Sometime this afternoon (and hopefully before 3 pm), Hollywood Elsewhere will be driving up to the Santa Barbara Film Festival. The festival is operating under some spiritual duress, as recent trade stories have made clear.

There’s been much hand-wringing over the recent Montecito mudslide tragedy, which has caused the Four Seasons Biltmore to close until April 1st. No debris is littering Santa Barbara’s State Street, but the mantra of SBIFF director Roger Durling has been “never say die,” “let’s stand together” and “sticks and stones may break our bones, but mudslides will only make us stand taller.” Or something like that.

Actual Durling quote: “People want to be together and the festival is a way to do that. It was essential for us to get our act together.”

All I know is that the Montecito region of the 101 freeway has been open for about ten days now. I’ll probably encounter delays, but perhaps not hellish delays. Update: I couldn’t get it together in time. Driving up tomorrow morning.

A 1.31 N.Y. Times piece by “Carpetbagger” Cara Buckley asks, “Why Didn’t Steven Spielberg Get an Oscar Nomination for The Post?” I thought that question had been answered earlier this month. In this space, I mean.

“In some views, the failure to gain much awards traction is an indicator of a shifting Oscars landscape,” Buckley writes, “where Moonlight, a small independent film with an all-black cast, won Best Picture over the white-on-white spectacle of La La Land.”

Bullshit — Moonlight eeked out a win because a sufficient number of Academy members wanted forgiveness or better yet erasure on the #OscarsSo White thing, which peaked in early ’16.

“In this awards season especially, one distinguished by underdog stories and diversity in Lady Bird, Get Out and other pictures, The Post felt out of place,” Buckley explains. “For all of its important messaging, it remains a very white, very upper-middle-class film.”

Lester Friedman, author of “Citizen Spielberg,” tells Buckley that ‘this isn’t the year for a middle-of-the-road Hollywood drama.'”

Or, as I said in a 1.13 post called “Oscar Bait Movie Is Over,” “Oscar-bait movies are regarded askance by younger industry types plus the new guild and Academy members. This is probably why Steven Spielberg‘s The Post never caught on. People smelled Oscar-bait calculation from the get-go, and they don’t like the mindset (an “important” story or theme done classy, aimed at 50-plus types, bucks-up stars and screenwriters) and the “game” of it all.

“The 45-and-unders looked at this well-written, respectably made prestige flick with two boomer superstars (Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks) and said, ‘Where is it written that we all have to stand up and salute traditional Oscar-bait movies like little toy soldiers every fucking November and December?'”

The fact that Sally Potter‘s The Party (Roadside, 2.16) runs a mere 71 minutes is, in itself, a fascinating selling point. For me at least. Most dramas of this sort are mining their second acts at the 70-minute mark. People often complain about longish running times, but I wonder if the average ticket-buyer feels vaguely shortchanged if a film is too short, whatever that might mean.

Last year Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, Nate Jones, Kevin Lincoln and Jada Yuan ran a list of 50 films with running times under 90 minutes, but how many well-regarded films have run less than 80? I can think of exactly one — Woody Allen‘s Zelig, which ran 79 minutes.

Not to mention The Party‘s 93% and 74% scores from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively.

Respect for Party costar Cherry Jones, who also appears in Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York, for saying the following to the N.Y. Times: “There are those who are comfortable in their certainty. I am not. I don’t know the truth. When we condemn by instinct our democracy is on a slippery slope.”

Filming on the sixth and final season of House of Cards resumed yesterday, with the newly-added Diane Lane and Gregg Kinnear playing (according to the N.Y. Times‘ John Koblin) a brother and sister. In a 1.31 post, Vanity Fair‘s Yohana Desta wondered if Lane and Kinnear will play “a pair of elite D.C. spin doctors ushered in to smooth out the kinks of [President Frank] Underwood’s disappearance.”

Have I missed something? Where has it been hinted that Kevin Spacey‘s chief executive might vanish? That would be an odd way to go, no?

If I were running House of Cards, I would keep it simple. Just as Spacey became an instant dead man last fall in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations, Frank Underwood needs to succumb to a heart attack. Nothing tricky or complicated — he just drops dead. (An act that can’t be performed, of course.) Start the season with a funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue. Flag-draped casket, muffled drums, the clop-clop of horses.

I for one would love to see House of Cards continue beyond a sixth season. The saga of the presidency of Robin Wright‘s Claire Underwood, and whether or not she can put forth a vision and a way of governing separate from her late husband’s. Priorities, finaglings, battles and challenges. What does she have to hide, and what do her enemies have on her?

