Why Cuellar & Mitchell Should Stay Put (For Now)

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX)

Politics is an unusual beast because it's one that combines pragmatism with principle.  You can believe something with your whole heart, be faced with two options, and realize that one side is better than the other even if it's not the most ethical.  This is actually true of all of life-adulthood is frequently about choosing between two imperfect paths, and making decisions based on those choices, even in some cases you're, for example, choosing money over happiness or career over love.  I was struck by this with two political pieces of news that came out this past week surrounding two Democratic politicians: Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX) and State Sen. Nicole Mitchell (MN).

To give you a bit of grounding (in case you haven't heard about either of these stores), both of these two Democratic politicians are facing criminal investigations presently, and in both cases now have indictments they are fighting in court.  In Cuellar's case, the longtime Democratic politician is charged with accepting $600,000 in bribes, facing charges of bribing a federal official and money laundering.  Cuellar reportedly received bribes from companies in Azerbaijan and Mexico to help both of these entities as a member of Congress.  Pretty serious charges, and not that dissimilar to those faced by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), which will come up in a second but I'll mention it now since I have called for him to resign in the past.

Mitchell, on the other hand, is charged with first-degree burglary.  The state senator, first sworn into the State Senate just last year, broke into her stepmother's home after the death of her father, in hopes of taking some items of personal value that her stepmother had been keeping, including her late father's ashes (in this case, a really good reminder that every adult over 25 should have a will written, and it should not be a surprise to those mentioned in the will what they will be getting).

In both Cuellar & Mitchell's cases, neither of them are (at this point) offering to resign from their current offices, and while there are members of their parties who are critical or "concerned" for the most part their same-party colleagues are not asking for their resignations.  In cases of their leadership, it seems clear they want to "let the law do what it needs to" situation more than anything else, rather than voting to expel or putting more pressure on them to resign.  This might seem hypocritical, particularly of Democrats who have made a point of going after certain politicians (particularly Donald Trump and George Santos) to resign from office given facing indictments of their own.  But I'm going to be honest-I kind of get the hypocrisy, and might even condone it a little bit.

I'll back up by saying that I don't really like Henry Cuellar (he is way too moderate, particularly on social issues, for my taste, and I'm still a bit mad at him for challenging Rep. Ciro Rodriguez in the 2004 primaries, which he won by only 58 votes, as Rodriguez was more progressive than Cuellar).  He's arguably my least favorite Democrat in Congress (give or take Krysten Sinema and Jared Moskowitz).  And Mitchell...I had never heard of Mitchell before this story even though I'm from Minnesota.  But I also understand what's at stake here, and am reluctant to cede ground that I know Republicans wouldn't.

State Sen. Nicole Mitchell (D-MN)

Cuellar is already our nominee for the House in TX-28 in November; Texas does their primaries early, and they also don't have a mechanism to remove the nominee in the case of resignation.  Therefore, we're kind of stuck with Cuellar or nothing in November.  If he's charged (and he may well be charged), he's going to have to resign regardless, but it's entirely possible that he won't know that until well after the election.  Cuellar is popular, and given the anti-establishment trends of his district, it's possible that if he is on the ballot in November, he'll win, even by a slimmer margin.  This is a red-trending district that's still one Biden will likely win in November, albeit by less than he did four years ago.  Essentially giving that to the Republicans on a silver platter, especially in a House majority situation where every seat matters and where if we wait we might only have to give up the seat for a few months rather than the full two years...it'd be easier & more practical to wait until after November given how much is at stake.

The same can be said for Mitchell.  Currently the Democrats hold a trifecta in the state of Minnesota, with control of the governor's mansion, State Senate, & State House.  The Minnesota legislative session should hold through May 20th (or longer if the governor called for a special session), and the State Senate is only controlled by one-vote (34D-33R).  This means that if Mitchell resigns, they'll give up their trifecta at least until her special election (and until at least 2026 if the Democrats lost her suburban seat), possibly for the bulk of 2024.  That's a big loss, particularly as the Minnesota State House is up in November (where Republicans could win back control), and this is the first trifecta the Democrats have had in a generation.  Until Mitchell is convicted (or becomes too politically toxic to carry)...why give that up?

