…and they told me to state my pronouns, I would write Eat / Me. Okay, that’s fairly vulgar but I’d probably feel better about that designation than He / Him, which seems overly compliant.

Would it be fair to observe that casting-wise there’s a certain diverse-centric approach on view here? A determination to virtue-signal by un-Wonder Breading the brand…right?

There are two or three fleeting glimpses of social congregations, and yes, I’ve noticed a couple of younger Millennial- or Zoomer-aged revelers who could be accused of having a problematic heritage, but otherwise the idea seems to be about playing it safe. Would that be fair to say?

I somehow missed a four-day-old report that Barack Obama had re-issued his Best Films of 2022 list as a tribute to Andrea Riseborough‘s searing performance in To Leslie. A gesture of respect, acknowledgment. Somehow this alters everything. In my head, at least. I’d interpreted the enthusiastic and orchestrated praising of Riseborough’s performance by a long roster of actor buddies as…well, expressions of loyalty and love. But Barack joining in changes things somewhat. He’s part of the cabal. Repeating: HE endorses Riseborough’s performance despite the film’s first hour having driven me up the wall. I feel much greater enthusiasm for Olivia Colman‘s performance in Empire of Light.

Given the basic sinking-into-the-swamp dynamic that’s been evident for some time now…

Artist Hank Willis Thomas obviously isn’t stupid. He knew that “The Embrace,” his recently unveiled Martin Luther King-Coretta Scott King sculpture, would be derided by the meat-and-potatoes crowd as an image of four hands and arms gripping a giant brown schlong or resting upon a huge turd.

Literalists are always voicing the same beef — “this work of art isn’t literal enough!”

Then again why did he create a 19-ton sculpture that looks like four hands and arms gripping a giant schlong, etc.? HWT knows the game. He knows that the proletariat masses always have the final say.

At 70 Liam Neeson seems too far along to play a certain legendary shamus in Neil Jordan’s forthcoming Marlowe. (Open Road, 2.15).

In two previous films Phillip Marlowe (described by novelist-creator Raymond Chandler as early 30ish in the mid 1930s) has been depicted as spiffily middle-aged. Humphrey Bogart was a fit 45 when he made Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (‘46). The dashing James Garner was 40 or 41 (but looked younger) when he made Marlowe (‘69).

Robert Mitchum, on the other hand, seemed a little too creased and weathered when he made Farewell, My Lovely (‘75) in his late 50s, and more so when he returned as Marlowe in Michael Winner’s Big Sleep remake (‘78)

This said, Neeson appears to have been digitally de-aged in Marlowe. That or my eyes deceive.