Early yesterday Variety‘s Kris Tapley reported that Martin Scorsese‘s Silence won’t screen until sometime in December. (I popped in the word “early” in my reaction piece as I assumed they wouldn’t dare wait until mid or late December.) Tapley was no doubt handed legit information by a Paramount source before filing, but on 10.31 — 10 days ago — members of the New York Film Critics Circle received invites to see Silence on Wednesday, 11.30. Specifically a 10 am and 2 pm screening at Paramount’s screening room in Times Square. At the very least Tapley’s story represented an abrupt reversal in strategy because, as the screen-captured PDF invite makes clear, as of 10.31 Scorsese and Paramount were confident that the film would be satisfactorily completed and ready to screen for elite NYC-area critics by 11.30. This would have still gotten in the way of the Broadcast Film Critics Association initial nomination deadline (initial ballots have to filled out by 11.29), but an 11.30 screening date would have probably been finessable. [The below invite was forwarded to me this morning by a NYFCC member.]

9:56 pm Pacific: It’s over. Hillary Clinton, who has lost fair and square, needs to concede — everyone needs to turn off their TVs and take long walks or maybe hit the nearest bar, so she just needs to man up and face the music. She isn’t making things better by stalling. She needs to concede and announce that a bigot, a hatemonger and a guy with an ADD condition that would choke a horse will be sworn in as President on 1.20.17. It’s 1 am in New York. This country just elected an intemperate child, a grotesque clown, to lead the country for the next four years. Ingmar Bergman‘s Shame. The ghost of John F. Kennedy is disgusted. Abraham Lincoln isn’t even reachable.

Nate Silver at 9:50 pm Eastern: “It’s very hard for Clinton to win the Electoral College if she loses Michigan along with Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, none of which look particularly safe for her right now. Even if she were to hold the test of her firewall and win Nevada, she’d be stuck at 263 electoral votes and would need to do something unexpected like flip Arizona or Georgia into her column.”

Nate Silver forecast bot (10:12 pm Eastern): “Clinton wins New Mexico. Our model now gives her a 60% chance of winning the election.” Bullshit! I just took a percocet. Hillary Clinton has been a lousy candidate all along, and now, God help us, the chickens have come home to roost. Thank you, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson supporters. Michael Moore‘s Michigan will go for Trump, and that’s all she wrote.

Thank you, James Comey!

7:42 pm news bulletin: A friend who’s been a hardcore Hillary supporter all along just told me she thinks I’m partly responsible for Clinton’s loss (because I said she’s unappealing as a candidate with the braying and the eye bags), and so she just told me we’re done as friends. Brilliant!

Earlier: Things are looking very tight, and I for one am white-knuckle terrified. Democrats are very nervous. Trump is going to win Florida and quite possibly North Carolina. The bumblefucks are heavily motivated. I’ve been saying all along that my seat-of-the-pants intuition was telling me that Hillary Clinton will squeak through to a victory, but only by a little-mouse squeak. 7:15 pm update: I’m getting a very bad feeling right now — very bad. A reality TV star and an ADD-afflicted demagogue is going occupy the White House.

The hinterland dumbfucks are a lot stronger than anyone figured. If Hillary doesn’t win Florida (and she won’t), it’ll makes HRC’s path to victory a lot tougher. I can’t believe this. A warm-nostril-breath psychopath may actually become President. Not likely but not unlikely either. Terrifying. The Young Turks‘ Cenk Uygur is the prophet. Nate Silver, from whom I drew endless comfort during the campaign, has some splainin’ to do.

Earlier today Variety‘s Kris Tapley reported that Martin Scorsese‘s Silence won’t screen until sometime in early December, which means that the screening deadlines of the National Board of Review, NYFCC and LAFCA (i.e., the New York and Los Angeles critics’ orgs) and HE’s own Broadcast Film Critics Association are being ignored. Which is too bad as these four groups will definitely be selecting the 2016 award season hotties, and now Silence is looking at…well, it’s own path.

At least this puts the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in a good spot to elevate Silence (or not), as they’ll be voting a bit later in December.