These are loaded questions, and they deserve a bit of "hypocrite!" calling from the Republicans, but I'll be honest-it also just feels logical, and slightly different than Santos, Trump, or Menendez.  In the case of Santos, this was a lost cause seat for the GOP.  Unlike Cuellar, there was no way he'd win in November, and while a special election would mean a few months with one less seat, the majority wasn't in jeopardy, and the press's coverage of his erratic behavior was making him untenable to keep in the House.  This was a case where there was virtually nothing at risk.  Menendez, again, would be replaced by a Democrat (also, he had a longer history of shading dealings than Cuellar or Mitchell had).  Calling for his resignation there's nothing to lose-we have to vote for his replacement in November anyway.

And Trump...what Trump did is far worse than Cuellar or Mitchell.  As the president, he encouraged a coup, and has actively said he would not honor the basic tenants of democracy.  That is worse than anything the aforementioned people have done-or-said.  If Trump was a Democrat, I would've wanted him to resign and certainly would've wanted him to step down as our nominee.  There is a line in pencil, and then there's another line in ink that it's not worth the political gains to avoid the consequences (also, it's worth noting that the Republicans would have a better shot with another nominee, and had Trump resigned while in office, would've still had the presidency...they risked very little on-paper by getting rid of him).  The unfortunate thing, though, is that when it comes to people like Cuellar & Mitchell, they occupy positions so great, a wait-and-see approach is worth it even if you are admittedly dealing with some hypocrisy.

OVP: Animated Feature Film (2023)

OVP: Best Animated Feature Film (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Hayao Miyazaki & Toshio Suzuki, The Boy and the Heron

Peter Sohn & Denise Ream, Elemental

Nick Bruno, Troy Quane, Karen Ryan, & Julie Zackary, Nimona

Pablo Berger, Ibon Cormenzana, Ignasi Estape, & Sandra Tapia Diaz, Robot Dreams

Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, & Amy Pascal, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

My Thoughts: The recent decline in Disney as a box office powerhouse (you have to go back to Toy Story 4 and Frozen II in 2019 to find cartoons that you could call unqualified hits from the Mouse House) has left a lot of openings here in recent years.  Movies like Strange World or Wish surely would've made the cut in this category in a normal year based on buzz alone, but given they were giant flops, the category is starting to look elsewhere.  I'm curious headed into this upcoming year, with two sequels to major movies (Inside Out 2 and Moana 2) if they are able to recover, but as of now, they had a few nominees that were clearly intended to be cited here, but never made it.

But Disney managed to avoid catastrophe in 2023 by at least getting one nomination, here for the slow-burn Elemental (since the pandemic, somehow their highest-grossing animated film even if it was greeted with a yawn on opening weekend).  It looks beautiful (though nowhere near as good as some of Pixar's best, but that's playing on a tough scale), and I loved the romance at the center feeling genuine to the story.  But it also is so tired at this point.  The metaphors are belabored, and literally every Pixar film since The Good Dinosaur has been some version of "parents don't understand" (Inside Out 2 looks likely to continue this trend)...does a studio that made unlikely children's classics out of a robot at the end of the world and an old man finding adventure in a floating house no longer have any other ideas?

The film of this bunch that actually made the most money was Across the Spider-Verse, a movie that when it came out was hailed as a potential Best Picture nominee, but ended up not even winning this category.  The film, like Elemental, looks great (the effects are mesmerizing), but it's also an incomplete thought.  How can you tell this is a good movie when there's no second half to it...I feel like I deserve a proper ending before I can grade it, and the increasingly manic nature of the movie, with unnecessary expositional dialogue and too many characters, feels like a "more is better" approach that doesn't bear out in reality.  I'll be real here-I feel like the people who heaped praise on this were more dazzled than impressed, because there's not enough to this for it to get the plaudits it received.

Nimona, a film that almost got lost in a series of mergers (at one point this was a Disney movie, and unlike Wish, it actually got an Oscar nomination), but I'm glad it escaped the collapse of Blue Sky.  The movie's queer plot lines are refreshing-you don't get to see this kind of representation in animated films often, though it doesn't break a lot of new ground with the plot.  I also had a bit of a crush on Riz Ahmed's Ballister, the best vocal performance in the picture.  It feels like it has more to say, which is a pity because at Netflix it won't get to do that, but this is a fun action-adventure.

Robot Dreams is not going to win any awards for being the most beautiful animation in this field (it'd come in fifth on that front), but this category isn't just about pretty pictures.  The substance matters too, and Robot Dreams is weirdly profound.  In a world where we have become increasingly isolated, and many of our friendships are conducted exclusively through text or social media, this movie captures that feeling, and the idea that what we all fear most in the world is dying alone.  It's really poignant, and of the films here, despite the cutesy design, the most mature in its messaging.

Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to make this film, and like Robot Dreams, really isn't for children (or at least, children aren't going to understand all of this plot).  The way that the film makes a metaphor come to life (how we'd rather leave the world behind than admit someone we love is gone) is fantastic, and I left enamored on that front.  But I do think that this is lesser Miyazaki, and especially in the last thirty minutes it tries too hard to shove all of the ideas in, as if Miyazaki is making multiple movies at once.  It's quite good, and it's Miyazaki so it's going to be moving & ethereal (the score is solid too), but I wish that it had had more structure.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with The Boy and the Heron as their winner, besting Elemental, Spider-Verse 2, Suzume, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, & Wish, while the BAFTA Awards also went with The Boy and the Heron atop Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, Elemental, & Spider-Verse 2.  At the time, the only one I missed in predictions was Robot Dreams, and while I predicted Suzume, my gut actually now says that something like Chicken Run 2 (which totally would've made it with a theatrical run) or the unusual approach of The Peasants (again, which would've had a better shot with a proper theatrical run) makes more sense.
Films I Would Have Nominated: This is maybe the weakest field of animated contenders I've seen since the 2000's...Oscar came up with a list that was middling, but it's not like the industry gave them much choice otherwise.  The one name I would've liked to have seen here was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a surprisingly choice and funny reimagining of the 1990's cartoon, but there's no film in 2023 that feels like a HUGE miss from Oscar.

Oscar’s Choice: At the time people thought it was a contest between Spider-Verse 2 and The Boy and the Heron, and I'm so glad that Oscar had the good sense in a weak year to think "Miyazaki should have two Oscars" and gave it to the latter.

My Choice: I'm going to go with Robot Dreams, which I think is the most poignant and ultimately the film I liked the best, over The Boy and the Heron, a movie that I might've voted for given it was the only film that had a shot other than Spider-Verse, but ultimately in a vacuum I have to admit Robot Dreams is better.  Behind them are Nimona, Spider-Verse, and in last Elemental, which means in the most recent four years, I have put a Disney film in last place three times.  Dark times underneath Cinderella's castle, indeed.

And that's our Animated Feature film race.  Do you want to join me in making an animatronic friend, or do you want to fly away with Miyazaki?  Do you think Disney will get its groove back in 2024?  And was it The Peasants, Suzume, or Chicken Run 2 in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Animated Feature Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Sound (2023)

OVP: Best Sound (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Ian Voigt, Erik Aadahl, Ethan van der Ryn, Tom Ozanich, & Dean Zupancic, The Creator

Steven S. Murrow, Richard King, Jason Ruder, Tom Ozanich, & Dean Zupancic, Maestro

Chris Munro, James H. Mather, Chris Burdon, & Mark Taylor, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

Willie Burton, Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo, & Kevin O'Connell, Oppenheimer

Tarn Willers & Johnnie Burn, The Zone of Interest

My Thoughts: I am still getting used to the concept of the sound categories being combined.  I don't like it (that's why in the My Ballot we are continuing to look at the categories separately), but it does makes things a bit simpler in grading these pictures.  In different years, some of these movies would've been a challenge to suss out the difference between mixing & editing, understanding what made one aspect a bit stronger than the other (cause quite frankly, as a non-filmmaker, there are movies where I can't tell if something is an effect or not).  But with them combined, we have it easier in just lumping them together-all the sounds count the same.

A good example of this would be Mission Impossible.  This film uses a number of different practical stunts (Cruise actually jumped off of a cliff while riding a motorcycle, which is insane & you have to be the level of Tom Cruise famous to be able to get a studio to take that kind of an insurance risk with their leading man), and when it comes to practical stunts, it is a combination of actual sounds and ones that are being manufactured after the effect to punctuate gunshots, punches, & explosions.  The film is strong in its fight scenes (particularly the one on the train), but I feel like it over-relies on the score, and it feels a bit generic after seven movies when it isn't getting its "this is the reason we made the movie" sorts of action sequences (again, like the train) brought out into the open.

The Zone of Interest is another film that, honestly, it's hard to tell the editing from the mixing, and you'd be forgiven for not realizing that the movie has both.  What you wouldn't be forgiven for is understanding how special this film's sound is.  Honestly, if you wanted to have a textbook definition of how sound can truly influence a film, this is it.  While Mica Levi's dramatic, electronic score elevates the movie in sequences, it's really in the silence, when we overhear people literally dying across the wall while the main family is displaying domesticity right in front of us, that we get the juxtaposition in Glazer's banality of evil paradox.  Brilliant stuff, and totally makes the movie.

