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Earlier this evening Rami Malek and Scott Feinberg had a nice, easy chat on the stage of Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre. Under the auspices of Roger Durling‘s Santa Barbara Film Festival. I had never really listened to Malek talk at length before, and I’m telling you he’s got it. He’s 37, educated, centered, gracious, confident, fairly wise for his years (he could be a guy in his mid 50s) and with a relaxed, sharp-toned voice. Plus he’s an excellent schmooze artist.

And I’m telling you he’s going to win the Best Actor Oscar. Okay, I don’t know anything but I can feel it. There’s a vibe around Malek. You should’ve seen the ridiculously long line to get into show tonight — down State and onto Sola and waaay down the block. In the rain. And the standing ovation when Malek came out…fuhgedaboudit.

We talked a bit during the after-party, and everything was cool and smooth. I had this idea that Rami’s kinda on the shortish side — he’s not. He’s 5′ 9″-ish, or only an inch shorter than the 5′ 10″ Freddie Mercury. And he’s friendly with my hairdresser, Phillip Rothschild. (They live near each other.)

By the way: Feinberg mentioned “the elephant in the room” — i.e., Bohemian Rhapsody director Bryan Singer. You could see Malek tightening at the mention. Most of what he said in response conveyed sympathy for Singer’s alleged victims. But he also said his relationship with Singer during the shoot was “not pleasant…at all.” He wouldn’t touch the subject beyond that, and who can blame him?

Hollywood Elsewhere attended a Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival tribute to the five gents nominated for the Best Director Oscar — Roma‘s Alfonso Cuaron, Vice‘s Adam McKay, BlacKkKlansman‘s Spike Lee, Cold War‘s Pawel Pawlikowski and The Favourite‘s Yorgos Lanthimos. The moderator was Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg. SBIFF board member Linda Weinman introduced him as Scott “Feinman.”

The evening’s tone was jovial, jaunty, collegial. Who seemed the most likable? All of them. Everyone had fun, everyone joshed, everyone smiled and quipped. For my money Lee had the most vivid answers. (My favorite: “It’s hard to make even a bad movie.”) Hollywood Elsewhere regrets to note that Lanthimos was the only director who wore sneakers with white midsoles, a 21st Century shoe design that I’ve previously described as “whitesides.”

(l. to r.) Scott Feinberg, Adam McKay, Pawel Pawlikowski, Alfonso Cuaron, Yorgos Lanthimos, Spike Lee.

It’s very nice — a relief — to attend a well-run, first-rate film festival that treats you with respect and even affection. Unlike (ahem) a certain lefty-progressive Stalinist festival with a passion for diversity and under-represented critics, and a stated concern about the prevalence of seasoned white-guy critics.

SBIFF director Roger Durling interviewing Alfonso Cuaron following a special screening of Roma at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre — Thursday, 1.31, 6:25 pm.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ footwear during Directors Tribute at Arlongton theatre.

The closing-credit sequence of Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird features the famous Woodstock recording of the late Richie Havens singing “Handsome Johnny.” It was a thrill to hear it again, especially on such a sharply tuned, well-amped sound system.

From Richie Havens Wikipage: “On 4.22.13 he died of a heart attack at his Jersey City home, at the age of 72. The BBC referred to him as a ‘Woodstock icon’ while Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young said Havens ‘could never be replicated.’ The Daily Telegraph stated Havens ‘made an indelible mark on contemporary music’ while Douglas Martin of The New York Times reported that Havens had ‘riveted Woodstock.’

“Pursuant to Havens’ request, his cremated ashes were scattered from the air over the original site of the Woodstock Festival, in a ceremony held on 8.8.13, the 44th anniversary of the festival’s last day.

“Havens was survived by his wife Nancy, three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren”

I was fairly shocked when Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born lost the SAG ensemble award last night. I also heard a resounding THUD sound. Because this, to me, seemed like the final kiss of death — i.e., SAG being unable to give this popular musical drama a “poor baby, we still love you” award.

An obviously well made, convincingly performed and hugely successful romantic tragedy, ASIB had consistently failed to win anything big — no Best Picture or directing or acting awards — at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards or the Producers Guild Awards. So before last night the thinking was “okay, no Best Picture Oscar and no acting Oscars for Cooper or Lady Gaga, but SAG members surely feel sorry for A Star Is Born, and so they’ll probably give it a Best Ensemble award as a kind of consolation prize.”

