Zero Rooting Interest…No Pulse

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Last night the Producers Guild Awards put everyone to sleep by handing their top prize to Paul Thomas Anderson and One Battle After Another. Okay, I felt a certain “whew” when they didn’t give their award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures to Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners…thank you, dear God, for small favors.

Otherwise I’m feeling nothing, nothing, nothing.

Three years ago my blood turned acidic and my soul was choked with industrial-strength hate for EEAAO, but I’m not even feeling that this year as OBAA is indisputably well-made. Throughout my entire life I’ve felt some kind of emotional response to this or that Best Picture Oscar winner, but this year is a total flatliner. Okay, I’m rooting for Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard to win Best Supporting Actor, but otherwise the well is dry.

If It Weren’t For Go-Getters Like Myself

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…films like Willam Castle‘s Hollywood Story (’51) would be completely forgotten….they would sink beneath the waves.

Bosley Crowther review, posted on 6.7.51:

“It is easy to see, now, why some pictures which sound promising at the start, on the strength of the ideas behind them, turn out to be dismal flops.

“Hollywood Story demonstrates it.

“This film, which came to the Paramount yesterday, is, in fact, a detailed demonstration of the collapse of a good idea upon which a movie producer hopefully launches himself. And with the collapse of his idea, this picture collapses, too. Only goes to show what a gamble the movie business is.”

Iranian Fiends Who Recently Massacred Thousands of Protestors Are Now Grappling With Karma Kickback

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“Pound them, Charlie…pound them.” — Jack Hawkins’ Gen. Allenby in Lawrence of Arabia.

HE believes that distraction is Donald Trump’s primary motivation in attacking Iran’s rulers…its military and governmental facilities. The idea of clobbering and wasting Iran’s detestable rulers is not a bad one, but the main goal is to make Don look tough and resolute…Mr. Ramrod.

N.Y. Times editorial, posted early this morning:

Nicholson’s All-But-Forgotten Cameo

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Before today I hadn’t mentally revisited Jack Nicholson‘s brief bit in Ken Russell‘s Tommy (’75) for decades. I hadn’t even thought of it, much less sat down and re-watched.

In a 1974 interview with Sight and Sound‘s John Russell, Nicholson said he agreed to play Dr A. Quackson** because “Russell’s films intrigue me…some I like very much, some I don’t like at all, and I want to find out what makes them tick.”

** N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby described the character as “a vacuous Harley Street medical specialist.”

Maid of Orleans

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I respect Otto Preminger and George Bernard Shaw‘s Saint Joan (’57), but I’ve only seen it once and that almost certainly means something. I feel the same way about the Preminger as I do about Victor Fleming and Ingrid Bergman’s 1948 version of Joan’s tragic saga, which is to say “yes but…” Two years ago I described Carl Dreyer‘s The Passion of Joan of Arc (’28) as a lapel-grabbing, no-way-out masterpiece.

The one aspect of the Preminger that I really love and swear by is Saul Bass‘s poster art. Within its own realm, it’s a better thing that the film itself.

Ellison Buying Warner Bros. Doesn’t Feel “Good”

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Tatiana Siegel:

HE sez: But at least, given that Netflix has never had the slightest interest in supporting theatrical exhibition, the Ellison win signifies a slightly more earnest commitment to brick-and-mortar cinema. (Right?) Plus Ellison isn’t a rabid wokey and seems to believe in sensible centrism, which indicates (to me at least) that real, reality-embracing, non-woke movies might have a greater shot at emerging. If nothing else the Ellison win means that the final nail in the coffin of the woke terror era (2017-2024) has been slammed and driven into wood.

James Cameron about a week ago:

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Arguably Springsteen’s Greatest, Saddest Song

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I could listen to “Nothing Man” over and over for the rest of my life. Nothing he wrote or recorded before or since feels so grounded, so shorn of artifice, so unconcerned with the usual concerns of a songwriter-performer.

I don’t remember how I felt, I never thought I’d live
To read about myself in my hometown paper
How my brave young life was forever changed
In a misty cloud of pink vapor