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In a 5.2 N.Y. Times article called “Dear Movie Industry, We Have Thoughts’, critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis riff on this and that. A diverting enough thing until I came upon Scott’s startling suggestion that anyone offering a historical analogy about today’s near-tyrannical climate of politically correct admonishing is up to no good.

“Please read some history,” he implored. “About the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the martyrdom of early Christians, Joseph McCarthy, Joseph Stalin, the Gestapo, Pol Pot and any of the other historical monsters and catastrophes you like to invoke when talking about whatever is bothering you in contemporary culture. Also please refrain from hyperbolically throwing around words like ‘silencing,’ ‘thought police’ and ‘censorship’ in reference to criticism on social media or elsewhere. People who indulge in this kind of rhetorical inflation are like rats spreading bubonic plague.”

Really? So I can’t use the term “p.c. brownshirts” any longer? And the HE meme about zealous sentiments within the #MeToo and #TimesUp community recalling the mindset of Maximilien Robespierre…that’s no good either?

There’s a slight but horrifying possibility that Donald Trump could actually be re-elected in 2020. One factor that could bring about this nightmare scenario, it seems, is a generally held suspicion among rural bumblefucks that the left has devolved into a culture of p.c. scolding. But there’s nothing to this, right?

A Twitter guy named “32 across” called this piece “the latest installment in the DSCU — the Dargis Scott Critical Universe. Please refer to it that way from now on.”

I for one began to have doubts about the DSCU last June when they posted a “Best Films of the 21st Century” piece and stated that Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen‘s Inside Out ranked seventh.

In a century that has celebrated Zodiac, Zero Dark Thirty, Manchester By The Sea, Leviathan, The Wolf of Wall Street, A Separation, The Social Network, No Country For Old Men, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, The Lives of Others, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Love & Mercy, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, In the Bedroom, Call Me By Your Name, Loveless, Personal Shopper, The Square and The Big Sick, the seventh-best is fucking Inside Out?

Ask any half-thoughtful person if they feel that the post-#MeToo reputations of Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen are roughly analogous, and they’ll most likely say “hardly…a single, highly disputable allegation is a far cry from several credible accusations of sexual assault and rape.” The fact is that the association persists only in the minds of certain journalists. Claudia Eller’s just-posted Variety interview with Cannes Film Festival jury president Cate Blanchett is a case in point.

Blanchett’s answer to Eller’s tabloid-attitude question (“Would you ever work again with Weinstein or Allen?”) skillfully sidesteps what she seems to actually think, which is “where’s the legal proof in the Allen pudding?” Remember Blanchett’s response to a similar question from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour a few weeks ago? She said that social media is great for raising “awareness about issues,” but it’s “not the judge and jury,” and that if evidence comes to light that warrants prosecution then a prosecution should result, but if the evidence isn’t there…well, you know, maybe the Robespierres should settle down, take a breath and direct their energies elsewhere.

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Maybe it was unrealistic to hope that Kevin Connolly‘s Gotti (Vertical/Sunrider, 6.15) might aspire to some kind of exceptional, Coppola-like vision or scheme. Something darker, sadder, deeper or grander than just another Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond-type deal.

The Gotti trailer suggests a brisk narrative and most likely a reasonably engaging sit — John Travolta‘s lead performance is obviously carnivorous — but it feels so rote, so familiar, so “is that all there is?” There may be more depth to Gotti than what the trailer is indicating, but right now it feels like run-of-the-mill bullets, bluster, brutality, braggadocio and brain matter.

An AP story is reporting that Gotti will premiere out-of-competition with a special 5.15 gala screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

Sight unseen, Hollywood Elsewhere fully approves. Pocket-drop attitude, vibe. My kind of dry humor. I can tell.

A producer friend saw Michael Mayer and Stephen Karam‘s adaptation of The Seagull (Sony Classics, 5.11) yesterday, and was stirred and delighted. Mainly by the performances, she said — Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, Elizabeth Moss, Brian Dennehy, Corey Stoll. I replied that (a) it had been mostly well reviewed a few days ago after screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, and that (b) I was sorry I hadn’t received a screening invite.

HE to LA-based SPC publicists (who invited colleagues to a screening and a press day three or four weeks ago): “So I don’t get to review The Seagull in a timely fashion? It opens in 11 days. I worship the play and have seen it performed on stage twice in NYC, so missing out on the film version thus far is unfortunate. I’m in NYC as we speak. Any Manhattan screenings between now and Thursday, 5.4?”

I’m still puzzled by the fact that despite The Seagull having shot in mid ’15, it didn’t hit theatres all during ’16 or ’17. In a smoothly functioning realm it would have played at the ’16 fall festivals and opened sometime in the winter, spring or fall of ’17. As I wrote on 3.16.18, there has to be a reason for that.

Lone-wolf naysayer Jude Fry wrote in his 4.22 Indiewire review that Mayer gussies The Seagull up with too many dolly shots, “like he’s choreographing a Green Day song.” He also said Mayer should have left Chekhov’s original play well enough alone. Nontheless the film currently has a 90% RT approval rating.

Also from 3.18: How could watching Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, Corey Stoll, Billy Howle and Elisabeth Moss performing Chekhov’s greatest play…how could that not be a keeper?”

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It’s hard to think of Michael Imperioli as a gray-haired 52 year-old, given that his Sopranos character, Christopher Moltisanti, is branded into our brains as an angry, undisciplined, emotionally intemperate guy in his early to mid 30s. (Born in ’66, Imperioli was 33 when The Sopranos began airing in ’99, and 41 when it ended in ’07.)

One of Moltisanti’s most noteworthy lines, shouted to Martin Scorsese in front of a hot Manhattan club: “Marty! Kundun…I liked it!”

Seriously, I can just tell that David Chase‘s The Many Saints of Newark, which deals with the Soprano family during the ’67 Newark race riots, is going to amount to something. I can feel it. Great title, Chase knows the turf like the back of his hand, an epic-scale confrontation between cultures. If anyone can toss me a PDF of the script…please.

In an NPR “Fresh Air” interview with Terry Gross that will air Tuesday, 5.1, Michelle Wolf said the following about her monologue at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner last weekend: “I wasn’t expecting this level [of controversy], but I’m also not disappointed there’s this level. I knew what I was doing going in. I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to cater to the room. I wanted to cater to the outside audience, and not betray my brand of comedy. I actually…a friend of mine who helped me write, he gave me a note before I went on which I kept with me which was, ‘Be true to yourself…never apologize…burn it to the ground.’ I wouldn’t change a single word that I said. I’m very happy with what I said, and I’m glad I stuck to my guns.”

John F. Kelly began serving as Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff on 7.31.17. He’s unlikely to last a year. With four separate sources telling NBC that he’s called Trump an “idiot”, Kelly is obviously on the way out. Perhaps not imminently, but surely within a month or two. Posted earlier today by NBC’s Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube, Kristen Welker and Stephanie Ruhle: “Kelly [has portrayed] himself to Trump administration aides as the lone bulwark against catastrophe, curbing the erratic urges of a president who has a questionable grasp on policy issues and the functions of government. He has referred to Trump as ‘an idiot’ multiple times to underscore his point, according to four officials who say they’ve witnessed the comments.” Wolf is claiming the “idiot” comments are “total b.s.” — I kinda doubt that.