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Not that I use the term “influencers” with any regularity, but the pink fringe lampshade dude (or woman) below will henceforth be the image that comes to mind whenever the subject arises. A Barbie worshipper, obviously, but also a quintessential image of an alpha–current, favor–currying gladhander and movie–invite whore.

As for Manuela Lazic’s 8.1 Guardian piece about an increasing publicist tendency to invite social-media influencers to screenings more while diminishing as much as politically possible the access of serious, seasoned critics when it comes to expensive studio product…well, that’s been the deal for roughly five or six years, right? (Launched in 2016, TikTok exploded in ‘18.)

And when you eliminate the obsequious, finger-to-the-wind go-alongers (the reigning critic fraternity since feature-length films were born in 1915) and the legions of big-city critics who decided around the advent of #Oscarssowhite and #MeToo (‘16 to ‘18) and certainly after the George Floyd riots of May ‘20 that becoming political–crusade wokesters was the safest approach going forward, the ranks of truly engaged, worth-reading, alive-on-the-planet-earth film critics & columnists have been dramatically thinned, to put it mildly.

In shorter terms, whore critics have been the leaders of the pack for over a century, and then a whole new breed of politically progressive virtue signallers came along about five or six years ago. Add this community to social-media influencers and the game is 98% rigged. Clear-light critics and columnists (numbering very few in this country, maybe 25 or 30** including contrarians like myself) are the last carriers of the integrity torch, and most people reading this sentence (including the HE pissheads) will snort derisively at such a notion.

Lazic excerpt:

** a random few off the top of my head — Owen Gleiberman, Sasha Stone, Jordan Ruimy, Jeff Sneider, Todd McCarthy, Armond White, Peter Bradshaw, Boston Herald’s Jim Verniere, Mark Kermode, Mark Harris, Maitland McDonaugh, Janet Maslin, Paul Schrader, Ella Taylor, Peter Howell…who else?

In response to this…

…sports and news reporter Jamie Stuart hit on something important, I think:

I’ve never personally been faced with a decision to respond in any physically demonstrative way to a banana protruding from a woman’s vagina. Nor am I even faintly implying that there’s anything necessarily wrong with banana vagina activity, whether or not it peripherally involves Lizzo.

As a rule HE generally steers clear of stories like this,

Since seeing Oppenheimer I’ve been feeling very supportive of Josh Hartnett, who gives a mature and highly convincing performance as nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence. It’s a major career bump for a guy I’ve admired and have followed for over 20 years — The Virgin Suicides, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, Hollywood Homicide and Mozart and the Whale in the early days.

And then I saw this appalling sweater-and-shirt combo — one of the most seriously frightful mine eyes have ever beheld. The sweater alone! How can a reputable actor wear stuff like this? Obviously a small matter but still.

I’m still perusing Jack Smith’s new Trump indictment, but right now (i.e., as far as I’ve read) it seems to boil down to three conspiracies: (a) an attempt to defraud the United States, (b) an attempt to obstruct an official government proceeding and (c) a third to deprive people of civil rights provided by federal law or the Constitution.

Basically it’s a fork shoved into his flabby bloated gut for trying to overthrow the 2020 election.

Does this mean Smith (I’m slow with legal jargon so please bear with me) is charging Trump with having blatantly incited the Jan. 6th assault upon the Capitol building for the purposes of obstructing the electoral vote count? Or with having aided and abetted the assault by waiting 187 minutes to attempt to call upon his followers to cease and desist. Apparently so but I’m still sifting through the particulars.

…at 15 mph on a Manhattan-bound 7 train. Grateful for the transportation and the a.c., of course, but otherwise a miserable environment to endure. I’ve ridden mass transit systems all over the world, and New York’s subway service is the absolute pits. Oldies, fatties and those burdened with heavy luggage forced to climb stairs half the time…it really sucks.

I’m “glad”, in a sense, for having visited the friendly but dull and desolate urban wasteland that is Detroit.

I spoke to a cabdriver who’s lived in Detroit for 65 years. “When was Detroit’s peak era?” I asked. “The late ‘50s,” he replied.