This isn’t a tragedy but it’s too bad that Scorsese has decided that Silence will be a latecomer. (Glengarry Glenn Ross‘s Shelley Levene says “lately kiss my lately.”) If I were Marty I would say “fuck it” and screen an almost-cut to these four groups and then invite them to see the final, fussed-over version later in the month. How different could these two versions be? A few trims, a few music cues.

As a voting member of the BFCA, may I make a suggestion? Cut Marty some slack by offering him a special dispensation in their voting procedure. Silence won’t be seen when initial BFCA balloting begins on the morning of 11.28.16 and ends on 11.29.16. And yes, the BFCA noms will be announced on 12.1.16. But the final BFCA ballots will be e-mailed on 12.8.16 with return ballots required by 12.9.16 by early evening.

But the BFCA (which, don’t forget, cut J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: The Force Awakens a huge break last year) could simply decide to include Silence sight unseen on the final ballots, and then if Silence is screened by, say, 12.5 or 12.6, the membership could see it and vote accordingly. Where would be the harm? Bend over for Marty, guys! He’s earned a special measure of respect.

Received from a critic friend: “I saw Arrival (Paramount, 11.11) last night, and for the life of me I can’t understand why it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Well made, and the linguistics stuff is pretty interesting, but the plot is really confusing. There are holes you could drive a truck through. Like what happened to the two soldiers who put the bomb on the alien ship? There’s a shot of them pulling an arsenal of weaponry out of their truck, as if they’re about to have a major shootout with other members of the military, and then the whole thing is dropped. And the whole ‘military is ready to blast the aliens because they fear they might be hostile’ subplot is so cliche’d.

“What exactly was it that Amy Adams said to the Chinese leader — he says it was his wife’s final words — and why did that convince him to order his military to stand down? What was the gift the aliens gave humanity? The ability to see into the future? Or the past? Or both simultaneously? I honestly feel as if my head is about to explode. A real disappointment.”

Said this before: “Why would the super-intelligent, highly evolved Heptapods visit earth without a translation scheme or technology that would make their thoughts clearly understood to humans? Why even make the trip if the relationship between Heptapods and earthlings is going to stall immediately due to an utter inability of government and military leaders to discern what the Heptapods are up to? Think about it. It’s completely stupid, and yet this is the basic situation.”

Said this also: “Eric Heisserer‘s screenplay (based on Ted Chiang‘s short story titled ‘Story of Your Life’) is about Banks embracing the Heptapod’s non-linear attitudes about time, which means on some level that…I don’t know what the fuck it means. But it has something to do with Banks’ deceased daughter, whom he see in an endless stream of memory excerpts. And whether that tragedy of disease and early death resides in the past or future or whatever. It’s kind of like what the Trafalmadorians taught Billy Pilgrim about time in Slaughterhouse Five — that each and every incident has always existed, that there is no past or future, etc.”

There are at least two color-designated West Hollywood voting districts — the green and the pink. I’m a green, and after I identified as such a volunteer led me right into the Weho community center (West Hollywood Park, 647 San Vicente Blvd.) with almost no waiting. I was done voting within five minutes. But poor Laura Dern was from the pink district, and so she was still waiting when I left. I’m sorry. It’s a warm day, an all-blue sky, clean air, peaceful. The last thing you want to do is work inside. Which of course is what I’m doing.

WeHo Community Venterm San Vicente Blvd.

Laura Dern (blondie, shades) ahead of me in the pink line. Two or three minutes after I snapped this a volunteer led me into the green line.

