…and probably best forgotten.

A World of Reel commenter named “M” has nailed the basic problem with Leonardo DiCaprio’s dumb-as-a-fencepost Ernest Burkhart character:

Yes, that’s 100% correct. Texas FBI guy Tom White should have been the main character.

Herewith the latest Oscar Poker, which alternated between agreeably plodding along and finding an occasional good groove…

How were things looking in early ’09, a time in the evolution of the species when Barack Obama was just settling into the Oval Office, MySpace was still a bigger thing than the five-year-old Facebook, Twitter hadn’t yet become an unavoidable big deal and the ensemble cast for this glide-along, critically scorned romcom included youngish, good-looking actors like Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Connolly, Bradley Cooper, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson and Justin Long.

Yes, the same Bradley Cooper (born in ’75) who would begin work on Maestro less than a decade later.

Mindsets and general attitudes naturally had to be challenged, broadened or deepened by the advancement of time and the eruption of disruptive social-media lava, and so films like He’s Just Not That Into You (produced by New Line, exec produced by Barrymore, described by Manohla Dargis as “a grotesque representation of female desire”) had to gradually go away.

IMDB review: “My girlfriend and I, late 40ish or just beyond, saw this in a theater that was absolutely filled with high-school girls. Which surprised me actually, given that that most of the costars are either mid 30ish or nudging 40 (the 25 year-old Johansson is the youngest). But the teens, like the rest of the audience, seemed to really enjoy this film, as did we. (Pic ended with a worldwide gross of $178 million.)

“The relationships were nicely intertwined without being contrived (Crash anyone?), and unlike the similar Love Actually, nothing portrayed was too outlandish. The convention of adding comments by ‘real’ people to introduce story lines was well done and amusing. All of the guys are presented as having relationship issues or as being total boneheads. Hopefully there are more ‘nice guys’ interspersed in society than what this film might lead you to believe this (although I must say that the attitudes presented are definitely not inaccurate).

“Overall a very nice film with 2-hour-plus running time goes by rather quickly. If you’ve ever been in or tried to be in a relationship, you’ll probably enjoy this movie.”

Again, the link.

I’m watching episode 3 of True Detective: Night Country, and despite my attachment to the legend of Jodie Foster I really am done with it. Just not for me, bruh. It’s too dark, too buried, too “lemme outta here”, too labrynthian, too snowy, too grimy, too scowling, too complex and drawn out…too much of a nativist celebrationist thing, too chanty, too indigenous, too face-painty, too cheek-studdy, too “all the men except one good-looking young cop are appalling or fleshy or ugly rednecks or deep-down diseased”…too rank-smelling, too unattractive, too downish, too frostbitten, too sullen, too grubby, too “ya wanna fuck?”, too haunted and too many hoodie parkas…angry women, bruised women, resentful women, horrified women, dead women, hell-bent women…fine, good, you can have it…later.

I just discovered this five minutes ago. A first-time experience. All but ruined because of the red sweater. The font or calligraphy is completely wrong. I don’t know what the blue urban background is but it’s nothing. But there’s something in the eyes.

Channelling William Goldman: I don’t like the idea of Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan being a couple, and so, naturally, I’m not at all interested in a story about whether or not they work through their troubles and get back together. With or without the help of a third party. That’s the nub of it.

Wiki synopsis: “Sent on a mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut encounters a creature that helps him put his earthly problems back together.”

Posted today by Atlantic Daily’s Elaine Godfrey:

…as reported by Paul Schrader in a Facebook thread. Devotional comments by all, and then along came Davey Holmes…

Yesterday New Yorker critic Richard Brody posted the following comparison between Barbie and 2001: A Space Odyssey (which Barbie briefly spoofed, of course, by aping the “Dawn of Man” sequence):

This is primarily a political tweet, of course. Brody is giving Barbie director Greta Gerwig a sympathetc fistbump after she was snubbed for a Best Director Oscar nomination last Tuesday.

I also think Brody likes to throw around eccentric, extreme opinions. Does he really, actually think Barbie is a “better” film than Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 mastepiece? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think he mainly wants the congnoscenti and the wokerati to consider that he might be the Albert Einstein of film critics…that he’s seeing things on a white-light, laser-beam level no one else has quite managed…that he’s some kind of Rasputin-like genius.

I understand that sometimes the best writing happens when you don’t think it through that much in advance. Just go with it, jump off a cliff and see where it all lands. But once you get into the afore-mentioned Rasputin provocation game (not a fact but a perception on my part) what you write becomes more performative than persuasive.