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Oscars Alert: SAG Awards Make History and Point the Way to Academy Awards Winners in 4 Acting Categories

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I think we have the four acting winners for the Academy Awards on April 25th. After the SAG Awards last night, it’s pretty clear we know the names on the envelopes. The SAG Awards are incredibly accurate predictors of the Oscars as all Academy voters who are also actors are in the Screen Actors Guild.

The winners are history making, too. Three Black actors, and one South Korean. For the first time, no white actors have won the SAG acting awards for movies. This is an extraordinary moment. Additionally, the two lead actors– Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, are from a movie that wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

Then there’s Daniel Kaluuya, who’s had an amazing year playing Black Panther Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah.” Like all the SAG winners, he was told on Thursday that he’d won. Two days later he hosted “Saturday Night Live.” He must have been bursting to tell everyone, but had to keep it a secret.

Yuh-Jung Youn, who played the grandmother in “Minari,” doesn’t speak English well. She’s a star in South Korea. She’s 73, and sort of their Judi Dench. She was nearly in tears when she won last night. And I loved the expression on Glenn Close’s face. She was beaming with happiness for Youn. Everyone on their Zoom looked delighted.

Boseman, of course, is being rewarded for his incredible but short career posthumously. Davis has an Oscar, for “Fences,” but that’s in supporting. This will be her first win as a lead actress. She deserves that statue for her stunning transformation into Ma Rainey. While Frances McDormand is excellent in “Nomadland”– which I think will still win Best Picture– but she has two Oscars and has more or less abdicated. She knows it’s Davis’s moment.

Last night’s wins are particularly poignant while the trial of George Floyd’s accused murderer, Derek Chauvin proceeds, and while we’re in the middle of this insane time of violence against Asian Americans. What better symbols of justice could there be? Seeing those four with their gold statues on April 25th will be an absolute pleasure.

SAG Awards Winners: “Chicago 7,” Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Daniel Kaluuya, Youn Yuh-Jung Sweep Film Awards

The SAG AWARDS have given their top acting prizes in movies to four non white actors. It’s amazing and about time. Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman won for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Daniel Kaluuya won for “Judas and the Black Messiah,” Young Yuh-Jung won for “Minari.” Congrats! These actors will likely win Oscars on April 25th.

Best Ensemble went to “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Now this film will battle “Nomadland” for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Winners in bold face. keep refreshing…

Motion Picture Awards

Cast in a Motion Picture

“Da 5 Bloods”
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
“Minari”
“One Night In Miami”
“Trial of the Chicago 7”

Best Actor in a Motion Picture

Riz Ahmed, “Sound of Metal”
Chadwick Boseman, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Anthony Hopkins, “The Father”
Gary Oldman, “Mank”
Steven Yeun, “Minari”

Best Actress in a Motion Picture

Amy Adams, “Hillbilly Elegy”
Viola Davis, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Vanessa Kirby, “Pieces of a Woman”
Frances McDormand, “Nomadland”
Carey Mulligan, “Promising Young Woman”

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Sacha Baron Cohen, “The Trial of the Chicago 7”
Chadwick Boseman, “Da 5 Bloods”
Daniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah”
Jared Leto, “The Little Things”
Leslie Odom Jr., “One Night in Miami”


Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Maria Bakalova, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”
Glenn Close, “Hillbilly Elegy”
Olivia Colman, “The Father”
Youn Yuh-Jung, “Minari”
Helena Zengel, “News of the World”

Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture

“Da 5 Bloods”
“Mulan”
“News of the World”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7”
“Wonder Woman 1984”

Television Awards

Ensemble in a Drama Series

“Better Call Saul”
“Bridgerton”
“The Crown”
“Ozark”
“Lovecraft Country”

Best Actor in a Drama Series

Jason Bateman, “Ozark”
Sterling K. Brown, “This Is Us”
Josh O’Connor, “The Crown”
Bob Odenkirk, “Better Call Saul”
Regé-Jean Page, “Bridgerton”

Best Actress in a Drama Series

Gillian Anderson, “The Crown”
Olivia Colman, “The Crown”
Emma Corrin, “The Crown”
Julia Garner, “Ozark”
Laura Linney, “Ozark”

Ensemble in a Comedy Series

“Dead to Me”
“The Flight Attendant”
“The Great”
Schitt’s Creek”
“Ted Lasso”

Best Actor in a Comedy Series

Nicholas Hoult, “The Great”
Dan Levy, “Schitt’s Creek”
Eugene Levy, “Schitt’s Creek”
Jason Sudeikis, “Ted Lasso”
Ramy Youssef, “Ramy”

