Reflections on Missing Expectations

Everything on the internet is permanent is a common phrase associated with social media, and this is a good piece of advice (think before you post).  But it's also true that nothing on the internet is permanent.  Websites collapse, accounts are deleted, priorities of even major companies like Google & Apple & Facebook disappear into the ether.  Because I have spent 12 years of my life on this blog, and because I am always a little bit fearful that it will all go away if Blogger ever disappears, I have been working on a project in my personal life to back up all of the articles on this site, at least in terms of the words themselves (the pictures & collages, I'll be honest, will have to be at risk in the ether as I don't have the bandwidth to save all of them, but the words are the important part).  This has meant that I am peeking at thousands of articles through the years on topics ranging from politics to movies to a whole host in between.  I have run across articles not only that I don't remember writing (but I did-with one exception where my brother did a guest spot, I have written every one of the 4000+ articles that have ever been published on this blog), but about subjects that I don't remember at all.  Hot topics fade away, and honestly that makes it more fun to revisit.  It's a good reminder that even in the digital world, yesterday's newspaper is lining a bird cage tomorrow.

One of the things that I was struck by while writing is that I used to be far more diligent about writing about my personal life, or at least thoughts from my personal life, on the blog.  If you've only come to the blog in the past couple of years, you'll probably know I do write about these things (I do a personal life update every few months or so), but I used to write about topics and not just my personal life.  Dating advice, navigating being single, advice for new home-owners...things that reflected what was going on in my life.  I don't know that that will ever be something I really get back into totally.  As you get older, your sense of propriety gets a bit stronger.  You find a few close friends (or a spouse...or a therapist...or a journal) that you can pour your guts out to, and you learn some decorum about what is shared on the internet.

But in the spirit of liking that reflection when I'm saving these articles, we're going to talk a little bit about feeling overwhelmed.  This has been a feeling I've been navigating quite a bit in the past few months, and one that I've been trying to get a handle on, and I suspect is something other people have gone through as well, so I wanted to invite it onto the blog for a GTKY Sunday article.

The last few months I have spent a lot of time doing what I call "working in inches" to not get overwhelmed by the day-to-day aspects of my life after having a tougher 2023 than I expected, certainly at the beginning of that year.  I put an inordinate amount of pressure on myself, and part of that means that there are a lot of things that I do that take a considerable amount of work.  I have been trying really hard at my job for advancement, which takes a significant amount of networking & extra work to prove yourself.  I have also been working harder with my personal finances so that I can afford some changes to my home & to go on a number of trips this year and next that are on my bucket list.  I own a pretty large home, one that for a single person is a lot of work to maintain.  When people talk about home-ownership, I think they think of it as a financial responsibility, but a house is a living, breathing organism, something you're expected to take care of and improve constantly, and all of that costs money, time, & effort.

These are just two aspects of life, ones that everyone has, but let's face it-we have others too.  To be well-rounded, we are expected to keep up on modern music, film, books, & television, having a "what are you reading/watching/listening to" answer whenever anyone asks (and not the same one they asked last month).  I run a blog I write on daily, one that I frequently have more good ideas for than I can execute in the time I allot it.  I feel a pressure to both cook healthy and interesting meals (which for a solo person, you also need to last as leftovers, otherwise your budget gets destroyed), while also eating out and finding a way to be sociable.  The more involved you are with people who share your hobbies (which is a beautiful aspect of being online), the more you get to talk about them, but also the more you get to realize if you're falling behind on that as well compared to other people that are super-fans of, say, Oscar-watching.  And to top it off, you have to be in shape, find time for a romantic life if you're not married, & be well-versed in things like retirement planning & properly saving your money...while also finding some time to volunteer to be a more civically-engaged human being.  I generally approach all of these things through "working in inches"-each month making sure I do at least a little bit to keep that ball rolling, while rarely actually finishing the project, or when I do finish it, it's just a couple of inches from the finish line so it doesn't feel like it's as big of a deal.

The thing about it is that none of these are things you "have" to do (if you want to go into my comments and be mean or condescending, you will get deleted-I'm aware that none of these are life-and-death issues...this is a personal blog, you're here by choice to listen to the topics I wanted to share-I'll be back to politics or movies tomorrow), but they are all things that make you feel whole, and for the past year I've felt that, even as I've moved significantly on some of these metrics as a combined effort, it doesn't feel like it's enough.  I'll spend six hours cleaning my house or write a dozen blog articles or finish buying a decorating project (these are not hypotheticals-they're all things I've done in the last month), but it doesn't feel like I'm having enough break between that and "okay, what's next."  Part of this is due to being single, I'll be honest-I know that in relationships you have someone else who is on the same team as you on a project, so they'll understand that spending $200 on a bunch of picture frames to make your guest bedroom look how you dreamt it would look is a big deal.  But I think this is everyone, going too fast to try to get to a finish line that doesn't really exist, rushing past being proud of the moments where you actually did something you'd worked days, weeks, months, or even years to be able to afford or put in the effort to finish.

