farm girl in the big city. 

If things don’t pick up I may have to become a cancelculture crybaby -- that’s how you make the really big money on Substack! Speaking of which, I notice that racket has gone international big-time:

This really sums up something about our current shit discourse -- not only that cancelculture is such bullshit that anyone, no matter how obviously evil, depraved, and criminal, can pick it up and go boo hoo hoo look how unfair my enemies are! In fact, Putin has the two key characteristics of a cancelculture crybaby: He’s an aggressor against a weaker enemy whom he seeks to portray as the Real Bully, and Rod Dreher loves him. 

•   I will add that, like everyone else in America, I know no one will do anything about Clarence Thomas’ wife being a total QAnon lunatic who colluded with insurrectionists to overturn the 2020 election and Thomas refusing to recuse himself in a case that would reveal that. And that’s why these bastards keep doing it, and won’t stop until they’ve fucked this country up beyond redemption. 

OSCAR PREDIX! GUESS ALONG WITH ROY.

Longtime readers know what pleasure I get from this annual Oscar thing, notwithstanding my poor track record. (Mind, I was one of the few who called Green Book in 2019.) So indulge me, please. I reviewed seven of the eight Best Picture nominees at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down; the seventh and the links to the previous six are here, and if you can't access them it's because you haven't subscribed so now's a good time to fix that.  

I just saw my last Best Picture nominee, Minari, and I will say that it's beautiful, warm, and everything people who love it say about it. It's also not my sort of thing. I recall sitting through Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs at its premiere New York engagement at Cinema Studio 1 in 1979 -- by myself, because none of my friends would go -- and thinking: okay, no more three-and-a-half-hour movies about shoemakers for me. To be fair, I was very young and itchy then, and in the decades since have learned more patience with slow movies about families scratching out a living. And though not as long or deliberate as the Olmi (comparatively it zips along), Minari is great at getting the viewer to fall into the rhythms of farm life -- not the "ring the dinner bell, Betty Lou" farm life of old Hollywood, but the mobile-home-on-a-cheap-plot farm life that's Korean emigrant Jacob Yi's gamble for a better future for his family. Material success and failure reveal themselves slowly, seasonally; meanwhile Jacob must succeed not only as an "eldest son" striver but also as a family man, keeping everyone happy and whole -- and it's even less clear that he'll succeed at that. The burden of Jacob's dream wears on his wife Monica, and by bringing over her mother to make her feel more at home and watch the kids, Jacob doesn't solve it -- in fact the mother's presence, for all its charm (she's a fun blend of TV addict and back-country philosopher), actually exacerbates the problem, and finally tests Jacob's ability to succeed not only as a farmer but also as paterfamilias. My synopsis makes it sound like a sitcom, but if it were it would be one directed by Terrence Malick. Thanks in part to stunning photography and music by Lachlan Milneou and Emile Mosseri, you can feel time and nature having their effect. Steven Yeun is leading-man great, and Yuh-Jung Youn as the grandmother brings both humor and something like mystery into the story. I think the fact that people aren't equally celebrating Yeri Han's performance as Monica -- with all its shadings of disgust at this "hillbilly" life, love for her family, perseverence and duty and, finally, finding the end of them -- suggests what's maybe out of balance in the movie, and something besides its genre that bugged me. 

Okay, predictions! Here I stand: 

Best Picture: Nomadland. My folly and glory in the past has been not to follow conventional wisdom. (Last year, I bucked the critics who thought 1917 had it in the bag, but also assumed the Academy would never dare laurel Parasite.)  Well, my feet are flat and I'm tired of running.  Everyone says Nomadland and so say I. Part of me thinks that, as with Roma in 2019, it's a little too much like museum-grade performance art to truly enchant the Academy, but maybe the pandemic year makes this spooky neo-Beckettian slice of life in the bluffs and Badlands the picture of the year.  [My choice: The Father.]

Best Director: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland. I mean they pushed her hard enough, with a zillion publicity photos of her and America's Sweetheart Frances McDormand, and Nomadland is not a "written" movie so much as a directed one. She really painted this canvas, and made the silence sing, give her that. Also, aren't the "nomads" a bit like the "witnesses" in Warren Beatty's Reds? That won him an Oscar too. [My choice: Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round.]