Best Actress in a Comedy Series

Christina Applegate, “Dead to Me”
Linda Cardellini, “Dead to Me”
Kaley Cuoco, “The Flight Attendant”
Annie Murphy, “Schitt’s Creek”
Catherine O’Hara, “Schitt’s Creek”

Best Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series

Bill Camp, “The Queen’s Gambit”
Daveed Diggs, “Hamilton”
Hugh Grant, “The Undoing”
Ethan Hawke, “The Good Lord Bird”
Mark Ruffalo, “I Know This Much Is True

Best Actress in a Television Movie or Limited Series

Cate Blanchett, “Mrs. America”
Michaela Coel, “I May Destroy You”
Nicole Kidman, “The Undoing”
Anya Taylor-Joy, “The Queen’s Gambit”
Kerry Washington, “Little Fires Everywhere”

Stunt Ensemble in a Comedy or Drama Series

“The Boys”
“Cobra Kai”
“Lovecraft Country”
“The Mandalorian”
“Westworld”

“60 Minutes” Profiles Black President of the Ford Foundation, Omitting First Black CEO Franklin Thomas, Who’s Very Much Alive

I find myself frustrated lately watching CBS News. I’ve already written about how “CBS Sunday Morning” screwed around with Woody Allen.

Now I’m watching Lesley Stahl’s report on Darren Walker, the current head of the Ford Foundation. Yes, he’s Black and grew up poor. He’s achieved a lot. But he’s not the first Black president of the Ford Foundation.

That was Franklin Thomas, who’s 86 years old and very much alive. He must have watched tonight’s segment and thought, “What am I? Chopped liver.” Thomas ran the Ford Foundation from 1979 to 1996. I never knew him, but I friends who worked for him and he was very highly regarded.

Here’s just the beginning of his bio from Wikipedia: “Franklin Augustine Thomas was born on May 27, 1934 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. After the death of his father, his mother, Viola, an immigrant from Barbados, headed the household where he was the youngest of six children as a housekeeper and waitress. He attended the Franklin K. Lane High School. Thomas graduated from Columbia College in 1956, where he was a star basketball player and the first African-American captain of an Ivy League team. He later graduated from the Columbia Law School 1963 after a stint in the Air Force.”

Thomas was also quite the ladies’ man, and with brand name ladies. He had a thing with Gloria Steinem in the early 70s, then married FDR’s granddaughter. Now that’s a success story!

Any, if Mr. Thomas reads this, he should know he hasn’t been forgotten. Lesley made Darren Walker seem like a pioneer. I’m sure in some way he is, but Franklin Walker was first! He once said, “One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”

I’m not sure how Thomas was left out of the story, by the way. It turns out the big boardroom at the Ford Foundation is named for him.

Very strange.

 

 

Paul Simon Is On the Same High Level as the Beatles, Dylan, As the All The Major Songwriters of the Classic Pop Era

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As the great rock and pop songwriters are nearing 80 and selling catalogs, it’s time to look back at what became the canon in our culture. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson, Carole King, the Motown gang (HDH, Ashford and Simpson) and so on.

I’m thinking about how smart part of NBCNews.com let a writer named Jeff Slate slag off Paul Simon this week on their website. He called him a “footnote” to Dylan. It was just extraordinarily stupid, and earned this person the ire of every music and culture writer who heard about it. I imagine this guy is enjoying his notoriety.

Paul Simon doesn’t need any help from me. He’s rich, and I think, happy. Plus he knows his place in history. I do recall, though, that Rolling Stone, reviewing Simon’s self titled first album, said something like: “If Paul Simon was worried about his place in history, with this album he no longer has to.”

Indeed.

Much has been written in Simon’s defense using “Bridge Over Troubled Water” as his masterpiece, which is probably right. But his catalog is much deeper than that, and that’s like saying “Like a Rolling Stone” is Dylan’s one stand out. There are few lyricists at Simon’s level, whether it’s “The Boxer” or “American Tune” or the songs from “Graceland.” I have a few favorites like “Rewrite,” from a recent album, or “Fathers and Daughters,” or “Rene and Georgette Magritte With their Dog After the War.”

Simon is far more acerbic than Dylan in his wording. In his compositions, he finds the hook more easily, and invokes jazz and Tin Pan Alley in ways that recall Gershwin and Porter. Billy Joel is definitely his descendant. Go back to the album “Still Crazy After All These Years,” from 1975. It’s a watershed moment, even for Simon, who’d just had two or three groundbreaking collections precede it. There’s a reason he and Stevie Wonder were locked in a fight for the first half of that decade. And Dylan — with the exception of “Forever Young” and “Blood on the Tracks” — wasn’t. They were in an unparalleled zone of creativity.