In a way, it almost feels like there's a mild connection between these feelings, knowing that I'd stopped marking major achievements in my personal life on this blog with some sort of article cornerstone, and feeling like I am not giving myself enough credit for doing all of the things in my life.  I am working on all of my projects at once, all of these amazing goals for my life at the same time, and there are days when this "working by inches" approach feels so slow as to not feel like I should get credit for where I'm headed.  But I'm getting there, and so are you-celebrate that in yourself, and make sure that any movement forward, even if it's not at the pace of people next to you, is still headed in the right direction.

OVP: Visual Effects (2023)

OVP: Best Visual Effects (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts, & Neil Corbould, The Creator

Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, & Tatuji Nojima, Godzilla Minus One

Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams & Theo Bialek, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Alex Wuttke, Simone Coco, Jeff Sutherland, & Neil Corbould, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Charley Henley, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco, & Neil Corbould, Napoleon

My Thoughts: I am totally intrigued and fascinated by the direction that the Visual Effects category is headed in this decade.  Increasingly, the Visual Effects world has struggled with uglier blockbusters.  The Marvel and DCEU films in 2023 were rough, with movies like Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom looking atrocious.  And Oscar seems to have noticed.  But with less original franchise starters that have the kinds of budgets to compete with these pictures, they went with two films that actively flopped, a franchise that it took seven installments before they actually cared, and another franchise it took 70 years before they could get behind it.  All of this at the expense of subtler special effects in Best Picture nominees like Poor Things, Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Oppenheimer, showing that they're still the only tech category that doesn't just cite the Best Picture nominees.

The only movie that you'd normally expect to get nominated here was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the only nomination the entire MCU got in 2023 despite three high-profile releases.  I will totally own that while I didn't love this movie, and I did think that it wasn't extraordinary in its visual effects, it's easily the best the MCU has been since...Eternals?  The special effects on-display here are great during some of the Counter-Earth scenes, as we get giant crashes over this domestic city, and they are aided by stronger cinematography than we normally get in most blockbusters these days.  It's not enough by Oscar standards, but this is the one comic book movie that didn't embarrass itself last year, and it shows.

The Creator isn't a good movie, but its visual effects are gorgeous.  The lighting in this sometimes veers too dark, but that's one of the few complaints I have.  This is a decadent film in terms of its actual effects, frequently mixing both the big (lots of explosions) with the small.  There's something really compelling about the CGI in terms of the head movements of the actors playing robots that you actually believe their heads are hollow, a tricky feat in a film, particularly when they're being played by actual actors and not just CGI green screen suits.  I didn't like the political ramifications of the film (a movie about the merits of AI happening during a strike when the actors in the film were fighting against AI), but that's not the fault of the visual effects department (and given my pick doesn't have any real-world ramifications like it would in an actual Oscar ballot, won't impact my decision).

Godzilla Minus One gained a lot of headlines for having one of the smallest budgets for an Oscar-winner for Visual Effects in a decade (I believe since Ex Machina in 2015), but if you watched this, it doesn't show it.  No, the effects in this certainly aren't Avatar levels of groundbreaking, but they prove that great visual effects help the story and help the look of the film.  The CGI that is working through this has some grit because of the budget, but it uses that advantageously.  I was particularly impressed not just with the way that we see an increasingly menacing Godzilla (with no obvious cutaways because they couldn't afford a full body shot like, say, The Little Mermaid which cost 25x this movie but you never get a proper look at Ursula), but also the smaller effects like the water shots, which are breathtaking, and give us multiple worries (Godzilla is right there, but also...the ship sinking is going to kill everyone anyway if they can't keep it afloat).  A really special film, and one helped at every turn by this team.

Mission Impossible getting this nomination has to be one of the weirdest 11:00 numbers I've seen from Oscar in a while.  Yes, Godzilla had the longer streak it was breaking (this is the first time in 70 years that a Godzilla movie was nominated for an Oscar), but that was a prestige reimagining of the picture.  This was just Movie #7 in the series.  There are definitely scenes in this that really require visual effects wizardry, not just CGI but lots of stunt work (the opening scene on the motorcycle, the scene in the train where they're pouring out of the boxcar), but I have two things puzzling me.  The first is that there's a lot of repetition to previous movies (there's not a lot of newness here save for the two scenes I just listed), so I have to take away some points for just building on the previous films while not providing enough new.  The second is-why did it take so long?  My rule with the OVP is always judge just by what's in front of me that's new, but...this is not the best VFX in the series (Ghost Protocol and Fallout get VFX nominations for my My Ballot for a reason-they're the best in the series).  I can't fault the film for that (I will judge on its merits), but if Oscar was going to go here, why not do it sooner?