Best Actor: Anthony Hopkins, The Father. Everyone says Chadwick Boseman, and man was he good -- every bit as young, dumb, and full of cum as he had to be to make that tragedy work. Also, he's dead! But Hopkins reminds me of something Thom Jones said about what one's writing needs to be if it is to succeed: "so good they can't reject it." No one who knows the first thing about acting can deny what Hopkins accomplishes here -- totally in the moment, undeniably believable, but also crafted to the sharpest detail. You can't say no to it. And maybe nearly-dead is good enough. [My choice: Hopkins.]

Best Actress: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holliday. Speaking of so good they can't reject it. I like Diana Ross in Lady Sings The Blues okay, but Day not only has Ross' star power, she's also a completely  believable Billie Holliday -- diva, junkie, street rat -- from jump. (When she asks Jenkins in jail, "what's your game, man," I thought: No one with a star on her dressing room door could possibly look or sound so real saying that. But she does.) Even better, the more you learn about Holliday (admittedly the movie makes it hard to keep track), the more sense her characterization makes. [My choice: Day.]

Best Supporting Actor: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah. Looking back at what I recall and wrote about this performance, I notice the contradictions: a committed radical with an awkward teenage gait, a great public speaker who's shy with the ladies, a Man of the People who's really of the people. That's a 3-D performance, and the character's end makes it especially poignant. [My choice: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal.]

Best Supporting Actress: Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari. She's super cute, for one thing, but also when she talks semi-mystical shit like why minari is a good thing to plant and she and her grandson make up a song about it, I buy it, and there's no reason on earth why I should except world-class acting.  [My choice: Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.]

Best Original Screenplay:  Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman. [My choice: Fennell.]

Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, The Father. [My choice: Hampton and Zeller.]

Best Cinematography: Joshua James Richards, Nomadland. [My choice: Sean Bobbitt, Judas and the Black Messiah.]

Best Original Score: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste, Soul.  [My choice: Emile Mosseri, Minari.]

Best Film Editing: Mikkel Nielsen, Sound of Metal. [My choice: Yorgos Lamprinos, The Father.]

Best Costume Design: Alexandra Byrne, Emma. [My choice: Byrne.]

Best Production Design: Donald Graham Burt and Jan Pascale, Mank. [My choice: Peter Francis and Cathy Featherstone, The Father.]

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Eryn Krueger Mekash, Matthew Mungle and Patricia Dehaney, Hillbilly Elegy. [My choice: Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.]

Best Song: "Husavik," Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. [My choice: "Husavik."]

Best Sound: Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michellee Couttolenc, Carlos Cortés and Phillip Bladh, Sound of Metal. [My choice: Sound of Metal.]

The rest, ha ha fuck, I'm just guessing:

Best International Film: Another Round.

Best Visual Effects: Tenet.

Best Animated Feature: Soul.

Best Documentary Feature: Collective.

Best Documentary Short: Hunger Ward.

Best Animated Short: If Anything Happens I Love You.

Best Live Action Short: The Letter Room.

Whew! Wanna put money on it? Kidding, I don't have any money. Watch this space and my Twitter Sunday night for my Oscar show regrets! 

MY OSCAR PREDICTIONS -- FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY!

