Here Are The 2025 SAG Nominations

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Due to the catastrophic wildfires currently burning in California, Tte Screen Actors Guild dispensed with their usual big nominations announcement and instead sent out a simple press release their morning.

Here are the SAG’s film nominations.  The SAG is a usually pretty good precursor so the folks who were celebrating the victory of the Brutalist on Sunday night have a bit less to celebrate today.  That said, the 2,0000-person nominating committee appear to have really liked The Last Showgirl.  Let’s keep Pamela Anderson’s Oscar hopes alive!

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
ADRIEN BRODY / László Tóth – “THE BRUTALIST”
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET / Bob Dylan – “A COMPLETE UNKNOWN”
DANIEL CRAIG / William Lee – “QUEER”
COLMAN DOMINGO / Divine G – “SING SING”
RALPH FIENNES / Lawrence – “CONCLAVE”

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
PAMELA ANDERSON / Shelly – “THE LAST SHOWGIRL”
CYNTHIA ERIVO / Elphaba – “WICKED”
KARLA SOFÍA GASCÓN / Emilia/Manitas – “EMILIA PÉREZ”
MIKEY MADISON / Ani – “ANORA”
DEMI MOORE / Elisabeth – “THE SUBSTANCE”

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
JONATHAN BAILEY / Fiyero – “WICKED”
YURA BORISOV / Igor – “ANORA”
KIERAN CULKIN / Benji Kaplan – “A REAL PAIN”
EDWARD NORTON / Pete Seeger – “A COMPLETE UNKNOWN”
JEREMY STRONG / Roy Cohn – “THE APPRENTICE”

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
MONICA BARBARO / Joan Baez – “A COMPLETE UNKNOWN”
JAMIE LEE CURTIS / Annette – “THE LAST SHOWGIRL”
DANIELLE DEADWYLER / Berniece – “THE PIANO LESSON”
ARIANA GRANDE / Galinda/Glinda – “WICKED”
ZOE SALDAÑA / Rita – “EMILIA PÉREZ”

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
MONICA BARBARO / Joan Baez
NORBERT LEO BUTZ / Alan Lomax
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET / Bob Dylan
ELLE FANNING / Sylvie Russo
DAN FOGLER / Albert Grossman
WILL HARRISON / Bobby Neuwirth
ERIKO HATSUNE / Toshi Seeger
BOYD HOLBROOK / Johnny Cash
SCOOT MCNAIRY / Woody Guthrie
BIG BILL MORGANFIELD / Jesse Moffette
EDWARD NORTON / Pete Seeger

ANORA
YURA BORISOV / Igor
MARK EYDELSHTEYN / Ivan
KARREN KARAGULIAN / Toros
MIKEY MADISON / Ani
ALEKSEY SEREBRYAKOV / Nikolai Zakharov
VACHE TOVMASYAN / Garnick

CONCLAVE
SERGIO CASTELLITTO / Tedesco
RALPH FIENNES / Lawrence
JOHN LITHGOW / Tremblay
LUCIAN MSAMATI / Adeyemi
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI / Sister Agnes
STANLEY TUCCI / Bellini

EMILIA PÉREZ
KARLA SOFÍA GASCÓN / Emilia/Manitas
SELENA GOMEZ / Jessi
ADRIANA PAZ / Epifania
ZOE SALDAÑA / Rita

WICKED
JONATHAN BAILEY / Fiyero
MARISSA BODE / Nessarose
PETER DINKLAGE / Dr. Dillamond
CYNTHIA ERIVO / Elphaba
JEFF GOLDBLUM / The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
ARIANA GRANDE / Galinda/Glinda
ETHAN SLATER / Boq
BOWEN YANG / Pfannee
MICHELLE YEOH / Madame Morrible

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
DUNE: PART TWO
THE FALL GUY
GLADIATOR II
WICKED

Scenes I Love: The End Credits of Predator

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

Predator (1987, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Donald McAlpine)

Look at how happy everyone is!  Well, everyone except for Dutch.  I don’t blame Dutch for not smiling.  He had to deal with a lot in 1987’s Predator.  Still, today’s scene that I love encourages us all to stay upbeat, even when we’re being stalked through the jungle by a fearsome extraterrestrial hunter.

If the crew of the Nostromo had smiled more, Alien would have ended on a much happier note.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special John McTiernan Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is John McTiernan’s birthday!  Obviously, McTiernan’s career has had its ups and downs but he’s still responsible for directing some of the best action films ever made.

