Hollywood Elsewhere is attending a reception this evening for Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson‘s The Ivory Game, a respected Netflix doc about the ongoing assault on African elephants and their possible extinction. It’s on the Academy’s doc shortlist and is naturally hoping to become one of the five nominees.

A persistent view remains that Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America will snag the Oscar, but getting nominated adds cred and is no small accomplishment.

I was reminded last week that The Ivory Game is even more timely now that China has put an official timeline on ending sale of ivory. For decades China has been the biggest market for ivory, which is principally harvested with the killing of elephants and chopping off their tusks, but last week it announced a plan to phase out all ivory processing and trade by the end of 2017.

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It was during the 1920s that the below-glimpsed Parisians and tourists sat and dined, sipped and strolled, lived and quarrelled. Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.

The element that you can’t help but respect in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (HBO, 1.7) is the honesty with which it regards the humiliations of aging and creeping illness as suffered by Debbie. She’s a trooper and a toughie, you bet, but the hill keeps getting steeper and thornier, and your heart goes out. Thank God for the fine comic relief of Carrie’s perspective, which includes relentless servings of candor.

The Terrence Malick flick formerly known as Weightless (aka Wait List) is now being called Song to Song — terrific. Broad Green Pictures has announced a 3.7.17 release, or roughly two months hence. And they don’t have a trailer to show, much less a one-sheet?

Boilerplate: “In this modern love story set against the Austin music scene, two entangled couples — struggling songwriters Faye (Rooney Mara) and BV (Ryan Gosling), and music mogul Cook (Michael Fassbender) and the waitress whom he ensnares (Natalie Portman) — chase success through a rock ‘n’ roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.”

You never know which actors will make the final cut in a Malick film, but Song to Song‘s Wiki page lists the following cast members apart from Gosling, Mara, Fassbender and Portman: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Haley Bennett, Val Kilmer, Benicio del Toro, Clifton Collins Jr., Angela Bettis, Holly Hunter.

Principal photography began on this Austin-based musical drama in September 2012, or four years and three months ago — two months before Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney for the Presidency.

When Song to Song finally opens in February, over five and 1/3 years will have transpired between the earliest filming at the September 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival.

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Reactions to Lionsgate’s forthcoming Bluray of Nicolas Roeg‘s The Man Who Fell To Earth (1.24): (a) The cover photo of David Bowie looks more than a little porny; (b) Interesting as Roeg’s film is, there’s something pallid and even a bit lifeless about it due to a curious vacancy within Bowie, who almost always seemed to duck and recede when the cameras were rolling — he rarely stepped up to the plate and delivered; and (3) My favorite scene is when a couple of goons break into Buck Henry‘s high-rise and attempt to throw him out the window — the first time Henry not only bounces against the glass but apologizes for this (“I’m sorry!”) — in response to this one of the goons says “don’t worry about it” and then they try again, this time succeeding — as Henry is falling 50 or 60 stories we can hear him breathing and gasping.

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Honestly? If I was asked to pose for a Los Angeles magazine cover story with some other award-season blogaroos and they asked us to pose in pairs, let’s say, and if a colleague came up behind me and gave me a double-arm T-shirt hug like the one Adam Driver is giving Viggo Mortensen here, I would be cool about it but my first thought would be “the fuck?” My second thought would be “okay, I’m getting a warm erotic man-hug here, but does that mean I should tenderly place my right hand over the right arm of my man-hugger?” To me this photo is only a step or two removed from that 1963 shot of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not me. I’ll do an arm-around-the-shoulder hug if I’m posing for a shot with a male friend or one of my sons, but that’s about it.

My eyeballs popped out of their sockets Wile E. Coyote-style (boiinnnggg!) when I took a gander at Scott Feinberg’s final pre-Academy-balloting prediction piece in The Hollywood Reporter, and more specifically when I saw that he regards Warren Beatty‘s Rules Don’t Apply as a longshot for a Best Picture nomination.

Actual Wells to Feinberg email message: “By using the term ‘longshot’ do you mean that potential nomination-wise, Rules Don’t Apply is bound and gagged and tied up inside a burlap bag and buried under 50 tons of soil, sand, gravel and concrete? I’m just trying to clarify what ‘longshot’ means.”

