The Twitter embargo on Steven Spielberg‘s The Post lifts on Monday, 11.27, at 9 pm Pacific; reviews can’t appear until Wednesday, 12.6 at 6 am Pacific. I can’t describe or even briskly summarize the discussions among critics so far, but the conversations next week will be lively, I can tell you. There’s a big evening screening happening on Monday, 11.27 at the DGA, complete with Spielberg and his illustrious cast attending a post-viewing discussion

Paul Schrader engineered a stunning comeback with First Reformed, which tallied a Rotten Tomato score of 95%. It delivered the kind of lean, flinty, straight-faced realism that hadn’t been seen from Schrader since….what, Light Sleeper? Or should I say Hardcore (’90)? This photo of Schrader, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig was recently taken at Minetta Tavern, and then posted on Facebook.

Last night Hollywood Elsewhere hopped on the beast and drove over to the Hollywood Woman’s Club (1749 No. La Brea) for another viewing of Svetlana Cvetko‘s Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber, which is angling for a Best Short Subject Documentary Oscar nomination. The event was well attended. Following the screening Cvetko and Hollywood historian and researcher Marc Wanamaker talked about Weber, a powerful, highly influential director-writer in her day.

Easily the industry’s most prolific filmmaker in the teens and 20s, Weber owned and operated her own studio beginning in 1917. She lost her mojo in the late 20s, largely out of a refusal to cater to prevailing tastes in shallow escapist fare. Shelley Stamp‘s “Lois Weber in Early Hollywood” is the definitive biography.

The dominant theme of the ’17 award season has clearly been the struggles of tough, dynamic women marching to their own beat, so Cvetko’s short fits right into this.

Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber director Svetlana Cvetko, Bison Archives’ Marc Wanamker during last night’s post-screening discussion at the Hollywood Woman’s Club.

"Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber" Trailer from Svetlana Cvetko on Vimeo.

There was a fair amount of excitement about Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here, a violent character study with Joaquin Phoenix, at the end of last May’s Cannes Film Festival. Phoenix won the fest award for Best Actor; Ramsay won for Best Screenplay. It would have made for a more interesting ’17 award season if Amazon Studios had decided to platform it next month in New York and Los Angeles, but nope. It pops limited on 2.23.18, or a little more than a week before the 2018 Oscar telecast.

It would be great if Amazon could offer a couple of screenings sometime in December, allowing those who missed the Cannes debut a chance to catch up.

For as long as I can recall the Cannes Film Festival began on Wednesday morning, and ended 12 days later with the big award ceremony on Sunday evening. Well, no longer. It was announced this morning that the 71st Festival du Cannes will begin Tuesday, 5.8.18, and end with the big awards ceremony on Saturday, 5.19.18. The change, according to festival president Pierre Lescure, “will increase [the] prestige of the award ceremony” — Saturday night is more prestigious than Sunday night? — “while at the same time giving the closing film better exposure.” HE readers are obviously free to sort that one out for themselves. The bottom line is that the annual journalist gathering at La Pizza will now happen on the evening of Monday, 5.7.18.

La Pizza table #1 (clockwise from left): Guardian/Vanity Fair critic & contributor Jordan Hoffman, Indiewire critic David Ehrlich, Variety critic Owen Gleiberman, Indiewire editor/columnist Anne Thompson (half-obscured), First Showing‘s Alex Billington, Film Society of Lincoln Center deputy director Eugene Hernandez, critic Tomris Laffly (Film Journal, Time Out New York, Vulture), [standing] TheWrap‘s Ben Croal, Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan (left profile, half obscured), New York/Vulture‘s Jada Yuan, Screen Daily‘s Tim Grierson, Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday, Vanity Fair‘s Rebeca Keegan.

For once I completely agree with Variety‘s KrisTapley about something, or more precisely the leading Best Actress Oscar contenders — The Shape of Water‘s Sally Hawkins, Frances McDormand‘s angry mom in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, I, Tonya‘s Margot Robbie, Lady Bird‘s brilliant Saoirse Ronan and The Post‘s Meryl Streep.

I haven’t even seen The Post yet (catching it this afternoon) but I really don’t see this lineup changing between now and nomination day in January. Tell me who, if anyone, can break in and dislodge one of these five.

If you asked me to pick a dark horse contender who really deserves a nomination regardless of the market odds, I would say Diane Kruger‘s lacerating turn in Fatih Akin‘s In the Fade. But it’ll never happen.

To have gone from being led by arguably the finest, most forward-thinking U.S. President in decades to arguably the absolute worst animal to hold public office in the history of democracy is just…shattering, devastating, soul-crushing. Variety‘s Scott Tobias: “Add…the splash of cold water on Election Night and The Final Year feels like the end of a story no one intended to tell. With the U.S. backing out of the Paris climate deal, decimating the State Department, and, most recently, reintroducing its trade embargo against Cuba, President Trump has leveled all those tough negotiations like a kid kicking down a sand castle. Try as it might, the film can’t spin its way out of despair.”

HE favorite Call Me By Your Name has scored six 2017 Spirit Award nominations, compared to five for Get Out and Good Time and four for Lady Bird and The Rider. If you know anything about Spirit Award-voting tendencies, the six noms — Best Feature, Best Director (Luca Guadagnino), Best Editing (Walter Fasano), Best Male Lead (Timothee Chalamet), Best Supporting Male (Armie Hammer) and Best Cinematography (Sayombhu Mukdeeprom) — make CMBYN (a) an odds-on favorite to take the Best Feature Spirit trophy and (b) locks it down as a major Oscar nomination threat on these fronts, particularly Best Picture.

