Ding-dong, the trans goon squad is retreating from Moscow! My spirit soars on gossamer wings. Run for the hills, assholes! Movies are about to look, talk, sound and behave like movies again.

Now that wokeism has been thrown under the bus by corporate America and members of the Indiana Film Journalists Association are shrieking and running for cover, it’s time to revisit ’80s Schwarzenegger machismo….yeaaahhh! And the original 1986 trailer is the keeper.

Pablo Larrain’s Maria has no pulse. It’s nicely directed for what it is. Handsome, decorous, more than a bit plodding, etc. Jolie delivers as well as can be expected, given the flatness of the concept.

But it’s slow as effing molasses. No story tension to speak of. It’s a museum piece.

My immediate response was “why did they make this effing thing?“ It’s not a bad film form-wise, but why?

Interior dialogue as I watched: “I have no empathy or sympathy for Angie’s Maria Callas. She’s a solemn, regal, frosty attitude-bitch with all kinds of grief and anger churning inside. She sulks, hides, chills. Later.”

Excellent cinematography, production design, hair, makeup, wardrobe…totally aces from a tech standpoint.

What was I thinking or feeling while watching the last half-hour? “Angie has no blood in her veins. She needs to die like Maria did and get this over with. Release me from this mortal coil.”

Sometime later today I may snag a link to Mike Leigh‘s Hard Truths…maybe. I’d be happy to catch it theatrically in Manhattan, but it doesn’t seem to be playing anywhere.

“I just think Kevin [Spacey] had certain things which he couldn’t or didn’t admit to, and I think it was a strain on him in many ways. And for me, that was Kevin’s only difficulty.

“But he’s a very fine actor, and I like Kevin a lot. He’s very funny. I met with him recently. I think he’s been through it. He’s had the kicking that some people think he deserved. He’s ready to get back in the saddle again, and some people are trying to stop him from doing that.

“And I really do go back to, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Maybe he got too out of hand, but I don’t think he should be punished endlessly for it. There should be a case of forgive and forget. Let’s move on. I think he should be given the opportunity to come back to work.” — Brian Cox to THR‘s Andrew Goldman.

Last weekend the Indiana Film Journalists Association (IFJA) asked themselves “what we can do, collectively and film-award-wise…what can we do this year to really stand out against the other critics groups, even if it makes us look like behind-the-curve showboats?”

And so they decided to go all-in on Coralie Fargeat‘s The Substance by handing it four big gutso-slammo awards — Best Film, Best Director (Fargeat), Best Performance (Demi Moore) and Best Supporting Performance (Margaret Qualley).

Their second-favorite filmn was HE’s biggest hate-on of 2024 — Brady Corbet‘s The Brutalist.

Compounding their assholery, the IFJA has gone gender-neutral on acting awards. Yo, fellas….you didn’t get the memo? DEI is retreating everywhere…no longer fashionable…ballgame’s over!

IFJA: “Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion: The IFJA believes comprehensive diversity of opinion goes hand-in-hand with comprehensive diversity of gender, race, creed, culture and sexual orientation…pathetic assholes! “To encourage such diversity, equity and inclusion within the group’s ranks — and spur innovation and promote growth in the field of film criticism in Indiana — the IFJA encourages critics of all genders, races, creeds, cultures and sexual orientations to apply for organizational membership.”

Bottom line: The Substance is sufficiently Cronenberg-perverse to warrant attention, but it goes on too long and wears out its welcome.

Posted during last May’s Cannes Film Festival:

There’s a degree of irony, methinks, in Demi Moore starring in The Substance, a riveting David Cronenberg-ian body-horror flick about the fear of aging among older women and the application of artificial enhancements, when it’s been apparent for some time that Moore herself has been augmenting nature with the usual costly touch-ups.

Not that I have the slightest problem with this. Born during the Kennedy administration, Moore looks great (and I’m saying this as a veteran of three Prague procedures so don’t tell me) but c’mon…her character, an aging actress and workout-show host named Elizabeth Sparkle who injects herself with a radical youth drug, isn’t that far from self-portraiture.

Sparkle’s radical de-aging situation conveys a certain parallel or reach-back to Oscar Wilde‘s Dorian Gray, of course, but I’m also thinking of poor, anguished Norma Desmond. Imagine her post-Sunset Boulevard, non-mental-asylum life with the benefit of today’s plastic surgery techniques. She might not have wound up shooting William Holden‘s Joe Gillis, and he might have become Betty Schaefer‘s permanent writing partner!

(Who speculated that Gillis might have somehow been the father of American Gigolo‘s Julian Kaye? Was it David Thomson?)

Directed by Coralie Fargeat, The Substance is a whipsmart body-horror flick. Urgency, punch and pizazz feeds into this synthetic-feeling, slickly assembled piece of feminist (i.e., male-asshole-hating) agitprop, and obviously with a bullhorn message, to wit: Women, throw off the yoke of male assholery and their imposition of bullshit beauty standards and live for yourselves.

There are only two problems with The Substance.

One, it’s not just about Moore’s Sparkle de-aging herself after being fired from her TV show (i.e, too old) but about being replaced by Margaret Qualley‘s Sue, a 20something who emerges, Cronenberg-style, from within Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Sue have some kind of alternating arrangement in which they take turns strutting around in the big, bad city. And I couldn’t understand the rules…how and why of it all.

And two, the film goes on too long. It wore me down and I started glancing at my watch repeatedly….c’mon, wrap this up already.

The New Yorker‘s Justin Chang is calling The Substance “a shoo-in for the Palme d’Or.” Sure thing. If they gave to Titane, why not?