Feel the excitement -- Oscar night! As you may know, I'm in the habit of seeing as many Best Picture contenders each year as I can. Yesterday I finished the cycle with Ford v Ferrari. And what a dumb pleasure it was! Two racing pros, the plain-spoken and practical Texan Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and the explosive, eccentric visionary Brit Ken Miles (Christian Bale), are at loose ends in 1963 when fate hands them a dream project: Make Ford Motor Company a world-class winning race car. Part of the drama is our boys versus the "suits" at FoMoCo who insist on gumming up their bold work with corporate bullshit. This to some extent also pits our boys against one another, as Shelby is more inclined to work with the suits and Miles to blow them off. Ironically, I felt the heavy hand of Movieland suits on Ford v Ferrari itself --  you can almost call out points where someone must have said, for example, "test scores say we really need Shelby to get hot with the Ford asshole around 1:35." But I gotta admit that, aside for a sniffly coda underlining the heroes' man-love, as Hollywood product goes the thing's very well built. I worried how things will go, felt good when they went well, and the racing stuff made a car-crazy little kid out of me and I don't even drive. I could have stood Shelby and Miles to be more, like, characters, but given the context I'm content with Damon and Bale coasting on their considerable base skills and charisma. If you want real acting there's plenty in the supporting cast, including Tracy Letts as pig-eyed honcho Henry Ford II (a world away from his Lady Bird and Little Women characters; his reactions to a report of Enzo Ferrari's insults is a little master class) and Ray McKinnon as a great car engineer who seems to know a little something about how people work, too. (Yeah, that's a cliche, but with a movie like this cliches aren't so bad.)

OK, you've seen my other reviews (links here). Now to my famous predictions! I'm seldom more that 65% right and often do much worse, but I did call Green Book last year.

× Best Picture: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

My big sucker bet right up top! Here's my reasoning: Everyone's saying 1917. It's so well-done, they say, a tour de force, it's a lock. But no one loves 1917. Once its brutal effect passes, it mainly remains in the mind as a series of unpleasant set pieces. You'll notice no major critics' awards named it Best Picture.

Parasite leads the critics' awards, and oddsmakers put it as #2 to 1917. But would Hollywood go so far as to give its crown jewel to a Korean movie so obviously about class warfare -- and with such a downbeat ending? No, they're more likely to pick a movie that flatters themselves -- indeed, flatters a Hollywood era in which many of them came up. And it's fun!

× Best Director: Sam Mendes, 1917

✓ Best Original Screenplay: Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won, Parasite

And that's where they'll split the difference.

✓ Best Adapted Screenplay: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit 

Had Waititi been nominated for Best Director, too, I'd be liking this movie for Best Picture. I found it not only involving but inspiring -- just the sort of thing Oscar goes for. It's a sign of our times that a movie about the fall of the Third Reich is the sunniest film of the bunch.

✓ Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
✓ Best Actress: Renée Zellweger, Judy
✓ Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
✓ Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

I'm not a total idiot.

✓ Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, 1917
× Best Production Design: Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales, 1917
✓ Best Sound Mixing: Mark Taylor and Stuart Wilson, 1917
× Best Sound Editing: Oliver Tarney and Rachael Tate, 1917

Tough categories, but 1917 really is too good to refuse in the technical areas.

× Best Score: Alexandre Desplat, Little Women

There's a lot of hype for Hildur Guðnadóttir, understandably. Her Joker score is very good at ratcheting the tension of a film that requires constantly ratcheted tension. (Thomas Newman's 1917 score is similarly effective, but with more musical flourishes.) Randy Newman's Marriage Story score is pretty lush, but at odds with the mumblecore look of the film. Desplat's score is as always very musical and I can even remember snatches of tune from it, plus it brings back pleasurable memories of a film that some people think the Academy undervalued.

✓ Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Little Women

'Cuz it's a costume drama, duh. (If they're ambitious maybe they'll recognize the clever, cartoonish exaggerations of the Nazi uniforms in Jojo Rabbit, not to mention Scarlett Johansson's hat.)

✓ Best Film Editing: Michael McCusker and Andrew Buckland, Ford v Ferrari

I have understood since Bullitt that they like to give this award to movies with cars going fast.

✓ Best Song: “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again," Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Rocketman
✓ Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker, Bombshell
✓ Best International Feature Film: Parasite
× Best Animated Feature: Klaus
× Best Short Film (Animated): Kitbull
✓ Best Short Film (Live): The Neighbors' Window
✓ Best Short Film (Documentary): Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You're a Girl)
× Best Documentary Feature: Honeyland
× Best Visual Effects: Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones and Elliot Newman, The Lion King

I don't know. What do I know? Kitbull gave me sniffles. Isn't The Lion King one long special effect?

And there we have it!

UPDATE. I'm a winner!
UPDATE 2: I'm a loser!
UPDATE 3: I can't be sore about Parasite -- it's brilliant. Props to the Academy for having the guts.

