Twitter has permanently darkened our understanding of ourselves. At no time in history have the witch-hunt instincts and predatory wolf-pack tendencies of nominally civilized human beings been so evident. For centuries people expressed, conversed and communicated in the usual pre-21st Century ways, but then…well, I’ve said it. What a wonderful party Twitter is. The coming 2020 elections are going to be brutal, bruising. (Especially within Camp Woke, and doubly so among the Pete haters.) And Twitter convos are going to win the Congressional Medal of Ugly. What’s the point of kidding ourselves?

I wish there could be a site that that specializes in compressing features into five-minute featurettes. Gene Fowler, Jr.’s I Married A Monster From Outer Space is probably a tedious sit (I’ve only seen portions), but I found this version engrossing as far as it went. Wiki anecdote: Principal photography began on April 21 and ended in early May 1958.” In other words, principal lasted for two weeks, three at the outside.) “The film premiered in Los Angeles on 9.10.58, followed by a U. S. and Canadian theatrical release in October.

Hollywood Elsewhere is anticipating a different kind of New Year’s Eve celebration. It’s basically a Parasite thang at Mama Lion (601 So. Western). It’ll be hosted by Miky Lee, exec producer of Bong Joon-ho‘s Oscar contender as well as vice chairwoman of CJ Group. (Lee is in charge of the overall strategic direction and management of CJ Group’s entertainment and media division.)

The gathering will be co-hosted by actress, producer and social queen bee Colleen Camp, who threw the greatest award-season party of 2018/’19 Oscar season for Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War. (It happened on 1.12.19.)

Tatyana and I are going to politely sidestep an 8pm Parasite screening (I’ve seen it twice) and just hit the party.

The evening will include a musical performance by A.C.E., a South Korean boy band. K-pop and J-pop (as in Japanese synth pop) are pretty much indistinguishable. The last time I was in Hanoi there was a V-pop band (Vietnamese) playing at an outdoor venue. Due respect but anything “pop” isn’t my cup. When it comes to New Year’s Eve sounds, I’m more of a boogie jazz cat Mose Allison type.

Lost in the general holiday zone-out, obscured by the bombing of Cats and out-shone by the respectable box-office hauls of Little Women ($33.5M domestic) and Uncut Gems ($22.7M) is the curious foundering of Jay Roach‘s Bombshell.

It isn’t tanking exactly, but it doesn’t seem to be connecting either.

After two and a half weekends in wide release (1,480 situations) the R-rated #MeToo dramedy is currently looking at a $17M domestic total. That’s bad news for a film that cost $33 million to make, not counting marketing. The Rotten Tomatoes rating was 67%, but the audience score is a not bad 83. The IMDB rating is 6.6.

I don’t know if this lack of b.o. energy will penetrate the industry membrane by way of diminished support for Charlize Theron‘s Best Actress chances, but I’m sensing that it might.

A few weeks back one or two HE commenters predicted that Bombshell would fizzle. I thought it would do a lot better than it has. It’s a crafty, well-made film with an urgent theme, but for whatever reason (creeping #MeToo fatigue?) Joe and Jane Popcorn seem to be only half-attentive. I’m sorry about this. At the very least I thought Bombshell would develop legs.

Ten years ago fake Criterion covers were…well, not ubiquitous but fairly noteworthy in terms of occasional online amusement. With the gradual passing of physical media FCCs have also done a kind of fade. I miss them. I’d love to see some covers of recent titles. No, not Uncut Gems.

Riding the flying Triumph over the barbed wire is the Steve McQueen moment everyone remembers**, but his stardom was officially sanctified with his return to Stalag Luft III. The whole camp came to a standstill. With everyone — German commanders, guards, inmates — staring at Cpt. Virgil Hilts and hanging on his every utterance, director John Sturges was telling the audience that McQueen was the King of Cool and that further attention would be paid. There but for the awful grace of God went Rick Dalton.

Shortly before his 1980 murder, John Lennon spoke about the difference between his 17-year-old son Julian Lennon and his five-year-old son Sean Lennon.

Quoted by U.K. Express, posted on 12.24.19: “Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don’t love Julian any less as a child. He’s still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn’t have pills in those days. He’s here, he belongs to me and he always will.”

