OVP: Paris Blues (1961)

Film: Paris Blues (1961)
Stars: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, Louis Armstrong
Director: Martin Ritt
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This week for our review theme we're focusing on movies that were Oscar-nominated for their music in some capacity.  Today we're venturing into the early 1960's, with Martin Ritt doing one of his less memorable outings with Paul Newman.  The film, despite the blockbuster cast (look at that call sheet!) is not really remembered for anything at all today, and in 1961 the film itself wasn't really noteworthy for anything either.  It wasn't the mammoth hit that The Hustler was for Newman that same year, and so if it's noted for anything today, it's for its nominated score, which of course we'll get to, but first let's talk about a pretty drab movie that common sense would dictate would be more famous than it is simply because of its four leads.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about two Americans living in Paris named Ram (Newman) and Eddie (Poitier).  They are musicians who work at a Paris hotspot, and Ram meets Connie (Carroll), whom he is initially quite infatuated with, but she's not having it; however, her friend Lillian (Woodward) is smitten and insists that they go to the club.  Quickly the couples pair off-Ram & Lillian in their own storyline, Eddie & Connie in theirs.  Lillian & Ram are focused on commitment-she wants to settle down, but he struggles with this & wants to continue seeing if he can be a truly great musician, while Eddie refuses to go back to America with Connie because he doesn't see the opportunities there for a black man that he can receive in France in the 1960's.  The film continues with one of the jazz musicians (Eddie) giving up his life here to pursue love with the woman he's met, while the other (Ram) admitting that he isn't ready to give up on his dream to go after Lillian, and deciding to stay in Paris.

There's so much about Paris Blues that should work.  The acting is great (I will admit right now that I don't love Joanne Woodward in most things, this included, but the other three leads are strong), and the cinematography is superb.  You get to see Paris as if it's almost in frozen photographs, it's so crisp and period-specific.  But the script doesn't have any urgency, and it shies away from the most obvious thing to a modern audience-Paul Newman's Ram should definitely be dating Diahann Carroll's Connie, not the stoic Lillian.

You almost get that-there's an opening scene where Ram is trying to pick a surprised Connie up, essentially dismissing the idea of her white roommate in favor of him dating her.  This is, quite honestly, a better movie.  Forgetting that Woodward & Newman have minimal chemistry in this film (like I said-Woodward doesn't seem to get her character here and underplays her), it would have made for a more interesting tale if it was Carroll's uptight Connie with Newman's rascally Ram, and then have Poitier's stoic Eddie having complicated conversations about racism with Woodward's Lillian.  This is, according to interviews Poitier would do later, what the filmmakers initially wanted to try with the movie, but the censors wouldn't have it.  As a result, you get a pretty lazy read on an interesting quartet of figures, despite the actors largely doing their part to keep us intrigued.

The film's score isn't classic jazz in the sense that it feels fresh for the era, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its moments or have a legendary source.  It just sort of gets lost in the picture, and doesn't feel as innovative as you'd expect both considering the context of the film and in particular the composer.  Paris Blues stands apart as the only Oscar nomination that Duke Ellington would ever win (the film would lose to West Side Story).  Like so much of Paris Blues, the songs in the film are competent but disappoint, clearly having the makings of some better sound that might have come to light in a better movie.

5 Thoughts on Last Week's Primaries

Okay, while I didn't write articles at all last week, one article I did not delay was the "thoughts on last week's primaries" article, as I waited on that one on purpose.  Last week we saw primary elections in New York, Kentucky, and Virginia, but due to the large number of absentee ballots this year, most of the ballots were counted over the past week, and so we are only at the point now where we can properly discuss the races.  These contests still could have a major effect on this fall's elections, however, so I want to discuss both the trends I'm seeing out of these races as well as my thoughts on what this could mean for upcoming primaries and especially November.  Unless a state doesn't seem to have a lot of absentee ballots, or is very quick with their victors, don't expect these types of articles to be coming on Wednesdays for the remainder of this primary year as I want to be responsible going forward about projecting winners.  Case in point, let's take a look at the race most people were talking about last week, the Kentucky Senate primary.

Amy McGrath (D-KY)

1. McGrath Beats Booker, Despite Her Own Best Efforts

Amy McGrath nearly had the rug pulled from under what was thought to be a foregone conclusion campaign last week.  McGrath was endorsed by the DSCC, had raised over $40 million, and was seen as the de facto nominee for the Democrats.  Her campaign had stumbled multiple times (particularly out-the-gate with her bungled response on whether she would have voted for Brett Kavanaugh), so it perhaps shouldn't have been a surprise when State Rep. Charles Booker challenged her from the left and gained traction.  McGrath is a centrist Democrat in Kentucky, the kind that fits in the mold of the winning Beshears, but more people were focusing on how she was similar to Jack Conway and Alison Lundergan Grimes, two other high-profile figures who lost recent Senate contests.  Booker was championed by the left, and came out of nowhere to challenge McGrath's perch with endorsements from figures like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The surge seemed to have happened too late though-Booker won in-person voting, but McGrath had already banked enough votes via absentee to advance to the general.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

2. Kentucky is More a Money Pit than a Competitive Race

McGrath's narrow win underlines what I've been saying for months, though-she is not a particularly compelling candidate (this isn't Beto 2018), and as a result I don't think she can beat McConnell.  Her presence, and gigantic war chest, ensure that she's going to be on the airwaves a lot, but McGrath clearly isn't well-liked by her base, and goes into the general election looking electorally weak.  McConnell can't afford to let her own the airwaves (he is also unpopular), but she has way more to prove than he does.

It's worth noting that the maxim "Republicans will have to spend in Kentucky now, money they can't spend anywhere else" has been thrown around a lot in light of McGrath's wins, but I don't know if that's a good thing yet for the left.  This is the case, say, if Donald Trump has to spend to keep Ohio.  There's a finite amount of money, and money spent in a state he can't afford to lose (there's no victory for Trump if he doesn't win Ohio) is money he isn't spending in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, money that Joe Biden is more reliant upon for a victory (but likely where Trump needs to win at least one of those two states).  This isn't yet the case with Kentucky, though.  The Democrats have not locked up seats in North Carolina & Iowa, and so it might behoove the Democrats to actually be spending the $40 million that McGrath has in those states, ensuring their majority, rather than tracking down a quixotic win in Kentucky.  This has been a problem for Democrats this cycle, where they are wasting money on races (Kentucky and South Carolina, specifically) where they have only a fool's chance of winning, rather than trying to lock down their majority with investments in places like North Carolina, Iowa, or Georgia.  If the Democrats in these states aren't leading by Labor Day, Kentucky is not only going to look like a bad bet, but a dangerous one.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)

3. Engel, Maloney Wait for Mail-In Ballots

While Kentucky has been called by the AP, two major races still sit in the balance in New York: the primaries to longtime Democratic incumbents Eliot Engel and Carolyn Maloney.  I've learned on this blog that calling a race early is a bad idea, so I'm not going to say whether or not I think Engel or Maloney will win, but I'll at least say what I'm seeing right now: of the two, Engel is in the most trouble.  Engel has refused to concede but his progressive challenger Jaamal Bowman has declared victory over Engel, who botched the final weeks of his campaign (particularly in a hot mic moment where he said he wouldn't want to be speaking at a protest were it not for his primary).  Even if Engel wins mail-in votes, it'll be a very uphill climb for him to win being down by over 20-points against Bowman with in-person voting.

Maloney is in much better shape (comparatively).  She leads by a few hundred votes against liberal challenger Suraj Patel, but she's expected to win the mail-in votes, which should skew older and toward parts of her district she won on Election Day.  Maloney-Patel's race has been nasty and personal, but the Democrats will win this seat regardless of who wins in a district Hillary Clinton won by 70-points.

