An actor of any non-Anglo ethnicity (an Egyptian, say) may be cast as an historical paleface character of English or European descent, but a white actor may never play a character of color under any narrative circumstance.

Just as there is a long list of films that I can watch over and over again, there are also those that I will never again submit to. Near the top of this list is Michael Cimino‘s The Deer Hunter.

I’m not talking about a film I don’t care for. I’m talking about a film that I wouldn’t watch again if someone shoved a snub-nosed .38 into my ribs, or offered me a sizable cash bribe. Would you sit through Star Wars: The Phantom Menace for $20 bills? Would you watch A.I. or Always again? The Cannonball Run II? Sylvester Stallone‘s Cobra?

I’ve stayed away from this simultaneously audacious and godawful film for the last 45 years, and I’m not about to break my streak.

Memories of my first and only viewing in a Manhattan screening room (late November ’78) are branded on my brain tissue. That idiotic Russian Roulette device. Those working-class townspeople singing a wedding song like practiced professionals in a Russian opera. The relentlessly cloying and obnoxious (i.e., overly performed) working-class camaraderie. Those absurdly majestic Northwestern mountain peaks that happen to be in rural Pennsylvania.

And especially Christopher Walken‘s idiotic Russian roulette death…no lead character in a serious film has ever died for a dumber reason than Walken did in The Deer Hunter.

Politically and culturally The Deer Hunter is one of the most full-of-shit films about the American proletariat ever made. The way it simultaneously used and ignored the Vietnam War was sickening.

Posted by Peter Biskind soon after Cimino’s 7.2.16 death: “The politics are execrable, and were widely denounced at the time for turning the war inside out. Clearly, filmmakers who make features ‘based on’ reality take liberties with their material, and the truth vs. art debate is one that will probably go on forever, encompassing films like Triumph of the Will, On the Waterfront, Birth of a Nation, etc., etc. But I think we can make some distinctions.

“First, ironically, although The Deer Hunter is certainly not a documentary, Cimino took great pains to replicate documentary footage his researchers had uncovered. Even the Russian roulette sequences were mean to evoke the famous still photograph of the Saigon police chief shooting a prisoner at point blank range with a pistol to his head.

“But more to the point, there are so many perversions of the truth in The Deer Hunter, all seemingly intended to make the same ideological point — i.e., the Vietcong were evil Orientals — while the Americans were no more than naive victims. There’s a lot more going on here than mere creative license.

“And finally, if I may be indulged, the film is centrally about male bonding and friendship among Americans, with the war as a backdrop and the Vietnamese reduced to stick figures with guns. In my opinion it’s really disgraceful!”

HE is thumbs–up on Uri Berliner’s 4.9 Free Press essay about how NPR’s entrenched liberal dogma and orthodoxy led to a pattern of eating its own tail when Donald Trump came to power. Most of the article tells the straight dope.

NPR’s ideological and institutional opposition to a flood of aggressive Trump malignancies over the last seven years (2017 until today) has led to the government-funded org preaching to a much smaller choir, Berliner says. Advanced wokeness has resulted in listener trust levels dropping considerably since 2011.

Many of Berliner’s judgments seem unassailable and inarguable. Many but not all.

Berliner is 100% correct in the matter of NPR’s coverage of the nearly four-year-old George Floyd murder and their subsequent obsessive filtering of everything by way of identity and identity politics in particular (all white folks are guilty of overt or unconscious racial bias and are therefore deserving of constant correction, somber self-reflection and shaming while all POCs are blessed and beautiful).

Berliner is also completely correct in stating that NPR suppressed coverage of the Wuhan lab leak theory, which was initially derided as possibly racist but which is now recognized as the most likely explanation of what triggered the pandemic.

But his article also strongly implies that suspected Russiagate collusion was bullshit when the Mueller Report concluded that while there wasn’t sufficient evidence to warrant prosecution, there was a coordinated Russian government-led effort to hurt or compromise Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, and that the Trumpies knew they were benefitting from this and responded with glee.

It also states that the Hunter Biden laptop story and corruption charges were and are a legit news story when in fact it’s always been a ho-hummer. The facts merely expose a pattern of garden-variety influence peddling — unsavory and even odious behavior but small change at the end of the day. This establishment is shocked, shocked to learn that Hunter is a bad-egg son whose sordid activities have rubbed off on his dad to some extent. Sorry but it’s nothing to have a major heart attack over.

These two caveats aside, hive (i.e., the NPR kind) is jive.

Remember that Sylvester Stallone didn’t insult any Tulsa King background people to their face. Nor did he share his reportedly unkind comments with various people on the Atlanta-based set.

According to Variety’s Kate Aurthur, Stallone shared said opinions only with director Craig Zisk, privately. The unspecified remarks made their way to Facebook via a second-hand eavesdropping — an overheard conversation that was passed along.