4 Shots From 4 John McTiernan Films

Predator (1987, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Donald McAlpine)

Die Hard (1988, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Jan de Bont)

The Hunt for Red October (1990, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Jan de Bont)

The Last Action Hero (1993, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Dean Semler)

It’s Elvis Presley’s Birthday!

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Since today is Elvis Presley’s birthday, I’m going to share this photograph that my grandfather took in 1958, of Elvis reporting for his induction into the army.  As far as I know, this picture has never been published anywhere other than on this site and my own personal blog.

Photograph by Raymond Ellis, taken on March 24th, 1958 at Fort Chafee, Arkansas

Film Review: Wild 90 (dir by Norman Mailer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Produced, directed, financed by, and starring writer Norman Mailer, 1968’s Wild 90 is incomprehensibly bad.  Words escape me when it comes to describing just how boring and pointless this film.

Over the course of four nights, Mailer and two of his friends were filmed in a shabby apartment.  Norman Mailer played The Prince, a gangster who talks tough and is constantly doing stuff like punching the room’s only hanging lightbulb.  Buzz Farber and Mickey Knox played Cameo and Twenty Years, the Prince’s partners in crime.  Acclaimed documentarian D.A. Pennebaker served as cinematographer, using a hand-held camera to capture the three men as they drank, laughed, fought, and pretended to be gangsters.

The plot of the film is not easy to describe, both because the entire film was improvised and also because the soundtrack is so muddy that it’s often impossible to understand what anyone’s saying.  As far as I can tell, the Prince’s latest criminal scheme has gone south and the Prince and his two cronies are hiding out in the apartment until the heat dies down.  They don’t have much to do, other than drink and exchange profane dialogue.  (The three men do their best to sound like real-life, poetically crude gangsters.  It’s hard to judge how well they do any of that because the dialogue is often incomprehensible.)  Some people drop by the apartment.  Normally, that would liven things up but in this one, everyone just seems like they want to leave before Norman Mailer accidentally punches them.  One man comes in a with a dog that start barking.  Mailer barks back until the dog falls silent.

Making all of this interesting is the fact that, in the 1960s, Norman Mailer was one of America’s leading public intellectuals.  Today, living in the age of influencers, it can be easy to forget that there were once public intellectuals, like Mailer, William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Tom Wolfe, who disagreements were followed by the public and who made headlines when they showed up drunk on the daytime talk shows.  Mailer was an acclaimed and often controversial writer, one who was as famous for his arrogance and his public feuds as for his novels and essays. Mailer was a New York fixture and a Pulitzer Prize winner  He was one of the first writers to suggest that the Left and the Right could be united by a shared belief in individual freedom.  A year after the release of Wild 90, Mailer ran an ill-fated campaign for mayor of New York City.  His slogan was “No more bullshit!” and his campaign, which attracted some attention early on, was ultimately sabotaged by his habit of showing up drunk to his rallies and insulting his supporters.

What he was not was a very good filmmaker.  Wild 90 was Mailer’s first film and it’s a nearly unwatchable disaster.  (At least his later film, Maidstone, had Rip Torn around to liven things up.)  With its low-budget, black-and-white look and it’s DIY aesthetic, Wild 90 may remind some of the Andy Warhol’s Factory films but Warhol (or, if we’re to be absolutely honest, Paul Morrissey) was at least trying to be subversive.  Wild 90, on the other hand, is pure self-indulgence, a chance for Mailer to say, “Look how funny I am!”  Farbar and Knox at least manage to give semi-believable performances.  Mailer continually looks straight at the camera and seems to panic whenever either of his co-stars start to take the attention off of him.  The entire film seems to be Mailer’s attempt to convince everyone that he really was a tough guy.

There is one moment of the film that does work.  The film opens with some gorgeously shabby images of lower Manhattan. Norman Mailer was a proud New Yorker so it’s appropriate that the best part of the film is the part that highlights the city he loved.

SHANE (The TV Series) – Episode 2: The Hant (aired September 17th, 1966)

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Shane (David Carradine) is awakened in the night by the sound of someone outside his bunk. He sees an old man (John Qualen) looking in the window. He grabs his gun and gets outside in time to see the old man driving off over the ridge in a horse drawn buggy. The next morning Shane is telling Mr. Starett (Tom Tully), Marian (Jill Ireland) and Joey (Chris Shea) about what had happened during the night. At this point, Shane seems unsure if it was even real. They muse that it may have been a “hant,” or a ghost.

Shane takes Joey to Grafton’s General store. While he’s trying on some new leather boots, he accidentally bumps into a drunk cowboy (Carl Reindel) causing his whiskey to spill. The drunk confronts Shane. Shane is able to beat up the cowboy without having to kill him. And then the same old man from the night before comes in and just looks at every man in the bar. He appears to be searching for someone. He comes up to Shane and says, “You’re Shane.” Shane doesn’t remember the old man, and the old man just turns and leaves. 