These challenges against longtime incumbents do raise some eyebrows.  I'm particularly looking at the contest in New Jersey next week, where Rep. Albio Sires is getting a challenge from his left to see if we're seeing more of a movement to throw out longtime incumbents in safe districts, or if this was merely isolated to uniquely vulnerable incumbents in New York.

Mondaire Jones (D-NY)

4. Torres and Jones Make History

In races that are called from New York, we have two new congressmen who will make history.  Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones are the first openly gay men of color to serve in the United States House of Representatives, a cool moment of progress during Pride Month.  They also both won very blue seats against plausible conservative challengers in the Democratic Primary.  Torres bested Ruben Diaz Sr., a member of the New York City Council who has frequently made headlines for homophobic statements.  Jones beat State Sen. David Carlucci, a Democrat who was a member of the IDC, a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans who formed together to ensure that the Republicans maintained their majority in the State Senate.  Most members of the IDC lost in primary challenges in 2018, but Carlucci was not one of them and there was a worry that he would win a very blue seat here.  Jones' win is another deathblow to the IDC, and proof that the 39-year-old Carlucci is going to struggle to shed this label in the future.

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5. What Does This Mean for November?

You'll notice that none of these races are expected to be competitive in November, and that's because really we weren't seeing a lot of competitive races in the contests that are expected to decide the House and Senate majorities this fall.  Kentucky doesn't really have any races, but Virginia & New York host a few.  In Virginia, the three most competitive races (the 2nd, 5th, and 7th) didn't see too much surprise.  The 2nd will be a rematch between Rep. Elaine Luria (D) and former Rep. Scott Taylor (R), who briefly ran for Senate but has a much better shot at this contest (though at this point I'd favor Luria).  The 7th district is selecting their nominee via a convention, which could be a risky affair, so we won't know the nominee for a while, but thanks to the 5th district convention giving the Republicans a questionable nominee, the Democratic Primary there was important, and the Democrats did well picking physician Cameron Webb, who is a quality candidate who quickly gained support from his primary challengers (something that Republican Bob Good cannot claim).

In New York, the Democrats have two pickup opportunities.  In the 2nd, the Democrats backed Babylon Councilwoman Jackie Gordon, while the Republicans went with State Rep. Andrew Garbarino.  This is one of many Obama-Trump districts, so it'll be a question if Biden can win back a number of the voters that he carried in 2012, or if they're gone to see if Gordon can win here.  The 24th district will be a rematch of 2018, with Rep. John Katko (R) facing off against Syracuse Professor Dana Balter.  Katko is very popular, but only won by 5-points in 2018, and there's a reason for that-he's one of three Republicans who won seats that Hillary Clinton took.  Balter is likely not going to be able to beat Katko on her own, and thus is going to need to ride Joe Biden's coattails hard.  I'm betting on Katko, but Obama won this district by 16-points in 2012; if Biden can come anywhere close to that, it'll be difficult for Katko to outrun Trump by double digits.

The Republicans have three pickup opportunities in the Empire State (the three seats the Democrats picked up in 2018), though they come with varying degrees of success for the party.  The 11th, arguably their best shot at a pickup, will pit State Rep. Nicole Malliotakis against incumbent-Rep. Max Rose.  Like the 2nd, this is a district that went for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, and so again-the question is how much can Biden win back from what Clinton lost in 2016, and will that be enough to carry a first-termer like Rose?  The 19th is also an Obama-Trump district, but the Republicans didn't recruit well here and most consider this to be, at most charitably to the GOP, a "Likely D" seat.  The 22nd is a Romney-Trump district, one of the few that the Democrats picked up in 2020, but the Republicans are taking a serious risk here by backing controversial former Rep. Claudia Tenney, perhaps the only Republican who would start out an underdog in this district, as their nominee again.  It's worth remembering that Obama lost this district by less than a point in both 2008 or 2012, so while Trump clobbered here in 2016 it has been competitive in the past.

A Quarantine Revisit to The Office and Lost

Today is my birthday, and that means I can write an article about whatever I want.  I know I owe some articles to y'all, and I've taken a bit of a break over the past week, but I'm back now and am feeling like extending my contemplation period for a while longer, as one does when they turn a year older, and particularly this year, when they turn a year older after spending months in relative isolation.

As we all have been, I'm sure, during this quarantine, I spent a good chunk of the past four months watching television (and movies, but you knew that), including The Office.  I had not seen The Office in at least three years fully through, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was longer than that, and admittedly I didn't see it fully through again this time.  I hate Season 8 of The Office, and the Season 7 episodes that don't involve Michael Scott, and so once again I skipped over them, finishing off with Season 9 and the fond farewells it includes.

The Office is one of my favorite television series.  I did watch it when it was originally on, though I didn't start watching it until the beginning of Season 4 live.  I had just started a job at an actual office, and everyone there watched the show, and The Office felt like an easier thing to get into than The Bachelor or The Hills, which were the other two shows that everyone was discussing ad nauseum at the time.  It was a really lovely show-once the series got off of its need to emulate the cruelty of the original British comedy, and add heart to the Michael Scott character (which I know some people consider a flaw in this show, but I think it's a vast improvement as mean Michael Scott would have been insufferable for multiple seasons), it was truly moving, and once the show realized its best asset wasn't Michael, but in fact Jenna Fischer's Pam (which it forgets for periods, but during its finest moments like Seasons 3, 5, and 9, puts front-and-center), it hit another level.  The Office sits proudly on my Top 10 favorite television show lists.

And yet, when watching it again, I realized that like most shows that run this long, there are long stretches of The Office where you are expected to continue your love more because you adore the characters & have invested so much time in them than because the show is earning your adoration.  The Office is better than most television, but that doesn't mean that it didn't suffer from serious repetition & quality dips, even during the Carell years.  Both Season 4 and Season 6 it feels like the show was biding its time, unable to decide what to do with Michael in terms of growth, and unsure of how to handle a happy Jim-and-Pam (happy characters admittedly being some of the hardest to write compelling narratives around).  You didn't feel this when it was new, but even though I love it, I can tell you that it feels that way on repeat-you can tell for long stretches that the narrative, the moments you really want to get to, are surrounded by filler-it's not a particularly tight show.

This is, of course, why I love movies more than television, something I've never been shy about.  Movies are finite, they are almost always meant to be contained within one story (or at the very least, what we'd constitute as "one season" of television), and with that lack of time comes risks of something other than "happily ever after," giving them higher stakes.  Movies don't need to meander, and they don't need to pull themselves like taffy in order to hit 100 episodes or seven seasons.  While television has more room for story, more room for character growth, and more room for a complicated, longer narrative (all things I love, and what attracts me to a novel), it almost never takes advantage of that.

Which is why it still shocks me after all of these years that I do, at the end of the day, love a TV show far more than I've ever loved any movie or book.  If you know me at all, you know I cannot make it through a conversation about television without bringing up Lost.  I recently also re-watched this, for the first time in at least four years (it could be five, as the main thing I remember about my last viewing of this is that my boyfriend I was watching it with dumped me before Ben showed up).  I have watched Lost fully through at least three times other than the initial viewings of the series, and the first five seasons I watched an additional time headed into Season 6.  This is a show that a lot of fans have a lot of problems with, and honestly, considering how much television and movies I've seen in the past few years (and how Game of Thrones had come to compete for the title of "my favorite show" in a way no show had since Lost went off the air), I was curious if it'd hold up.  But, weirdly enough, it just gets better.

