Hollywood Elsewhere is leaving for the heavily-fortified garrison state known as the Beverly Hilton complex about 65 minutes from now. I’ll be live-blogging the Golden Globe awards starting at 5 pm, or as best I can from a viewing-party cocktail table What are the biggest possible upsets? I would be totally on-the-floor flabbergasted if Wes Anderson‘s Grand Budapest Hotel takes the Best Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical award away from Birdman, which some are suggesting could happen. I don’t expect that Cake‘s Jennifer Aniston will abscond with Julianne Moore‘s Best Actress, Drama award for her performance in Still Alice, but if this happens people will scream and howl and break champagne glasses. Selma‘s fate is, of course, already set in stone as far as the Oscar nominations are concerned, but if it wins the Best Motion Picture, Drama award tonight (which I believe is unlikely) and if it lucks out with a Best Picture Oscar nomination next Thursday morning (and the signs are not good for that either), people will start saying that Selma‘s shadow-over-LBJ stigma (i.e., having screwed the 36th President out of his proudest accomplishment in the eyes of impressionable none-too-brights who wouldn’t open a history book or consult a Wikipedia summary if their lives depended on it) has been lifted.

The source of HE’s strength has always been the quality of the eyeballs (industry, media, ubers, early adopters) and not the general across-the-board numbers. But of course that’s all the ad-agency crunchers pay attention to and so they give HE arguments about this from time to time in terms of ad rates. It’s been suggested that I should dumb things down a little bit in order to punch up the page views. One of my proudest distinctions is having never once run one of those number-driven stories in which the headline says “10 Movies That You Probably Won’t Want To See in 2015” or something along those lines, so I guess I could start, you know, running those two or three times a week. If Hitfix can run these kind of stories why can’t I? I’m kidding. Seriously, what can I do to appeal to the Walmart-level ADD crowd?

Poor Anita Ekberg reportedly had a rough financial time during her last few years, and now she’s passed at age 83. Kindness and respect. But honestly? If it hadn’t been for that thigh-deep wading scene at Rome’s Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini‘s La Dolce Vita (’60) her life probably would have been a bit more difficult as almost everything else she acted in was either negligible or embarassing. Ekberg enjoyed a four or five-year buildup to this career-peak moment, landing a Hollywood contract when she was 23 or 24 and snagging parts in Blood Alley (’55), Artists and Models (’55), Hollywood or Bust (’56) and War and Peace (’56). Post-La Dolce Vita she costarred in Boccaccio ’70 (’62) and then almost got Ursula Andress‘s role in Dr. No. Next she did the dispensible Rat Pack comedy 4 for Texas, and then gradually descended into European exploitation. Her last two noteworthy films were Fellini’s I Clowns (’72), and Intervista (’87) — she and Marcello Mastroianni played themselves in the latter.

Point #1: A majority of U.S. publications have decided against re-publishing the satiric illustration of Prophet Muhammad that led to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and the reason for this timidity was indicated by today’s attack upon Hamburger Morgenpost, a tabloid daily in Hamburg that ran it. Honestly? I wouldn’t have if I was an editor of a daily or weekly dead-tree publication. Why taunt the nutters? R. Crumb‘s half-ass, kinda-sorta-kidding solidarity with fellow cartoonists illustration is probably more reflective of what most editors are thinking. Point #2: I hate the way Amurricans always manage to mispronounce the French language in little ways. It’s not Charlie as in Charlie Kaufman and it’s not Hebdo as in hedge row — it’s SharLEE HebDOH.

Last night on Real Time with Bill Maher Jay Leno told Democratic strategist Paul Begala that he’s feeling all kinds of fire and energy from Elizabeth Warren and almost none of that from Hillary Clinton. And then today chief Washington Post correspondent Dan Balz reported that when a small group of Democrats, Republicans and Independents discussed the political landscape last Thursday night in Aurora, Colorado, the only person they really liked across the board was Warren.

Balz writes that the focus group was “dismissive, sometimes harshly” in their assessments of former Florida governor Jeb Bush and was “chilly” about Clinton.

The group was basically uninterested and resistant, in short, to the idea of Bush vs. Clinton again and the general return of their dynasties.

“[But] when Warren was introduced into the conversation, however, many of those around the table, regardless of party affiliation, responded positively,” Balz reports. “To this group, who spoke in stark terms throughout the evening about the economic challenges of working Americans, Warren has struck a chord.

“Quick impressions voiced about [Warren] were highly positive: ‘Passionate.’ ‘Smart.’ ‘Sincere.’ ‘Knowledgeable.’ ‘Intelligent.’ ‘Capable.’ One person said ‘questionable.’ That was as close to a negative reaction as she got in that round.

“There were other signs that Warren, who has said repeatedly that she is not running for president in 2016, had caught the eyes and ears of people in the room. She was the popular choice as a next-door neighbor, seen as genuine and personable. Even one of the most conservative members of the group said this.