He added that John-Julian relations were in a nascent stage at the moment: “Julian and I will have a relationship in the future.”

There is only now.

I didn’t see this George and Harrison deepfake thing when it popped on 12.24. The next day we drove up to San Francisco, etc. Caught up with it only this morning. I honestly think it’s brilliant in spurts. The voices, the wigs, the stoned stuff (“I know what you’re up to, on that ranch”), “McClunkey,” etc. Best Collider thing ever. But it should have been trimmed. Four, five minutes tops.

This morning I finally read the 12.29 N.Y. Times story (reported by Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti) about Trump’s demand to halt military assistance to Ukraine, and particularly the 8.16 Oval office meeting in which National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper pleaded with Trump to lift the military funding freeze, to no avail.

Moscow Mitch’s intention to blow off any pretense of a fair and thorough Senate impeachment trial is locked down, of course. He will continue to coordinate with the White House in order to facilitate a whitewash, etc.

Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (posted on 12.31): “In objecting to a fixed trial with rules dictated by President Trump, you have distinguished yourself as someone willing to place country and Constitution above party.

“You alone cannot stop a grievous injury to our Constitution, but with several Republican colleagues (might I suggest Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, retiring senators and those senators whose constituents will run them out of town on a rail for going along with a rigged trial), you have the ability to stop a travesty that would bring dishonor on the Senate, prevent a full accounting of the president’s conduct and result in a verdict lacking credibility with the American people

Given the general presumption that certain fellas aren’t exactly into Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women, and given that the film has a robust army of progressive-minded female champions, it’s worth noting certain male critics who’ve stood by Little Women and generally bonded with Gerwig, given her a comradely hug or poke, sung her praises, insisted that reticent males should re-think it and so on.

It’s been observed that Gerwig’s “white knights” include rogerebert.com and N.Y. Times contributor Glenn Kenny, Vanity Fair‘s Mark Harris, MCN’s David Poland, N.Y. Times critic A.O Scott, Variety music guy Chris Willman, TheWrap‘s Alonso Duralde, THR‘s Todd McCarthy, New York‘s David Edelstein and L.A. Times critics Justin Chang and Kenneth Turan.

Kenny responds: “I am fine being listed as a booster of the movie, but not as a ‘white knight.’ I’m not being chivalrous. Gerwig [is] a real filmmaker. From my year-end blog post: ‘Guys, it’s good! It’s got mise-en-scéne! I kept hearing about how radical and stuff it was, but what more impressed me about the picture was its genuine tenderness…there’s a rare delicacy of feeling here.'”

Willman responds: “I wouldn’t object to [the white knight thing], although it’s hard to take it as anything other than tongue-in-cheek. Unlike Poland or Kenny, I have no clout in film circles. I should never have gotten caught up in the Twitter debate with [redacted], but it was just hard to resist pointing out that it’s not some kind of even split on the movie and vast majorities really like it just fine. I did not realize I was joining a ‘pile-on.’ Anyway, as there are so many critical voices supporting Gerwig or the movie, mine hardly counts.”

When Green Book won the Oscar pic.twitter.com/B3ihsi9V2r

— YrOnlyDaddy📽🎞📺 (@YrOnlyHope) December 30, 2019

I’m not particularly qualified to riff on the worst films of 2019 as I almost always steer clear. I can smell them a mile away and will only occasionally endure. I could mention Cats, of course, but I feel mostly pity for that film. I could complain about the Miss Bala remake (the Mexican-made original was 17 or 18 times better) but I didn’t see It: Chapter Two, Glass, Last Christmas (even though I have a screener), Men in Black: International, Isn’t It Romantic, the Hellboy remake, the Shaft remake, etc. I’m not saying Alex Ross Perry‘s Her Smell was one of the year’s worst, but I really hated it. Long Shot pretty much stunk, I thought. I never saw Tolkien or Ophelia. I hated Spider-Man: Far From Home. Almost everyone felt that Stuber blew chunks. I hated The Goldfinch and was mostly dismissive of Ad Astra. I never saw Rambo: Last Blood. I didn’t care for The Aeronauts at all. I ducked 21 Bridges. I avoided A Million Little Pieces, etc.

My heart’s not in this, I guess.