I’m presuming that the film critic successor to A.O. Scott, whose decision to shift into book reviewing was announced on Tuesday (2.21), has already been decided upon by N.Y. Times management.

If not, one presumes or at least hopes that the decision will take into consideration the fact that the woke worm has turned, the crazy current is losing its strength and that the Times really needs a sensible, snappy–phrased, Bret Stephens-like cineaste, or someone who doesn’t hold with the wokester criteria that defined the Dargis–Scott Universe essays of the last three or four years.

Someone like Variety critic Owen Gleiberman, for example. A seasoned diviner of great 20th and 21st Century cinema and certainly no friend of the progressive Khmer Rouge, O.G. has always gotten the whole equation and writes entertainingly to boot.

For symbolism’s sake if nothing else, they need to hand Scott’s job to a critic who doesn’t necessarily buy into the “Woody Allen is Satan” narrative, as Scott more or less did five years ago. That article was an ignoble Times milestone, and they certainly don’t need another agenda-tied progressive like Dargis. The readership has had it with that shite.

If the decision is between Times contributors Wesley Morris and Glenn Kenny, I’d much rather see Kenny fill Scott’s shoes. As an act of defiance if nothing else. Because if Times honchos don’t hand the gig to Morris their hides will carry an R brand, right?

I know or suspect deep down that Morris will get the gig but I’ve never liked him. He’s an excellent writer but also an arch know-it-all and a somewhat fey elitist. In 2015 he chortled at the brilliant Love and Mercy. having sneered at it during the 2014 Toronto Film Festival. Like a good little woke Trotsky-ite Morris tried to kill the harmless, warm-hearted Green Book at a crucial stage in the Academy voting game. (Sorry that didn’t work out!) Instead of honorably engaging when I wrote him a few years back with a challenging opinion, Morris shrieked at the alarming fact that I had his email address. Pearl clutcher!

Ray of hope: Word around the campfire is that Morris may not want the job, as he allegedly prefers being a critic-at-large. Covering the waterfront as the Times’ co-lead film critic is a demanding task, etc.

In the view of the Critical Drinker, Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania “sums up everything the MCU has become…a plot so entirely predictable and generic that it feels as if it was written by an overworked AI, basically consisting of a series of tired and played-out tropes that have been done a million times before…visuals that are so obnoxiously overdone you can barely process what you’re seeing…

“Ant Man 3 is everything that most of us have come to despise about Marvel at this point…two hours of trite, bland, corporatized, predictable, pointless, soul-destroying nothingness…what a pile of absolute shite.”

Posted on 2.17.23:

If Sonny Bono hadn’t slammed into a tree while skiiing in the Lake Tahoe region on 1.5.98 and if he’d otherwise kept himself in good health, he would have celebrated his 88th birthday five days ago (2.16.23).

Bono was 64 at the time of his death. I’m sorry he suffered through that. But he lived an interesting life with an unusual arc — at first a hippie-ish songwriter, singer and performer in the ’60s and ’70s, and then a “protect the small businessman” Republican in the ’80s and ’90s.

An early ’80s memory: I was driving west along the hilly-curvy section of Sunset Blvd. (near Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion) when I noticed Bono in his car, waiting to slip into the eastbound lane.

Two or three years later I ordered a drink at Bono, his Italian joint on Melrose near La Cienega. My immediate impression was that there were too many tables scrunched together.

I’m mentioning Bono because until this morning I somehow hadn’t read that he and Roddy Jackson co-authored “She Said ‘Yeah!’“, a fast and catchy Rolling Stones song from ‘64 or ‘65. The song is basically a horndog thing — a lust-struck guy wants to have it off with a hot girl, and to his infinite delight she’s down for it… “yeah!”**

I’d also never read that Bono co-authored “Needles and Pins,” a 1962 song that took off when a version by The Searchers charted in ’64. Bono co-penned the song with Jack Nitzsche and Jackie DeShannon, who recorded a version in ’63. The song is more commonly known as “Needles and Pinzah.”

The obvious bottom line (apparent to anyone paying attention) is that Everything Everywhere All At Once is not just divisive but deeply loathed. It’s my personal opinion that this A24,release (and I mean this from the bottom of my heart) is nothing short of a pestilence.