The final nomination is for Napoleon, which is the least showy of these five, and honestly got its nomination almost completely on the legs of the battle sequence at Austerlitz.  This is impressive, the way that it unfolds and, similar to the dual threats in Godzilla, is handled well from a narrative perspective in addition to the effects (the threat of both being shot and being drowned in the same passage).  But I'll be honest, much of the rest of the film is dull, particularly those scenes in Egypt where you never actually believe the actors are remotely near the Pyramids...it's just a mess of background CGI that would've done better with better location shooting.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Visual Effects Society gave their trophy to The Creator against Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Oppenheimer, while its supporting effects winner was Nyad against John Wick: Chapter 4, Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, and Society of the Snow.  It's worth noting that they have an Animated Feature category given Oscar's shortlist, and it was indeed won by Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.  Poor Things won Best Visual Effects at the BAFTA's against The Creator, Guardians 3, Mission Impossible 7, and Napoleon.  The Oscar shortlist for this category was Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Poor Things, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire, Society of the Snow, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.  The inclination is to fanboy out and think it was Spider-Verse in sixth or go with Poor Things because it was nominated elsewhere, but I'll be honest...given the need to award big budget films here (save Godzilla), I'm going to bet that it was Indiana Jones that just missed.

Films I Would Have Nominated: There's a specific film that's going to show up in my list that Oscar loved way more than me (this is the only time I would cite it but Oscar wouldn't), but I can't really complain about a movie with 13 nominations missing somewhere, so I'm going to instead say that the fun plays on size in Dungeons & Dragons were really smile-inducing (particularly the Bradley Cooper effect & Chris Pine's facial morphing), so I wish Oscar had gone there.

Oscar’s Choice: You have to go all the way back to 1998 to find what happened here-a Visual Effects field where anyone could win.  I predicted The Creator, which I'm guessing was second place, but you could make the argument for pretty much any order here, and Oscar surprisingly did the classy thing by giving it to the ingenuity of Godzilla Minus One.

My Choice: I'm going to repeat that.  I think the single best effect of the year is the heads in The Creator, which is my silver, but cohesively (and in terms of story-telling) I cannot deny Godzilla.  Behind them are Guardians, Mission Impossible, and then Napoleon.

And those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone ready to storm Tokyo with Godzilla, Oscar, & I, or did another film tickle your fancy?  How did Mission Impossible get this nomination on its seventh try?  And was it Poor Things, Indiana Jones, or another option lounging in sixth place?  Share below!

Also in 2023: Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

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

OVP: Makeup & Hairstyling (2023)

OVP: Best Makeup (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Karen Hartley Thomas, Suzi Battersby, & Ashra Kelly-Blue, Golda

Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou, & Lori McCoy-Bell, Maestro

Luisa Abel, Oppenheimer

Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier, & Josh Weston, Poor Things

Ana Lopez-Puigcerver, David Marti, & Montse Ribe, Society of the Snow

My Thoughts: There was once a time when the Makeup category was quite unpredictable, and it would stand out because Oscar would get weird with it.  You'd see random films you've never heard of or box office bombs or movies that are at like 15% on Rotten Tomatoes.  But in recent years, this category has lost a good chunk of its personality, minus the craziness going along with the "everything must be one of the ten Best Picture nominees," and this category isn't an exception.  There are three Best Picture's here, and while there could've been more (we'll get there), the remaining two include an International Feature film, so there's really only one reminder of how crazy this category can get.

This is the first, last, and only nomination we'll get to for Golda in our 2023 OVP.  This is the sort of "transform a movie star" work that they tend to love in this category, and given how little personality the Oscars allow the tech categories anymore, I really wish I liked it, but I don't.  The only piece here that's worth any value is Helen Mirren as the former Prime Minister of Israel, and even that work feels rubbery.  The nomination is for the whole film, not just one set-piece, and if it is for that set-piece (here, it clearly is) it shouldn't look like latex.

We ended up having two non-Jewish actors playing famous Jewish figures in 2023 (make of that what you will), but only one stirred up a lot of controversy around the makeup.  I don't mind biopics that don't mirror real life (you need to bend to make it an interesting movie), but I will say that giving Leonard Bernstein a significantly larger nose than he had in real life in Maestro to accentuate his appearance feels like a choice, and a suspect one.  The more impressive old-age makeup, quite honestly, was what they did to Carey Mulligan in middle-age, with strained lines in her makeup to make her look older than she is, but that's not why this got a nomination-it was Cooper's nose, which isn't all that remarkable.

