R.I.P.: B.B. King (1925-2015)

"The Thrill is Gone." But B.B. King is forever. In our hearts, in his music -- and, alongside Eric Clapton, in this wonderful music video.

Eat your hearts out, Avengers: Brad Paisley is "Crushin' It" as a singing superhero

"Completely and totally drawn, animated and created by Brad Paisley." No joke: The multi-platinum musician and dynamic multitasker takes full credit -- or, if you prefer, full blame -- for this hilarious music video, in which he cast himself and a slew of other country superstars (including Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and "George Freakin' Strait") as superheroes fighting for truth, justice and the Grand Ole Opry. (Looks closely, and you'll see cameo appearances by Jimmy Kimmel, Beavis and Butthead, and the Nashville skyline.) 

Could this Paisley's sly but none-too-subtle way of auditioning for a role in the next Avengers movie? Well, if Robert Downey Jr. ever does decide to hang up his Iron Man outfit...

Dave & Barack talk retirement

I wish David Letterman and Barack Obama could hold on to their jobs a lot longer. But all good things must come to an end. Dammit.

Star Wars: "Chewie, we're home!"

Must admit: After viewing the last few seconds of this trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, even I am super-geeked to see the movie. And remember -- I am old enough to have seen (and reviewed) the first Star Wars adventure during its original theatrical release many moons ago.

Dennis Quaid gets pissed off

Dennis Quaid and I aren't exactly BFF's, but I have interviewed him on several occasions, and he always has impressed me as an unfailingly gracious and unaffectedly down-to-earth professional. So I can't help thinking that whatever made him angry in this video is something that would try the patience of a saint. Seriously.

Update: Well, of course it was a joke. 

About damn time: Animals opens May 15

Over a year after David Dastmalchian's semi-autobiographical drama Animals premiered at the SXSW Film Festival -- where it received a Special Jury Award, and garnered a thumbs-up review from yours truly -- the impressive indie is set to open May 15 in theaters and drive-ins everywhere. If you're a venturesome cineaste, you might want to check it out. In my Variety review, I must admit, I expressed doubt that the movie had much commercial potential. So go ahead -- prove me wrong.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is Bambi! (And he's pissed!)

I laughed so hard at this instant-classic Saturday Night Live sketch -- showcasing the lovely and talented Dwayne Johnson -- I frightened my cats and nearly spilled my Merlot.

Back in the saddle at SXSW

So many movies... so little time... Fortunately, my Variety colleagues, as always, know where the buzz is. 

Michele Bachmann stars in Sharknado 3. No, really. Seriously.

Yes, it's true: Water really does seek its own level. After demonstrating her entertainment value as a Presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann gets her big shot at stardom. Or something like it.

But seriously, folks: My last-minute, what-the-hell Oscar predictions

And remember: These are predictions, not preferences.

PICTURE: American Sniper

DIRECTOR: Richard Linklater, Boyhood

ACTOR: Michael Keaton, Birdman

ACTRESS: Julianne Moore, Still Alice

SUPPORTING ACTOR: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: The Grand Budapest Hotel

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Imitation Game

EDITING: American Sniper

CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Grand Budapest Hotel

PRODUCTION DESIGN: The Grand Budapest Hotel

SONG: "I'm Not Gonna Miss You," Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me

ORIGINAL SCORE: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Oscar nominee Robert Duvall: On losing control in The Judge, taking charge in Wild Horses

In the unlikely event you’ve ever doubted Robert Duvall’s fearlessness as an actor, take another look at that scene in The Judge where his character – Joseph Palmer, an aging magistrate who’s suffering through the side effects of chemotherapy -- is embarrassingly incontinent.

Clad only in his undershorts, Duvall looks every minute of his 80-plus years as Joseph struggles, and fails, to regain his footing after collapsing while upchucking into the toilet of his upstairs bathroom. At first, he pridefully pushes aside an offer of assistance from Hank (Robert Downey Jr.), his hot-shot lawyer son. But he relents – reluctantly – and manages to get to his feet, just as he starts to soil himself. Awkwardly, Hank and his father gravitate toward the shower, where Joseph – alarmingly pale and frail, sadly resigned to his humiliation – must rely on his son’s help to wash away the mess.