The Flixbus journey from Detroit to London, Ontario was visually pleasant — flat cornfield farmland with occasional silos and vast blue skies. It reminded me of southern Texas and the long agricultural and steer-grazing stretch between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, Argentina.

The flat, modest, sprawling village of Grand Bend, Ontario is fine as far as it goes. A well-tended place, friendly people, a nice library, most of the usual amenities.

Alas, many of the weekend tourists roaming around near the crowded Lake Huron shoreline were chubby or porcine and wearing, of course, the usual low-rent garb. I felt truly sorry for their full-of-beans, bright-eyed toddlers, knowing they’re almost certainly doomed to look and behave the same as they come into adulthood.

We are living through a period of a general lack of refinement, slovenliness and cultural decline, and all you can do is slowly shake your head like Jose Ferrer’s Turkish Bey in Lawrence of Arabia and mutter “I am surrounded by cattle.”

There are certainly no persons resembling Peter O’Toole, Claude Rains, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins or Anthony Quayle on the tree-lined streets of Grand Bend — I can tell you that for certain.

Okay, I’m partially taking that back. There was one exceptionally attractive and interesting person I ran into in Grand Bend — a young, slender and rather tall Vietnamese woman named Liz, a waitress at a disappointing Japanese restaurant and a resident of nearby Goderich. She wouldn’t have been cast in Lawrence but she was certainly genteel and well-spoken. David Lean would have given her a large tip.

Did the 20th Century realm that I knew as a New Jersey suburban kid and a young lad in Connecticut, Boston and NYC…maybe it never precisely existed as I recall it although I’m 100% certain that people were a lot thinner back then. Either way that era is gone for good now.

Obviously the Barbenheimer competition, but could it also be that the general expectations of movie fans have suddenly shifted or turned along with the zeitgeist, and that audiences suddenly want more than just action distractions? Out of the blue they’re suddenly hungry for more story, more artistry, more thematic heft, more feeling? I’m asking.

Tonight’s Spirit Airlines flight from Detroit to LaGuardia has been bumped three times. Latest projected LGA arrival time: 11:20 pm. Not much chance to catch a Connecticut or NJ train once I finally arrive at GCS or Penn Station, which will probably force me to fork over $200 for an LGA hotel room.

Will Spirit Airlines do the right thing? I think not.

Actual Spirit Airlines response: “It’s the weathah. Sorry ‘bout that.” Bullshit — the weather here and in NYC is completely mild and uneventful.

SPIRIT AIRLINES FLIGHT 313 UPDATE DTW-LGA
Your estimated departure time is now Jul 31, 8:28 PM. We’re sorry for this delay.

SPIRIT AIRLINES FLIGHT 313 UPDATE DTW-LGA
Your estimated departure time is now Jul 31, 8:48 PM. We’re sorry for this delay.

SPIRIT AIRLINES FLIGHT 313 UPDATE DTW-LGA
Your estimated departure time is now Jul 31, 9:22 PM. We’re sorry for this delay.

8:00 pm update: Team Spirit has suddenly decided to accelerate the departure time…maybe. The 8:01 departure is bunk, of course. (It’s now 8:21 pm.) They’re improvising, playing it by ear.

Announcement from female Spirit rep with a Detroit accent: “We’re gonna be boardin’ very shorely” (not a typo).

Posted at 8:58 pm:

Friendo sez…

39 years ago I was part of a unit publicity effort in support of Tim Burton’s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure ‘85), which shot in the late summer and fall of ‘84. I never met Paul Reubens but I watched him behave and perform a lot. Funny, fascinating dude.

I’m sorry that he’s succumbed to cancer, but when your number’s up, it’s up. Hugs and condolences…life is way too short.

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It’s been 43 years since I had my one and only viewing of William Richert’s Winter Kills (‘79). I didn’t just dislike this paranoid, overly-flamboyant fantasy fiction about the JFK assassination — I was infuriated by it. But I’ll give it another shot. What the hell. It’ll play the Film Forum and the New Beverly later this month.