Hollywood Elsewhere attended two good-time Manhattan soirees last night. First up was the Fox Searchlight holiday party at the Nomad Hotel (B’way and 28th) where I spoke with Can You Ever Forgive Me? director Marielle Heller and “cat killer” Richard E. Grant. The second stage was the Roma after-party at The Pool, or the former location of The Four Seasons (99 East 52nd). Thanks to Fox Searchlight reps and Netflix’s Lisa Taback and Albert Tello for the invites. A splendid time, excellent food and drink, superb coatrooms, etc.

Six or seven old typewriters, dating back to the 20s and 30s, were available for the Fox Searchlight guests at the Nomad. It’s not easy typing on these things.

Gold Derby hotshot and all-around Manhattan gadfly Bill McCuddy (r.) and wife Sue.

I’m not going to offer any sweeping judgments about the just-announced 2018 Sundance Film Festival slate, except to suggest that with a competition slate that is 53% female (i.e., nine of the 17 directors eligible for the festival’s top prize are women) it would appear that 2018 Sundance is going to be just as progressive-minded (i.e., “socialist summer camp in the snow”) as last year’s festival, if not more so.

I’m going to take it two or three sections at a time. Today I’m pasting Premieres (feature and documentary), Midnight & Spotlight. I’ve bold-faced the titles that I have a special interest in seeing, but I’d appreciate thoughts about anything I might be unfairly dismissing. I’l consider the other sections tomorrow.

Premieres (18):

After The Wedding (Director and screenwriter: Bart Freundlich, Producers: Joel B. Michaels, Harry Finkel) — Seeking funds for her orphanage in India, Isabelle travels to New York to meet Theresa, a wealthy benefactor. An invitation to attend a wedding ignites a series of events in which the past collides with the present while mysteries unravel. Based on the Academy Award-nominated film by Susanne Bier. Cast: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Billy Crudup, Abby Quinn.

Animals (U.K.-Ireland-Australia – Director: Sophie Hyde, Screenwriter: Emma Jane Unsworth, Producers: Sarah Brocklehurst, Rebecca Summerton, Cormac Fox, Sophie Hyde) — After a decade of partying, Laura and Tyler’s friendship is strained by Laura’s new love and her focus on her novel. A snapshot of a modern woman with competing desires, at once a celebration of female friendship and an examination of the choices we make when facing a crossroads. Cast: Holliday Grainger, Alia Shawkat.

Blinded by the Light (U.K. – Director: Gurinder Chadha, Screenwriters: Sarfraz Manzoor, Gurinder Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges, Producers: Gurinder Chadha, Jane Barclay, Jamal Daniel) — In 1987 during the austere days of Thatcher’s Britain, a teenager learns to live life, understand his family and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen. Cast: Viveik Kalra, Hayley Atwell, Rob Brydon, Kulvinder Ghir, Nell Williams, Aaron Phagura.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (United Kingdom – Director and screenwriter: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Producers: Andrea Calderwood, Gail Egan) — Against all the odds, a thirteen year old boy in Malawi invents an unconventional way to save his family and village from famine. Based on the true story of William Kamkwamba. Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Maxwell Simba, Lily Banda, Noma Dumezweni, Aissa Maiga, Joseph Marcell.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (Director: Joe Berlinger, Screenwriter: Michael Werwie, Producers: Michael Costigan, Nicolas Chartier, Ara Keshishian, Michael Simkin) — A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy from the perspective of Liz, his longtime girlfriend, who refused to believe the truth about him for years. Cast: Zac Efron, Lily Collins, Haley Joel Osment, Kaya Scodelario, John Malkovich, Jim Parsons.

I Am Mother (Australia – Director: Grant Sputore, Screenwriter: Michael Lloyd Green, Producers: Timothy White, Kelvin Munro) — In the wake of humanity’s extinction, a teenage girl is raised by a robot designed to repopulate the earth. But their unique bond is threatened when an inexplicable stranger arrives with alarming news. Cast: Clara Rugaard, Rose Byrne, Hilary Swank.

