Three and a half years ago I stated that Michael Fassbender was on the HE shit list (“Turning Against Fassbender“), and that his reign as a proverbial hot guy had begun to wind down. Fassy is still a respected working actor (his next film is Taika Waititi‘s Next Goal Wins), but he’s now regarded as a kind of perverse figure with a surly aura.

An early 2020 perspective allows an assessment of Fasbender’s hot six years (’08 to ’13) — Hunger, Fish Tank, Inglourious Basterds, Jonah Hex, X-Men: First Class, A Dangerous Method, Shame (his peak achievement), Haywire, Prometheus, 12 Years A Slave, The Counselor.

I got off the boat roughly five and a half years ago or starting in 2014 — Frank, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Slow West, Steve Jobs, Macbeth (hated it), The Light Between Oceans (meh), Assassin’s Creed, Song to Song (nothing), Alien: Covenant, The Snowman, X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

A 1.21 Lacey Rose piece in The Hollywood Reporter passes along two bombshell quotes from Nanette Burstein‘s Hillary, a four-part Hulu docuseries that will debut at Sundance 2020 and stream in March. One conveys Clinton’s negative view of Bernie Sanders, and another passes along President Obama‘s opinion of The Beast.

Hillary tells the cameras that Sanders “was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

In a THR interview Clinton is asked is the Bernie assessment still holds. “Yes, it does,” she says.

THR: “If he gets the nomination, will you endorse and campaign for him?” Clinton: “I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary season. I will say, however, that it’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.

“I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it. And I don’t think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don’t know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you’re just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or after Elizabeth [Warren]. I think that that’s a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions.”

In the doc Clinton vp running mate Tim Kaine is heard confiding that President Obama called the night before a debate and said, “Tim, remember, this is no time to be a purist…you’ve got to keep a fascist out of the White House.”

I can think of only one other second-hand Obama quote about Trump’s venality — “He’s nothing but a bullshitter.” It appeared in a May 2017 People article.

For an hour-long session, this sure flies by. Great gab, fascinating character studies, etc. How many weeks ago was this thing taped? Hanks shaved his beard over a month ago.

For the 47th time, I hated Uncut Gems but deeply admired Adam Sandler‘s career-altering performance as a manic gambling junkie. I was one of the early-birds who insisted it was award-worthy and the National Board of Review (among others) agreed, but industry voters didn’t buy in. A member of the Academy’s acting branch recently told the N.Y. Post that Sandler is “emerging as a truly great actor, but then he does cheesy Netflix comedies that are really dumb…Unfortunately, actors become brands [and] Sandler’s brand doesn’t scream ‘Oscar.'”

Another actor said, “If Sandler has another great film, he’ll be nominated.”

The 21st Century Robert De Niro is a whole different being than he was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, which is when I began to study him first-hand in terms of parties and press encounters. Now he’s open, candid and even loquacious…playing the game. Back then he was some kind of holy monk oddball who was too special and sensitive to talk to anyone except close colleagues.

Shia LaBeouf on playing his asshole dad: “I think if you can empathize with the biggest villain in your life and scrape some of these shadows, it makes you lighter and free-er. When you lead with lightness and love, you can get to the heavy easier. Anger and the rough shit is very easy. It’s the other stuff that feels quite difficult.” HE: Honey Boy is an honest, respectable effort, but I didn’t feel this empathize-with-dad element at all. From the very beginning I was muttering to myself “okay, here we go…we’re stuck with this boorish dickhead for the whole film.”

Side observation: The collar on the white shirt that LaBeouf is wearing looks awful. If you must wear a collar buy Italian-made shirts with smallish, narrow or button-down collars. Or better yet banded collars.

I’d vote for either Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar against Trump in the general. Along with Bernie or Pete or Typewriter Joe. Any of them would be a huge improvement. But where’s the polling data that says Warren or Klobuchar would be a formidable Trump opponents? This is my concern.