So “footnote”? Not quite. They’ll be singing “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls” long after we’re gone.

Meantime, I found this Dick Cavett Show clip in which Simon explains how he wrote “Bridge,” sort of lifting it from a bunch of different ideas that came from gospel. (Much the same way he adapted gospel for “Love Me Like a Rock.”) It’s fascinating and also instructive because when Aretha Franklin heard it, she knew it was gospel. She reinvented the song, had a huge hit with it just one year after Simon & Garfunkel, and kept playing it and working it right up until her very last show. When I mentioned this to Simon once, he told me to tell her that once he heard her version, he started playing it. This just about as high a compliment as two artists of their caliber could pay to each other. Nothing else matters.

(And don’t tell it’s cultural appropriation. Dylan wouldn’t have existed without Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and so on. Every artist of value builds on his or her influences.)

NBC News, Think again.

 

“Saturday Night Live” Remains Stuck at All Time Low Rating with Host Daniel Kaluuya and Musical Guest St. Vincent

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“Saturday Night Live” remains at its all time low rating– 3.6 million– after last night’s desperately off key show.

Daniel Kaluuya was guest host and St. Vincent was musical guest, moving the key demo up a notch to 1.7 from last week’ s 1.5.

But the show was not funny, or clever. Almost every bit of hit the wrong note, starting with the cold open of Britney Spears interviewing Lil Nas X and Matt Gaetz. That was not an opening bit. The audience wants to see a cold open of political satire now. The show isn’t getting it.

Kaluuya’s monologue about British and US racism was off putting, not witty. He tried to help it along, but only Dave Chappelle could get away with material like that.

I’m a big Kyle Mooney fan but that video about apologies lost me. I’m guessing it lost almost everyone.

St. Vincent? She’s interesting, I felt like we needed Cliff Notes to understand what she was doing. She’s been around for 15 years but has never had a hit and has a cult audience, I guess. I wish I’d know more about what to expect from her. Her performances were artful.

The Weekend Update hit some sour notes. It was one Jost and Che’s off nights. Nothing seemed to land, and the Gaetz stuff wasn’t that funny.

Who knows? Maybe the “SNL” squad is as tired as we are. Kate McKinnon still has a glint in her eye, but she’s feeling a little pedestrian. Not enough Cecily Strong. And why aren’t we seeing Beck Bennett in more leads instead of backgrounds?

Not a great effort. On to the next week, and Carey Mulligan, lots of potential with “Promising Young Woman” parodies.

Box Office: Pandemic Over? “Godzilla v Kong” Makes Monstrous $48.5 Mil in Opening Week

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Is the pandemic over?

May be.

In its opening week, from last Wednesday through today, “Godzilla v Kong” made a monstrous $48.5 million. That was in fairly wide release, 3000 theaters. (Kong no longer uses “King,” his first name, patterning himself after Madonna.)

The film stars Alexander Skarsgaard, Millie Bobby Brown, and Rebecca Hall, among others. Plus, of course, the leads.

Did people wear masks? Did anyone care? Was everyone vaccinated? Who knows?

Ironically, the battle of the CGI titans comes from Warner Bros., which also had “G v K” on HBO Max, so the movie made even more for those who invited the gnarly pair into their living and bedrooms.

Elsewhere at the box office, a real movie — “Minari,” an Oscar movie — has made $2 million. But “Nomadland,” which may win Best Picture, is playing somewhere but there are no box office results reported. What a year!

Hunter Biden’s Performance as Eddie Haskell on “CBS Sunday Morning” is a “Beautiful Thing,” May Alter Oscar Race for Best Actor

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Hunter Biden has suddenly jumped out front in the Oscar race. After his performance on “CBS Sunday Morning” this morning, Hunter’s work as Eddie Haskell (look it up, kids) may push him past Chadwick Boseman and Anthony Hopkins for an Academy Award.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Joe Biden, and Jill Biden. I support his presidency totally. But this whole campaign to rehab Hunter with this book, “Beautiful Things,” is a hoot. Whoever set up that segment on “Sunday Morning” today deserves the PR award of the century.

Indeed, the whole book idea is great. The idea is to admit everything, cry a lot, and get everyone’s sympathy. If he’d just stayed quiet and in the background, I wouldn’t have given Hunter another thought. But this campaign is so cynical, I burst out laughing.

