Jeffrey Wells

First Orgiastic Expression of “We Ain’t White!”, Lemmings-Over-The-Cliff, Woke-ity Woke Hollywood Glee Club

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…happened ten and a quarter years ago (1.25.16) and I was right in the middle of it, bruh….a front-row seat at Park City’s Eccles theatre…and I called it what it was, blunt and straight and true….”one of the biggest self-congratulatory circle jerks and politically correct wank-offs in the history of the Sundance Film Festival.”

This flashpoint event marked the birth of the cultish woke insanity that would begin to engulf Hollywood two years later and which ignited big-time during the COVID–infected, George Floyd summer of 2020.

One of the more significant responses to my 1.25.16 report came from Variety ‘s Steven Gaydos, who more or less implied that I was some kind of racist Unibomber who needed to face my own ugliness and get my head straight and so on.

2026 hindsight: Gaydos had his head up his woke-cheerleading glee club woo-woo rectum, and I was channeling the spirit of Dalton Trumbo.

Endorsed by Paul Simon

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Yesterday I was knocked out by a nocturnal photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, which had been posted on Facebook by Reid Rosefelt. It has a fantasy-world quality…pinpoints of golden amber enshrouded by fog clouds, like an image of nighttime London out of Disney’s Péter Pan (‘53).

“It doesn’t seem real”, I thought, “but congrats to Reid all the same.”

Reid later clarified that the photo has been snapped by event photographer Jane Kratochvil, who lives in Reid’s building but has a better view of the bridge.

Kratochvil’s photos, which capture corporate events and shows and big celebrations, are all postcard pretty — bursting with color, perfectly balanced, full of joy and spirit, etc. Which is what her clients want.

Look at her professional website and you immediately think of that lyric from Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome”…”gives you the nice bright colors, gives you the greens of summer…makes you think all the world’s a sunny day.”

Alas, Jane’s magnificently foggy Brooklyn Bridge-at-night snap is apparently an anomaly — I found no other images on her website that seem to even aspire to its moody complexity, much less vaguely resemble it.

Heavenly, Red-Robed Trump

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A divine and merciful Donald Trump blessing a resting (ailing? dying?) Paul Newman as Judge Roy Bean…what does this have to do with Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo?

And what’s with the winged, shadowy, flying monkey demon floating in the golden clouds behind Jesus H. Trump…the figure with the Statue of Liberty crown and flanked by two U.S. soldiers?

This Is It

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“To be happy, you must eliminate two things in your head. The fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past.” — Seneca the younger.

I try to live with a loose-shoe, “everything’s everything”, be-here-now, zen-hepcat attitude, but I will never be free of the above. They will always haunt me. The only things that keep the HE boat afloat are (a) the love of great or very good or hugely enjoyable movies from the past and (b) unquenchable excitement about great movies yet to come.

The 2015 Version Will Do Just Fine, Thanks

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You’ll notice that in Criterion’s forthcoming 4K version of Point Blank (due on 4.21.26), the red-robed Angie Dickinson has an unhealthy pallor — pale, blood-drained, almost ghostly — while the orange-robed Dickinson in the 2015 WHE Bluray has a robust and creamy sun-tanned look.

HE to John Boorman acquaintance who has his contact info: “I want to reach out to Boorman and ask him why oh why he approved Criterion’s teal desecration of his 1967 crime classic. Could you please share his email? Or contact info for his business rep? I’ve respected the man immensely for many decades but I went into a state of cardiac arrest when I saw those DVD Beaver screen captures.”

Boorman acquaintance to HE: “Given Boorman’s current state of health, it doesn’t feel like now is an appropriate time to engage.”

HE to Boorman acquaintance: “You think that my respectfully and submissively asking Boorman why he approved Criterion’s teal-soaked Point Blank…you think that’ll cause the poor guy to have a heart attack?”

Tooze Says Criterion Teal Gremlins Have Vandalized “Point Blank”

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In a recent review, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze has posted a condemnation of yet another Criterion teal vandalizing, the victim in this case being John Boorman‘s Point Blank (’67) on an upcoming 4K Bluray (due on 4.21.26).

This is par for the course when it comes to the teal gremlins in the employ of Criterion, which has been producing teal-tinted Blurays since 2018 or thereabouts. But the apparent Point Blank ruination is doubly shocking because the forthcoming Bluray (a 4K and a 1080p version are included) has been “approved” by the film’s 93-year-old director John Boorman.

How could Boorman have possibly okayed this**? How could he have surveyed this desecration and said “even though the color grading ignores what this 1967 film, a classic jewel in the crown of my career, has always looked like, the tealish makeover or mauling is…well, it is what it is. Criterion has its own visual take and I will not protest.”

I’ve been looking at Point Blank for many decades (theatrically, cable, DVD, Bluray), and I know what the color grading looks like as well as Boorman does so don’t tell me.

Presuming that the Tooze screen captures are accurate, this is yet another atrocity. Who was (or is) the evil maestro behind the teal tinting? The infamous Lee Kline or some anonymous disciple, some flunky, some Criterion stooge?