Is Stallone an elderly Republican tough guy who doesn’t adhere to woke social standards? Yes. Did he share views about allegedly unattractive extras that certain parties found offensive? Apparently. Should Stallone henceforth strive to share less ruthless opinions about the appearance of this or that coworker? Yeah, he should.

Clint Eastwood will turn 94 on 5.31.24 — roughly seven weeks hence.. It would be great all around if Juror No. 2 premieres in Cannes next month, but we’ll see. Using pink-rose lighting for his selfie was a good idea.

Friendo: “So Civil War is woke-infused propaganda masquerading as neutral drama. And the only ones calling it ‘even handed’ are likely woke as fuck. Correct?”

HE: Mostly correct, yes, although it’s not really “woke-infused propaganda,” although it could be so argued in certain respects.

My first major thought upon leaving the theatre last night was that the lying–by–omission on the part of many if not most of the South by Southwest critics is fairly shocking. Some of those bastards flat–out lied through their teeth.

What the final third of Civil War boils down to is an anti-Trump and anti-MAGA jeremiad. The finale of Alex Garland’s dystopian war film really hates with a capital H, and you can’t help but admire it for not softening the tone or diluting the rage. Call it morally ironic if you want…I don’t care.

The ending is so arousing that I almost experienced a boner.

Apart from a curious, less-than-involving focus upon the two leading photo-journalist characters (Kirsten Dunst’s hard-bitten veteran and Cailee Spaeny’s young and emotionally-driven pup), the first two-thirds seem to be mostly even-handed and matter-of-fact in a Battle of Algiers way.

But when the already notorious Jesse Plemons scene (around the 60 or 65-minute mark) arrives, and especially when the big finale happens, it totally becomes a “hooray and goo-rah for the lefty rebels!” thing, and that’s all there is to it.

Okay, you can argue “but it’s full of tragedy and irony and horrible devastation so how can you call it a ‘hooray for the lefties!’ thing?” Yes, it is rife with somber, morally ambiguous irony, but Civil War certainly reveals its true colors at the end.

It also shows a certain significant character to be a weeping, whimpering coward, and I for one think it’s truly wonderful for this.

…but then it finally turns fierce and riveting in a holy-shit way during the last 40 minutes, and then it ends with a “yes!…oh, yes!” moment that I can’t and won’t describe, but it felt so good my eyes were almost damp with joy.

You can criticize me all you want, but this last scene delivered the kind of emotional satisfaction that I hadn’t experienced since the home-invasion finale in Zero Dark Thirty.

During the first 65% I was saying to myself “this is pretty good dystopian stuff but not as good as Children of Men.” Then it finally got into gear.

Yes, it’s about journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moira, Stephen Henderson) covering a brutal civil war between (a) fatigue-wearing nativist whites with Trumpian, anti-POC mindsets (the fascist, Trump-modelled U.S. President is played by Nick Offerman) and (b) secessionist Western Forces (a California + Texas alliance that’s well-armed and helicoptered and determined to wipe out every last Offerman follower…shoot ‘em down like dogs)…an army that seems to be mostly composed of left-progressive whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics…

Boil the snow out and we’re basically talking about a blues-vs.-reds Armageddon.

And yes, Civil War is obviously a slaughterhouse metaphor for the extreme left-right polarization that we’ve all been enduring for last 20-plus years but especially since Trump was elected in ‘16.

But don’t let the critics fool you into thinking it’s more about combat journalism than combat (although it’s told from a journalist perspective), and that it takes some kind of centrist, non-committed view of the war between the cultures…fiercely separate tribes despising each other to such a degree that nobody has any humanity left…it’s been burned and blown out of everyone.

And don’t let the critics fool you about which side this film is on. The journalist characters are just devices — if not distractions then certainly window-dressing and not the real subject (at least in my opinion).

Civil War is a blistering war-is-hell saga, yes, but there’s no dodging the fact that director Alex Garland sides with the lefties.

A24 and the critics have pooled forces in order to sell two deceptive descriptions — i.e., that the film is kind of neutral by not taking sides, and that it’s about combat journalism and not the war they’re covering.

And please understand that the second half of the following paragraph, excerpted from a 3.26.24 review by Empire’s John Nugent, is bullshit:

There is dying bravely and honorably (like Ralph Meeker died in Paths of Glory or like Harris Yulin died in Scarface…”fuck you!”) and there is dying like a whimpering dog (like Robert Loggia died in Scarface, two minutes before Yulin). Trust me — Civil War makes a very clear statement about the latter.

And let’s not forget Winston Churchill’s famous statement that “nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

I’m catching Alex Garland’s Civil War at a 7 pm all-media screening in NYC this evening. It and Ripley will be topics #1 and #2 during tomorrow’s Misfits podcast.

World of Reel Jordan Ruimy received word earlier today that Francis Coppola’s Megalopolis will be screened at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. The scoop came from Coppola himself, but his quotes were forwarded by an audience member.