Herewith is a 12.15.22 press release sent out on behalf of GLAAD, and it’s basically a complaint about how too many in the industry are failing to pass GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation. Here it is verbatim:

GLAAD 10TH ANNUAL STUDIO RESPONSIBILITY INDEX: PERCENTAGE OF LGBTQ-INCLUSIVE FILMS DROPS, AS DOES RACIAL DIVERSITY AND SCREEN TIME

This report found a transgender character in major studio film for the first time in five years, though there was a decrease in percentage of LGBTQ characters of color, LGBTQ women, and zero LGBTQ characters living with disabilities or HIV

All seven studios receive “Insufficient,” “Poor,” or “Failing” grades as GLAAD includes new evaluation of public advocacy on LGBTQ issues, employee resources, and political giving from studios and parent companies.

Only nine films released in 2021 by major studios passed GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation.

Los Angeles, CA – Thursday, December 15, 2022 — GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today released its tenth annual Studio Responsibility Index, a study that maps the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ characters in films released by the seven film studio distributors that had the highest theatrical grosses from films released in the 2021 calendar year (January 1, 2021 – December 31, 2021) as reported by the box office database Box Office Mojo. These studios are Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, United Artists Releasing, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros.

For the full report, visit www.glaad.org/sri.

The same John Sturges western, 62 years old now and presumably somewhat darker because it’s been remastered for 4K. That’s all that 4K does since the naked eye can’t usually detect strong differences between 4K (3840 × 2160 pixel resolution) and 1080p. It brings in deeper shadows and whatnot. So all you’re left with is a darker image. I own a “good enough”, presumably less dark Bluray version, and that’s more than satisfactory.

Directed, written and produced by Zach Braff, A Good Person (UA Releasing, 3.24) seems to be about feelings, grief recovery, virtue-signalling…all that good stuff.

It’s the saga of a mousey young woman named Allison (Florence Pugh) struggling to recover from fatal-car-accident trauma and the heavy guilt that goes with that. Allison survived but a young POC male, apparently the son of Morgan Freeman, bought the farm. Allison is apparently part of a large extended family that is partly BIPOC, partly white-ass.

The copy line on the poster, however, is fatal: “Sometimes we find hope where we least expect it.”

Every time I watch Barry Lyndon‘s fist fight scene, my respect for the film and especially director Stanley Kubrick plummets slightly. The combatants, of course, are the quick and agile Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) and the brawny, red-bearded Corporal Toole (the late Pat Roach), but Kubrick’s instincts as a fight choreographer were atrocious.

Where did Kubrick-the-perfectionist get the idea that the fight would be even half-interesting if O’Neal ducked every wild air-punch thrown by Roach? Roach seems to have been told to fight like a drunken buffoon — to fight like the stupidest, most uncoordinated bare-knuckled boxer in English history and thereby miss O’Neal by several inches each and every time. If Roach had only managed to land a single jaw-blow…if only he’d managed to slug O’Neal once or twice in the chest or the rib cage. But no.

On 2.11.15, or a bit less than eight years ago, I reflected upon an Angelina Jolie-directed movie that had been quite the talked-about thing in late 2014 but abruptly disappeared after it was screened for press. No one has spoken about it since. It’s like it fell through a trap door.

In a piece called “Gone For Four Months,” I tried to explain the how and why of Unbroken‘s disappearance.

“There’s this imaginary guy I’ve been visiting at Cedars Sinai,” I began. “He went into a coma early last October and just came out of it yesterday. I wasn’t there when he awoke but he called today to say thanks for stopping by all those times. His mother told him about my four or five visits.

“Then he said he’d gone online this morning and visited the latest Gold Derby and Gurus of Gold charts, and he wanted to know what the hell had happened to Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, which was the Best Picture front-runner for weeks on end.

“Where’d it go?” he asked. “What happened? It was the leading Best Picture contender…it was all over but the shouting and the formalities. Every last default-minded, deferring-to-Dave Karger Oscar expert had it at the top of their lists. What’s the most likely film to win Best Picture? Why…Unbroken! What else? And now it’s vanished.”

I tried to break it to him easy. “What happened,” I explained, “is that Universal finally screened it, and a few days later the air had seeped out of the balloon. And then it just disappeared.” He asked me why. “It was the Christian torture-porn thing,” I said. What’s that? “There was something in the movie that said that the more a guy has been beaten and tortured, the braver and more beautiful and closer to God he is.” Oh, the guy said, suddenly sounding weaker and less curious.

“Right now the only chance Unbroken has at the Oscars is Roger Deakins‘ nomination for Best Cinematography,” I said. “But it would be surprising to a lot of people I know if Birdman‘s Emmanuel Lubezki loses out.”

I’ve always hated comic book films, but especially the DC Universe and particularly the Superman movies. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Take the brand out of the refrigerator, re-heat in a copper frying pan ad infinitum. The idea of another origin film or a young Superman film…suffocate me with a pillow.

Alas, James Gunn and Peter Safran are determined to bludgeon the remaining fan base into numbed submission. Plus they’ve deep-sixed poor Henry Cavill, 39. Jettisoned over being too old, I guess.

In keeping with the general industry sensibility of the last few years of de-emphasizing, degrading or ignoring whiteness, one wonders if Gunn and Safran’s new Superman will be gay, Black, Latinx or trans whatever? Or will Gunn-Safran go “wait, we have to be ahead of the curve…popcorn inhalers have hated woke stuff all along and woke has generally been losing money hand over fist and Joe Popcorn wants traditional guy stuff anyway to let’s hire a younger Cavill type…”

The same rationale applies to casting the new James Bond, a role that would fit Cavill like a glove.