Nope!

Obviously no one knows anything for sure about the final Oscar tallies, but the Academy Award ambitions of Cooper’s grand musical opus are almost surely dead, dead, deader than dead.

So what killed the award-season chances of what had seemed — on paper at least — like a film that might do exceptionally well with award-season voters and handicappers — a film that was obviously well crafted, expertly refined, beloved by audiences and extraordinarily successful all over ($206 million domestic, $413 million worldwide).

In a phrase, A Star Is Born was way overhyped in the early stages, and that avalanche of pre-release praise produced feelings of irritation (at least as far as Hollywood Elsewhere was concerned) and a kind of “oh, yeah? show us!” attitude among many others.

That plus the fact that it just seemed wrong, wrong, WRONG to give a Best Picture Oscar to a remake of a remake of a remake of a 1932 original.

Warner Bros. publicity, obviously, was the architect of the overhype. Their hubris bears the responsibility.

The first clue came when Warner Bros. decided not to show ASIB in Telluride — a decision that said “we know this is basically a hoi polloi popcorn movie, so we don’t want any critical slams coming out of an elite rarified setting.”

But if you want to focus on overhyping faces and personalities, A Star Is Born was primarily killed by the Murderer’s Row quartet of Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Variety‘s Kris Tapley and Barbra Streisand.

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I for one admired Ryan Gosling‘s minimalist approach to playing Neil Armstrong in First Man. Armstrong, yes, was an allegedly dull and undemonstrative fellow, at least according to some, but in my eyes (and surely in the eyes of director Damien Chazelle) Gosling was conveying a complete emotive universe…all kinds of feeling, anxiety, ache and seasoned-pilot attitude, but with the tiniest and fleckiest of paint dabs.

I found it a fascinating and courageous performance because Gosling and Chazelle had made a conscious choice to not use the standard-issue emotional strategies that Ron Howard and others have resorted to in similar “solitary man vs. incredible challenge” dramas.

Obviously the ticket-buying public didn’t agree; ditto the industry when it came to handing out awards and acting nominations. File the Gosling-Chazelle experiment under “noble but unsuccessful.”

But another angle on this failure came to light when I read Owen Gleiberman‘s 1.24 review of Apollo 11, the CNN documentary that screened a few days ago at Sundance ’19.

“Even as a die-hard First Man believer, I have to say [that] while Ryan Gosling’s clean-cut, clear-eyed terseness matches up neatly with Neil Armstrong’s, the documentary confirms what I’d always remembered: that Armstrong’s face was frequently graced with the angelic hint of a smile — he was the Eagle Scout as Mona Lisa. Maybe he was just that way for the cameras, but I somehow doubt it.

“In Apollo 11, he comes off as genial and inviting, the very soul of a more optimistic America. I think if he’d come off that way a bit more in First Man, the movie might have won more fans.”

Early yesterday afternoon I did another “what say ye about the Oscar race?” Gold Derby podcast chat with Tom O’Neil and Michael Musto. The usual usual but we had fun. I agreed with Musto that Roma is a lock to win Best Picture “with Green Book on the outside as a close runner-up.”

For my money we didn’t sufficiently discuss the all-but-total collapse of A Star Is Born and Bradley Cooper enough, but Tom was leading the discussion.

HE quote: “I don’t think there’s stopping Mahershala Ali (Green Book) in the race for Best Supporting Actor,” I said. “He’s been ahead since the get-go. I’d like to see Richard E. Grant win because I loved him in that role more than just about anyone else.”

Musto quote: “It’s time for Glenn Close to get the freakin’ Oscar and everyone knows it! [Plus] Glenn plays a character who deserves the award that someone else gets. And she’s getting it this time. There is no chance for Lady Gaga!”

I was forced to participate from the lobby of the Park Regency because that’s the only spot in that otherwise comfy condo complex which the wifi is half decent. At the last minute I moved a small green palm plant right behind me for color design reasons — the green looked good along with the red glasses.

Leaving Neverland is a talking-heads horror film — an intimate, obviously believable, sometimes sexually explicit story of two boys — Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck, now pushing 40 — who became Michael Jackson’s special “friends” — i.e., lovers, masturbation buddies, fellators — while their more or less oblivious parents went along, thinking that the relationship was more of a kindly innocent bond.