Ten years after it went off the air, I still get chills when Charlie says "where are we?"  I still pause at the map in the Hatch to look at the drawings on the wall.  I still keep a list of mysteries I can't remember the ending to, and have "a-ha!" moments when they are solved seasons later.  I still weep openly at every major character death...this time, because of the loneliness of the quarantine as I started this when the stress of being alone was at its worst for me, I literally balled during the opening scenes I was so happy to see old friends in my home again.  Because I limit myself to only watching once every three years or so, I don't know the show by heart, and so it doesn't have the reflective "I know exactly what's about to be said" feeling that, say, Bob's Burgers does for me.

Lost does occasionally suffer from repetition problems, specifically in the first half of the third season.  This was when the creators were negotiating for an end to the series, and were starting to run short on ways to extend what was happening in flashbacks, but Lost had a secret weapon that other shows don't-it arguably had too many story opportunities going on on the island at the time that made up for the fact that the well was getting weak in backstory (with the most-cited example of this being the "Jack's Tattoos" storyline in Stranger in a Strange Land), and with the exception of the Writer's Strike episodes of Season 4 (which feel a tad bit rushed and like the 3-4 more episodes they'd been contracted to get might have fleshed out some backstory on the Kahana crew), it doesn't get overwhelmed by this task.

I found on this viewing, this might be the principle reason that I love Lost more than I love any other show or movie-it's brimming with plot, most of which (despite fanboy protestations) has answers, even if they aren't transparent ones, and you find those stories in repeat viewings.  This cycle, a lot of my attention kept being drawn to the geography of the Island, specifically during Season 5 when we see the Others & the Dharma Initiative battling over its secrets, both not understanding them in different ways.  It's intriguing to watch longtime residents of the island like Ben Linus & Charles Widmore continually reveal how many secrets they don't know about the place, and how so much of their character arcs are about curiosity-not just about mining the Island for their own power trips, but also a thirst for knowledge; their need to know more drives them to constantly "have to go back."  That the show is structured so that you discover more and more each viewing, rather than continually seeing the flaws even in things you love (despite themselves) is the show's genius.

I have not revisited Mad Men, The Leftovers, or Game of Thrones yet this quarantine, arguably the three shows that might come closest to this (though the trio, perhaps weary of a similar criticism of Lost, left very little ambiguity in the final chapters of their final season), but I think that that's what's missing in a lot of modern television, and why the "Golden Age" hit its peak in roughly 2010-12 with shows like Lost, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones, and why it's probably over until someone can either recapture this magic or find something new to say with the medium.  Since it's my birthday, I'll invite you to join me in the comments and share why you love your favorite TV series (one that you've seen through a couple of times), and what shows currently on right now come the closest to capturing what made that series so special & magic.

OVP: The Village (2004)

Film: The Village (2004)
Actors: Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, Celia Weston, Judy Greer, Michael Pitt, Jesse Eisenberg (seriously-this cast list is nuts)
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're back to our reviews!  I took a week off to recuperate from some personal life things as well as to try and get my professional life in order, but we're back to our weekday reviews, and our (frequently Oscar-inspired) themes.  This week, the focus is going to be on music, specifically Oscar-nominated music.  All of this week's movies will have one thing (and pretty much that only thing in common)-they were nominated in one of the three Oscar music categories (either Song, Score, or Song Score...and in some cases a couple of those).  We're going to start off this category with a pretty recent nominee by our standards, The Village, which was during the period where M. Night Shyamalan was not only a bankable director, many were thinking he was about to rival Spielberg & Cameron in terms of becoming the rare director who could open a movie simply based on their own name.  While this film struggles in terms of quality years later, it didn't disprove that theory-The Village was a big hit, the final one before Shyamalan's epic fall-from-grace in the back half of the Aughts.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in a remote village in Pennsylvania, a 19th Century town where villagers live in fear of bizarre creatures in the woods who walk around in red cloaks.  The town is run by a group of elders, headed by Edward Walker (Hurt), whose blind daughter Ivy (Howard) is in love with a local boy named Lucius Hunt (Phoenix...btw, it is so weird to see Phoenix when he would still take romantic lead roles, and a bummer to remember he was so good in them).  After Lucius is stabbed by another young man in the village, Noah (Brody, playing a character with a developmental disability in a performance that would raise eyebrows today), Edward decides to let his daughter go out and find medicine from beyond the forest that surrounds their village, in hopes of saving Lucius' life.

This is where the film's twist happens, but, well, it doesn't feel like a twist.  Perhaps because The Village (as I mentioned, a huge hit at the time) has become so influential, I kind of assumed that we weren't in 19th Century Pennsylvania but instead a modern day time period but a group of people who were living as if time hadn't passed.  As a result, I wasn't really thrown by the twist, which isn't a bad thing (this was the era when the "twist" became the most important aspect of story-telling in a movie, frequently to the chagrin of the actual plot), but it feels pretty anticlimactic, and the movie never really recovers.  Some of the emotional tears this might have aren't fully explored.  The village elders founded the town because of traumas in their own lives, that they could no longer handle, but the film's final moments aren't grand enough or precise enough to get across a sense of the sacrifice they made by escaping the world, and what it means that they are willing to let all of the other children in the village continue living as if the world around them hasn't changed (and that the monsters aren't real).  As a result, I feel like The Village is less a bad movie and more a failure, something that could have been terrific but gets lost in the execution.

The score to the film is actually quite good on its own.  James Newton Howard creates a rich, elegant sound and frequently uses violinist Hilary Hahn to great effect, having her create a signature almost wave-like chill over the movie itself.  The problem for Howard is that the music, while gorgeous, doesn't fit the movie and frequently feels like it's telling a story that the film doesn't know.  The music is always building to something, some great reveal, and since I didn't feel like the movie's "surprises" (it's so essential to the script that these read as surprises to you in order for the movie to work) really added to the narrative, his music feels off-balance in the movie.  It's not really Howard's fault (I'm certain he composed the way that Shyamalan pitched the movie & hoped the film would turn out), but it doesn't land properly on the ear while actually watching the picture.

The Misfits (1961)

Film: The Misfits (1961)
Stars: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach
Director: John Huston
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Marilyn Monroe-click here to learn more about Ms. Monroe (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Few films have productions as steeped in lore as The Misfits.  If you study film history at all, The Misfits shows up in a lot of texts about this era.  It was, as we'll discuss below, the final film of two Hollywood legends.  It also had pretty much everyone on the set at each other's throats, from Clark Gable & John Huston quarreling throughout the shoot (weirdly in the first & only film that they ever made together) to Marilyn Monroe & screenwriter Arthur Miller's marriage falling apart on the set of the movie they were making together to of course the continued "slow suicide" of Montgomery Clift after his car accident.  Pretty much everyone on the set suffered from some form of alcohol abuse, and production delays abounded.  But what of the film itself?  I have weirdly, despite having read about this movie for most of my life (and having written in college a 120-page paper about American cinema in the 1960's), never actually gotten around to seeing it, and if I was going to do a month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, there was no way I wasn't going to plug this gap in my film-watching.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Misfits is a little hard to explain in a conventional way, but let's give it a shot.  The picture starts with Roslyn (Monroe) getting a divorce in Reno from her husband for emotional neglect (her husband is played by Oscar nominee Kevin McCarthy in a truly 1-minute cameo, if not less).  She is staying with a local landlord named Isabelle (Ritter), and being as she's played by Marilyn Monroe, Roslyn quickly gets attention from the men of the town, including two cowboys: Gay (Gable), a rough-and-tumble guy and his driver best friend Guido (Wallach).  Roslyn & Gay move in together in Guido's house, even though it's not entirely clear that they are romantically linked (it's treated in many ways throughout the movie not as a love story, but more as a father getting a chance to raise the surrogate daughter that he gave up for his cowboy ways), though Guido clearly lusts after Roslyn.  At a rodeo, they meet Perce (Clift), a dumb rider who nearly kills himself and decides to join up with Roslyn, Gay, and Guido as they wrangle mustangs in the desert.  Slowly, Roslyn understands the cruelty of these men's lives as she sees them basically track and nearly murder a bunch of wild mustangs.  She calls them out on it, and in the dark with Perce she frees them, angering Gay.  Guido, still obsessed with her, tries to make a move but she says he's heartless, and it turns out she's right-he encourages Gay to leave her, but instead, after an extended shoot where he tries to tame a stallion, he lets them loose, driving off into the sunset with Roslyn, their future uncertain but knowing they love each other.

