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This year almost none of the films nominated for Oscars were still playing in theaters on Academy Awards night.
That was March 2nd.
To ensure none of the next group of nominated films will be in theaters in 2026, the Oscars will be held on March 15th, two weeks later.
Couldn’t they push them into April?
The good news is that Conan O’Brien is hosting the show again. He jokes that it’s just because he wants to hear Adrien Brody finish his acceptance speech.
This year’s Oscars broadcast was up slightly in the ratings, or down slightly depending on what numbers you go by. The main thing is, it was a terrific show, well produced and very entertaining. I do hope they return to featuring the Best Songs next year. Also, maybe we can have some legacy movie stars as presenters.
I guess now ABC can use a promotion with the tag line “Beware the Ides of March” if anyone still knows what that means.
The pop singer who’s now a father posted a message to Instagram that reads like a cry for help.
He says he feels like he’s drowning, “feeling unsafe to acknowledge it.”
Bieber’s mental health issues have been going on for some time now. It’s unclear if anyone is helping him or where this is all going. He’s semi-retired from show business at 31 years old. No music, no tours, nothing. Just odd posts.
Bieber was so unsympathetic as a young star that it’s hard to find sympathy for him now. But he’s clearly in trouble. It’s interesting that the person who found him and made him a star, Scooter Braun, has no connection to him now. And what happened to all the religious mumbo jumbo?
Donald Trump dumped this news at 12:30am Eastern Time.
To flood the zone even more with his crackpot declarations, the worst president in history announced tonight that he will not respect President Joe Biden’s pardons before he left office.
He called them “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”
Of course this is illegal, but Trump is now spending his days ignoring the judicial system on different matters. He regards judges as his employees and doesn’t shrink from violating their orders.
Trump says — and this is all a lie — that Biden knew nothing about the pardons and they don’t count because he signed them in AutoPen. He says evenyone who was pardoned by Biden “should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.”
Trump is not stupid. He knows this will take up all the air this week, letting him continue on his path of destruction. This is another misdirection, after so many.
After four weeks of very little happening, “The White Lotus” turned up the heat tonight.
Oscar winner Sam Rockwell turns up in Bangkok, where he’s a sketchy friend of Rick (Walton Goggins).
Rockwell’s appearance makes sense. He is the real life husband of actress Leslie Bibb, who plays one of the three women traveling together. (She’s the Trump voter, the one who knows Parker Posey from home.)
Rockwell delivers a speech to Ric over drinks that could earn him an Emmy award. It’s a self-revelation that will leave you gobsmacked.
Meanwhile, the implied incest of the last four weeks finally occurs. The Ratliff brothers — played by Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola — have a steamy make out session during their orgy romp with the two women played by Aimee Lou Wood and Charlotte Le Bon. Spoiler: it gets worse next week.
Rockwell will be back next week. Makes sense since Bibb was filming in Thailand for months. As for Ric, we know he’s up to no good. We see his plan forming tonight.
After next week there are only two more episodes. How will this all resolve? Who is the dead person floating in the water? After next week, it’s still hard to guess who’s the killer and who’s the survivor. This group, except for Belinda, is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
NY Post readers: the paper is lying to you about Trump’s polling numbers per NBC.
The poll says people disagree with everything Trump is doing except immigration.
Everything else is vastly unpopular.
Trump’s overall rating is 51% disapprove, 47% approve. It’s the second lowest approval rating for any president in 30 years. The lowest was during his first term.
are the pollsters asking these questions of minorities? Trump is erasing their history, and undermining them getting jobs or having any equal rights. It’s shocking to me that there aren’r riots at this point. And few Democratic “leaders” are doing anything.
You know Robert De Niro can do anything. With Martin Scorsese, no mob movie has ever eluded his great acting skills. He can play tough, violent, and crazy. He also has a soft side (“Silver Linings Playbook”) and a funny one (“The Intern”).
In Barry Levinson’s throwback film, “The Alto Knights,” produced by Irwin Winkler, De Niro actually plays the two lead roles in a mob movie that’s sweet and sour. In a true story written by Nick Pileggi and set in 1957, De Niro plays childhood friends and mobsters Frank Costello — dapper, well spoken, who’s just trying to get out of the business — and Vito Genovese, scruffy, comically vicious — as frenemies who would slit the other’s throat despite their long association.
In the record business, they used to have A and B sides of singles sometimes so popular they went up the charts at the same time. De Niro’s Costello/Genovese is just like that. Watching him succeed at playing both parts simultaneously — often in the same scene — is like experiencing two hits at a time. And to carry the metaphor over, “with a bullet.”
Costello was the Boss of Bosses, a powerful mobster who survived several Mob wars, government scrutiny and an assassination attempt to control the powerful national Commission of Mafia bosses founded by Lucky Luciano. Born Francesco Castiglia in Italy, Costello came to the United States in 1895 to settle in Manhattan.
