Over and over you hear that African Americans aren’t all that familiar with Sen. Bernie Sanders, and that they feel a natural kinship with Hillary Clinton because she’s associated with the liberal largesse of her husband’s administration. Nobody wants to say that “aren’t all that familiar with” is code for (a) lazy, incurious, low-information attitudes and (b) a brilliant presumption that despite his having gotten arrested for demonstrating for civil rights in the mid ’60s, a U.S. Senator from a mostly all-white state (i.e., Vermont) can’t be trusted to understand or respond to the concerns of black voters. Harry Belafonte‘s Bernie endorsement is fine, but the South Carolina black vote is hugely in Hillary’s favor, to go by the polls. Related: A 2.10 column by N.Y. Times columnist Charles Blow called “Stop Bernie-splaining to Black Voters.”

Tonight’s Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival event is a group interview with the five Oscar nominees for Best Director — Room‘s Lenny Abrahamson, The Revenant‘s Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Spotlight‘s Tom McCarthy, The Big Short‘s Adam McKay and Mad Max: Fury Road‘s George Miller. The moderator is Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg, who will conclude with a presentation of five Outstanding Director of the Year awards.

The Big Question is whether or not Feinberg will subject the audience to a 2 & 1/2 hour ordeal like he did last year (described in a 2.5.15 HE piece called “Existential Ordeal, Man”), or whether he’ll keep it to a more reasonable 100 minutes. I realize that the temptation is to go longer. I realize that last weekend’s DGA theatre event (same deal, same directors minus Abrahamson with the addition of Ridley Scott) lasted for 2 hours and 40 minutes. But I’m begging Feinberg anyway. End it before people start coughing and taking bathroom breaks. Please.

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I had to go to Bakersfield yesterday — a 2 1/2 hour drive from Santa Barbara. This was followed by an agonizing four-hour drive down to Los Angeles, thanks to a Caltrans crew blocking two lanes in the vicinity of Gorman — your California state taxes at work. Hundreds upon hundreds of vehicles inching along for two full hours…crawling along at 2 or 3 mph. I was studying Google Maps for a way out of this torture, and there was — a small winding road that I could have taken that might have hastened things. But I didn’t have the boldness of spirit to risk it. So I sat there on Interstate 5 with all the other sheep…baahhh! I took care of some business in WeHo and then turned right around and drove back to Santa Barbara around 8 pm — a 100-minute journey. Eight hours on the road, dawn to 10 pm.

Yes, I’m aware that Jennifer Aniston‘s notorious Emirates airlines ad is four months old, but I hadn’t seen it until it aired this morning on MSNBC. A few minutes later Bernie Sanders‘ latest ad was shown on Morning Joe. I’m not saying Hillary Clinton doesn’t support or believe in Sanders’ vision, but which ad do you believe more closely reflects Hillary’s core values?

“I think the idea we should be voting for Hillary Clinton, as women, comes from the feminist value of supporting other women at all opportunities. I agree with that, and I’m a feminist, but I don’t think it’s feminist to vote for Hillary just because she’s a woman, if I don’t agree with her policies more than the other candidates. The right thing to do is elect the President who will do the most to make the United States better for its people, and I think that’s Bernie Sanders.” — GenY/Millenial Sara Johnson speaking to Uproxx contributor Pheonix Tso. Posted earlier today, the article is called “Some Insight Into Why Young Women Support Bernie Sanders.”

An HE state-of-the-race riff titled “Old Academy Farts, As Always, Are Calling The Shots,” posted on 1.4.15: “At this point, everyone wants to know which film is going to win Best Picture,” MCN’s David Poland has written. “Anyone who tells you they know the answer is pulling their own chain. [But] it is looking more and more like Boyhood vs. Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything with the latter two splitting, allowing Boyhood to win.

“Birdman is divisive, especially amongst older voters,” Poland wrote. “There are a number of reasons why Selma is unlikely to win and two years in a row of ‘historical dramas focused on race’ is amongst them, whether we like it or not. Grand Budapest Hotel is a bit too light and magical and Whiplash is too thin, however entertaining. [And] Nightcrawler is just too brutal to win.”

Concurrent HE comment: “I’m still waiting for a definitive sign that Boyhood is something more than a critics’ film, or more precisely a Steve Pond film. I’m not saying it isn’t that. Richard Linklater‘s Best Director campaign may indeed result in a win, but somebody needs to point out the solid indicators that say Boyhood‘s popularity is as deep and wide as the Jordan river. As much as I like and truly respect that film, I’m honestly questioning — unsure of — its strength amongst the fartists.”

Initially posted on 12.24.10: I was eleven or twelve when I jettisoned the idea that I’d have to pay for my sins in the afterlife. But every time I watch Bryan Desmond Hurst‘s A Christmas Carol, and particularly Michael Hordern‘s big Act One scene as Jacob Marley’s ghost, the concept of suffering in death for one’s lack of kindness, charity and compassion in life, childish as it seems, is revived. Hordern’s performance half-scares and half-transforms, if only for the moment.

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Nearly every aggressively attuned, self-respecting film critic, it seems, is hating on Ben Stiller‘s Zoolander 2. And yet the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings are poor but not abysmal — at least they’re in the double digits (26 and 42% respectively). And here I am up in Santa Barbara, clueless (having missed last night’s Zoolander 2 all-media in Los Angeles) and a bit anxious and feeling left out. Semi-positive reviews have come from N.Y. Daily News critic Gersh Kuntzman, Us Weekly‘s Mara Reinstein and Time Out‘s Kate Lloyd. I might drive down to L.A. today to take care of some things; maybe that’ll help.

In a post-New Hampshire primary forum on Politico, Bill Scher (senior writer at the Campaign for America’s Future, co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show “The DMZ,” a contributing editor at Politico magazine) is saying “there’s no question that Hillary Clinton has lost the white left of the Democratic Party to Bernie Sanders.

The question that remains is: How far left has the entire party moved, outside of the lily-white states of Iowa and New Hampshire?

“The exit polls show that nearly 70 percent of the Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic electorates self-identified as ‘liberal,’ a jump of more than 10 points in each state since 2008. In the next caucus state, Nevada, liberals made up only 45 percent of the Democratic pool in 2008. That’s more fertile territory for Clinton, but will that number rise as well? And if so, does it inevitably buoy Bernie? Or can Hillary still make the case for her progressive bona fides to a more racially diverse electorate less familiar with Sanders?

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Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie, a Funny or Die presentation with Johnny Depp as Trump and costarring Alf, Alfred Molina, Jack McBrayer, Michaela Watkins, Stephen Merchant and Patton Oswalt, popped today. Obviously satire but not really; based on Trump’s own book; directed by Ron Howard.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes didn’t Freudian slip, didn’t gaffe — he simply allowed the sand in Sanders to become a sandwich. Maybe he was hungry at that moment. It was nothing, but yesterday in some people’s mind it was a “thing.”