It’s an impressively powerful scene in a criminally under-rated film, one that reveals both the weakness and resilience of Duvall’s character – who, not incidentally, can’t remember whether he’s actually guilty of a murder he stands accused of committing – and the forging of something like a nonaggression pact between Hank, who’s serving as Joseph’s defense attorney, and his long-estranged father.

And it’s the scene that caused Duvall to very nearly pass on The Judge.

“Yeah,” Duvall told me over lunch last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, “I turned it down. “I said, ’A guy who shits himself? I don’t want to do that.’ But my agent, Nigel Meiojas -- he talked me into doing it, Nigel did. If it weren’t for him, I probably would be saying, ‘I don’t want to do it’ to this day. “But once I decided to do it, I had to really jump in and just do it.”

Indeed, Duvall did it so well that he earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor – and could score an upset Sunday evening during the Academy Awards presentation. (That would make Duvall a two-time Oscar winner, after his Best Actor prize for Tender Mercies.)

But was there another reason for his initial reluctance to play the title role in The Judge? Specifically: Did he view the ailing and incontinent Joseph Palmer as a worst-case-scenario future version of Robert Duvall?

“I gave that a fleeting thought, maybe,” Duvall conceded. “But, look: My wife looks after me, and I try to keep in shape. My younger brother died of cancer, got a disease, and I know that’s a pretty terrible thing. But I try to, each day, face the day in a positive way, hopefully.”

During our long lunch break, Duvall repeatedly praised co-star Robert Downey Jr. – “I really like him. A good man, a good man.” – and expressed gratitude for the rehearsal time the cast was granted by director David Dobkin.

“Actually,” he recalled, “we sat down one afternoon at a hotel, and we started an improvisation. And we did it for an hour and fifteen minutes, all of us -- Downey, too -- talking about different subjects as the characters. It really worked out, helping us unify ourselves, and meld, you know? Dobkin was willing to sit back and watch that, to see how that formed. It was nice, to form friendships as actors and as the characters, too, so that really helped.

“Sometimes, during rehearsal period, you just keep going over the lines. ‘What does that mean? What does this mean?’ You try different things. But that one improvisation was a great, great thing to do.

“I think that some of the modern-day directors are a little more appreciative of the actor, rather than trying to control them. Some of the old guys – well, I still tell the story about Henry Hathaway, I worked with him on True Grit, and he said to [Glen Campbell], ‘When I say action, tense up, goddamnit!’ It’s not a good thing to do.

“But you know,” Duvall added with a soft bark of a laugh, “even now, it’s still the same: They say action, and they say cut – and you’ve got to come up with something in between, right? It’s kind of like playing house. Kids play house. We play house as adults for money. It’s the same thing: make-believe. You play the father, I play the son – you know? And now I’m the judge, you’re my son. But it’s the same as when you were a kid.”

Now 84, Duvall maintains his youthful enthusiasm for acting – and continues to extend his resume with credits on both sides of the cameras. In fact, he almost didn’t make it Toronto to publicize The Judge because, at the time, he was working as director on another project: Wild Horses, a small-budget drama in which he appears alongside his wife, Luciana Duvall, and co-stars James Franco and Josh Hartnett.

“Warner Bros. wound up paying for an extra day of shooting [on Wild Horses],” Duvall said, “and they offered to fly me up here on their private jet. I figured that would be as close as I’d ever come to their private jet, so I said OK.”

For all his complimentary words about The Judge in general, and Downey and Dobkin in particular, it’s obvious that Wild Horses – which is slated to have its world premiere next month at the SXSW Film Festival – is a film much closer to Duvall’s heart.

