Please God…this looks like possible proof that Judge Brett Kavanaugh lied through his teeth to the Judiciary Committee when he testified that the first time he’d heard about Deborah Ramirez‘s accusation (i.e., that he’d allegedly stuck his dick in her face) was when he read that recent Ronan Farrow-and-Jane Mayer piece in The New Yorker.

Can you imagine being on a friendly “yo, bruh” basis with any of these jerkoffs (women excepted)? The third-from-the-left guy…look at him!

Mark my words — Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story is going to be equally fascinating and horrible. I actually admire Spielberg having the balls to try and make this work. At least he’ll be stretching. On a certain level you have to respect that.

“The most revealing element of [last] Thursday’s hearing was not Judge Kavanaugh’s response to sexual assault allegations — his denial was already well known — but rather his manner of delivery.

“It is perhaps unfair to expect Judge Kavanaugh, facing serious allegations that he asserts have slandered and disgraced him, to slow-play his response. But there is no civil right to serve on the Supreme Court. The question is not what is fair to Judge Kavanaugh but rather what is constitutionally healthiest for the republic. Judicial confirmation hearings are auditions for serving as a judge. Judge Kavanaugh showed himself to be up to fighting when attacked, but less so to judging dispassionately.

“Judge Kavanaugh had a choice between accelerating the combat — clearly President Trump’s method — and declining to join while still defending his name. The latter course would have accomplished dual goals: refuting the accusations while acting like an occupant of the office to which he aspires.

“Perhaps the F.B.I. will uncover useful evidence about what happened 36 years ago. But to advise and consent to his nomination, the issue the Senate must resolve is not merely how Brett Kavanaugh behaved in 1982. It is how Judge Kavanaugh comported himself in 2018, on television. Whatever else we can say, he did not act like a justice of the highest court in the land.” –from “Judge Kavanaugh Is One Angry Man,” a 10.1 N.Y. Times opinion piece by Greg Weiner.

Brett Kavanaugh was allowed to be angry. Dr. Ford wasn’t. Women grow up hearing that being angry makes us unattractive. Well, today, I’m angry – and I own it. I plan to use that anger to take back the House, take back the Senate, & put Democrats in charge. Are you with me? pic.twitter.com/c9DebKTQEV

— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) September 30, 2018

Will Hollywood Elsewhere attend the Hugh Jackman celebration in Santa Barbara on 11.19.18? I’d like to but we’ll see. The star of Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner (Columbia, 11.6) will be the recipient of the 13th annual annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, which will be held as usual at the Ritz Carlton Bacara.

Some of us are aware of the moralistic undertow in Jackman’s performance as Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart, and the fact that The Front Runner is a highly unusual film for its decision to present a canny, opportunistic infidel as a symbol of ethical decency — a politician with the usual egoistic flaws who nonetheless believes in governmental ideas and visions while keeping libidinal diversions in a box off to the side.

It also portrays the Miami Herald reporters and editors who made hay out of Hart’s mostly meaningless affair with campaign volunteer Donna Rice as…well, fellows who weren’t exactly advancing the cause of first-rate journalism.

It’s a movie that says “yeah, Gary cheated on his wife and so what? Because the real embarassment and the real mud came from what those journalistic bottom-feeders did to Hart and American political culture in the bargain.”

Out of 22 Gold Derby spitballers, why am I the only one who’s listed Jackman’s performance as one of the five most nominatable? I don’t know, but I can tell you for sure that most of the Gold Derby-ites are just following the pack mentality. On top of which a good portion of them probably haven’t seen The Front Runner…who knows?

Alexis Bloom‘s Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes is a frightshow. It leaves you with a shudder and a realization that Ailes, drooling fiend that he may well have been, really was a Luciferian visionary and a dark genius who turned Red America into a Nation of Crazy.

He was the reigning Machiavellian author of big-lie rightwing media for 20 years, the Pied Piper of Rural Dumbshit-ism, the pugnacious fat man who primed the country for the arrival of Donald Trump…a hustler who dipped his paintbrush into an apothecary jar of his own fears and paranoia (and perhaps some festering resentment toward his mother for infecting him with hemophilia as a young child) and embraced anger and aggression as primal fuel and sticking it to the liberal media machine as his guiding mission.

How engrossing is Divide and Conquer? Very. How detailed, probing and well-organized? Same. How depressing is it? Oddly, it’s strangely engrossing because Ailes was a real surface-to-air missile and a deranged motherfucker whose generator was always humming. He was never a dull man, and neither is this documentary. How much does it tell you that you didn’t know? Not that much but I didn’t care. What a demonic and diseased reptile Ailes was…a cookie filled with arsenic.

This photo could’ve been taken in Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai, Bangkok, Mumbai, Abu Dhabi, Manila, Seoul or Saigon. Clusters of titanic, impersonal super-structures have defined the look of expanding cities everywhere, but especially in Asia and the Middle East. If you ask me they deliver a gloomy, soul-less vibe.

In fact this photo was snapped in NYC — from a building on 10th Avenue and 41st Street, looking south. Much of the western region of Manhattan in the 30s and 40s from 9th Avenue to the Hudson looks like this. Good for “growth” and taxes, but it feels depressing and impersonal.

You can’t have a guy who doesn’t sing as well as Elton John…you can’t have him sing the John-Taupin classics in an Elton John biopic. Not right, degrades the experience. Is this Taron Egerton‘s voice or someone else’s? Either way it doesn’t cut it. I didn’t have this reaction to Rami Malek‘s singing (or whomever) in the trailer for Bohemian Rhapsody. I didn’t have this reaction when I first heard Val Kilmer imitate Jim Morrison‘s crooning in Oliver Stone‘s The Doors.

Have you ever listened to Natalie Wood‘s actual singing for West Side Story, before they brought in Marni Nixon to dub her? She wasn’t bad but also not quite good enough. That’s what Egerton-or-whomever sounds like. The producers of Rocketman need to do a Marni Nixon on him — they need to dub in the real Elton. Seriously — this doesn’t work. If Elton John’s voice had sounded like Taron Egerton’s, he never would’ve made it big.