…as reported by Paul Schrader in a Facebook thread. Devotional comments by all, and then along came Davey Holmes…

Yesterday New Yorker critic Richard Brody posted the following comparison between Barbie and 2001: A Space Odyssey (which Barbie briefly spoofed, of course, by aping the “Dawn of Man” sequence):

This is primarily a political tweet, of course. Brody is giving Barbie director Greta Gerwig a sympathetc fistbump after she was snubbed for a Best Director Oscar nomination last Tuesday.

I also think Brody likes to throw around eccentric, extreme opinions. Does he really, actually think Barbie is a “better” film than Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 mastepiece? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think he mainly wants the congnoscenti and the wokerati to consider that he might be the Albert Einstein of film critics…that he’s seeing things on a white-light, laser-beam level no one else has quite managed…that he’s some kind of Rasputin-like genius.

I understand that sometimes the best writing happens when you don’t think it through that much in advance. Just go with it, jump off a cliff and see where it all lands. But once you get into the afore-mentioned Rasputin provocation game (not a fact but a perception on my part) what you write becomes more performative than persuasive.

“We’re just a shittier people than we used to be…sorry.” — Bill Maher, last night’s “New Rules” rant.

The vast majority of well-regarded films shot in frigid temperatures share a basic visual trait — snowscapes.

The highest ranking members of this fraternity include Fargo, The Revenant, The Hateful Eight, The Dead Zone, the ‘51 and ‘82 versions of The Thing, The Shining, Cliffhanger, Snowpiercer, Everest, Misery, Society of the Snow and, last but not necessarily least, the currently unfolding True Detective: Night Country.

But there have been damn few shot in miserably cold climes that aren’t swamped in whiteness, and there may, in fact, be only two of these: Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront (‘54) and William Freidkin’s The French Connection (‘71).

I’m not saying there aren’t more that qualify in this regard; I’m saying I can’t think of any.