Jeffrey Wells

If there’s a slight problem with A Complete Unknown, it’s that Timothee Chalamet’s Bob Dylan is a little too elusive and circumspect — too much of an artful dodger or a snotty sidestepper — to register in straight dramatic terms.

It needs at least one scene in which Dylan lays his cards on the table and says “this is what I want” or “this is who I fucking am or at least who I’m not any more”…something like that.

And if you ask me, Dylan’s rambling remarks at the Bill of Rights dinner at the Americana hotel on 12.13.63 (three weeks after JFK’s murder) are fairly declarative in this sense.

Martin Scorsese read from Dylan’s remarks in a passage from No Direction Home (‘05), his 208-minute documentary about roughly the same period in Dylan’s life that A Complete Unknown covers. Re-using this event — this scene, these words — would have added a little something to James Mangold and Jay Cocks’ upcoming feature.

Excerpt: “Man, I just don’t see any colors at all when I look out. I don’t see any colors at all, and if people have taught anything through the years [it’s] to look at colors. I’ve read history books, but I’ve never seen one history book that tells how anybody feels. I’ve found facts about our history, I’ve found out what people know about what goes on but I’ve never found anything about what anybody feels about anything that happens.

”It’s all just plain facts. And it don’t help me one little bit to look back.

“I wish sometimes I could have come in here in the 1930s like my first idol – used to have an idol, Woody Guthrie, who came in the 1930s. [Applause] But it has sure changed in the time Woody’s been here and the time I’ve been here. It’s not that easy any more. People seem to have more fears.

“There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore. There’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics.”

But my gut tells me he’s griefstruck by the news that Paul “hawknose” Mescal will play him in the Sam Mendes Beatle flicks. For vanity reasons alone. It’ll be like Cary Grant being portrayed by Seth Rogen.

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Gladiator II offered conclusive proof that Paul Mescal lacks any kind of natural commanding charisma…the kind of sexy juice vibe that lights up a room the second he enters it. At best he’s a subdued character actor pretending and failing to be a movie star. On top of which he kinda looks funny or even a little bit dopey with that hawk nose and pointy chin and all.

The good-looking, close-to-pretty Paul McCartney had that X-factor thing in spades, of course, in his long-gone youth, and he retains a smidgen of that today. The man has/had a quality that can’t be faked, and certainly not by an Irish jerkoff. It’s therefore grotesque to think of Mescal playing McCartney in a film…horrific, in fact…a Notre Dame gargoyle pretending to be a kind of silver-throated prince.

The only problem is that Efron, 37, is probably too old to play the 26 year–old assassin. Jake Gyllenhaal would also be an excellent fit if he was younger — alas, he was born in ‘80.

So who’s the most promising candidate who isn’t too old?

…President-Elect Donald Trump has bought off Kimberly Guilfoyle, 55, with an Ambassador to Greece appointment…a neat and tidy “shut up” payoff…signed, sealed, delivered.

Get thee to Athens, oh my aging Kimberly, where you will most certainly hook up with your next wealthy boyfriend.

At 38, Bettina is 17 years younger —- an obviously brighter future indicated for the nearly 47-year-old Donald Trump Jr.

Under-45s have no cable subscriptions, and they sure as hell haven’t been watching the Oscar telecast in increasing numbers over the past few years. So the Hulu add-on makes sense.

And if the Oscars really don’t want to be toast they’ll need to trim their sails in terms of the DEI wokey virus by raising high the roof beam carpenters while praising films about real-deal people and real-life currents minus any traces of bullshit AMPAS progressive instruction (some Anora, Conclave, A Real Pain and Babygirl action would be excellent antidotes).

Will Hulu streaming energize the Oscar brand? Will the emerging new wave (enuf with the intolerable wokey) sink in before it’s too late?

HE continues to frown upon the bourgeois brunch-munching but LAFCA has done a good thing by boosting Sean Baker’s farcical Brooklyn dramedy.

HE also applauds the Boston Society of Film Critics for heaping even more praise upon Anora — Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison) and Best Original Screenplay (Baker).

The other night in the Village Market I was struck by a decades-old memory pang. The creased but attractive face of a middle-aged, possibly 60ish woman in a black overcoat is what triggered it.

I was 85% to 90% certain I’d run into her back in the ‘70s, so to alleviate that 10% to 15% of doubt I did the unthinkable: I politely approached her in the soaps and Febreze and detergents aisle and asked if she’d been running around Wilton in the mid ‘70s, or if she was a contemporary of an ex-girlfriend of mine who’d graduated from Wilton High in ‘75 or ‘76.

It wasn’t her negative reply (no biggie) as much as a resigned or forlorn look on her face that suddenly colored the mood. For she hadn’t graduated in the ‘70s but in 1989, she said, or 35 years ago. Which means she’s currently around 53, give or take.

Alas, my question had indicated (and there was no going back on this!) that her appearance, in my judgment, might be that of a lassie in her mid ‘60s.

Honestly? Fetching as she is for an older woman (she has a cute chipmunk face), she could have been 65 or thereabouts. I’m sorry but some of us look our age or younger than (especially if you’ve had some Prague touch-ups), and some of us look a bit worse for wear. And now I’d insulted this poor lady in a supermarket aisle, and there was no honest way to apologize.

Chipmunk lady had entered the market as a woman in her early 50s, a GenXer feeling pretty good about her life, and left it as someone 12 or 13 years older — a retirement-age boomer looking at a biological downslope.

…being dropped because of hung jurors…anyone who approves of the prosecution of Daniel Penny being downgraded to criminally negligent homicide is almost certainly a racist and probably a Trumpie.

Okay, not really.

Seriously, any veteran NYC subway commuter who’s had encounters with aggressive mental wackos was on Denny’s side from the get-go.

Maybe the legions of other wackos out there will ponder the sad fate of Penny’s choke-hold victim, Jordan Neely, and mutter to themselves, “Hmmm, maybe I should make a greater effort henceforth to not make subway riders cringe and cower when I go into my routine?”