When it came to movie stars with testy, pugnacious reputations, Hollywood would cast them in redemption dramas. The guys behind any number of Jimmy Cagney films of the ’30s and’40s pretty much invented this. Put a rogue-ishly likable, anti-social lout into some arduous, do-or-die situation and allow him to redeem himself in the third act. This formula was used in three or four Frank Sinatra films of the ’50s (From Here To Eternity, Young at Heart, The Man With The Golden Arm, The Joker Is Wild, Pal Joey) and finally, for the last time, in The Devil at 4 O’Clock (’61) — Hollywood’s first outdoor ensemble disaster film**. The producers sunk a lot of coin into what were regarded back then as knockout special effects. The best was an exploding volcano — a practical effect that was fortified with heavy fireball explosives and pretty much built from scratch in a farm-country location near Fallbrook, right near Camp Pendleton. Does this character-driven, Mervyn LeRoy-directed adventure cut the mustard by today’s standards? Not from a technical standpoint, no, and a lot of it feels hokey. But from a general quality perspective it’s a lot better than Irwin Allen‘s When Time Ran Out (’80), which used more or less the same story.

** Hollywood’s first “indoor” ensemble disaster film was William Wellman‘s The High and the Mighty (’54).

For the next 90 minutes, Hollywood Elsewhere will be (a) fulfilling a certain Constitutional duty and (b) picking up a few things at Pavilions (deli-style chicken salad, pita bread, low-calorie popsicles, apples, green O’Doul’s for tonight’s celebration).

Presuming that Hillary Clinton squeaks through to a win tomorrow night (the announcement will come sometime around midnight eastern, possibly a little later), there’s a good chance that Donald Trump will not only refuse to concede but will call on his scumbag followers to grab their muskets and wage open revolt against the establishment, etc. I would honestly be surprised if he plays it classy. An 11.7 article by HuffPost‘s Julia Craven addresses this very concern.

Never forget that while many films of the 1970s were indeed rich and rewarding, there was also a lot of schlock to contend with. (And I don’t mean John Landis‘s Schlock, which is a witty little exploitation comedy. And I don’t mean Mike Nichols‘ The Day of the Dolphin, which I have a certain weakness for.)  The Airport franchise was godawful from the get-go, and everyone (filmmakers, audiences) knew this. And it didn’t matter. If someone had offered me a decent sum to re-watch and review, I would have seriously considered turning them down. Really.

Worst ’70s films: Aloha Bobby and Rose, Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Quintet, A Perfect Couple, Logan’s Run, The Black Bird, The Only Game in Town, Death Race 2000, The Fury, The Swarm, Last Remake of Beau Geste, The Love Machine, Moment by Moment, Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Thing With Two Heads, The Wiz, Xanadu, Earthquake, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Myra Breckinridge, An American Hippie in Israel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, I Spit on Your Grave, Caligula. Note: The Airport franchise Bluray (Airport, Airport ’75, Airport ’77, Airport ’79: The Concorde) is selling on Amazon for only $15.

Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Brent Lang are reporting that Ang Lee, dirctor of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and Sony Pictures honcho Tom Rothman “clashed regularly during filming and in post-production, according to insiders, on the roller-coaster production with a $40 million pricetag,” primarily over “Lee’s decision to shoot the Iraq war picture in 120 frames-per-second, a new record for a big-screen feature.”

The bottom line is that Rothman didn’t think the bulk of the HFR photography was transporting enough to justify the cost of enabling dozens of theatres to project Billy Lynn at 120 fps, and so “only five locations around the world will be showing Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk in the way Lee wants it to be seen: 120 frames-per-second, 4K resolution and in 3D.”

Five theatres worldwide are showing the full whambam? That’s all?

Here’s the real eye-opener: “Market research indicated that audiences gave higher scores to Billy Lynn at the regular 24 frames-per-second, which is how the movie will play at 800 or so theaters when it expands on 11.18 after opening this Friday on 11.11. Setoodeh and Lang report that “other high-frame-rate screens could be added later on.”

Variety‘s conclusion: “When it was greenlit, the hope was that Billy Lynn would be a major awards contender, like Life of Pi which went on to gross more than $500 million. (Rothman and Lee also battled on that project, but the end result was a beloved blockbuster that picked up 11 Oscar nominations.) Instead, Billy Lynn finds itself saddled with mediocre reviews out of the New York Film Festival last month and moribund tracking. The film is expected to debut with less than $10 million, a disappointment given its star-studded cast that includes Vin Diesel, Kristen Stewart, Steve Martin, Garrett Hedlund and Chris Tucker.”