The nighttime scenes in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women deliver the usual, approvable candle-light amber. As they should. That 19th Century timestamp. But Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, set during the same Civil War era as Louisa May Alcott’s novel, happens in Janusz Kaminskiland — a candle or two, a few gas lamps and a whole lot of milky-gray Kaminski “sunlight” piercing through the windows. It’s the early 1860s as imagined by a headstrong alien.

IMHO the ugliest Robertson Blvd. Christmas decorations ever displayed — red, green, blue and white bulbs wrapped around tree trunks with tinsel-like strips of the same colors hanging from the branches. In London, which arguably knows more about the spirit of Christmas than the government of Beverly Hills, only white mini-bulbs and imitation candle lights are used. Kardashian-style decorations and the legends of Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchit don’t go together, you see.

Look at these humanoids, these Millennial and GenZ fashion plates in their jeans, T-shirts and whitesides, hopping up and down with anticipation of winning a free getaway in Ojai or whatever. I’d forgotten that Drew Carey has been hosting this show for 12 years now…Jesus. Salivating materialistic frenzy by way of a mosh pit. The American dream, the culture we live in, etc. What would Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis or Abbie Hoffman say?

From the latest edition of Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler: “It’s nice to have a good, old-fashioned complete disaster. There have been flops this year, certainly, but not really full-blooded systemic meltdowns. A flop like Charlie’s Angels feels so half-hearted, a flop mostly for want of really trying. Say what you will about Cats, but it’s not forgettable.

“Universal threw themselves in headlong, gave it everything they had, and somehow everything still went wrong. And it happened to what might be the most responsible, sober-minded studio in Hollywood; certainly not a place given to crazy bets.

“This is the blood sacrifice the gods demand from Hollywood, at least once a year.

“We need these showbiz equivalents of human offerings at the altar now and then to remind us that we work in a business that is not in any way subject to sane rules and predictable outcomes; a business that is to a great degree dependent on the whims of the gods.

“Take a look at the Cats reactions oh ye of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Verizon. Stick around Hollywood long enough and this too will be yours. In all likelihood, on the film closest to your heart. Beware dream projects!”

Please scan this “Academy Award for Best Picture” Wikipedia page and vote to take back and re-award five Best Picture Oscars. Choose, in other words, the five most appalling and fundamentally criminal Best Picture winner decisions and give that Oscar to the film that should’ve won. Simple enough.

The 20th Century had its share of Best Picture embarassments and black marks (Around The World in Eighty Days, Driving Miss Daisy, The Greatest Show on Earth), but the 21st Century totally ruled in this realm. You know which films I’m referring to. Five groaners in particular.

HE picks: Worst Best Picture Oscar winner of all time — Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist (2011) — the Oscar is re-awarded to Bennett Miller‘s Moneyball.

2nd Worst Best Picture winner: Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech (2010); in a tie vote, the Oscar is re-awarded to David Fincher‘s The Social Network and David O. Russell‘s The Fighter.

3rd Worst Best Picture winner: Rob Marshall‘s Chicago (2002); the Oscar is re-awarded to Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist.

4th Worst Best Picture winner: Ben Affleck‘s Argo (2012) — in a tie vote, the Oscar is re=awarded to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty and David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook.

5th Worst Best Picture winner: Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; the Oscar is re-awarded to Peter Weir‘s Master and Commander.

I wouldn’t see Philippa Mawthorpe‘s Mishebaviour with a knife at my back. Set during the 1970 Miss World competition, which Bob Hope, an old-school hound from way back, emcee’d. Feminism had just exploded in Atlantic City two years earlier, and this British pageant saw the crowning of the first black competitor, Jennifer Hosten (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Keira Knightley plays feminist pathfinder Sally Alexander. Savor the joys of an all-female team (director Mawthorpe, producers Suzanne Mackie and Sarah-Jane Wheale, screenwriters Gaby Chiappe and Rebecca Frayn) bristling at half-century-old sexism.

When I think of Sam Mendes‘ 1917 I mutter “hugely impressive tech,” even though it works emotionally and story-wise on top of this. And then I recall this scene.

Again, dazzling tech. But then comes the inexplicable behavior of the German pilot after being pulled from his burning aircraft. It’s even crazier than the end of Alfred Hitchcoock‘s Lifeboat, when a teenaged German U-boat sailor is hauled out of the sea by British-American rescuers (“danke schoen”) only to pull a Luger on them a few seconds later.

The difference is that the German pilot was merely loyal to Germany and the Kaiser while the U-boat kid was a “Nazi buzzard.” Here’s the mp3.

“I”m dead serious”, “hold your fire,” stoking the fire, etc. All of this mitigated, of course, by Spacey speaking with the South Carolina drawl of his House of Cards character, Frank Underwood. Spacey is obviously speaking about his own situation, so why bring Frank into it?

Question: What’s the one thing you must never, ever say to a filmmaker? Answer: “I didn’t much care for your film…sorry.”

I’ve confessed this to a very small number of directors and screenwriters over the years, and each and every time their response has been a kind of silence that conveys “I don’t know you any more” or “you don’t exist”.

