My first thought when I heard about Sen. Cory Booker being with Rosario Dawson was that she was acting as a kind of beard for the guy, at least while his Presidential campaign is up and running. But apparently Booker is straight (or at least bi — I’m good either way) and their relationship is for real. Buzzfeed says they’re “not just dating” but “truly, madly in love.” Fine, although it seems a tiny bit odd that Dawson is talking openly about their mutual feelings just as Booker’s presidential campaign is gearing up.

Taron Egerton is a better-than-average singer, granted, but his recent Oscar-night performance of “Tiny Dancer” simply doesn’t cut it. Because he’s offering an approximation of an “Elton voice” rather than the voice itself. It didn’t have to be this way.

Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody delivered a believable, satisfying Freddie Mercury voice, but for some reason Rocketman will not do the same. Fatal error.

I’m sorry but when a film is chosen to close a major festival, this almost always indicates more of an agreeable crowd-pleaser than any kind of brazen, cutting-edge thing. Most of us suspected this about Danny Boyle‘s Yesterday earlier, but now we’re more certain.

Himesh Patel plays “Jack Malik”, the only guy in the world who can recall the entire Beatles library of tunes, which leads to great fame and fortune.

Honest excerpt from official Universal-supplied synopsis: “But as his star rises, Jack risks losing Ellie — the one person who always believed in him. With the door between his old life and his new closing, Jack will need to get back to where he once belonged and prove that all you need is love.” Aaaagghh!

The fact that the trailer cutters chose to show clips of Patel singing “Yesterday”, “Let It Be” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” speaks volumes.

If this film was even half-cool, Patel/Malik would be shown singing “Girl”, “Things We Said Today”, “Norweigan Wood,” “I’m Only Sleeping”, “Cry Baby Cry”, “You Never Give Me Your Money”, “Here, There, Everywhere,” “Lovely Rita”, “Savoy Truffle”, “Got To Get You Into My Life”, “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey”, “You Know My Name — Look Up The Number” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

But no — he can only croon the sappy top-40 Beatles tunes that everyone has heard 17 million times and is sick to death of.

Yesterday will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on 5.5.19. Universal will release the musical fantasy on 6.28.19.

The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival (4.24 — 5.5) will offer a whoop-dee-doo gala presentation of the 40th anniversary of Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now at the Beacon Theatre. Great — but the people behind this are misleading audiences by calling it Apocalypse Now: Final Cut.

No new footage, nothing to do with re-editing or extra bells and whistles — it’s strictly a technical upgrade thing. “Remastered in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos from a 4K scan of the original negative,” etc.

Hollywood Elsewhere urges Coppola to remove the words “final cut” and replace them with “spit-shined.” Because that’s what this is.

Coppola statement: “Restoring Apocalypse Now: Final Cut forty years later has been a tremendous undertaking and joy that I am thrilled to be able to share with the world for the first time at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The audience will be able to see, hear and feel this film how I always hoped it could be — from the first ‘bang’ to the final whimper.”

There are many great 20th Century films that could use some spiffing up, but in my judgment Apocalypse Now is not among them. By my criteria it has always looked and sounded terrific from the very first screening at the Ziegfeld in 1979. God, the moment when I felt those Ziegfeld bass woofers in my ribs…

The only Avenger I really want to see endure is Paul Rudd‘s Ant-Man — the rest can suck it. Sick of these bloodsuckers. Over and out.

Even if the Cannes-Netflix dispute was resolved, there’s no way Scorsese’s The Irishman would play there in two months. No way in hell.

The 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination is burning a little brighter this morning…new runner, new feeling…does it sound overly partisan to say fresh goose bumps?…bang.

Yesterday Variety‘s Matt Donnelly reported some particulars about what a lousy year 2018 was for Megan Ellison‘s Annapurna. Three wipeouts and a total loss of around $37 million, give or take.

Why? Because Ellison is famously into quality for its own sake, and doesn’t (or didn’t, at least) believe in greenlighting possible commercial successes as much as smart, sensitive, upmarket films that will delight film festival crowds along with her enlightened, SJW, politically correct hipster colleagues and feminist friendos.

Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk earned $14 million and change, but lost between $8 million and $10 million, Donnelly reports. Karyn Kusama‘s Destroyer didn’t earn squat domestically ($1,527,853) and lost around $7 million.