We didn't get a musical nomination in 2023, which is usually one of the mainstays of this category, but we did get a musically-inspired film in Maestro.  I have been somewhat tough on Maestro throughout these proceedings (if you're a fan of the film, that's not going to get better the further along we go so brace yourself), but I am not blind (or in this case, deaf) to its stronger attributes, and one of those is its sound mixing.  The way that we hear a loud, almost cannon-fire look at Bernstein's compositions (think of the famous scene where Bradley Cooper allegedly spent years learning how to compose to get a few minutes of screen time), you understand so much of the character through the overpowering genius of his music.  This is well-balanced throughout the rest of the film, where we get conversation that feels tinkling, like in a Douglas Sirk picture.

Loud being good isn't the case for all films, though.  I have long had an issue with Christopher Nolan's pictures and their sound design, with some being very strong, but occasionally him having the worst of offenders in movies like Tenet, where there are stretches of dialogue when you literally can't hear the picture.  Oppenheimer isn't that bad, but I will own that the overbearing score breaks the sound-it's too loud, and it's too much.  It causes some of the bigger explosions to feel like they're playing second fiddle to a cymbal crash, and in a movie where the "big explosions" are important to what's happening in the movie (we need to understand the destruction to get why this has haunted Oppenheimer), this is a risky ball to drop.

The final nominee is The Creator, a movie that would've been a threat to win Best Sound Editing in a different era (I think 2023 is one of those years that the Sound categories split their winners).  The movie's reliance on a futuristic world where robots coexist alongside (and are seen as toxic to) humanity is one that needs to have a constant whir of sounds that are not there, and this works really well.  The Creator is not a strong movie, but it is one that looks & acts like a prestige Science Fiction thriller, and that includes its strong sound design.  You get distinctive aural cues for the robots, and despite none of that being in reality, you never doubt the visual effects are real.  That's in part due to the perfect synchronicity with the sound.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Cinema Audio Society (focusing on Sound Mixing) splits its victors between Live-Action and Animated, so for Live-Action we have Oppenheimer beating Barbie, Ferrari, Killers of the Flower Moon, & Maestro, while Animated had Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse victorious over Elemental, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, The Boy and the Heron, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.  The Golden Reel Awards (focusing on Sound Editing) also split between live-action and animated, with Oppenheimer (beating Ferrari, Gran Turismo, John Wick: Chapter 4, Napoleon, & The Killer) and Spider-Verse 2 (atop Elemental, Migration, & Mario) their winners.  The BAFTA Awards gave their statue to The Zone of Interest, here against Ferrari, Maestro, Mission Impossible, & Oppenheimer.  The Sound categories in 2023 have a shortlist (I always forget this because for years they didn't and also it's for some reason not on the Wikipedia page) and so we know that sixth place was either Barbie, Ferrari, The Killer, Killers of the Flower Moon or Napoleon...and I think the smart money would be on one of the two Best Picture nominees.  At the time I predicted Barbie (it has the musical elements that they tend to like), but Killers of the Flower Moon is a smart guess as well.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Like I said, we'll split out the categories between mixing and editing for my nominees, so we'll actually have seven films nominated for Sound in total.  One movie that will make both fields, though, and therefore would've had a guaranteed nomination in a combined category like Oscar's, is The Killer, which is a masterful look at how sound can inform the pacing of your film (also, all David Fincher films tend to sound good).

Oscar’s Choice: In maybe the classiest win of the night (and there were a lot of classy wins at the 96th Academy Awards), The Zone of Interest upset and got a victory over Oppenheimer, which was many people's presumed favorite.

My Choice: The only way you beat something like Oppenheimer for a gimme category like this is by being an all-timer, and that's what The Zone of Interest is-it's an extremely worthy first place.  Behind it, I debated between The Creator and Maestro, but ultimately picked the SciFi epic for second because I think it has the harder task and makes it more engrained into the movie.  Behind these three would be Mission Impossible, and then Oppenheimer.

