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Given the corrosive reputations of Donald J. Trump and his onetime mentor Roy Cohn, who died from AIDS in the mid ’80s, you might expect some kind of wicked hit job from Ali Abassi‘s The Apprentice.

And you’d be…well, partly wrong.

The film leans heavily on the factual record, and so Trump and Cohn don’t exactly come off as honorable or admirable at the end of the day, but they aren’t portrayed as total scumbags either.

Which is a bit surprising. It’s even affecting.

During the first half of The Apprentice Sebastian Stan‘s Trump comes off, believe it or not, like a relatively sympathetic ’70s lad from Queens — a bit naive and unsteady, hungry for fame and fortune, a hard-charging comer trying to learn the ropes and make something of himself as best he can.

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Trumpistan gradually succumbs to a kind of cynical, brusque egotism before morphing into out-and-out venality, but in the early stages Stan allows you to actually feel a little something for the guy.

Ditto Jeremy Strong‘s Cohn, who is unmistakably avaricious and reptilian during The Apprentice‘s first half, but gradually registers as half-human when Part Two kicks in.

With Trump having essentially decided to throw personal loyalty to the winds after learning that Cohn is sick with AIDS, the frail, soft-spoken Cohn emerges as a more or less tragic figure — you actually feel a shred of sympathy.

Which is quite a feat considering who and what Cohn actually was.

And here’s another rooting factor, although it may sound a bit hard-edged:

Above and beyond the obvious quality of their Oscar-nominated performances, Stan (now preparing to shoot Fjord for Romanian helmer Cristian Mingiu) and Strong are the only Oscar nominees associated with a thumbs-down message about the real Donald Trump. Today’s version, I mean.

Until recently Emilia Perez star and Best Actress Oscar nominee Karla Sofia Gascon stood to benefit the most from anti-orange sentiment. Several weeks ago THR‘s Scott Feinberg speculated that a vote for the transitioned Gascon could be interpreted as an extended middle finger aimed at you-know-who.

But right now the general consensus is that Gascon’s campaign has self-destructed with those years-old racist tweets, and so at the risk of sounding a bit mercenary, it can be argued that Stan and Strong are now the only viable symbols of anti-Trump industry fervor.

Do I believe that acting Oscars should be bestowed with this kind of political motive? No, I don’t — my feelings about Oscars are too romantic and deep-rooted to allow for this kind of thinking or symbology. But many AMPAS members, I gather, are itching to send a message to MAGA nation. Who am I to say they’re wrong?

To hide the possible fact that…what exactly? That she was a lesbian? So what? Who cares?

Friendo: “The problem with DEI isn’t that people get jobs because of it — it’s that people are too afraid to be honest with those they want to elevate.

“Women directors are graded on a curve, as are Black directors. This is because people want to be encouraging…they want the story to have a happy ending. But the problem is that in the end it ends up becoming more detrimental if you put someone in a job they’re not ready for or not innately good at (like Kamala Harris).

“Qualifications are one thing but the question is, could Cpt. Rebecca Lobach fly that helicopter like a champ or not? Choppers crash from time to time, but how often do they crash into other planes and kill everyone on board? I don’t know the answer to that. I do know that we have to be able to talk about who can do the the job and who can’t without worrying about being called a racist or a bigot.

“Helicopters crash every so often but they don’t crash into moving planes so the basic appearance is that Lobach was not a person who was skilled enough to handle that flight…what other conclusion could there be? That she was skilled enough? Then why that awful collision?”

That’s Cahuenga Blvd. and the Hollywood Freeway in the distance, and a scene between Peter Ustinov‘s Lintulus Batiatus and Laurence Olivier‘s Marcus Licinius Crassus in the grassy foreground.

I’m guessing that the hatless, dark-haired guy standing behind the 70mm Technirama camera is none other than director Stanley Kubrick.

Shot sometime in the late winter or spring of 1960.

…Harris Dickinson. Why? He’s got cold eyes — the eyes of a guy who could put a couple of silencer bullets into an adversary’s chest without blinking. Plus he’s authentically British. Plus he’ll be 29 in June and 30 or 31 when (and if) the next Bond film finally gets around to shooting…exactly the right age.

Daily Mail‘s Jonathan Dean is dismissing Dickinson because Sam Mendes has apparently locked him down as John Lennon for the next two or three years.

HE to Dickinson: Drop out of Mendes’ Beatles project immediately as it will be a disaster (certainly in my eyes) due to the most poorly calculated ensemble casting in the history of commercial cinema — the utterly reprehensible, quickly-downspiraling Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, the completely loathsome, warlock-eyed Barry Koehgan as Ringo Starr, and the geeky-looking, ginger-haired Joseph Quinn as George Harrison. Ridiculous!

Save yourself, Dickinson!…save yourself from a chain-linked anvil of a movie that will wrap itself around your neck and drag you down for years.

Jeff and Sasha chatted up the latest last night around dinner hour.

Three topics mostly. One, the complete toastification of Emilia Perez‘s Karla Sofía Gascón over the last few days. Two, how and why Demi Moore‘s Best Actress candidacy will probably benefit the most from Gascon’s calamity, even though the narrative she presented at last month’s Golden Globes ceremony is essentially false**. And three, the Saturday report that the third member of the deceased Blackhawk crew (and likely pilot) was 28 year-old Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, of Durham, North Carolina.

We mainly focused on Gascon’s all-but-collapsed Best Actress campaign. Which was triggered by a one-two punch. On 1.28 she contended that I’m Still Here‘s Fernanda Torres, a competing Best Actress nominee, was allied with people who had attacked Gascon online. Soon after some old, highly unfortunate Gascon tweets surfaced, persuading many that she holds bigoted views about Muslims and African Americans.

