So in the forthcoming Midnight Run remake/sequel, which will presumably blow chunks because lightning generally refuses to strike twice in the same place, Regina Hall will presumably play the lead or female equivalent of Robert De Niro‘s “Jack Walsh” character. No word on who will play Charles Grodin‘s mob-accountant role.

De Niro and Jane Rosenthal will “produce” (i.e., pocket a paycheck) for Tribeca. Jesse Collins is also collecting a check via Jesse Collins Entertainment. Hall will also collect a producer’s fee under her RH Negative label. Universal’s Sara Scott (no fee, just salary) will oversee on behalf of the studio.

I didn’t mean to say “Midnight Run with Black Chicks.” I meant to say “Midnight Run with a female bounty hunter of color plus an actress of color doing her best at resuscitating the late Charles Grodin.”

With a sizable percentage of Rotten Tomatoes ticket buyers giving Spencer a thumbs-down, an inevitable shadow is cast upon Kristen Stewart‘s Best Actress campaign. I’m not saying that the film’s lack of popularity invalidates Stewart’s Oscar hopes, but it certainly doesn’t help. If the schmoes say no, how long can the handicappers and Gold Derby shills and smiling gladhanders keep the fires burning? What say ye, Scott Mantz and Perry Nemiroff?

“Why didn’t the Eternals intervene when Ultron tried to destroy the world, or when Thanos was about to wipe out half the universe, you ask? Apparently they’re only allowed to take action when the deviants are involved.”

Or why, HE asks, didn’t they step in during the Nazi holocaust to try and save a few million Jews from horrible death? Or during the mass murders of Cambodian citizens in the mid to late ’70? Part of the answer is that the Eternals believe that tragedies are teaching experiences, and that people grow after experiencing them. Apparently they’re only allowed to take action when the deviants are involved.

But really, how worthless are the Eternals in a general sense?

So this tough guy named Chris Knittel (ex-military for 11 years, currently trying to be an actor) announced on Facebook that he’d heard “mixed things” about Chloe Zhao‘s Eternals (i.e., had read that it’s the lowest-rated Marvel film of all time) and therefore announced it’s “time to see it for myself.” And Facebook decided that this post was “spam” and took it down.

Chris tapped out these words yesterday as the show was about to start. Obviously the slapdown is an algorithim thing but still…the word “mixed” is considered spammy?

So what did he think of Eternals? “I liked it,” Chris says. “Pretty epic movie…great actors, good comedy….I think the adverse reactions were about people’s expectations being so high, being from an Oscar-winning director and all, people’s expectations were extremely high…this movie did a great job with the different characters…they all had their different dynamics.”

Chris’s favorite film of the year so far is Edson Ota‘s Nine Days (Sony Pictures Classics, 9.30). It costarred Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz and Benedict Wong. Currently renting on Amazon for $5.99.

21 Gold Derby forecasters have stated preferences in the race for Best Actress Oscar. The overwhelming favorite is Kristen Stewart‘s performance as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer, and so she’s sitting atop 13 lists.

Except the most deserving recipient for the ’21 and ’22 Best Actress Oscar is Penelope Cruz in Pedro’s Parallel Mothers — theres no question about this, none whatsoever.

How many GD smarties have Cruz at the top of their lists? Two — Variety‘s Tim Gray and Queerty’s Michael Musto. There should be more. Cruz’s performance is incontestably fuller, richer, tethered to common experience than Stewart’s. Comparing the two isn’t allowed — entirely different leagues.

Stewart’s submission to Spencer‘s concept — Diana was half-mad, besieged by visions and nightmares, lost in her own head — is total and therefore admirable; you could even call what she does mesmerizing. (being a stickler, I can’t apply that term.) But she’s mainly being favored because critics and public alike are still Diana-struck (they all want to curtsy and bow) and because Spencer declares that the royal family members were bloodless ghouls, and this synchs with current wokester views.