Those are my choices-how about you?  I'm assuming anyone who has seen The Zone of Interest is giving it their vote...right?  Why do you think Oscar has moments of such discerning taste, and in other categories they just let the Best Picture winner stampede to the top?  And was it Barbie or Killers of the Flower Moon in sixth?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2023: Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Sound Mixing Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

On Moonlight Bay (1951)

Film: On Moonlight Bay (1951)

Stars: Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Jack Smith, Leon Ames, Rosemary DeCamp, Mary Wickes, Ellen Corby, Billy Gray

Director: Roy del Ruth

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Doris Day: click here to learn more about Ms. Day (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

All of the women we'll profile this year bore the title of "America's Sweetheart" at some point during their career.  But few of them got bogged down with that title in quite the same way as Doris Day did in her career.  As we'll find in the coming weeks, Day was wildly successful as America's Sweetheart, holding that banner for nearly twenty years, and it was the primary foundation for most of her movies, to the point that by the end of her career, she'd practically become a punchline for being the "world's oldest virgin."  But a film like On Moonlight Bay shows exactly why she was so good at that.  Virtually all of the tropes we associate with being America's Sweetheart, Doris Day lived in her time as a leading lady, which by 1951 was starting even if she wasn't the proven box office phenomenon she would eventually become.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Marjorie Winfield (Day), whose father George (Ames) has moved his entire family to a more respectable & wealthier part of town to live in a nicer neighborhood.  Initially something of a tomboy, Marjorie falls for an idealistic young man named Bill (MacRae), in the process becoming far more traditionally feminine in hopes of pleasing him, though both of them don't feel that they think marriage is the correct path for them as a romantic couple.  As the film progresses, they fall deeper in love, even though her father doesn't want her to pursue such an untraditional young man, but after he goes off to war (and adjusts his views on marriage), he condones the union and they end up in each other's arms before the film finishes.

On Moonlight Bay is not a direct remake of Meet Me in St. Louis, but it is clearly borrowing from the film.  The movie is about Day, but it's really about her family-her kid brother Wesley (Gray) might honestly have more screen-time than she does if you get out a stopwatch, much in the same way that a lot of the other actors in Meet Me in St. Louis share the spotlight with Judy Garland.  There's even a Christmas scene to complete the comparison.  The issue here is that Meet Me in St. Louis is a sentimental masterpiece, with bright costumes, moody cinematography, & toe-tapping musical numbers, and On Moonlight Bay...isn't.  The film was a big hit, and even got a sequel out of the deal called By the Light of the Silvery Moon (with pretty much the entire cast returning, including Day & MacRae), but it's just too feather-light and the music doesn't have enough panache.

Day's part here is one that she'd know well.  One of the more psychological tropes of the America's Sweetheart genre is a woman who doesn't at first present to the norms of respectable femininity, but by the end of the movie the man in her life has convinced her that's what she needs to do to be happy.  This is true for everyone from June Allyson (Little Women) to Audrey Hepburn (My Fair Lady) to even modern examples like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.  This is something that Doris Day excelled at, starting this film as a tomboy in dirt & pigtails, and then transforming into a blonde goddess.  It's not hard to see the appeal to the male gaze on this one-the idea that beneath every girl is a ravishing movie queen, if only she'd listen to the man in her life.  I'm hopeful as we continue this month that we'll see Day step out of that shadow, as her pluck & talent deserve a movie that sees those first, before catering to her lesser co-leads.

My Thoughts on the Columbia University Protests

I was 19-years-old when I attended my first protest.  It was (and I'm giving you a pretty decent idea of my age here) against the Iraq War.  I stood on the sidewalk of Snelling Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in St. Paul, holding a sign basically espousing that the Iraq War was wrong, an illegal war (something like that...I am not artistic so I am confident I didn't make my own sign).  I can still remember the reactions, though.  There were people who honked in support, there were people who honked that they were not supportive.  This was relatively early in the Iraq War (before it became popular to be against it), so there were more of the latter than the former.  I remember people yelling, one person spat from their car, and I definitely got a couple of "go back to Russia's" which made no sense in the context, but I would learn in the years that followed is sort of a stupid person's response to anything they perceive as anti-American during a protest.

In the years since, I have marched, protested, & written letters on behalf of a variety of causes, ranging from local issues (like specific campus policies my school had) to more national issues like gay marriage or Black Lives Matter.  I walked in the Women's March in 2017, by-far the largest march I've ever been a part of doing.  As I've gotten older, my attitude toward public marches have changed, understanding that what this is about is rarely about actual, tangible change (that happens through legislation, which ultimately happens through voting, not through marches or public revolt in the United States), and is more about a public expression of disgust with a specific policy, putting on record that this is important to me and the people I'm protesting with, and that we will be remembering this when it comes to primary season (and that we expect a public statement from the public officials we are talking toward).