Why didn’t Netflix staffers scrub Gascon’s Twitter/X account for possibly offensive terms early on? Dereliction of duty, man.

THR‘s Scott Feinberg has described Gascon as “completely toxic…At this point, Mel Gibson is probably more popular in town.”

Worse, IndieWire‘s Ryan Lattanzio has said that he thinks Gascon “may be dragging down Emilia Perez with her.”

** Jeff and Sasha strongly contend that Anora‘s Mikey Madison should win the Best Actress Oscar, and not Demi Moore.

Posted on 1.9.25: “Over the last 40 years Moore wasn’t pushed and bullied into a mainstream megaplex career. I’ve never read or heard that she tried to prove her arthouse mettle by appearing in edgy Sundance films, and as far as I know she wasn’t kept down and put in a confining box by big, bad studio execs — she went for big, attention-getting, high-paying roles in mainstream films, and she became rich and famous and lived a very flush life. She chose this path while the choosing was good.

“She did Brat Pack roles, sexy hottie parts, romantic relationship roles, femme fatale roles…Blame It on Rio, St. Elmo’s Fire, About Last Night…, Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, Striptease, The Scarlet Letter, The Juror, G.I. Jane. True, she played a small part in the arthousey Margin Call but that was 14 years ago, after her career flame had cooled. And last year she did Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

“In short, Moore never even tried to be in a critically-approved, Cannes-worthy, outside-the-box feminist statement film, and certainly not in a body-horror film. She only took the lead in The Substance when she calculated that she’d aged out (duhhh) and a role like this was her only likely shot at prominence, just like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford signed up for hag horror in the ’60s.”

The relentlessly woke HE comment-threader Glen Runciter has rhetorically shot himself in the foot.

Here’s something Runciter posted earlier today about Cpt. Rebecca Lobach, who was apparently piloting the Blackhawk helicopter when it smashed into a commercial jet last Wednesday evening, resulting in her immediate death along with two fellow soldiers plus 64 people on the jet.

Has everyone read the above carefully?

Runciter has stated that because Lobach was objectively well-qualified, she was, in his words, “clearly not a DEI hire.”

Repeating for emphasis: Wokey-woke Runciter has admitted that being well qualified = not DEI.

Put another way, he’d just admitted that DEI is synonymous with lower qualifications.

HE to Runciter: Given this admission, how exactly would you define DEI?

CBS News has reported that two bodies — a man and a woman — were recovered yesterday (i.e., Friday) from the wreckage of the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into a commercial airplane near Reagan Airport three days ago.

The deceased woman was the phantom co-pilot who was commanding the Blackhawk — “phantom” becauese the Army isn’t releasing her name at the request of her family. The apparent idea is to keep her identity an indefinite secret.

Why the mysterious suppression of this woman’s identity? As the unnamed woman was reportedly piloting the chopper, she was almost certainly to blame for the recent Potomac tragedy.  Her family is presumably concerned about some sort of negative blowback, but who knows?

The other body is believed to be that of Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Loyd Eaves. The body of the third member of the flight, Staff. Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, was recovered a day or two ago.

I wrestled this morning with whether or not to discuss this situation. Was there any way I could write about the phantom female pilot, I asked myself, without sounding like a MAGA asshat, which I really don’t believe myself to be?  (I’m a sensible left-centrist.) What is the soundest explanation for the family’s no-name request? I’m asking.

Before watching last night’s Real Time With Bill Maher episode (actually the Overtime segment), I had never heard the above term.

It was uttered (coined?) by novelist Max Brooks (“World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War”).

Brooks at 6:25 mark: “[Trump’s recent pardoning of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, which in the early teens became the first modern darknet market or “the Amazon of drugs”] is part of the bigger picture, which is the rise of crypto, which is the ultimate dark money…the super-rich are going to run everything.”

Variety‘s Katcy Stephan: “I’m still processing everything that has transpired in the last couple of days, and I’m sad,” Emilia Perez costar Zoe Saldana said earlier today in London. “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [Gascon’s unfortunate tweets], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group.

“I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part…of this film, and my interactions with inclusivity and collaboration…racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me. It saddens me that we are having to face this setback right now.”

Anyone who uses the phrase “[blank product] is taking the country by storm”…avoid these people for the rest of your life and into the next. Anyone, really, who uses the term “by storm” in any context. YouTube narrators, salespersons, copywriters…among the worst people on the planet.

In that 1.29 Hollywood Reporter profile of Babygirl‘s Harris Dickinson, Seija Rankin writes that it’s “dawning” on the 28-year-old Dickinson “that broader fame is coming for him, and he’s not sure he’s ready for it.”

HE to Dickinson: Nobody’s “ready” for anything. You obviously wanted this, and you speak with a great London street accent, and now you’ve got it so no whining. You just have to jump into your local shark-filled pond or into the heaving, big-time sea and swim as best you can. If you don’t paddle like a sonuvabitch you’ll sink like a stone, but then you knew that.

…more than people laughing uproariously or otherwise too hard, too demonstratively, giggling like idiots, rocking back and forth, slapping their thighs, covering their mouths with their right hand, going “hoo-hoo-hoo” and “yee-hee-hee”…all of this is truly horrible.

Have you ever seen any serious, heavy-cat comedians laugh like this? Woody Allen will crack an occasional grin or smirk, but never, ever has he yee-hawed in some over-the-top way. People who know what goes never laugh like this. Only shallow gladhanders do. Only the worst people.