The final hour of Black Panther really nails it. It delivers the same kind of junkie fix that Marvel fans are accustomed to paying for, but it’s escapism fused with social vision and progressive identity politics — African pride, honor, heart, nativism, community. The last hour saves the day, but the first 75 is mainly about set-up and diversion — hidden Wakanda, vibranium, action detours (including a mad car-chase scramble in South Korea) but mostly set in a kind of tribal, primal heaven-on-earth.

Best Stormy-to-Jimmy quip: “I thought this was a talk show, not a horror movie.” Second best: “Define true.” Stormy Daniels has a seven-year-old daughter, born in January 2011.

And A24 won’t open Ari Aster’s horror film, in which Toni Collette is said to be phenomenal, until 6.8

If David Lynch‘s Wild At Heart is so great, why can’t I remember a single scene or shot from it? Okay, I remember a closeup of Laura Dern‘s crazy feet on top of her bed, excitedly “running” without moving. But literally nothing else.

I didn’t actively dislike Wild At Heart. I remember sitting there and saying to myself, “Yup, this a Lynch film, all right.” I vaguely recall feeling underwhelmed and letting it go as soon as I left the theatre, but that was 27 and 1/2 years ago.

Nic Cage‘s Sailor Ripley is a southern outlaw borrowed from mid ’50s Elvis mythology, Dern’s Lulu Pace Fortune is constantly anticipating sex or panting about something or other, and they both embody the title.

I can’t honestly say I have the slightest urge to check it out again. I certainly wouldn’t buy this Bluray. Okay, I might stream it someday to remind myself which aspects I didn’t care for 27 and 1/2 years ago. I’d watch a Bluray of Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man or The Straight Story without a moment’s hesitation.

Early this morning a post by Brent Budowsky, opinion columnist for The Hill, stated that he “now strongly believe[s] that President Trump will soon fire Robert Mueller.”

Trump will “use the upcoming report of the Justice Department inspector general as a pretext to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein,” Budowsky warned, which would pave the way to fire Mueller, which would guarantee the most extreme constitutional crisis in American history.

“With an 85 percent probability, I now believe that President Trump will never agree to be questioned by Mueller and his special counsel team. The fast-moving time schedule to resolve whether Trump does or does not agree to be questioned by Mueller will be a precipitating event for Trump firing Mueller if indeed this occurs.

“I assign a probability to these warnings because they may not be proven correct. However, because there is a significant prospect they are, and because the consequences for America would be so dangerous and dramatic if they are, it is time to issue a warning in the strongest possible terms that a great constitutional crisis may be imminent for the republic.”

I’m telling you right now that I’m more down with Peyton Reed‘s Ant Man and the Wasp, sight unseen, than Ryan Coogler‘s allegedly slambang Black Panther, which I won’t see for another two or three hours. Because it’s (a) obviously invested in the same wry comedic attitude that the original had, and (b) it’s clearly not solemn or portentous. The only thing I’m not sure of is Evangeline Lilly, who seems a little too snitty and frosty.

Ant-Man: “Hold on, you gave her wings?” Hank Pym: “And blasters.” Ant-Man: “So you didn’t have that tech available for me?” Pym: “No, I did.”

Is it really all that important to have Twitter-follower bragging rights? To some it obviously is, even to the extent of paying to acquire “fake” followers, as a 1.27.18 N.Y. Times story reported.

But if you’re a big-city, brand-name film critic like Richard Roeper, who’s been a Chicago Sun Times columnist, critic and book author since the late ’80s, who cares if you have 25,000 or 250,000 followers? If I were to pay for an extra 20K followers, how would this help my game in the great scheme?

It was reported yesterday that the Chicago Sun-Times will no longer be publishing anything by Roeper until it completes an investigation of his Twitter followers. Roeper was named in that Times story about the buying and selling of fake Twitter followers.

Chicago Sun Times editor-in-chief Chris Fusco: “We became aware over the weekend of issues relating to Rich Roeper’s Twitter account. We’re investigating these issues. We will not be publishing any reviews or columns by Rich until this investigation is complete.”

Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther had its big Los Angeles premiere last night. Right after a chorus of invested, eager-beaver critics tweeted what could modestly be described as over-the-rainbow responses. But you can’t rely on media types who were primed to worship it going in (along with those who were inclined to love it for reasons of representation and whatnot). Remember the ecstatic, holy-moley, touching-God tweets that poured into the twitterverse after the Last Jedi premiere at the Shrine?

The only thing that matters in the end is the opinion of the hard guys (those who assess a film straight from the shoulder sans agendas, and primarily in terms of filmmaking expertise and classic chops), and you’d better believe that Hollywood Elsewhere is among this fraternity. HE is seeing Black Panther tonight on the Disney lot, and then we’ll see what goes. Harumph.