Within Oscar-Conversation Circles, “Wicked” Has Died

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Has anyone noticed? Nobody talks about it. The hate conversations are about Emilia Perez and The Brutalist, of course, and the love conversations are about Anora, Conclave and A Complete Unknown, and the “yeah, liked it, really good” conversations are about A Real Pain and I’m Still Here and maybe September 5. But nobody even mentions Wicked. It’s “there” but nobody’s paying attention. It’s totally fallen by the wayside. Not happening. Unless, that is, Ariana Grande wins for Best Supporting Actress. Which is possible.

Slinky Side-Stepper

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It was one thing to listen to Caroline Kennedy’s recollection of the behavior of young Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “I watched his younger brothers and cousins follow him down the path of drug addiction…his basement, his garage, his dorm room were always the center of the action”…that was one thing. But the remainder of her sentence really put a chill into my system: “…where drugs were available and he enjoying showing off how he put baby chickens and mice into a blender, to feed to his hawks.”

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Day Late, Dollar Short

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“Anyone who posts a video of herself crying and posts it to the internet should be disregarded and ignored automatically” — agreed.

I didn’t know what to do or say when Selena Gomez‘s weeping video hit a couple of days ago (i,e, sometime on Monday), although I did know right away that she/it pushed too way hard.

Plus it struck me as a tad ungenuine for an actress who “grew up speaking Spanish but lost her fluency around the same time she began her Hollywood career as a kid“, and was therefore obliged to “spend months relearning the language for her Emilia Perez role as the trophy wife of a Mexican cartel boss.”

Space-Time Continuum

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42 and 1/2 years ago I interviewed this famous, emotionally emphatic 50 year-old woman for an Us magazine interview to promote E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. She was 7 years old at the time, and now she’s on the fucking cover of AARP’s print publication.

I feel like I’m on a time toboggan, and it’s going faster and faster.

Out Of Their Heads

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Industry friendo: “So why is it so hard to find any AMPAS members, whom I speak with from time to time. who don’t love Emilia Perez? Riddle me that, big boy.”

HE to industry friendo: “I don’t want to sound cruel, but the evidence (including your own testimony) indicates that they’re simply lacking in taste, or the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. I wouldn’t want to call them rubes, but that’s what they more or less seem to be.  

“This is proven by the fact that even in 2025, they’re STILL in thrall to kneejerk wokeism. I sympathize with wanting to tell Trump to shove it, but they’re slitting the Academy’s (and indirectly Hollywood’s) own throat by celebrating a far-fetched, bordering-on-ludicrous, trans-identity musical that 75% of the Joe and Jane Popcorn RT community doesn’t care for very much, and which is pretty much hated in Mexico.  

“To repeat an old phrase, they’re committing cultural suicide.  This is why so many popcorn megaplexers think Academy members have lost their minds. On a raft and heading for Niagara Falls…

“The Academy has to wake up, smell the coffee and stop giving Oscars to woke instructionals that celebrate this or that identity cause. Joe and Jane have have had it up to here with this crap. Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave…step back from the insanity brink and embrace the crafty good stuff that is blessedly free of ideology. Okay, two out of three.”

Ready Or Not, Here We Go Again

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I felt a certain degree of excitement about the original Richard Donner Superman reboot (‘78) and even the gradually declining early ‘80s sequels. And I’ll admit to feeling a vague revival of this when Bryan Singer‘s Superman Returns came along in ‘06.

But Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel shat the bed, I felt — it was covered in gloom sauce, and left me with a splitting headache. Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (‘16) really put a nail in it.

And now James Gunn has directed and delivered still another one, God in heaven, and is calling it just plain old Superman. I suppose we should all be thankful that David Corenswet‘s Clark Kent / Supie hasn’t been re-imagined as trans. (Corenswet, 31, is straight and married.)

Where does Gunn get the chutzpah to drag out Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) yet again? Where is the shame? How can Gunn glance at himself in the bathroom mirror?

For What It’s Worth, HE Empathizes With Team Baldoni

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During the scriptwriting or script-polishing phase of It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni really went to town — emotionally, therapeutically, performance-wise — as he kissed Blake Lively‘s ass in a phone message. 2 am, six minutes and 49 seconds — “I am so sorry…sorry that you went through what you went though…you’re the secret sauce.”