Edward Berger’s Conclave finale was cooked up by author Robert Harris in 2015 (the book was published in ‘16), or well before the trans wokey thing (another factor that tarnished Biden and helped to ruin Harris in the eyes of bumblefuck voters) kicked into gear in the early ‘20s.

I feel soul-sick myself but the Great Woke Legend is that straight men are generally broken and corrupted and bad news, and that it’s time for women (and in one particular situation a cardinal with a uterus) to step in and call the shots.

Obviously a slight majority of voters disagreed with that scenario on 11.5, and so here we are…totally fucked as a nation and about to endure the pains of MAGA fascism.

I blame the wokeys. I really do. They brought this about. Right now they’re understandably searching for tall grass.

And I solemnly believe it would be wrong, wrong, wrong for John M. Chu’s handsome, uber-industrial pile-driver of a musical to take the Best Picture Oscar. Because if you put aside the musical numbers it has no great scenes.

Some Facebook dude wrote this:

But you’re a black sheep and a wrong one, and you fucked up repeatedly so ya gotta do the time, man. Really. No skating. It’ll build character. You’ll be a better, tougher person at the end of your sentence. It’s a growth opportunity.

HE comment: I think President Biden pardoned his bad-seed son Hunter out of resignation and despair.

Joe’s inner dialogue: “Obviously I’m reversing myself but my reputation is in the toilet anyway. Future generations will be taught to despise me as I’m the obstinate old coot who surrendered our nation to MAGA fascism because I wouldn’t collapse my ill-conceived campaign for a second term until it was way too late.

“You might be horrified by the return of Donald Trump but I’m the deluded scumbag who blew open the border and ushered in his second term so what difference does it make? History hates me now and will certainly hate me going forward.

“At the end of the day I’m defaulting to an age-old sentiment when it comes to broken-down fathers and weak sons: ‘The heart wants what it wants.’”

I’m sorry but Martin Scorsese and Dave Tedeschi’s Beatles ‘64 (Apple +, now streaming) is decent at best and shortfally at worst. It never quite rides the whirlwind.

The 106-minute doc tries to convey or suggest the spiritual-emotional endorphin highs that were surging through the fans in February ‘64, and it achieves that here and there, yes, but mostly it feels likes a spotty, half-assed, catch-as-catch-can affair. A catchy quote or an energy surge every now and then, but then it peters out. A bit lazy.

I own a mid ’90s DVD of the original Maysles tour doc, and we’ve all seen various snippets before, of course. So I wanted more, better, extra…something new that would get me going.

I wanted a gleaming, straight-from-the-lab, totally grain-free enhancement of the 60-year-old footage, but what I saw looked merely acceptable…nothing to jump up and down about. I wanted a stronger music track with heightened thrompy bass lines….nope. I wanted footage from the Saturday rehearsal session at the Ed Sullivan Show…nope.

No mention of the bizarre fact that the Beatles’ sets (in February ’64 they played inside a boxing stadium in Washington D.C. and at Carnegie Hall) were only about 20 or 25 minutes or so.

I wanted to hear about what surely went on between the lads and those few girls who were shrewd or persistent enough to penetrate security and meet them…stuff that nobody reported about back then, but c’mon…are you telling me nothing happened?

I have a vague recollection of a rogue photo taken during the August ’64 tour. I can’t find any evidence of it, but I recall the photo having appeared in Confidential or some like-minded scandal sheet. It was a flashbulb shot of a laughing, seemingly drunken John Lennon prowling around on his hands and knees and playing horsey to some floozy in black underwear…riding him like a stallion, riding crop in hand. You can accuse me of imagining this and maybe I did, but an inner voice says otherwise. **

Being especially receptive to the delicacy of Sutton these days, my heart went out to all those excited, screaming, jumping-up-and-down girls in their mid teens who surrounded the Plaza hotel (Beatles bunker) like General Santa Anna’s troops surrounded the Alamo. I wouldn’t have wanted them to be riding Lennon or anyone else. I just wanted them to get home safely.

You know what would have been far more interesting? An in-depth doc about the Beatles August ’65 tour (8.15.65 to 8.31.64), which happened right smack in the middle of their drug-experimentation heyday. This doc could’ve included the fellas hanging with Bob Dylan at the Warwick, not to mention the Peter Fonda encounter in Benedict Canyon when everyone was tripping (“I know what it’s like to be dead”).

At 5’8″ or thereabouts, Ringo Starr was the shortest of the fab four. But Beatles ’64 includes recent color footage of him speaking to producer Martin Scorsese, and Ringo is significantly taller.

https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/?s=Mangold-Chalamet+

Variety’s Elsa Keslassy from Marrakech:

We all understand what Luca is saying here. We all understand who the proponents of industrial taste are, the easy lays and the obsequious whores, not to mention the lazy rubes and slowboats who support big shitty franchise movies and tumble all over themselves when films like Wicked (which is not so much problematic as overwhelming in a blitzkrieg, Jon M. Chu-like way, which is what makes it industrialized) come along.

HE to Clemmy: You really do need to consider the possibility that you simply don’t have a sufficient brain-cell count.

HE supports the cinematic art of the obviously gifted and indisputably great Roman Polanski.