I was much more taken with the consistent makeup work in Society of the Snow.  Here we have makeup throughout, even if it's just the same effect, but I do feel like we got a sense of the degree of frostbite these men & women endured as they tried to live in the bitter cold of the Andes.  The makeup is subtler, and it grows over time so it feels like more of a consistent tracking achievement the further we get in, measuring the despair from the looks of the actors since the actual environment is meant to be an unyielding constant.

Poor Things is perhaps the film with the "most" makeup in its story.  The headline is Willem Dafoe's Dr. Frankenstein-adjacent work, but we also see the growth of the makeup in Emma Stone and Kathryn Hunter's characters as well.  I think this is also very well-done.  I do think that some of the gross-out choices feel more there to shock the audience (particularly those that are associated with blood or body humor), but Dafoe looks incredible here, totally believable makeup while also feeling quite natural to the picture.

Our final nomination is the first of the mountain of citations won by Oppenheimer, our Best Picture winner for this season (and the leading nominated film).  I'm in the middle on this particular aspect of Oppenheimer.  Cillian Murphy & Emily Blunt are achieving this nomination based on their old age makeup which, I'll be real, isn't that good, especially Blunt's (Blunt's forehead does not look like the age of a woman who hasn't had access to Botox, I'm sorry).  But I do like some of the looks when they're younger.  This category, it has to be remembered, is not just about transformations-it's okay to make pretty people look pretty.  The severe red lipstick of Blunt during her testimony, Benny Safdie's caked-on sunscreen...these are solid touches by the makeup department.  They aren't why it got this nomination, but they're under the technical umbrella of why it's nominated so they get it some points.

Other Precursor Contenders: BAFTA went with Poor Things as its winner, besting Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Napoleon, and Oppenheimer.  The Saturn Awards covered multiple years due to some late-breaking Covid issues where they had a longer eligibility window than usual, but they did largely stick to 2023 films.  The Covenant won (the Saturn Awards have weirdly flexible eligibility in terms of what's allowed to be nominated, but their winners tend to favor horror or fantasy), beating Evil Dead Rise, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Oppenheimer, Renfield, and the 2022 release Prey.  The shortlisted contenders here were Beau is Afraid, Ferrari, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and Napoleon, so one of them was in sixth place.  At the time I only predicted incorrectly that Oppenheimer would miss in favor of Flower Moon, and so that's my guess at sixth, though honestly Napoleon isn't a crazy guess either given it did pretty well with the tech categories.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Despite a couple of good nominees, I'm totally upending this when we get to the My Ballot.  Of the five I'll nominate the one that feels the most Oscar-y is Nyad, which is really fascinating prosthetic work on Annette Bening as she weathers literal days in the salt water, and the swelling and sunburn that gets on her face is so realistic (and hard to watch).  It's the Best Actress nominee that deserved inclusion.

Oscar’s Choice: The winner was Poor Things, probably over Maestro and Oppenheimer.  This was the best/only chance Maestro had to win, and given the "spread the wealth" of the past few years, I'm kind of surprised it didn't, and its loss a testament to Poor Things doing quite well in the tech categories.

My Choice: I'm going to start out properly contrarian in 2023 (this will not be the first time) and pick Society of the Snow, a movie I liked much less than Poor Things (my silver), but one that had the better makeup work so I need to give credit in the category itself.  Behind them I'd do Oppenheimer, Maestro, and then Golda.

And those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to enter the laboratory with Willem Dafoe or go hiking the Andes with me (scratch that-let's all just put sunscreen on Benny Safdie instead)?  Why do you think that clear contenders Guardians 3 and Nyad couldn't even make the shortlist?  And was it Napoleon or Killers of the Flower Moon that just missed here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Previously in 2023

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

Maryland's Senate Primary is a Rare Thing: Competitive

Prince's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD)

One of the pitfalls of being the only person who writes this blog (very much as a side hobby-I have a full-time job, and a full-time house that takes up most of my attention) is that I sometimes miss stories that I would've wanted to discuss.  One of those stories was the decision by Tammy Murphy, current First Lady of New Jersey, to drop out of the US Senate race there.  Murphy's decision basically makes Rep. Andy Kim the de facto nominee (and in a state as blue as New Jersey, a de facto US Senator). 

