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If a reporter or editor puts quote marks around a term, it means that he/she regards the term as exotic and to some degree suspect. Especially if they qualify it by adding “so-called”.

In Jessica Testa‘s 10.6 N.Y. Times story about Bari Weiss (“How Bari Weiss Won“), the following passage appears in paragraph #5:

“[Weiss] achieved [her CBS News hiring] without climbing the typical journalistic career ladder, and with no experience directing television coverage. She is richer in social clout than in Emmys or Pulitzers. And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions.”

Testa and her editors are obviously casting doubt upon the validity of the “w” term. It follows that they wouldn’t dare use “so-called” as an adjective when mentioning certain sacred-cow terms.

If, say, a reporter or editor were to put quotes around “systemic racism” with a “so-called” qualifier, they would be instantly suspected of being Republicans if not white supremacists and probably fired and ex-communicated on the spot. Same result if they were to post an article that used the term “so-called ‘sexual harassment'”. Ditto if a reporter or editor were to publish an article that included “so-called ‘climate change'” — only a rightwing denialist would use such terminology.

From “Variety Shows Its Hand“, posted on 9.22.21:

“So we know where Variety reporter Jamie Lang (and/or his editor) is coming from when an opening paragraph about a Johnny Depp press conference at the San Sebastian Film Festival reads as follows:

“‘Johnny Depp was only meant to be asked questions relating to his career during a press conference preceding his Donostia Awards reception at the San Sebastian Film Festival. But in response to one journalist’s bold attempt to parse the actor’s thoughts on so-called ‘cancel culture’ and how social media can affect public figures, Depp did not hold back.'”

JFK spots Abraham Zapruder, etc. The JFK voice (created or branded by “Inspector Theory” or Sora or whomever) isn’t an imitation…it’s him! Same vocal chords! The most accurate-sounding artificial JFK simulation I’ve ever heard. Presumably AI-generated.

Why didn’t the creator get the proper seating, the angle and the Dealey Plaza atmosphere right? How hard could that have been? And why does Jackie look like Lois Chiles in The Way We Were?

As we all stand together before the gaping, fang-toothed jaws of AI engulfment, I’ve never felt more of an intense longing to see films that operate on the simplest renderings of dramatic or comedic or fantasy-seeking basics — movies that hopefully arouse the mind, trigger the heart and generally go deep.

Translation: AI is fine, but it has to be invisible.

I will hereafter stop badgering David Kittredge about a possible Best Documentary Oscar campaign for the great Boorman and The Devil, as I learned today that so far nobody has gotten in touch with key journos and conversation-starters who might want to see it.

I don’t know for a fact that Boorman and the Devil hasn’t even been verbally pitched as a possible awards contender, but this certainly seems to be the situation.

I don’t know if the film’s reps are keeping silent because they simply don’t see it as an award-season player, or because they don’t plan to qualify it until next year or what.

I’m sure that key players in the award-season universe would love to see Boorman and the Devil. They just haven’t been offered the chance to do so.

In other words, Kittredge has basically thrown in the towel. For now, I mean. Maybe next year.

Boiled down or at least apparently, there’s one basic reason why Peter Kiefer has written a Kevin Costner takedown piece for The Hollywood Reporter (the article has two titles — “How Kevin Costner Lost Hollywood” and “How Kevin Costner Lost The Plot”).

It posted today (10.8) because Costner’s epic-sized Horizon project has been a big bust, and all big-swing failures must be punished.

Mitigating quote from Rick Nicita, Costner’s agent from 2002 to 2008: “The word difficult gets used a lot. It can mean someone who won’t come out of their trailer, or someone who doesn’t know their lines, or is rude. [But] that’s not Kevin. He wanted what he wanted and knew what he wanted and if he didn’t get it…well, he was never a great compromiser. It’s a firm belief in himself and a confidence that to some can play as arrogance.

“Nothing that’s happened surprises me because Kevin firmly believes in himself. He thinks he can will things into happening because he could, and he did. I don’t think that’s changed.

“What happened is the circumstances no longer allow for that. I’ve never known him to play the angles — it’s all fast balls down the middle. It’s just that the strike zone has gotten smaller. But I would never write him off.”

In One Battle After Another, the 25-year-old Chase Infiniti gives a vivid supporting performance as the brave and resourceful Willa, the 16-year-old daughter of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s “Bob Ferguson” and Teyana Taylor‘s “Perfidia Beverly Hills”.