The Misfits is a strange film.  Honestly-I didn't really know what to expect considering its place in film lore and its position in the early 1960's, when even westerns that would be conventional like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance would challenge some of the assumptions we have about heroes and villains.  It's more avant-garde than you'd think.  While yes, at its center this is the story of one man (Gable) struggling with modernity, aided in that struggle by a beautiful woman (Monroe)-basically the plot of most westerns-we also realize that it's Monroe's Roslyn who was right the whole time, not just about him needing to give up this life, but that perhaps this life wasn't necessary to begin with.  The film is brutally violent in scenes (the mustang wrangling is disturbing, particularly since with John Huston in the director's chair, there's no assurance those horses weren't injured at some point), and sex permeates the movie.  Aside from a scene where Monroe is topless (you see her from the back), you have Eli Wallach's Guido lusting after Monroe in a way that I don't remember seeing in a movie like this, at least not very often.  It feels carnal, and is a big payoff for the later scene where Monroe tells him off.

Because honestly-this movie is fantastic.  You can quibble over whether certain sequences go too long, or whether it's too much mood, but I loved it.  The script is tight-Miller was writing it as he went along, but it doesn't show as his vision comes together in the end.  The direction is glorious-Huston enjoys the action sequences the most (and they're thrilling if also gut-wrenching), and the score is divine.  Best of all is the acting.  Wallach, as I mentioned, is out-of-this-world good; if this movie hadn't been considered a disappointment at the box office, it's easy to see him getting an Oscar nomination.  Ritter is great as ever; there's this weird, odd scene in the center of the movie where she opines about the husband who left her for her best friend, and everyone is confused about why she's happy to see them, but it works.  Ritter's face & gestures indicate an understanding of love, even love that's lost or mistreated, that I found so moving.  And then there's Clift, who finds an authenticity in his rodeo clown that feels genuine.  Clift occasionally feels like he's about to forget his lines (and indeed, that might have been the case-if I had to pick a weakest link in the cast, he'd be it though he's still solid), but at least he picked a character where that is convincing.

Gable & Monroe are sensational in the leads.  Even with the box office disappointment, I'm kind of stunned Gable didn't get a posthumous Oscar nomination for this-it might be the best performance he's ever given (give or take Rhett Butler), and I like Gable in a lot of movies.  As he's worn down, you find a man who has long since lost his youth & his reason for even existing, but he keeps on living, and has to find a way to acknowledge that he's still living.  It's so profound, and while Gable is an A+ movie star at his best, I didn't really know he was this good of an actor.  The same has to be said for Monroe.  This could be another dumb blonde where men do crazy things to sleep with her, but it's not.  She finds something there in this lost soul, a woman who has something to say but doesn't understand how to get it out.  Monroe, deeply introverted in real life, rarely played such characters onscreen (there are actually very few introverts in Classical Hollywood cinema), but here it suits her grandly. This is possibly Monroe's best performance too (give or take Sugar Kane), and it's a bummer she didn't think so (Monroe disliked the movie & her work in it).

The film, as I mentioned above, was the end of the road for two Hollywood legends.  Gable died 12 days after shooting of a heart attack.  He wasn't that old all-things-considered (the film would be released on his 60th birthday, a few months after shooting), but you can tell that decades of smoking & drinking had worn down the matinee idol.  Monroe, 24 years his junior, also would never complete another film.  Though she had started shooting the (yet-another-troubled-shoot) film Something's Got to Give, Monroe died before it was completed, of a drug overdose, a potentially intentional one.  We've discussed the many conspiracies surrounding Monroe's death before (click the link if Hollywood true crime is your jam), but in the light of just watching The Misfits, it feels especially tragic, and adds a sense of anguish to the final scenes of Gable & Monroe driving off into the sunset that John Huston never could have intended.  Here we have two of the true legends of cinema, uniting for the only time, in some of their best ever work, and soon to die tragically young.

That ends our month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, the quintessential sex symbol in a year-long series devoted to cinematic sex symbols.  As we'll see in July, though, we aren't entirely abandoning Marilyn-her legacy will be felt next month, both in terms of heightened, sexualized glamour...and unfortunately, even more tragedy.

Targets (1968)

Film: Targets (1968)
Stars: Tim O'Kelly, Boris Karloff, Arthur Peterson, Monte Landis, Nancy Hsueh, Peter Bogdonavich
Director: Peter Bogdonavich
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

When you read this I'll be coming back from a sojourn to visit my parents (we've all been socially distancing to do this trip, don't worry), and on that trip, I'll be listening to new episodes of my all-time favorite podcast, You Must Remember This.  This season, Karina Longworth is taking an in-depth look at the career of Polly Platt, an Oscar-nominated art director who was most famous for decades as a creative contributor (and frequent producer) of some of the most ingenious projects to come out of Hollywood, ranging from The Last Picture Show to Broadcast News to The Other Side of the Wind.  Platt's first significant film was the 1968 Roger Corman movie Targets, which was also the directorial debut of her then-husband Peter Bogdonavich.  The next episode I have in the series apparently goes quite in-depth into this movie, and since I'd always wanted to see it (and a recording of it was sitting on my DVR thanks to the eternal gift-giver TCM), this felt like the perfect time to take the opportunity.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie tells two seemingly unconnected tales that end up coming together in a petrifying final sequence.  The first story is one that Bogdonavich would intersperse into a lot of his movies and certainly into his decades of colorful anecdotes about Hollywood: the story of a Classic Hollywood actor.  In this case it's Byron Orlok (Karloff), an aging horror film actor who wants out of the business after finishing his last movie The Terror (which was, in fact, a real-life horror movie that starred Karloff and a pre-fame Jack Nicholson, so your eyes are not deceiving you when you see Jack Nicholson randomly show up in Targets, and according to legend around this movie, Nicholson sought after the other lead in this movie but wasn't given it).  Orlok has a curmudgeonly respect for his assistant Jenny (Hsueh) and a young screenwriter-director named Sammy (Bogdonavich), who has written an actually strong film that might give Orlok a new chapter in his career (meta, right?).

The other aspect of the story is around Bobby Thompson (O'Kelly), an all-American guy (handsome, young, veteran) who seems to have the world-on-the-sleeve, but whose only passion appears to be firearms.  Throughout the movie we see Bobby pretend to kill people, frequently stockpiling more and more weapons while his wife and his parents take little notice.  He eventually goes on a shooting spree, first killing his wife & mother, then shooting people randomly from a tower overlooking a freeway, and then finally shooting people at a drive-in...a drive-in showing The Terror where Byron Orlok is set to make his final appearance before retreating into retirement.

The movie up until the shooting scene at the drive-in is interesting if not always compelling.  The drive-in sequence in many ways anticipates another classic New Hollywood movie, one that I really want to name-check but it's such a surprise what happens at the end of the picture that I don't feel I should...suffice it to say, this movie was influential.  But before that scene, the O'Kelly scenes are oddly bereft of emotion.  This is a choice that I think works in hindsight, but I can't imagine how Bogdonavich had the foresight to think of making such a prototypical, 21st Century villain.  At the time, the character was based in large part on Charles Whitman, who killed 17 people in 1966, many of them at random from a tower at the University of Texas (Whitman also killed his wife and mother before his shooting rampage), and if you look at photos of Whitman and O'Kelly, they do share a similarity.  What makes Targets prescient, though, is that Whitman/Bobby Thompson fit the mold of what we think of as a 21st Century villain-straight, white, male loner obsessed with collecting weaponry & risking other people's safety.

