In Stephen Frears‘ fact-based, semi-fictionalized The Lost King (IFC Films), Sally Hawkins plays Philippa Langley, who ten years ago (2012) was able to guesstimate the accurate location of the bones of Richard III. Steve Coogan (who co-wrote the script with Stan & Ollie‘s Jeff Pope) plays Langley’s husband; Game of Thrones costar Harry Lloyd is an imaginary ghost of King Richard.

The film will premiere at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“I am a brilliant, neurotic, judgmental little prick in need of some Prague neck-wattle work**, but the combination of my lacerating wit plus my spirited madman persona is killer and I know it, especially since I take the time to write good material before coming on the show.” — Martin Short muttering to himself between commercial breaks on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

Slight objection: Short began with “James Thomas Fallon — my God, your name screams out diversity!” Translation: We’re both Irish — my dad was an Irish Catholic emigrant from Northern Ireland, and my mom comes from English and Irish stock — so in today’s woke realm we’re almost an endangered minority…would it help if we apologized for being white Irish guys?

Bottom line: Chiding Fallon for not being diverse isn’t funny — it’s actually kinda paranoid.

We all understand that within the conservative nutbag Presidential preference realm, Florida governor Ron DeSantis (who is not a nutbag) is ascending and Donald Trump (a totally deranged, anti-Democratic narcissistic crime boss) is declining.

If it has to be one of the other, DeSantis is obviously the saner, less scary choice. But it’s starting to hit me that DeSantis doesn’t really have it in terms of JFK- or Obama-level charisma. And that’s a big thing not to have. He doesn’t even have that Trump swagger thing.

One, he’s not slender enough and in fact seems a tiny bit chubby — he’s certainly on the stocky side. DeSantis is nowhere near as fat as Trump, but a would-be President has to look trim and healthy and well-disciplined — daily workouts, no 11 pm cookie-jar raids. Do you think Jack Kennedy would have squeaked out a victory over Richard Nixon if he’d had a Ron DeSantis body? Think again.

And two, DeSantis has cold beady eyes. He doesn’t radiate warmth or charm. He seems like a semi-reasonable fellow, but something inside him seems prickly and prick-ish.

Bottom line: Cold eyes, chunky bod, prickish vibes…DeSantis probably can’t win.

…it’s bad karma for the relationship. Because a film jointly made by a famous couple is like a child, and if the child fails to make its own way by winning respect from critics or at least from paying audiences, this is often…okay, sometimes interpreted as a referendum on the couple itself. And then a certain vibe takes hold.

There is some evidence to back up this theory, but with significant exceptions. The success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? aside, the union of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor endured several mediocre films. The marriage of George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere not only survived the debacle of The Savage Is Loose (‘74) but 25 subsequent years of living until Scott’s passing in ‘99.

I’m mentioning this theory because I’m starting to suspect that the response to Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling (Warner Bros., 9.23), a ‘50s-era white-male-conspiracy creeper in the vein of The Stepford Wives, is not going to strengthen Wilde’s relationship with Harry Styles.

Have I seen Darling? No. What do I actually know about its quality? Apart from the fact that no big-name film festivals will be screening it except for an out–of–competition slot in Venice, very little.

So why don’t I just shut the hell up? Because I can feel it. Because the insect antennae vibrations are ringing in my ears. Largely due to the trailer.

The general presumption is that Amazon’s My Policeman, a gay-themed British indie in which Styles plays the lead (and which is debuting in Toronto), is the better bet.

Three to four hundred bills for high-end heating pots at Bed, Bath and Beyond? You can pay even more, of course, for Nancy Meyers-style copper pots**. If you’re into fashion or status statements with kitchen ware, $400 is a drop in the bucket…right? Not this horse.

** No filmmaker living or dead has done more to promote the magnificent owning of copper pots than Meyers.

As far as they go, HE approves of high–end compact wallets. The built-in tracking devices are especially welcome as I’m sometimes unsure of my wallet’s hiding place. But I prefer my old–school, king–size, elephant–hide leather wallet, which I’ve had since the mid ‘90s. Ample and manly and worn down by time…an Ernest Hemingway wallet that can hold a passport, wads of cash, eight hard-plastic cards, unfolded Telluride passes and so on.

Sasha Stone‘s 8.18 essay about Hollywood’s blue–pill attitudes and certain inconvenient truths that apply blends right in with Tom Leonard‘s Daily Mail piece about woke-minded films tanking or under-performing with Joe and Jane Popcorn.

Here’s an excerpt from Stone’s article:

“The Boomers are responsible for having created most of American culture up to Obama’s presidency. They are on their way out and eventually, the Millennials will be taking over as the dominant generation that is inventing and re-inventing American culture. That is good in some ways, bad in others.

“The Boomers aren’t really going to help us through this moment because they remember their counter-culture days and that makes them more sympathetic to the ‘woke’ movement.

“My generation, Gen-X, is the only group that has maintained most of our subversive, or questioning authority mindset, which is why you see a lot of Gen-Xers like me pushing the boundaries of what is and what isn’t acceptable to talk about, think about or write about. This is the first time in my life I’m grateful to be part of that generation.

“I come from the unique vantage point of having spent the last 28 years of my life, exactly half, online. That means I had a full life before smartphones, the internet and social media. But if you imagine everyone you know who is around 28 or younger, they have spent their entire lives with an internet, and much of it with social media and smart phones.

“Human evolution, culture, society — it’s all a dance. It’s about adaptation, survival, endurance. It is a test for who has the right stuff to make it through.

“Zoomers have come of age as social media natives. They know no other way of living except that they use their phones a lot. Everything that happens to them happens on their phones. They have already grown up knowing that they must self-censor or they will be swarmed and attacked by their peers.

“Unless they make a conscious effort to unplug, which I hope they do, Zoomers are never coming out of their online spheres. That is the future, full stop. But we’re not quite there yet. There is still a whole America that isn’t yet living online the way Zoomers do. They’ll turn out to buy tickets to movies if it’s something that catches their fancy but it isn’t something they’re committed to as previous generations were.

“Zoomers are most definitely in the Matrix and blue-pilled. They don’t yet know, most of them I figure, that they can rebel against the system if they want to. They tend to be mostly agreeable and compliant when it comes to a society ordering them how to think, speak, behave, etc.

“But there will come a day when that changes. They will likely push back against all of it. And THAT, my friends, will be a time to be alive.

“Right now, though, we’re dealing with a media that doesn’t quite get the message yet about why people are going to tune out content that they see as inorganic and contrived to serve a specific agenda. The new religion of the [wacko] left is more or less like any religion. Where virtue is the goal, nothing else can survive. The idea is that they want to be good, and so all movies have to also be about being good.”

From Kat Rosenfeld‘s “The Progressive Puritans Will Fail,” an 8.18.22 Uherd essay:

“Here’s the thing: you can only see them online, and here they are preaching to the choir in an otherwise empty church. It is only the true believers who are left, feeding on and off each other, stewing in fear and resentment while everyone else goes outside and has fun. And as loud as they might seem to themselves, and each other, within the confines of their echo chamber, the truth is that outside of it they’re not just irrelevant, but nearly invisible. Their power, and their numbers, are diminished by the mere existence of normal people living normal lives.”