You can call me a wimp or a sell-out but I was quite “impressed” by the enormity of John M. Chu and Marc Platt‘s Wicked (Universal, 11.22). I felt completely flooded, walloped, steamrolled, avalanche’d by it. That’s not quite the same thing, needless to say, as being intimately touched or tickled or deeply moved.

Directed by Chu with the same vigor that made In The Heights work as well as it did, Wicked is quite an eyeful, quite the visual deluge, quite the immaculate pageant, quite the overwhelming beat-down, quite the wealth-porn extravaganza.

Every frame of it looks super-costly, I mean. It exudes so much of a flush fantasy vibe by way of super-lavish sets, eye-bath production design, immaculate costumes, spot-on makeup and CG magnificence that it almost leaves you gasping for breath.

Wicked keeps pushing harder with that old Chu pizazz. Every shot is intended to be processed as a wowser knockout moment. It quiets down in one delicate dancing scene, and I for one could’ve done with more of this, but mostly Chu opts for splendorific dazzle.

What is this Wizard of Oz origin story actually about? What’s going on inside Wicked?

The stage musical, of course, is/was about the plight of the disliked, suspiciously regarded Elphaba…the nascent sorceress who hums to her own music and marches to a different drummer (Idina Menzel in the original B’way show, Cynthia Erivo in the film) and how the disdain, derision and cruelty thrown at poor Elphy during her time at Shiz University eventually leads her to become the Wicked Witch of the West.


Elphy is easily the kindest, wisest, most soulful, most perceptive and least egoistic Shiz student, and so OF COURSE all the elite, cool kid go-alongers despise and ostracize her.

Elphaba’s green skin is a metaphor for magical, insightful being and vision…for outside-the-box thinking…for sensitivity, artistry, inwardness and standing against the tide, of course, but with Erivo in the role the green skin is an obvious allusion to blackness or, if you will, even queerness.

A friend tells me I’m off on my own eccentric broomstick, but Chu’s Wicked is clearly a racial parable — a grandiose super-musical fantasy about smug, haughty, entitled whites treating an unusual woman of color like shit and thereby goading her to fulfill her Wizard of Oz destiny as a mythical broomstick witch.

I can’t see how Erivo’s Elphy could possibly morph into Margaret Hamilton‘s enemy-of-Dorothy. I really don’t see it. Hell, nobody will.

Ariana Grande’s Glynda, the young version of the good witch of the north played by Billie Burke in the 1939 original, is re-imagined and played to the absolute hilt as a gentle-mannered, glamour-gowned lass in the most superficial sense imaginable…an empty, priveleged, super-entitled debutante type.

But boy, does she look great! Pure dessert! Every single gesture, every line, every strand of golden hair and every shot of Grande proclaims unequivocally that she’s a glowing movie-star specimen…exquisite, porcelain, princess-like, to-die-for.

Glynda is clearly lacking in terms of depth and introspection but she’s perfectly poised and lighted and a seriously luscious pixie girl.

Do you want a truly affecting parable about otherness…a sad but affecting human-scaled tale about a young green person bullied and ostracized for being different? Watch Joseph Losey’s The Boy With Green Hair (1948). Idina Menzel and Cynthia Erivo? Meet the 12 year-old Dean Stockwell.

Friendo: “Wicked was never a racial parable. The fact that the Idina Menzel character is now played by a Black actress does not make it such.

“Sure, you can now read that overtone into certain stray moments, but there’s a big difference between an overtone and the essential MEANING of the material, as scripted and acted and directed. It is an allegory of outsider-ness, about someone who feels SINGULAR and UNIQUE in her outsider status.”

There’s a third-act line when Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard (played by Frank Morgan in the ‘39 original) regards the flamboyantly designed sets and the general sound-stage lavishness and quips “I think it’s a bit much.” I laughed out loud — the only time I did so during Wicked’s entire 160-minute length.

The plan, obviously, is for The Studio (Apple, 3.26.25), a half-hour series produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez…the plan is to try and serve as a 21st Century, going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket sequel to Robert Altman‘s The Player (’92).

Rogen’s Matt Remick: “I got into this because I love movies. But now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.”

Remick seems at least partly based upon Jason Blum, whose name signifies everything about Hollywood product that I hate. His Blumhouse output has long been regarded as a pox upon movies.

Who else could Remick be based upon? I want names.

Every single Hollywood hotshot over the last half-century has claimed to be a devotional Movie Catholic who’s trying to fulfill a kind of cinematic spiritual calling. Even Hollywood’s most despised movie executive, David Zaslav, has spoken this way from time to time.

Bryan Cranston is apparently playing the chief villain.

Rogen is only 42 and 1/2 years old, and he looks at least 58 or 60, minimally.

And arguably Luca Guadagnino‘s greatest film…seriously.

“Queer is much more transformative than Call Me By Your Name…it may be Luca’s best film ever, or his most out-there or whatever…I’m not sure how to label it but Craig’s performance is staggering…purely a matter of heart and spirit and twitchy emotion…all I know is that he’s uncovered something fresh and alive…really something else.” — from my 10.7.24 NYFF review.

Queer will allegedly open in the U.S. on 11.27.24, but you’d never know it from the absence of hype and promotion.

Deadline‘s Matt Grobar is reporting that Frank Marshall will be producing some kind of definitive, fully-authorized Fleetwood Mac doc.

Long-of-tooth or passed-on band members Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks will “reflect on their fortuitous meeting in 1974” and the “50-plus-year history that’s followed, from their record-breaking recordings and tours to their trials and tribulations, personal resilience, musical dexterity,” etc.

In other words, the doc will mainly cover the super-hot, mid ’70s heyday (Fleetwood Mac (1975–1976) + Rumours (1977–1978), and the still-hot-but-slowing-down period (Tusk (1979–1980) and Mirage).

And if I know Marshall, the doc will barely acknowledge the scruffy, struggling early years (the first FM album was released in ’68) and may even possibly ignore one of the late Christine McVie‘s best songs ever — the melancholy, raggae-flavored “Did You Ever Love Me?” (’73), which was from the Penguin album (’73).

“Did You Ever Love Me?” was written by McVie and Bob Welch and recorded by them, with McVie delivering a sad and soulful lead vocal. It was also released as a single.

President-elect Donald Trump appears to be throwing in in the towel as far as Matt Gaetz‘s chances of becoming Attorney General are concerned.

On top of which the N.Y. Times is reporting than an unidentified hacker has gained access to a file shared in a secure link among lawyers with clients who have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gaetz.

Excerpt: “The file is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, in addition to testimony by a second woman who said that she had witnessed the encounter. The material does not appear to have been made public by the hacker.”

There are six states in which the legal age of consent is 17: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Texas, Wyoming.

There are quite a few more states in which the legal age of consent is 16: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, etc.

In short, there are at least 34 states (more?) in which an adult male having sex with a 16- or 17-year-old, however distasteful or odious this might be if the male is significantly (more than ten years) older, is not illegal.

There are 12 states in which the age of consent is 18 — Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

HE’s personal view is that a woman is obliged to examine and scrutinize for herself when she hits 20. Once she’s experienced two full decades on this planet, she’s on her own. Before that age her judgment may not be what it could or should be.

What Bob Woodward meant, more precisely, is that Trump is an animal, and that we’e all condemned to cope with his snorting, territorial jungle behavior for the next four years and change. And so, from the bottom of our hearts, “thank you, bumblefucks!…thank you so much.”