This is what makes the final sequence at the drive-in so electric.  We know at this point that Bobby Thompson is a monster, solely intent on increasing his body count before capture or death.  We watch in horror as an audience of cars slowly realize that the danger is not the villain on the big-screen (Karloff's Orlok in The Terror), but instead a more real, actual danger.  People open their cars or speed away, trying to escape, but in the process turn on the lights, making them easier targets.  It's petrifying-one of the scariest things I've ever seen a movie.  All-the-while, there is Byron Orlok, as we come-to-understand his retirement is more about shutting out the world as he is afraid of death, not realizing that he's being confronted with it in very tangible, absolute terms.  When Orlok ultimately is the person who stops Thompson, he states "is that what I was afraid of?" as if realizing that death can come in many forms.  The film itself isn't strong enough to warrant 5-stars (the earlier sequences are too prosaic), but this is a fascinating film and a strong debut from Bogdonavich, who was about to make a trio of celebrated movies (The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc?, and Paper Moon), and features a mesmerizing piece-of-work from Karloff, giving his final onscreen performance.

OVP: Let's Make Love! (1960)

Film: Let's Make Love! (1960)
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan (as well as some fun cameos I'll reference in the review)
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Marilyn Monroe-click here to learn more about Ms. Monroe (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For our final two weeks with Marilyn Monroe, we're going to focus on the very tail end of the actress's career.  Last week we talked about one of the biggest triumphs of Monroe's career, Bus Stop, which brought her critical hosannas (serious ones) for the first time in her career, and was a huge box office hit for Fox.  This was followed with two legendarily difficult shoots for Marilyn, the first being the now-maligned The Prince and the Showgirl (with Laurence Olivier) and then the smash-hit classic Some Like It Hot, where she feuded relentlessly with costar Tony Curtis & director Billy Wilder.  Despite Some Like It Hot's success (it won Monroe her only competitive Golden Globe), she took another year off before making her next movie, today's film Let's Make Love!.  The film was a big deal not only for Monroe, but her costar Yves Montand, who was making his English-language debut after a decade of starring roles in European cinema, and becoming the toast of the New York theater scene with his one-man show.

(Spoilers Ahead) In a weirdly similar opening to The Seven Year Itch, we go through the family tree of Jean-Marc Clement (Montand), a billionaire whose ancestors all had a knack for making money and were frequently distracted by "balloons" (the script's entendre, not mine).  He is considered a spoiled playboy, and a local theater production about famous figures of the early 1960's is skewering him.  He goes down to show he's "in on the joke" as a bit of publicity, but there is mistaken for an actor pretending to be Jean-Marc Clement, and goes along with the casting when he falls for Amanda (Monroe), a beautiful actress who leads the production.  Jean-Marc gets to see a woman actually fall for him, and not his money, as she just assumes he's an out-of-work actor.  However, Amanda is dating the show's leading man, Tony (Vaughan), so Jean-Marc, along with his assistants (including Tony Randall playing the same role Tony Randall always played in these types of films-the best friend), recruit the help of legendary entertainers in hopes of making the no-talent Jean-Marc a rival for Amanda's affections.

You can imagine how that turns out (happy ending!), but arguably the best part of Let's Make Love! is the scenes with the legendary performers.  Milton Berle, Bing Crosby, and Gene Kelly all play themselves, recruited to make the hapless Jean-Marc seem like a funny song-and-dance-man, with amusing results (Berle basically steals the movie during his segment).  And I will admit I actually liked the score for the film, even though it's not as memorable as it might have been.  The Oscar nomination may have been something of a gimme given the film's high profile (we were entering a period where musicals struggled to gain traction with audiences), but Vaughan can sing, and he-and-Monroe have a gay sort of chemistry that is fun-to-watch.

This is not true for Monroe & Montand.  While Montand generally was a popular figure in the era, his comedy bits don't age well and he's stiff in a lead role that would have been a better fit for someone like Cary Grant or Rock Hudson.  Montand isn't helped by a script that has no punch.  The joke bits aren't that funny (Berle & his segment are the only ones that really work), and while Monroe is enjoyable in her part (George Cukor would never totally fail his leading actress), the script is just sort of there for us to ogle her.  One of the striking things between the sex symbols of the 1930's/40's and the 1950's is that while Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth were given different types of roles to excel in, Monroe always played some version of this Amanda.  When it was in Some Like It Hot, with great writing and costars like Jack Lemmon, it's glorious.  Let's Make Love!, though, is pretty disposable and wouldn't be thought of at all today except it was Marilyn's penultimate film.

The movie had no good memories for any involved.  Monroe hated the part, considering it her worst role, and not soon after watched her marriage to Arthur Miller dissolved (she had had a very public affair on-set with Montand, who was married to Monroe's friend Simone Signoret at the time).  The film was moderately successful, but considered a disappointment given Monroe's star power and how gossip columns had been swirling about her relationship with Montand.  After three rough productions, Monroe was still famous and bankable enough to demand headlines, but producers were worried about hiring her for anything.  She lost out at the time on the role of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, a part that was written specifically for her by Truman Capote, and which would win Audrey Hepburn an honor Monroe never received: an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Instead, Monroe would make a different film, one that would sadly be her last, and one that we'll discuss next week.

The State of the Vice President

Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE)

I hate to break it to people who have set up Twitter alerts, but my gut still says we're at least four weeks out from knowing who Joe Biden's running-mate is.  Traditionally we wouldn't find out until much closer to the convention, and considering that the convention will surely be done virtually in some capacity this year, Biden may cling to that name until much closer to the convention in hopes that he maximizes his post-convention bounce.

So it's entirely possible that we'll see one more of these rundowns closer to the election, but...I doubt it.  Unlike our recaps of actual elections, where polls and raw data actually matter and thus you can make logical guesses as to what is happening, here we're basing all of this on innuendo, anonymous gossip, and gut instinct, and as a result there's not a lot we can go on.  As a result, while I do feel like the eventual nominee is on this list, and I do feel very confident she's in the Top 5, this is about as close I'm going to get to knowing the name of the eventual nominee.

That said, there are things that we do know that have changed since our last lineup.  Several high-ranking names, including our previous #1, have withdrawn from consideration publicly.  These include Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who for some reason didn't want to go through this (perhaps it was that she's more focused on her work running the DSCC, which is getting a very good cycle with lots of opportunities this year), and thus is no longer under consideration.  We also have seen Sen. Amy Klobuchar withdraw, almost certainly due to the backlash she's received since the death of George Floyd.  Klobuchar received intense scrutiny for not charging one of the officers involved in Floyd's murder, Derek Chauvin, with criminal charges in the death of Wayne Reyes in 2006 when she was Hennepin County Attorney.  Klobuchar has called these attacks unfair, but Biden wasn't going to risk the backlash that came with Klobuchar after such accusations.

I also took two names off of the list.  Attorney General Sally Yates was a bit of a Hail Mary pass when I first made this list that went nowhere (it was in the early stages of the conversation about Biden's running-mate), and while I do think Maggie Hassan would be a decent choice for Biden (and she'd be toward the top of his list if he didn't have to worry about winning an election), she's not exciting enough to make it onto the ticket.  There is a renewed pressure on the ticket to pick a woman-of-color (you're going to see this does play a pretty big role in shaping my Top 10 list below), and I doubt if they are going to pick a white woman they are going to pick someone without a national profile like Hassan.

So we are now left with a new Top 10, six of whom we have from the previous list, and four of whom are new to the conversation.  Below I'll detail out the pro's and con's of these candidates, with #1 ultimately being who I think will be the nominee.  I'm still including ten because while reports vary that Biden has cornered the list down to six (or even reports today that it's down to two), I think this is a fluid enough affair that ten names isn't inappropriate.

