As the Washington Post is a limited pay-walled site, some may not have access to Ann Hornaday‘s brilliant review of Long Shot (Lionsgate, now playing). Here it is — please read it.

Her assessment is not only correct, but the sharpest I’ve read anywhere. Yes, I’m impressed because she largely agrees with my own 4.24 pan. Toronto Star critic Peter Howell also understands and tells it straight.

A lot of reviewers are giving Long Shot a pass (83% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), calling it a “charming popcorn flick” or an outing that does the trick or delivers a good time, etc. Put a check mark next to every such reviewer as a way of reminding yourself to NEVER trust these guys again, at least when it comes to comedy.

Hornaday: “Long Shot, a fantasy-fueled romantic comedy starring Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron, establishes its reality-adjacent ethos from the jump: In its tensely amusing opening scene Rogen’s character, an investigative reporter named Fred Flarsky, has infiltrated a neo-Nazi group and is undergoing an initiation, giving half-hearted ‘Heil, Hitlers’ and keeping the sarcastic patter going as he prepares to get a swastika tattoo.

“The sequence plays like BlacKkKlansman‘s goofball cousin, made all the more ludicrous when Fred escapes the escalating mayhem by jumping out a window and bouncing off a parked car with nary a scratch. Welcome to the raucous, cheerfully preposterous world of Long Shot, where slapstick physical comedy, coarse sex jokes and amusingly on-point political commentary are expected to coexist as happily as the self-righteous, adamantly inelegant Fred and Charlotte Field, Theron’s pragmatic, sleekly fashionable secretary of state who falls in love with him.

Best line of entire review…yes!: “You don’t have to suspend disbelief to enjoy Long Shot — you have to jettison it entirely, along with any sentimental attachments to archaic fundamentals such as sparkling dialogue, organic structure and genuine sexual chemistry.

There’s a fair amount of deep-down homophobia out there. Nobody will mention or admit to it, but it’s there in the backwaters and the suburbs, and even to some extent in the cities. If you think the average voter hasn’t laughed at Eddie Murphy’s Mr. T joke from the ’80s, you’re kidding yourself.

HE’s advice to Pete Buttigieg is to not refer all that often to his marital status (i.e., Chasten Glezman), and to basically soft-peddle the gay cards. His candidacy should be — is! — about brilliance, middle-class Indiana values, military service, Christianity, mild temperament, generational change, speaking several languages, administrative smarts.

In a manner of speaking, Pete’s candidacy has to be mild-mannered and straight-friendly. His campaign, I mean, will have to be analogous to Call Me By Your Name or Brokeback Mountain without the pup-tent scene. If so much as a whiff of Taxi Zum Klo slips out, he’ll be in trouble.

John F. Kennedy campaigned as a staunch Massachusetts Catholic, family man and World War II hero. He didn’t flaunt the fact that he was to-the-manor-born wealthy, and he kept his ex-bootlegger father, Joseph P. Kennedy, in the shadows. And of course there was never a mention of his sexual side-life or the fact that he had Addison’s disease. In short, he played it smart.

Franklin D. Roosevelt never emphasized to voters that he had polio and was confined to a wheelchair. He knew that a segment of the populace would be uncomfortable with the idea of a handicapped President, and so he used his steel braces and stood tall at every campaign rally. It’s all about branding and signage.

Hugs and condolences to fans, friends and family of the late Peter Mayhew, who left the earth on Tuesday, 4.30. For the last 40-odd years Mayhew famously played the towering Chewbacca (7 foot, 3 inches tall at his peak) in the Star Wars films. The 74 year-old actor died at his North Texas home (Arlington?) of an undisclosed ailment.

Mayhew’s only interesting Chewy moment, acting-wise, was when he restrained himself just before Han Solo was put into carbon freeze….”yuhhhhaaahhhawwwwng!”

Boilerplate: “Mayhew was discovered by producer Charles H. Schneer while working as a hospital attendant in London, and cast in Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. The next year, he was cast as Chewbacca, the 200-year-old Wookiee.”

I’ve always disliked the spelling of “Wookiee” — what’s the point of the “i” after the “k” if you’ve already got two “e”s?

HE’s personal preference list of Cannes ’19 films comes to 27, and that’s not counting the Cannes Classics roster (Loves of a Blonde, Easy Rider, The Shining, Seven Beauties, Moulin Rouge, the Bunuel trio). 27 to 30 films in 11 days, and that’s leaving out a lot. Which films should I downgrade and which omissions should I include? Tell me this isn’t one of the most exciting Cannes rosters in years, at least on paper.