Also, really a segment lasting nine minutes and 44 seconds in which not a serious question is asked is the last straw. And since he’s offering his personal life up for inspection, what happened to the woman he had a baby with, didn’t want to take responsibility while he was dating his sister-in-law? I really wanted Tracy Smith to ask him about all that. Plus, his new wife and baby. If you’re not going to get into his business life, at least talk about that.

Oh, Eddie Haskell. Without a doubt.

Jon Voight’s Anti-Abortion “Roe v. Wade” Movie is Out, with a Zero on Rotten Tomatoes, and No Distribution

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Who knew?

Jon Voight’s anti-abortion movie, “Roe v. Wade,” has had a stealth release for Easter weekend. There are five reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, all negative. One is from the New York Times, which called it “hammy.” The score: Zero.

You can buy the DVD for “Roe v. Wade” but you can’t rent it or stream it on Nextflix, Apple or Amazon. The movie has no distribution. It’s not in theaters.

“Roe v. Wade” is a screed against abortion co-directed (and financed) by Nick Loeb, the moronic rich kid who dated “Modern Family” actress Sofia Vergara and then sued her for her stored eggs. (Even though they’d broken up he wanted her children.)

Loeb is the son of 90 year old former Reagan appointee ambassador John Loeb, a top Republican donor (major money to McConnell, et al). In 1996, Nick’s mother, Meta Martindell Harrsen, killed her estranged third husband, Jeffrey Bauer, and then herself in a tabloid scandal murder suicide. (Her married name was Meta Bauer, coincidentally one of the first soap opera characters on TV from the 1950s.)

Nick’s claim to fame, other than trying to hijack a TV star’s fertilized eggs, was marketing a condiment no one wanted called Onion Crunch. (See if you can find it in your grocery store.)

Nick has taken his father’s money — John Loeb is from the famed Loeb-Lehman banking and real estate dynasty– to underwrite “Roe v. Wade,” which has an all star cast of D Listers including himself (he acts in it), ex wacky Fox Newser Stacey Dash, former kid star Joey Lawrence, Jamie Kennedy (still alive), Corbin Bernsen (mother Jeanne Cooper turning in her grave), nut job right winger Robert Davi, and Duke of Hazzard John Schneider. Sadly, Steve Guttenberg is involved. So is Kelsey Grammer’s daughter, Greer.

In this Supreme Court untelling of the “Roe v. Wade” case, Voight plays Supreme Court Justice Warren Berger. Voight is old now, and has destroyed most of what his stellar career that came from movies like “Midnight Cowboy” and “Coming Home.” He lost his mind some time ago endorsing Trump over and over, sucking up to him until he got a quote-unquote Presidential Medal of Freedom. It’s hard to imagine that he and daughter Angelina Jolie (herself in hot pursuit of trying to destroy former baby daddy Brad Pitt) have much to discuss at a dinner table.

“Roe v. Wade” so far can’t be streamed in any conventional place. Maybe one day it will drift onto a platform by accident until some subscriber complains. But it’s likely just a vanity project, money out the window for Loeb, his father. and something called the Susan B. Anthony List Inc. which is billed as an executive producer. They’re a 501 c3 from Virginia that pays million in salaries to its executives while promising its donors it will eradicate abortion. Suckers.

 

Rapper DMX, 50, Is in “Grave Condition” and Possible “Vegetative State” After Overdose, Heart Attack

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Influential rapper DMX is in what’s described as grave condition and a possible vegetative state after an overdose and a heart attack.

The news was reported by TMZ that DMZ, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was rushed to White Plains Hospital in Westchester County, New York. It doesn’t sound good.

Simmons has had a lifelong struggle with addiction and substance abuse. He’s been in rehab many times. He’s also recently been in jail for tax evasion.

Sending prayers and good wishes to his family.

Taylor Swift Will Drop Re-Recorded “Fearless” Album Next Friday, April 9th with Special Guest Keith Urban

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Hello, Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta: Taylor Swift is dropping her re-recorded “Fearless” album on Friday, April 9th. The $300 million Braun got for selling Taylor’s masters to an investment firm is going up in flames. (I’m surprised they haven’t asked for their money back.)

Taylor writes: “I’m really honored that @KeithUrban is a part of this project, duetting on That’s When and singing harmonies on We Were Happy. I was his opening act during the Fearless album era and his music has inspired me endlessly.”

Two singles from the remastered album have already been hits. Watch the album hit number 1 on April 16th without too much trouble.