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I’m told that Steven Soderbergh’s “Let Them All Talk,” is heading to the Oscars. It’s being put in competition as a motion picture in this odd year.
HBO Max, which never existed before, is the studio of record. Parent company HBO is not used to having a Best Picture possibility with all the other trimmings. But this is it. Meryl Streep– who will get Golden Globes musical category attention for “The Prom” — is a cinch for Best Actress nods from this film.
Soderbergh directed and edited this story from a script by short story writer Deborah Eisenberg. Soderbergh has 2 Oscars, Streep has 3. Co-star Dianne Wiest has 2. So of course this movie– and it’s a movie, no “Love Boat” — has to be high in the mix for the Academy Awards.
The big surprise may be Candice Bergen, who has a raft of Emmy Awards, and many fine performances on film. When reviews break on Thursday, watch for to be cited. It’s about time. I loved her a couple of years ago in Noah Baumach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories.” She never stops getting better.
For the young folks, “Let Them All Talk” has the hot star of his generation, Lucas Hedges. His contribution is major.
Will HBO hire an Oscar specialist for this film? Will anyone from HBO return my emails about this film? They should know when I queried a colleague about this movie recently, I got a shrug back. A profile boost may be needed.
Bravo! Ellen Page was always the coolest kid, and now she’s done something really brave. She’s come out on social media as transgender, she’s now using different pronouns– he/they– and a new name, Elliot. From here on, so be it, Elliot is a terrific actor who’s going to blaze new trails. He says in his post below he’s afraid jokes and hate. There better not be any of that. Welcome, Elliot!
PS Ellen was nominated for an Oscar for “Juno.” I have no doubt Elliot will be nominated for one in the future and be a record-setter in the process.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, someone once said. Ryan Murphy certainly had plenty of good intentions in adapting a mediocre Broadway musical for Netflix with big stars. “The Prom” was fun on Broadway but enervating. Even though it’s a tribute to inclusion, its songs– which are still the biggest part of a musical– were never much more than billboards for the plot. Sorry. The show wasn’t a hit when it ran a couple of years ago.
How did it keep going as long as it did? The cast, led by Beth Leavel and Brooks Ashmanskas, was just like the characters they played: terrific Broadway performers who were now down on their luck a little. In the show, they’ve just closed a huge flop on opening night, a musical about Eleanor Roosevelt. Convinced they must come up with a cause to help them win good publicity, they head– with friends– to Indiana to help a gay high school girl gain acceptance to her prom.
But now we have Meryl Streep and James Corden, plus Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannels, not to mention Kerry Washington, Keegan Michael Key, guest spots from Mary Kay Place and Tracey Ullman. We’ve also got the two young lesbians in love: the excellent Jo Ellen Pellman, and Ariana de Bose (soon to be in Spielberg’s “West Side Story” and a lock for a movie about Meghan Markle).
The opening is a sparkling kind of “Forbidden Broadway” as it’s all about inside stuff satirizing the Great White Way. Broadway enthusiasts will love the lyrics to the opening song, “It’s Not About Me,” because of course, it IS all about them. And there’s nothing better than when this posse arrives at a two star hotel and Streep presents her Tony Awards in order to get a suite (which they don’t have– and I don’t understand why we don’t actually see the rooms after all this fuss).
Within the first hour, Emma’s prom occurs, she’s tricked, and the show, I’m afraid, is over. This is what happened on Broadway. The plot is so thin that once we’ve crested to the reason we’ve all come to this town, we are done. The next almost hour is taken up with trying to fix the problem of the prom having just occurred and the gays not getting in. Plus Emma’s girlfriend, Alyssa, has thrown her under the bus. In the live theater I lost interest, and I did here, too.
Nicole Kidman, who’s just had a big success with “The Undoing” on HBO, has a tertiary role here– third billed, and her character of Angie, the has been chorus girl, remains underdeveloped. Kidman has a terrific number in the second hour, a satire of Bob Fosse and “Chicago,” that I could watch as a separate clip. But she’s a little wasted in this film. I think she just wanted to have fun, and it’s clear she does.
