A first-rate cast — Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed — under Zombieland‘s Ruben Fleischer, and with grade-A production values. I’m just sorry they got together to make a Marvel flick. Actually a horror-action thing, “loosely set in the same world as Spider-Man: Homecoming, although not officially within the Marvel cinematic universe”…whatever that means. Sony will release Venom on 10.5.

Hollywood Elsewhere is sitting down Tuesday morning (10 am) with Avengers: Infinity War (4.27). The word on the street is that a lot of Marvel superheroes are going to be squished and splattered by Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his henchmen. How many? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m figuring as least five or six out of a cast of…how many? I don’t care.

I’d be lying if I said I’m not rooting for Robert Downey, Jr.‘s Tony Stark/Ironman to buy the farm. My loathing for this rich, smart-ass quipster has been growing over the years, and now I can almost taste it.

Of all the Marvelinos the one I least want to see killed is Paul Rudd‘s Ant-Man, mainly because I’m a major Ant-Man fan and I can’t wait for Ant-Man and the Wasp, etc. Is Rudd even in this thing? Possibly but maybe not. What do I care?

Before I go any further the readership needs to know that I will not spoil about any deaths. At all. I will totally keep my yap shut. Unless, of course, everyone else starts spoiling.

On Sunday evening TheWrap‘s “two Phils” — Phil Hornshaw and Phil Owen — posted a knowledgable, well-composed piece about which Marvel superhoes are most likely to be terminated. It’s called “Who’s Going to Die in Avengers: Infinity War? We Put Odds on Every Major Hero Biting the Dust.”

Boiled down, the Phils are figuring Stark, for sure, along with Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans). They’re also saying Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) had better watch his back.

CBR.com has a similar prediction piece up, and they’re saying definitely Captain America along with Tom Hiddleston‘s Loki. They’re also claiming Gwynneth Paltrow‘s Pepper Potts is toast. Works for me! Will death’s honesty catch up wih Don Cheadle‘s War Machine and Benicio del Toro‘s The Collector?

The Phils are also calculating that Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Black Widow (Scarlett Johnasson), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Bucky/White Wolf (Sebastian Stan), Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Wong (Benedict Wong), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) and most of the Guardians of the Galaxy will escape with their lives.

My first thought when I laid eyes upon that canary-yellow tunic worn by Solo‘s Lando Calrissian (i.e., Donald Glover) was that it’s…what, too flowery? Too lemon custard? Too Cliff Gorman from The Boys In the Band? I just don’t hold with dandelion shirts. And if that’s not enough of a dissuader, yellow Lando is way too close to William Shatner‘s yellow-mustard pullover that he wore during the first couple of Star Trek seasons. Even if you like the idea of Lando Calrissian channelling Paul Lynde on The Hollywood Squares, this kind of starship uniform was launched by Shatner and Gene Roddenberry. You can’t cross-pollinate between the Stars Wars and Star Trek universes! It’s just not done.

Someone who’s seen Bradley Cooper‘s A Star is Born has told a friend that during the first part of the film “Lady Gaga’s rather plain, un-glamorous features work incredibly well for the mission statement of the title. You see her transform within the movie.  She’s molded, manufactured and launched into a splashy goddess, so there’s a degree of My Fair Lady in play.”

The source also confides that Gaga/Germanotta is “playing a performer closer to Sheryl Crowe than Gaga’s own persona”

This photo of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi was taken, I’m guessing, right after the 1931 debuts of James Whale‘s Frankenstein and Tod Browning‘s Dracula, which put both middle-aged men on the map. (Born in 1887, Karloff was 44 when Frankenstein made him a star; Lugosi, born in 1882, was nearly 50 when Dracula premiered.) They were obviously at a formal gathering of some kind, but who wears gray socks with a tuxedo? I’m presuming that Karloff realized as he was dressing earlier that evening that his one lonely pair of black evening socks were being laundered — this in itself tells you his financial ship hadn’t yet come in. Lugosi’s sin is almost as bad — black evening socks that aren’t high enough or held up by leg garters, thereby revealing Lugosi’s bare calf. For men of that era, there were few sartorial failings worse than these.

“There have been four Hollywood films made under the name and/or with the basic story of A Star is Born. The definitive version may be the one starring Judy Garland, directed by George Cukor in 1954; the most reviled version is the one starring Barbra Streisand, made in 1976 and produced by Barbra’s hair dresser-turned-boyfriend Jon Peters.

“In the middle of the New Hollywood 1970s, when American film was supposedly engaged in a mass project of questioning establishment myths, Streisand and Peters embraced Hollywood’s oldest, most institutionalized myth and appropriated it as a way to build a enormous (and enormously un-self-aware) monument to their own lives and their real-life romance.