Honorable Mention: A lot of people are going to ask where Stacey Abrams is, and while I do think her stock has gone up in recent months (particularly as the Biden campaign tries to find a high-profile black woman who doesn't have a career in law enforcement to run with him), her experience is too limited and there's no indication that Biden is vetting her (or is interested in her joining the ticket).  Her unorthodox campaign for the #2 spot appears to have failed, but considering the once-in-a-blue-moon sort of poll numbers that Jon Ossoff is getting in the Senate race, this was arguably the second worst decision she made politically in 2020.  I also would love to put former Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis on this list, but again-there appears to be no indication that Biden is considering her.  That said, Solis could be the sort of last-minute candidate that sometimes gets thrown into the conversation, as she's arguably the most qualified woman of color (Obama administration alumni, former US congresswoman) who is not being seriously listed as an option.  Expect both of these women in a Biden cabinet, however.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI)

10. Gretchen Whitmer

Age at Election: 49
Previous Experience: Governor (2019-Present), State Senator (2006-2015), State Representative (2001-2006)
Swing State?: Yes-Michigan
Previous TMROJ Ranking: 8
For Her: Whitmer has become something of a national celebrity in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, getting credit for her work to try and stop the virus in Michigan, and getting into multiple public feuds with Donald Trump that might endear her to the progressive wing of the party.  Whitmer was one of the crucial backers of Biden during the primary, doing so at a time when there was still a worry that Bernie Sanders could stage a comeback, so Biden (a guy who values loyalty) knows he owes her.  She'd certainly help in one of the most important swing states that Biden must flip (there's pretty much no win without him taking Michigan).
Against Her: Whitmer has three things going against her, which is why she nearly fell off of this list.  First, Biden doesn't appear to need her to carry Michigan-it's the Trump state he seems most certain to take in November.  Second, Michigan is one of the epicenters of the Covid-19 pandemic; she would (rightly) face backlash for putting her ambition ahead of her constituents if just two years into office she ran for a promotion.  And last-I sincerely doubt that Klobuchar said "Biden should pick a woman of color" without permission from the Biden camp...which makes me think he's probably going with a woman of color.

Gov. Gina Raimondo (D-RI)

9. Gina Raimondo

Age at Election: 49
Previous Experience: Governor (2015-Present), State Treasurer (2011-15)
Swing State?: No-Rhode Island
Previous TMROJ Ranking: N/A
For Her: Raimondo is on this list principally because she's clearly on Biden's list.  The Governor of Rhode Island, and the longest-serving sitting female governor, Raimondo is still an unusual choice for this list, and so the fact that she's obviously being vetted means that Biden is intrigued.  She is a sitting governor, so she'd get some credit for the Covid-19 handling and Biden could use that to counter Trump, and she's young-only 49 despite a pretty impressive career in Rhode Island.
Against Her: Before the Covid-19 outbreak, Raimondo was not popular, and her tenure as governor has had a lot of bumps (particularly a state foster care scandal that would surely be risky to put out on your ticket considering how reliant Biden is on turning out suburban voters).  Also, even her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has not been without criticism (remember when she briefly tried to ban New Yorkers from entering the state?), and she doesn't bring in a swing state or voting demographic.  I'm kind of perplexed, honestly, why she's actually being vetted over other long-shots like Laura Kelly or Kirsten Gillibrand (who make more sense).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

8. Elizabeth Warren

Age at Election: 71
Previous Experience: US Senator (2013-Present)
Swing State?: No-Massachusetts
Previous TMROJ Ranking: N/A
For Her: I said in my last article that I didn't think that Elizabeth Warren would be the ultimate pick, but that there would be a time that she's seriously being considered, and I stand behind that, but there's enough evidence that I should at least consider I might have been wrong.  Warren has definitely been vetted, and is the favorite of progressives.  It's worth noting she polls well among African-Americans, even when compared to other African-American politicians who are being touted by the press as a way to turnout black voters.  Warren & Biden also clearly get along quite well, and she'd be a way to cover Biden's left flank.
Against Her: Warren breaks the rule of being a running-mate: "do no harm."  Forgetting that her Senate seat would go red if she was the nominee (which is a big deal), Warren is a risk when Biden's poll numbers indicate a risk isn't what he needs.  She's far more liberal than Biden, to the point where she'd either have to lose credibility with the left-wing of the party by denouncing something like Medicare-4-All, or put Biden into an impossible position.  Also, she's a senior citizen and white, providing almost no age or racial balance to the ticket.  All-in-all, I think Warren is on Biden's list, but she'd be arguably the most foolish option he could go with at this juncture.

National Security Advisor Susan Rice (D-DC)

7. Susan Rice

Age at Election: 55
Previous Experience: National Security Advisor (2013-17), United Nations Ambassador (2009-13)
Swing State?: Not really.  Rice has family connections to Maine (her mother is from there), but she lives in DC, which will obviously go blue.
Previous TMROJ Ranking: N/A
For Her: Rice presents a unique profile for Biden if she were to be picked.  She's an insider's insider, which would normally be a deficit, but she's also someone who is incredibly experienced in a campaign where the media has put a disproportionate amount of pressure on Biden to pick someone who is "very qualified" to be president (considering her age).  She's also one of the few black women who are in contention for the nomination that doesn't have a history in law enforcement, which the Biden administration is trying to avoid considering the popularity of judicial/police reforms in the Democratic Party.
Against Her: Rice comes with two major headaches.  First, she's never held elected office before, and Biden's going to need someone who knows how to campaign-that might be Rice, but unlike every other woman on this list, we don't know what she's like in an actual retail politicking situation.  Second, and more important, Rice comes with a renewed conversation about Benghazi.  We saw how that scandal brought down one other woman on a major party ticket-will Biden really want to risk that conversation again?  I'd bet on Rice for Secretary of State, but VP might be a tougher sell.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

6. Tammy Baldwin

Age at Election: 58
Previous Experience: US Senate (2013-Present), US House (1999-2013), State Representative (1993-99)
Swing State?: Yes-Wisconsin
Previous TMROJ Ranking: 6
For Her: Baldwin is the highest-ranking white woman on this list for a reason-she's the only white woman being vetted who, in my opinion, could genuinely help Biden add to his electoral column.  Unlike Warren, Raimondo, or even Whitmer, Baldwin comes from a state that is truly a tossup.  I think the conversations about Wisconsin being critical for Biden are not as omnipresent as they were four months ago (polling in Arizona, Florida, and to a lesser degree Georgia & North Carolina have opened up the map a bit more for him), but that doesn't mean it's not important, and not a state that Biden is desperate to pin down.  If they feel that Baldwin is the edge they need to win the state, I wouldn't be stunned to see her as a surprise nominee.
Against Her: A few things.  First, I think Klobuchar's comment was a proxy from the Biden camp-they're signaling that they want a woman-of-color to the public.  Second, Baldwin to some degree is in a similar boat to Warren-she's much more progressive than Biden, and she'd have to sacrifice some of that on a ticket.  And third (and most importantly), her seat would be at risk of going red in a special election, costing the Democrats a Senate seat.  These are a lot of debits that come with pinning down a swing state that Biden might well win on his own, and that is less pivotal than it was a few months ago.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)

5. Tammy Duckworth

Age at Election: 52
Previous Experience: US Senate (2017-Present), US House (2013-17), Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs (2009-11)
Swing State?: No-Illinois
Previous TMROJ Ranking: 3
For Her: I'm moving Duckworth down a couple of slots, but it's worth noting that that's not because I have lost faith in her as a quality nominee, just that I think other people have a better chance.  Duckworth has a lot going for her.  Senator, veteran, young mother, and a woman-of-color (whose Senate seat isn't at risk if she's the nominee), Duckworth is the sort of underdog who wins in these situations.  She's also an Obama administration alum, and considering that a large part of Biden's campaign appears to be a "third term of Obama," picking someone who underlines that message is a good call.
Against Her: Two major things.  For starters, there's no obvious avenue that she brings to the ticket other than she'd be a qualified president-she doesn't come from a swing state and doesn't appear to be the favorite of a specific important Democratic constituency.  The second big thing is, though, that she has quite young children (including one who just turned two) & is very young herself (by political standards)-she'll have other opportunities to go on a national ticket...would she want to subject herself to a campaign this brutal?