I’m seeing a lot of criticism for James Corden in other reviews. I liked him. Am I wrong? I think he has great musical talents, and he certainly can keep up with Streep, who’s his main scene partner. Streep is spot on playing all the notes she can find, but they’ve put her in an odd romantic situation with Keegan Michael Key, who’s 20 years her junior. On stage, that relationship made sense because the school principal and Dee Dee were the same age and the same points in their lives. Much as I love KMK, this was a part for Glynn Turman.
(Here’s an irony: Turman and Michael Potts, the original actor from the stage who played Key’s part, are featured in a great movie, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Potts was good enough for that film, but not a big enough name for this one, the role he created. Crazy.)
Netflix is the right place for “The Prom.” In theaters this would not have played after a big first weekend in main markets. On Netflix, it can find a long life and many Golden Globe nominations. Oscars? I’m not so sure. Ironically, Meryl Streep is in another streaming movie, Steven Soderbergh’s “Let Them All Talk,” which could be Academy fodder if HBO Max steps up to that idea.
I think about Francis Ford Coppola a lot. He’s our Orson Welles, isn’t he? He made these two masterpieces, the first and second “Godfather” movies. They’re like the Beatles of the movies. Then he made “Apocalypse Now.” Genius again. The rest of his resume is good and bad, with highlights and disappointments, and it doesn’t matter. (I really liked “Peggy Sue Got Married,” actually.) His work is done.
Why he made “The Godfather III” in 1989, released in 1990, remains a sticking point. Why not just leave perfection alone? But I guess the money was too good, and he had most of the actors, so why not? The movie was met with derision. The biggest problem was his daughter, Sofia, who replaced Winona Ryder at the last minute playing Michael Corleone’s daughter, Mary. She had no acting experience and retained an 80s Valley Girl stance. She was reamed in reviews. No one could have guessed that Sofia would go on to become a talented and important film director in her own right.
“The Godfather III” was also very convoluted. What was it about? It was like taking Hamlet and adding another act to his story. When we left Michael Corleone, he’d had his brother, Fredo, killed for betraying him, Kay, his wife, had left with their children. His brother, Sonny, and father, Don Corleone, were dead. He’d taken the family to Vegas, bought casinos, and wound up alone. It was a chilling end to a tragedy. So now what?
For “Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone,” Coppola gets a rare second chance to fix his own mistakes. He digs 40 minutes into the original film and pulls out a plot-defining moment between Michael (Al Pacino) and Archbishop Gilday. the priest in charge of Vatican funds, at St. Patrick’s Cathedal (the amazing Donal Donnelly). Now the new version begins with Michael proposing basically that the Corleone’s divest from Vegas and buy the Vatican’s debt. So we at least know what the movie is about.
From then on, Coppola shortens the movie by about 20 minutes by cutting away his old, former opening that ponderously recapped Fredo’s death and included a ceremony at which Michael gets a big award. Instead. we go straight from St. Patrick’s to Michael inviting his estranged grown kids to a family party celebrating the Vito Corleone Foundation. Whew! The party, which arrived later in the original film, reflects the original film’s wedding. Various people come to Michael for favors. There’s an intimation of trouble brewing with the other mob families, and we launch ever more quickly into “Coda.”
The good news is that Sofia Coppola, with the long knives no longer out for her, is fine. She’s not a great actress, but she makes Mary convincingly vulnerable. The central plot turn in both films remains Mary’s incestuous relationship with Vincent, the bastard son of Sonny and the girl he knocked up at his own wedding, Lucy Mancini. (Page 27 in the hardcover, I was 13.) It’s still very creepy, this relationship. But Andy Garcia is outstanding as Vincent. I think he would have had a bigger career if not for the way “The Godfather III” was received.
