Honestly? If I was asked to pose for a Los Angeles magazine cover story with some other award-season blogaroos and they asked us to pose in pairs, let’s say, and if a colleague came up behind me and gave me a double-arm T-shirt hug like the one Adam Driver is giving Viggo Mortensen here, I would be cool about it but my first thought would be “the fuck?” My second thought would be “okay, I’m getting a warm erotic man-hug here, but does that mean I should tenderly place my right hand over the right arm of my man-hugger?” To me this photo is only a step or two removed from that 1963 shot of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not me. I’ll do an arm-around-the-shoulder hug if I’m posing for a shot with a male friend or one of my sons, but that’s about it.

My eyeballs popped out of their sockets Wile E. Coyote-style (boiinnnggg!) when I took a gander at Scott Feinberg’s final pre-Academy-balloting prediction piece in The Hollywood Reporter, and more specifically when I saw that he regards Warren Beatty‘s Rules Don’t Apply as a longshot for a Best Picture nomination.

Actual Wells to Feinberg email message: “By using the term ‘longshot’ do you mean that potential nomination-wise, Rules Don’t Apply is bound and gagged and tied up inside a burlap bag and buried under 50 tons of soil, sand, gravel and concrete? I’m just trying to clarify what ‘longshot’ means.”

Do the producers of Nocturnal Animals and Patriots Day have reason to be upset at Feinberg for lumping them in with Beatty’s critically lamented Howard Hughes pic? Patriots Day producer to Feinberg: “How could you do this to us, Scott? Did we do something to personally hurt you? If so, we apologize because this is ridiculous. Patriots Day is 10 or 15 times more successful than Rules Don’t Apply. They’re not even in the same league much less the same ballpark. The Watertown shoot-out sequence is a classic. You’ve really hurt our feelings and damaged us in the eyes of the community. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Hollywood Elsewhere is participating in the 1.12 Los Angeles press day for John Lee Hancock and Michael Keaton‘s The Founder (Weinstein Co., 1.17). For the 16th or 17th time: From an ethical, artistic or strategic standpoint, Keaton’s fascinating, neither fish-nor-fowl performance as McDonald’s kingpin Ray Kroc in The Founder is an essential thing. The ’50s period drama refuses to adhere to a black and white moral scheme. It treads a fine edge, allowing you to root for Keaton’s “bad guy” despite reservations while allowing you to conclude that the McDonald brothers were stoppers who didn’t get it. Keaton’s performance never instructs you how to feel or what judgments to arrive at, and therein lies the genius.

Hillary and Bill Clinton have decided to temporarily ignore the memo about Donald Trump being an arrogant, willfully ignorant, authoritarian, short-tempered, climate-destroying orangutan. How else to explain a report by Variety‘s Ted Johnson that they’ve agreed to attend Trump’s swearing in ceremony on Friday, 1.20?

The Clintons are basically saying (a) “as an ex-President, Bill is obliged to attend,” (b) “it will look funny if Hillary doesn’t go with him,” (c) “let’s show respect for the office and our country’s transfer-of-power tradition, if not the man himself,” (d) “hey, maybe Trump won’t be so bad…let’s wait for him to fuck up before going negative” and (e) “at least he said he’s not interested in prosecuting Hillary for her emails!”

The Clintons will reportedly be joined by George W. Bush (and wife Laura) and Jimmy Carter.

I’ve never seen the original 1945 Michael Curtiz version of Mildred Pierce (’45), mainly because I’ve always sensed a “woman’s picture” vibe. This despite Joan Crawford‘s tough-as-nails lead performance having won a Best Actress Oscar. I’ve always felt a bit guilty about this, and so next month I’ll probably sit down with the new Criterion Bluray (4K digital restoration, 2.21.17).

I did, however, watch HBO’s five-part Mildred Pierce miniseries, which aired in 2011 and costarred Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce, Evan Rachel Wood, Mare Winningham and James LeGros. I didn’t drop to my knees but I was largely intrigued by this effort. I was initially puzzled about the absence of a murder plot, but then I read that the ’45 version added this.