Late Night (Director: Nisha Ganatra, Screenwriter: Mindy Kaling, Producers: Ben Browning, Howard Klein, Jillian Apfelbaum, Mindy Kaling) — Legendary late-night talk show host’s world is turned upside down when she hires her only female staff writer. Originally intended to smooth over diversity concerns, her decision has unexpectedly hilarious consequences as the two women separated by culture and generation are united by their love of a biting punchline. Cast: Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, John Lithgow, Paul Walter Hauser, Reid Scott, Amy Ryan.

The Mustang (Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Screenwriters: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Mona Fastvold, Brock Norman Brock, Producer: Alain Goldman) — While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse. Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Connie Britton, Bruce Dern, Jason Mitchell, Gideon Adlon, Josh Stewart.

No way in hell will the New York Film Critics Circle give Green Book their Best Picture prize. No way. The membership includes too many arch-backed p.c. zealots who believe that a gentle humanistic buddy film that could have been made in 1987…there are too many who feel such a film should be mule-kicked to death.

I’m presuming that Roma will take the top prize, along with Alfonso Cuaron for Best Director. And if not that, possibly The Favourite. They can’t go for A Star Is Born….not the NYFCC. It’s the kind of warm-emotional-bath film that popcorn-eaters like and therefore not a fit. And no Best Actress trophy for Lady Gaga either! I’m thinking it’ll be Olivia Colman or Mellissa McCarthy.

Maybe Bradley Cooper for Best Actor, although it should go to Christian Bale. HE’s personal favorite is Ethan Hawke, of course. I’m saying this under the presumption that the NYFCC won’t touch Viggo Mortensen with a ten-foot pole.

Richard E. Grant (the “cat-killer” from Can You Ever Forgive Me?) for Best Supporting Actor!

I’m also betting on Cold War taking the Best Foreign Language Feature prize, and RBG for the Best Documentary award.

Critic friend #1: “I think this is a Roma group, and that the other film that will figure in the most is First Reformed.” Critic friend #2: “I wouldn’t be surprised if The Favourite does something. Otherwise there’s no way to tell, particularly with the influx of younger members” — i.e., the New NYFCC Kidz. Critic friend #3: “It’s a very unpredictable year.”

Thoughts or notions about any of the NYFCC categories?

My insect antennae are telling me that four Best Actress Oscar nominations are locked down — A Star Is Born‘s Lady Gaga, Can You Ever Forgive Me‘s Melissa McCarthy, The Wife‘s Glenn Close and The Favourite‘s Olivia Colman.

I felt personally rocked only by McCarthy and Close. Colman is always strong and savory no matter the part, but if she’s playing a leading role in The Favourite I’m a monkey’s uncle. I genuinely respect Gaga’s performance and have no quarrel with her being nominated.

As for the THR round-table, Kidman’s gutted-zombie performance in Destroyer is mainly about the makeup, The Favorite‘s Rachel Weisz has been elbowed aside by Colman, and Kathryn Hahn‘s performance in Private Life has, due respect, never really been in the running.

In response to the 11.26 death of Bernardo Bertolucci, New York critic David Edelstein shared a coarse and unwise sentiment — a flip joke, if you will — on Facebook. Along with a still of the Marlon Brando-Maria Schneider anal sex scene from Last Tango in Paris, he wrote that “even grief is better with butter.”

In a matter of hours Edelstein, who had quickly deleted and apologized for the post, became Satan’s spawn. Which was no surprise in our ongoing Salem-witch-trials-on-twitter climate. He was going for a tone of casual, hipper-than-thou impudence, I suppose, but in a social-media sense what he wrote was actually quite bone-headed. You don’t spit into the wind.

