You may have read that roughly six years ago there were two competing Leonard Berstein film projects, Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro and Jake Gyllenhaal and Cary Fukanaga‘s The American, which focuses mostly on Lenny and Felicia Montealegre‘s early years and deals specifically with Lenny’s dishonesty and duplicity about boyfriends along with Felicia’s telling him in so many words that she won’t be humiliated if they marry, etc. Not to mention their break-up and reconciliation.

Here’s Michael Mitnick‘s nearly six-year-old draft for the Gyllenhaal-Fukanaga Bernstein project, dated 5.21.18. The subtitle is “A Musician in Five Movements.” And it’s only 89 pages!

The Gyllenhaal project collapsed when Cooper landed the music rights.

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Remember that moment in Goodfellas when Joe Pesci shoves an ice pick into the back of the head of Chuck Low‘s “Morrie” Kessler, the hugely obnoxious wig guy who was part of the Lufthansa heist? And Morrie goes “ahrgggghhh“?

That’s what happened this afternoon to Madame Web on Rotten Tomatoes. Not to mention Metacritic.

The Sasquatch makeup is pretty good, I have to say. I’m pretty sure I can spot Jesse Eisenberg under the stringy hair and prosthetics but I can’t identify Riley Keough. (Her name accompanies an image of one of the beasts, but I can’t “see” her.) The other two actors are Nathan Zellner and Christophe Zajac-Denek.

Sundance, Berlin, SXSW…Bleecker Street will release Sasquatch Sunset on April 12th.

Variety‘s Rebecca Rubin posted on 1.19.24:

I wasn’t paying attention to this “Dunkin’ The Dunking” ad during the Super Bowl…

1:40 mark:

Teenager to Ben Affleck: “Jennifer Lopez‘s husband…that’s cool.”

Affleck to teenager: “I had an influence myself.”

Teenager: “So what do you do?”

Affleck: “Aahhh, I do some…acting and writing and directing of movies, which were a kind of longform entertainment popular in the…20th Century.”

Jennifer Lopez is 54 (born on 7.24.69) and she doesn’t look a day under 32. Ben is 51…no biggie.

The expression on Mark Ruffalo‘s face in this Zodiac interrogation scene…his expression alone in this 5 minute, 48-second scene is ten to fifteen times better than his whole performance in Poor Things. Better in that it conveys an immense amount of information…he doesn’t move a muscle but his face is quaking with emotion and arousal and implication.

And that vaguely moaning, faintly growling sound we hear as the suspicion factor begins to build…fascinating. And the watch.

My God, what a brilliant film Zodiac is! All four guys in this scene are note perfect — Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Elias Koteas, John Carroll Lynch.

Plus Ruffalo is at least 20 to 25 pounds lighter in Zodiac than he is in Poor Things so there’s that also.

The snow is thick and icy and slippery…love it as long as I don’t slip and fall and bruise my ribs like I did in the Sierras a few years ago. This is the kind of Hollywood snowfall you dream about…the kind of snowfall tailor-made for a horsedrawn sleigh with jingling bells…a snowfall straight out of The Magnificent Ambersons.

There’s nothing uncool about emotional fire and exuberance, but Travis Kelce behaved yesterday like a bellowing three-toed sloth. If you ask me he not only embarassed himself but Taylor Swift in the bargain. No sense of class or modesty. And I don’t like the Marine boot-camp hair and the long bushy-ass beard.

If I was in Swift’s boots I would be seriously re-thinking the situation. Who wouldn’t?

Brock Purdy is cooler, modest and moderate, better looking and a great quarterback.

I was amazed how cranked and excited I was by yesterday’s Super Bowl duel. I haven’t felt so crazily absorbed by a game of any kind, ever.

And — this is an Adam Carolla thing — I was reminded again about how wonderfully un-woke the sporting world is…no equity, no race bullshit, no DEI, no POCs complaining about not being shown the proper deference or accusing whiteys of fucking them over.

The players last night were on the field because they were good, period. They had proven their worth during the just-concluded season and were totally trusted by their coaches to perform well and to their utmost, and that’s all anyone cared about.

What’s that expression again? Oh, yeah, right — “merit over equity.”

Another thing about sporting competitions is that everyone accepts is that one team or another (or one golfer or tennis player or whomever) is going to lose, and that’s that. Life is hard, competition is demanding and certain competitors are going to feel gutted when they lose. But that’s life.

Imagine if Hollywood and the Oscars were to operate with this attitude. Talent matters! Only the best! Industry politics and high school popularity sentiments have always been a thing but equity standards are a whole different game —- an obstruction, a corrective.