The obvious bottom line (apparent to anyone paying attention) is that Everything Everywhere All At Once is not just divisive but deeply loathed. It’s my personal opinion that this A24,release (and I mean this from the bottom of my heart) is nothing short of a pestilence.

In an 8.1.22 HE story called “Au Hasard, Cocaine Bear,” I conveyed a certain degree of loathing for what Elizabeth Banks‘ Cocaine Bear (Universal, 2.24 23) appeared to be about. Here’s what I said:

A while back Banks sat for a Variety cover story, written by Adam B. Vary. A passage reads as follows: “Most crucially, when Banks looked into the real story, she came away with what she describes as ‘a deep sympathy for the bear.'”

Banks: “I really felt like this is so fucked up that this bear got dragged into this drug run gone bad and ends up dead. I felt like this movie could be that bear’s revenge story.”

The below image was stolen from a “New Rules” segment on Real Time with Bill Maher.

What’s the difference between book–burning and word–burning, which is what “sensitivity readers” (currently working for all major publishers) are basically about? It’s a matter of scale as the basic impulse is the same.

8:01 pm: I walked out of Ant–Man and the Wasp: Quantumania with approximately 30 minutes left to go. My soul was screaming with boredom. Make that boredom-fueled rage. I felt sick, poisoned.

It’s one of the most corrupt and sickening wastes of time I’ve ever submitted to, and that’s saying something.

I can’t believe that Peyton Reed, the guy behind the original glorious Ant–Man (‘15), has so completely sold his soul to the devil. For it was Reed, a twisted, perverse, black-hearted jackal if there ever was one, who decided to set the whole damn thing in the micro-sized Quantum realm, an “exotic” green-screen George Lucas visual disease land by way of Fantastic Voyage and the Star Wars prequels, complete with dopey exotic monsters amid super-lavish sets and bullshit CG backdrops that obviously cost a shitload.

Reed “did” this movie to me…he created it and suffocated and killed me tonight…his doing, his fault…and he should be hung upside down and dipped in a vat of boiling oil.

I nonetheless feel obliged to praise Jonathan Majors’ performance as Kang Bang, the Sam-The-Sham Conqueror of the Kingdom of Self-Loathing. It was good enough to prompt me to imagine him one day playing Macbeth or Othello at the Old Vic.

Yesterday trans-allied bully signatories of that two-day-old GLAAD protest letter to the N.Y. Times were basically told by management to pound sand…hah!

The message could be reasonably translated as “individual Times employees are hereby advised that further protests against Times management under the aegis of an outside political agenda org will not end well for them…do not mess with us in this fashion again.”

The last 72 words of Amy Holden Jones’ Facebook post, which appeared within the last couple of days, are stark and true and sad. The passage begins with the words “but help me.”

HE to Amy: “Here’s a pretty good answer to ‘what the hell happened to cinema?’ It comes from not just my own thoughts and observations but those of a few others, and it’s called “Don McLean’s ‘The Day The Academy Died.” It was posted on 9.25.22.

Gregg Moscoe and Alex Simon also stirred the pot:

Final HE thought: “Vote for that Riseborough!”

I’ve been attending the Santa Barbara Film Festival since ‘03 or thereabouts, and I really wish I could’ve been there last night. All hail Cate Blanchett!!