Yaphet Kotto Was 81

Yaphet F. Kotto on Robert Mitchum

There are sturdy favorites in the handicapping—Nomadland a few lengths ahead of the tied pair Minari and Trial of Chicago 7—but also categories with stirrings of a horserace. Sentiment has turned heavily toward Carey Mulligan (versus Frances McDormand) as well as Yuh-Jung Youn. Riz Ahmed and Anthony Hopkins draw about the same favor but some yards behind Chadwick Boseman; Daniel Kaluuya is prize among supporting male performances.

Nomadland is a far reach from other Adapted Screenplay nominees, including surprise back-of-the-pack The White Tiger. Stalk-and-talk Promising Young Woman and walk-and-talk Trial Of Chicago 7 are only words away from each other.

Nomadland leads for cinematography, but Mank is smoking right behind; Nomadland vies with close-at-hand Trial of Chicago 7 in the Editing heat.

The Gurus are definitely drunk on Another Round for International, while Production design seems to be on the scent of Mank while Tenet is lost to time.

Emma. and Mank are right on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in the Costume Design department. In Makeup & Hair, Ma Rainey reigns over Meemaw in Hillbilly Elegy and Mank inside Mank.

Tenet suits up for lead in Visual Effects.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Gurus

Thelma Adams: Author, Top Critic on Rotten Tomatoes, Oscar Expert Twitter
Robyn Bahr: Freelance (Washington Post, GQ, Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, Guardian) Twitter
Gregory Ellwood: The Playlist Twitter
Peter Howell: Toronto Star Twitter
Mark Johnson: Awards Daily Twitter
Dave Karger: TCM, IMDb Twitter
Wilson Morales: BlackFilmAndTV.com Twitter
Michael Patterson: Michael’s Telluride Film Blog; Twitter
David Poland: Movie City News Twitter
Steve Pond: The Wrap, Twitter
NathanielR: The Film Experience Twitter
Jeff Sneider: Collider Twitter
Sasha Stone: Awards Daily Twitter

The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial Of The Chicago 7

Mank: 10 nominations; The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Minari, Nomadland, Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7, each 6; Promising Young Woman, 5

BYOB Oscar Nomination Morning

Times Goes Grim With Nominations Preview: “Such is life on Hollywood’s virtual awards scene, where the pandemic has vaporized the froth (Champagne toasts! Standing ovations! Red-carpet reunions!) and created an atmosphere more akin to a dirge. There is a dearth of buzz because people aren’t congregating. Screenings and voter-focused Q. and A. sessions have moved online, adding to existential worries about the future of cinema in the streaming age.”

“Angry readers wrote to The Times in response to my favorable review of the series, insisting I was part of a lynch mob: “Shame on you!” Others railed against it on Twitter as an HBO hit piece. Heated arguments ensued across Facebook. Some of the upset was understandable: Robert Weide, who directed “American Masters’” “Woody Allen: A Documentary,” spoke out in favor of his friend,  complaining in a blog post that most of the press was guilty of “swallowing the HBO series whole, seemingly thrilled that someone was finally taking Allen down.But the immediacy and intensity of those who presumably don’t know Allen personally was puzzling. His apex as a filmmaker was more than 30 years ago. The accusations detailed in “Allen v. Farrow” are nearly as old. Why are these fans so invested in defending him?”

George Clooney Comes Down In Favor Of Britain Returning Parthenon Marbles To Origin In Greece

Billie Eilish takes Grammy For Theme From Unreleased Bond Film That Some Think Apocryphal

Almodóvar: “I love actresses, and this is an iconic piece for iconic divas. What I like about him and this text is the excess that is purely melodramatic, but that, because of his talent as a writer, acquires a style that’s superior to melodrama. Abandonment is also a dramatic element that has always interested me. An abandoned woman is a bomb that can blow up at any time. In my films there is more than one abandoned woman, fueled to recover the person she loves, to change her life, or to overcome their situation.”