“The result was both a huge success, and a disaster. It paved the way for Streisand’s future directing career and Peters’ future as a Hollywood mogul, while also branding both with bad reputations — partially thanks to an expose on the production of the movie published by its jilted director.” — from Karina Longworth‘s introduction to episode #21 of “You Must Remember This,” titled “The Birth of Barbra Streisand’s A Star Is Born.”

Wikipedia defines hypogonadal (or hypogonadism) as “diminished functional activity of the gonads — the testes or the ovaries — that may result in diminished sex hormone biosynthesis. In layman’s terms, it is sometimes called interrupted stage-one puberty.”

It’s the term of the moment because of an inflammatory but extremely welcome James Cameron quote, reported earlier today by Indiewire‘s Michael Schneider.

“I’m hoping we’re going to start getting Avenger fatigue,” Cameron said during a 4.22 press event for “AMC Visionaries: James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction,” a new docuseries.

“Not that I don’t love the movies,” Cameron went on. “It’s just, come on, guys, there are other stories to tell besides, you know, hypogonadal males without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process.”

During a recent discussion of Stanley Kubrick‘s Full Metal Jacket “Reverent and free” wrote the following: “To this day Vincent D’Onofrio‘s performance as Pvt. Pyle is oddly unsung. Which is really weird. No one can ignore the character [as] Pyle is the heart of the boot camp section, and it’s one of the most nuanced performances in Kubrick’s filmography, and yet it’s rarely talked about.”

HE response: “D’Onofrio’s Leonard ‘Private Pyle’ Lawrence always struck me as contradictory in a sense. In the very first scene he’s amused by Sergeant Hartmann‘s brutal harassing, which suggests an ironic sense of humor. Obviously a fellow with a thought or two in his head. Everyone else (Joker excluded) is too scared to do anything but obey. But Pyle can’t help himself. After being threatened by Hartmann he tries to repress the smirk, but fails. Obviously bright and perhaps even sophisticated to some extent.

“Unfortunately that character disappears after that first scene. For most of the remainder of the Parris Island section Pyle drops the irreverence and turns into a slow-witted simpleton. He stares. He self-pities (‘Everyone hates me now’). He weeps. He struggles. He repeats himself.

“Then a third Pyle emerges after the middle-of-the-night beating by his fellow trainees. He goes into full-dark zombie mode. In the climactic latrine sequence he speaks in a ridiculously theatrical slowed-down manner, and makes demon faces. And then shoots himself.

“All to say it’s not ‘one of the most nuanced performances in Kubrick’s filmography’ as much as inconsistent and lacking in subtlety. And at war with itself. Pyle being one guy in the opening scene and some kind of intellectually devolved goober for the rest of the film, and then a goober possessed by Satan. I never bought it.”

After eight months of bureaucratic stress, struggle and occasional despair, Tatyana’s green card arrived a couple of days ago. Still no work permit but that’s more or less moot at this stage. The green card means she’s good for a social security card and a California driver’s license. She’s now able to apply for a job commensurate with her experience — a decade of exec-level management in sales, bilingual, brilliant organizer, skilled motivator. Not to mention the blonde hair, beautiful hands, great gams. Tatyana’s life in the U.S. of A. can actually begin now.

Last night I leafed through a 10.27.16 draft of A Star Is Born, written by Will Fetters and director-star Bradley Cooper. I’ll read it cover-to-cover soon, but it struck me as reasonably well written, at times even eloquent. Especially at the very end. And remember the script has since been tweaked by Eric Roth, Irene Mecchi, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson.

If the celebrity buzz has any validity, Cooper will get a big bump as a respected director and Lady Gaga…sorry, Stefani Germanotta will probably be the one to attract laurels for performing. Maybe. What do I know?

One small observation: Gaga/Germanotta has always been a voice first and a flamboyantly glammy presence (heavily made-up, crazy wigs, over-the-top Vegas-y wardrobes) second. For years I could never picture in my head what she actually looked like without all the glammy trimmings.

But recent on-set photos have shown that without all that stuff Germanotta is…what’s the polite way to say this?…a rather plain-featured woman. Not exactly someone who would inspire a “hey, who’s that?” if you saw her on the street. She could be the stressed-out owner of a small osteria in Southern Italy or the owner of a Milan art gallery. Not “unattractive’ but who would call her a knockout or, say, an erotic presence a la Anna Magnani?

Of course if the movie camera falls for her and she can really act then all bets are off, and that may happen…

Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born (Warner Bros., 10.5).

Taking a broader view…

In the 1937 and George Cukor-directed 1954 versions of A Star Is Born, the movie-star drunk’s name was Norman Maine, and the lead female character (played by Janet Gaynor and Judy Garland) was called Esther Blodgett.

In Frank Pierson‘s 1976 version (which also bore the heavy imprimatur of star-exec producer Barbara Streisand and producer Jon Peters), Kris Kristofferson‘s musician drunk was named John Norman Howard. Streisand’s protagonist was naturally renamed Esther Hoffman rather than Blodgett, which is an English-Welsh name.