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

I see a lot of people complaining in near-apocalyptic terms this morning that their Oscar faves didn't get nominated -- or, in the ridiculous popular term (considering this is a ballot result), were "snubbed" -- and maybe I'm insensitive but really: this is a silly social event where movie people give each other prizes, why you stressin'? The New York Film Critics Circle Award is much more meaningful honor, and Lupita Nyong'o won that; and she shares the distinction of winning a NYFCCA acting award without a concomitant Oscar nomination with Steve Martin, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, and a lot of other geniuses.

If there's anyone who should feel cheated it's Kevin Garnett.

I've just started my way through the big award-season movies, and have written at length about Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, Marriage Story, and The Irishman. I'll get to the rest in time. Right now I'll just say I'm surprised that Taika Waititi wasn't nominated for best director, because I thought and still kind of think JoJo Rabbit would be a good Best Picture choice -- weird enough to hit the artiste-voters where they live, and also extremely well-done and even inspirational. It could still win but it'll be more of a stretch.

As it stands, I will say yay Parasite.

PARAGRAPH OF THE WEEK.

It's from National Review's David French, NR's house testosterone junkie whose prose always purples up when he's talkin' man-talk. The title of his latest emission is pretty good -- "Understanding the Inescapable Reality of Masculinity" -- though the story is the same as usual: A man, Oscar Stewart, did something mainly (chased the latest synagogue shooter! Didn't catch him, but M for Maneffort!), which is offered as evidence that boys are "more aggressive than girls, and more violent than girls, and they take greater risks than girls," and that's good because we need boys to do that because girls, well you know, sugar and spice.

(French actually mentions that at the synagogue "a courageous woman named Lori Kaye lost her life shielding the rabbi from the incoming bullets" and never for a second acknowledges that this fact blows his whole stupid thesis.)

But the nut graf, and it is nuts, is thing of beauty. It comes after French is forced to admit that most men aren't cowpunchers and roadhouse bouncers and opportunities to butch up don't come easy in today's modern, sissy world. Attend:

But what used to happen more naturally must now happen more intentionally. Men need to cultivate physical strength even if physical strength isn’t necessary to their daily lives. They should identify as protectors even when immediate threats aren’t evident. Did Oscar Stewart believe he was in immediate danger when he went to his synagogue last Friday? And our culture and our people need to stop mocking and belittling men when they pursue stereotypically “manly” hobbies and activities. Male friendships are vital, and male friendships flow organically from male pursuits.

"Cultivate physical strength" -- you mean like Jack LaLanne? I hate to tell French but there's this thing called health clubs and it's sweeping the country. Maybe he thinks men should do less cardio and more weight training? [Checks cover of magazine -- this is supposed to be about conservatism, right?]

"Stop mocking and belittling men when they pursue stereotypically 'manly' hobbies and activities" is good too, though I wonder what activities he's talking about -- drum circles? Model airplane building? Jack-off clubs? Well, that would explain "flow organically from male pursuits."

UPDATE. Commenter Andrew Johnston makes a great point: "If all of this is 'natural' to men, then why do you need to teach it?" Maybe someday we'll get a David French book explaining how liberals made all the boys girly and conservatives are trying to bring 'em back to butchitude with crossfit, cigars, and Fetal Pain bills.

OSCAR PREDIX FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

Okay, it's minutes away -- too late to affect the betting line, but just in time to embarrass me! You've seen my Best Picture nominee reviews. And now the proto-envelopes, please:

Best Picture: Green Book. My big sucker bet! I know everyone says Roma, and I loved it, but like I said, it looks and moves too much like a museum installation -- Green Book is old Hollywood stuff and pEoPlE LiKeD iT. (Also: Driving Miss Daisy didn't get a Best Director nomination that year, either.)

Best Actor: Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Actress: Glenn Close, The Wife
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

I'm sticking with conventional wisdom all the way, except for Weisz, whom I think will lap the field out of sheer magnificence.

