There are a few relatively cheap and tolerable places to crash in Manhattan, but none, I’ll wager, are as storied or aesthetically pleasing in an old-world sense as the Jane Hotel (113 W. Jane, next to West Side highway). Georgian-style architecture, century-old wooden walls, a pleasing yesteryear vibe. Built in 1906, a sailor’s hotel. Not to mention the Jane Ballroom, which was jumping when I arrived last night around 11:30 pm. Their tiny standard room (not recommended for couples) will set you back $99. Shared bathroom, but the spacious shower stalls have locks.

HE’s LAX-to-JFK journey was no picnic. Jet Blue is the Trailways of the skyways. Zero wifi — what airlines don’t offer this in 2021? The electric outlet next to the seat worked initially, and then changed its mind. Plus half my power charge cords turned moody and fickle. Plus we’ve been sitting on the tarmac for 30 minutes — no available gate.

I love it — welcome to NYC. You know where they don’t pull this sit-and-wait-at-the-gate shit? Almost anywhere else in the world. New York City — the finest and proudest crumbling-infrastructure town in the Western hemisphere. Plus the world’s (often) slowest, shittiest subway system by far. Not to mention the wounding…all right, I’m over-venting.

9:40 pm: We’re still waiting to disembark. 50 minutes since landing.

9:48 pm: Finally stretching my legs! Thanks, guys. Now let’s see what we can do about delaying the carousel luggage.

I just landed at JFK, and the first blast out of the phone was the death of the great Stephen Sondheim, age 91. Shattering. All my life his songs and scores have been casting spells — wonderful, mesmerizing, heart-melting poetry…complex, urbane, delicate and sophisticated. And just before the opening of Steven Spielberg’s screen version of West Side Story, which Sondheim (along with Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins) co-created 64 or 65 years ago. I’m very, very sorry. Then again 91 years, and many of them rhapsodic or historic or at least ebullient.

“Stephen Sondheim: The Last Word,” N.Y. Times. 11.26.

Three years and eight months seems like a long time ago in this context. It’s kind of startling to consider how so many people were convinced that Jordan Peele‘s Get Out was the absolute shit, and that it looked like a Best Picture Oscar winner. Imagine. Time sure does change perceptions. Woke-think had only begun to flex its muscles a few months earlier.

Posted on 2.26.18: Yesterday on Facebook HE’s own Jordan Ruimy again predicted that Jordan Peele‘s Get Out will win the Best Picture Oscar. Then he doubled-down on Twitter this morning.

What he means is that Get Out, a half creepy, half satiric, racially-stamped Stepford Wives, will slipslide into a win because a huge number of Academy members have it down as their #2 or #3 choice, and that the “kooky” preferential ballot will do the rest.

Hollywood Elsewhere says no way. I’m not even sure that Get Out will win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, which will most likely be won by Three Billboards‘ Martin McDonagh. It might win in this category, but forget Best Picture — the apparent momentum of the last week has all been with Three Billboards with everyone assuming that The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro will take Best Director.

I’ll say this much: One thing favoring Get Out is that the people who love it really love it, while the Three Billboards and Shape of Water crowd is more composed of likers and accomodationists.

HE arguments & agreements with Facebook comments:

“That would be great but I doubt it” — Alex Conn. HE: “What exactly would be ‘great’ about Get Out winning Best Picture? Great in what way? And how likely is this? A clever, financially successful genre film that says upscale liberal whites are just as odious as Charlottesville racists — who in AcademyLand really believes that?”

“It’s a good movie but not Oscar-worthy. The academy will give it the old ‘good effort, good try’ treatment come Oscar time. My money is on Three Billboards.” — Trexis Griffin. HE to Griffin: “But that’s the new thing — a significant portion of the new membership does consider genre fare like Get Out to be Oscar-worthy.”

“Nah. Too genre for Oscar. This one screams Best Original Screenplay.” — Tim Fuglei. HE comment: And possibly not even that.

“Jordan, will you eat a bug if wrong?” — Jay Smith. HE to Ruimy: Seriously — what act of contrition will you actually perform if you’re wrong?

“It’s Get Out or Three Billboards. There are good and bad reasons for both. Three Billboards is actor-driven and actors dominate [in the voting]. Get Out could win, but you have to wonder how the BAFTAs had the option of choosing it to win Best Picture but went with Three Billboards for both Best Picture and Best British film? Between that and having no SAG ensemble nom is why I am not predicting Get Out to win, but it is one of three that could. I have no idea what will win.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s LAX-JFK flight leaves at 1:40 pm Pacific, arrives at 9 pm eastern. I’m presuming I’ll be online during the flight. NYC/NJ/CT temps in the low 40s as we speak, probably in 30s when I land. Every time I fly back east, the same question hovers in my mind — do I take the cowboy hat or not? If the weather was extra cold, mid 20s or below, I’d say yeah. The 10-day forecast says it won’t drop below 35.

“In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Christopher Columbus flew Jet Blue…”

The trick…okay, the intention is to post photos that connect on purely visual or aromatic terms, no matter who or what you might personally relate to.

A stark, impressionistic Macbeth of no particular era. Well, some time in the past but not necessarily 17th Century Scotland. The spiffy hallway design and window panes obviously argue against that. The hallway in particular could have been designed by Albert Speer. And what about those boots, eh? Fine 20th Century cobblery.

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Sometimes in the science of Oscarology it takes a few years to understand the political reasons (for all Oscar triumphs are political) behind this or that winner snagging a trophy.

Take the Moonlight win, for example. Thanks to Spike Lee’s refreshing frankness, we can now safely assume that the deciding factor behind Barry Jenkins’ film beating La La Land was about Academy members being able to tell themselves that #OscarsSoWhite had been squarely faced and responsibly negated.

But in the days following the 2.26.17 Oscar telecast, many were saying “of course!…of course Moonlight was obviously better than La La Land!…on top of which it was wrong for a white guy to love jazz.”

I didn’t feel that way, but the mob was on a roll.

“Putting Moonlight To Bed,” posted on 3.4.17: “This is several days old and yesterday’s news, but a 2.28 Hollywood Reporter piece by Stephen Galloway that derided the echo chamber of Oscar punditry and the failure of the know-it-alls to foresee Moonlight‘s Best Picture win (“Why the Pundits Were Wrong With the La La Land Prediction“) was wrong in two respects.

“One, whoda thunk it? Even now I find it perplexing that Moonlight won. A finely rendered, movingly captured story of small-scale hurt and healing, it’s just not drillbitty or spellbinding enough. I wasn’t the least bit jarred, much less lifted out of my seat, when I first saw it at Telluride. Moonlight is simply a tale of emotional isolation, bruising and outreach and a world-shattering handjob on the beach…Jesus, calm down.

“As I was shuffling out of the Chuck Jones I kept saying to myself “That‘s a masterpiece?” (Peter Sellars, sitting in front of me, had insisted it was before the screening started.) If there was ever a Best Picture contender that screamed ‘affection and accolades but no Oscar cigar,’ it was Moonlight. And the Oscar pundits knew that. Everyone did.

“So I don’t know what happened — I really don’t get it.**

“I’ve already made my point about Moonlight in the Ozarks. It’s just a head-scratcher. And two, Galloway’s contention that only pipsqueaks with zero followings were predicting or calling for a Moonlight win is wrong.

“As I noted just after the Oscars, esteemed Toronto Star critic Pete Howell and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Matt Atchity were predicting a Moonlight win on the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby charts. As I also noted, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone hopped aboard the Moonlight train at the very last millisecond, although she stuck to La La Land for her Gurus of Gold ballot. These are facts, and Galloway’s dismissing Howell and Atchity was an unfair oversight.”

** It wasn’t safe to say that Moonlight ‘s win was about Academy members covering their ass until Lee said this on 6.21.17. After that it was olly-olly-in-come-free.

The material is nothing special but for me, the Get Back Beatles playing Chuck Berry‘s “Rock and Roll Music” is easily the most rousing performance. It happens during episode #1 of Peter Jackson‘s 468-minute documentary, which premieres today on Disney+.

“The moments of inspiration and interest are marooned amid acres of desultory chit-chat (‘aimless rambling’, as Lennon rightly puts it) and repetition. There is a point, about five hours in, when the prospect of hearing another ramshackle version of ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ becomes an active threat to the viewer’s sanity.

“That is doubtless what recording an album is like, but for an onlooker it is — to use the language of 1969 — a real drag. Much opprobrium has been cast at Yoko Ono for her constant presence at Beatles’ recording sessions, but, after this, you marvel at her fortitude for sitting through them.” — The Guardian‘s Alex Petridis, posted on 11.25.