“The Alto Knights” — the name of the social club where these guys met in downtown New York in the old days — begins with Costello surviving a shooting in the elevator of his apartment building. His wife, played with exceptional grace and grit by Debra Messing, with her rich, conservative suits and tasteful jewelry — wants him out of the business already. It’s time to take their two little dogs and retire some place warm.
Frank wants to turn the business back over to his oldest friend, Vito Genovese, who’s just gotten out of prison after a long stretch. Genovese is fine with that, he wants his old life returned to him. But this is not so easily accomplished considering his own wife — Kathrine Narducci, in a star turn — is divorcing him loudly in court with a lot of press and no fear of anything, including being killed. She’s determined to expose his worst infractions.
Pileggi draws on his original source material from his book, “Wiseguy,” part of which was turned into the Scorsese movie, “Goodfellas.” Levinson’s movie, with exquisite cinematography from Dante Spinotti, thanks to Pileggi, is a cousin of “Goodfellas,” certainly. De Niro plays Genovese like a slightly less maniacal, more reasonable version (for a cold blooded murderer) of Joe Pesci’s frightening and funny Tommy DeVito from that film. De Niro’s nuances in the two characters are exceptionally layered both physically and intellectually.
Like “Goodfellas,” “Alto Knights” also depends on a narration (from Costello) which helps Levinson and Pileggi lay out the map of the story to make it easily understood. What is the difference between a Scorsese mob movie and one made by Levinson? Scorsese’s gangsters are tough and bloodless. Levinson paints a warmer picture where the mobsters seem like old friends. And these days, there’s nothing like seeing old friends no matter how badly they behaved.
Of course, even fairy tales must come to an end. Levinson and Pileggi set up a brilliant third act based on the famous 1957 Appalachin Meeting in upstate New York. This famous confab of not terribly bright mobsters — like a Lions Club convention — is the memorable pay off that makes “Alto Knights” a pleasure.
Bottom line: Levinson and co have made what we now call “a real movie,” worth go to see in a movie theater. That’s kind of a relief after going through this Oscar season.
“The Alto Knights” opens this Thursday night in previews.
Kanye West — a despicable example of evil fighting humanity — posted a “Nazi Song” on Instagram tonight.
He also posted a photo of his new logo — the Nazi SS sign — and a photo of his new world headquarters in whicb bright red swastikas are prpjected on the wall.
West — I will not call him Ye — thinks this is all a joke. He’s lost everything anyway. All his avenues back to the real world are blocked and no one will do business with him.
These posts come after a bunch I’ll add in the morning, plus the song is at the bottom. If you can call it a song. The miserable mouse droppings inside his head.
Twitter X and Instagram (Facebook) refuse to cancel his accounts. Elon Musk is no surprise. But don’t Mark Zuckerberg’s parents have anything to say? Or do they just like the checks>?
I told you before that Netflix’s “Electric State” was a bust.
The Russo Brothers’ film cost $320 million. If it had gone to theaters, the box office stories would have been wild. It’s that bad. I’ve seen it now, and it’s quite atrocious.
Now that other people have seen it on the streaming platform, the Rotten Tomatoes number is down to 15%.
Will Netflix subscribers sample it? Why not? It’s there on the service.
But so much is wrong with it. “Electric State” is set in the 90s, and it’s about a war with robots. Millie Bobby Brown is the heroine, but the star is really Chris Pratt.
The look, feel, and tone are of a bad (really bad) “ET” kind movie from the 80s — think “ET” and “Gremlins” — somehow combined with “Guardians of the Galaxy.” There’s actually no plot.
What do the Russos bring to “Electric State”? It literally begins like a Marvel movie. The music is edited to scenes in such a way that this could be the lost chapter of the “Avengers.”
And then a cavalcade of well known actors start appearing, one after the other. Many of them are wearing Dust Busters on their heads with front facing video screens. (If you want to know where the $320 million went, you’ll see it in endless CG! and green screen.)
Pay days besides Millie and Pratt went to Holly Hunter (Holly Hunter is in this movie!) Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito, Ke Huy Quan, Jason Alexander, Colman Domingo, Marin Hinkle, Anthony Mackie, and even one of the Russo’s wives. When they speak you can actually see the gears turning as the actors try to figure what they’re saying.
“Electric State” will go down in history as the “Ishtar” or “Waterworld” of streaming, even more than another infamous Netflix film, “The Gray Man.” (Still waiting for that sequel!)
The only redeeming feature: “Electric State” is under two hours long. It just stops eventually, and we’re so lucky for that!
Lady Gaga’s tremendous marketing push for her new album has paid off.
“Mayhem” sold 223,000 copies this week. Of those, 140,000 were CDs and downloads.
That’s what every artist wants, with streaming — which pays less — the least of sales.
In the UK, she sold around 55,000 copies.
Still, “Mayhem” fell behind The Weeknd’s “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” which debuted with 450,000 copies despite having any hit singles. Very strange.
“Mayhem” is a hit that should produce an album’s worth of singles — six right now on the iTunes top 100 — and last right through the year. If Gaga does a fall tour, even more copies will be downloaded or sold.
