This 9.17.22 video, shot by “Year Zero with Wesley Yang“, is an argument about gender ideology between Billboard Chris (the billboard says “children cannot consent to puberty blockers“) and hyper Zoomer girl with the white glasses. It could be an interesting discussion if you could hear more of what they’re saying, but the jet planes keep roaring overhead. I’m with Billboard Chris…sorry.

It’s no surprise that Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans has nabbed the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice award, given the glowing reviews and all. The People’s Choice award is a strong indicator of across-the-board appeal. Then again previous winners have included Belfast, Jojo Rabbit, Room, The Imitation Game, Precious, etc. So you never really know.

Imagine if the beloved Martin Scorsese had announced that Killers of the Flower Moon will be his last film and that he’ll henceforth he’d be devoting himself to novel-writing. Or if, God forbid, James Cameron or Kathryn Bigelow or Alexander Payne or Guillermo del Toro were to announce the same.

Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, trust me, would almost certainly collect a few admiring quotes from colleagues while lamenting the eclipse of a great and prodigious talent. Their stories would also list some of his or her more luminous career highlights.

So what did the trades publish in response to Woody Allen’s announcement that he’ll be retiring from filmmaking after he completes work on his 50th film, a Paris-based dramedy that’s allegedly in the vein of Match Point? They mainly recited police-blotter stuff — dry, flat summaries of how Allen’s career has been diminished in the eyes of wokesters and the mainstream press over the past few years due to Dylan Farrow‘s account of what allegedly happened on 8.4.92 with no logical counter-views, and how Amazon cut him loose, his autobiography was dropped by Hachette and he’s had to rely on European financing, etc.

In so doing Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have effectively said the following: (a) “Well, it’s not surprising that Allen is finally throwing in the towel,” (b) “We can’t honestly say that we’re distraught over this news” and (c) “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea that Allen goes away and stays away, considering his current reputation.”

On 7.28.22 Indiewire‘s Christian Zilko and Ryan Lattanzio reported that Allen had told Alec Baldwin that he was thinking of retiring, and they posted the same kind of chilly summary.

HE to Variety‘s Anna Marie de la Fuente, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Ryan Gajewski, the Indiewire team and their editors (along with all the others who’ve posted similar remarks): “No offense, guys, but you’re showing disrespect in a way that strikes most of us as odious and repellent. You honestly make me want to throw up.

“Allen is incontestably a great filmmaker — a man of considerable genius and relentless innovative creativity, a guy whose output has enhanced the quality and worldliness of American cinema over the last 55 years, and whose sterling reputation as a filmmaker will be remembered and cherished long after the authors and editors of these repulsive trade articles will have died and been forgotten.

“This is a man, remember, who made 15 great or near-great films over a 45-year period (starting in the mid ’70s and ending in the early 20teens) — Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris (15).

Not to mention 18 others that most of us regard as sturdy and respectable — What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Sleeper, Love and Death, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Radio Days, Another Woman, Alice, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown, Small Time Crooks, Melinda and Melinda, Irrational Man, Blue Jasmine.

Only one other world-class director has cranked out as many first-rate films over a period that lasted over half a century — Alfred Hitchcock.

How dare you dismiss this man with your implied derision and disdain? Do you understand that in the greater scheme of things Allen is a man of considerable wit and vision and artistic consequence and that you and yours, comparatively speaking, are insects?

From a 9.17 Air Mail piece, written by Jonathan Dean, about Moonage Daydream director Brett Morgen:

I wrote this last summer, but it was precisely Morgen’s “clear set or rules” that gradually put me off Moonage Daydream when I caught a Cannes midnight showing on 5.23.22. Now that Neon’s Moonage Daydream is finally playing here and there, I’m wondering what the HE consensus might be.

Here’s how I put it:

Here’s a wise comment from Justin Michael Ptak, posted on 5.234.22:

“I realized a way to reinvigorate the band/artist biopic. The filmmaker cannot go through their entire, randomly ordered, rags-to-riches-to-rags to rehab to rejuvenation to what-come-may tale, but instead focus on one specific, seminal moment in that artist’s/bands creative/destructive life and just allow the audience to soak that in and bring them along for a ride in that specific time and place.

“One can think of any number of tales told about this artist or that band that would make a very cool, condensed retelling if kept to those constraints.

“George Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue moment, Jimi Hendrix realizing he can really play guitar in his own stratospheric way, Brian Wilson creating Good Vibrations, Bob Dylan‘s transition from folk to electric, the Beatles making Revolver, Ronnie Van Zant insanity surrounding Sweet Home Alabama, Pat Benatar‘s Battlefield of Love, Spike Jonze shooting the Beastie Boys Sabotage video, any 48 hours with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis connecting with Lou Barlow, a week in Athens, Georgia with Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel, etc.

“Tie these creative sagas into the on goings and vibe of the period and times a la Quentin’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and you have yourself a pretty chill picture.”