Actress Martha Plympton tweeted that she’d been avoiding Bertolucci’s passing “precisely because of this moment in which a sexual assault of an actress was intentionally captured on film.” (A dead wrong observation, by the way.) “And this asshole” — Edelstein — “makes it into this joke. Fire him. Immediately.”

Guardian contributor and Women in Hollywood founder Melissa Silverstein wrote that Edelstein “has been a sexist asshole for many years. Why is he still employed?”

Edelstein was soon after fired from his commentator gig on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” and yesterday afternoon, I’m told, he was disinvited from moderating a discussion with Private Life director Tamara Jenkins during a mid-day press luncheon at The East Pole on East 65th Street. (Edelstein didn’t reply when I double-checked with him last night.)

The stupidity factor aside, Edelstein was basically saying that the infamous Tango scene had left the strongest impression as he considered Bertolucci’s career-long imprint, just as when Steven Spielberg passes someone will tweet something about the primal impact of Jaws. But of course, Edelstein was also conveying a cavalier attitude about Schneider’s 2007 claim that the shooting of this scene was traumatic because she hadn’t been consulted by Bertolucci and Brando beforehand, and that she felt “a little bit raped.”

A couple of years ago hair-trigger types (Jessica Chastain among them) took this to mean that Bertolucci and Brando had sprung the rape scene upon Schneider and perhaps had even subjected her to an actual on-camera violation, but Schneider was clear in her ’97 interview that the sex was simulated. She maintained, however, that the anal-sex aspect “wasn’t in the original script,” and that “it was Marlon who came up with the idea,” and that “they only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry.”

This was strongly denied by Bertolucci two years ago. “I specified…that I decided with Marlon Brando not to inform Maria that we would [be using] butter,” he wrote. “We wanted her spontaneous reaction to that improper use [of the butter]. That is where the misunderstanding lies. Somebody thought, and thinks, that Maria had not been informed about the violence on her. That is false!

“Maria knew everything because she had read the script, where it was all described. The only novelty was the idea of the butter. And that, as I learned many years later, offended Maria. Not the violence that she is subjected to in the scene, which was written in the screenplay.”

In his apology Edelstein claimed he “was not aware of” Schneider’s experience on the film. But how could he have possibly missed that December ’16 twitter brouhaha? It got a lot of play and lasted a good two or three days.

The Edelstein thing is yet another illustration of the present-day fact that if you’re stupid enough to say the wrong thing, the mob will turn on you like that, and even your “friends” will run in fear of your evil aura. This is the ’50s blacklist scare all over again.

I’ve written before that everyone in the public spotlight should be entitled to at least a couple of “get out of jail” cards in the event of a haphazard tweeting of something idiotic. We should acknowledge that the ability to say something wrong and hurtful (as Plympton did when she tweeted that the Tango anal-sex scene was an “intentional capturing” of “a sexual assault of an actress” when in fact the scripted scene was about Brando and Schneider performing simulated sex) is in all of us.

I for one feel that Edelstein, a wise, seasoned and brilliant critic who has paid his dues and proved his critical mettle over decades, should not be seized by guards and taken out behind the building and shot in the head. He should be caned, okay, but also given a chance to speak and atone some more and perhaps share some related truths. But tell that to the twitter mob.

HE to Gold Derby-ites: So are some of you guys feeling a little more supportive of Ethan Hawke‘s career-best performance in First Reformed? In the wake of his having won the Gotham Award prize for Best Actor, I mean.

For weeks ESPN’s Adnan Virk and I have been the only ones to predict Hawke as a Best Actor finalist in the Oscar race. The rest of you have been hanging back. I get that the four Best Actor locks are Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born), Viggo Mortensen (Green Book), Christian Bale (Vice) and Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody). But Hawke is absolutely the guy to fill that fifth slot. Wake up and smell the Schrader coffee.

