Yes, it’s true. We can connect Judy Garland to Freddie Mercury in less than six degrees. We can also connect “A Star is Born” to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” How’s that, you say?

Well, it’s all through Judy’s gifted and beloved singer daughter Lorna Luft, who made a surprise appearance last night at Fox’s swell NYC premiere for “BR” at the Plaza Hotel. And I mean it was swell. I’ve never seen the Plaza fitted up so well for a movie premiere.

But Lorna Luft! What was she doing there? She’s in town promoting a book she’s written about “A Star is Born” called “Judy Garland and the Film That Got Away.”

Judy Garland, of course, was the star of the classic 1954 version of “A Star is Born.”

So why’s she at the premiere? Turns out her best friend is Anita May, wife of Brian. That’s Brian May from Queen, Brian May who wrote so many hits with the group, was their founding member, and comes off like a totally nice guy in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

So take that in for a minute. Lorna loved “Bohemian Rhapsody” when she saw it last night. And yes, I asked her about sister Liza Minnelli, how is she, etc? “She’s very well,” Lorna said. The two sisters are finally living in the same city– Los Angeles– and are very close, not just geographically.

The great actor Jared Harris came to the premiere with his bw Allegra Riggio. Allegra is friends with another Queen wife but they got a bigger surprise when the song “MacArthur Park” was presented in the film as an example of a hit record longer than six minutes. Jared’s famous actor father, Richard Harris, sang that hit record in the 1960s. It was a hit by accident, Jared told me. “It was the B side of another song, but a deejay flipped it over and played it. And it took right off.”

Rami Malek is the undisputed star of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “Playing Freddie Mercury has changed my life forever,” he told me. “It’s been such an an incredible experience. Changed it not just for a hundred years or a thousand years, maybe a million years.” He should get an Oscar nomination out of this, easily. His performance is not an imitation. And guess what? He played a lot of the piano in the movie. In a key scene, Freddie is lying on the ground under a piano and plays the keyboard supine, unable to see the keys. It was Rami actually doing it! He was very sheepish when I asked him, but proud. “Yes, there’s a lot of me playing piano.”

Last: congrats to “Downton Abbey” actor Allen Leech. He’s terrific as Freddie’s lover/manager/ betrayer Paul Penter. Leech, well known as Branson, widower of Sybil on “Downton.” is getting married this January in Santa Barbara to actress Jessica Herman. She’s lovely. “We’re bringing in over 100 Irishmen to Santa Barbara,” Allen told me. “Should be quite the party!”

Leech just wrapped the “Downton Abbey” Movie two days ago. “I flew right here from the set,” he told me. “It’s a beautiful movie, you’re going to love it.” I did everything I could to get some spoilers from him. He laughed, and said, “Maggie Smith is alive and well at the end!” I gasped. Then he added quickly: “Or maybe not! You’ll have to see!”

And the late lamented Sybil? “She,” he said, “is still dead.”

If only Disney could have figured out a way to include Avengers characters in the “Nutcracker.”

Alas, after a summer of hit-after-hit from the comic book side, the Mouse House now braces for a huge disaster with “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.”

Reviews are embargoed until Halloween night, less than 24 hours before preview audiences will see the much beleaguered movie.

Cost of “Four Realms” is minimum $130 million but probably in the realm of $200 million. Original director Lasse Hallstrom must have been in over his head. He’s such a good director but perhaps this was too much. He was replaced, some of the film was re-shot, and now it carries two director’s names. (The other one is Joe Johnston.)

Despite having Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman, “Four Realms” is evidently overpowered by no focus and too much pocus. One sign that it’s very bad– aside from no reviews– is that it’s been cut down to 99 minutes. Sometimes we say, This movie was too long. In this case, it’s the opposite. “FOur Realms” has obviously been shredded.

Disney has trouble with this kind of movie. “A Wrinkle in Time” was only released last March– and flopped famously. This is a second wrinkle. They need to iron this stuff out.

Ah, well: next year, bring us “The Nutcracker: Iron Man and Captain America” dance it out, and then we’ll be onto something!

Whitey Bulger is dead. Good news for a change. The 89 year old mobster was killed in a West Virginia penitentiary. He was found and tried for his crimes in 2013 after 16 years on the run. During that time, Martin Scorsese made a movie about him in 2006 called “The Departed.” Jack Nicholson got an Oscar nomination for playing Whitey (his name in the movie is Frank Costello, lest he show up at the premiere and demand a cut– and a leg). Johnny Depp also played him in “American Gangster,” but not as well. Anyway. During a really bad time, it’s nice to have something to smile about.

Jake Gyllenhaal, hosting a special screening of his sister Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new film, “The Kindergarten Teacher,” at Metrograph, was all praise for his sibling. (The movie is in theaters, and on Netflix right now.)

“I’ve been watching her act all my life,” he smiled broadly at a crowd that included Christopher Lloyd, Israel Horowitz, Diane Sawyer, and many others including his “Wildlife” director Paul Dano and co-writer Zoe Kazan.

The titular kindergarten teacher joins a roster of edgy women brought to life by Gyllenhaal’s ample talents. Think “Secretary” where her character enjoys a good spanking. In this movie, she’s a thwarted poet who recognizes the poetic gifts of one of her students, a five-year old named Jimmy Roy played by one of the producer’s children’s real life classmates, Parker Sevak. Wishing to nurture his verse, Gyllenhaal’s Lisa goes creepy, unacceptable. Every parent will get the willies watching her become more and more obsessed with savant poet Jimmy. She even tries to pass off the little kid’s potent verse as her own to gain the graces of her own hottie poetry teacher, played by Gael Garcia Bernal.

At a post screening Q&A, Ashley Banfield began by asking which is more fun to play, a prostitute (as in HBO’s “The Deuce”) or a kindergarten teacher. A prostitute, said Gyllenhaal gamely, and yet she spoke eloquently about women like Lisa whose imaginations are curbed by few opportunities and her own artistic limitations. Lisa illustrates the consequences of what happens when you starve a vibrant woman’s mind: “Women twist themselves into a culture that doesn’t care who we are. We are learning right now in our culture how little women’s experiences are heard or valued. People are hungry for something truthful.” As to her own ambitions, Maggie Gyllenhaal is adapting a novel by Elena Ferrante to direct.

Just to show you the Oscar race can’t be prognosticated so easily months out:

Sony Pictures Classics has announced a qualifying run for Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare fantasy, “All is True.” Branagh directed and plays the Bard, Judi Dench is his wife, Anne, and Ian McKellen plays the Earl of Southampton. Ben Elton wrote the screenplay.

The year is 1613, Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest writer of the age. But disaster strikes when his renowned Globe Theatre burns to the ground, and devastated, Shakespeare returns to Stratford, where he must face a troubled past and a neglected family.

Haunted by the death of his only son Hamnet, he struggles to mend the broken relationships with his wife and daughters. In so doing, he is ruthlessly forced to examine his own failings as husband and father. His very personal search for the truth uncovers secrets and lies within a family at war.

SPC already has a lot on its plate: Glenn Close in “The Wife,” two foreign films– “Never Look Away” and “Capernaum.” If they’re trying an Oscar run for this one, it must be good.