“If you’re going to look like this, you’ll have to settle for the fat-girl parts.” — a drama teacher to Kate Winslet when she was in her mid teens, according to Winslet’s account during a 60 Minutes essay that aired yesterday (12.1).

By “like this,” the drama teacher meant not slender or rail-thin, a physical state that all competitive actresses aspire to whether they want to admit it or not.

What the drama teacher also meant, I suspect, was that Winslet wasn’t so much “fat” as zaftig (curvy, fleshy, wide-hipped). During the filming of Titanic James Cameron allegedly referred to Winset as “Kate weighs-a-lot.” I’ve personally never said an unkind word to any woman’s face for the misdemeanor of being a bit hefty or bulky, but I’ve held critical thoughts about such qualities for nearly my whole life. Everyone has.

Catherine Breillat made a film about a French obese teen and called it Fat Girl. Was that a size-ist slur or a statement of fact?

Things have changed over the last 30-plus years, but women of size and bulk are still not generally regarded as being in the 8, 9 or 10 categories…be honest. Nobody wants to be so impolite or coarse to put such women down for this, and it’s certainly permissible if this or that guy finds “big girls” attractive…knock yourselves out.

It’s noteworthy that the 60 Minutes interviewer (Cecilia Vega, who blends ardent feminism with standard obsequiousness) didn’t ask Winslet to explain or reiterate her own statement of self-condemnation for the crime of having worked with Woody Allen (Wonder Wheel) and Roman Polanski (Carnage).

Winslet: “It’s unbelievable to me now how those men were held in such high regard, so widely in the film industry and for as long as they were. It’s fucking disgraceful.” I’ll tell you what was disgraceful back in ’21 — knee-jerk #MeToo Stalinist sentiments from Johnny-come-lately, trying-to-curry- favor activist actresses.

Cheryl Hines posts video of RFK Jr in the shower to promote her line of “MAHA” branded candles, body sprays, and creams. pic.twitter.com/jd4DwQFOmL

— PatriotTakes (@patriottakes) November 30, 2024

One of the sexiest dance moves ever, and then they stroll out of the joint with ultra-rightwing Walter Brennan carrying the bags.

Three months ago Edward Berger‘s Conclave played at Telluride Film Festival’s Werner Herzog theatre (8.30.24)…glorious. I sat in the second or third row…elated, throttled, tumescent. Now I’m watching it with headphones on my 15″ Macbook Pro…parked inside an under-heated food court cafeteria on the northbound 95 in Darien. I love it no less and am very happy that I own the Amazon digital file, but you know Berger is quietly weeping as he reads this.

Before last night I’d never watched Holiday Inn (’42), the Bing Crosby-Fred Astaire romantic musical that introduced “White Christmas” and “Happy Holiday.” I found it a wee bit silly and even boring at times, but then the Abe Lincoln minstrel show sequence began.

My jaw fell on the floor. Has to be seen to be believed.

Wiki excerpt: “Beginning in the 1980s, some broadcasts of Holiday Inn entirely omitted the ‘Abraham’ musical number, staged at the Inn for Lincoln’s Birthday, because of its depiction of a blackface minstrel show incorporating racist images and behaviors.

“Turner Classic Movies nonetheless screened the film with the ‘Abraham’ number intact; AMC also aired the film intact before it became an advertiser-supported channel.”

I’ve respected Wicked‘s wallop factor from the get-go, but please God, no…don’t let it win the Best Picture Oscar.

To improve its reputation among the Joe and Jane Bumblefucks who’ve had it up to here with elite leftist instruction, the Oscar-bestowing community has to get with the emerging new current…the “put down the wokey DEI playbook, and maybe ease up on queerish messaging” program.

And I’m saying this, mind, as a rapt admirer of Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer.

Wicked is basically a high-impact racial parable with songs, magic and lesbian sauce. It’s about an unjustly feared and despised woman of color (i.e., green) and the wicked superficial whitey-whites who are determined to socially ostracize and excommunicate her, and thereby leave her no choice but to evolve into Margaret Hamilton‘s Wicked Witch of the West.

And that’s fine as far as it goes. Just leave the Best Picture Oscar out of the equation.

Obviously industry people love Wicked and I’m not saying they’re wrong for leaning this way, but given that average Americans have been saying “enough!” and “whatever happened to real movies?”, it’s clear that cinema has to turn the corner or else…films have to get real, step off the soapbox, put their feet on the ground and ease up on the progressive instruction narratives…really. Honest stories that touch bottom. Anora, Conclave, that line of country.

We all know it’s been a weak year and I don’t mean to abruptly switch objections, but HE also wishes a double ixnay upon The Brutalist.

An hour ago I checked with domain.com and discovered that www.stopwicked.com, stopwicked,org and stopwicked.net are available.

Posted a few hours ago by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Seth Abramovitch:

“A week into its release, Wicked is starting to shape up as a serious contender. Elphaba isn’t flying off to the Western sky with statuette in hand quite yet, but there’s no denying that Wicked has a lot going for it in its bid to win best picture.

“Let’s start with the obvious. Academy members don’t just like Wicked — they love Wicked. At the Directors Guild, PGA and SAG screenings in both Los Angeles and New York, as well as at the Academy screening, capacity crowds burst into applause after many songs and gave the film a rapturous standing ovation after the cliffhanger finale.

“Guild members are known to give standing Os — they did last year for Oppenheimer when Christopher Nolan emerged for his Q&A — but according to those in attendance, the effusiveness for Wicked has been at another level.

“Then there’s the damn grosses. We are coming off a near extinction-level event for cinema — i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic, during which small streaming-friendly films like CODA and Nomadland won best picture.

“But in the post-plague era, some voters seem to be hungry for spectacle. Last year, Oppenheimer was the perfect mix of IMAX-sized visuals and weighty subject matter — a billion-dollar earner the Academy could proudly point to and say, ‘This is the cinematic gold standard.’ That bodes well for Wicked.”

Wicked is a ride, all right, but “cinematic gold-standard” is a whole ‘nother realm.

…I’d never even heard of Salmon P. Chase, the seventh Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1864-1873) whose facial features adorned the $10K bill, which was printed between 1878 and 1934.

$1K bills were printed between 1861 and 1954; the small-sized Grover Cleveland version was issued in 1928 and 1934. Since 1969 banks have been required to forward $1K bills to the government for destruction.

William McKinley $500 bills were also printed between 1861 and 1945.

$100K Woodrow Wilson bills were printed by FDR’s administration “in response to hoarding of gold during the Great Depression.” 42,000 went through the printing process.

Man, would I love to carry a couple of McKinley or Cleveland bills in my elephant-hide wallet, just to watch people’s eyes pop out of their sockets…boinnnng!

I’m not saying that if either Wicked, Emilia Perez or The Brutalist win the Best Picture Oscar, it’ll feel like an apocalypse to me personally. Actually I am kinda saying that, to be honest.

If either Perez or Wicked win, I’ll feel the next morning like I did on 11.6.24.

THR’s Scott Feinberg recently wrote that a vote for Perez and/or Karla Sofia Gascon could be seen around town as a fuck-you vote against The Beast, and that this symbology could be a determining factor.

Please don’t do this, Academy. On a certain level movies like Emilia Perez and the attendant wokey influenza within are among the reasons that Trump won.

The bumblefucks didn’t so much vote against Kamala Harris as they voted against men competing in women’s sports. Please don’t make things worse by doubling down on this shit. Please consider backing away from radical gender fluidity and transitioned six-foot biomales competing againet female swimmers, and come down to the normal earth amidst the mindsets of Joe and Jane Popcorn.

Al Kooper needs to be re-saluted for his guerilla commando raid during the 6.15.65 recording of “Like A Rolling Stone”. I’m suggesting this because a highly abbreviated version of this session is included in A Complete Unknown. Kooper is played by Charlie Tahan, but Kooper’s personal recollection of what happened is, like, ten times better.

If unusually frank words had been exchanged between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Sunday, July 21st, and if Harris had followed through on this frankness, the presidential race might have turned out differently. Maybe.

Harris: “So you’re doing this? You’ve firmly decided?”

Biden: “If I don’t fold the tent and pass the torch, Pelosi and the gang will further challenge and undermine me, and I’ll almost certainly wind up losing to Trump by an even greater margin than previously projected, and I’ll go down in history as an even greater villain…a withered, stubborn old coot who surrendered the country to MAGA facism, and all because of my Irish, bone-headed arrogance.”

Harris: “I’ve always supported you. I participated in the general gasllghting about you being mentally alert and fully able to continue doing the job, and I’m supporting you now…I respect and support your decision to withdraw.”

Biden: “So it’s on you now, Kamala. Do your best and go with God. You’ll need to hit the road running. I presume you and your team have been preparing for this all along, and particularly since my absent-minded debate performance last month.”

Harris: “Actually, no, we haven’t.”

Biden: “You haven’t?”

Harris: “We’ve been in kind of a holding pattern, waiting to see what you’d do.”

Biden: “Since 1.20.21 you’ve been one heartbeat away from the Presidency, and you haven’t done a single thing to prepare, policy-wise and contingency-wise, for the possibility of taking over if something, God forbid, were to happen to me? You’ve just been plotzing?”

Harris: “We didn’t want anyone saying that we were preparing to take over prematurely. That would’ve looked ugly and craven.”

Biden: “Jesus, man!”

Harris: “What’s important now, Joe, is that I’m going to be the Democratic candidate. I’m grabbing the reins, and…well, please don’t take this the wrong way but I have to speak frankly to you, and more importantly to the voters between now and November 5th.”

Biden: “Uh-oh, here it comes.”

Harris: “If I’m going to have even a prayer of winning, I’ll need to throw you under the bus a little bit. I can’t run as Kamala Biden…I can’t be a rubber-stamp successor. If I do that, Trump will win. Your numbers have been in the toilet for a couple of years so let’s cut the shit. I have to be able to say two things. One, the vice-presidency is a ceremonial position without any real agency of its own. Every vice-president except Cheney has acknowledged this and said as much to journalists and historians. I was obliged to be loyal to you and that’s how I played my cards up unti now.”

Obviously Earl Holliman‘s career peaked in the mid to late ’50s, and if you ask me his absolute top-of-the-heap moment was his solo performance in “Where Is Everybody?“, the debut episode of Rod Serling‘s The Twilight Zone. The episode aired on October 2, 1959.

Otherwise Holliman almost always played unsophisticated or doltish none-too-brights and second bananas — The Bridges at Ioko Ri (Mickey Rooney calling out “Lester! Lester!” when Holliman was shot by North Korean troops), The Rainmaker, I Died A Thousand Times, Forbidden Planet, Giant, Sergeant Bill Crowley in Police Woman, etc.

Until today I never knew Holliman was gay but whatever. Successfully closeted for decades…fine. An Advocate piece outed him in 2015. His husband was Craig Curtis.

The Taschen folks have issued a Dr. No coffee table book, and they’re charging $850 for it.

Boilerplate: “This detailed companion explores the making of Dr. No (1962), the film that first introduced the world to the cinematic 007. With over a thousand images, excerpts from the original script, and stories from the cast and crew, this book offers unrestricted access, etc.”

I would love to have this lying around but c’mon…