I’m feeling very affected by this. Seven-year-old Drew Barrymore reminds me a bit of Sutton, who’s just turned three. I love that Carson spent the first 60-plus seconds settling her nerves about having fallen and soothing any slight embarrassment she might have been feeling. A good interviewer always shows respect and restraint, but allows feelings of affection to leak out if they naturally surface [go to 7:53].

In late May of ’82 I did an Us magazine group interview with Drew, Henry Thomas (who was 10) and Robert MacNaughton (then 15).

I remember being told by my Us editor, Stephen Schaefer, that a decision had been made by Universal publicists and magazine editors alike to concentrate on Henry and Drew and downplay poor Robert. “But he’s so good in the film!,” I replied, feeling a bit sorry for the guy. That may be true, I was told, but he’s too old and not cute enough — the story will be about Henry and Drew.

The piece was called “E.T.’s Tiny Heroes,” and it turned out to be a cover (my first). The issue date was 7.20.82.

Richard Attenborough‘s Gandhi won the 1982 Best Picture Oscar. Because it said something important and politically correct about social issues, human rights and whatnot. E.T. should have won for the simple, undisputed fact that it’s a much better film that Gandhi…much. Yes, some of it feels emotionally heavy-handed, but I’m suddenly seized by an impulse to watch it again.

I ran into Drew again in ’99 at that Sunset Marquis bar (Bar 1200) — she and Luke Wilson were parked at a table, and I sat down for a chat.

Drew will hit 50 on 2.22.25 — less than three months hence. Henry Thomas turned 50 three years ago — 9.9.21.

“Anybody here seen my friend Martin? / Can you tell me where he’s gone? / He freed a lot of people, but it seems good they’re dyin’ / You know I just looked around and he’s gone.”

The “it seems good they’re dyin'” is repeated four times in “Abraham, Martin and John,” a 1968 hit from Dion (still with us!) and songwriter Dick Holler.

For decades I never quite understood why Dion felt it was good on some level that all the freed people were dyin’. I didn’t think that was the actual lyric, of course, because it didn’t make a lick of sense. Nonetheless I had no alternative and that’s how I sang it for years.

A few days ago I took the time to read Holler’s lyrics and realized that the line goes as follows: “He freed a lotta people but it seems the good they die young.”

What? That’s absurdly ungrammatical on Dion’s part. “The good” and “they” are the same things. Clumsy. A grammatical way to sing it would be to pronounce the first “the” (right before “good”) and then omit the “they” and make it “it seems the good die young.”

I can’t be the only listener who thought he was singing “it seems good they’re dyin’.”

Robert Harris‘s “Conclave” was published on or about 12.1.16 — almost exactly eight years ago. Earlier that year Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash, which costarred Ralph Fiennes as a free-spirited, middle-aged Dionysian and who eight years later would topline as a reverent, somber-minded cardinal in Edward Berger‘s film version of Conclave, opened in theatres and sorta kinda flopped.

From “Much Better Splash Than Expected — Perverse, Noirish, High-Style, Sensual,” an HE review posted on 4.11.16.

“The undercurrent of A Bigger Splash is gently mesmerizing, and that was enough for me. I can’t wait to see it again, or more precisely go there again. I felt like I was savoring a brief vacation. I’m not saying the dramatic ingredients are secondary, but they almost are.

“You feel so nicely brought along by Yorick Le Saux‘s sun-speckled afternoon cinematography and Walter Fasano‘s disciplined cutting, and by the nostalgic Stones vibe (there’s a lip-synch dance sequence that made me fall in love all over again with ‘Emotional Rescue’) and especially by Ralph Fiennes’ giddy-ass, run-at-the-mouth, rock-and-roll madman performance that I was going ‘wow, I almost don’t even care what may or may not happen in this thing.

“Well, I did as far as the plot unfolded. When the heavy-ass, third-act complications arrived I was…well, not uninterested. They’re definitely intriguing as far as they go, especially when the law steps in and starts asking questions. But I just liked being there.”

Posted on 4.12.16: There’s a kick-in-the-pants sequence in Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash that uses the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue.” Sing it, feel it…infectious. But it brought back a misheard-lyrics issue from way back. Go online and the song ostensibly begins as follows:

“Is there nothing I can say, nothing I can do?
Change your mind. I’m so in love with you.
You’re too deep in, you can’t get out.
You’re just a poor girl in a rich man’s house.”

I’ve never heard “too deep in.” Idiotic as it sounds, I’ve always heard “bootie bear.” Here’s how the opening stanza sounds to my ears:

“Is there nuttin’ I can say, nuttin’ I can do?
Change yo’ mind. Ahm so in love wit you.
Bootie bear, yuh can’t get out.
You’re just a poor girl…rich man’s house.”

All these years I’ve told myself that “bootie bear” was a romantic nickname that the guy had given the girl in question. People do this. A girlfriend from the mid ’80s used to call me “huggie bear” so it’s not that crazy.

The River House, 447 E. 52nd Street (cul de sac along the frigid East River), New York, NY 10022.

Eleven days ago a N.Y. Times headline severely traumatized the wokeys and pretty much sent them into a tailspin. Diversity Stalinists lamenting from coast to coast…”oh, noooo!”…and all of it stemming from a single impact-grenade piece by Kabir Chibber.

And then came Robbie Collin’s similar Telegraph story — “Hollywood’s great unwokening has been unleashed.” Excerpt: “Loath as I am to give the w-word an airing, there’s no avoiding it here: 2024 was the year in which Hollywood began to move into its post-woke era.”

The tide has turned, ayeholes! Sanity and proper proportion are being restored.