I say this because the protests at Columbia University have, to my mind, become something of a murky waters situation online, and I wanted to try and make sense of it.  I have not written much about the situation in Gaza on this blog for a few reasons.  First, foreign policy is not my area of expertise-I am much stronger when it comes to discussions of domestic policy, or specifically, elections analysis.  Second, I find that this is a situation where you need to have a nuanced opinion.  The attacks on October 7th needed some sort of response, and the US has one primary ally in the region (Israel) that they cannot strategically abandon just because Netanyahu is a truly terrible leader (which you should be able to say without this being equated to antisemitism-Netanyahu is not Israel, and he is certainly not the people of Israel, who like the people of Palestine, deserve peace).  I support a ceasefire, but I also understand that that is what Joe Biden is trying to achieve with a delicate diplomatic situation, and that blaming Biden for almost any of this is a bit like blaming the president for gas prices.  Biden is not the King of the World, despite what some media will say, and other countries do have autonomy-there's only so much he can do, and putting economic sanctions on Israel is an extremely shortsighted solution given their position as an ally.  I'll be real-I think people expect Biden to have done more than he legally or practically could do in this situation.

And the third is that I understand that, while complicated, the actions of the protesters at Columbia University are not going to help.  This is a hard conversation to have, but for the bulk of Americans, while they support public protest in the forms of marches, letters, or peacefully assembling, they don't support other things that frequently come out of these events.  Destruction of public or private property, illegal squatting in buildings, and purposefully blocking traffic-these are not popular, and frequently have the unintended consequence of not helping the cause, adding more detractors than anything, and making your side look extreme (which makes politicians not want to align with it).  Oftentimes this is a challenging conversation to have.  What does a few broken windows matter compared to the atrocities happening in Gaza, or a few years ago, the actions endured by George Floyd?  They don't compare, and they shouldn't be compared.  But that doesn't mean that they accomplish what you want them to-most people don't think that way (public polling consistently bears this out).  They think "how will breaking those windows help anything?" because, well, it usually doesn't.  I watched with shock yesterday on Twitter as people said that Joe Biden had made a mistake in his public speech, condemning the actions of the protesters, thinking that Columbia University and the New York Police Department acted disproportionately to the situation, and that was more important.  They claimed what he was doing was "political suicide."  But it wasn't...if Biden loses because of the protesters abandoning support for him (despite Trump being much worse on this particular issue for the left, but that's a conversation for a different day), that's a possible consequence of this, but siding with the protesters breaking the law...that would've been political suicide.  Forget that the president (of either party) can never condone people breaking the law (he's the president-he has to support following the law)-the protesters are not popular, it wouldn't be politically expedient.  Had he sided against the police department enforcing the law (for the record, not condoning how extreme they were, just pointing out that was what they were technically doing in this case), that would've been the end of his presidency.

When it comes to a ceasefire, Biden is working behind the scenes (I'm confident...this is also politically expedient for him, not to mention a general reflection of his diplomatic policy), to make that happen, but ultimately it will be Netanyahu who makes that decision.  Biden cannot force him to do that.  But I do want to call out for progressives who feel forlorn with this-the biggest wins that we have had as a movement over the past few decades have been almost entirely as a result of coordinated ballot initiatives and strategic decisions with elections.  The current Democratic Party is more progressive than it has been since the 1930's, and Joe Biden (whether you want to admit or not) is the most liberal president the country has had economically since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and socially-ever.  Joe Biden, the 81-year-old Catholic from Scranton, Pennsylvania, is easily our most socially progressive president.  That didn't happen on its own.  It happened through giving him a Congress he basically had to move to the left with.  Progressives' biggest wins (true wins, that resulted in real change) in the past 15 years have been through a coordinated effort to elect more liberal candidates in blue seats, even if that means ousting incumbents (think of figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marie Newman getting real power in Congress by having a voice that has power behind it, and ousting incumbent Democrats from their left), or ousting Republicans with real progressives and not just middle-of-the-road Democrats (Elizabeth Warren & Katie Porter, two dominant figures of the new progressive movement, got their current offices by ousting Republican members-of-Congress).  The biggest win of all would surely be the power of Bernie Sanders' presidential runs.  Though he didn't win, he forced Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to move left in order to beat him, and because Biden became president (again, with the support of countless progressives), he was able to take some of Sanders' policies and make them law.  Public opinion in the past 15 years on gay marriage, the Affordable Care Act, marijuana legalization, and most recently issues like climate change & abortion rights, have shifted in large part due to a singular, specific message, and a movement to get the right people into office to impact change.  And in cases like gay marriage and the ACA, having those people in office have given the US some of their signature progressive domestic policy wins.

