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

Screenshot

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.

Am I understanding this correctly? And just under one-quarter of all viewers are primarily or entirely watching broadcast. What is a fair term to describe this segment of the populace? Hayseeds?

Full respect and earnest affection for the greatest actress of the late 20th Century (not to mention her stellar performances in The Devil Wears Prada, The Iron Lady and The Post), although I’ve never forgotten this 2015 Telluride discussion.