Top Ten: (1) Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, (2) Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Intermezzo, (3) Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse, (4) Jim Jarmusch‘s The Dead Don’t Die, (5) Pedro Almódovar‘s Pain & Glory, (5) Marco Bellocchio‘s The Traitor, (6) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s Young Ahmed, (7) Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life, (8) Ken Loach‘s Sorry We Missed You, (9) Dexter Fletcher‘s Rocketman (out of competition), (10) Kantemir Balagov‘s Beanpole.

Second Group: (11) Asif Kapadia‘s Diego Maradona, (12) Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Too Old To Die Young – North Of Hollywood, West Of Hell, (13) Nicolas Bedos‘ La Belle Epoque, (14) Jessica Hausner‘s Little Joe, (15) Corneliu Porumboiu‘s The Whistlers, (16) Ira Sachs‘ Frankie, (17) Xavier Dolan‘s Matthias And Maxime, (18) Arnaud Desplechin‘s Oh Mercy, (19) Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles‘ Bacurau, (20) Gaspar Noé’s Lux Aeterna.

Third Group: (21) Larissa Sadilova’s Odnazhdy v Trubchevske, (22) Gael García Bernal’s Chicuarotes, (23) Luca Guadagnino‘s short film The Staggering Girl, (24) Leila Conners’ Ice on Fire, (25) Dan Krauss’s 5B, (26) Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite, (27) Diao Yinan‘s The Wild Goose Lake.

Yesterday Slashfilm‘s Ben Pearson passed along a possibly inaccurate but nonetheless horrific rumor about the upcoming Indiana Jones 5, which would theoretically star a 78-year-old Harrison Ford and (who knows?) could be released on 7.9.21.

The rumor was part of a 5.1 story by Making Star Wars’ Jason Ward. I hope it’s not true, but it’s so eyebrow-raising and historically grotesque that it has to be at least mentioned.

The rumor is that Dan Fogelman, the touchy-feely, deeply loathed creator of This Is Us, screenwriter of Crazy, Stupid Love, Fred Claus, The Guilt Trip and Last Vegas and director-writer of Danny Collins and Life Itself, has been hired to rewrite the Indy 5 script, which had previously been worked on by David Koepp and Jonathan Kasdan.

Indy 5 would theoretically be directed by Steven Spielberg (after he makes West Side Story), produced by Frank Marshall and Kathy Kennedy and distributed by Disney.

On 10.20.15, or 3 1/2 years ago, Joe Biden took part in an event titled Tribute to Walter Mondale. Under the auspices of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Biden, Mondale and a moderator. Go to 56:45, which is where Biden says the following: “I actually like Dick Cheney…I get on with him. I think he’s a decent man.” I don’t want to elect a President who’s comme ci comme ca about Cheney, whose rancid history and values were no secret to anyone in late ’15. (Hat tip to Young Turks’ Emma Vigeland.)

“With her declarative snap and ability to go for the jugular, Emma Thompson truly seems like a born talk-show host. Even when she’s just riffing, she grounds Late Night in something real. Yet the movie, while it races forward with snappish energy, is telegraphed and a bit scattershot.

“It keeps throwing observations at you — about age and obsolescence, the dumbing down of the culture, the boys’ club of comedy writing, the perils of social media. Yet the themes don’t always mesh into a coherent vision of the talk-show landscape.

“Twenty years ago, The Larry Sanders Show was a brilliant deconstruction of the late-night universe, and now, with so many hosts competing for our attention, that universe has only gotten headier. But in Late Night, the rigamarole of actually running a talk show stays off to the side. The film wants to be a puckish media satire and an earnest workplace dramedy about ‘growing,’ and the fusion doesn’t always gel.” — from Owen Gleiberman’s 1.25.19 Sundance review.

From Elizabeth Weitzman‘s Tribeca Film Festival Wrap review, posted on 5.1.19: “How do you follow one of the most critically acclaimed rock docs of all time? Michael Wadleigh’s seminal 1970 documentary Woodstock was immersive and electric — a definitive, you-are-there experience rather than a here’s-what-happened chronicle.

“Despite its ambitious title, Barak Goodman‘s Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation is [merely] a here’s-what happened chronicle.

“It’s curious that the filmmakers don’t try to mine a perspective beyond nostalgia. The lack of context [feels] like a lost opportunity, particularly since many of the seeds of our current culture were planted 50 years ago at Max Yasgur’s farm. (And also because promoters with far greater resources don’t yet seem able to pull off an anniversary event in 2019.)

“Speaking of those long-haired, muddy, barely-clothed kids: The youngest of them is now nearing 70, and there’s an undeniable poignancy to seeing beautiful teens and twentysomethings while hearing their much older selves look back with an almost aching wistfulness.

But while there’s a lot of talk about how moved they were by their experience at Woodstock, there are few attempts to dig deeper. What happened after they went home? Were they inspired in any concrete ways? Or haunted by a communal high that would have been impossible to reach again?