Wake up: Jackson was a finagling fiend, a smooth predator, the kindest serpent.

You should have seen the faces of the audience members during the ten-minute intermission of Leaving Neverland at the Egyptian. They had that look of hollowed-out nausea, submerged disgust…trying to hide their revulsion.

Michael Jackson, Wade Robson sometime around ’88, when Robson was seven or eight.

The Jackson-guilt denialists are finished. Jig’s up. Once this four-hour doc hits HBO, forget it.

Leaving Neverland is also, of course, a very sad story. Damage and dysfunction are passed on and on. You’re only as healthy or sick as the amount of ugly secrets you’re carrying around. Oh, and the two complicit mothers of the victims are dealt tough cards at the end by their trying-to-heal sons.

From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review: “[Director] Dan Reed forces us to confront the reality that the greatest pop genius since the Beatles was, beneath his talent, a monster. Leaving Neverland is no thriller, but it’s undeniably a kind of true-life horror movie. You walk out of it shaken, but on some level liberated by its dark expose.”

From David Ehrlich’s Indiewire review: “Steel yourself for specifics, as dancing around them would defeat the purpose of this documentary: Jackson was a man who convinced their most innocent relatives to bend over and spread their butt cheeks while he masturbated to the sight; who forced them to suck on his nipples while he serviced himself; who installed an elaborate system of alarm bells at the Neverland Ranch so that he would hear if anyone was going to walk in on an eight-year-old boy with the pop star’s penis inside his mouth.

“Penetration was a more complicated process, but one that got increasingly possible as the boys grew older. There was even a mock wedding ceremony at one point; the kid involved still can’t bear to look at the ring. The mothers chaperoned many of these vile trysts, oblivious to (or in denial about) what Jackson was doing to their sons behind closed doors. A teenage sibling even defended the pop star in court. She didn’t know any better, but will still regret that decision until the day she dies.”

Incidentally: I waited outside (25 degrees) in a ticket-holders line for 40, 45 minutes. Sundance staff & Park City police (checking bags, wanding everyone) didn’t exhibit the slightest interest in allowing the 9 am screening of Leaving Neverland to start on time. It started at 9:28 am — 9:30 am after the Sundance promos.

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16 months ago Björn Runge‘s The Wife premiered during the 2017 Toronto Film Festival. At Roy Thomson Hall, to be precise. I was there in the mezzanine, mesmerized by Glenn Close‘s slow-boil performance as a strong but resentful wife of a Nobel Prize-winning author (Jonathan Pryce). After it ended I was convinced — dead certain! — that Close would land her seventh Oscar nomination, and that she might actually win this time.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jon Frosch wrote that Close’s performance is “like a bomb ticking away toward detonation” — perfect. But she’s not just playing her husband’s better in terms of talent and temperament. She’s playing every wife who ever felt under-valued, patronized or otherwise diminished by a swaggering hot-shot husband along with their friends and colleagues as well as — why not? — society as a whole.

In the months that followed I kept re-stating my belief that Close’s Oscar-winning moment would finally be at hand. I said it again after catching a Wife screening in midtown Manhattan. The mostly over-50 crowd whooped and cheered, and you could just feel it.

“This Academy contingent is going to vote for Close en masse, no question,” I wrote. “Over the last 30-plus years she’s been nominated for six Oscars (The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs) without a win — this will be the clincher.”

But deep down I wasn’t 100% sure. Noteworthy journos kept saying “yeah, maybe, Close is very good,” etc. My response was “no, not maybe — definitely.”

Early last November I felt slightly irked by an Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson Indiewire podcast about likely Best Actress contenders. Olivia Colman, Lady Gaga, Melissa McCarthy, Charlize Theron, Rosamund Pike and even Hereditary‘s Toni Collette were discussed, but not Close. This despite 22 out of 25 Gold Derby spitballers having predicted a Close nomination. What exactly was Kohn and Thompson’s blockage?

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Excerpts from Damon Linker‘s “How Twitter Could Be The Death of Liberal Democracy,” posted yesTerday (1.22) on The Week:

“In 1984, George Orwell famously described a totalitarian political order in which people were kept as docile subjects in part by a daily ritual called ‘Two Minutes Hate’ in which the population directs all of its pent up fury at ‘Goldstein,’ a possibly fictional enemy of the state.

