I was just as surprised by the Andrea Riseborough thing as anyone else, but to paraphrase Stephen Stills, “There’s something happening here.” Paul Schrader, Marc Maron, Rod Lurie…something has snapped.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is just trying to placate the Riseborough conversation — we all understand that, no worries — but there’s an early groundswell thing happening regardless. Right here, right now.

What we’re all witnessing or at least sensing is the very early beginnings of the end of woke tyranny.

I am the groundhog — Hollywood Elsewhere is the groundhog.

Obviously the Riseborough thing (which is partially driven by the “hey, what happened to Danielle Deadwyler?” thing) and the climate of fear within film festivals are separate concerns. But they’re also linked in a certain oblique way.

When Eric Kohn, of all people, is noting that goose-stepping woke groupthink is inhibiting artistic freedom, you know something’s up.

Go ahead and chortle if you want, but I think we’re witnessing the nascent beginnings of a Spartacus moment. It’s some kind of boiling-water, bursting-tea-kettle thing — a combination of a lot of triggers (and not all them contributing to an articulate whole) but it’s some kind of emotional socio-political catharsis that boils down to “we’re tired of this Big Brother-esque, guilt-tripping, Great Cultural Revolution, Twitter tyranny shit and we’re not gonna take it any more…fuck you!”

Remember Kirk Douglas, John Ireland, Harold J. Stone and the others yelling “aahhggh!!” as they attacked the Roman guards inside Peter Ustinov’s gladiator school in Capua?

IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, one of the original woke commissars who once challenged me about the validity of the word “woke” — he suggested it was arguably an imaginary construct used by righties — Kohn actually posted the following paragraph on 1.29.23, and this definitely means something…it means that all the cowards who raise their damp fingers to the wind before saying anything…the cowards are now asking themselves if woke fascism might need to be walked back a bit.

Journalist to Jounalist: “Can you imagine how a movie like Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men, which premiered at Sundance in 1997, would be received today?” Such a film (a blistering critique of misogyny) wouldn’t be shown today, of course. And that’s what’s the matter.

“…comes bob-bob-bobbin’ along…along!”

Whenever I’ve thought of Cindy Williams, I’ve thought of The Conversation. Her character, Ann, and Frederic Forrest‘s Mark, her lover or husband or whatever, strolling around San Francisco’s Union Square, bugged and haunted and up to something pretty bad. I’ll always think of her in this context…her finest moment.

Honest confession: I’ve never seen a single episode of Laverne and Shirley.

The below image was captured yesterday morning (dawn) during a balloon ride over the Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania. You can disagree and that’s fine, but it immediately struck me as being in the same aesthetic realm as Freddie Young‘s work on Lawrence of Arabia (’62).

I’m not saying that the argument put forward by the “get Andrea Riseborough and her supporters” crowd (Variety‘s Clayton Davis, Puck’s Matthew Belloni, Till director Chinonye Chukwu) ever had any real traction, but for a day or so the anti-Riseborough contingent made some noise and seemed to generate an “uh-oh” atmosphere.

But I think it’s fair to say now that their side in this debate (i.e., the wokester position) is weakening as we speak and they’re basically adopting a rope-a-dope stance. Reasonable, fair-minded human beings are standing against them and their vague allusions to some kind of conniving, elitist, white-person, anti-equity cabal…that’s all going away, I’m afraid. I can feel it.

Director Rod Lurie put it nicely earlier today on Facebook:

The two best performances among the five Best Supporting Actress nominees — obviously, hands down, no question — have come from The Banshees of Inisherin‘s Kerry Condon and The Whale‘s Hong Chau. If either one were to win, I’d know in my mind and my heart that the right thing was done.

But neither are fated to win, apparently. Angela Bassett‘s Wakanda Forever turn as Queen Ramonda has it in the bag, we’re told…not because she delivered a richer, fuller, finer performance, but because the word has gone out that it’s time for Bassett to receive a career tribute, partly because she’s in her mid 60s.

I can only tell you that I found her performance tedious, wearying and even painful at times, as I did the film itself. She barks her lines and glares daggers at everyone so they’ll understand her grief over the death of her son, T’Challa (the late Chadwick Boseman). I know for a fact that many others felt similarly challenged when they sat through (or tried to sit through) Wakanda Forever. And it doesn’t matter.