From Gary W. Tooze‘s recently posted DVD Beaver review of Criterion’s new Point Blank 4K Bluray (streeting on 4.21.26):

“Unfortunately the Criterion has a noticeable teal-heavy color grade in many scenes. This is part of a long-running complaint about Criterion’s modern 4K restorations, often called the ‘Criterion teal disease’ or ‘teal push’ in home video communities.

“Natural blues, greys, and even some skin tones or concrete surfaces in the film lean noticeably toward cyan/teal-green, which can make the image feel colder and more ‘modern/digital’ than the warmer, more naturalistic (yet still stylized) look of the earlier Warner Bluray or DVD releases.

“Dark blue suits [have turned] light blue and Angie Dickinson‘s orange bathrobe [has turned] deep red.

“[The film] still works cinematically, but color timing is the most divisive aspect of this restoration.”

** Presuming, of course, that Tooze’s screen captures are accurate representations.

Guy Lodge Hired as Co-Chief Variety Critic, Replacing Peter Debruge

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Congrats to the ultra-dweeby Guy Lodge, a longtime Variety stringer and an insightful film nut, upon his hiring as Variety‘s new co-chief film critic, replacing Peter Debruge and now on equal footing with co-honcho Owen Gleiberman.

HE admired and respected Lodge all through the first 15 or so years of this century. We first met 20 or so years ago…drinks in London, Cannes schmoozings, a dinner in Paris, etc. And then Lodge went wokey-woke and snooty-snoot in the late teens. Okay, fine…almost all film critics are woke these days and Lodge, an excellent writer, is no different. But he can also be, to be fair, a reasonably supple mainstream guy on occasion.

12 years ago I was delighted by Lodge’s praise for Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper: “Among the many things that appear to be on Assayas’s mind is the disembodied — and disembodying — nature of modern-day communication and social media, which makes ghosts of us all to those with whom we text far more than we talk. Perhaps no film has ever made the mobile phone quite such an instrument of tension: the on-screen iPhone ellipsis of an incoming message takes on a breath-halting urgency here. No more should be revealed about the film’s gliding, glassy sashay through multiple, splintered genres and levels of consciousness – except to say that Assayas, working in the high-concept, game-playing vein of his Irma Vep and demonlover, is in shivery control of it all.”

Three or four years later the woke virus began to manifest, and Lodge was infected along with the rest. A certain tone of dutiful cult servitude began to settle in.

From “A Fifth Body Snatchers is Required“, posted on 1.9.18: “Friends and family members of seed-pod film critics have begun to notice a certain robotic manner and a glassy, out-to-lunch look in their eyes. Local constable: “But he looks like his picture, madam. Obviously he’s Guy Lodge, the Variety critic.” Mrs. Lodge: “But it isn’t him, I’m telling you. Something is missing. It’s just not Guy!”

Posted three and a half years ago:

Posted on 12.7.25: “Variety’s Guy Lodge, the bespectacled king of the Cannes filmcrit dweebs, has totally raved about Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling. I respect Lodge’s willingness to drop to his knees and kowtow to a feminist filmmaker who has the chutzpah to subject viewers to a drip-drip gloom virus, but at the same time I think he’s either left the planet or had simply decided to praise this fairly infuriating film no matter what.”

Saga of a “Daughter of The Desert” Needs A Coda

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Who could have foreseen on 2.1.26 that the missing and presumed-kidnapped Nancy Guthrie, beloved mom of TODAY‘s Savannah Guthrie, would still be missing nine weeks later, and that the Tuscon fuzz and the FBI still wouldn’t have clue #1 as to what exactly happened or where she is or anything?

I wonder if any of the principals involved have seen or even heard of Peter Weir‘s Picnic at Hanging Rock?

Two more ransom notes have been reported by TMZ, only they aren’t about where Nancy Guthrie may or may not be — it’s about where her body is. The first note, received on Monday, says “she is dead.”

TMZ’s Harvey Levin: “We got another letter today from this person, an email saying ‘I know where her body is, and who the kidnapper is…give me half a bitcoin and I’ll tell you.'”

“Take A Train, Dear”

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13 years expired between the 12.18.09 debut of James Cameron‘s Avatar and his aquatic follow-up, Avatar: The Way of Water, which opened on 12.16.22. A long wait.

But that’s nothing compared to the 20 year gap between David Frankel‘s The Devil Wears Prada and The Devil Wears Prada 2, which opens on 5.1.26 — a mere 3 and 1/2 weeks hence.

Everyone, of course, is 20 years older. Way back in ’06 Meryl Streep was 56 or 57, Anne Hathaway was 24, Emily Blunt was 23, Stanley Tucci was 56, etc. And the material is…well, who knows if it’s dated or not? But the concept certainly is.

Will there be any references to deranged fashion industry wokeism, which is apparently ebbing as we speak. Will anyone mention the mercifully brief vogue of plus-sized women in underwear and fragrance ads? Will the film allow a glimpse of any trans runway models? The only portion I’m really looking forward to is the Milan footage.