This also means that the DSCC is avoiding yet another primary.  In fact, the DSCC has made avoiding primaries its raison d'être in recent years.  While the other three congressional arms frequently encounter such mess, the DSCC has made it through 2024 virtually unscathed.  The open seats in Delaware, Michigan & Arizona look like coronations for Reps. Lisa Blunt Rochester, Elissa Slotkin, & Ruben Gallego, respectively, and while California did have a primary, it was over months before the actual election.  Thanks to a quick effort by Rep. Adam Schiff to ensure he had a Republican opponent, both Reps. Barbara Lee & Katie Porter were lame ducks nearly a year out from the next Congress.  Even the challengers in competitive races (like Reps. Colin Allred & Debbie Mucarsel-Powell) are doing so without any competition.  This is a fascinating counter to the Republicans, who have potentially competitive primaries in Utah, Michigan, Nevada, and just finished a much ballyhooed race in Ohio.

The sole exception to this is what is happening Maryland, which has become not only the marquee Senate primary this cycle, but the only Senate primary remaining this cycle worth a damn on the left.  The race features Rep. Dave Trone, a three-term House incumbent who is facing off against Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.  The race initially started out with Trone having a huge advantage.  He is personally wealthy (he is the founder of the Total Wine retail chain, and appears to have a family fortune in excess of $2 billion), and has outspent Alsobrooks 12-1 in the race.  

However, Trone has made some fumbles in recent weeks, which have left Alsobrooks an opening.  Trone, though he has presented as a progressive in the primary, has a more moderate past, and even donated to Republicans like Greg Abbott and Pat McCrory in the past, which Alsobrooks has successfully exploited.  Abortion has become a major topic in the race, and Emily's List (a Democratic group that supports pro-choice women, and is actively supporting Alsobrooks in the race) has pointed out that Trone has supported candidates who passed restrictive abortion laws in Georgia, questioning his opinion on abortion rights.  Trone also made a racial slur (that seemed accidental-he claimed to use the wrong word in a congressional hearing) that caught him a lot of bad headlines especially given that Alsobrooks is African-American (like a large portion of the Maryland Democratic primary electorate will be).  No poll so far has shown the race (which takes place in mid-May) with Alsobrooks winning, but the latest poll from Garin-Hart-Yang, the only poll this month, shows Trone only leading by three-points as Alsobrooks is rolling out a steady list of endorsements, including from Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, and Maryland Reps. Jamie Raskin & John Sarbanes.

Rep Dave Trone (D-MD)

The closeness of the Senate primary is unique.  The last time I can find where a Democratic-held open-seat Senate primary was decided by less than 10-points was in Illinois in 2010, where State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias beat Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman by just 5-points (despite Giannoulias being the heavy favorite amongst the Democratic elite...a sign of how he'd foul up the general a few months later).  Most Senate primaries that we think of as "being close" in that time frame simply weren't.  2016's race where Rep. Chris van Hollen beat Rep. Donna Edwards in Maryland (which Alsobrooks has to worry about given the clear through-line of a sitting white congressman defeating a Black woman in the blue state) was decided by 20-points.  Both Martin Heinrich defeated Hector Balderas and Mazie Hirono defeated Ed Case by 17-points in 2012.  

Even if you move beyond the open blue seat criteria, you don't run into many tough competitive primaries.  For example, despite a lot of press, John Fetterman defeated Conor Lamb by 32-points in 2022.  Incumbent Democrats generally have been fine.  Ed Markey's supposedly "nailbiter" race with Joe Kennedy III ended up with him winning by 11-points.  Dianne Feinstein only won by 8-points in 2018 against State Sen. Kevin de Leon, but that was a general election so it doesn't really count.

The only major races I can find on the map (I have some diligent readers who will point out if I missed one, but I think I'm good here) in the last decade that were for a competitive/blue seat ithat were decided by less than 10-points were the 2016 Senate primary in Pennsylvania (where Katie McGinty beat Rep. Joe Sestak by just a few hundredths of a percentage point less than 10-points), and Sen. Brian Schatz defeating Rep. Colleen Hanabusa by less-than-a-point in 2014 in Hawaii, the last true nailbiter when it comes to a Democratic primary in a race that the Democrats would win the general.

All of this is to say, Alsobrooks even being competitive is honestly an atypical world for the Democrats right now.  The question is-does she have enough time (and more crucially) enough money to get through to the Senate against Trone, in a race that will likely decide Maryland's next US Senator.  I have not attempted to hide that I am actively rooting for Alsobrooks (and will be donating to her campaign tomorrow), but if I am looking at this race impartially, she needs to close the gap a little faster if she wants more than just a moral victory in this race, as right now I'd bet on Trone being the nominee.

Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Film: Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: The film received no Oscar nominations, which given its precursor count would number as a BIG upset by today's standards-Wilder was nominated for both the DGA & the WGA, and the film was cited for Best Picture at the Golden Globes (as well as lead nominations for both Hepburn & Chevalier).  If a film today got that, they'd be a sure thing for a few nominations from the Academy.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Audrey Hepburn: click here to learn more about Ms. Hepburn (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

One consistent thing that we'll see all year for this theme is that while some of the actresses we'll profile did, in fact, wait around in Hollywood for a bit before they became "America's Sweetheart," all of them pretty much had that picture, that afterward they were instantly stars.  For Audrey Hepburn, that movie was Roman Holiday, which won her an Academy Award and made her a household name.  For the next ten years, Hepburn could do no wrong, with virtually all of her movies doing well with audiences ...with only 1-2 exceptions, the biggest being today's movie Love in the Afternoon.  Why are we focusing on one of those exceptions today, you might ask?  Because, well, I didn't realize it'd flopped until after I'd watched the movie and I have seen so many of her films that I didn't think it would be wise to waste a screening.  Today, we're going to talk about arguably the highest-profile miss from Hepburn from this era, one that paired her with an icon of the previous generation (which may have been the problem).

(Spoilers Ahead) Love in the Afternoon is about Ariane (Hepburn), a young cello student who lives with her father Claude (Chevalier) in Paris.  Claude is a private detective, one who makes his living investigating the crumbling romances of the various men of Paris, many of whom are losing their wives to a lothario named Frank Flannagan (Cooper).  When a client threatens to kill Frank, Ariane intercepts, and manages to save his life...but in the process she becomes enamored with him.  Having read about his escapades for years in her father's notes, she is able to manipulate him, pretending to be a worldly sophisticate and someone he can easily romance without strings attached (this is basically "friends with benefits" for the 1950's), but she's in fact deeply in love with him.  When he becomes jealous of all the men she's "been with" he goes to her father's detective agency...at which point her father realizes what's happened.  He wants him to dump her, knowing that he will break her heart, but at the end (in a romantic train station goodbye), they embrace, and the closing narration shows that she finally tamed the playboy, and made him her husband.

Audrey Hepburn, similar to Grace Kelly, spent much of her acting career being romanced by older men.  Humphrey Bogart was 30 years her senior, Rex Harrison 21 years older, Cary Grant was 25 years older, and Fred Astaire, again, was 30 years older than Hepburn.  There are a lot of guesses as to why Hepburn & Kelly, specifically, were asked to do this, but it was largely because Hollywood had a lot of over-the-hill actors who were still somewhat bankable & they didn't think audiences would continue to see them if they continued to romance women their own age like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck.  This wasn't always a problem for Hepburn-you watch films like Sabrina, My Fair Lady, Charade, & Funny Face, and she plays really well against these guys, using their screen personas and her youthful whimsy to full advantage.  This is why she made so many good movies, as she was the rare romantic lead who could compliment these men's star persona so beautifully, even with an age difference.

But that did not manifest with Gary Cooper.  Love in the Afternoon is a good movie, mind you.  There's a solid script here, even if it should probably be funnier, and the premise works really well.  It's Gary Cooper's casting, though, that doesn't click.  Cooper is not my favorite actor, but in his best roles he did two things well-he was very good as an honorable man stuck in a tough situation and he was really good at playing an idiot being outmaneuvered by a smarter woman.  The script doesn't play into the first part at all, and doesn't really lean into the latter well enough.  Cary Grant was the first choice for this movie, and would've been much better, as in many ways this foreshadowed their work in Charade (which unlike this, was a massive hit).  Cooper & Hepburn, both screen stars in their own right, don't work together, and it's hard to put any of the blame on Hepburn, playing this role decently.  The scenes she has with Maurice Chevalier, for example, are quite light & melodious.  A missed opportunity, and a shame that all of these flashy names couldn't pull together a better picture.

Stop Writing Off Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA)

I am generally loathe to write about a future election when the current one is not done, but I was struck the other day by a unique quirk in having two presidents face off against each other in a post-22nd Amendment world.  Joe Biden will, regardless of what happens in 2024, never run for president again (his age will make that impossible), and while there's a slim possibility that Trump would run in 2028 (Trump's supporters don't care about his age), I honestly doubt he would attempt to unless he was the incumbent (and openly defying the 22nd Amendment, which is a discussion for a different article).  Regardless, there is a strong probability that in 2028, we will have no incumbent president running.  This isn't rare, and in fact it has happened twice in the past twenty years (2008 & 2016), but there's something that neither of those two years had happening that will be near-certain in 2028: we will have a sitting vice president running for the White House.

This didn't used to be as unusual as it would be now.  Since 1952, in every election where an incumbent couldn't run, the vice president has run for the White House save for 2008 & 2016.  The open-seat elections include 1960, 1968, 1988, & 2000.  In fact, before 2008, you'd have to go back to 1952, when Vice President Alben Barkley declined to run, which in retrospect was a good thing as he died in what would've been his first term as president (he was, and still is, the oldest man ever to hold the office of Vice President).