“We had a wonderful cast, but we only had $2 million to do it, and 23 days. But we did it, and I think it worked. It is kind of a complex story about a guy who has a ranch, and he runs his son off the ranch, at gunpoint, 15 years ago, because his son is gay. The son comes back, 15 years later, for the reading of the will. We got Franco to play that part. That was a quirky part.”

So what is James Franco really like?

“A bit of a whacko,” Duvall replied without hesitation – and with, it should be noted, a wide grin. “But you ought to see him ride a horse. Terrific. And he can do many things, like take a page of dialogue and know it in six minutes. He is very, very, very, very quick. We only had him for five days. We couldn’t get him for six or seven. So we really had to hustle.”

Duvall reportedly is set to reunite with Franco and Judge co-star Vincent D’Onofrio for In Dubious Battle, a drama (directed by Franco) based on the John Steinbeck novel of the same title. After that? There had been talk – lots of talk, actually – that he would star in Terry Gilliam’s long-delayed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Now, however, it appears that project is going in a different direction, with a different actor. But never mind: Duvall doesn’t seem to be a man who spends many sleepless nights in dread of long-term unemployment.

“Sometimes things are planned,” he said, “and then something will come around the corner and be better than what you’re planning. Like a surprise, you know?”

I want to hear the lamentations of the Oscar bloggers!

What do I want to happen Sunday night during the Oscarcast? Total chaos. Astounding upsets. Epochal disruptions of the space-time continuum. Weeping and wailing, heads exploding, dogs and cats living together...

In short: I want the bloviating Oscar bloggers to be battered and flabbergasted. After lo these many months of endless handicapping, it's no longer a question of who I think will or should win. No: At this point, to paraphrase Michael Caine in The Dark Knight, I want to see the world of the Oscar bloggers burn.

Yes, that's right: I want American Sniper -- or, better still, Selma -- to claim Best Picture. I want Benedict Cumberbatch to snatch the Best Actor prize, and Rosalind Pike to strike Oscar gold as Best Actress. I want to see Wes Anderson tell his fellow Best Director nominees: "Back off, bitches! This motherfucker is mine!" I want Meryl Streep to go for the gusto and grab the Supporting Actress award.  And I really, really want Robert Duvall to wrap his fingers around the Supporting Actor statuette, and tell anyone who doesn't like it to kiss his 84-year-old ass. 

So there.

Think I'll go lie down now.

The classic Saturday Night Live sketch I really wanted to see during the 40th anniversary show

"I'm Norman Bates from The Norman Bates School of Motel Management..." Anthony Perkins once told me how much he loved doing this sketch. And his delight is obvious, even as he plays it perfectly straight. Well, perhaps "straight" isn't precisely the correct term to use in this context, but you get the idea.

Why I am always willing to cut Kanye West an inordinate amount of slack

Being a proud New Orleans native, I felt compelled to watch NBC's A Concert for Hurricane Relief when it aired in the wake of Hurricane Katrina nearly a decade ago. And I must admit, I was absolutely gobsmacked when, without warning, Kanye West dropped his infamous 20-megaton dis on George W. Bush. Don't misunderstand: I didn't really question West's claim that Dubya "doesn't care about black people." But I was shocked by the angry intensity-- and, yes, the utter fearlessness -- of his off-the-cuff comment. 

And I was convinced -- absolutely convinced -- that West would immediately be targeted for a boycott by outraged right-wingers. There would be pressure brought to bear on advertisers, who would in turn pressure radio and TV outlets to ban West's music and music videos. And, of course, major retail chains would be pressured to stop selling West's CDs.

So even before the TV special ended, I got up from my couch, ran out to my car, drove over to the nearest Best Buy store -- and bought a copy of every Kanye West CD I could find. In the interest of full disclosure: I think, at that point in his career, West had only released two studio albums, so we're not talking about a huge cash outlay on my part. But, hey -- it was the principle of the thing.

