OT: Oscar Race is go

PT is clearly a very personal film for PTA, even the title copies from his initials.

And yes, it does evoke the look of Ophuls.

OK, I've finally seen The Post.... It's OK, well-made but the story just isn't very cinematic (apart from lovingly-crafted ultra-close-ups of linotype machines and printing presses). Latter-day Spielberg keeps picking projects (Amistad, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies) that are at bottom about legal questions and governmental procedures and The Post is another.

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Its interesting indeed that this seems to be what interests Spielberg now -- legal questions and governmental procedures. And history.

When the Spielberg career is finally finished, it will look pretty interesting to me: An almost ten year spurt of thriller/fantasy/genre pictures(from Duel to ET), that slowly and surely morphed into a filmmaking career heavy with thoughtful prestige projects about history, law and government. Spielberg made his name and his money(ala Hitchcock) in genre stuff, and then pretty much turned his back on it.

There is none of the full focus on style, sex and violence that Scorsese still gives us; Spielberg's films are identifiable for their smoky use of diffuse light(and a generally gray look in recent decades) and for being "thoughtful." He's still the richest guy around(all those investments in Transformers and animation and the like), but he's practically become an "invisible" filmmaker. Very weird, the Spielberg career. Its likely why he wasn't even thought about for an Oscar nom this year. Too many other , younger guys and gals are being more experimental.

One more thing: Spielberg seems to rely on very smart scripts these days, and almost seems to have sacrificed his storytelling to his writers -- he's almost "for hire" on his own dream projects.

everything's tilted towards making the movie of *Kay Graham's Choice* (imagine remaking Jaws so that it's the story of the mayor's heartfelt choice to finally fund Quint to catch the shark).

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What a great line! Its been said that ANY movie could, by whim, choose its lead character and conceivably it COULD be the supporting character in someone else's movie.

I suppose the fairness of focusing on Katherine Graham here is a 41-years later bow to the fact that Graham was NOWHERE found or seen in "All the President's Men." The Oscars bear it out: Streep is nominated; Spielberg and Hanks are not.

Note in passing: I don't know how the grosses will end up, but The Post has Streep and Hanks in it at a time when their box office appeal is supposedly on the wane. Hanks especially hasn't had a big hit in years, I don't think, not even Bridge of Spies. He doesn't much care; he made his zillions and has his two Oscars. Still "Streep and Hanks in Spielberg's The Post" feels a little musty.

I still want to see The Post, but the idea of yet another movie "telling us repeatedly how important everything we're seeing really is" may smack a bit of the condescending. I've never really thought Spielberg is a very bright interview -- somebody writes his better lines. Hanks and Streep, well, we've heard from them and its not too earth shaking what they have to say. (Though I did like non-Trump-fan Hanks say of Trump's election: "It reflected a rejection of the Clinton-Bush continuum." True. Those two names were starting to sound like the Chevron and Shell of politics.)

It feels to me like "The Post" lacks the urgency and oomph of a true classic.

But I'll see it.

The Levelling:
Not being considered for either Oscars or Baftas, but nonetheless critically praised, The Levelling is an exciting debut from writer/director Hope Dickson Leach. A young woman (Ellie Kendrick) is called back from Vet School to the family farm after her brother commits suicide (or did he?). Secrets and tensions within the family boil over... Nothing terribly surprising or even complicated occurs but it's so beautifully shot and acted and sound designed, and so thoughtfully put together (and it doesn't overstay its welcome at only 83 mins) that it haunts and marks Dickson Leach as one to watch. Kendrick, who's in every scene, is fantastic. I mainly knew her as Meera Reed on Game of Thrones before this - which is a small role - here she carries the film. If you enjoy moody family dramas with a strong sense of place then The Levelling is definitely worth checking out.

Mudbound:
A quite old-fashioned, prestige, period, family epic (sort of Giant meets Best Years of Our Lives meets 12 Years a Slave). It's a Best Picture Contender if I ever saw one (I'd take it over The Post and Call Me By Your Name for a start), and I dare say that if Roger Ebert were still alive he'd have stumped like crazy for it to get a nom.. Instead it's only been nom'd for supporting actress, Cinematog., Adapted Screenplay, and Song.

Superb acting ensemble so that it's weird to single out Mary J. Blige for a nom (tho' she's very good). Solid, Faulkner meets Steinbeck 'great American novel'-type script. All technicals first rate. Maybe could have used a more traditional emotion-wringing score. A shame perhaps that Mudbound got scooped up by Netflix after succeeding at Sundance last year.

M. was the second Netflix-only film I watched this week. The other was (from sublime to ridiculous) Cloverfield 3 which dropped as a post-Superbowl surprise on Netflix worldwide. It's a truly dreadful and stupid film. The no marginal cost to consumers model for C3 was the correct move; you'd be furious if you paid full price for such a turkey.

120 BPM:
120 BPM won second prize at Cannes last year, and while it's not in contention at the Oscars, many critics have saluted it as a should-have-been.... It records for posterity what a particular early '90s moment in the AIDS crisis felt like to certain sorts of activists. Lots of drugs and drug combinations are being tried, and a big breakthrough is at hand (by the late '90s HIV is no longer a death sentence at least in rich countries) but testing and trials need to occur, and private companies want to protect their intellectual property, and nothing's happening fast enough for people who are dying. The film plunges us into the political strategizing of activist group ACT UP's Paris branch. As well as meetings, we tag along on protests and Lab Invasions, and also on club night celebrations. Somewhat like Florida Project, out of this quasi-documentary buzz and confusion we start to focus on just a couple of characters: HIV+ve Sean and his -ve lover Nathan. The second half of the film is their (not too surprising) story. Sean&Nathan's relationship is vividly drawn (much more so than the shallow gay couple in Call Me By Your Name), and that together with the capturing of a specific tension-filled moment in gay history are the reasons to see this film. There are some interesting dream-like reveries scattered throughout the film too that I'd need to watch again to be sure I understood them, and I probably will see it at least once more (but not for a while).

120 BPM is definitely worth seeing if its topic sounds at all interesting to you, and it's a solid, 7.5-8/10 piece of work I'd say. Not quite interesting enough to be one of my films of the year, but a good and important film in its own way.

The Disaster Artist:
As is well-known, TDA dramatizes the making of The Room (2003), the legendarily bad, self-produced film that became a hit on (what remains of) the Midnight Movie circuit, i.e., as a kind of '00s successor to Plan 9 from Outer Space. Franco's TDA roughly stands to The Room as Burton's Ed Wood stands to Plan 9. The director of The Room, weirdo Tommy Wiseau, was his own lead, i.e., his own Lugosi, so the story here is a lot more cramped than in the Ed Wood case. Ed Wood made lots of movies and Lugosi with the special sort of single-role-based stardom he pioneered contains within himself a whole shadow history of Hollywood and is inherently fascinating and moving. Wiseau begins and ends with The Room, which limits the interest of TDA.

For me, this was a problem. I haven't seen The Room, and, really, I kind of lack the Bad-Movie-watching gene that some people seem to possess. Franco does a good impression of Wiseau and recreates much of The Room perfectly (an end-credits sequence gives us a split-screen comparison of The Room scenes with their TDA recreations) but why bother? was never really answered at least to my satisfaction. #MeToo troubles for Franco appear to have prevented TDA from building up a head of steam in Awards season, but I doubt whether it was going anywhere in any case. The Oscars have shown a lot of love for meta-filmic themes recently with The Artist, Birdman, La La Land, but TDA isn't nearly as polished or as ambitious as those. Alison Brie is super-cute in a small role (looking younger than ever), so there's that.