Willa is obviously supporting because the film doesn’t rest on her shoulders — it rests on Leo’s, as he’s with us, arc-wise and struggle-wise, from start to finish. (Perfidia bails early on and dishonorably at that, and therefore doesn’t count.) Willa is first and foremost a reactive victim character after getting kidnapped by Sean Penn‘s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, and then escaping and taking charge with a weapon, etc. Chase is playing a tough nut, but clearly not a lead.

Why, then, is Infiniti going for a Best Actress nomination? Because her reps are looking to game the system. They’re basically saying to the industry, “You may have thought Willa was a supporting character while watching One Battle After Another, but we’re not accepting this. We’re setting our own agenda. As far as we’re concerned, Willa is a lead character even if she isn’t because it’s better for Chase, career-wise, to go the big gold. She’ll get a bigger bump out of a Best Actress nomination than a Best Supporting one.”

Another way of putting it is that I’m not determined to hate it.

Roofman (Paramount/Miramax, technically opening tomorrow) is clearly a movie-movie, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It also seems to be a dishonest sell-job as far as the real-life Jeffrey Manchester is concerned, but I can accept movie bullshit if it’s sufficiently clever, charming and confident.

“Obviously Broad, Goofy…A Chuckly Popcorn Flick“, posted on 6.25.25: “Perhaps there’s more substance to Derek Cianfrance‘s Roofman (Paramount, 10.10) than what the trailers have indicated.

“But a certain early trailer indicated that as far as Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst‘s characters** are concerned, Roofman is definitely not Out of Sight. It’s going for easy sitcom laughs…a tone of light silliness and zero sophistication.

“Tatum, 44, dropped some weight for this role. Dunst, 43, is too old to play the proverbial girlfriend (sensible, morally grounded). If she was ten years younger, okay, but she’s not.

“The red powder exploding in Peter Dinklage‘s face is the best bit.

“Tony Revolori was only 18 or thereabouts when he played a slender, poker-faced bellboy in Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel (’14). Now he’s 29 and chubby.”

** Tatum plays Jeffrey Manchester, a polite, well-behaved stone sociopath felon who robbed a whole lotta McDonald’s restaurants in the early part of this century. Manchester is in jail as we speak, and looking at release in 2036…only 11 more years!”

The current wokey answer is “we don’t care how good Mr. Wonderful might be as ‘Milton Rockwell’ in Marty Supreme (A24, 12.25)…he’s a ruthless Trumpie and there’s no way he’s getting any award-season action…not if we have anything to say about it…not if we can nip this shit in the bud.”

Alternate wokey exclamations: “Naaahhh”, “Fuck that guy!”, “He’s the devil!”

Reddit (24 hours ago): “I skimmed through a handful of Letterboxd 5 star reviews for Marty Supreme and was shocked by how much mention there was of Kevin O’Leary, who seems to have a larger role in the film than many expected.”

HE interjection: O’Leary is fourth-billed on the Marty Supreme Wiki page.

HE sez: If O’Leary really nails the Rockwell character and is thereby a major standout, he shouldn’t be discriminated against for behaving like a flinty prick on Shark Tank or in real life or whatever.

Back to Reddit: “I can’t really expect a movie that largely features a Trump apologist who goes on CNN to defend the current administration granting much respect into Awards season. Is it possible?”

@gma “What I think is important in life is spend about 30% of your day outside of your comfort zone.” Kevin O’Leary shares what pushed him to jump into the world of acting in his new film, “Marty Supreme.” #martysupreme #sharktank #kevinoleary ♬ original sound – Good Morning America

Friendo: “I wish there was a link to Dreams, the Michel Franco-Jessica Chastain drama about a reckless affair. But ever since premiering in Berlin eight or nine months ago and aside from the recent screening at the Hamptons Film Festival, it’s been a no-show all over…Telluride, TIFF, NYFF, etc.”

HE: “Yeah, a bit odd. Greenwich Entertainment execs obviously liked it enough to acquire U.S. rights, but are obviously and somewhat curiously feeling skittish on some level. They’re not releasing it until early ’26.”

Friendo: “The ending apparently pissed a lot of people off.”

HE: “The pissed-off contingent was triggered by what? Chastain’s to-the-manor-born character deciding to blow off the Mexican ballet dancer-lover (Isaac Fernandez) or …what, something more drastic?”

Friendo: “I’m not entirely sure. Reviews only hinted that what Chastain does is morally repugnant.”

Never fuck anyone who’s below your social station. Or, if you will, never fuck the help.

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We’ve all become sick of needlessly long movies…films running between 130 and 150 minutes or longer for no apparent reason other than a lack of basic narrative discipline. But this doesn’t appear to be an issue in the case of Josh Safdie‘s Marty Supreme (A24, 12.25).