All they know is, you’ve just told them that a beloved child that they’ve sired and nurtured for months or years and then fed and disciplined and raised as best they could…all they know is that you think their child is ugly or maladjusted or a beast of some kind.

They would much rather have you lie or half-lie to them and tell them half-truths and emphasize any positive thing you can think of or invent. They don’t want anything straight from the shoulder. At all.

So why after all these decades have I continued to occasionally level with this or that filmmaker from time to time? Because I respect them, and I can’t bear the idea of lying to them. So I tell them what I think in the gentlest and most diplomatic terms I can come up with, and their response is always “why didn’t you lie to me, asshole?”

(l. to r.) Directors Roundtable guys Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig, Fernando Meirelles, Martin Scorsese, Lulu Wang, Todd Phillips.

A couple of months ago I sent a letter to a filmmaker I greatly respect. I wasn’t a huge fan of the new film, and rather than tap-dance around the truth I thought it would be respectful to lay it on the kitchen table in plain but gentle terms.

“No one has been a bigger, more devoted fan of your uniquely self-owned work and creations than myself,” I said, listing three or four films that I’ve quite admired.

“It is therefore with a heavy heart and nothing but remorse that I must share my subdued reaction to [film title]. I’m sad to say that it’s a tradition-breaker. I’m very sorry. I appreciate what your strategy was, and I felt your personality in it, and I loved [this or that portion]…I can only say or rationalize that this kind of thing happens now and then to the best of filmmakers and the most robust of talents.

I concluded with “onward and upward…new challenges, new hills to capture, new dreams to explore, etc.”

I never got a response, but I was told by a go-between that my letter wasn’t appreciated.

In a recently-posted Hollywood Reporter Directors Round Table, Little Women director Greta Gerwig says that “all of my [tough moments] are petty. Like people telling me, without me asking, that they didn’t like my movie.”

In response to this Joker director Todd Phillips says, “That’s the worst.” And Gerwig replies, “It wasn’t for me. Go fuck yourselves!” And everybody has a good laugh.

N.Y. Times columnist Thomas Friedman, speaking to MSNBC’s Ari Melber before last week’s impeachment vote: “We basically have today the ability to create an entire alternative epistemological universe. When you simply live in a completely different set of facts…to get most of your information online from Facebook, and [information that] is targeted to reenforce your biases. And if you watch only one particular network, and you put all those together…uhm, there’s no Walter Cronkite out there, someone [from] whom everyone is sharing the same information.

“And I think it’s one of the most frightening things. Our democracy is based upon two pillars — truth and trust. If we don’t share truth we can’t possibly face the big challenges — climate change, cyber wars, education. We can’t possibly agree to do anything if we don’t share the same truth. And if we don’t trust each other, we can’t possibly do anything big and hard together. Ad all the challenges facing us now are big and hard.”

Every honest critic and comment-threader has said he/she was aware of CG de-aging manipulation in the early stages of The Irishman, but that they gradually forgot about it. Or accepted it the way we all accept performances in which an actor wears a wig (Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor) or a fake nose (Nicole Kidman in The Hours) or what-have-you.

I don’t know how many millions were spent on Irishman CG but honestly? On my 15″ Macbook Air the iFake version looks better. It’s a lower resolution version and it screams CG finessing, of course, but given what it is, it looks better.

What kind of money do you suspect that the iFake guy spent compared to what Scorsese and Netflix spent? When I first heard of the intention to de-age De Niro, I was expecting to see a version of his Vito Corleone from The Godfather, Part II. I didn’t, of course. The iFake versions look like CG, of course, but DeNiro and Pacino look younger, smoother, etc. If I was willing to accept the uncanny valley thing that Scorsese delivered, how much more difficult would be to accept the iFake version?

Youtube comment (Mr. Coatsworth): “This looks really good for freeware, but it won’t hold up on a cinema screen or 4K television. I saw The Irishman in the theater and, while there were moments where the CGI on De Niro and Pesci was obvious, Al Pacino never looked the least bit fake, in my opinion. It was amazing. Your Al Pacino de-aging looks very obviously like the face is just pasted in. All in all yours look very blurry, but of course for the amount of time and money you spent, excellent work!”

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil to Hollywood Elsewhere: “Hi, Jeff — happy holidays! Do you really believe that Parasite won’t even be nominated for Best Picture?”

HE to O’Neil: “Happy holidays to you also, Tom. I’ve fixed my Best Picture prediction chart. I believe Parasite will be Best Picture nominated, of course. Too many critics, critics groups and prognosticators have chugged the Bong Joon-ho Kool-Aid, and there’s no stopping it now. I realize that. I guess I’ve just been living in denial. Because while the Bong chorus has been saying one thing over and over, reality has been saying something different and just as consistently.

Parasite is without question Bong’s best film, and he’ll certainly win the Best International Feature Oscar on 2.9.20. But (and I mean this with the greatest respect) it’s plotted way too clumsily and sloppily to win the Best Picture Oscar, for reasons I’ve explained time and again.

Whatever should or shouldn’t happen with Parasite, the current in the water is too strong at this stage. So I’ve washed my hands of it and am hoping for the best, or more specifically for the least. If and when Parasite should win the Best Picture Oscar, which is certainly conceivable but God forbid …if this happens there will be only one word to say, and that word is “really?”