One way or another Trump supporters always wind up acting in a brutish and ugly manner and generally representing the lower end of the gene pool. Here’s a 3.25 O.C. Weekly piece (“Huntington Beach Pro-Trump March Turns Into Attack on Anti-Trump Protesters“) by Frank John Tristan and Denise de la Cruz, about a pro-Trump rally at Bolsa Chica State Beach in which some anti-Trump counter-protesters (including a couple of O.C. Weekly staffers) got slugged and kicked and chased around.

I can’t over-emphasize how much I loved Sen. Al Franken‘s grilling of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch last Tuesday. Particularly Franken’s dissection of the frozen trucker court case. I’ve watched the whole thing on YouTube three times. Franken revealed to one and all what a flinty, corporate-favoring prick Gorsuch is when it comes to disputes of this nature, which are basically about the gulf between common sense and humanitarian regard for working people vs. the rules and dictates of large companies.

I came away thinking that the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket should be headed by Gavin Newsom and Al Franken. Seriously.

Hell, I’d vote for Franken himself if he were to run for President in a 2020 primary or general election, although I recognize that he’s not really the running-for-President type, and that his natural place is in the U.S. Senate. 

The other concern is that California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom will have a tough time running for California governor in 2018 if everyone believes that his bottom-line aim is to run for President in ’20. 

So if not one of these two, who? Who has the right kind of post-Hillary, new-generation cred? Who’s got the charisma and magnetism to persuade the dumbshits not to vote for Trump? Will Elizabeth Warren run?

Allegedly the first installment of a two-parter, pic takes place after the events of Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad. The idea of having to watch this thing is similar to contemplating a visit to the dentist. I can’t wait to feel numb and drained. Stab me in the head with a kitchen knife.

A guy has sent me a January 2016 draft of Martin McDonaugh‘s Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri. The trailer popped on 3.23.

“Easily McDonagh’s best,” the guy says. “Instead of getting cute at the end, it gets human. The trailer is great but it doesn’t give the drama enough credit. I think it’s easily his most mature, humanist film to date. There’s a No Country For Old Men vibe.” Now I’m wondering if I should read it or wait for the film. This is sounding more and more like a perfect film for Cannes. Everyone will probably praise it, and it’ll kick off Frances McDormand‘s Best Actress campaign to boot.

Should Fox Searchlight re-think their alluded-to policy of never screening a potential award-season hottie on the Cote d’Azur? The conventional Oscar strategist advice is to never shoot your wad in Cannes but wait for Venice, Telluride and Toronto. How then did No Country, which premiered in Cannes on 5.19.07, ever manage a Best Picture win?

The first five paragraphs of “The Perverse Thrill of Chaotic Times“, a 3.25 N.Y. Times piece by Teddy Wayne, offer an uncannily accurate capturing of how Type-A specimens have been feeling deep down since Donald Trump‘s election. I fell into it like a guy on a bungee cord. Yes, exactly…we’re in a monster movie, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and while I’m 70% freaked, I’m also 30% jazzed.

But the thing that really turned my head arrived about 14 paragraphs in. After noting that “political journalism — itself under attack by the president — hasn’t been this ardent since Sept. 11,” Wayne reminds that the World Trade Center attacks “ushered in the era of the superhero, with desire for American might to overcome evil projected onto a single figure.”

Illustration for Teddy Wayne’s “The Perverse Thrill of Chaotic Times” by Anthony Freda and Dan Zollinger.

This reminded me of something I said almost exactly 13 years ago about Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire, in my mind the best rightwing superhero whoop-ass movie ever. Denzel Washington‘s Creasy made the bad guys (i.e., Mexican cartel kidnappers) howl and sweat and scream before killing them like a meter maid hands out a parking ticket, water off a duck’s ass.

In my mind (and in Scott’s, I’m thinking) the cartel guys were stand-ins for the terrorist “other.” Everyone understood that, I think, and millions relished the feeling of payback. No mercy, no quarter. No CG superhero movie has ever made me feel this way. I was in the men’s room adjacent to the Zanuck theatre after my first Man on Fire viewing, and guys at the urinals were going “whoa, fucking Denzel…he doesn’t fuck around…Jesus!”

Man on Fire opened on 4.23.04 — two and a half years after 9.11. I don’t think I’ve ever succumbed quite as fully to a film espousing this kind of rightwing, scorched-earth vengeance. No, I don’t feel good about the likelihood that Steve Bannon and the Breitbart guys probably like Man on Fire as much as I do, but I can’t deny that I feel and endorse what it’s putting out. Yes, still.