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D-GA)

4. Keisha Lance Bottoms

Age at Election: 50
Previous Experience: Mayor of Atlanta (2018-Present), Atlanta City Council (2010-18)
Swing State?: Yes-Georgia
Previous TMROJ Ranking: N/A
For Her: Lance Bottoms is the highest-ranking new name on this list, and that's because, quite honestly, I think we genuinely need to take her seriously as a running-mate for Joe Biden.  While Lance Bottoms does have a history in law enforcement (as both a prosecutor and a judge), she has made much of her tenure as Atlanta's mayor about judicial reforms.  She's a black woman from an increasingly important swing state (where Biden will need mad turnout in-and-around Atlanta to win), and has made headlines for getting into high-profile public fights about Covid and criminal justice with Brian Kemp & Donald Trump.
Against Her: The biggest deficit for Lance Bottoms is she's still pretty new to the limelight, and it's unusual to pick a mayor as a running-mate even though Atlanta has roughly the same amount of people as Wyoming.  Lance Bottoms therefore comes with risks that people will claim she's not "ready" to be president, and also her tenure is less-vetted by the public.  For example, her votes while on the City Council on giving non-violent repeat offenders harsher criminal sentences (the panhandling bills in 2012) will not play well if the election focuses on progressive judicial reforms.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM)

3. Michelle Lujan Grisham

Age at Election: 61
Previous Experience: Governor (2019-Present), US House (2013-19), State Secretary of Health (2004-07)
Swing State?: No-New Mexico
Previous TMROJ Ranking: 5
For Her: I'm moving Lujan Grisham up the list for a few reasons.  First, she's purportedly the only governor that's still at the top tier of candidates, and I think Biden would be smart to pick a governor to capitalize on the popularity they gained due to their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic (plus, she comes with experience in Congress, which is crucial if she's going to be stumping for bills on Capitol Hill, a big part of the VP's job).  Second, while she is a lawyer, I can find no evidence that she ever worked in criminal justice (instead, she worked on other legal matters for the state).  And finally, with Arizona & Florida becoming more pivotal states on the map for Biden, he needs to find a way to shore up Latino votes in swing states-the first Latina running-mate might be a way to do that.
Against Her: The biggest issue with Lujan Grisham is that New Mexico is still in the middle of a pandemic, albeit not to the same degree as Whitmer in Michigan.  She could also face similar criticisms about abandoning the state when it needs her leadership...but it's not to the same degree as Whitmer, whose state has had more public issues with the pandemic.  I think Lujan Grisham makes a lot of sense, and is being underestimated by pundits.

Rep. Val Demings (D-FL)

2. Val Demings

Age at Election: 63
Previous Experience: US House (2017-Present), Orlando Police Chief (2007-11)
Swing State?: Yes-Florida
Previous TMROJ Ranking: 9
For Her: Demings has gone from the kind of "they should totally look into her" sort of spitballing that always happens when you pitch someone in the US House as a running-mate to "this person seriously could be the next vice president."  Demings comes from the voter-rich Orlando area (she could get enough turnout there to carry the state for Biden), and she's been acing all of her press tour spots as a campaign surrogate (she's great on the stump).  Demings would be an atypical choice, but the Biden campaign has been taking her seriously, and part of being chosen as the VP nominee is being the right person for the right time-is that Demings?
Against Her: Two things, and they are pretty clear.  One, she's a congresswoman in her second term-while I think she's proven in interviews she's ready to take on this critique, the "ready from Day One" conversation is going to happen with Demings in a way it wouldn't with Harris, Lujan Grisham, or Duckworth.  Secondly, and more pressing, her tenure as Orlando Police Chief opens her up to criticism in a way no other candidate on this list would on the forefront of criminal justice; this is why Demings has made a point of talking about judicial reforms in interviews (she knows she's vulnerable).  If the Biden campaign doesn't want to go with Harris and there isn't something particularly damning in her Orlando Police files, I think Demings could be the pick.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)

1. Kamala Harris

Age at Election: 56
Previous Experience: US Senate (2017-Present), California Attorney General (2011-17), District Attorney (2004-11)
Swing State?: No-California
Previous TMROJ Ranking: 2
For Her: I mean, at this point the conversation isn't so much "will it be X or will it be Y"-it's "will it be Kamala or will it not be Kamala?"  Harris makes sense-she's a sitting US Senator, she comes with experience, she's had most of her dirty laundry already aired on the presidential campaign, and she gets along well with Biden.  Harris is a dynamic speaker, funny, and would be set up well if indeed Biden only serves one term (a conversation for another day).  I think if Biden wants to pick a black woman for his ticket (and that does appear to be the case based on who he's vetting), you basically need a reason as to why Harris wouldn't be that choice since she's the most qualified.  I haven't seen (publicly) a reason that she wouldn't be.
Against Her: Her career as a prosecutor could come back to haunt her-despite her putting criminal justice front-and-center (like Demings, she knows she's vulnerable here and she also knows she's a serious candidate for VP, so she's trying to negate these attacks), this will come up, and could dampen enthusiasm for her in communities of color which Biden needs to win the White House.  But I think what might ultimately stop her is that there's no surprise around her nomination.  This might be a good thing (Biden wants a VP, not a candidate), but without a traditional convention, picking an expected VP is going to rob him of successive days of headlines that he might have otherwise had with a jam-packed DNC.

OVP: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Film: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Stars: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono
Director: Robert Aldrich
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Best Actress-Bette Davis, Supporting Actor-Victor Buono, Cinematography, Costume*, Sound)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I promise tomorrow we'll do someone other than Meryl Streep or Bette Davis to finish off our Best Actress week, but I had this in my drafts folder, and couldn't skip the opportunity for such symmetry.  On Tuesday we did the first nomination for Bette Davis, today we're going with the last one.  What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is cheating a little bit with our theme this week, as I have seen the movie before, though it's been at least 20 years, as I saw it as a teenager, and while I remembered it relatively well (probably better because of watching the TV series Feud more than anything else), there were whole chapters of the movie that I had completely forgotten, including the ending, so it was terrific to revisit this movie years later, and reflect on the last great chapter in the careers of two of my favorite Golden Age actresses, Bette Davis & Joan Crawford.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place over three different time eras.  The first is when both Blanche (as an adult, Crawford) and Jane (as an adult, Davis), are children, and Baby Jane is a star on the vaudeville circuit.  The little girl is spoiled rotten, and indulged by her father, and treats her entire family with contempt.  As adults, though, the roles are reversed-Jane is an unsuccessful actress in movies, only allowed to make pictures because the studio doesn't want to upset her sister Blanche, who is a big star.  At the peak of her career, Blanche is in a car accident (and we're meant to assume for most of the picture that it's Jane who was driving, as this has passed into urban legend), and is paralyzed, destroying her career.  We then retreat to the present day, where Blanche & Jane live together in an old house, with Jane living off of Blanche's money & mistreating her sister, who isn't able to stop Jane from abusing her (basically by starving, psychologically torturing, and eventually tying up Blanche to prevent her from selling the house and institutionalizing her mentally unwell sister).  The film has a subplot involving a conman named Edwin (Buono) trying to bilk Jane as an accompanist for her ridiculous attempts at a comeback, which combines the two stories when Edwin discovers Blanche bound-and-tied.  The film ends with Blanche confessing that it was she who was driving the car, and trying to run over Jane for her years of cruelty, and in the process ruined both of their lives.  Jane, now fully insane, dances for onlookers as the police arrive.