Best Director: Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman
Best Original Screenplay: Green Book
Best Adapted Screenplay: A Star is Born

My other sucker bet! I think a split ticket on Best Picture and Screenplay is the sort of comity gesture Academy members might like.

Best Original Score: Terence Blanchard, BlacKkKlansman
Best Cinematography: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Best Production Design: Black Panther
Best Costume Design: The Favorite
Best Film Editing: Vice
Best Song: "Shallow," A Star Is Born
Best Make-Up and Hairstyling: Vice
Best Sound Mixing: Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Sound Editing: A Quiet Place
Best Foreign Language Film: Roma

Blanchard is always great and his style and Lee's dovetailed so well here it's giving me a serious hunch. Roma was too good for Cuarón not to win a craft award. The other craft award predix are based on previously observed Oscar wealth-sharing.

Best Animated Feature: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Documentary Feature: Hale County This Morning, This Evening 
Best Special Effects: First Man
Best Animated Short: Bar
Best Life Action Short: Skin
Best Documentary Short: A Night at the Garden

I am totally guessing. I'm guessing on all of these, really -- who knows the heart of the Academy voter anymore? But this is part of the fun for me, and maybe you. Now, on to the Pantages!

(Oh, I'll try to be responsive in comments should you be so inclined.)

UPDATE. Well, I'm losing already.

UPDATE 2. Okay, got the make-up thing, I'm a star, yay.

UPDATE 3.  Why did I bother.

UPDATE 4. I won at something! I feel good now!

UPDATE 5. FIRST MAN FOR VISUAL EFFECTS I'M A  G E N I U S

UPDATE 6. LOL all the woke people are mad about Green Book. Guys, this is Hollywood. What did you expect? It’s like being pissed they didn’t nominate The Love Witch. Anyway, I shoulda put money on it!

ON TO OSCAR 2019, PART 7.

(Other Best Picture Nominees considered so far: Black Panther, A Star is Born, Roma, BlackKkKlansman, The Favourite, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Green Book.)

Vice. Lively, politically astute, but a bit of a mess. In The Big Short, reformed funny-movie maker Adam McKay dramatized the fucking-over of the American economy, and amplified it with explanatory montages. Vice, about the fucking-over of America, is similar but with even more weight on the montages -- in fact, most of the historical characters are introduced mainly as pieces of the Brechtian educational filmstrip; for example, Frank Luntz has lines but no character; his main usefulness is as a living demonstration of how Republican propagandists used focus groups to not just sell policies but also poison the public discourse. Long passages are just tableaux or archival footage, cutting political events with clips of The Rifleman, Survivor, and Jane Fonda's Workout, seasoning history with zeitgeist.

You can see why Cheney looked like a great focal point for the story: He not only has a fat hand in every Republican outrage from Nixon through W, he also exemplifies the Republican success story: Be a total fuckup, get religion either figuratively or literally, latch onto some scumbags who respect your scumbaggery and scam your way to the top. The film suggests a similarity between the trajectories of youthful drunkards Cheney and George W., but also acknowledges the big difference: Unlike Bush Cheney is not even passably good with voters; he only shines among his fellow power jocks; as one of the film's many joke sequences underlines, his gift is to look serious and knowledgeable even when pitching total nonsense. In other words, he can bullshit the bullshitters, and he's not above hauling in an expert or two -- trained legal analysts, for example, with no excess of scruples -- to back his bullshit up.

The main problem with this approach is, Dick Cheney is not a tragic or a comic or even an anti-heroic figure -- he's just a piece of shit. Christian Bale dives to the center of the character and comes up with a believably not-too-bright guy who loves his family and finds a way to raise their standard of living by joining Today's GOP. This is a sensible explanation of the real Cheney's career, and Bale does it well -- but it has very little to do with the political lesson McKay's giving, other than to unnecessarily explain that amoral men make amoral movements. What would it mean if Cheney were a different person? What's the functional difference between Cheney and, say, fellow country-wrecker Donald Trump? After a while the Dick Cheney story diverges from the political story and, despite a half-hearted attempt to link some family drama to Republican hypocrisy (which could be yet another movie!), loses focus.

