If Disney in fact decides to make a Han Solo trilogy, they need to dump Alden Ehrenreich and hire Ansel Elgort. Ehrenreich will simply become the George Lazenby of the Star Wars series — a one-off who was quickly dropped and replaced. No problem, fans are willing to adapt and forgive, but get rid of that beady-eyed, small-shouldered, square-faced short guy and hire a proper Han…Jesus.

Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Brent Lang have reported that the people behind Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born, currently regarded as a potential Best Picture contender, said no to an invitation to premiere in Cannes next week. Cooper, Lady Gaga and the film itself, which various actors (Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Barbra Streisand, Jennifer Lawrence) have said is extraordinary, would’ve gotten a huge promotional bounce out of a Cannes premiere.

So why the ixnay? Probably because A Star Is Born is a little too commercial (i.e., too nakedly emotional, too Access) for this critic-driven festival, and award consultants calculated that a certain percentage of Cannes critics would trash it simply because of the emotional current, and so they figured why risk it?

Variety says Cannes also invited Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria to attend, but Amazon said no. My guess is that they were slightly concerned about the fact that Suspiria, however scarily effective, is anything but a typical Guadagnino film and represents, in fact, a sharp departure from the sensual splendors of I Am Love, A Bigger Splash and Call me By Your Name. They knew that a certain portion of Cannes critics might feel distanced by this on some level, and so they got scared and decided to restrict themselves to the fall circuit.

Award-season consultants have been advising their clients to avoid Cannes for years. Add to this the calamitous Netflix withdrawal (no Roma, Norway or The Other Side of the Wind) and a general feeling, reflected by the Variety headline “Will Cannes Remain Influential?”, that the sun may in fact be setting on this much-beloved gathering, and you’re left with guys like me thinking I should probably save my travel dough for Telluride and Toronto, etc. Winds are shifting, wheels are turning.

“The truth is that Cannes’ influence and effervescent mixture of celebrity and cinephilia have been fading for several years,” Setoodeh and Lang write. “It costs tens of millions for studios to fly directors and stars to the Mediterranean town, an expense that shrinking indie players can’t afford.”

I’ve noted before that the only apparent bright lights are Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War, David Robert Mitchell‘s Under The Silver Lake (which I’ve heard good but mixed things about), Matteo Garrone‘s Dogman, Jafar Panahi‘s Three Faces, Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman and Lars Von Trier‘s out-of-competition The House That Jack Built.

I’m very sorry I missed Ari Aster‘s Hereditary (A24, 6.8) at last January’s Sundance Film Festival. It seems that I’ve been paying the price ever since. I’m partly blaming the festival programmers as two of Hereditary‘s four public showings were midnighters, and I don’t do those as a rule. My only real shot was catching an 8:30 pm screening at the MARC on Monday, 1.22, but I had a conflict. If Sundance is about one thing, it’s “choose right or lose.” Have A24 publicists since offered one or two screenings to people like me? Of course not. All I know is, I missed a biggie — this year’s Babadook or The Witch. Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne, etc.

Roughly an hour ago Hollywood Elsewhere took up residence at 37 rue Andre Antoine in Montmartre. A first-floor apartment (i.e., one floor up from the street) with a decent-sized bedroom, a smallish living room, a first-rate kitchen, a nice bathroom with a washing machine and a toilet closet. Large French windows, plenty of light. Just down the steps from rue d’Abbesses.

There’s a Serge Gainsbourg quote on the white wall in front of the apartment. It’s from a Gainsbourg 70’s hit called “Variations of Marylou”. Pretty cool graffiti. Only in France. A friend offered a translation:

“With her absent look
And her absinthe irises
Marilou has fun making smoke rings
of dry menthol
Between two comic-strip bubbles”

No sleep during last night’s JFK-to-Dublin flight, which left around 5:30 pm and arrived at 4:25 am. The Dublin-to-Paris flight left at 6:40 am, arrived at CDG…I forget but the flight lasted around 100 minutes, maybe a bit longer. Why go through Dublin? It was cheaper, or so it seemed at first.