And you can’t trust the fanboys, of course. And that includes the sometimes too friendly or obliging Jeff Sneider. And I wouldn’t trust David Ehrlich either. None of them are really and truly straight-from-the-shoulder, let-the-chips-fall types.

You can, however, trust sourpusses like myself. If HE really and truly tumbles for George Miller’s latest wasteland saga, fine. But wait until Cannes for that to happen or not.

Congrats to New Yorker critic Justin Chang for having won a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism. But if you ask me his 10.26.23 pan of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers was cheap and petty — a woke gangster hit job. Justin is a bright fellow and an excellent writer, but this swan-song review was a disqualifier, plain and simple.

And immediately humiliated myself when, having forgotten his name, I idiotically addressed him as “Captain Smith”. The glancing look on his face, a combination of mild contempt and mild disgust, is forever branded upon my memory.

I’m not saying that Captain Edward Smith was or wasn’t the chief culprit in the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, but someone needs to explain how Bernard Hill’s performance as this tragic figure in James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster was in itself infamous.

These things happen, I realize, when an obit writer is under pressure to quickly bang out copy but still.

His performance as Theoden hadn’t happened at the time of our unfortunate encounter (sometime in ‘98 or ‘99) but being a Lord of the Rings hater I would have avoided any such mention anyway.

Ominous indications of what may be coming are making me feel more and more depressed and sick in my soul. I don’t want to succumb to despair but this awful pit-of-my-stomach feeling won’t go away.

If admitting this makes me a bad person, fine — I’m a bad person then. To alleviate my vague feelings of guilt I subsequently read through Wikipedia’s synopsis of Baby Reindeer’s seven episodes. Thank God I trusted my impulse to abandon this series after episode #1. No offense but Richard Gadd’s “Donny Dunn” is…I’m obviously in no position to judge after one lousy session but he immediately struck me as someone I really, really didn’t want to hang with. Not to mention Jessica Gunning’s “Martha Scott”. Yes, I know — the problem isn’t the show or the morbid obesity or the anal stuff or Donny’s sexuality or the trans thing…the problem is with me, the potential seven-episode viewer who ran shrieking from the room. I’m the bad guy, no question, but at least I’ve accepted my guilt in this matter. Go ahead — throw vegetables.

Zeke’s X reaction, which appeared last night, made me laugh out loud.

“Sometimes there’s God…so quickly!” — Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire

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Time is at an absolute premium during the Cannes Film Festival, and 60 to 90 minutes is a sizable block of that stuff. But I must attend! I must diligently support and especially (if necessary) defend this presumably exceptional film from the bad guys.