Ultimately, while protest is part of the American tradition, those electoral wins are the ultimate solve.  No matter how angry you feel, when it comes to making real change in the United States, the solution is usually the same-you hold no greater power to help advance the causes you believe in than when you are holding a ballot.  And choosing not to use that, or to vote for a candidate you know can't win...that's throwing that power away, and makes a mockery of the cause you are championing.

OVP: Score (2023)

OVP: Best Original Score (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Laura Karpman, American Fiction

John Williams, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Robbie Robertson, Killers of the Flower Moon

Ludwig Goransson, Oppenheimer

Jerskin Fendrix, Poor Things

My Thoughts: I do not generally gamble on the Oscars, mostly because no one will bet against me.  Even when I've had predicting contests in the past, it's usually me putting up the prizes while other people are just betting to see if they can take me down...the only thing I get when I win (which I have done all but two years I've done an official contest) is pride.  But I did bet on this race that John Williams would get a nomination, and won $10 (Cody, I suspect you're reading this, and yes, I am bragging about this months after the fact 😎).  This was John Williams' 54th nomination, and potentially his last.  While Williams has stated that he doesn't intend to retire (he initially did but changed his mind while doing press for Dial of Destiny), he is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category at the age of 91, and has no other projects lined up.  The only one of his frequent collaborators to have a movie out this year is Chris Columbus with The Thursday Murder Club (the composer has yet to be announced), but it's worth noting that Columbus & Williams have not worked together since 2002's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, so I suspect this might be the right bookend for Williams.

The OVP is very long and despite being in our 25th season, we still have 38 John Williams nominations after this to get through, so we will be discussing him a lot even if he never shows up again in real life (which I hope he does, I love John Williams).  If he is going out here, he's doing so with a beautiful piece of music.  Dial of Destiny is the fifth and final Indiana Jones film with Harrison Ford (Williams has done all five pictures), and while it does borrow from some of his past work, it's still an engaging and refined score.  Working with strings, in many ways Williams is leaning a bit on John Barry-style James Bond music, particularly with the luxurious woodwinds of "Helena's Theme."  I was enraptured, and nostalgic the whole picture listening to this orchestra.

We do know for sure that this will be the final Oscar nomination for Robbie Robertson, who won his first and only citation for Killers of the Flower Moon.  Robertson died of prostate cancer in 2023 at the age of 80, so this is the rare posthumous nomination, and it's a nice touch that he got it for a Scorsese film given they've worked together regularly since Raging Bull.  The film does a good job of combining some of the expected from Scorsese's filmography (an edgier, rougher composition, here combining Osage woodwind instruments with a drum & bass guitar).  It's not as memorable as I think you'd probably want it to be, but it's a fine piece of music when you revisit it.

Jerskin Fendrix's score to Poor Things is memorable.  I don't think that should be a distinguishing thing (you shouldn't get a win for being the most unique, particularly in a category full of "classical" music), but of all of these scores the sparing strings of Poor Things stands apart and gets points for that.  I didn't love this-I don't think it accomplishes the mood enough for me, and I think that it repeats too often, but it fits the quirky formatting of the picture, and Fendrix is an original.

American Fiction is the sort of movie that feels like a very odd juxtaposition for me.  If you know me in real life, you will know that I'm not a big music person (I'm much more into cinema, then literature...music is a casual thing), but of the music I do listen to, jazz is the most pronounced.  This has elements of jazz in Laura Karpman's score speak to my genre bias...but it doesn't work if you compare it to other, better jazz.  It feels too generic, and honestly borders into elevator music in portions of the film.  I think it's fine if you're waiting in a lobby, and I will totally own that I would clean my house or cook to this because I like jazz, but I cannot distinguish this from anything you'd randomly hear at 9 AM on MPR.

