Gold Derby experts are claiming that A Star Is Born‘s Bradley Cooper is currently “out front” among Best Actor contenders. Are you familiar with the term “meaningless“? As in “totally”? Cooper will be nominated, sure, but right now the Best Actor race is between Green Book‘s Viggo Mortensen and Vice‘s Christian Bale. And they both gained weight for their roles. It’s pretty much Viggo’s to lose. It’s his time, his moment. I haven’t seen Vice, but I’m presuming Viggo’s goombah guy is more likable than Bale’s Dick Cheney. Just a guess.

“It will happen this way. You will be on the New London ferry to Orient Point. A bright, sunny day with crisp fall weather. And a fellow passenger, probably overweight and atrociously dressed, will suddenly be next to you, chatting about the Hamptons Film Festival or whatnot. And then another passenger, perhaps someone you know, maybe even trust, will join the conversation. And he will smile, a becoming smile. And then you’ll feel something hard pressing into your ribs.”

For the first time in eight or nine years, Hollywood Elsewhere is hitting the Hamptons Film Festival (10.4 thru 10.8). Leaving at 8:45 am or 30 minutes hence. To avoid the horrible LIE traffic I’ll be taking the New London ferry to Orient Point and then motoring down to East Hampton. And I’ll be staying in the cheapest, most bare-bones, nickle-and-dimey Tobacco Road motel in the region (Wainscott’s 380 Inn).

The final Senate vote on Judge Kavanaguh will presumably begin around 3 pm. I’m not a dreamer — I know what’s going to happen. The reprehensible Susan Collins and Jeff Flake are going to vote for the guy, and that’s all she wrote.

The HIFF films will include the usual award-season suspects — First Man, Roma, Green Book, Boy Erased, Cold War, Can You Ever Forgive Me, The Hate U Give, Capernaum, The Panama Papers, Ben Is Back, Everybody Knows, A Private War and Paul Dano‘s depressingly perverse Wildlife. The Hamptons fest “holds the distinction of being the only East Coast film festival to have screened the eventual Best Picture winner at the Oscars for the past eight years.”

I won’t be able to return to Manhattan in time for Sunday evening’s Bohemian Rhapsody screening in Union Square so I’ll have to catch it on Thursday, 10.11. Los Angeles journos will be seeing Bryan Singer‘s film tomorrow night.

Apart from my profound admiration for the performances by Mahershala Ali in Green Book and Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, I’m not all that certain of my Best Supporting Actor persuasions at this stage.

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I’m getting a swords-drawn, rough-and-ready, Game of Thrones-y attitude here….reactions?

Earlier today I attended a New York Film Festival press screening of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. A western anthology thing for Netflix. Diverting, amusing, first-rate chops, 132 minutes, good but “minor,” etc. I’m calling it the Coen’s “death film” as quite a few characters get killed in it, and many with the same exact wound. At 4 pm I did a brief interview with Studio 54 director Matt Tyrnauer in the library-like bar at the NoMad hotel (27th and Broadway).

Following press screening of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (l. to r.): Bill Heck, Tim Blake Nelson, Zoe Kazan, Ethan Coen, Joel Cohen, Kent Jones.

NoMad hotel, 27th and Brodway.

NoMad bar.

Could the title of Clint Eastwood‘s The Mule (Warner Bros., 12.14) allude to something besides a guy who smuggles drugs? Could it also allude to, say, stubbornness or obstinacy? Right now we’re all saying the same thing to ourselves — we might as lay it on the table. Variety‘s Kris Tapley” believes that Eastwood might wangle a Best Actor nomination — partly for his performance, partly as a Redford-like gold watch tribute. When Tapley muses, the world takes note.

Just read the FBI report on Kavanaugh – if that’s an investigation, it’s a bullshit investigation. pic.twitter.com/9D8oeVMEoU

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) October 4, 2018

“I have to say, I’m starting to think a bipolar sociopath with no moral compass might not have been our best choice for President of the United States. And the people in the crowd! When he did this, they loved it. He mocked this woman’s story about a sexual assault and they ate it up. They laughed, they cheered…I really don’t understand it.”

Why will people want to see that just-announced Challenger space shuttle flick, above and beyond the Michelle Williams-as-Christa McAuliffe factor?

Exactly — they’ll be curious to see if the film will depict what actually happened to the Challenger crew after calamity struck. As everyone knows the seven-person crew almost certainly survived the initial explosion and that most of them were alive and conscious during the crew cabin’s two-minute, 45-second descent down to the ocean surface.

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…the Senate would probably confirm him. Relaxed vibe, handsome, an apparent straight-shooter, centered, non-defensive. The actual nominee, of course, radiates none of this. The FBI report pops Thursday morning (10.4), and the Senate’s vote on Brett Kavanaugh will reportedly happen on Friday. My sense is that he probably won’t make it. How certain am I? I’m not willing to bet money on it — put it that way. But I really don’t think he’ll amass the votes. How can the five fence-sitters (Flake, Collins, Murkowski, Manchin, Heitkamp) vote for a guy who wrinkles his nose like that? Everyone knows he’s bad news, tempestuous, a stone liar, a fly-off-the-handle partisan who lacks the right judicial temperament, etc.