Corrections and Promotions
A grab bag post.
First: My friend Wes Perry replied to my last newsletter to point out that what I thought was cacti was in fact euphorbia, which originated in Africa. I would chalk this up to a common botanical mistake one would make in an email newsletter that is not fact-checked had John not explained the difference between euphorbia and cacti half a dozen times. But thank you to Wes nonetheless!
Are you subscribing to Considerations, my awards newsletter published by Filmmaker Magazine? The first edition went out on Tuesday, and if you didn’t sign up yet, here’s a little teaser:
I realize the irony in having to “catch up” in mid-October on movies that most people, including thousands of Academy voters, might not see until the new year. But as someone with an interest in the Oscar races — and as someone who likes to observe the machinery of awards season, from the niche guild awards to the big, televised spectacles — right now is perhaps the most important part of the year: when the buzz is building.
But how does the buzz get built?
I’ve been thinking a lot about a line from one of my favorite movies, James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News (nominated for seven Oscars in 1988, won zero). The brilliant and anxious network news producer Jane (Holly Hunter) attempts to woo the very hot, yet very dim, reporter Tom (William Hurt) — while also ranting about unseemly practices among D.C.’s political journalists. “Another thing I can't stand,” she complains, “is when reporters bullshit with each other after a briefing, and then one of them quotes the other in his story as ‘White House sources say…’”Similarly, a lot of Oscar buzz feels very insidery.
But there’s one narrative most of my peers in the awards space can agree upon: The current Oscar race is wide open. Unpredictable, even! To which I must repeat: We are four and a half months from the Academy Awards! Which is why I am less invested in debating how many nominations The Brutalist is likely to receive (overheard before a screening of Blitz at the Apple offices in Culver City: a confident 10) than I am in learning if the movies I haven’t yet seen (for example, The Brutalist!) are as good as I’m hearing they are.
Don’t worry: I’m seeing The Brutalist in all its 215-minute glory on Sunday morning. I also saw the blissfully short — compact? tight? succinct? — A Real Pain this week, which did not shoot up to the top of list simply because it’s only 89 minutes long. Written, directed and starring Jesse Eisenberg, the film follows two cousins (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) as they take a tour through Poland in honor of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me wonder why more screenplays can’t films so much with such short runtimes.
I’ll leave you with one final thing: something I underlined recently from Eileen Chang’s collection of essays, Written on Water.
If one is really bursting with things to say and has no one to say them to, perhaps the only recourse is to go forth and accomplish earth-shattering deeds, so that when the time comes for an autobiography, one need no longer be concerned that no will take any notice.
Have a good weekend!