“Thanks to Twitter, we now know that the same dynamic can arise spontaneously, with fresh ire directed at a new manifestation of the partisan enemy nearly every day. It shows us that under certain circumstances — our circumstances — people can and will fasten onto an endless succession of real-life Goldsteins for the sheer, addictive joy of it — for the pure, delirious pleasure of denouncing manifestations of evil in our midst. Nothing, it seems, is quite as satisfying as singling out our fellow citizens for their moral failings and indulging in fantasies of their fully justified punishment.

“Too little attention has been paid to what may be the most potent facet of the social media platform: its ability to feed the vanity of its users. There’s always an element of egoism to intellectual and political debate. But Twitter puts every tweeter on a massive stage, with the nastiest put-downs, insults, and provocations often receiving the most applause. That’s a huge psychological incentive to escalate the denunciation of political enemies. The more one expresses outrage at the evils of others, the more one gets to enjoy the adulation of the virtual mob.”

“They display an impulsiveness and unhinged rage at political enemies that is incompatible with reasoned thinking about how we might go about governing ourselves, heal the divisions in our country, and avoid a collapse into civic violence that could usher in tyranny.”

At 7:22 am, Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh posted “Oscar Nominations: The 15 Biggest Snubs and Surprises.” Hollywood Elsewhere, currently waiting for a McCarran Airport flight to Salt Lake City, respectfully differs with some of Setoodeh’s assessments.

Snub #1: Bradley Cooper‘s direction of A Star is Born fails to land a nomination.

Setoodeh: “Cooper got Afflecked. The Academy director’s branch is notorious for snubbing actors who step into the director’s chair. Cooper was considered a lock for A Star Is Born, has now joined the ranks of Barbra Streisand (Yentl), Ben Affleck (Argo) and Angelina Jolie (Unbroken), as actors-directors who failed to receive their proper due.”

HE: One, Cooper got shafted in part because he’s perceived in some quarters as aloof and self-absorbed. Two, A Star Is Born was over-hyped by celeb-filmmaker endorsements (Sean Penn, Robert DeNiro, Barbra Streisand) followed by Kris Tapley‘s notorious pre-Toronto testimonial piece in Variety. Three, it was obvious from the first screening that Unbroken was a whiff. Why should Jolie have been Best Director-nominated for delivering Japanese POW camp torture porn with a weird Christian undercurrent?

Snub #2: A no-go for Beautiful Boy‘s Timothee Chalamet.

Setoodeh: The star of Call Me By Your Name and the forthcoming Dune was “due” a nomination for playing a drug addict, blah blah.

HE: No, he wasn’t — he wasn’t effing “due” because his meth-head performance was (a) all strenuous “acting”, and (b) it didn’t emotionally connect with anyone. Plus the film was torture to sit through, and was doubly painful for Steve Carell‘s mope-a-dope dad character. Only now can it be said: Beautiful Boy blew chunks when it opened in Toronto, and it still does. Plus Chalamet hasn’t yet paid off the piper for throwing Woody Allen under the bus when the matter of his guilt has never been close to conclusive, and is actually doubtful if you read Moses Farrow‘s essay.

Snub #3: John David Washington in BlackKklansman.

Setoodeh: “While Spike Lee’s drama picked up six Oscar nominations, Washington somehow failed to crack the best actor category for playing real-life police officer Ron Stallworth.”

HE: Washington’s performance was okay, but he was the weak link in that film. Why? His face is uninteresting, opaque. Look into his eyes and there’s nothing burning or churning underneath. He’s just good looking, and that’s never enough.

Snub #4: Academy shafts Ethan Hawke‘s award-showered performance in First Reformed.

Setoodeh offers no thoughts so allow me. A sufficient number of voters simply didn’t like the idea of a pastor strapping on a suicide vest as a way of addressing environmental pollution. Plus they didn’t like a bare-chested Hawke bloodying himself with barbed wire, and they didn’t much care for the drinking and the cancer threat. And they strongly disliked the cruel way Hawke’s character treated that mousey middle-aged woman who cared for him. News flash: Academy voters aren’t especially deep or thoughtful.

Snub #5: Michael B. Jordan‘s Black Panther performance gets the go-by.

Setoodeh: “Not a single actor in its cast was recognized, [not even] Jordan as Erik Killmonger, for playing the best villain in the genre since Heath Ledger as the Joker.”