At the checkout counter, the polite young African-American cashier had a hard time hiding his amusement as this gray-haired white dude placed the CDs onto the counter. But his smile faded when I told him what I had just witnessed on NBC. He, too, thought Kanye West was going to suffer mightily -- professionally, and maybe even personally -- for his outburst.

Of course, when I got home, I started playing the CDs in my office. And right around the time I had "Gold Digger" (West's bodacious duet with Jamie Foxx) blaring from my speakers, my son George walked through the front door with a few of his college buddies. They had to file past my office door to get back to George's room, for a long evening of video-gamesmanship. And it was my turn to be amused as I noted the amazed looks on their faces. Fortuitously, I turned down the sound just in time to hear one of my son's friends tell him: "Damn, George! Your dad is fuckin' cool!" George, it should be noted, didn't indicate disagreement with that appraisal.

And that's why, even when Kanye West misbehaves at The Grammys, I can't get too upset at him.   

Now that the nominations are in, here are the Oscar odds

Courtesy of Bovada, here are the Oscar odds laid down by sports publicist Jimmy Shaprio.

Best Picture

Boyhood 1/14
The Grand Budapest Hotel 12/1
Birdman 14/1
Selma 18/1
The Imitation Game 20/1
Theory of Everything 25/1
Whiplash 50/1
American Sniper 50/1

Best Director 

Richard Linklater - Boyhood 1/14
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - Birdman 13/2
Bennett Miller - Foxcatcher 25/1
Morten Tyldum - The Imitation Game 25/1
Wes Anderson - The Grand Budapest Hotel 25/1

Best Actor 

Michael Keaton - Birdman 4/5
Eddie Redmayne - The Theory of Everything 1/1
Benedict Cumberbatch - The Imitation Game 12/1
Steve Carrell - Foxcatcher 25/1
Bradley Cooper - American Sniper 33/1

Best Actress 

Julianne Moore - Still Alice 1/20
Reese Witherspoon - Wild 10/1
Rosamund Pike - Gone Girl 20/1
Felicity Jones - The Theory of Everything 20/1
Marion Cotillard - Two Days One Night 33/1

Best Supporting Actor

JK Simmons - Whiplash 1/18
Edward Norton - Birdman 9/1
Mark Ruffalo - Foxcatcher 12/1
Ethan Hawke - Boyhood 20/1
Robert Duvall - The Judge 33/1

Best Supporting Actress 

Patricia Arquette - Boyhood 1/25
Emma Stone - Birdman 12/1
Keira Knightley - The Imitation Game 20/1
Laura Dern - Wild 20/1
Meryl Streep - Into the Woods 25/1

Call me a sentimentalist, but I'm putting my money down on Robert Duvall (pictured above) for an upset. Of course, when I was in Las Vegas last August, I wagered $100 for my beloved New Orleans Saints to win the Super Bowl this year, so you might want to think twice before heeding my handicapping.

Boyhood sweeps Houston Film Critics Society Awards

The Houston Film Critics Society (of which I am a member) announced its annual awards for cinematic achievement Saturday at H-Town's Sundance Cinemas. And, not entirely unexpectedly, home-town boy Richard Linklater's Boyhood picked up a passel of prizes -- including the Texas Independent Film Award for outstanding indie shot in the Lone Star State. (Other nominees in that category: Above All Else, Hellion, Joe, No No: A Dockumentary and Stop the Pounding Heart.)

Other winners:

PICTURE - Boyhood
DIRECTOR - Richard Linklater, Boyhood
ACTOR - Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler
ACTRESS - Julianne Moore, Still Alive
SUPPORTING ACTOR - JK Simmons, Whiplash
SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
SCREENPLAY - Richard Linklater, Boyhood
ANIMATED FILM - The Lego Movie
DOCUMENTARY - Citizenfour
FOREIGN FILM - Force Majeure
SONG - "Everything is Awesome," The Lego Movie
SCORE - Alexandre Desplat, The Grand Budapest Hotel
POSTER - Annie Atkins, The Grand Budapest Hotel
TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT - Boyhood 
WORST FILM - The Identical

(I know HFCS president Joshua Starnes has kittens whenever a member publicly questions any of our awards -- but, really, I saw The Identical, and it wasn't that bad. Trouble is, I don't think many of my fellow HFCSers saw Premature, Best Night Ever or Jinn.)

