Tarantino says digital is the death of cinema. Fuck you, man. Chloé could get no backing because she is a Chinese woman. With digital we could make our own movie for a hundred thousand dollars at the level they could be shown as cinema. Joshua James Richards talking about Nomadland director Chloé Zhao in an interview in the New Yorker.

We watched Tina Fey and Amy Poehler host the Golden Globes last Sunday and walked away feeling better about the world. Because it was sort of Covid quarantined and sort of not, the Golden Globes seemed, every time we cut to somebody at home, a little like eavesdropping on some very interesting and entertaining people. Of the five nominees in every category, it seemed there was one expectant winner with her/his entire extended family. I was surprised that I had seen so few of the movies and even more surprised at how many of the nominees I hadn’t even heard of.

This year, the Golden Globes honored both Jane Fonda and Norman Lear and we were all reminded of how much they both contributed to Hollywood and to the making of our modern Liberal world. However, listening to people laughing at an old Archie Bunker bit from the 70s is disquieting; it is humorous but the humor comes at the expense of Archie who is presented as, and we all know is, a racist clod. To me, that is somewhat of a problem. There are lots of racist clods in the United States and humiliating them does not make them go away – like we thought it would – it just builds resentment which boils over into doing something stupid, like electing a conman like Donald Trump.

This year, it seemed much more women-centric than any year I can remember. The winner for best movie, Nomadland is a movie by a woman director, Chloé Zhao, who probably would not have won ten years ago. It was one of the few movies we had seen and, based on very little information, I’m glad that it won. To quote Peter Keough of The Boston Globe, who was writing about another one of Zhao’s movies but is just as true about this one, [The film] achieves what cinema is capable of at its best: It reproduces a world with such acuteness, fidelity, and empathy that it transcends the mundane and touches on the universal.

Nomadland starts with the town of Empire, Nevada shutting down which immediately caught my attention. Michele and I know Empire, it is a company town near Gerlach, Nevada which is sort of the home base if someone is exploring Northwest Nevada (I suggest breakfast at Bruno’s Country Club Café, the Country Club part is misleading). When United States Gypsum Corporation shut down Empire, it gutted the area and, in the movie’s background, the general failure of American capitalism is always present. I thought it was a superb movie, thoughtful and, in the end, very affirming.

However…..Nomadland is not my favorite movie from last year, Palm Springs is. Palm Springs is just a fun movie at a time when not much else is fun, but the humiliatathon, Borat, Subsequent Moviefilm won instead. The Crown, which we have seen, won and Schitt’s Creek, which we tried and gave up on, won several awards. I guess we’ll try again. Finally, Jason Sudeikis won for Ted Lasso which we enjoyed.

One movie we decided to give a try after it won for best actress is I Care A Lot but it left us both cold so, as far as I am concerned, winning isn’t a guarantee we are going to like a particular movie. Especially this year.

Lastly, what I most like about both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards is how they reflect our changing society. If one is a racist or a sexist, it must be much harder to watch these programs. As a side note, the woman who made Nomadland, Chloé Zhao – who, BTW, is listed as Chinese but went to high school in LA and lives in Ojai, California – who couldn’t get more than an hundred thousand dollars to make Nomadland, is now the director of a two hundred million dollar Marvel movie with Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie. Now THAT wouldn’t have happen ten years ago.