Here’s what Gene Maddaus’ 6.1 Variety story partly reported about today’s Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial verdict:

Here’s how Maddaus summed it all up:

And here’s the Variety headline above Maddaus ’ story — technically correct but obviously a spin job — an attempt to portray Depp’s victory as a bit muddled, a half-and-halfer.

Two days hence Watcher (IFC Midnight), which I’ve been hyping since last January, finally opens. It’s an expert, quietly creepy, Polanski-level thriller, and well worth the price.

Set in present-day Bucharest and costarring Maika Monroe (It Follows), Karl Glusman and Burn Gorman, Chloe Okuno and Zack Ford‘s film is unquestionably scary and unnerving.

In my view it stops short of elevated horror — it’s more of a low-key, Roman Polanski-level thriller in the vein of Repulsion and The Tenant. First-rate chills and anxieties ensue. And not the “midnight movie” kind either.

Scream-level morons may respond in their usual way, but Watcher is as good as it gets with this kind of palette and approach.

4:30 pm Paris time, 10:30 am New York time. We’ve been airborne since 1:30 pm with nearly five hours to go. I chose Air Canada to save $$… big mistake.

All the sublime Parisian soothings of the last four days were erased this morning in one fell swoop. Everything has been hell. 5:30 am wake-up, idiotic Uber driver, wallet explosion on Roissy bus to CDG, interminable air terminal lines, etc.

Air Canada made me get a $35 Covid test, and we’re all wearing fucking masks on the flight. News flash: The pandemic is more or less over, guys, and fuck Monkey Pox. I hate hate HATE this crap so much.

Slight consolation: I’m wearing a very cool-looking Cannes Film Festival mask.

I needed something to take my mind off of this morning’s awful Air Canada / Charles DeGaulle gauntlet (150 minutes of Chinese water torture waiting), so I re-read last night’s thread about the unfortunate casting of Moses Ingram in the Obi Wan Kenobi Disney+ series.

It’s one of HE’s most fascinating threads in recent months, and I want to congratulate VicLaz6 for revealing to the world what a pack of salivating racist dogs many of the commenters are.

Seriously, most of the adverse comments alluded to impressions that Ingram’s Baltimore patois didn’t seem to belong in the Star Wars realm — the style and manner of her performance doesn’t fit, and therefore hurts the show’s credibility. (Along with the allegedly poor calibre of her acting plus the lousy writing.)

But the basic thrust, many said, was that the fault was less Ingram’s and more the casting directors.

I haven’t read most or even a fair percentage of the negative responses overall — only the HE sliver — and for all I know a good portion have been flat-out racist in nature. But something tells me the reactions are probably more mixed, and that Ewan McGregor’s fairly sweeping denunciation of all the naysayers as racist was unfair.