“The original Woodstock remains the standard, by any definition. But this is likely to be an eye-opening primer for anyone who can’t imagine their grandparents looking like proto-Coachella fans — and a welcome reminder for those grandparents themselves.”

13 days before the start of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center’s Eugene Hernandez is offering a decent-looking duplex sublet for 1200 euros. It looks like two could stay there. Not huge but nicely located, near the Grand Hotel. Available between 5.14 and 5.26 “or any subset of these dates.” 1200 euros is a decent rent. I’d take it in a New York minute if I hadn’t already paid for my costly rental six weeks ago. File this under “Too Late Blues.” Interested parties should reply to me, and I’ll pass your info along to Eugene.

4:40 am: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was finally confirmed as a Cannes Film Festival competitor today, along with Abdellatif Kechiche‘s erotically provocative Intermezzo (aka Mektoub My Love: Intermezzo aka Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due).

The Tarantino will screen on Tuesday, 5.21 — the 25th anniversary of Pulp Fiction‘s Cannes debut. The sexually frank Kechiche film (allegedly including a prolonged scene of cunnilingus) will show at the tail end of the festival, presumably on Friday, 5.24 or Saturday, 5.25. This may be a problem for Hollywood Elsewhere as I’m leaving the festival on the afternoon of 5.24.

Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux explained that that finishing Tarantino’s film, which runs 165 minutes, had taken longer than usual because it was shot in 35mm rather than digital. He described it as a “love letter to the Hollywood of his childhood, a rock music tour of 1969, and an ode to cinema as a whole.”

Born in 1963, Tarantino moved from Knoxville to Los Angeles with his mother, Connie, when he was three. He and his re-married mom lived with husband Curtis Zastoupil in Torrance. (A notoriously dull and spiritually deflating armpit suburb intersected with the horrid 405 freeway, Torrance is a place you want to stay as far away from as possible — trust me.) Tarantino was six and 1/3 years old when the Manson murders happened.

We’ve all been schooled about Once Upon A Time in Hollywood so I don’t need to unpack it for the 18th or 19th time.

Intermezzo is a follow-up to Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno, the first half of a two-parter “about a Franco-Tunisian youth’s amorous pursuits.” Canto Uno world premiered at Venice in 2017, and if I remember correctly not a bird stirred in the trees after it played. Variety‘s Guy Lodge called it “another heady, alluring sensory epic, but it lacks the narrative and emotional heft of [Kechiche’s] best work.”

Fremaux said he “saw the film last Thursday, as it was still being edited, and definitely right in the middle of edits.” Running four effing hours, Intermezzo will screen at the end of the festival “so the DCP has time to get there.”

If you want to submit to a serious stress test and thereby discover how tenacious or ruthless you can be in pursuit of a coveted social goal, try getting a few words in edgewise with a world-famous celebrity at a party. The best way to manage this is to ask the celebrity’s publicist for assistance, but if you’re attempting to elbow your way into the star’s orbit on your own steam, look out. There are few exercises in life that are more naked or grasping.

The competition can be truly brutal, and the effort will almost always eat up 10 or 15 minutes of your time. Just standing there like some schmuck in a soup line…holding onto that half-smile, that look of casual expectation….beyond humiliating.

And while you’re ready to pounce into that little time-sliver of opportunity, that two-second opening when there’s a break in the conversation and you can jump in like a cat with your well-rehearsed opener…it’s really, really awful. How desperate am I? Where is my dignity? “Hey, Clint…Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere…we did a phoner in early ’04 for a Los Angeles magazine piece I wrote about Hollywood Republicans, and a while later I went apeshit over Million Dollar Baby,” etc.

And the way some people will just barrel right in while you’re having a chat with Clint or whomever…their aggressive behaviors aren’t unattractive as much as flat-out ugly. You might think you know someone, but you really don’t until you’ve seen them smoothly muscle their way into a celebrity’s face-space with just the right amount of finesse.

Andrew Goldman to Anjelica Huston about her Prizzi’s Honor Oscar: “I’d forgotten that you won over Oprah for The Color Purple. [The other three nominees for 1986’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar were Margaret Avery for The Color Purple, Amy Madigan for Twice in a Lifetime, and Meg Tilly for Agnes of God.] As I was watching the footage of you collecting the Oscar, my blood went a little cold thinking, There’s got to be some repercussions for beating Oprah.”

Anjelica: “She never had me on her show, ever. She won’t talk to me. The only encounter I’ve had with Oprah was when I was at a party for the Academy Awards, a private residence. I was talking to Clint Eastwood, and she literally came between us with her back to me. So all of the sudden I was confronted with the back of Oprah’s head.”