If you wanted to be snide about it, which of the favored Best Picture contenders could be regarded as a kind of soap opera? A Star Is Born, The Favourite or If Beale Street Could Talk…right? So which is being referred to in this tweet?

2:40 pm Update: Variety‘s Matt Donnelly is reporting that “key parties involved in the annual Oscars telecast are open to the return of Kevin Hart as host, following an alternately contrite and defiant appearance on The Ellen Show on Thursday.”

Earth to Academy honchos: Did you guys read what Hart told Kris Tapley only hours before chatting with Ellen?

Sir Thomas More to Kevin Hart: “When you spoke to Tapley you said you wouldn’t host the Oscars…’it’s done, it’s done.’ Hours later you told Ellen you might want the gig after all. We must just pray that when your head’s finished turning, your face is to the front again.”

Previously: Hours before visiting with Ellen DeGeneres and suggesting to viewers that he’s re-assessing the Oscar hosting gig, Kevin Hart firmly told Variety‘s Kris Tapley that he would not host the Oscars…no way, no how, nopeski.

Hart #1: “Would I ever do it? No, it’s done. It’s done. The moment came and it was a blessing and I was excited at the opportunity and I still am.”

Hart #2: “In my mind I got the job, it was a dream job, and things came up that simply prohibited it from happening. But I don’t believe in going backwards. When I go on that stage, it will be because I’ve somehow figured out a way to win the Oscar. Somehow I’ll get to the stage but it’s not going to be in this way because it just comes with such a weird cloud at this point.”

So now there are two arguments about Hart filling the presumably-still-open Oscar gig. One, the LGBTQs have doubled-down on him for not really apologizing for those old ugly tweets and for generally being a bad fit in 2019. And two, he’s all kinds of shifty and dodgy about what he really wants, telling Ellen one thing and Kris another.

Throughout most of Cold War, which spans about 14 or 15 years (1949 to the early-mid ’60s), Tomasz Kot‘s piano-man character wears hipster whiskers. Nobody and I mean nobody adopted this look until the debut of grubby-chic manbeards in the mid to late ’80s (GQ, Don Johnson, Miami Vice). Anyone who wore three-week-growth whiskers before that late-Reagan era was universally regarded as an alcoholic bum, a hobo, a down-at-the-heels loser.

“War” is one thing and political conflict another, but there’s a certain amount of overlap. The slight irony is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is probably more dug into the idea of pitched-battle politics than any of the new generation of Congressional legislators. To her credit, of course, but she’s certainly not averse to using social-media grenade launchers and other tools of political warfare. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.

I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.

Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! 💃🏽

Have a great weekend everyone 🙂 pic.twitter.com/9y6ALOw4F6

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 4, 2019

Is this an even worse Kevin Hart debacle than the first one? I kinda doubt that the LGBTQ community is going to follow Ellen Degeneres‘ lead by saying ‘okay, Kevin…we forgive your homophobic tweets, host the show, all is well,” etc. Or am I misreading the situation?

Sopan Deb‘s N.Y. Times report contains the following Ellen quote: “So I called [the Academy]. I said ‘Kevin’s on.’ I said, ‘I have no idea if he wants to come back and host. But what are your thoughts?’ And they were like, ‘Oh my god. We want him to host. We feel like that maybe he misunderstood or it was handled wrong or maybe we said the wrong thing but we want him to host.’”

I believe in forgiveness. I believe in second chances. And I believe in @KevinHart4real. pic.twitter.com/oJxfGXhU4P

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) January 4, 2019

Vicky Jewson‘s Close looks and feels like a reasonably servicable bodyguard-protects-rich-client action flick. “Loosely inspired” by the actual exploits of Jacquie Davis, one of the very few women to excel in the male-dominated bodyguard profession. Pic began principal photography in August 2017. Netflix will debut Close on Friday, 1.18.

It’s time to finally stop saying “two thousand” when speaking of any 21st Century calendar year, and start saying “twenty.” We are now in the year twenty-nineteen, and not two-thousand nineteen. Year after year people (including news anchors for CNN and MSNBC) have stubbornly insisted upon “two thousand” this and that. I’m asking everyone to please stop it. For the next 80 years we’re going to be in the twenties, not the two-thousands.

The pronunciation of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey screwed things up for God knows how many millions. I realize that the first year of the 21st Century had to be pronounced two-thousand, and of course the following year had to follow the Kubrick. (Nobody in that 1968 classic ever said “two-thousand one,” by the way.) But for too many years people have been sticking to that absurd verbal tic, and after 20 years of living in the 21st Century I really think it’s time to stop it once and for all.

We’ve now lived through two full decades in which the year has begun with the number 2. For a century before 12.31.99, the year began with nineteen-something. When John F. Kennedy was elected president no English-speaker ever said the year was “one-thousand nine sixty” — they said “nineteen sixty.” Years are always pronounced as a pair of two-digit numbers. The Declaration of Independence was signed in seventeen seventy-six — not one thousand seven seventy-six. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in eighteen sixty-five, not one thousand eight sixty five.

You don’t know what the term “aural torture” really means until you’ve been in a room with someone who’s slurping soup or eating yogurt and granola out of a glazed clay bowl, or who’s stirring a powdered drink in a glass.