Gold Derby-ites to HE: It doesn’t matter how good Hawke is in First Reformed. It doesn’t matter because A24 opened it last May, and that means we don’t give a shit. Period. Gold Derby hotshots will only support performances in films that have opened in the fall. We don’t care about quality or what the Movie Godz believe in. We live and breathe by our own code.

I’ve met Jason Clarke socially two or three times, and there’s no correlation between the dude he is at the dinner table — loose, casual, funny, kind-hearted — and the glum, dismissable guys he’s always being hired to play in films.

Clarke has had four interesting roles over the last decade — John “Red” Hamilton in Public Enemies, the CIA torturer guy in Zero Dark Thirty, Ted Kennedy in Chappaquiddick and “Malcom” in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Otherwise he’s always getting cast as cuckolds (in Mudbound, All I See Is You and the forthcoming The Aftermath) or guys who end up dead (First Man, Everest) or as villains.

The real-life Clarke is bathed in charm and alpha vibes, but put him before a movie camera and he turns into a downhearted gloomhead who’s always coping with the shitty end of the stick. Unfair, not right, reboot required.

I’m told that New York and Los Angeles chapters of the National Alliance of Politically Correct Scolds and Admonishers (NAPCSA) will be meeting in emergency session later today to discuss how to respond to the National Board of Review having given its Best Film of 2018 prize to Peter Farrelly’s Green Book.

Worse in their view, the NBR has given its Best Actor trophy to Viggo Mortensen, whose chances of winning any acting awards had been dismissed by NAPSCA reps after he mistakenly used a verboten term in a post-screening discussion.

In a joint statement, NAPSCA co-chairs Brooke Obie and Inkoo Kang have said that “the NBR is obviously entitled to hand out its top awards to any film or filmmaker or performer it chooses…we wouldn’t want to inject ourselves into any private voting dynamic. However, we would be derelict in our duties as moral and ethical arbiters if we didn’t express disappointment that they chose to honor Green Book, which, as we’ve patiently explained, fails to reflect the current politically correct values and conversations that we would prefer to see in commercial cinemas these days.

“Peter Farrelly‘s decision to tell a story set in 1962 obviously goes against the grain of current progressive thought, and we strongly disagree with this. We will be meeting later today to discuss measures that will hopefully nip this in the bud.”

The other NBR awards:

Best Director — Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born
Best Actress — Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born
Best Supporting Actor — Sam Elliott, A Star Is Born
Best Supporting Actress — Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Best Original Screenplay — Paul Schrader, First Reformed (yes!)
Best Adapted Screenplay — Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk (really?)

Best Animated Feature: Incredibles 2 (give me a break!)
Breakthrough Performance: Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace
Best Directorial Debut: Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade
Best Foreign Language Film: Cold War
Best Documentary: RBG

In the view of Vulture‘s Mark Harris, Green Book’s Oscar campaign hasn’t necessarily derailed. Which is another way of saying it may be on track. Harris actually allows that the film’s A+ CinemaScore “suggests that the audience (at least the primarily older, largely white audience that showed up) is loving what it sees.”

HE to Harris #1: That’s been obvious from the get-go, bruh. I was there for the first big Toronto Film Festival screening, and people were levitating when it ended. I was told yesterday that a paying audience somewhere in the Hartford area clapped when it ended. Last month my 30 year-old son and his 29 year-old wife told me they “LOVED” it. And look at what just happened with the National Board of Review! But you know what I love? The way you indicate that the film’s admirers are behind the curve…on the slightly doddering, fuddy-dud side.

Harris says that Universal is hoping to ape the award-season success of last year’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, “which made more than half its money after its ninth week of release and earned Academy Awards for Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell. There were loud critical complaints that in Three Billboards, the black characters were plot devices, abstractions designed to facilitate the growth curve of the white protagonists. That didn’t matter to Academy voters, nor will it matter to some of them that Green Book is a movie that could have been made 30 years ago.”