The general drift of David Ehrlich‘s 1.7 Slate article about Jennifer Aniston‘s Cake is that it’s a “terrible movie” and therefore the Best Actress conversation about Aniston is unwarranted. First of all it’s not terrible — it’s underwhelming. I know what “terrible” tends to feel and taste like and Cake doesn’t qualify. I think it’s roughly in the same realm as Still Alice, and nobody’s calling that one “terrible” so…you know, c’mon. Second of all Aniston’s performance as a wealthy, scarred-up woman dealing with constant pain delivers, I feel, roughly the same degree of conviction and finesse as Julianne Moore delivers in Still Alice. You can disagree with me and that’s fine, but I really don’t think there’s a great deal of difference. So why, boiled down, is Ehrlich beating up on Aniston? Partly because he didn’t like Cake but also — let’s be honest — because (a) he doesn’t like the general idea of Aniston being in the Best Actress conversation, probably because he regards her as a lightweight interloper plus (b) he resents the aggressively funded campaign that has put her within striking distance of a Best Actress nomination. A female performance can win a New York Film Critics Award for meritorious reasons alone but to win an Oscar you’ve got to play ball. We all realize that, don’t we? Aniston is just playing her cards according to house rules. My 11.23 opinion: “At least Aniston really gives it hell. She can be quite deft and subtle when she wants to be, always letting you know what’s happening inside with just the right amount of emphasis.”

Can you imagine the response to an opening credit sequence like this today? Can you imagine the sea of iPhone and Android screens that would start lighting up after the first minute or so? Absolutely no sound for two minutes and 43 seconds (an eternity by today’s standards) except for a single barking dog somewhere in the distance.

There isn’t a lot of wiggle room in predicting the winners of tomorrow night’s (or tomorrow afternoon’s if you’re attending a West Coast viewing party) Golden Globe awards. It’s gotta be Birdman for Best Picture, Comedy of Musical, and Michael Keaton for Best Actor, Comedy or Musical. The set-in-stone rigidity of Julianne Moore winning for Best Actress, Drama, for Still Alice…of course. Poor, sagging-against-the-ropes Selma hasn’t a chance of beating Boyhood for Best Picture, Drama. How can the Best Director award not be won by Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater or Birdman‘s Alejandro G. Inarritu? J.K. Simmons and Patricia Arquette for Best Supporting Actor and Actress…yaddah yaddah. The most welcome HFPA gesture would be to hand Birdman‘s Antonio Sanchez the Best Score award, which of course would dispute the Academy’s unfair decision to disqualify his all-percussion score because (ungracious, nickle-and-dime reasoning) the film uses a few classical music passages.

By the late spring of 1969, Gene Hackman was in a pretty good spot. He had recently delivered strong supporting performances as a tough Olympic ski coach in Downhill Racer, as an astronaut in Marooned and as a sky-diving barnstormer in The Gypsy Moths. Perhaps Hackman didn’t seem fated for stardom but he was certainly looking at steady employment as a character actor. And yet he “nearly accepted the role of Mike Brady for the upcoming TV series, The Brady Bunch,” it says in his Wiki bio, “but was advised by his agent to decline in exchange for a more promising role, which he did.” Good God…can you imagine? Correction #1: the Patton line that Hackman quoted in his 2003 Golden Globes speech actually reads as follows: “I love it…God help me, I do love it so.” Correction #2: James Cagney‘s final line in White Heat is “Made it, ma! Top of the world!

There are great movie finales, or ones that end on a sum-up note that is fair, concise, honest, eloquent. And there are finales that do all that but also reach inside and push that button that you yourself don’t know how to find, much less push, half the time. A kind of sinking-in sensation in your soul. A sense of sudden wisdom and sadness and being oddly at peace with everything, including your own miserable self. This is how I’ve felt time and again during the last 90 seconds of Franklin J. Schaffner‘s Patton (’70), and particularly upon hearing the words “all glory is fleeting.”

It sure as hell is along with everything else worth cherishing…romantic love, freshly-shined shoes, a perfectly tuned six-cylinder engine, purring cats on your lap, world-class wifi, general ecstasy, feelings of absolute security, exquisite guitar playing, momentary pride in a difficult achievement, warm sunshine, the balm of friendship and camaradarie, the sight of snow-capped mountain peaks against a sparkling blue sky, perfect glasses of pineapple juice, Everett Sloane‘s girl in a white dress on the Staten Island ferry…don’t get me started. All of it streaming past, leaves on a mountain stream, nothing to have or hold. Either you savor your passing delights as impermanent and all the more valuable for that, or you don’t.

Sometime during last night’s Real Time With Bill Maher they flashed a poster of While You Were Sleeping, a romantic drama costarring Bill Cosby and Sandra Bullock. Searching around for a screen-capture as we speak. If anyone’s already grabbed it, please forward. Update: The below image courtesy of HE reader “Jery October“…much obliged.

Thanks to HE reader “Jery October”