In Cooper and Fetters’ script the drunk is named Jackson (“Jack”) Maine. Lady Gaga’s character is called Alli Campana. (The last name obviously from the Italian term “campagna” — friend, companion.) The script spells her first name as “Alli” — Wikipedia spells it “Ally.”

Cooper’s Star Is Born is rooted in the country-music realm, and yet in the script I read Mr. Maine ends up in the same Pacific ocean, off the same Malibu coast with the same “I can’t take it any more,” the same “she’ll be better off without me.”

I’ve never been moved by any of the Star Is Born films, going back to the 1937 William Wellman version. With all due compassion my reaction has always been (a) “drunks are a drag…do I really have to hang with this tedious fellow?” and (b) “Do us all a favor and commit suicide already…get it over with.”

I’m not talking about a lack of compassion for people with actual addictions, but an inability to tolerate characters who drive audiences to lethargy and despair with their predictability and repetition, the same inability to get past their Big Damn Problem.

14 months ago I wrote that one good thing came out of Francis Coppola‘s The Cotton Club, and that was Michael Daly‘s “The Making of The Cotton Club,” a New York magazine article that ran 22 pages including art (pgs. 41 thru 63) and hit the stands on 5.7.84.

I described it as “one of the most engrossing accounts of a troubled production I’ve ever read, and which still is. Dazzle and delusion, abrasive relationships, murder, tap dancing, pussy, cocaine, flim-flam, double talk, financial chicanery and Melissa Prophet. Excellent reporting, amusing, believable, tightly composed…pure dessert.”

This morning I happened to read another great making-of-a-disaster article called “My Battles With Jon and Barbra,” a blow-by-blow account of the making of the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, written in a state of seething anger by director Frank Pierson and as delicious in its own way as Daly’s article.

Pierson, who passed in 2012, was arguably a better screenwriter (Cool Hand Luke, Dog Day Afternoon, Haywire, Presumed Innocent, Mad Men) than a director, but he certainly knew the realm.

I found Pierson’s piece on the Barbara [Streisand] Archives website. Launched in ’03, it’s been written, designed, created and maintained all along by Matt Howe of Washington, D.C.

Howe’s intro: “This is the infamous article, written by the director of A Star is Born and published shortly before the film had its premiere. Streisand and Jon Peters begged Pierson not to hurt their film by publishing it. The article was a betrayal to Streisand — a public airing of behind-the-scenes battles that, traditionally, were always kept private between director and star. It is included here so readers can understand why Streisand is so private and wary of the press.

“A different edit of the piece also ran in the November 15, 1976 issue of New York magazine. I’ve incorporated several of the excised sentences here, as well as scans of some of the photos that appeared in that magazine.

“In 1983, Barbra told journalist Geraldo Rivera: “Pierson’s article was so immoral, so unethical, so unprofessional, so undignified, with no integrity, totally dishonest, injurious. If anyone believes it, without examining who that person is, to try to put a black cloud over a piece of work before it’s even released: that’s the most important indication of who that person was.”

Karina Longworth‘s take on the Star Is Born debacle, “You Must Remember This,” episode #21, posted on 11.4.14.

Again, the article itself.

Last fall I wrote that the next great Hollywood expose or tell-all could or should be called “Super-Vomit: How Hollywood Infantiles (i.e., Devotees of Comic Books and Video Games) Degraded Theatrical and All But Ruined The Greatest Modern Art Form.”

Not filmed dramas per se but the stand-alone, non-sequelized, franchise-resistant form of dramatic endeavor that used to be Hollywood’s bread-and-butter when theatres showed movies of substance (1920 to 2015). This kind of thing hasn’t completely disappeared from theatres, but it nearly has. Streaming and cable are where the goods are now, and half the time you’re talking long-form serials.

Otherwise a form of dramatic story-telling that has existed since the time of the Greeks — a tale told in one sitting, three acts delivered within 100 to 160 minutes and that’s all she wrote — is showing signs of serious theatrical erosion and may even be extinguished down the road. What does Kenneth Lonergan have to say about all this? Oh, Manchester By The Sea, how we loved ya, how we loved ya…your brevity, discipline, dramatic choices, shape.

Ben Fritz‘s “The Big Picture” is said to be the best intelligent summary of this evolutionary process, but I also understand it’s more of a historical analysis thing. I’d like to read a you-are-there, episode-by-episode, movie-by-movie, beat-for-beat saga of how it actually happened over the last 15 years or less. As I wrote yesterday, how the apes (“suits” and ticket buyers alike) decided that theatres are CG funhouses and that smarthouse, soul-stirring flicks are for streaming, and how the twain would never again meet.

What I’m imagining is something written in the tradition of David McClintick‘s “Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street,” Stephen Bach‘s “Final Cut: Dreams and Disasters in the Making of Heaven’s Gate,” or Mark Harris‘s “Pictures at a Revolution.”