It’s jangly and jarring, but irresistibly hypnotic. Mark E Smith chants this incantation as if he is literally crawling out of his skin. The performance is teeth grinding punk rock in its distilled essence. a portrait of a poet in service to anarchy. And, funny. Deeply biting and ironical, this was DJ champion, John Peel’s favorite group. The lyrics here seem improvised, but he’s a gonzo beat poet extraordinaire - he’s written it all down, and delivers it with his signature repetition in a discordant bray.

“You don't have to be weird to be wired

You don't have to be an American to be strange

You don't have to be strange to be strange

You don't have to be weird to be weird”

After seeing the Sex Pistols in ’76 Mr Smith had a vision that carried him for 42 years through a ridiculous number of personnel changes. It doesn’t matter who is playing as long as Mark is at the mic. He said once, “if it’s me and your granny, it’s The Fall”.

Mark was a difficult, complex man who died in 2018 at the age of 60, leaving behind 32 studio albums and countless live versions. One could pick out practically any Fall tune, and experience that singular voice - “attitude personified,” one journalist dubbed it. I chose this cut because it makes me smile every time I hear it. I hate being in that condition myself, but it’s fun to vicariously share Mark’s flirtation with psychosis.

At the Governors Awards, Rashida Jones spoke on behalf of her father, who died earlier this month at the age of 91.

Before his death two weeks ago, the musician and producer Quincy Jones wrote a speech he intended to deliver at the Governors Awards, where he would receive an honorary Oscar at the ceremony created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

On Sunday night in Hollywood, his actress daughter Rashida Jones delivered that speech on his behalf before a rapt audience.

“As a teenager growing up in Seattle, I would sit for hours in the theater and dream about composing for films,” she said while channeling her father, who was a Black trailblazer in Hollywood: “When I was a young film composer, you didn’t even see faces of color working in the studio commissaries.”
Nominated seven times, Jones was given a different honorary Oscar — the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award — in 1995, back when these awards were still part of the televised Oscar broadcast. To shorten that show, the honorary awards were spun off into their own event in 2009.
Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lopez staked their seats out early while the directors Luca Guadagnino (repping both “Challengers” and “Queer”) and Brady Corbet (“The Brutalist”) compared notes on film formats. The “Succession” stars Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin reconnected on the terrace outside the party; both men are supporting-actor contenders; Strong for “The Apprentice,” Culkin for “A Real Pain.” And the stars of “Emilia Perez,” Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofía Gascón, proved to be popular presences in every corner of the ballroom.

The first honoree of the night was Juliet Taylor, who has cast more than 100 films over the course of her career including “The Exorcist,” “Terms of Endearment” and “Annie Hall.” While accepting her Oscar, she described her job as being “able to appreciate actors when they’re not all that likable and appreciate directors when they’re not easy.”

Daniel Craig came out to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to the producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, who have served as the stewards of the James Bond franchise for nearly three decades. After taking the reins of Eon Productions from their father, Albert Broccoli, the half-siblings produced the last nine Bond films beginning with “Goldeneye,” Pierce Brosnan’s first foray in the role, all the way up to Daniel Craig’s final Bond outing, “No Time to Die.”

-Kyle Buchanan

I’M ALWAYS DRUNK IN SAN FRANCISCO by Carmen McRae (Atlantic, 1968)

Here’s my San Francisco story: In the 1980s, Chemayne and I went there on our honeymoon, spending a week before flying to Hawaii. We stayed at The Red Victorian, a reconverted townhouse in the Haight run by a dedicated, middle aged hippie, Sammy Sun-Child. It was adjacent to the Red Vic movie house, where you lounged on comfortable couches and ate homemade delicacies. The movie that week was Meryl Streep’s Dingo ate my baby film “Cry in the Dark”. We made the pilgrimage, and had martinis at John’s Grill, the legendary steakhouse where Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon. It was a week lovingly emblazoned on my memory forever.

This song evokes these ruminations. The piano playing chanteuse, Carmen McRae weaves a sophisticated memoir of ironic delight, and I am in the throes of her conjurations. I discovered the tune on an obscure Atlantic box set entitled The Ertegun’s New York: New York Cabaret Music, meant to memorialize that special, hoity-toity Manhattan crowd, and it’s mythic entertainers. This version was released on the label’s 1968 album “Portrait of Carmen”, arranged and conducted by Benny Carter, in a much more fleshed out version.

Carmen, who started off aspiring to be like her mentor, Billie Holiday, perfected her own brand of behind the beat phrasing and ironic interpretation, finding her unique voice and style as a story teller of the first rank, honed by way of a disciplined acting training, which led to her success in the worlds of Cabaret, television, and film.