When Megan Kelly moves over to NBC News later this year, she will of course be surrounded with more liberal-minded colleagues than she’s currently used to. This means that sooner or later, and especially given the natural human impulse to acclimate and blend in to some extent, Kelly will be modifying her view that Jesus of Nazareth was “white,” which she declared on-air about three years ago.

Hollywood Elsewhere applauds Kelly’s move to bail on Fox News — a strategic chess move that will bestow a more middle-groundish profile than if she were to remain with Fox, which will probably become an even more toxic hotbed of disinformation once the Trump regime takes over on 1.20.

Soon-to-be NBC News anchor and correspondent Megyn Kelly.

Kelly reportedly could’ve earned $20 million annually if she’d stayed with the Murdoch-owned network, so her motive in accepting a $15 million-per-year NBC deal was obviously not first and foremost financial.

She’ll deny it for the rest of her life, of course, but Kelly obviously wanted to be cleansed, image-wise, of the stink of Fox News, not just because of its reputation for spreading highly suspect if not blatantly deceptive rightwing talking points but because of the after-aroma of the Roger Ailes era and a once-prevalent climate of sexual harassment, which Kelly herself had to grapple with.

Kelly is a conservative but she wants to be regarded solely as a super-smart anchor, reporter and interviewer, period, and not the top star of a notoriously toxic news network that has been cynically misinforming elderly white viewers and rural dumbshits for a long, long time.

My takeaway from this morning’s American Cinema Editors (ACE) nominations is that David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water (and to a slightly lesser extent Mel Gibson‘s Hacksaw Ridge) have gotten a Best Picture Oscar boost.

An ACE nomination is supposed to indicate industry preferences on the Best Picture front, right? So the intrigue is not about three well-established Best Picture hotties — La La Land, Manchester By The Sea, Moonlight — receiving Best Edited Feature Film (Drama) noms as much as the Mackenzie and Gibson being among the five.

The blogaroos, remember, have been downplaying Hell or High Water to some extent. Most of the Gold Derby experts have been slotting HOHW in sixth or seventh place on their Best Picture rankings, and a 1.3.17 Gurus of Gold chart has HOHW listed in eleventh place. So basically we’re looking at a Hell or High Water upgrade and a moderate blogaroos fail, especially when it comes to the Gurus.

The 67th annual ACE Awards will happen on Friday, 1.27.

Ballots will be mailed to ACE members on on Friday, 1.6. The voting concludes on 1.17. What’s gonna change between now and then? Nothing.

This David Bowie image, snapped earlier this evening, adorns an east-facing wall of the Beverly Hills Sofitel. I don’t know what Bowie looked like in 1969 but he was two years away from Hunky Dory (long blonde hair, no heavy glam makeup) and sure as hell hadn’t adopted his Ziggy Stardust persona, which wouldn’t happen until 1972. Think of it — Sofitel management actually paid someone to paint a misdated Bowie portrait on their hotel, and in so doing made the whole team look like idiots.

Taken at the corner of Beverly Blvd. and La Cienega — Monday, 1.3, 8:45 pm.

Until Criterion announced the imminent release of a restored 2K Bluray on 1.17, I’d never even heard of Jack Garfein‘s Something Wild (’61), much less seen it. Yes, it was released on an MGM DVD five years ago but I somehow ignored this. Boilerplate: “A complex exploration of the physical and emotional effects of trauma, Something Wild stars Carroll Baker, in a layered performance, as a college student who attempts suicide after a brutal sexual assault but is stopped by a mechanic (Ralph Meeker)—whose kindness, however, soon takes an unsettling turn. With astonishing location and claustrophobic interior photography by Eugen Schufftan, an opening-title sequence by the inimitable Saul Bass, and a rhythmic score by Aaron Copland, Garfein’s film is a masterwork of independent cinema.”