Which brings us to Oppenheimer.  I will note right now that Christopher Nolan scores do not necessarily get a death sentence with me.  Both Interstellar and Inception have My Ballot nominations, and Inception comes with a shiny silver medal for Hans Zimmer.  But the score here is too much.  Goransson's compositions are impressive-I get that, maybe even more than Poor Things, this will become synonymous with a specific kind of movie memory when it's played.  But it overwhelms the picture, and makes it far too loud and overbearing.  This isn't just about the best piece of music in the film, it's also about how the music fits the film, and here I think they're jamming together two puzzle pieces rather than making them feel like a natural click.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Grammys eligibility window for the best film score nomination is not the same as Oscar's so oftentimes you'll see films from two different years getting citations.  We do not have yet what the nominees for the 2025 Grammys will be, and so it's possible (if not probable) that some of these films (I'm looking in particular at Killers of the Flower Moon) could show up there, but of the year we do have, Oppenheimer won, and got in over two other 2023 releases: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Barbie.  The Globes and BAFTA's match Oscar's eligibility, so we have an easier comparison there.  The Globes went with Oppenheimer over Poor Things, The Boy and the Heron, The Zone of Interest, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, & Killers of the Flower Moon, while BAFTA picked Oppenheimer to beat Killers, Poor Things, Saltburn, & Spider-Man.  In sixth place, I'll be honest-I think it was none of these movies (even Spider-Man).  My money at the time was on Thomas Newman getting one of his randomly-discarded nominations for Elemental, and I think that was still probably sixth even if there are others with more precursors.  As Williams proves, sometimes Oscar just likes what he likes and says "see ya" to the recommendations from the rest of the season.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Past Lives is the 10th place finisher in the Best Picture category, and barely got nominated otherwise, but the place it should've made it was here, with Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen's lush, romantic score.

Oscar’s Choice: There was no universe anything other than Oppenheimer was winning this, and we don't need to even pretend there was a second place.

My Choice: Let's get three out of the way.  I'm giving 3rd/4th/5th to Poor Things, Oppenheimer, and American Fiction, in that order.  For the win, this is a good reminder that we do these things in a vacuum-we don't take into account, for example, that this was our only chance to give Robertson (who had a profound impact on the films of Martin Scorsese) a statue nor do we consider this might be the last chance we have to give John Williams' his long-awaited sixth statue.  We go just with what's in front of us, and while it's by no means his best score (or, honestly, even in the Top 20), Dial of Destiny is by my vote the best of these five nominees, and gets my Oscar.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  I am feeling confident I'm standing by myself here, but anyone want to join Indy & I while the rest of the world parties with Cillian & company?  How much should originality factor here compared to just really good music?  And do you agree with me that Elemental was sixth here, or was there another movie that was closer?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Score Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Saturdays with the Stars: Doris Day

Each month of 2024 we are taking a look at an actress who bore the title "America's Sweetheart" during the peak of her film fame, and what she did with the title (including when it was passed on to the next Hollywood princess).  Last month, we discussed Audrey Hepburn, a Belgian-born actress who would eventually become the most beloved actress in America.  This month, we're going to talk about a performer who also retired for decades after her stardom (refusing virtually all public appearances, including an Oscar & a Kennedy Center Honor), but in her heyday, enjoyed financial success at the box office that was pretty much unparalleled while she ruled as an "America's Sweetheart" for well over a decade.  This month's star is Doris Day.

Day was born the daughter of a music teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was named after actress Doris Kenyon.  While initially she pursued dance, a car accident & a broken leg put an end to that, and she started to sing on radio programs and eventually in acts with famed bandleaders like Bob Crosby & Les Brown, and eventually became a performer on Bob Hope's weekly radio program.  During this time, she signed a contract with Warner Brothers, making a series of forgettable musicals while also having massive success as a radio star (in 1952, if you asked people whether or not Day was an actress or a singer, they would have undoubtedly said the latter).  Calamity Jane was a monster success for Warner Brothers, getting Day her biggest hit song to date with "Secret Love," and it was enough that Day decided she was ready to leave her contract with Warner and strike out on her own in the mid-1950's.

Day would then enjoy one of the longest, most successful runs at the top of the American box office of any actor in the history of the movies, being in the Top 10 most successful actors all the way until 1966, when at the age of 44, she was operating in a field usually reserved for actresses a decade younger than her.  Day's legacy is fascinating in retrospect.  Famously conservative and one could even admit a bit prudish, her films have not survived in the same way as someone like Hepburn's, as her persona was built on a girl-next-door appeal that occasionally ran against the real-life woman behind the part.  Oscar Levant once said of Day "I knew her before she was a virgin" and indeed, Day toward the end of her career had to wear the snarky moniker "the world's oldest virgin" considering she kept playing naive women onscreen.  This month, though, I want to talk about Day's unusual personal life (which had some really rough chapters, including her son being involved with the Manson Family and her third husband squandering her fortune), and maybe see if there was more to the actress than the homespun America's Sweetheart persona let on.