This has opened up something of a myth about the vice presidency being a lousy platform to the White House.  Of those four elections I just name-checked, only one (George HW Bush in 1988) won the election, while the other three (Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, & Al Gore in 2000) lost unusually close elections (in Nixon & Gore's cases, elections that historians still wonder if they actually won).  So you're going to read a lot of puff pieces about how Kamala Harris (or the Republican Vice President, whomever he or she may be) is doomed in 2028, and I'm going to be real here-this far out, don't buy it.

There's a tendency in political prognostication to assume politics is prophecy, that it's preordained who will win based on trends or history, but that's not really the case.  Everyone will come up with random historical models (my favorite being the forty years model, and not just because it would strongly indicate the Democrats will win the 2024 and 2028 elections), but they're all kind of hooey, so I want to be clear here-a sitting vice president gains a lot from that position, particularly when it comes to winning the nomination (which in 21st Century America is most of the battle)...but it is by no means a way to win the White House on its own.

I'm saying this particularly because of naysayers to Harris's chances in 2028 (which is the primary reason that I'm writing this article now instead of in January when it's obvious who the sitting vice president in 2028 will be...I'm tired of people disparaging Harris).  I want to be clear on what is and isn't true about her chances in 2028.

First off, should Harris win reelection in November, she will automatically become the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2028.  Sitting vice presidents in the modern political system have so many advantages that in many cases, people don't even run against them.  Al Gore won every single state in the 2000 primaries, and Richard Nixon won pretty much every election that had actual votes in 1960.  Harris, unlike Joe Biden this past year, though, won't be unbeatable, and you can see that in 1968 and 1988.  Hubert H. Humphrey likely would've lost the 1968 nomination to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy had Kennedy not been assassinated, and in 1988, George HW Bush lucked out after getting third in Iowa when Pat Robertson failed to catch on in New Hampshire, and Sen. Bob Dole's views on taxes was exploited (along with a critical endorsement from Gov. John Sununu, who would later be rewarded by becoming Bush's Chief of Staff).

So Harris will be the frontrunner in 2028, but other leading Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, & Raphael Warnock will not be scared off in the same way they could've been in in 2024.  But the other thing that should be taken into consideration is that Harris's campaign for the White House in 2020 should not be an indicator of whether she'll win or not.  Harris, were she to win in 2028, would join a long list of presidents who ran & lost their first primary only to come back and win not only the nomination but the general election.  Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and Joe Biden all ran for the presidency in previous nominating cycles, lost the nomination, and then went on to become president, just like would be the case with Harris.  Other candidates like Hubert H. Humphrey, Bob Dole, Al Gore, & Hillary Clinton all ran for the nomination, lost, and then was their party's nominee again (and, admittedly in all cases, also lost the general proving that maybe the voters were right to decline them in the first place).  All of this is to say-Harris losing in 2020 means nothing.  She's a different candidate now, and history teaches us that that means she'll be able to run a different campaign.

No, what will cost Harris in 2028 isn't stats, but simply the attitude of the country.  She will be running for a third Biden term, and really a fifth Obama/Biden term.  If the country wants that, she'll win, and if they don't, she won't.  No VP can escape their predecessor, and even ones with popular predecessors (Nixon in 1960, Gore in 2000) can tightly lose because they don't capture that same charm.  But don't write her political future off based on the past or stats just yet.  2028 is miles away, and the only thing we can say for certain is that Kamala Harris will be a name we'll hear a lot in the years leading up to it.

The RFK Jr Campaign Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (I-NY)

We will see how much of this I get out in the next few days, but I currently have five political topics (in addition to getting to some actual races in the 2023 OVP) that I want to do on the blog in the coming days, but I am also trying to have a super productive week on other topics, so we'll how it goes.  My hope is to get it all done, as I think all five political topics (and of course the 2023 races) are intriguing (and at least a couple are time sensitive).

We're going to start with a conversation about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is currently running as an Independent for the White House.  This past week, a top campaign official on Kennedy's team said something that felt telling, albeit telling in the way that you're saying "the quiet part out loud."  Rita Palma, who according to CNN is Kennedy's campaign director in New York, stated that the campaign's "No. 1 priority is to get rid of Biden."  I'll clarify that she was speaking specifically about Kennedy's campaign in New York, not his national campaign, but it's a telling sign that Kennedy wants to specifically beat Biden in New York, not make things more difficult for Donald Trump.