Now that the plot has been resolved, you can sort of calm down and enjoy other aspects of the film. Al Pacino is just stunning. I don’t know what Coppola’s other cuts were (it doesn’t seem like many) but Pacino, to me, is mesmerizing. He carries the film, of course, and he’s magnetic. In the film, it’s been 18 years since he left Michael Corleone to grieve, and he knows the character is dying (diabetes, other medical issues). He’s trying to save his family and prepare them for the future. But their time is over. The romance of the mob is becoming a legend, not a sustainable plan. And of course, the film still gives Pacino one of his great movie lines in history: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
Some things remain bewilderments. Bridget Fonda was miscast as Vincent’s one night stand. Fonda stands out like a sore thumb because you think, she’s a star, she’ll turn up later. She just disappears. But mostly there are just some real gems here: Talia Shire, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, and George Hamilton are all rather terrific in their supporting roles. (Wallach is really sensational.) Diane Keaton, I love her, but she’s dressed and coiffed like Annie Hall, not Kay Corleone. Keaton the actress comes through, though: her look of anguish and grief in the movie’s big climax is incendiary. Look at her eyes. They are wild with the horror of what her participation in this family has cost.
“Coda” is supposedly playing in theaters somewhere beginning December 4th. If it’s not at the Ziegfeld, I don’t care. Blu Ray, DVD. and streaming commence December 8th. If you’re a Godfather fan– and who isn’t?–you must return once more to the scene of the crime.
K-Pop and iTunes have a lot more in common than funny names. They are complicit in the gaming of the pop charts.
A new album from Korean boy band Got7 isn’t officially released until December 2nd. But today it sprung out and went straight to number 1 on iTunes. How is that possible? iTunes only counts advance orders toward the first day of release. Nevertheless, K Pop albums– largely unknown to American audiences and not often played on the radio– are holding down the top positions on the iTunes top 100 album chart.
That’s because K-Pop fans metaphorically “stuff the ballot box.” They pile on sales over and over in the first week of a new release to push it to number 1. They do the same thing with singles. The result is that the K-Pop records take over all the top positions on the charts for a week or less. Then they quickly recede as the fan clubs stop ordering. The records fade because they have no “legs.”
Last week, BTS– the NSync of K-Pop, released an English language album called “BE.” It shot to the top of the charts. Sales of CDs and downloads were 136,000. Total sales including streaming came to 220,000. That put them at number 1.
A week later, “BE” has sold just 5,000 CDs and downloads on Friday and Saturday. The total is 10,000. This latest BTS party is basically over. Now it’s Got7’s turn and other lesser groups like Kai and Enhyphen, whose 6 track EPs are getting the phanthom push this week.
It doesn’t seem exactly fair to acts like Miley Cyrus and Bad Bunny, each of whom released new albums on Friday playing by the regular rules. They will hope to build their albums’ popularity over time, radio play and so on. When you don’t have throngs of superfans buying multiple copies to game the system, those acts will score between 70K and 100K copies for their opening weeks.
Miley Cyrus’s “Plastic Hearts,” by the way, is a solid grade A pop album with plenty of singles on it. The only questionable track is her Dua Lipa duet, called “Prisoner,” which sounds suspiciously like Olivia Newton John’s “Physical.”
Abby Dalton has died at age 88. A prolific long legged TV actress with a fetching smile, she was sexy and relatable which made her a staple on TV from 1957 to 1962.
But her breakouts were starring on two shows at once, “The Joey Bishop Show” and Jackie Cooper’s “Hennesey.” The prime time sitcoms were broadcast between ’62 and ’65, cinching Dalton’s celebrity. She was one of my early TV crushes that included Inger Stevens and Diane Baker. Those were the days!
Through the 70s and 80s, Abby Dalton was a regular on just about every game show and a guest star on dozens of prime time shows. In 1981 she debuted on the hit CBS nighttime soap “Falcon Crest” as Julia Cumson, the mother of Lorenzo Lamas and the daughter of Jane Wyman. Julia was crazy, which made her a lot of fun as she went about killing people and hiding out.
Just to show how weird Hollywood is, Dalton’s real life daughter, actress Kathleen Kinmont, was briefly married to Lorenzo Lamas, who played Abby’s son on “Falcon Crest.” (She was number 3 of 5.) Kinmont and Lamas co-starred on a syndicated show called “Renegade.”
Hats off to Abby Dalton. She was one of the more pleasant presences offered on TV in a more innocent age. Condolences to her family.
