…that no one and I mean no one will have the nerve to ask during this evening’s post-screening q & a.

Thanks There’s no disputing that Beanie Feldstein‘s performance as Monica Lewinsky (particularly that look of shock and intimidation and primal fear) is fully present, and obviously skillful and affecting.

But for a miniseries in which the makeup department used every trick in the book to make the actors look as much as possible like the character they were playing (especially in the matter of Sarah Paulson‘s Linda Tripp), they were given a hopeless task when it came to Beanie. I’ve seen all seven episodes thus far, and her lack of resemblance has thrown me each and every time. Why then?

The apparent idea was to emphasize Beanie/Monica’s victim status…the huge gulf between mousey little Beanie and Clive Owen‘s silky Bill Clinton…doubling-down on Clinton’s opportunism and sexual exploitation. But if a gifted actor with at least a slight physical resemblance to Lewinsky had been cast, the miniseries would have been that much better.

“Why didn’t the Eternals intervene when Ultron tried to destroy the world, or when Thanos was about to wipe out half the universe, you ask? Apparently they’re only allowed to take action when the deviants are involved.”

Or why, HE asks, didn’t they step in during the Nazi holocaust to try and save a few million Jews from horrible death? Or during the mass murders of Cambodian citizens in the mid to late ’70? Part of the answer is that the Eternals believe that tragedies are teaching experiences, and that people grow after experiencing them. Apparently they’re only allowed to take action when the deviants are involved.

But really, how worthless are the Eternals in a general sense?

After serving a 20-year term in Spandau Prison for exploiting slave labor during World War II, the urbane and well-spoken Albert Speer — Nazi armaments minister from ’42 through’45, grand architect and Adolf Hitler confidante — published two well-written, self-serving books about his Nazi experience.

“Inside the Third Reich” (’69) was the most widely read and influential as far as Speer’s reputation was concerned. He presented himself as a basically decent and civilized family man who made a deal with the devil and was therefore “inescapably contaminated morally” for his complicity with the Nazi regime…forever stained and doomed to carry a searing sense of guilt for the rest of his life. “”

“Spandau: The Secret Diaries” (’75) was Speer’s follow-up.

Out of these two books Speer became known not as “the good Nazi,” as many have called him, but the “not quite as bad as the other Nazi fanatics” guy with at least some sense of moral self-awareness and regret…a man who hadn’t denied his guilt and had served his prison sentence, and was looking to somehow atone in the years he had left. Speer died at age 76 in 1981.

Vanessa Lapa‘s Speer Goes to Hollywood (opening today) is a 97-minute argument that Speer wasn’t the urbane smoothie he portrayed himself as, and that he was aware of the extermination of the Jews, and that he was just as much of a Nazi shit as Himmler or Geobbels or Bormann or any of the others.

It is HE’s belief that Speer was definitely an ambitious, anti-Semitic, cold-hearted prick who engaged in a Faustian bargain for his own professional benefit. But it is also HE’s view that his saga is not anomalous, and that many seemingly or ostensibly civilized people have supported evil policies and homicidal regimes throughout history.

The Brazilian senate recently endorsed a report that accused president Jair Bolsonaro of the Covid-related murder of tens of thousands of Brazilians due to neglect, incompetence and anti-scientific denialism. How many tens of thousands of Americans needlessly died as a direct result of Donald Trump‘s similar response to Covid-19, and who would argue that Dr. Deborah Birx wasn’t at least partly complicit in these deaths? Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger knew that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, but they kept it going for three or four years after the Nixon administration took power in January ’69 and in so doing caused the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Vietnamese. 1.7 million people were murdered in the Cambodian killing fields — were the Khmer Rouge cadres who saw to these deaths born killers, or were they just loyalists who did what was expected? How many hundreds of thousands died in China’s Great Cultural Revolution? 17,000 were killed during the French terror of the 1790s. How many hundreds or thousands of present-day careers have been destroyed by woke terrorists?

Throughout history ambitious cutthroat types have done almost anything to get ahead or serve their superiors, and they’ve never given a damn how many innocent lives were sacrificed in the bargain.

It makes you look weak or woozy or somehow dependent upon the warm bath of booze in the blood. If someone picks up a camera, always put the glass down. That said, Newman and clan look awfully good here. Those moist Connecticut lawns and especially the fragrance following a rainfall. Judging by the gray in his hair, I’d say it was taken around the time of Fort Apache, The Bronx (’81) or The Verdict (‘82).

That long-simmering, much-whispered-about rumor about Kirk Douglas having sexually assaulted Natalie Wood at the Chateau Marmont in the summer of 1955…that story has been confirmed by the late actress’s younger sister, 75 year-old Lana Wood, in a forthcoming memoir called “Little Sister” (Dey Street, 11.9).

Lana spoke of the assault during a multi-part podcast that streamed in July 2018, but she didn’t name Douglas.

At the time of the incident Douglas was 38 and Wood had just turned 17. The get-together had been arranged by their mother, Maria Zakharenko, who thought that “many doors might be thrown open for her, with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf,” according to Lana, who was around eight at the time.

AP: “It seemed like a long time passed before Natalie got back into the car and woke me up when she slammed the door shut,” Lana writes. “She looked awful. She was very disheveled and very upset, and she and Mom started urgently whispering to each other. I couldn’t really hear them or make out what they were saying. Something bad had apparently happened to my sister, but whatever it was, I was apparently too young to be told about it.”

“According to Lana, Natalie did not discuss with her what happened until both were adults and Natalie, after describing being brought into Douglas’ suite. She told her sister, ‘And, uh…he hurt me Lana. It was like an out-of-body experience. I was terrified. I was confused.’

“Lana recalls Natalie and their mother agreeing it would ruin Natalie’s career to publicly accuse him. ‘Suck it up’ was Maria’s advice.

“Douglas’ son, actor Michael Douglas, said in a statement issued through his publicist: ‘May they both rest in peace.'”

…how the Supremes upholding a Mississippi abortion law that states an abortion has to happen with 15 weeks of conception…how exactly does that undermine a woman’s right to choose?

The Texas abortion law is ridiculous, and yes, the Mississippi law, passed in 2018, is restrictive and problematic for low-income women, especially in its refusal to make exceptions in cases of rape or incest. If it were my determination I would certainly uphold Roe v. Wade.

Under present Mississippi law, women who’ve made their decision simply have to terminate a given pregnancy within 105 days. Let’s say that an unwilling mom doesn’t learn that she’s pregnant until the six-week mark — that gives her nine weeks or 63 days to do something about it.

A woman’s right to choose is the central thing, of course, and no civilized person would disagree with this. A 15-week timeframe will obviously make it harder for low-income women, and I’m not oblivious to an element of cruelty in the Mississippi law. Which is why it’s better, I believe, all things considered, to stick with Roe.

But here’s an 11.1 Times op-ed piece that says Roe is “as good as gone.”

The Supremes will evaluate Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on 12.1.21.