Let's take a step back to point out a few things.  First, the goal of third party campaigns is rarely to actually win the White House, even that's what they claim to the public.  The last third party candidacy that had a shot at winning the White House in public polling was Ross Perot in 1992, whom, it's worth noting, despite winning 19% of the public vote, received exactly zero electoral college victories (the closest he got was Maine's second congressional district, which he got within 5-points of taking from Bill Clinton).  No third party candidate has won an electoral college vote on their own since George Wallace in 1968, and while there have been some that have made serious overtures since Perot (specifically Evan McMullin in Utah in 2016), most are running for other reasons.  They might be running on single-issue campaigns (like around marijuana legalization) or are running to raise awareness about a specific issue (like climate change or racial justice).  Or...they're running to be a spoiler.

Whether or not that's the actual case, in the past thirty years, save for Perot & McMullin, this has been the role of any third party candidate that you can actually name.  Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, even Kanye West...all of them were running with the most meaningful thing they could do is throw the race to another party, in all of these cases, the Republicans (Johnson is debatable, the other three are not).  That is the case with Kennedy-he is 100% running with the intent of being a spoiler in the race, and it is clear not just from his campaign staff's public statements, but also in the way he's conducting his campaign.  Kennedy's condoning of the actions of those who participated in the January 6th attacks on the Capitol is just one of many entreaties that Kennedy has made in an effort to show a stronger alignment with Donald Trump than with Joe Biden.

You might be asking yourself a pretty obvious question here-if Kennedy is aligning himself with Donald Trump, doesn't that put Trump (who is, like Joe Biden, wildly unpopular) more at risk of losing votes to Kennedy than Biden?  That's not a bad question to be asking at this point in the race.  Kennedy's views on vaccines, the attacks on January 6th, and in particular his penchant for supporting conspiracy theories are very much aligned with the Republicans than the Democrats in 2024.  If Kennedy were to get the same kind of coverage in the presidential election that Joe Biden or Donald Trump did, I think the Trump camp would need to be worried, and it's possible he will.  His polling is decent enough at this point that he might be invited to a debate, or at the very least major news outlets will continue to treat his candidacy more seriously than those of Stein or McMullin.

But I still think Kennedy (currently) poses a greater threat to Joe Biden for three reasons.  First is that he wants to beat Biden; it's clear that of the two, Kennedy prefers Trump, and that is dangerous because if he's lucid enough to know that he's going to hurt one of the candidates, he'll make a point of hurting Biden.  This is why he's trying to get on the ballot in Arizona, Michigan, & North Carolina, all crucial swing states that Biden is going to need at least one of to get the White House.  Second, Kennedy's views on other issues (such as gay marriage & abortion access) are more moderate than your average Republican (i.e. he's not as conservative as Trump), albeit they shift depending on the day you ask him.  Put it this way-if Kennedy was an actual voter, and not a candidate who has made public statements & signaled their preference, I would be genuinely curious who they were voting for for the White House in November.

President Biden with dozens of members of the Kennedy
Family this past St. Patrick's Day

And third is: he's a Kennedy.  Kennedy is not well-known to the public, and so I guarantee if you asked most people voting for him they'd either say "he's different" or assume that he is more progressive than he actually is because of his family name.  It is entirely possible this is where the race stays for low-propensity voters...that they will go into the election booth, and the only thing that they know about the guy is that his father and uncles were US Senators (and one was US President), and vote for him assuming he's the same guy.  And those voters that are impressed by the Kennedy name are going to be Democrats or moderate/swing Republicans (i.e. the type that will vote for Nikki Haley but not Donald Trump), all of whom are winnable by Joe Biden (and in fact, he needs to win to get a second term).

This is where the Biden campaign I suspect takes the cue.  Frequently with third party candidates, the best idea is to ignore them, and pretend they don't exist but you aren't seeing that from Democrats.  They are going after Kennedy pretty hardcore, and that's because they're taking his polling seriously.  The best way they can do this is through using the Kennedy brand against RFK Jr, and you're seeing Biden do that.  Four of Kennedys siblings (Rory, Kerry, Joe, & Kathleen) publicly admonished their brother and announced their support for Joe Biden, and in the months since several other high-profile members of his family (including his cousins Caroline & Patrick, nephew Joe III, and aunt Victoria) have publicly endorsed Biden, and indeed an entire group of Kennedys were at the White House for St. Patrick's Day, basically a billboard for the Kennedy support of Biden.

Expect to see more of this in the coming months-I would bet my next paycheck that before this campaign is over, members of the Kennedy family will cut an ad for Biden that he can air in states where RFK Jr. might be a threat.  This wouldn't be the first time this has happened, after all; Rep. Paul Gosar's siblings cut an ad for his opponent in his House campaign in 2018.  The Kennedy family branding is at stake here too-if the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins figures like Ralph Nader & Jill Stein (basically swear words in the Democratic Party), it will reflect poorly on them, and their power within the Democratic Party will waver.  A Biden victory is also a Kennedy victory...except for one black sheep that's trying to elect a man his father would've been repulsed by.