Sean Penn was a guest on Bill Maher’s podcast and, when the topic of Woody Allen came about, both of them did not hold back in their defence of the legendary director:

I come as the bearer of bad news: Brandon Cronenberg’s “Infinity Pool” doesn’t amount to anything meaningful. This is disappointing, considering his last film was 2020’s visionary “Possessor.”

I don’t know about you, but Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie) getting nominated made my morning. The grassroots campaign worked!

I can understand why no studio has dared buy “Magazine Dreams” (for now). Its Sundance debut might have been greeted by a rowdy ovation from the Eccles theater audience, but this is the type of film that isn’t a crowd-pleaser by any sense of the term.

How weird that Ben Affleck’s “Air” is going to be released theatrically in April. I fully expected a fall festival route for this one, but I guess not.

I was hesitant going into Chloe Domont’s “Fair Play,” but let me tell you this film is a scorching fireball of gender politics, in the best of ways. It’s the best movie I’ve seen so far at Sundance 2023.

The snapshot below is from an L.A. times piece published this morning. Hundreds of Oscar voters were polled by the paper, asked what film they would vote for in the Best Picture and, unsurprisingly, the bottom line is that there is no frontrunner.

My Berlin Film Festival predictions were, as it is with every year, wildly off. It’s such a hard fest to predict. I'm nevertheless intrigued by this year’s selection, which seems tightly curated and filled with less starry names. There are a total of 18 films in competition.

I don’t think anyone foresaw this happening, but Damien Chazelle’s $100 million budgeted “Babylon” is set to be outgrossed by “The Whale,” which cost $3 million.

Last night, halfway through a screening of “Birth/Rebirth,” the Rose Wagner theater had to be evacuated, with paramedics shortly arriving on the scene soon after.

I’ll have a Sundance dispatch published later today, but just to quickly tackle Celine Song’s “Past Lives” which was greeted with raves yesterday afternoon in Park City.

Razzie 2023 voting ballot options were announced this morning and they’ve decided to nominate “Blonde” for Worst Picture and Andrew Dominik for Worst Director.

The 93rd Academy Awards will announce its nominations on Tuesday. What do you think will surprise?

The latest rumor has Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer” premiering at the Berlin Film Festival. The film is said to be a remake of May el-Toukhy‘s 2019 film, “Queen of Hearts.”

Back in November, Jeff Sneider reported that Christian Bale was close to joining Timothee Chalamet as Pete Seeger in James Mangold’s “Going Electric.”