HE sadly notes the passing of Frederic Forrest, 86. For most of us, Forrest’s best and biggest role will always be “Chef” in Apocalypse Now (‘79), a colorful supporting character whose head was chopped off by Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz.

Forrest had starring roles in One From The Heart (‘81) and Hammett (‘82) — neither took off.

Jordan Ruimy reports that a pair of special Barbie screenings happened last night on both coasts, but the idea was fans-only — no critics or smart-asses or possible contrarians of any kind. So where are the tweets calling Greta Gerwig’s latest an absolutely blazing pink cinematic orgasm?

Or: the pitfalls of cohabitation with Major General Dimitri Strelnikov in the early spring of ‘21.

In keeping with the general wokester view that older white guys are evil, and especially so if they’re wealthy, Melissa Hung recently complained about receiving three N.Y. Times alerts about the lost (and apparently still missing) OceanGate submersible vs. zero alerts about the week-old (4.26) drowning of 55 Libyan migrants after their boat capsized and sank.

Hung’s lament sounds like a close relation of that classic joke about what to call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean. Answer: A good start.

It’s now 5:30 pm eastern on Wednesday, 6.21. The oxygen supply aboard the Titan is due to run out around 10 am on Thursday morning. If they’re still alive, the five trapped travellers (British billionaire Hamish Harding, OceanGate honcho Stockton Rush, French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood) have about 16 hours of breathable air left as we speak. To the best of my knowledge the submsersible hasn’t even been located; the odds of finding it and somehow hauling it to the surface seem astronomical.

It’s been estimated that the Titan, the small, deep-sea, Titanic-spotting submersible that went missing early Sunday morning, can sustain the lives of five on-board travelers for 96 hours, or four 24-hour days.

The 23,000-pound Titan began descending around 4 am on Sunday, or roughly 53 hours ago. (It’s now 9 am eastern.) Start to finish Titanic dives last ten hours, including a 2 and 1/2 hour descent to the wreckage some 13,000 feet below.

If the five aren’t rescued by early Thursday morning, an agonizing finale awaits. The clock is ticking — at most rescuers have the remainder of today (Tuesday, 6.20) and all-day Wednesday.

This paragraph, from a N.Y. Times report, conveys the bottom line:

This also:

Why would average parents trust Disney these days? Disney used to be family-friendly — now they’re Chinese communists pushing radical gender ideology. They’ve become the woke brain police, waving Mao’s little red book.

If you’re primarily a fan of Brian Cox in Succession and not much else, hold on to your hat. Once upon a time and strange as it may sound today, Cox was actually 39 years old, and he blazed a Hannibal Lecter trail that no one who saw Manhunter (‘86) will ever forget.