As Lynn Cheney, Amy Adams manages to spell out the personal frustrations that she displaces by feeding Dick's ambition without turning into a Lady Macbeth bitch-caricature (with a script that does her no favors), and Sam Rockwell does a good job of catching both W's weakness and charm. And I enjoyed all the cameos and special guest appearances, including Madea as Colin Powell. But the real doubles act, to me, is Bale's Cheney and Steven Carell's Donald Rumsfeld. There's a lot of student-exceeds-the-master in the relationship, and while Carell never makes the old bastard genuinely likable, there's some poignance in his profession of admiration from an abandoned office to the old friend who's just cut his throat. If we could strip away the superfluities, that's the part I'd keep.

That's it! In an hour or two, my predictions; then, showtime!

ON TO OSCAR 2019, PART 6.

(Other Best Picture Nominees considered so far: Black Panther, A Star is Born, Roma, BlackKkKlansman, The Favourite, and Bohemian Rhapsody.)

Green Book. I don't get the alleged problem with this movie. I don't see it as "The White Savior" -- I see it as The Odd Couple.

Dr. Don Shirley is black, brittle, and insistent on his rights -- for which who could blame him, as he's an educated, talented classical musician forced to play pop to get over, and it's 1962. He can't take comfort in his blackness, either; backstory and behavior suggest his education and ascent from poverty has left him cut off from his roots. (He professes not to know who Aretha Franklin is, surrounds himself with African artifacts, and never talks to his family.) Despite his bitter experience of the world, he's surprisingly unworldly -- putting himself in obvious mortal peril throughout his tour of the Deep South -- and you get the impression he hangs onto that unworldliness, as he hangs onto his nightly bottle of Cutty Sark, because if he were constantly seeping in the undiluted ugliness of the world it would kill him.

For his Southern tour Shirley enlists as a driver/guardian Tony Lip (so-called, he says proudly, because he's "a bullshit artist... I'm good at talking people into doing things they don't wanna do"), a streetwise, unbright Bronx goomba with an extremely que-sera-sera attitude -- which isn't easy to maintain, as he's uneducated and marginally employed with a family to feed. When the Copa, where he works as a bouncer, shuts down for a few months, he's mainly qualified to win short money on hot-dog eating contests and he won't work for the Mob, so when someone gets him the Shirley gig he takes it, even though -- we have clumsily telegraphed to us early on -- he's prejudiced against black people.

Can two diverse men share a Cadillac Seville without driving each other crazy? [Cue theme music]

Yes, Green Book has the kind of Lessons-In-Life-and-Love howlers you would expect. The weirdest is when Tony gets the fastidious Shirley to play some R&B at a local black juke joint. (Shirley delicately removes a glass of whiskey from the upright first.) And Lord help us, those clips on TV aren't a joke, Shirley does help Tony write love letters. To his wife!

But the movie has a trick up its sleeve, and the trick is dramaturgy. Because of the way the characters are built, not only are those scenes less obnoxious than they could have been, the whole Driving Dr. Shirley thing works pretty well, too. First, when Tony really does play White Savior (and, blessedly, we get the first instance of this out of the way early), Shirley is ungrateful and mainly outraged at the unfairness of a system that makes it necessary that he be saved. So it's not really the whitesaving that turns the relationship around. But Tony's enough of a go-along type -- and, let's face it, used to servile gigs -- that he doesn't get too indignant about that. That gives him room to pay attention. And he's also, as a bullshit artist, a good enough student of human nature to actually pick up on what's eating Shirley, and a good enough human being to care. (Key line: "I been working nightclubs in New York City my whole life. I know it's a complicated world.") Shirley may be alienated, but not so alienated he can't pick up that Tony is actually listening, and in response he begins to unburden himself more to him -- even when it's in anger. Time then does its work.

So what if it's corny? I think I would have preferred it if [spoiler!] on Christmas Eve Shirley just stayed home and called his estranged brother instead of going all the way from West 57th Street to the freaking Bronx IN A SNOWSTORM to hang out with the Italians who, a minute ago, were calling black people eggplants. It ain't Frantz Fanon, it's a Hollywood movie. I was held.