“When I worked at the Hormel meat-packing plant, I did dream – a lot! – that I was best friends with Schwarzenegger. You know those dreams when you have when you’re just so drunk? Well, look, if you work on the kill floor of a meat packing plant, you will get drunk every night. But eventually that crazy dream came true! So I go out to meet Jim Cameron at his house, he’s nice to me, and then he says, “Okay, do the audition scene.” I said, “Yeah, I didn’t learn the audition scene.” He says, “What?!” I said, “Well, because I know I’m not getting the movie, so why even try?” But he sighs, and he goes, “Well, since you’re here, just read it off the paper. It’s three pages.” I read it one time. He’s, like, “Get Arnold down here.” Again, up until then, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the guy from my dreams at Hormel, an bodybuilding star of the world, an action star and now he’s walking down the stairs. We do this scene together one time. Sometimes in life, something clicks. Well, something clicked there, I tell ya, and it worked. And Jim Cameron said, “You got the part, Tom.” I was, like, “Holy shit!” And he goes, “But don’t tell anyone for two weeks.” A Few Words From Tom Arnold

“Why We Pay Writers: The Thinking Behind Substack Pro,” by Hamish McKenzie

Joe Flint: “WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar is asked about future of Turner networks at AT&T investor day and says he is “big fan” of them. “That’s a damn good business. They generate a lot of cash flow as well” and investment needs to continue there.”

“Jason Kilar says he’s “very encouraged” by early results of WarnerMedia’s decision to release films day-and-date on HBO Max. He says movies “are often” the first title viewed among new subscribers & the service has seen a reduction in churn”

“The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced that theaters will be allowed to reopen at 25% capacity sometime between Monday and Wednesday of next week.”

Disney’s Bob Chapek: “I think the consumer is probably more impatient than they’ve ever been before. Particularly since now they’ve had the luxury of an entire year of getting titles at home pretty much when they want them. So I’m not sure there’s going back, but we certainly don’t want to do anything like cut the legs off a theatrical exhibition run. I don’t think they’ll have much of a tolerance for a title, say, being out of theatrical for months, yet it hasn’t had a chance to actually be thrown into the marketplace in another distribution channel, just sort of sitting there getting dust.”

“I saw horrendous things there. I ended up in a flat. We went out for a drink on a Sunday and met some people. We went back to their basement flat and I said, “Well, I’m going to have a pee.” And they said, “There’s a bucket in the corner.” It was really serious poverty. There was a pram down there, and the woman who owned the flat was knitting baby clothes, and she’d lost the baby a year before, but she’d forgotten. These were very deprived people.”
Mike Hodges Recalls Get Carter Half-A-Century Later

“De Niro was given a copy of LaMotta’s autobiography by LaMotta (right). Inside the cover, he inscribed: “To Bob De Niro! According to Pete [Savage, LaMotta’s childhood friend] – the only actor in the world that could play my crazy ‘whacked out’ life and make it come alive again … With love, Jake LaMotta.” De Niro said he was suitably intrigued and took the book to Scorsese.”

“AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc said the roll-out of vaccines and the release of movies would boost sales this year, sending the company’s shares up 9%. AMC’s shares have more than doubled in the last 12 months, with the recent surge coming as a result of being one of the so-called ‘stonks’ – a term used to describe stocks with convoluted prospects that are popular with retail traders on online forums.”

Kim Masters on “Saving Joel Silver”: “Silver was so eager to start anew with someone else’s money that he had flown by private jet to Saudi Arabia and sat at dinner with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (A companion on that trip describes the scene as something out of a Bond film.) It was mere weeks after an outraged world had learned of the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”

Netflix To Clamp Down On Password Sharing?

Drone Buzz: “A drone operator shot a short video in a Minneapolis bowling alley to rally support for the business. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media and won high praise from Hollywood directors.”

“This kind of wonderful photographic innovation adds to the language and vocabulary of cinema. Just beautiful.”

James Gunn: “Oh my God this drone shot is stupendous. I want them to come with us to London later this year when we shoot ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.'”

Filmmaker Jay Christensen: “What’s up James. I shot this.”