Because she was in a receptive erotic mood four-plus years ago, and because she gifted her former boyfriend Nathan Wade with a well-paid gig as a senior prosecutor on the Donald Trump election–racketeering case in Georgia, and because she recently decided to lie (i.e., commit perjury) about her romantic timeline with Wade, Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis has done an enormous favor for the foulest sociopath to ever threaten U.S. democracy in this country’s history. Brilliant! Take a bow!

I’m not saying Alex Garland’s Civil War (A24, 4.12) isn’t a first-rate film and I’m not saying it’s being over-praised, but I know one thing for sure and it’s this: Always regard South by Southwest hype askance.

Every now and then the adoring tweets are legit (like with Trainwreck a decade ago) but mostly you can’t trust anyone or anything out of Austin. Just sayin’.

A movie about an American civil war that doesn’t lay the Orange Cancer reality on the line? I don’t like the sound of that.

In response to some recent Sharon Stone recollections about 1993’s Sliver, told to Spotify podcaster Louis Theroux and repeated by Metro’s Rishma Dosani and Danni Scott, director Phillip Noyce has sifted through his own memory vault:

Timothee Chalamet is going to look great as he ages into his 40s, 50s and beyond. Those eyes and bones…he’s going to become a combination of a graying David Niven and a gentle-faced Basil Rathbone with bushy salt-and-pepper hair.**

Ditto Emma Stone. She’ll never put on weight, her face will retain its tightness as long as she submits to an occasional Prague touch-up, and those grand, luminous eyes are never going to lose their wattage.

Margot Robbie is going to radiate much of what she has now when she passes the 45-plus threshold. Firecracker eyes, delectable bones. As long she ignores her gay hairdresser’s advice to wear her hair shorter as she ages, she’ll be totally fine.

Zendaya is also going to weather fairly nicely.

But you know who isn’t going to age all that well? Florence Pugh. She’s pretty and everything but it’s clear she’s just about to flip over. On her way to Kathleen Turner-ville. A round little ball.

Journalists and columnists aren’t allowed to talk candidly about actors’ appearances, but you should listen to casting directors and beauty professionals after they’ve had a couple of drinks and let their hair down.

Who else is seemingly fated to experience significant (i.e., unwelcome) changes as their genes come in for the kill?

** Chalamet may get into trouble if he allows himself to bulk up and become Alan Bates, but he’ll be fine if he sticks to a Cary Grant diet..

I’m trying to at least post an acknowledgment of the universally expected Best Picture Oscar win for Oppenheimer. Maybe this will post and maybe it won’t. But it was a great show! And I fell over backwards in my chair when the deserving Best Actress winner was announced. Wow…my faith in humanity semi-restored.

But not in theatres, unfortunately. Reactions from last night’s SXSW debut screening assert that it’s emphatically a film to see half-drunk from an eighth-row seat, sprawled.

Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin attended game #3 of the 1959 World Series — Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Chicago White Sox. Construction of Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine had only begun a few months earlier and wouldn’t be finished until early ‘62, so the Dodger home games happened at the L.A. Colisseum. This was the first World Series played on the West Coast.

From The New York Times…even Maureen Dowd wants him to quit.

Re-submitting to the epic, sand-choked saga of Dune: Part Two didn’t thrill me in a narrative sense, but to my great surprise I adored watching Denis Villeneuve’s 168–minute, richly immersive, alternate–reality dream trip from a purely visual perspective.

Greig Fraser’s desaturated color (and briefly monochromatic) cinematography, Brad Riker’s art direction, Patrice Vermette’s production design and Joe Walker’s editing…Villeneuve’s visionary, deep-dive scheme provides the maestro-like guidance…conducting these four fellows…this is where the genius comes from, where it lies.

Dune: Part Two is a serious trip, an exotic world unto itself…one of the most eye-opening, original-feeling geek films I’ve ever seen.

If you can put aside the Frank Herbert story and just tune in to the other-worldliness, it’s quite a feast for the eyes — a major league art film. Stunningly exotic and quite original…quite the aural-visual knockout.

Rags and monster worms and pyramids and sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, sand. Mr. Sandman, man. Everyone and everything coated and smothered in trillions upon trillions of sparkling micro-crystals. Endless sand dune vistas…sand in my pores, in my ears and eyebrows…sand crystals in my pants, my mouth, my hair, my lungs…surrounded, enveloped…I couldn’t fucking breathe but in a different way Villeneuve opened me up.

Who the fuck cares about any of this? Forget the convoluted, forehead-slapping plot about dynasties and corruptions and revolutionary fervor and the arc of the chosen…just forget it, bruh. If you try to follow the labrynthian twists and turns you’ll be driven insane…bats in your belfry.

Just turn on the fucking phone and follow Herbert’s plot on the film’s Wikipedia page (which is what I did, starting around the one-half mark) and focus on the commanding, mind-bending, majesterial all of it…the dizzy, dancing way it looks, feels, sounds…the desaturated palette…the Fremen language rendered in subtitles. Scene after scene…some other planet…wowser exotica. I felt as if I had mescaline in my system. I forgot about the popcorn.

But at the same time I felt swamped and surrounded by the superhero, epic-saga cliches. So you know what I did? I said to myself “fuck all this…just concentrate on the textures, the brushstrokes…the wondrous style of it.”

The surprising aspect (at least from my perspective) is that Dune, Part Two truly abounds with excellent performances from everyone…Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya (as the messianic Paul Atreides and the pretty, half-feral Chani) deliver their career-best. Really — babygirl Timothee has turned into a man. And I never thought Zendaya’s acting was especially good. Now I feel differently.

Cue-ball bald, albino, eyebrow-less Austin Butler (as the totally psychotic Feyd–Rautha Harkonnen) has saved himself from the Curse of Elvis. He’s also saved himself from that awful ’60s motorcycle movie, The Bikeriders.

Not to mention the devotional Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. The demented, royal-robed Chris Walken. The bald, white-skinned, animal-eyed beast (Glossu-Rabban Harkonnen) played by Dave Bautista. All of the spacey and spooky women in robes and veils (Rebecca Ferguson, Lea Seydoux, Florence Pugh, Charlotte Rampling, Anya-Taylor Joy). And that bald, massively obese, sprawling mountain of sickening flesh in a dark pullover tunic (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen), played by Stellan “fat as a cow” Skarsgard…what a complete, Trump-like animal.

I really wanted to hate Dune: Part Two, but I couldn’t. It wouldn’t let me. Hats off to the team.

Just remember to bring your phone and read the plot as you go along.