The movie has entered a whole different level of lore in recent years thank to Ryan Murphy's Emmy-winning series Feud, which chronicled the bitter real-life rivalry between Crawford & Davis, and the filming of this movie and its spiritual sequel Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte, so it's intriguing to go back to the movie after all of these years and find out it's really good.  There's a certain level of camp that is unavoidable here (hell, movies like Baby Jane basically invented modern camp), but that doesn't mean that it doesn't feel real.  The story is petrifying-you spend most of the movie not sure if Blanche will make it out alive or not, and intrigued by what Jane might do next.  You also have a lot of great throwbacks to Davis & Crawford's careers (this was the final important movie of either of their careers, though they'd both continue working for the next few years, and in Davis' case, the next few decades), including footage of them as younger actors.

The Oscar nominations were all pretty well-earned as well.  The costume work is intriguing, particularly the garish ways that Davis turns Baby Jane into almost a creature dressed as a little girl (this surely would've been a Makeup nominee had that category existed yet).  The sound work is fine, if not quite as inventive; the movie's best sound effect trick is the sort of screeching moment of the car accident between two unknown figures, and then the opening credits come forward announcing a different kind of movie than you might have expected before.  The same can be said for the Cinematography, which has some iconic shots (the final sequence being the most obvious, though Ernest Haller does a good job of making us feel like we're peering into the lives of famous people gone to hell in a way others might not have been able to achieve).

The film won two acting nominations.  I'm always stunned by how young Victor Buono was when this movie was made (he was only 24), and he has a menace to his character even if ultimately it doesn't feel like he has a full-enough grasp on who his character is.  I liked his chemistry with Davis (which ultimately won him this nomination), but his motives other than greed remain unclear, and you are left wondering why he is the way he is.  The script doesn't help here, but neither does Buono.

Davis famously won her 10th and final Oscar nomination for her work here, and was expected to win the Oscar (how she didn't is a story most of you probably know if you've made it this far in this review, but let's just say it's epic).  She's great-she makes Baby Jane a concoction of horror & sympathy all at once, and while she was applauded at the time for letting her vanity go (she makes herself older & uglier to sell the part), it's really the way that she underlines how Baby Jane wasn't allowed to grow up, and the trauma of having success at such a young age, that really sells this movie.  Crawford just missed with the nominations (you have to assume she was sixth place), but is very good in a subtler role.  Yes, she looks awfully glamorous for a shut-in (Crawford, ever vain from being "the most beautiful woman in movies," would try to make herself look better against the wishes of director Bob Aldrich), but she finds great moments in the movie to hint at the woman she might have become without Jane, and to provide hints of the sort of person who would destroy their sister's life for their own mistake.  I loved that scene where she's watching an old movie, complaining, but all-the-while knowing that she looked great & succeeded in a way that her sister never could.  Baby Jane is a legendary movie not because of the offscreen feuds (lord knows countless movies have had costars who despised each other), but because that rivalry didn't stop a truly mesmerizing movie from taking place.

Ranting On...the Myth of Amy McGrath

Amy McGrath (D-KY)

On Tuesday, voters in Kentucky, Virginia, and New York are headed to the polls, and we'll have more on the results of those races next Wednesday on the blog.  However, I want to discuss some of the movement we're seeing in one of the races today on the blog, as it's a fascinating microcosm of a race, and sort of a weird case study into how nationalizing races can have unintended consequence.

The Democratic Primary in Kentucky has been set for months.  Amy McGrath announced in July of 2019 that she was running for the Democrats, and this felt like a decent solution in taking on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  McGrath lost in 2018, but she didn't lose by much and has a respectable resume, is a good fundraiser, and honestly, after multiple different Democrats turned down the opportunity, this was at least a non-embarrassing option for the Democrats.

But McGrath has run a pathetic campaign.  Yes she's raised gargantuan piles of money, but otherwise her campaign has been a joke.  She royally botched the initial question of whether she would have voted for Brett Kavanaugh or not (she initially said yes, then changed her answer to no, pleasing no one in the process).  She was nearly sued by Kentuckians for using their image without permission in an ad.  And she has not been able to figure out a a way to run on the same ballot as Donald Trump, not finding a strong balance between criticizing McConnell and not criticizing Trump.  The money has masked the fact that she's running one of the worst Senate campaigns in the country.

And now, she's going to be lucky to win her primary.  Despite having raised $41 million, out-raising McConnell by $9 million, she's in an increasingly tight contest with State Rep. Charles Booker, even though McGrath has 8x as much money.  Booker, a young African-American legislator, is running to McGrath's left, and has done better than either McGrath or McConnell in terms of fundraising from actually citizens in Kentucky.  He's stacked up endorsements from liberal leaders like Bernie Sanders & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as a more mainstream one from Alison Lundergan Grimes, a former Kentucky Secretary of State who was McConnell's last general election opponent.  Polls show the race closing, as local Democrats seem less enthused about McGrath as a candidate, and are excited for the prospect of Booker.

State Rep. Charles Booker (D-KY)

I'm pretty pragmatic, and so this would upset me in normal circumstances.  McGrath is the candidate that has raised the most money, is more moderate in a red state, and stands (on-paper) the best chance of winning.  But here's where I'm going to depart for a second-I am kind of hoping that Booker wins this, because McGrath has been running not just a shoddy campaign, but also one that has been dishonest about its chances.

One of the things that is fascinating about nationalizing fundraising is that it doesn't often mean smarter fundraising.  Democrats throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at the opponents of national figures like Jim Jordan & Kevin McCarthy, while Republicans are giving pointless amounts of cash to beat AOC or Nancy Pelosi.  This is all money that could actually make a difference in competitive, if less marquee, congressional campaigns.  And nowhere is this more evident than in Kentucky.

McGrath can't entirely be faulted for taking this money, but this is bordering on Jill Green campaigning to audit the election results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (playing on people's emotions) rather than feeling practical.  McGrath knows she can't win, and any Democrat who trots out "we might be able to pull it off" is either an fool or charlatan.  McConnell can lose, but by making him stop being majority leader, or perhaps even have him lose so badly that the GOP throws him out of his leadership post, but ruby-red Kentucky is never, ever going to throw out McConnell while Trump is on the ballot.  Ain't gonna happen.  He's as safe as AOC or Jim Jordan.  I'm forgiving of a lot of wishful thinking donations (I wouldn't bat an eye over a Democrat donating to Al Gross or MJ Hegar or Barbara Bollier even though those seats are longshots), but this is basically burning your money.

So McGrath raising this money and not either giving it to more winnable candidates, or at least trying to build up some infrastructure for Kentucky Democrats makes me feel like this is a long con, and one that it'd be better to stop before it gets out-of-hand.  She's even worse than Jaime Harrison (another candidate who is never going to win), as Harrison doing better-than-expected might at least carry Joe Cunningham across-the-finish-line.  But McGrath didn't recruit an up-and-comer in Kentucky's 6th district, the only conceivably winnable pickup in the commonwealth, and so I would prefer us to stop wasting resources on this race.

Booker might just be another option for Democrats frustrated at McConnell.  People might throw their money at him the way they did McGrath.  But hopefully her losing will put some sort of sense into people's minds that all the money in the world can't get you a win if the dynamics of your race don't change.  And from there, prospective donors will instead shift to seats like Iowa or Georgia or North Carolina or Maine...seats that might actually defeat Mitch McConnell.