Responses to last night’s “secret” Supreme screening at the New York Film Festival have been pretty good. Some have expressed vague concerns over a 2 hour and 29 minute running time, but hell…that’s nothing. Especially if the film in question has the Safdie heebie jeebies.

Length, of course, has always been immaterial or irrelevant when it comes to quality — no bad film can be too short, no good film can be too long.

If you’re talking “long but good movie,” 165 to 180 is HE’s sweet spot. Long but a little lighter, tighter and trimmer…slightly less indulged.

HE’s favorite 165 to 180s: The Godfather (175), Heat (170), Patton (172), The Best Years of Our Lives (170), Saving Private Ryan (169), The Thin Red Line (170), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (174), The Young Lions (167), The Longest Day (178), Beau Is Afraid (179), Dogville (’03), The Great Escape (172), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (171), Braveheart (178).

I even have a certain elevated regard for marginally flawed films in this realm…King of Kings (168), In Harm’s Way (165), The Towering Inferno (165), The Good Shepherd (167), Alexander (175), etc.

Many three-hours-or-longer films reside on my all-time greatest roster — The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, The Wolf of Wall Street, Scarface, The Irishman, Barry Lyndon, Ben-Hur, Titanic, The Seven Samurai, Gone With The Wind, Spartacus, etc.

“Even if CBS staffers (rightly) see Bari Weiss‘s Free Press as opinionated, it might not see itself that way; indeed, the site claims simply to be covering the world the way it is, when mainstream newsrooms have abandoned that role. (Already, in the press release announcing her appointment, Weiss promised to make CBS News ‘the most trusted news organization of the 21st Century.’)

“This isn’t to say that everything is relative. But the truth rarely just reveals itself. The choices journalists make in seeking it inevitably inform the stories they tell.” — from Jon Allsop’s “What Will Bari Weiss Do to CBS News?” (New Yorker, 10.6.25).

“The media meltdown around Bari Weiss, who is basically a sensible centrist with zero allegiance with the wokeys, is no different than the leftwing mob that ran her out of The New York Times, except that now she has control over the newsroom and is (gasp) forcing the CBS newsroom to adhere to traditional journalistic standards.” — @mattray4876.

With Michael Mann‘s Heat 2 having finally settled upon an eager-beaver financier-distributor (United Artists) and ready to move next year with a budget of $170 million, HE has a comment or two.

With discussions about the 50-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio playing Chris Shiherlis, the role Val Kilmer played at age 35 in the 1995 original…I hate to say this because it sounds cruel, but isn’t Leo too old for this character?

Chris isn’t a strong supporting role in Heat 2, mind, and is pretty much the flat-out lead with Neil MacAuley, Robert De Niro‘s character from 30 years ago, appearing only in the first third.

Mann and Meg Gardiner‘s Heat 2, a novel published in ’22, serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the original, and it goes like this:

(a) a 1989 Chicago-based saga featuring Vincent Hanna and the super-villainous, Anton Chigur-like Otis Wordell (some kind of Waingro-like figure, only worse), along with MacAuley (please don’t hire the beak-nosed Adam Driver to succeed Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino…please don’t do this to us!), Chris Shiherlis and Michael Cerrito involved in the usual thievery and violence, and topped off with a tragic finish…

(b) a 1995 section that covers Chris’s escape from Los Angeles after Heat‘s big failed bank robbery, and his relocating to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay where more heavy stuff happens, and…

(c) a 2002 chapter that dramatizes a collision between Hanna, Wordell and Shiherlis.

Shiherlis would obviously be six years younger than his Heat age in the ’89 prequel, or 29 years old. He would be 42 in the 2002 finale. I interviewed a 19-year-old Leo at The Grill in ’94, so it feels pretty weird to suggest that he’s now a bit too too old to portray a ’90s-era bank-robber. But time doesn’t fuck around and he would be a little too creased and leathery to play a 29-year-old.

Mann would have to digitally de-age DiCaprio for the ’89 and ’95 sections. The Leo who starred in The Wolf of Wall Street would have had no problems in this regard.

Heat 2 can’t be all tension and bullets and adversaries. It needs love and longing, and an element of trust and settled vibes…a Jon Voight-like figure who speaks softly and cautiously and has the angles mostly anticipated.

Friendo who’s read Mann and Gardiner’s Heat 2: “It’s a good book. The vibe feels similar to the original Heat. Otis Wordell is the most compelling figure….he’s like a demonic Anton Chighur, and his presence imparts a certain kind of No Country for Old Men vibe. A haunting figure. Seems unkillable. Rapes/tortures people.”