The Houston Film Commission was given a special award for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema. And it was my pleasure and privilege to introduce a Lifetime Achievement award for Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter Larry McMurtry.

Unfortunately, due to technical problems, the exceptionally inventive montage of 2014 movies prepared for the event by HFCS member Travis Leamons... well, couldn't actually be played at the event. But you, dear reader, can feast your eyes upon it here.

Back when Columbia wasn't afraid to offend foreign dictators: You Nazty Spy!

Months before Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator reached theaters, The Three Stooges took their own potshots at the posturings of Adolf Hitler in their 1940 short You Nazty Spy! Just how ballsy was this movie in its time? To quote Wikipedia:

The film satirized the Nazis and the Third Reich and helped publicize the Nazi threat in a period when the United States was still neutral about World War II, and isolationist sentiment was prevalent among the public. During this period, isolationist senators such as Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye objected to Hollywood films on grounds that they were anti-Nazi propaganda vehicles designed to mobilize the American public for war. According to the Internet Movie Database, You Nazty Spy! was the first Hollywood film to spoof Hitler...

The Hays Code discouraged or prohibited many types of political and satirical messages in films, requiring that the history and prominent people of other countries must be portrayed "fairly" [but] short subjects may have been subject to less attention than feature films.

BTW: Both Moe Howard and Larry Fine reportedly cited You Nazty Spy! as their favorite Three Stooges short. No kidding.

Mitt Romney stands up for The Interview. No, really.

.@SonyPictures don’t cave, fight: release @TheInterview free online globally. Ask viewers for voluntary $5 contribution to fight #Ebola.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 18, 2014

Guess the North Koreans didn't see the Red Dawn remake

In the wake of the (alleged) North Korean hacking of Sony Pictures -- a crime (allegedly) triggered by a fictional assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Sony's upcoming The Interview -- one thing seems certain: The folks who made and released the Red Dawn remake must be very, very happy right now that their film flew so low under the radar.

As I noted in Variety when reviewing the remake at Fantastic Fest in 2012:

China was depicted as the aggressor when this Red Dawn was shot in 2009. But after MGM, its original distributor, declared bankruptcy, the producers opted to make the pic more appealing to other distribs (particularly those wary of offending Chinese government officials) by re-filming scenes, relooping dialogue and digitally altering flags and military insignia to transform the bad guys into war-mongering North Koreans.

Thank goodness the North Koreans didn't know about that. At least, I think they didn't know about it. I mean, the fact that the remake premiered in Austin... that wouldn't have anything to do with Austin being on North Korea's must-nuke list, would it?

BTW: I guess the North Koreans didn't see Olympus Has Fallen, either.

My dream comes true in the Kingsman trailer

For years -- decades, really -- I've thought one of the extended "nah-nah-nah-nah" riffs in Deep Purple's cover of "Hush" (a '60s hit originally recorded by Billy Joe Royal) would work terrifically well on the soundtrack of some kick-ass action flick. Particularly in a scene where there's a great deal of, well, ass-kicking.

Lo and behold, my wish finally has been fulfilled -- sort of -- in the new trailer for Kingsman: The Secret Service. Mind you, they didn't use the Deep Purple version of "Hush" -- instead, they chose Kula Shaker's take, which ain't chopped liver -- but the "nah-nah-nah-nah" stuff works just as well as I've always thought it would. I don't know if this musical selection was approved by the film's director, Matthew Vaughn. But it should be noted that one of the guy's previous credits is.... wait for it... Kick-Ass.

By the way, when I went looking for a video clip of Deep Purple performing "Hush," I found this 24-karat oddity, shot on location at the Playboy Mansion.