About a week ago (2.25) I mentioned that the Santa Barbara Film Festival will present an on-stage interview with the five 2022 nominees for the 2022 Best Director Oscar — The Power of the Dog‘s Jane Campion, Drive My Car‘s Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Licorice Pizza‘s Paul Thomas Anderson, Belfast‘s Kenneth Branagh and West Side Story‘s Steven Spielberg.

It happens tonight at 8 pm. THR‘s Scott Feinberg will moderate. These SBIFF events are all about praise and softballs so it’s unlikely that Feinberg will ask anything the least bit challenging. However…

In my 2.25 piece I suggested that Feinberg ask Anderson the following: “As you know, for the last four or five years Hollywood progressives have has dictated that all historical films have to adopt the practice of presentism in terms of casting. That means that all casts have to reflect social values as they should be in terms of inclusion and representation rather than how they actually may have been during the time of the story. (Presentism anticipates the Academy’s representation and inclusion standards that will apply concurrent with the 2024 Oscars.)

Anderson question: “Late last year you were challenged on a racial insensitivity issue. Licorice Pizza has a couple of scenes in which a middle-aged white guy speaks to his Japanese wife (actually two wives in succession) with a bizarre Japanese accent. You responded that you think it’s more important to portray all the aspects of a given era accurately rather than default to presentism. Would you care to elaborate on this dispute and re-explain where you were coming from?”

I’ve decided to revise my suggestion. Feinberg should instead ask all five directors to answer this: “In your opinion, which is the higher calling in the making of a period film? Is it better to (a) follow the guidelines and dictates of presentism, which aims to reflect social values as they should be in terms of inclusion and representation rather than how they actually were during the time of a given story, or (b) present this or that historical era honestly, as it actually was and without any progressive sugar-coating?”

I’m still in West Hollywood as we speak (3 pm), but I’ve got five hours to play with. Drive up to Santa Barbara, pick up the press pass, unload my stuff at a nice SBIFF-comped hotel (Lavender by the Sea) and get up to the Arlington Theatre sometime between 7:30 and 8 pm.

Earlier today I was telling World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy that Colin Farrell‘s Penguin (aka Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot) kept reminding me physically and verbally of Michael Rapaport…if, that is, Rapaport was wearing Penguin makeup.

Jordan said that Farrell’s Penguin reminded him more of Richard Kind, and after he sent me the below two-shot, I realize that he’s right — they’re almost dead ringers.

HE to Aleksandr Rodnyansky and Andrey Zyagintsev:

I’m terribly sorry for the anguish and horror you both must be going through now. Anguish and horror by loose association, I mean.

We all understand that millions of Russians are just as appalled and anguished by the chaos and slaughter in Ukraine as the rest of the world.

Most of us (along with the Festival du Cannes guys) think of you and Andrey as residing in the Aleksei Navalny camp, and I’m very, very sorry for what you’re all enduring as we speak.

I take it that the good Mr. Zvyagintsev’s health has improved? Best to both of you!

…and I was honestly not expecting much more than a sporadically engaging in-and-outer. I was praying it wouldn’t be arduous. Well, it’s more than that — a good deal more. It’s not my idea of a stone masterpiece, but it’s awfully damn good for what it is. Much better than expected.

No bathroom breaks! And I have to hand it to RBatz…he holds his own and can regard all the other Bat dudes (Keaton, Bale, Kilmer, Clooney) on an equal footing.

Yes, another brooding, badass, seething, dark-as-shit Batman flick. But on its own terms it stands up to the Nolan aesthetic. It looks Nolan right in the eye, I mean, and says “this is another way to go, bruh…yes, similar in some ways…okay, in more than a few…how could it not be?”

But Matt Reeves has made this nearly three-hour noir work on its own dark, rainy-ass, soaked-in-sewer-water, steaming noir-scape terms.

It’s obvious from the get-go that The Batman has been directed by a sharp, highly intelligent maestro type who wears bow ties…this is no schlocko enterprise, no Peter Hyams paycheck thing.

The unrecognizable Colin Farrell for Best Supporting Actor! Seriously! He looks and sounds like Michael Rapaport under heavy makeup and a fat suit.

I loved the “Ave Maria” opening. Very impressive! Overall it played better than I expected. Paul Dano is fantastic — he out Kevin Spacey’s Kevin Spacey in Se7en.

And they’re both (Dano and RBatz) angels of vengeance, dammit.

The music is great!!

The constant rainy, gloomy, down-at-the-heels noir stylings and a steady stream of haunted minds and ominous undercurrents — The Batman really does have a kind of orchestral symphonic feeling…it all moves and emotes and groans and despairs from a single fierce place…the particulars all blend into a fused and multi-shaded whole.

It’s still a Batman movie, of course, and people keep getting shot, blown up, burned, knocked cold and blasted and bruised all to hell, and they all just kind of grunt and recover. A little bruised and bleeding but we’ll be okay in a while.

And the cape-and-cowl guy dropping off from the tops of super-tall skyscrapers….God, that cliche refuses to die!

I really didn’t recognize Farrell at all…amazing!

I liked Jeffrey Wright’s performance in this thing much more than his heralded performance in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch.

Adam West aside, the Batman thing has always been about noirish gloom, sullen moods, feelings of vengeance, downerism, dark shadows, etc. Right?

With great respect and profound sadness Hollywood Elsewhere is acknowledging the death of producer Alan Ladd, Jr, an old-school guy & son of Shane who believed in taking the occasional risk, standing by certain filmmakers and supporting the advancement of women in the ranks.

Ladd was 20th Century Fox’s production chief between ’76 and ’79, and distinguished himself as the guy who stood behind Star Wars and Alien. In ’79 he launched The Ladd Company, which yielded Chariots of Fire (’81), Outland (1981), the truncated & narrated version of Blade Runner (’82), Night Shift (1982), The Right Stuff (1983) and Police Academy (’84). He also produced Gone Baby Gone (2007).

Ladd joined MGM/UA in ’85 (Giancarlo Parretti!), and thereby cranked out A Fish Called Wanda (1988), Moonstruck (1987) and Thelma & Louise (1991). Ladd re-started the Ladd Company with Paramount Pictures in ’93, and thereafter produced The Brady Bunch Movie and Braveheart.

In one corner we have Oliver Stone, who gave Vladimir Putin a friendly interview four or five years ago, suggesting that we’re overly consumed by anti-Putin hysteria while “omitting key facts when inconvenient, and that we’re failing to “understand the full spectrum of what’s happening.” Which boils down, Stone feels, to Putin’s territorial anti-NATO paranoia being justified or at least understandable.

And in the opposite corner we have former chess champion and anti-Putin, pro-democracy activist Garry Kasparov, telling Megyn Kelly that this is Putin’s last stand. Not to mention Michael Moore posting yesterday terms of surrender that Putin might want to consider.