That night, Marian, unable to sleep walks outside and sees Shane talking to the old man. Shane tells her he’s an old friend that she should go back to bed. Shane invites him into his bunkhouse. That night the old man tells Shane that he killed his son 4 years earlier in Black Falls, CO. He even shows Shane a picture of his son. Shane doesn’t remember him at first. As he looks at the picture, he begins to have short flashbacks of the young man. He’s eventually able to remember the entire exchange with the young man in a saloon in Colorado. He did kill the man, but it was in self defense. He tells the old man that he did kill his son and that he’s sorry. He tells him that it was either his son or him, and that’s the only reason he killed him. Shane then asks the old man what he wants…. I won’t spoil it for you, but the answer was surprising! 

Episode 2 is all about Shane being haunted by his past. David Carradine does the heavy lifting as his character tries to come to terms with the fact that he’s killed so many men that he can’t even remember them all. He even considers leaving the Starett ranch because he’s concerned that other people could show up in the future wanting to get vengeance on him. Old man Starett isn’t involved in the action at all in this episode. Marian is mostly there to encourage Shane to not be so hard on himself. There is a scene where he puts a blanket on her when he’s about to leave the ranch for good. She’s sleeping and takes Shane by the hand like she’s touching her husband’s hand. It will be interesting to see how far the series takes their relationship, but that will be for another episode. And Joey is not very involved outside of telling the family about Shane kicking the drunk cowboy’s butt early in the episode. I could hear “Linus” a little bit in his voice since I know that he would be voicing the character that same year in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” That was pretty cool. John Qualen is good in his guest starring role as the old man whose son was killed by Shane in the past. Qualen has been in so many TV shows and movies in his career going back to the early 30’s. He’s a very recognizable actor. 

All in all, I thought this was a solid episode. There was some real tension built up at the end of the when Shane is confronted again by that same drunk cowboy, and I was a little surprised by the resolution. 

Music Video of the Day: Look Back In Anger by David Bowie (1979, dir by David Mallet)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day comes to us from David Bowie, who would have been 78 years old on this day.

Look Back In Anger has nothing to do with the John Osborne play of the same name but the music video is based on The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 1.1 “Pilot”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

Last month, we finished up Baywatch Nights.  For our next show, we have Pacific Blue, which was often described as being Baywatch On Bikes.  Before watching the episode reviewed below, I had only seen one previous episosde of Pacific Blue.  I was in Rome and the episode was dubbed into Italian.

As I sit here typing this, it is currently 32 degrees and windy outside.  On Thursday, we’re supposed to get hit with ice and snow.  Fortunately, on Pacific Blue, it’s forever summer!  Let’s dive right in with the first episode!

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Ralph Hemecker, originally aired on March 2nd, 1996)

Welcome to Santa Monica in the 90s!

The skies are sunny, the ocean is blue, everyone’s wearing a bikini or a swimsuit, and the cops are on bikes!

The pilot for Pacific Blue opens with Officers Victor Del Toro (Marcos A. Ferraez) and Cory McNamara (Paula Trickey) riding their bikes down the boardwalk and talking about how criminals and even citizens often don’t pay them enough respect because they’re on bicycles.  And, to be honest, they do look pretty silly riding their bicycles with their grim “I am the Law” facial expressions.  Judge Dredd would never be caught dead on a bicycle.

When Victor and Cory catch a couple of graffiti-spraying vandals, they get to show off what they can do with their bicycles.  “They can run but we can fly,” Victor says as he takes off after the fleeing vandals.  And …. no, sorry.  The bikes still look dorky.  I don’t care how many bad guys the bike cops capture.  The dark shorts and the crisp white t-shirts and the Schwinn bicycles, none of it is intimidating.

Chris Kelly (Darlene Vogel) was once a hotshot Navy pilot until her eyesight dipped below 20/20 and she was discharged.  (You have to have 20/20 eyesight to fly a plane?  Well, I’ll add that to my list of things that I will never be allowed to do!)  Chris joined the Santa Monica police force and found herself assigned to tell kids not to go off with strangers while wearing a milk carton costume.  After Chris catches some drug dealers (again, while dressed up like a milk carton), she is transferred out of public relations and over to …. BIKE PATROL!