The biggest calamity was Adam McKay‘s Vice, which cost $65 million to make but lost between $15 and $20 million.

Be honest — you’re the final “yes or no” person at Annapurna, and certain voices want you to greenlight an adaptation of a 1974 James Baldwin novel that, despite Jenkins’ intention to bathe it in Wong Kar Wai-styled lighting, others regard as a serious downer. It’s basically about a young black couple in Harlem who are totally in love with each other, but then the young husband gets jailed for a rape he didn’t commit and he winds up staying in the clink for the rest of the film, in part because his wife’s mother is unable to persuade a Puerto Rican woman who misidentified the husband as the culprit to recant her testimony.

In all honesty, would you greenlight Beale Street?

And would you greenlight a hardboiled police thriller with Nicole Kidman as a gray-faced zombie cop who goes from one encounter to another speaking in an affected, raspy-voiced, all-but-unintelligible Clint Eastwood whisper? A movie that was shot in order to prove that a crusty, hard-boiled undercover woman detective can be just as existentially blighted and inwardly destroyed as any male badass cop — would you say “yeah, sounds like a winner”?

If you’re enjoying a taco or a burrito with a nice lady in some outdoor location, you’re not allowed to lick your fingers between bites. If you do that, two things will happen. One, you will become an eternal pig in her eyes. And two, you will absolutely and irrevocably forfeit any chance of ever having sex with this woman for the rest of your life. Licking your fingers while eating is in the same realm as farting loudly and then pulling your pants down, wiping your ass with a newspaper and then fanning the air in order to dissipate the aroma. Forget it, finito, you’re done.

It’s been just under a month since my agonizing fall in the Sierra Nevadas (slippery snow, flat on my back). I’m happy to report that I’m somewhere between 65% and 70% recovered. I still walk around like an 80 year-old, but without a cane. Simple exertions that caused horrible pain two or three weeks ago (getting out of bed, climbing out of a car, coughing or sneezing) don’t hurt as much now. Lifting anything heavy (like groceries) is still a dicey idea, but at least I’m off the pain meds. I won’t be able to leap into the air and click my heels like Fred Astaire for another couple of weeks, but the worst is over. Right now I’m just trying not to bang into anything or, God forbid, slip on a banana peel.

HE colleague Jordan Ruimy is hearing whispers that Dexter Fletcher‘s Rocketman will have a big Cannes Film Festival premiere, possibly an opening-nighter, almost certainly out of competition.

For the fifth or sixth time, Hollywood Elsewhere is foursquare-opposed to this Elton John biopic for the simple fact that (a) I loathe Taron Egerton, who has the titular role and (b) the singing (either by Egerton or someone else) sounds like a cruise-ship John imitator. Rami Malek actually sounded like Freddie Mercury so what was the problem this time?

Bryan Singer might be a serial sexual abuser and difficult as hell to work with, but at least he got the Bohemian Rhapsody singing to sound right. My insect antennae can just sense that he’s a much, much better director than Fletcher ever will be. Rocketman may to be a decent film in other respects, but the absence of a vocal-sound-alike element is a huge negative.

The 2019 Cannes Film Festival will run from 5.14 to 5.25. Rocketman opens in England on 5.24, and in the U.S. on 5.31. It sounds like a good opener — glitzy, flashy, Joe Popcorn-accessible.

Ruimy also reports that “two separate sources” confirm that Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Sony, 7.26) is indeed going to the festival. I forecasted this possibility on 2.26.

One thing good about Beto O’Rourke intending to finally announce his Presidential candidacy this week (not at some big staged rally but on social media, according to a source) is that at least he’ll have declared before Uncle Joe “Mike Pence is a decent guy” Biden pulls the trigger. At least that.

Said it before, saying it again: Biden’s candidacy will be strictly about his legacy and his mostly boomer-aged supporters doing a farewell nostalgia lap. Boomers (Trump, Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders included) are finished as far as steering this country into the future is concerned. The 2020 Democratic nominee has to be youngish (Beto or Kamala realm) and reflective of the spirit and convictions of under-45 voters.

WATCH: If Beto O'Rourke makes a 2020 run, what lane does he occupy in the race? #MTPDaily@TexasTribAbby: "Reminds me very much of Obama '07…you can feel the ground shake as he comes in, in a way that was different from previous candidates entering." pic.twitter.com/4oUmDrUpmS

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 12, 2019