This Adobe Photoshop ad was created eight months ago, but I didn’t see it until this evening. Somebody said last year that it’s 99% Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere, and maybe 1% Photoshop. And I don’t care. Fucking brilliant.

I’ve been grappling with misgivings…call them mildly conflicted feelings…ever since Carey Mulligan married Mumford & Sons lead singer Marcus Mumford in April 2012. Because somehow it didn’t seem right in a Hollywood-fairy-tale, all-things-being-equal sense that the slender and fetching Mulligan had married a guy with a beefy, moose-like appearance.

Lo and behold, during Mulligan’s opening monologue on Saturday Night Live this evening Mumford made a surprise appearance, standing up in the audience and greeting her and trying to wedge a song into the proceedings. And the guy was something like 30 or even 40 pounds thinner than he’s appeared in photos over the years. Hats off & champagne toast to Mumford for doing the hard grueling work. All is well and good. HE stamp of approval.

Bear-like Mumford, slim Mulligan a few years ago.

Ditto.

I know Nomadland will almost certainly win the Best Picture Oscar. I have no problem with this as I know (along with everyone else) it’s a first-rate, Grapes of Wrath-like film, despite the inscrutable WTF ending and the outdoor bucket-shitting.

But it depresses me nonetheless, and I can’t even explain why. All I know is, I want a movie that doesn’t feature bucket-shitting to win the big prize…inane as that sounds. And I’m all gloomed out about what will probably happen despite what my preference may be.

In my mind, Nomadland helmer Chloe Zhao winning the big DGA prize tonight doesn’t mean that much as she was always going to win this…always. She had to. The Woke playbook (a woman of color, 2nd Asian director to win after last year’s Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite triumph) demanded it. Ditto the Best Director Oscar.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson: “There was never any suspicion that Chloé Zhao would not win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Achievement for Direction of a Theatrical Feature Film for Nomadland. The Golden Globe, Critics Choice, and PGA winning film now heads to Sunday’s BAFTA Awards with seven chances to win again, followed by Oscar voting from April 15-20.

“Zhao is the second woman to win the DGA award (after Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker) and the first Asian woman.

“The PGA and DGA wins for Nomadland give it a clear lead in the race for Best Picture and Director”…you’re killing me, Anne!

“Overwhelmingly, the DGA winner wins the Best Director Oscar. Only eight times in 72 years has that not happened. And more often than not — 50 times — the DGA winner’s movie also wins Best Picture.” Aagghhh!

..this railroad-car-demolition shot appears in. The make of the cars indicates early to mid ’70s.

They don’t do stunts like this anymore pic.twitter.com/XkXqI9RCS0

— Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) April 10, 2021

Tatiana Siegel‘s THR piece about producer Scott Rudin is basically an evergreen, as Rudin’s sometimes brutal relations with office staffers has been a familiar industry legend since forever. All Siegel has basically done is freshen it up with new quotes, the smashed Apple computer and the flying potato.

Call me fucked up but I’ve somehow always been able to tolerate brutal bosses. A friend says this is because I had a brutal dad. I personally believe that (a) life is hard and demanding, (b) the kitchen is often hot, and (c) the only way to go in a tough business is to be humane, of course, and turn the other cheek and forgive whenever possible, but at the same time to always try harder and think faster and especially work weekends.

No, this is not an excuse for brutality, and I’ve no comment on Rudin’s reported behavior with office underlings except to say it’s highly unfortunate. But he’s always been a straight-shooter with me. (And yes, that includes acrimonious exchanges.) I don’t like getting yelled at, but I accept that it happens when the pressure is on, which is almost always.

An excerpt from Richard Rushfield‘s latest Ankler, titled “Mr. Potatohead”…

This is big news, a huge development…seriously. Down the road it will help invalids enormously. It could eventually lead to writers composing articles and novels without using keyboards or fingers.

Posted on 4.8 by CNET’s Jackson Ryan: “Neuralink, the brain implant start-up founded by SpaceX head honcho and self-appointed ‘technoking’ Elon Musk, has unveiled a new video of a nine-year-old monkey named ‘Pager’ playing Pong…with its brain.

“The three-minute video shows Pager learning to control a computer with his brain activity. At first, the monkey uses a joystick to interact with the computer for a ‘tasty banana smoothie, delivered through a straw.’

“The narrator states Pager has two Neuralink devices implanted in his brain. The devices, which Musk calls a ‘Fitbit for your skull,’ were revealed at a press briefing in August 2020.

“As Pager plays through the games, the narrator explains the Neuralink devices in his brain are reading his brain activity and that activity is being decoded by a computer. When the team disconnect the joystick, Pager keeps playing the game — and the brain-implant allows him to play MindPong, as Neuralink has dubbed it.”

Two days ago (4.8) the N.Y. Times reported that Devin Murphy, Rep. Matt Gaetz‘s legislative director, has quit. He’s out due to media coverage of the feds looking into sex trafficking allegations against the Trump-supporting Florida congressman, who is almost certainly toast at this stage of the game.

But out of this resignation came two signature lines that are, as of this moment, newly popularized.

Axios has reported that in an email sent to Republican legislative directors this morning (i.e., 4.10), Murphy wrote, “It’s been real”…definitely! The subject line of the email was “Well…bye.”

As HE followers know, “Bye!” is the line spoken several times by the body-inhabiting monster in Jack Sholder‘s The Hidden (’88). And of course, Murphy’s insertion of “well” before “bye” changes the context — it implies “okay, somebody fucked up here….not me but somebody.”

Axios adds that as of Saturday afternoon, Murphy’s automated email response says: “I am no longer with the office of Congressman Matt Gaetz. Womp womp. Cue the sad trombone.”

It’s not that I wasn’t listening to the testimony of Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County medical examiner who performed the initial autopsy of George Floyd, but I kept thinking that I could hook Baker up with my Prague hair guy, and that his bald spot problem would be history after two visits at $2K each.

Baker testified that while Derek Chauvin‘s knee on Floyd’s neck was the primary cause of death, drug use and heart disease were lesser contributing factors.

“The people who are the future of this country, or the cranky old white people who are dying off?”

A round-table dinner at Novita (102 E. 22nd St.) in the Grammercy/Flatiron district. Cait and Tatiana were on the other side. Jett was born on 6.4.88…life sure as shit moves on.

“Judging by this year’s Best Picture nominees, you couldn’t have a worse time at the movies if there was an active shooter in the theatre.”

Maher isn’t describing overall Hollywood output, but the “if we play along with the wokester narrative maybe they won’t come after us” rationale, hence the Best Picture noms. Many industry people secretly despise the prevailing climate of terror. Blah pandemic Oscars…kill me.

It’s no longer just Variety‘s Clayton Davis predicting the collapse of the Carey Mulligan for Best Actress campaign, which seemed like a safe bet until Viola Davis‘s Best Actress SAG win. Now The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has also thrown in the Mulligan towel, relegating her to a third-place slot among the five Oscar nominees for Best Actress.

Feinberg is also, bizarrely, predicting that Nomadland‘s Frances McDormand will take the Best Actress trophy — which of course will be her third. I thought her minimal campaign plus “she’s already won twice” meant she wouldn’t prevail.