HE does not and never has supported the notion that anyone proven guilty of sexual abuse or assault should skate. Crimes of the loins have penalties. Nobody’s disputing this.

Then again are you telling me that Polanski hasn’t been made to suffer and submit to the proverbial lash for the last 47 years?

Are you telling me that Polanski’s kids, Morgane and Elvis, live in a state of perpetual fear and horror about what their allegedly monstrous dad may do to them?

We’re talking about two twains here, two separate boxes.

History is flooded with accounts of great artists who didn’t behave well at certain points in their lives, or who behaved abusively or with cruelty or callousness.

Enlightened art scholars have long argued and understood that at the end of the day you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

#MeToo ideologues will never understand or accept this. Their basic creed is “if the bathwater smells bad or is tainted in some way, the baby must either submit to the sword or be banished to the desert.”

Howard Hawks is famous for having said that a movie is properly regarded as a major stand-out or perhaps as an Oscar contender if it has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

What are Wicked’s three great scenes? Put up or shut up.

I’m not sure musical numbers should count as the point of all musical scenes is to express a significant thematic or emotional moment while stopping the narrative in its tracks. Musical numbers are what I would call highly arresting as opposed to great.

Great scenes hit home, touch emotions, signify or deliver major plot pivots or wake-up moments, accomplish something at least semi-profound.

In The Wizard Oz, for example, the three…make that four great scenes are (a) Dorothy being effectively counselled by Professor Marvel, (b) returning to her farmhouse as the tornado approaches and being hit on the head, and then the house landing in Munchkinland as the film turns to color, (c) she and her three comrades managing to vanquish the witch and take her broom back to the wizard, and (d) the “there’s no place like home” finale in Dorothy’s bedroom.

I’ve been running Wicked in my mind and trying to recall the three great qualifying scenes. I’m not being cynical. I’m open to instruction. Please inform.

HE’s annual “By the Measure of Howard Hawks” article will follow later today, applying Hawks criteria to all the major Best Oicture contenders.

…are probably doomed to repeat it.

Three of us ordered breakfast this morning inside Raymond’s of Montclair, an obviously storied, 20th Century establishment that may (I say “may”) have begun serving food as a Swedish smorgasbord eatery called The Three Crowns back in the 1930s or before. I’m not really sure.

It obviously began life as an old-time, pre-war restaurant of some kind. It’s the sort of place that James Stewart’s George Bailey or Gig Young’s Martin Sloan or Fredric March’s Al Stephenson may have visited with their families during the holidays.

Before doing my research I asked three waiters at Raymond’s if they knew when this spiffy yesteryear joint (excellent food, beautifully maintained, well-weathered under the surface) began serving food. Two weren’t sure; our own waiter said 1979. (Note: I found out later that the place apparently began as a breakfast and lunch place in ’89, and the current upscale version was created roughly 20 years ago.)

“That can’t be right,” I said to her. “Maybe the owners began in ‘79 but this place was obviously designed and built in the 1920s or ‘30s..something like that.”

She shrugged her shoulders and said that’s all she knew. Translation: “To me a place that began serving 45 years ago is old, old, old, and that’s about as far back as I can navigate from my Millennial or Zoomer viewpoint.”

Alternate translation: “We don’t really care that much. We’re waiters, not historians. You’re not going to give us bigger tips if we can recite this place’s history chapter-and-verse. We’ve never even heard of It’s a Wonderful Life or The Best Years of Our Lives, much less seen them. To us, Gig Young is about as relatable to our culture or way of seeing things as the pharoah Amenhotep.”

Our waiter told us there are black-and-white photos hanging upon a rear bathroom-adjacent wall, and that’s where I picked up on The Three Crowns.

People born after 1980 don’t particularly want to consider the way things were during the Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt or Truman years, or even the Eisenhower or Kennedy era. It’s all going to be washed away down the road. 20something or 30something mutants don’t want to know. Out of sight, out of mind.

AI Overview: The history of Raymond’s in Montclair, New Jersey, includes the following events:

Raymond’s Coffee Shop

Raymond Badach opened a small coffee shop in 1989 on Church Street.

Raymond’s Restaurant:

In 2004, Badach and Joanne Ricci opened a larger restaurant in the same location. The restaurant was designed with a 1930s diner/brasserie look by artists Ian McPheely and Christian Garnett. Chef Matt Seeber created a menu that was part diner and part bistro.

Roman Polanski haters have kept English-subtitled Blurays of An Officer and a Spy (aka J’Accuse) off the market for the last four-plus years, and no English-sub streaming options have surfaced in the U.S. or Europe either (except via pirate sites). And yet a beautiful all–format Russian Bluray with English subs has been kicking around on eBay for a year or two. It took me a long time to wake up to this. I’m now a proud owner.

…for everything, all of it. Especially delighted that I finally own an English-subtitled Bluray of Polanski’s J’Accuse. Heartbroken that the hooligan bad guys are about to take charge and that the degradation of so much is about to kick in.

Otherwise I’m grateful for the hundreds of small pleasures and comforts and nourishments that constitute daily life…I could write a book. Good wishes and heartfelt greetings to everyone, even my comment-thread enemies…even those I’ve wished cancer upon.

Friendo: