There’s an encased-in-cement contingent out there that insists on seeing La La Land — a love story that’s mostly about struggle, stress, career angst and romantic dreams not coming true — as some kind of slightly-too-frothy diversion. I’ve been repeatedly explaining that it’s hardly that at all. There’s exactly one light moment at the very beginning, and exactly two swoony romantic scenes — the rest is about what a bitch it is to make your career and love life work out. And yet the “too light” crowd refuses to back off.

Here‘s one of them — a member of the Academy’s publicist branch who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg:

Author and former Chicago Tribune movie guy Mark Caro is back with his annual Oscar quiz, once again in the N.Y. Times. “I tried to make it a bit less tough or obscure,” he notes, “but that’s eye-of-the-beholder stuff.” Reference the Oscar.go.com nominees list as you’re answering the toughies.

Opener: If Moonlight‘s Barry Jenkins wins for Best Director (which he won’t), he will not become the second African-American winner in that category.

I’ve been ixnayed regarding a request to attend Friday’s Hidden Figures party at Spago, but I’ll share this all the same — a note from a Manhattan guy who gets around: “I’ve spoken with several Oscar voters in New York who voted for Hidden Figures in the Best Picture category. They could give a shit about a love letter to Los Angeles. They live here. I’m calling this as a huge upset possibility. The frontrunner is always vulnerable and HF is about something. Plus it’s a story no one knew.”

If Hidden Figures is surging (and I’m not disputing this), it’s a Hubert Humphrey surge — too little and too late. Or too regional.

Reading Robbie Collin‘s recent pronouncement that The Lost City of Z (Amazon/Bleecker, 4.14) is an “instant classic” really rankled my ass. It’s a slow, tension-free dirge — a film that inspires thoughts of escape with the first 30 minutes — with a dead-fish lead performance by Charlie Hunnam. Beware of the James Gray cabal! — they live in a different world than you or I.

From my 12.22.16 review: Around the 25-minute mark I was starting to feel concerned about how much longer The Lost City of Z would last. I looked at my watch…Jesus God, almost another two hours!

“I was sitting in a rear-center seat in Alice Tully Hall, and for some wimpish reason I didn’t want to get up and risk stepping on 15 or 16 pairs of feet on the way out so I figured, ‘Stop it…be a man and stick this out…you can do it.’

“I made it to the end but it was brutal, dawg. By the time The Lost City of Z I had concluded that I really, really don’t want to watch another movie with Charlie Hunnam in the lead.

Quick wit, nice guy, open to the alpha, drawing from the well. But I’m not sensing a discerning Olympian sensibility a la Nicolas Ray, Spike Lee, Orson Welles, Samuel Fuller, Sidney Lumet, Charles Burnett or Stanley Kubrick. I’m sensing the mindset of an entertainer — a guy who’s looking to sell tickets, juice the customers, make ’em laugh. A black John Carpenter with a funny bone?

“Denzel Washington’s performance in Fences is big, bold and showy; Casey Affleck’s in Manchester by the Sea is quiet, understated and internal. Affleck had won almost all the awards until SAG chimed in. Washington’s is the kind of acting that the Academy loves to reward — when was the last time an oversized performance lost to a subtler one, or a performance as brilliantly understated as Affleck’s won? I don’t know the answer to that question, because it just doesn’t happen. Subtlety, sad to say, rarely wins acting Oscars.” — from Steve Pond‘s last and final Oscar assessment piece, posted today at 2:12 pm.

Note: I’m not going to personally fork over $20 bills to all comers if Affleck loses — you have to have a Pay Pal account.

I finally took final possession of the forest-green Mini Cooper last night around 7:30 pm. I wanted to drive it off the lot by late afternoon but the dealer needed extra time to work out registration, tags and whatnot, and the process was delayed. Which is why I wound up missing last night’s all-media screening of Get Out, which opens tomorrow night. Jordan Peele‘s horror-comedy is currently polling 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, but something tells me I might have a problem with it. Maybe. I’ll almost certainly have to catch it this weekend, and we’ll see what’s up.

Posted on 1.25.17: “The Sundance Film Festival response to Charlie McDowell‘s The Discovery (Netflix, 3.31) has been fairly dismal. Speaking as a fan of McDowell’s The One I Love, which played here three years ago, I was sorry to find that The Discovery, a dialogue-driven drama about social reactions to a scientific discovery of an afterlife, is a morose, meandering thing that never lifts off the ground. The general atmosphere of dismissal had to be a heartbreaker for McDowell, but there’s also the fact that Discovery costar Rooney Mara, whom McDowell had been in a relationship with since 2010, dumped him late last year.”

If your movie opens a film festival, it’s probably soft or inconsequential on some level – be honest. And it’s probably an even worse omen if your movie closes a film festival. You could actually double that equation if it’s closing South by Southwest, whose attendees are known for bending over backwards to celebrate geek-friendly genre movies as long as they’re seriously geeky where the rubber meets the road. I’m not saying Daniel Espinosa‘s Life is a problem, but you can tell where it’s coming from and feel the oppressive pangs of familiarity.

In a 2.22 interview with N.Y. Times reporter Dave Itzkoff, Real Time‘s Bill Maher reviews the crash-bang-boom that followed last weekend’s interview with Milo Yiannopoulos, a series of blows and exposures that led to Yiannopoulos losing his book deal and resigning from Breitbart News and more or less being banned from Planet Earth.

“What I think people saw [during the Real Time interview] was an emotionally needy Ann Coulter wannabe, trying to make a buck off of the left’s propensity for outrage. But to see him as this monster is a little crazy. You know what he is? He’s the little impish, bratty kid brother. And the liberals are his older teenager sisters who are having a sleepover and he puts a spider in their sleeping bag so he can watch them scream.”

With four days to go before the big night, we’re looking at exactly two Oscar quandaries — (1) will Denzel Washington steal the Best Actor Oscar from Casey Affleck? and (2) which awards won’t be won by Team La La? Excitement levels couldn’t be higher. On top of which Hollywood Elsewhere has been besieged by invites to hot Oscar-week parties. Well, five or six. I won’t be attending tonight’s La La Land dinner thrown by Vanity Fair and Barney’s New York; ditto the VF and Lancome party celebrating VF’s Hollywood Issue. But I’m good for JJ Abrams‘ annual Oscar Wilde bash at Bad Robot on Thursday evening and…uhhm, maybe Friday’s Hidden Figures soiree at Spago. Not to mention the big-tent Spirit Awards on Saturday, an Amazon/Manchester By The Sea viewing and after-party on Oscar night followed by a Lionsgate La La after-party at Soho House. That’s enough, I think.