Saying the wrong thing, ignoring woke mantras = must be punished if not squished like a bug.

@robsmithonline “Sinners” Is Black Victimhood PROPAGANDA! #sinnersmovie #michaelbjordan #sinners #blacktiktok #blackmen ♬ original sound – Rob Smith

Louisville-based cartoonist Marc Murphy drew this six years ago, he says. “Rejected” for being “unfair and alarmist,” he explains. Sometimes unfair and alarmist cartoons are great.

Because The Accountant 2 made me happy, I’ve decided to throw all my reservations out the window and become an unmitigated Ben Affleck fan….again.

I’ve never listened to Affleck’s Armageddon commentary track on the Criterion Bluray. Now I want to.

“American culture is black American culture…it just gets filtered out and watered down and whitewashed until they can give credit to a white guy. Jazz, country, rock ‘n’ roll, rap…all black American creations.” — posted on TikTok by “Royal Pomegranate“, a Beverly Center nail beautician. (And don’t put her down because she works in a vanity-driven industry!)

HE to Royal Pomegranate: Black American culture has always comprised a vital if painful slice of the American pie. The heart and soul stuff mixed with the social shit end of the stick…centuries of this. But thank the Lord for all the TikTok Zoomer ayeholes who’ve done so much to set things right!

Five years ago I was challenged to explain my views about the 1619 Project. The date was 7.30.20, and here’s part of what I wrote:

“Over the last 400-plus years many factors have fed into or contributed to the vast patchwork of American culture. Factors that drove the expansion and gradual strengthening and shaping of this country, I mean, and particularly the spirit and character of it.

“And they would be immigration, the industrial revolution and the cruel exploitations and excesses of the wealthy elites, the delusion of religion, Native Americans vs. anti-Native American racism and genocide, breadbasket farming, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick C. Douglas, the vast networks of railroads, selfishness & self-interest, factories, construction, the two world wars of the 20th Century, scientific innovation, native musical forms including jazz, blues (obviously African-American art forms) and rock, American literature, theatre and Hollywood movies, sweat shops, 20th Century urban architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, major-league baseball, Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig…

“Not to mention family-based communities and the Protestant work ethic, fashion, gardening, native cuisine and the influences of European, Mexican, Asian and African cultures, hot dogs, the shipping industry, hard work and innovation, the garment industry, John Steinbeck, George Gershwin, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, JFK, MLK, Stanley Kubrick, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Malcom X, Taylor Swift, Charlie Parker, Elizabeth Warren, Katharine Hepburn, Aretha Franklin, Jean Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carol Lombard, Shirley Chisholm, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, barber shops and manual lawnmowers, the auto industry, prohibition & gangsters, the Great Depression and the anti-Communism and anti-Socialism that eventually sprang from that…

“Not to mention status-quo-challenging comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Steve Allen (“schmock schmock!”), popular music (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles), TV, great American universities, great historians, great journalism (including National Lampoon and Spy magazine), beat poetry, hippies, the anti-Vietnam War movement, pot and psychedelia, cocaine, quaaludes and Studio 54, 20th & 21st Century tech innovations, gay culture, comic books, stage musicals, Steve Jobs, etc.

“Don’t tell me that slavery and racism is and always has been this country’s central definer. The 1619 Project’s revisionist zealotry rubs me the wrong way in more ways than I’d care to elaborate upon.”

@royalpomegranatePolitical thoughts never leave me alone. Unless I’m doing nails so someone book with me♬ original sound – Royal Pomegranate

More Sinners lunacy…

@meggymcthicc If you don’t like Sinners you’re wrong #sinners #filmtok #movies #moviereview #ryancoogler #michaelbjordan #ytpeople #haileesteinfeld ♬ original sound – meggymcthicc

I’ll be catching Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning in Cannes on Wednesday, 5.14…16 days hence**. I’ve just watched the M:I meets IMAX short featurette, but I’m from Missouri. As with Fallout, I’m presuming that MI:8 only detours into IMAX for two or three segments…right?

I would love it if THE WHOLE THING could be shown in proper IMAX (huge boxy screen, 1.43:1), but I’m guessing it won’t be.

I’ve asked a good source how many scenes were shot in IMAX, and whether or not they’ll be projected in 1.43:1 or at least something with much more height than the aspect ratio typically provided by 1.85 or 2.39. I’ve also asked what percentage of the total film was shot in the usual digital whatever?

Cruise latest squeeze is Ana de Armas, 36. They’ve allegedly been happening since last February.

The Los Angeles and NYC all-media screenings of M:I-8 are happening two days before the Cannes screening — Monday, 5.12 at 7pm. All SOCIAL MEDIA REACTIONS are embargoed until MONDAY, MAY 12TH at 10:00 PM Pacific / TUESDAY, MAY 13TH at 1:00 AM Eastern.

“[60 Minutes exec producer] Bill Owens resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard on us, but he did it for us and you. Our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it [and so] Paramount began to supervise our [60 Minutes] content in new ways. Bill felt that he has lost the independence that honest journalism requires.” — Scott Pelley during the closing minute of last night’s 60 Minutes show.

What Pelley said wasn’t all that different from Al Pacino‘s Lowell Bergman argument inside Don Hewitt‘s office in The Insider (’99)..remember? A planned CBS merger with Westinghouse, the maneuverings of attorney Helen Caperelli and the concept of tortious interference apparently influencing the honesty of the Jeffrey Wigand / Brown & Williamson story. Don Hewitt: “Are you suggesting that she and Eric are influenced by money?” Lowell Bergman: “No, no, of course they’re not influenced by money. They work for free. And you are a volunteer executive producer.”

Or, for that matter, Howard Beale‘s rant about in the influence of CCA over the news division of UBS, the United Broadcasting System.

“This company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication Corporation of America. And there’s a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting on the 20th floor. And when the 12th largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddam propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled as truth on this network?” — Peter Finch‘s Howard Beale in Network (’76).

“Nobody in this corner is the least bit confused or thrown over Sinners. I’m not even occasionally scratching my head over the cultural currents that Ryan Coogler’s film has seemingly stirred. I know exactly and precisely what this super-expensive excursion into early 1930s rural Mississippi Blackitude is (an unabashedly heterosexual Samuel Z. Arkoff popcorn horror film with cunnilingus detours and transportational music sequences) and what it’s tapped into over the last two weeks. Rarely has an exploitation flick connected in such a primal, across-the-board way.” — HE comment-thread retort below yesterday’s “Has Sinners Become An Online Political–Cultural Moment?”