Over the last three years, the Spirit Award Best Feature prize and the Best Picture Oscar have been won by the same film — Moonlight, Spotlight and Birdman. It’s happened, in fact, in five out of the past six years, starting with 2011’s The Artist. The Spirits didn’t go for Argo in 2012, but they went for 12 Years a Slave in ’13 followed by Birdman, Spotlight and Moonlight.

All of those Gurus and Gold Derby group-thinkers who’ve been listing Call Me By Your Name in sixth or seventh place on their roster of most likely Best Pic contenders are now twirling around and saying to themselves, “Uh-oh…hamma hamma hamma…I’d better recalculate my predictions and upgrade Luca’s film to at least second or third place or people will think I’m out of step with the culture!” Trust me, they are literally muttering this to themselves right now.

I’ve been saying that while 2016 Best Picture Oscar for Moonlight was largely about making up for “Oscars So White”, 2017 is, performance-wise and possibly otherwise, about the Year of the Ballsy, Go-For-It Independent Woman — Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan‘s Lady Bird triumph, Meryl Streep‘s Katharine Graham performance in The Post, Frances McDormand‘s lead perf in Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, Sally Hawkins as a fantasy-driven cleaning woman in The Shape of Water, Margot Robbie in I, Tonya.

And I mean especially in the current climate of women pushing back everywhere against workplace sexual harassment. It all fits together.

This told me that the most likely recipient of this cultural moment might be Lady Bird, and by that I mean guaranteed Oscar noms for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress and so on. That still seems likely, but before this morning I was half-presuming that Lady Bird might take more Spirit Award noms that any other film. But that hasn’t happened. Lady Bird has been nominated for Best Feature, Best Screenplay (Gerwig), Best Actress (Ronan) and one other.

Now this — this — is first-degree sexual harassment…creepy, leering, odious, manipulative. And just like that, the soothing, intellectually intriguing Charlie Rose interview — a staple of thinking people’s TV-watching habits for the last 26 years — is gone, out the window, poof.

Which isn’t to lament in any way, shape or form the punishment and pushback that Rose is now receiving (he’s just been whacked by CBS), but simply to say “too bad…really a shame.”

Because the PBS Charlie Rose show…well, who knows but how can that continue in this climate? Update: PBS has just cancelled the PBS Charlie Rose hour.

Next to the Washington Post‘s Charlie Rose saga, the Al Franken thing (aggressive kissing during USO sketch rehearsal, sophomoric pretend-boob-grabbing for a photo, alleged ass-fondling at Minnesota state fair) pales by comparison. Rose and Franken may share aspects of a certain older-male-privelege psychology, but 36 former SNL women who worked with Franken in the ’80s have posted a letter stating that “not one of us ever experienced any inappropriate behavior; and mention our sincere appreciation that [Franken] treated each of us with the utmost respect and regard.” Something tells me a similar congregation isn’t going to write a letter supporting Rose.

The default definition of net neutrality is more or less “a regulatory determination to protect the even-steven, no-special-priveleges, common-carrier nature of the internet. No big-money interests and corresponding URLs enhancing their position with the public via high-throttle delivery speeds.”

Two and 2/3 years ago Tom Wheeler‘s Federal Communications Commission ruled in favor of net neutrality. The rule took effect on 6.12.15. Now Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican flunky who was confirmed only a few weeks ago, has announced an intention to repeal net neutrality at its 12.14.17 meeting. He’s basically shilling for the rich guys, of course. Strong legal challenges will ensue.

Written in May 2014 by N.Y. Times media savant David Carr: “Why should you, as someone who just wants to use the web to surf or watch programming, care whether companies like Netflix and Hulu have to pay companies like Comcast and Verizon to ensure smooth feeds? Well, even though consumers won’t be charged directly for the faster service, we all know where those fee increases will end up landing.”

This MSNBC video essay about Donald Trump‘s involvement with Russia and vice versa last 14 minutes. That’s an awfully long viewing investment by today’s standards. I’m aware that many summations of Trump-Russia collusion and complicity have been posted. But to my eyes and ears, this one’s especially arresting.

Tapping this out from a Miami Beach Starbucks, NE corner of Washington Ave. and 12th Street. American flight 1147 to Los Angeles leaves around 9 pm this evening, arrives at midnight. Drove out of Key West this morning at 10:30 am, two pit stops (one for coffee, another to visit the original African Queen scow, which is moored in Key Largo), arrived in Miami Beach around 3 pm. We parked near 728 Ocean Blvd. to visit the remnants of the Tony Montana chainsaw motel, just south of 17th Street — it’s been converted into a CVS.

Stiles Hotel, Collins Ave., South Beach.

Kent Hotel, 1131 Collins, Ave., South Beach.

Carniverous tarpon and a grouper waiting for scraps of butchered fish to be tossed into the harbor water.

The first N.Y. and L.A. screenings of Steven Spielberg‘s The Post happened yesterday. Press viewers are embargoed on all platforms until further notice, but the second-hand buzz is encouraging.

“We’re not allowed to say it’s good,” quipped a New York guy. “Perfect Spielberg in top form,” said another, “and Meryl [Streep] dazzles. Spielberg will definitely be back in the running for Best Director.” A person who attended the NYC screening said it’s “no Spotlight” although he thinks it will receive a Best Picture nom regardless. “Spotlight was an All the President’s Men imprint — this isn’t,” says another.

I personally admire the speed with which The Post was put together. Spielberg joined the project last March, and filming began on 5.30.17. Not that The Post needs any slack or leeway, but it’s almost as if it needs to be graded differently than a normal Spielberg flick as he was following a Clint Eastwood timetable. HE is looking forward to seeing it very soon.