Her new boss, Tony Palermo (Rick Rossovich), explains that Chris will require three days of bicycle training before she’s officially a member of Bike Patrol.  In one montage, Chris learns how to ride a bike like a …. well, I would say like a “badass,” except for the fact that she’s on a dorky Schwinn.  She is then partnered up with TC Callaway (Jim Davidson), who orders her to lose the attitude when it comes to riding her bike.  No one is too good for bike patrol!

TC’s girlfriend, Sandy (Cindy Ambuehl), thinks TC should get a job working for his wealthy father.  TC’s younger brother agrees.  But TC loves the beach.  He loves chasing criminals.  He loves riding his bike!  TC was born to work with ocean in the distance and sand getting stuck in the spokes of his bike,

Speaking of criminals, someone has stolen Mayor Mickey Dolenz’s car.  (Mickey Dolenz appears as himself.)  The Bike Patrol takes down a bunch of car thieves and closes down their chop shop.  It’s a standard cop show plot but keep in mind that this is just the first episode.  The purpose of a first episode is to introduce all the characters and explain the premise of the show.  And that’s what this pilot did so technically, this episode has to be considered a success.

The only problem — and I have a feeling that I’ll be coming back to this point frequently over the next two years or so — is that the Bike Patrol looks incredibly dorky.  Pacific Blue was obviously meant to capitalize on the success of Baywatch but the thing with Baywatch is that, as incredibly dumb as that show could be, the slow motion running looked cool.  The members of the Bike Patrol riding their bikes up and down the beach just look silly.

That said, the beach scenery was nice to look at and this show does seem like it might have the potential to be fun in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way.  So, we’ll see what happens.  By the end of this month, I’ll either be happy that I picked this show to review or I’ll be cursing my terrible judgment.  We’ll find out soon enough.

Documentary Review: William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods (dir by Harald Reinl and Charlie Romine)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1976, the German documentary Mysteries of the Gods raises the same questions that were asked by Chariots of the Gods and it offers up the same answers.  How did ancient man build the pyramids?  Aliens!  How were the giant statues of Easter Island moved to their final resting place?  Aliens!  Who created Stonehenge?  Aliens!  Who drew the South American ley lines?  Aliens!  Who took Elijah, Gilgamesh, and Enoch up into the sky?  Aliens!  Who is responsible for religion?  Aliens!

Mysteries of the Gods was made by the same people who did Chariots of the Gods but it’s less a continuation and more of a remake.  The only new thing that Mysteries of the Gods brought to the table was the suggestion that the governments of the world knew about the aliens and that they were, in some cases, working with the aliens.  I’ve already made my feelings about those theories clear.  I’m a skeptic and I’m proud of it.  Still, it’s interesting to wonder what type of advice the aliens would have given the world leaders.  I mean, considering everything that has happened over the past 66 years, it doesn’t appear to be very good advice!

Seriously, tell those dumbass aliens to go home and mess around with their own planet.

When Mysteries of the Gods came over to the United States, it was decided that the film needed a bit more of an American feel to it.  The original’s German narrator would have to go.  But who could replace him?  Who had the gravitas necessary to seriously discuss the theory of ancient astronauts?  Who would draw in the science fiction crowd while possibly still appealing to people who didn’t know much about the history of UFO sightings?  Who would have the proper enthusiasm for the project?  Who was reasonably famous but still enough in need of a paycheck that they would agree to be associated with something as shoddy as Mysteries of the Gods?

We all know the answer to that question.

And if the American distributors were going to pay William Shatner to re-record the film’s narration, why not take full advantage of his presence and film some scenes of him interviewing various psychics and scientists?  Why not have him wax rhapsodic about a crystal skull while actually holding the artifact?  Why not have him actually visiting the locations described in the documentary?  Why not put him in a green turtleneck and a black jacket and present him as being the hip face of pseudo-science?  And why not change the title of the film to William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods, implying that Shatner himself had something substantial to do with the making of the film?

And let’s give credit where credit is due.  Mysteries of the Gods is a ludicrous documentary that provides even less evidence for its fantastical claim than Chariot of the Gods did.  But the American version of the film is worth watching, just to see William Shatner trying to repress his natural smirk while reciting the film’s overwrought narration.  Shatner appears to be amused by the whole thing and he definitely comes across as being a good sport as he gamely interview a series of crackpots who are all convinced they’ve cracked some sort of alien code.  The film ends on a triumphant note, with psychic Jeanne Dixon telling an excited Shatner that aliens will visit Earth in April of 1977.

Now, you may say that Dixon was incorrect.  There’s no record of aliens coming to Earth in 1977.  Maybe that’s just what they want you to believe!  To quote the Amazing Criswell, can you prove it didn’t happen?