I’m half intrigued because of the presumably gritty New York locations, but that’s all. I’m not walking around with blinders. I used to work at the Carnegie and Bleecker Street Cinemas (both were highly regarded repertory cinemas) in the late ’70s. If this is such a good or fascinating or magnetic film why haven’t I heard about it until now? If Baker gives a “layered” performance, what’s a good example of an un-layered performance?

I’ve just stumbled upon this photo. It shocked me because of a mediocre script I wrote around ’86 called Space Elvis. Boilerplate: “Elvis was kidnapped by aliens in August 1977 just before he died, and flown back to the aliens’ home planet. He was restored, cleaned up, de-drugged, probed, kept in a large home (facsimile of Graceland) for 32 years, and then returned to earth as the same 42 year-old he was before only much thinner and full of vim and vigor and ready to rock out. Except nobody believes he’s the real Elvis (naturally) so the only gig he can get is performing as an Elvis impersonator.” I never could figure out a good story after EP is returned to earth and is soon after stuck performing at a third-rate Las Vegas lounge for nickles and dimes. I posted this summary was on 10.30.08.

The Capri Hollywood Festival has just named Damien Chazelle‘s La La Land as the Best Movie of the Year. Well, that settles it — the Best Picture Oscar is now a fait accompli.

Seriously, the real deal-sealer is the apparent likelihood that La La Land will end up cresting $100 million. As the New Years’ Eve weekend drew to a close the Lionsgate release was at $37 million. This inspired N.Y. Times reporter Brooke Barnes to call it “the No. 1 prestige release of the year” and to remind that La La earnings are “on par with films like Silver Linings Playbook, which went on to collect more than $132 million in the United States and Canada in 2012.”

HE commenter Bobby Peru, who predicted on or about 9.4.16 that La La Land would only do “arthouse-level business”, has never manned up and eaten his words, which any person of character would have done by now.

I still don’t understand the analogies between the national mood (i.e., widespread depression over the election of Donald Trump) and La La Land possibly winning the Best Picture Oscar…or not.

On 10.24 Cinemaholic‘s Gautam Anand wrote in an HE comment thread that “with Hillary Clinton winning the election, Hollywood will be in a celebration mood, [and] La La Land will hugely benefit from that. I know to many this may sound ridiculous, but imagine Trump winning the election and then Hollywood going for something like La La Land. It wouldn’t feel right.”

So now with Trump sending everyone into a psychological tailspin, it feels “right” to celebrate La La Land anyway?

Contrast this with Barnes declaring that “the moviegoing masses sent clear messages in 2016, [which is that] fantasy worlds of any kind, whether underwater or in outer space, are worth the trip to theaters. But reality? Not so much.” If you allow that voting preferences of Academy and guild members often bear some relation or resemblance to box-office popularity, as previously noted, a La La land victory would make sense.

But La La Land (to its considerable credit) is not a fantasy film. Well, it is in terms of resorting to song and dance escapism, but it’s mostly a film about downish career struggles, disappointments and rejections.

Back during the Telluride Film Festival Tom Hanks was so enthused about La La Land that he declared that “if the audience doesn’t embrace it, we’re all doomed.” So I guess we aren’t doomed then — not spiritually, at least.

“A friend at the office said it’s like you’ve been tossed out of an airplane…you feel the alarm, the fear, you feel the freezing wind around you, but you haven’t gone splat yet. On the other hand no parachute has opened…there’s no sense of ‘aah, this is a normal event.’ The back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. There’s not that sense, at least not in me. But there is that impulse to make it such. Normalization. It’s a very human impulse…to normalize the situation so you’re not in a state of constant alarm or fear or sadness or agitation.” — New Yorker editor David Remnick in a 12.21 interview with BBC’s “Newsnight”, which was largely about Remnick’s post-election (11.9) essay — “An American Tragedy.”