HE to Harris #2: That was one of the first things out of my mouth last September, Mark. That except for the material dealing with Don Shirley being gay, Green Book could have been made in 1987. But — hello? — it’s still a really good film. It walks softly and uses a deft touch, applying just the right English and timing to make this kind of story deliver just so. And it doesn’t harm anyone. And it believes in mutual respect and compassion. And it isn’t selling a “white savior” or a “magic negro” story. It’s just about a couple of 1962 guys, one of them being a blustery old-school racist and the other being on the priggish, constipated side. It delivers in low-key fashion from start to finish, and it believes in modesty and hugs and the taking of small steps.

“But Academy voters themselves, almost 30 percent of whom have joined only in the last four years, are changing, too, so who knows?,” Harris writes with a note of hope and optimism. He means that the New Academy Kidz might push back against Green Book while embracing, say, Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk, a movie that muses along and winds up flatlining toward the end, like a Wong Kar Wai flick that’s run out of gas.

“It used to be a certainty that you’d never go broke selling white people stories of their own redemption, and that may still be true,” Harris allows. “But in 2018, it suddenly seems possible that you’ll never get rich that way either.”

The concern of the moment is that recently opened critical and film-festival favorites (Widows, Green Book, Boy Erased, The Front Runner, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Beautiful Boy) are underperforming or limping along while generic family-friendly sludge movies (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Creed II, Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Bohemian Rhapsody, Instant Family, A Star Is Born) are making all the dough.

The general social-pledge attitude of the moviegoing audience used to be that (a) they would pay to see low-rent, mass-appeal popcorn fare (horror, CG-driven, superheroes, stupid comedies) all through the winter, spring, summer and early fall, but that (b) they’d willingly shift gears and pay to see prestigious, well-reviewed, award-contending movies in November and December.

The new general attitude seems to be “fuck the prestige human-drama movies…we’ll watch them on Netflix or Amazon when they come around in three or four months.” Even in the case of a feel-good flick like Green Book, which audiences are completely in love with (I heard yesterday that it got a standing ovation in Hartford from a regular paying audience)…even with Green Book they seem to be going “ehh, well, maybe not…I can wait.”

What’s happening here? What’s happened to the good old “okay, we’ll pay to see well-made, adult-friendly movies during the year-end holidays” contract? The willingness to engage with adult, semi-complex, reality-reflecting movies seems to be dwindling.

Question: Imagine if Sidney Lumet‘s The Verdict had never been made and released in ’82, but had been made by, say, Steve McQueen or David Fincher or David Gordon Green and released over the Thanksgiving holiday. If the McQueen-Fincher-Green version has been just as good as the Lumet, would it also be getting the bum’s rush from audiences? Or would it prove the exception to the rule?

The Verdict opened on 12.10.82, and wound up making $53,977,250, or $140,340,850 in 2018 dollars.

Here’s an audio file of a Vice q & a that happened at Manhattan’s SVA theatre the night before last (11.25). The participants are Vice director-writer Adam McKay, star Amy Adams, composer Nicholas Britell, and producers Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Kevin Messick. Thanks to Blackfilm’s Wilson Morales for providing the file. Again, the mp3.

2018 Gotham winners:

Best Feature: Chloé Zhao‘s The Rider
HE comment: Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed is a fuller, more impactful film with a better ending.

Best Actor: Ethan Hawke in First Reformed.
HE comment: Deserved.

Best Actress: Toni Collette in Hereditary.
HE comment: Collette’s performance is top-grade, but I’m surprised they didn’t give it to The Wife‘s Glenn Close.

Best Screenplay: First Reformed, Paul Schrader
HE comment: Deserved.

Best Documentary: Hale County This Morning, This Evening
HE comment: Haven’t seen it..

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade
HE comment: Should have been a tie between Burnhamn and Hereditary‘s Ari Aster.

Jury Award for Ensemble Performance: Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman and Emma Stone in “The Favourite”
HE comment: Deserved.

Audience Award: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
HE comment: Sure.

Breakthrough Actor: Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade.