I was initially intrigued by Lucy Ellman‘s “Patriarchy Is Just a Spell,” a 12.26 N.Y. Times piece about Alfred Hitchcock‘s Spellbound. But the subhead — “I’m outing Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller Spellbound as a #MeToo film” — doesn’t really manifest.

Ellmann basically notes how the male characters in Spellbound treat Ingrid Bergman‘s character, Dr. Constance Petersen, like a sex object or otherwise disregard her authority as a psychoanalyst. Over and over and over, Gregory Peck included. That doesn’t make Spellbound a #MeToo film. It makes it a study of upscale 1945 culture and how almost all males from that realm were sexist assholes in one way or another, certainly by the standards of 2019.

Spellbound is, was and always will be a less-than-satisfying film. The psychological jargon has always felt gimmicky and simplistic, and Peck’s character, John Ballantyne, is, in fact, a brooding, hair-trigger jerk.

But the film has always held my attention for (a) the falling-in-love, opening-of-doors sequence when Bergman realizes she’s head over heels for Peck and vice versa, and (b) the fact that Bergman and Peck did in fact lock loins during production. Both were 29 at the time.

Peck to People‘s Brad Darrach in a 1987 interview: “All I can say is that I had a real love for her (Bergman), and I think that’s where I ought to stop. I was young. She was young. We were involved for weeks in close and intense work.”

Ellman #1: “Psychoanalysis has often despaired of women. Detailing the faults of mothers has worn out the velvet of many an analytic couch. Freud expressed mystification and exasperation with the uncharitable question ‘What do women want?’

“Well, maybe what women want is to steal the show, regain center stage, which is in fact their rightful place in the world — and in the movies. Echoes of the matriarchal cultures that dominated prehistory lurk in our collective unconscious. Female supremacy is alluring.”

I too find female supremacy alluring. This is probably the way to go, given the toxic tendencies of too many boomer, GenX and Millennial males. Things have to change.

But when I think of what’s happened to the Sundance Film Festival over the last five years **, it does give me pause. Think about that and all of the Robespierre beheadings cancellings.

Tatyana and I are staying at a friend’s place in the South Beach section of San Francisco, about three blocks NW of Oracle Park. It’s a magnificent two-story condo with all the amenities (including excellent wifi). We couldn’t be more grateful for the hospitality.

There’s just one problem, and that’s the fact that the place has no heat to speak of, and in fact feels like the David Lean ice house in Dr. Zhivago. I’m trying to remedy the situation as we speak, but for now the only thing I can do is boil water in the kitchen, which helps a little bit.

It’s not like it’s cold outside — 48 degrees is T-shirt weather for New Yorkers. But the holiday atmosphere in San Francisco is damp and windy and bone-chilling all the same. A half-hour ago I went across the street for a cappuccino, and I instantly felt the horror of the howling ice winds off the bay. If I wasn’t properly dressed I’d be dead in less than an hour.

Tried for exceptional, failed, settled for usual usual.

We’re driving north on the 101 (and soon the coast highway) on a casual, take-our-time trip to San Francisco. I’m riding shotgun as we speak, but the wheel will be mine before long.

Posted two months ago: Here’s the original Ed Bradley 60 Minutes report (aired on 11.22.92) about the rash and wrongful imprisonment of Walter McMillian on a murder charge.

Lasting 14 minutes, it covers most of the same material that you’ll find dramatized in Just Mercy (Warner Bros., 12.25). One of the things that Bradley’s report mentioned but that Daniel Destin Cretton’s film doesn’t explore much is the fact that McMillian had been having an affair with a white woman, Karen Kelly, and that one of his sons had married a white woman.

Both McMillian and the attorney he had in 1987, J.L. Chestnut, “contended that Mr. McMillian’s relationships alone had made him a suspect.” In a N.Y. Times prison interview in 1993, McMillian said, “The only reason I’m here is because I had been messing around with a white lady and my son married a white lady.”

The McMillian-Kelly relationship was reported and discussed in Bryan Stevenson‘s “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” the 2015 book that the film is based upon. Why does Just Mercy mostly ignore the McMillian-Kelly backstory? Mainly, I’m guessing, because McMillan’s sexual history would have compromised the pure-of-heart aura that Cretton and co-screenwriter Andrew Lanham wanted to project. It might have also lessened the sympathy factor among POCs…who knows?

The nighttime scenes in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women deliver the usual, approvable candle-light amber. As they should. That 19th Century timestamp. But Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, set during the same Civil War era as Louisa May Alcott’s novel, happens in Janusz Kaminskiland — a candle or two, a few gas lamps and a whole lot of milky-gray Kaminski “sunlight” piercing through the windows. It’s the early 1860s as imagined by a headstrong alien.

IMHO the ugliest Robertson Blvd. Christmas decorations ever displayed — red, green, blue and white bulbs wrapped around tree trunks with tinsel-like strips of the same colors hanging from the branches. In London, which arguably knows more about the spirit of Christmas than the government of Beverly Hills, only white mini-bulbs and imitation candle lights are used. Kardashian-style decorations and the legends of Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchit don’t go together, you see.

Look at these humanoids, these Millennial and GenZ fashion plates in their jeans, T-shirts and whitesides, hopping up and down with anticipation of winning a free getaway in Ojai or whatever. I’d forgotten that Drew Carey has been hosting this show for 12 years now…Jesus. Salivating materialistic frenzy by way of a mosh pit. The American dream, the culture we live in, etc. What would Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis or Abbie Hoffman say?

From the latest edition of Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler: “It’s nice to have a good, old-fashioned complete disaster. There have been flops this year, certainly, but not really full-blooded systemic meltdowns. A flop like Charlie’s Angels feels so half-hearted, a flop mostly for want of really trying. Say what you will about Cats, but it’s not forgettable.

“Universal threw themselves in headlong, gave it everything they had, and somehow everything still went wrong. And it happened to what might be the most responsible, sober-minded studio in Hollywood; certainly not a place given to crazy bets.

“This is the blood sacrifice the gods demand from Hollywood, at least once a year.

“We need these showbiz equivalents of human offerings at the altar now and then to remind us that we work in a business that is not in any way subject to sane rules and predictable outcomes; a business that is to a great degree dependent on the whims of the gods.

“Take a look at the Cats reactions oh ye of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Verizon. Stick around Hollywood long enough and this too will be yours. In all likelihood, on the film closest to your heart. Beware dream projects!”

Please scan this “Academy Award for Best Picture” Wikipedia page and vote to take back and re-award five Best Picture Oscars. Choose, in other words, the five most appalling and fundamentally criminal Best Picture winner decisions and give that Oscar to the film that should’ve won. Simple enough.

The 20th Century had its share of Best Picture embarassments and black marks (Around The World in Eighty Days, Driving Miss Daisy, The Greatest Show on Earth), but the 21st Century totally ruled in this realm. You know which films I’m referring to. Five groaners in particular.

HE picks: Worst Best Picture Oscar winner of all time — Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist (2011) — the Oscar is re-awarded to Bennett Miller‘s Moneyball.

2nd Worst Best Picture winner: Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech (2010); in a tie vote, the Oscar is re-awarded to David Fincher‘s The Social Network and David O. Russell‘s The Fighter.

3rd Worst Best Picture winner: Rob Marshall‘s Chicago (2002); the Oscar is re-awarded to Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist.

4th Worst Best Picture winner: Ben Affleck‘s Argo (2012) — in a tie vote, the Oscar is re=awarded to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty and David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook.

5th Worst Best Picture winner: Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; the Oscar is re-awarded to Peter Weir‘s Master and Commander.

I wouldn’t see Philippa Mawthorpe‘s Mishebaviour with a knife at my back. Set during the 1970 Miss World competition, which Bob Hope, an old-school hound from way back, emcee’d. Feminism had just exploded in Atlantic City two years earlier, and this British pageant saw the crowning of the first black competitor, Jennifer Hosten (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Keira Knightley plays feminist pathfinder Sally Alexander. Savor the joys of an all-female team (director Mawthorpe, producers Suzanne Mackie and Sarah-Jane Wheale, screenwriters Gaby Chiappe and Rebecca Frayn) bristling at half-century-old sexism.

When I think of Sam Mendes‘ 1917 I mutter “hugely impressive tech,” even though it works emotionally and story-wise on top of this. And then I recall this scene.

Again, dazzling tech. But then comes the inexplicable behavior of the German pilot after being pulled from his burning aircraft. It’s even crazier than the end of Alfred Hitchcoock‘s Lifeboat, when a teenaged German U-boat sailor is hauled out of the sea by British-American rescuers (“danke schoen”) only to pull a Luger on them a few seconds later.

The difference is that the German pilot was merely loyal to Germany and the Kaiser while the U-boat kid was a “Nazi buzzard.” Here’s the mp3.