Videos: This was the best cliffhanger of any of the Lorimar shows. You had a to wait all summer to find out who was in the coffin. Michael Filerman wrote it. We miss him! I’m sure he’s welcoming Abby to a special part of heaven for “Dallas,” “Knots Landing,” and “Falcon Crest.”
and look! Bobby Darin was a guest star on “Hennesey”
Actor-writer-director Colton Dunn has played Garrett on NBC’s “Superstore” for five seasons, or 102 episodes.
But when he signed for a virtual production meeting, whoever was accepting the invites to the Zoom meeting didn’t know who he was.
Dunn Tweeted a picture of the message. “Hello, I don’t recognize this name. Can you please let me know how you are related to the show?” a P.A. texted him.
Dunn, with great restraint, wrote back: “I play Garrett.”
Stupid is everywhere these days. But in Hollywood, this is par for the course. Maybe the PA should watch the show.
Dunn has a long and impressive career resume, with runs on “Park and Recreation” and “Key and Peele.”
The Monday after Thanksgiving usually brings the Gotham Awards. Much more important that the Spirit Awards, the Gothams kicked off the awards season. They were also the first gathering of the New York film community after a week off, so there was always a little extra buzz down at Cipriani Wall Street, where they’ve been held the last few years.
Alas, the Gothams have been moved to January 11th, if they happen at all in person because really that’s a short time from now to vaccinate the 1,000 people who will turn up for this event. I’m really bereft but since we’re having a hurricane today in New York, I guess it’s just as well.
When and if the Gotham Awards ever do happen, “Nomadland” will win and so will Frances McDormand. I just watched “Nomadland” again on my press link, and it’s essentially the Best Picture. Much will happen between now and April, when the Oscars come, but Chloe Zhao may be the first female Best Director, and Asian to boot. Her work is exceptional.
Chadwick Boseman will win Best Actor at the Gothams posthumously for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” He deserves it, and here he’s not in competition with Anthony Hopkins (whose film, “The Father,” everyone will see shortly). Best Doc will go to “Time,” from Amazon Prime.
Well, I’ll miss standing outside Cipriani tonight, it’s usually very cold. I really miss friends from Frank PR, Lina Plath and Clare Ann Darragh, and their amazing staff, and Mike Zimet, who runs the world and keeps everyone safe. Until a couple of years ago we always had an awkward comedian who tried to make jokes about the movies, so I’ll miss him, too.
The one great tragedy of this awards season is not being able to meet people from the movies. If this were a regular year, I’m sure Searchlight would bring all the real people/actors like Swankie and Linda May from “Nomadland.” It’s our loss that we don’t get to meet them. I salute you, Nomads!
“The Undoing” is over. The murder of Elena Alves has been solved. The real killer was not Nicole, or Donald Sutherland or the kid or Lily Rabe.
In fact, even the little things we hoped tied up loose ends weren’t explored. The last twenty minutes jumped every shark it could find, looking for OJ’s Bronco. All the red herrings came to nothing. This was a disappointment.
It’s a sign of the times that so many people were obsessed with “The Undoing” as it progressed. I watched all five episodes at one in a press cue. I couldn’t “put it down,” so to speak.
Maybe one reason was that it looked like our fantasies before the pandemic ended everything. Everyone’s rich and happy or unhappy, money seems to be the answer to everything until it isn’t. No one is wearing a mask, Trump isn’t brow beating the news, it’s like a dream of something long ago.
Can you imagine all that happening to the Frasers in the middle of the pandemic? Oh, no, Masks and social distancing. Bodies piling up in the morgue behind Lenox Hill? No time for a good affair and murder now, folks. We. are. busy.
So in the end David E. Kelley and Jean Hanff Korelitz did not turn out to Alfred Hitchcock or Perry Mason or even Agatha Christie. But it was fun, and that’s what we needed. And Nicole Kidman will get more awards. I saw her today in “The Prom” coming to Netflix, and let me say, 2020 has been her year.
CBS Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith got a good scoop this morning. George Clooney tells her he uses the Flow-bee to cut his hair. Clooney is a movie star, international celebrity, worth about $500 million. “My hair’s like straw, you can’t make too many mistakes,” he says.
Clooney is promoting a film he directed for Netflix, I’m told.