Do the producers of Nocturnal Animals and Patriots Day have reason to be upset at Feinberg for lumping them in with Beatty’s critically lamented Howard Hughes pic? Patriots Day producer to Feinberg: “How could you do this to us, Scott? Did we do something to personally hurt you? If so, we apologize because this is ridiculous. Patriots Day is 10 or 15 times more successful than Rules Don’t Apply. They’re not even in the same league much less the same ballpark. The Watertown shoot-out sequence is a classic. You’ve really hurt our feelings and damaged us in the eyes of the community. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Hollywood Elsewhere is participating in the 1.12 Los Angeles press day for John Lee Hancock and Michael Keaton‘s The Founder (Weinstein Co., 1.17). For the 16th or 17th time: From an ethical, artistic or strategic standpoint, Keaton’s fascinating, neither fish-nor-fowl performance as McDonald’s kingpin Ray Kroc in The Founder is an essential thing. The ’50s period drama refuses to adhere to a black and white moral scheme. It treads a fine edge, allowing you to root for Keaton’s “bad guy” despite reservations while allowing you to conclude that the McDonald brothers were stoppers who didn’t get it. Keaton’s performance never instructs you how to feel or what judgments to arrive at, and therein lies the genius.

Hillary and Bill Clinton have decided to temporarily ignore the memo about Donald Trump being an arrogant, willfully ignorant, authoritarian, short-tempered, climate-destroying orangutan. How else to explain a report by Variety‘s Ted Johnson that they’ve agreed to attend Trump’s swearing in ceremony on Friday, 1.20?

The Clintons are basically saying (a) “as an ex-President, Bill is obliged to attend,” (b) “it will look funny if Hillary doesn’t go with him,” (c) “let’s show respect for the office and our country’s transfer-of-power tradition, if not the man himself,” (d) “hey, maybe Trump won’t be so bad…let’s wait for him to fuck up before going negative” and (e) “at least he said he’s not interested in prosecuting Hillary for her emails!”

The Clintons will reportedly be joined by George W. Bush (and wife Laura) and Jimmy Carter.

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I’ve never seen the original 1945 Michael Curtiz version of Mildred Pierce (’45), mainly because I’ve always sensed a “woman’s picture” vibe. This despite Joan Crawford‘s tough-as-nails lead performance having won a Best Actress Oscar. I’ve always felt a bit guilty about this, and so next month I’ll probably sit down with the new Criterion Bluray (4K digital restoration, 2.21.17).

I did, however, watch HBO’s five-part Mildred Pierce miniseries, which aired in 2011 and costarred Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce, Evan Rachel Wood, Mare Winningham and James LeGros. I didn’t drop to my knees but I was largely intrigued by this effort. I was initially puzzled about the absence of a murder plot, but then I read that the ’45 version added this.

When Megan Kelly moves over to NBC News later this year, she will of course be surrounded with more liberal-minded colleagues than she’s currently used to. This means that sooner or later, and especially given the natural human impulse to acclimate and blend in to some extent, Kelly will be modifying her view that Jesus of Nazareth was “white,” which she declared on-air about three years ago.

Hollywood Elsewhere applauds Kelly’s move to bail on Fox News — a strategic chess move that will bestow a more middle-groundish profile than if she were to remain with Fox, which will probably become an even more toxic hotbed of disinformation once the Trump regime takes over on 1.20.

Soon-to-be NBC News anchor and correspondent Megyn Kelly.

Kelly reportedly could’ve earned $20 million annually if she’d stayed with the Murdoch-owned network, so her motive in accepting a $15 million-per-year NBC deal was obviously not first and foremost financial.

She’ll deny it for the rest of her life, of course, but Kelly obviously wanted to be cleansed, image-wise, of the stink of Fox News, not just because of its reputation for spreading highly suspect if not blatantly deceptive rightwing talking points but because of the after-aroma of the Roger Ailes era and a once-prevalent climate of sexual harassment, which Kelly herself had to grapple with.

Kelly is a conservative but she wants to be regarded solely as a super-smart anchor, reporter and interviewer, period, and not the top star of a notoriously toxic news network that has been cynically misinforming elderly white viewers and rural dumbshits for a long, long time.

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My takeaway from this morning’s American Cinema Editors (ACE) nominations is that David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water (and to a slightly lesser extent Mel Gibson‘s Hacksaw Ridge) have gotten a Best Picture Oscar boost.

An ACE nomination is supposed to indicate industry preferences on the Best Picture front, right? So the intrigue is not about three well-established Best Picture hotties — La La Land, Manchester By The Sea, Moonlight — receiving Best Edited Feature Film (Drama) noms as much as the Mackenzie and Gibson being among the five.

The blogaroos, remember, have been downplaying Hell or High Water to some extent. Most of the Gold Derby experts have been slotting HOHW in sixth or seventh place on their Best Picture rankings, and a 1.3.17 Gurus of Gold chart has HOHW listed in eleventh place. So basically we’re looking at a Hell or High Water upgrade and a moderate blogaroos fail, especially when it comes to the Gurus.

The 67th annual ACE Awards will happen on Friday, 1.27.

Ballots will be mailed to ACE members on on Friday, 1.6. The voting concludes on 1.17. What’s gonna change between now and then? Nothing.

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