Also it's Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, so if nothing else you can soak in their craft. Ali's Shirley is a real old-fashioned fusspot -- you can imagine Shirley learning and adopting a Clifton Webb facade, and shifting to the shit-eating smile when there are white folks to be pleased -- but even from the beginning you can perceive the years of hurt behind it, and when it's exacerbated -- as when a couple of black horseshoe players at a motel call him "fancy pants" -- you can feel the wounds reopen. And his pride is real and he can't be moved off it. (And he's funny! He really nails "I knew you had a gun.") Mortensen's technically ridiculous -- I mean, 'ey, gabagool, 'ats-a some accent, chief. But he's believably a creature of instinct who has operated so effectively on it, and has had so little need (or maybe capacity) for higher orders of thought that you can believe he'd unthinkingly accept Arthur Avenue bigotries, and unthinkingly say the ridiculous shit he says to Shirley (including that Shirley isn't as black as he is!) but, when his instinct tells him he had it all wrong, he would heed that, too. These guys have some great scenes together -- the one in the rain after they get sprung from jail, ending Ali climbing the ladder on "so if I'm not black enough, and if I'm not white enough, and if I'm not man enough, then tell me, Tony, what am I?" (Imagine being given that line on a piece of paper and getting what Ali gets out of it!); but I almost prefer watching them do the dumb scenes like the love letter ones, because as much as my eyes roll to describe it, they don't roll when I watch it.

ON TO OSCAR, PART 5.

(Other Best Picture Nominees considered so far: Black Panther, A Star is Born, Roma, BlackKkKlansman, and The Favourite.)

Bohemian Rhapsody. I've often said that the biopic is an intrinsically minor artform, and that only extremely rare exceptions bend the curve. Bohemian Rhapsody looks good and moves with some of the strut and glide of Queen's music, but it has all the traditional biopic problems -- for example, outside the star, there are no real characters. Credit Tom Hollander for sneaking a hint of dry humor into his lawyer/manager Jim "Miami" Beach (and Mike Myers -- had me fooled!), but everyone else is a cipher. Maybe it's because they're all still alive and could make trouble but the movie bandmates don't give us anything besides the most pro-forma behind-the-music moments: The lightbulb that's-a-great-riff! moments, the Freddie-you've-gone-too-far moments, etc. Even Mercury's female "love of my life" Mary never shows any feelings but Freddy-related feelings, and out of a regrettable soap opera at that. What if they'd been a little playful about it? When Freddie says "I think I'm bisexual" and Mary says, "you're gay," didn't anyone on the set realize how funny that is? I was laughing, anyway.

In fact all the stuff about Freddie's sexuality is weirdly fraught -- I haven't seen a leather scene like that since Cruising. (Wait'll they make the Rob Halford biopic!) Well, the closet can do strange things to a man and, given his background, Mercury was particularly [cue the music!] under pressure from both directions -- pushed not to go too far for obvious social reasons, but compelled to reveal what was going on inside himself for artistic reasons. That's a lot to take on and I can hardly blame Bryan Singer,  the superhero-movie director of a big-budget can't-miss biopic (who has some issues himself), for deciding that the answer is the true love of a decent bloke you can bring home to your stereotypically uptight immigrant dad. But sweet as that is, judging by his music I bet that wasn't all Freddie Mercury was going for.

But if the script doesn't show us, at least Rami Malek's performance is able to suggest it. There have been a lot of jokes about Rami Malek's dental prosthesis doing the acting for him, but like any good actor Malek makes the thing work for the character -- sometimes the teeth are a totems of his fears and sorrows, something to hide and brood over, and sometimes they're the prow of a proud ego-ship steaming late into rehearsal. And despite being 90% of the movie, Malek's Freddie is still able to remain a little mysterious -- even in the cliche good-love and bad-love scenes, you can feel that he's protecting something inside himself -- his heart, maybe, or his ego, or his talent; something, in any case, that can't stand too much handling. Whether at the top of his game or the height of his madness, that makes Mercury vulnerable and lovable and fascinating, and not just someone we're staring at because he's famous. For a biopic that's an achievement.