Plus there’s Stewart’s LGBTQ profile and her two-decade career besides (plugging away since 2002’s Panic Room, only 31 years old).

Nagging problem: A few brave critics who’ve seen Pablo Larrain’s film have honestly shared what they feel about it. The fact is that Spencer is an oppressive and smothering thing to sit through. It literally gives you a kind of headache. This doesn’t seem to bother Stewart’s supporters, but in the old days (i.e., before 2015) if a movie really stunk then the Oscar chances of this or that performer in said film would be negatively affected. Not so much any more, or so it would seem.

Stewart is a respected actor. She’s been in a few half-decent films (Welcome to the Rileys, Clouds of Sils Maria, The Runaways, Cafe Society) and also made a lot of stinkers. Spencer is one of them. How many truly awesome, artistically approved knockout films has Stewart made in her life? Exactly one — Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper.

13 for Kristen Stewart. 3 for Lady Gaga. 2 for Olivia Colman, 2 for Penelope Cruz, 1 for Jessica Chastain.

I’m reading about “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” (Encounter, 10.26), a just-published book by Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon.

It got my attention because roughly the same thing has been happening in the film industry for the last five or six years. I summarized the situation twice this year — on 9.9.21, and on 3.22.21.

Amazon synopsis: “Something is wrong with American journalism. Long before ‘fake news’ became the calling card of the right, Americans had lost faith in their news media. But lately, the feeling that something is off has become impossible to ignore.

“That’s because the majority of our mainstream news is no longer just liberal; it’s woke. Today’s newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including ‘antiracism,’ intersectionality, open borders and critical race theory. How did this come to be?

“The moral panic around race, encouraged by today’s elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. ‘Bad News’ explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked.”

my n

But there’s no way in hell that Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (which is being aggressivejy junketed right now at the Four Seasons) can even fantasize about winning the Best Picture Oscar.

Those insisting that it’s time for Campion to snag an Academy trophy might be able to push this notion through, but the film itself is a rancid bowl of grim about a mean and smelly closet case (i.e., Benedict Cumberbatch). The Gold Derby kiss-asses who are projecting a Dog Best Picture win are completely out of their fucking minds.

And Anne Thompson, by the way, rating Dune higher than King Richard? That’s crazy stuff!

But she doesn’t. She wimps out. Probably because she knew N.Y. Times wokester thinking would just lead to a watering-down process so why bother?

The closest Dowd comes to just saying it is to quote James Carville kvetching about “stupid wokeness”.

Here’s what she could have said: Goaded and justifiably alarmed by Donald Trump’s racist, dog-whistled taunts during the ‘15 and ‘16 campaign, doubly freaked by his defeat of Hillary Clinton, jarred by “The 1619 Project” (launched in August’19) and then carried along by the agonized George Floyd protests of May ‘20, Democrats embraced the woke progressive agenda lock, stock and barrel.

The time had come to not only push back against 300 years of systemic racism but to embrace anti–white racism as a counterweight. The tables had to be turned, and whites had to not only be confronted but condemned for a bedrock biological poison in their bones a la Robin DiAngelo. Which required stringent anti-racist education in not just colleges but public schools, and in some cases with young kids being taught this doctrine.

This led to suburban parental perceptions that wokesters had overplayed their hand — that the basic educational thrust in schools was that people of color are sainted figures and hothouse flowers and needed to be treated with scholastic kid gloves (equity vs. “racist” meritocracy) and that European-descended Anglo culture is rooted in cruel, dismissive, anti-persons-of-color attitudes.

Nobody has any arguments with frank teachings about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow and systemic governmental prejudice and neglect, but instructing kids that whites are infected with a fundamental evil gene was a bridge too far, and telling parents not to try and mess with school curriculums (as Terry McAuliffe did) was rubbing salt in the wound. Hence the decisive victory of Glenn Youngkin last Tuesday.

That’s what Dowd could have said.