I’m talking about a person who won’t stop stirring the soup over and over and rythmically at that…clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink. Or who feels the need to keep stirring and overturning the yogurt-granola mash…eat, savor, swallow and then clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink. Or someone who’s poured a packet of Emergen-C into a glass of water and then won’t stop stirring it…clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink.

I’m telling you that after listening to these clink-clinks for the 17th or 18th time and realizing that you’re going to be listening to them for the remainder of your life on this planet…this is when the insanity virus will begin to seep into your system, and after this point it will never leave you alone.

“Five years ago, All Is Lost premiered at Cannes to deserved acclaim. But when it opened later that fall, the film was a noteworthy commercial disappointment, and the awards magic never happened for Robert Redford. I think I understood why. All Is Lost was ingeniously made, and a true experience, yet the stark fact is that it was slow. Arctic, as effective as it is, may face a similar challenge (at least in the U.S.), precisely because of the rough-hewn, trudging-through-the-tundra, one-step-at-a-time honesty with which Joe Penna works. [It’s] the anti-Cast Away. Yet that’s what’s good and, finally, moving about it. It lets survival look like the raw experience it is.” — from Owen Gleiberman‘s Cannes Film Festival review, posted on 5.10.18.

…the heavier the anvil chained to the Academy’s ankle becomes.

Just remember that if the host that Donna Gigliotti, Dawn Hudson and John Bailey finally hire has the slightest uh-oh hiccup in his/her Twitter feed…if he/she shared some kind of casually thoughtless remark while bombed at a party or during a hung-over breakfast in 2005…if there’s anything in his/her history that the p.c. commissars can seize upon and run with, this person will become instant social-media mincemeat and then they will learn first-hand what truly profound suffering can feel like. **

Yesterday The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg posted a “Jesus, are they gonna choose somebody or what?” article.

Didn’t Feinberg once suggest Bill Hader? He’d be perfect. Now Feinberg is suggesting John Legend and wife Chrissy Teigen as co-hosts. Okay. I guess.

There is only one totally bulletproof ratings magnet who could handle the task with aplomb. I’m speaking of a guy who can be funny and urbane but has the common touch, and who writes like a scholar and is in business with Netflix and has excellent across-the-board relations with talent, and who most recently was the author of a Best Films of 2018 list that became the talk of the town. Yes, that’s right — Barack Obama. I’m perfectly serious. How could he lose if he took the gig? How could he not win?

I love this paragraph: “What is known is what the Academy and ABC, which broadcasts the Oscars, do not want. They do not want someone who is socially divisive (especially after the Kevin Hart debacle), having concluded that politically-outspoken hosts have contributed to the show’s ratings declines in recent years; and they do not want someone who primarily appeals to older viewers, who are likely to watch the show regardless of who hosts.”

What the hell does “socially divisive” mean? The primary definition, I presume, is “someone with a Twitter past,” but does it also mean someone who has feelings about the decline and corrosion of this once-proud nation due to the Cheetoh factor? About how streaming is now the moat popular way to watch films these days, and how megaplexes have devolved into serving almost nothing but Roman colosseum-type fare?

What the hell does socially undivisive mean? A silly billy who mainly likes to smile a lot and has no strong thoughts or feelings about anything? Emily Blunt or someone in that vein?

Noteworthy Feinberg quote #2: “Further complicating matters is the Hart factor. Anyone who has been approached since Hart’s withdrawal knows — and knows that everyone else will know — that he or she was a backup option, a second choice. Moreover, people who might consider hosting in other years, such as Dwayne Johnson, are probably reluctant to accept this year, not wanting to look like they are benefiting from the misfortunes of a friend.”

I know some people have issues with Netflix, but Hollywood Elsewhere is genuinely grateful for their constant delivery all kinds of complex feature-length movies for adults.

Okay, so their selective investment in four-walled theatrical bookings for certain high-end films prior to streaming isn’t what it could be in the eyes of theatrical purists. Do I wish Netflix was more like Amazon in this regard? Yes. A friend said the other day that Netflix has conveyed to the industry that they don’t “need” the traditional give-and-take relationship that has existed between films and paying, popcorn-munching audiences for the last century or so, and that there’s something about the Netflix label that seems a little inorganic or over-digitized in this respect.

I’m not indifferent to these concerns, and yet I still say “thank God that a Daddy Warbucks entity like Netflix is investing, developing and streaming the kind of films and occasional longforms that I want to see” — Roma, Carey Mulligan‘s Collateral, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, Triple Frontier, The Irishman, etc. Yes, I know that serious streaming competition from Disney, Apple and others is just around the corner, and no one knows, of course, how this will shake out in five or ten and what kind of tremors or upheavals will result, etc.

Earlier today I spoke to an old friend about all of this, and I have to admit that I laughed when he drew a vague analogy between what seems to happen to newish Netflix features and what happened to the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t agree with the analogy because the above-mentioned upsides kind of balance everything out (or so it seems to me), but I guffawed all the same.

I would be down with two more Avatar films — a trilogy — but the idea of sitting through four upcoming Avatar films turns me right off.