HE: Setoodeh had to have been kidding when he wrote this. If you’re playing a guy whose last name is Killmonger, you’re automatically and instantly disqualified from any sort of awards consideration.

Snub #6: Nicole Kidman passed over for Destroyer and Boy Erased.

Setoodeh: “In a less competitive year for actress, Kidman who have added her fifth (and maybe sixth) career nominations for Destroyer or Boy Erased. In the former film, playing a Los Angeles detective, she disappeared onscreen with a limp and facial prosthetics. And out of Toronto, there was a lot of buzz for her supporting role as the Baptist mother who took her son to gay conversion therapy.”

HE: Out of Toronto there was NO BUZZ AT ALL for Kidman’s Boy Erased performance…none, zero, zipposky. The reaction I heard was that Kidman wasn’t bad but that guys like Setoodeh need to calm down. As for Destroyer, Kidman’s nomination was a no-go from the start because you can only occasionally understand what she’s saying, what with her raspy, scratchy Clint Eastwood-like delivery. The makeup people who turned her Erin Bell character into a George Romero zombie should have been nominated, but they were also shafted.

By the way: Setoodeh says that Willem Dafoe “managed to sneak into the Best Actor race” for his Vincent Van Gogh performance in At Eternity’s Gate. That’s Setoodeh-speak for “I didn’t much care for the film or Dafoe’s performance.” Dafoe was in fact masterful in Julian Schnabel‘s film. Setoodeh believes that BlackKklansman‘s John David Washington was more deserving of a nomination. He really thinks that.

My Southwest flight to Salt Lake City and the Sundance Film Festival leaves tomorrow morning around 9 am, but due to a longish Las Vegas layover I won’t arrive at the Park Regency condo until 5 pm or so. Like last year, Hollywood Elsewhere is bunking at the Park Regency with World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy and seasoned film journo and festival guy Robert Koehler.

My first Sundance in 25…now 26 years without a press pass! I have a sacred duty to fulfill, of course. A duty to myself, the general “never say die” esprit de journalism and the intrepid tradition of Hollywood Elsewhere to fly my ass up there, put on the overcoat and the black cowboy hat, tromp through the snow (Park City is currently at 27 degrees and besieged by winter storm “Indra”) and see everything I can.

I’ve been asking filmmaker and publicist friends to please help with public-screening tickets, and I know I’ll be getting into a fair number of films. Maybe 15 or so. Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets. The Steven Soderbergh basketball flick at Slamdance, for sure. (Not to mention other Slamdance films, which I’m credentialed to see.) Dan Gilroy‘s Velvet Buzzsaw. The Harvey Weinstein, Mike Wallace, David Crosby and Roy Cohn docs, certainly. Not to mention the accusatory four-hour Michael Jackson doc and the origins of Ridley Scott‘s Alien doc, MEMORY. Whatever I can see.

Some of the alleged hotties: Shia LaBeouf‘s Honey Boy, Nisha Ganatra‘s Late Night, Scott Z. Burns‘ The Report, JD Dillard‘s Sweetheart (if there’s a way to see it without actually attending a midnight screening), Rashid Johnson‘s Native Son, Tomorrow Man (recently sold to Sony Pictures Classics) costarring John Lithgow and Blythe Danner.

Word around the campfire is that Rhys Ernst‘s Adam, Chewitel Ejiofor‘s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and Pippa Bianco‘s Share are a tad underwhelming, at least according to one Boy Scout. Joe Berlinger‘s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Zac Efron-as-Ted Bundy pic, is said to be strikingly performed but “dramatically flat.”

Sonya — The White Swan, a Sonja Henie biopic, has been screened in Los Angeles but I’ve heard nothing. Ditto Bart Freundlich‘s After The Wedding, which is opening the festival on Thursday night.

Will audiences be treated to another Manchester By The Sea, a Call me By Your Name, a Big Sick? I would deeply love to experience this kind of thing but I’m not hearing about films of this calibre in the wings. Is anyone?

A typical Sundance-credentialed journo sees 20 to 25 films over this ten-day gathering. But outside the documentaries Sundance ’19 is looking (and it breaks my heart to say this) like it might be just as meh-level “woke” as last year — alternate lifestyles, afflictions, LGBTQ and POC agenda sagas, women in transition, this or that personal issue, healings, buried pain, social maladies, etc.

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