That’s it…Noah Baumbach’s White Noise is all but finished as a Best Picture winner, and the proof…okay, the suspicion is due to the enthusiastic, fair-minded Eugene Hernandez having selected it as the opening night film for the 60th New York Film Festival. Or so says David Poland, at least.

Writing on the wall, game possibly over, history of the Baumbach brand, etc.

Hernandez has done well, of course. White Noise is a good prestige-level score for the NYFF.

This Mystery Scoop “Smilin’ Abe” video is a year old, but I’ve only just discovered it. All my life the nation’s 16th President has been this sad-eyed, weary-looking monochrome fellow with a creased face and in need of a comb. Now he’s not only in believable color, but slightly grinning and twinkle-eyed and attuned to the mood in the room. Clearly a feature film (or at least a short) will be made within five or ten years in which the actual Lincoln speaks, moves, reacts, converses. This is really fascinating.

I’m sorry but I don’t do summer movies as a rule. Smartly strategized, semi-realistic action and thrills are great (especially if they adhere to the forbidden laws of basic physics, which were more or less banned from filmmaking circles 20 years ago), but later with “turn off your brain and submit to the crap”, which is what Bullet Train is about.

Don’t get me wrong — I adore expertly rendered escapism. Being goosed and transported out of my own miserable head and taken to someplace fresh or surprising or hilarious or super-exciting is what movies have occasionally done for decades, and are certainly still capable of doing, and I mean going all the way back to the absolute gymnastic brilliance of Buster Keaton and his dazzling command of action choreography.

Alas, Bullet Train is not a Hollywood Elsewhere type of action flick. Because director David Leitch, an ex-stuntman who allegedly co-helmed the original John Wick (’14) and then actually directed Atomic Blonde (’17) and Deadpool 2 (’18), hasn’t the slightest interest in delighting people like me, and he might even be the kind of guy who would spit on the sidewalk when Keaton’s name is mentioned.

Okay, he might be a Keaton fan but he certainly doesn’t get him.

I vaguely respect (sort of) the fact that Leitch is basically giving people like me the finger and loving it. I vaguely respect (in a perverse roundabout way) that Leitch is fiercely opposed to realistic action chops and focused on fusing martial arts, manga and dry humor in a kind of bullshit Guy Ritchie wacky cartoony vein.

For all I know Bullet Train, which is looking to excite those tens of millions of action fans who also despise the idea of realistic action (you know, the kind with roots in that tedious realm that exists right outside the theatre doors or when you take off your headphones and turn off your Playstation games), and if it winds up making money, great.

Because that’s who and what Leitch is — a man of impudence and conviction and hunger who’s out to make money. And Sony loves him for that. And Brad Pitt, who was allegedly paid $30 million to star in this thing, is almost certainly swooning with affection

I’m making myself clear, I presume. I’m not saying Bullet Train is a bad, empty, cynical, unfunny, idiotic, overwrought, soul-polluting film (although it is). I’m saying I’m not in this. Bullet Train wasn’t made for people like me. It was made in order to sell tickets to people with a jaded (corrupted?) sense of taste in this stuff, but the secondary motive (and Leitch will be the last one to deny this) was to make people like me feel poisoned and bored and drained while watching it.

That’s how I felt last night, all right. But it doesn’t matter because action movie fans with standards don’t matter. The entire corporate movie-making, escapist-driven culture of 2022 is brushing away the lint of my opinions as we speak. Go away, you grumpy-ass fuck.

For me, the funniest thing to come out of Bullet Train so far is a line from Peter Debruge‘s Variety review: “There’s something callous about how casually Leitch takes human life.” Facetious Steve Martin remark from Planes, Trains & Automobiles — “Do ya think so?”

Yes, Debruge does think that something callous this way comes when we (you, me, your kids, your parents, your coworkers, your enemies, bus drivers, students, terminally-ill cancer patients) sit down to watch Bullet Train. Just a teeny weeny bit callous. As in “wait, am I getting a slight vibe of callousness from this film, or is it me?”

Maybe it is me. Maybe I’m a callous columnist and Bullet Train is a harmless provider of dazzling, good-humored, twinkle-eyed distraction.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Tangerine, a British assassin who’s professionally partnered with Brian Tyree Henry‘s Lemon, a chubby idiot whose modified Afro hair has blonde tips. For what it’s worth I really liked Taylor-Johnson’s Don Logan accent. He’s not as funny as Ben Kingsley but he made feel a bit of that old Sexy Beast elation. Taylor-Johnson is better than Pitt in this thing…honestly.

The film takes place aboard a bullet train (Shinkansen) travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto. The Tokyo departure begins sometime in the (late?) evening, and the big finale (you know what happens) comes at daybreak. Except the real-life bullet train makes the Tokyo-Kyoto journey in about two hours, or maybe a bit longer depending on how many stops. So even if the train leaves Tokyo at midnight, how could it arrive in Kyoto as the sun is coming up? How could this happen even with a 2 am departure?

Go see Bullet Train and have a blast. Forget what I’ve said here and just see it…turn your brain off and just submit to the damn thing. Tom Rothman will love you for it. Some people were laughing here and there during last night’s screening, and maybe you will too. Pay no attention to sourpusses like myself. I am like a crust of bread left over from a half-eaten chicken salad sandwich that’s sitting on a crumb-filled plate in a truck-stop diner somewhere in Indiana. Nobody cares about that crust, but they do care about the cinematic visions of David Leitch!

Daily Mail investigative reporter Laura Collins has visited the Kentucky backwater apartment of Carolyn Bryant Donham, 88 — the one-time Mississippi storekeep who accused 14 year-old Emmett Till of wolf-whistling her in the summer of 1955, and in so doing incited her deranged redneck husband, Roy Bryant, and his brother, John Milan, into killing Till. The brothers were found not guilty by a local jury. A long-buried unserved warrant for Donham’s arrest (dated 8.29.55) was recently discovered. Chinonye Chukwu’s Till (UA Releasing) will premiere at the ‘22 New York Film Festival.

Posted on 11.12.09: I had a nice, friendly, off-the-record lunch today with Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow at Extra Virgin on West 4th.

After Bigelow left and I was putting my coat on I asked the Extra Virgin waitress if she’d seen The Hurt Locker. “The what?,” she said. “The Hurt Locker. An Iraq movie, bomb-squad defusing.” Her face was a blank. “Is it a documentary?,” she asked. “Nope, feature…a thriller,” I said. “Who’s in it?” she said. “Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes, Anthony Mackie….that’s okay, just wondering.”

Intrigued, I walked into the main room and asked the hostess and (I think) another lady employee who was sitting at the bar if they’d seen it. Same reaction — neither had even heard the title.

And we’re not talking about waitresses in some greasy spoon in Pensacola, Florida. New Yorkers are supposed to be moderately hip and aware. It’s one thing for these women not to have seen an Iraq War film, but to draw a total blank at a mention of the title?

“Having worked our way through Generations X, Y and Z, we’ve settled on the next cohort being Generation Alpha — not a return to the old, but the start of something new.

“The generations today each span 15 years with Generation Y (Millennials) born from 1980 to 1994; Generation Z (Zoomers) from 1995 to 2009 and Generation Alpha (Alphabots) from 2010 to 2024. And so it follows that Generation Beta will be born from 2025 to 2039.

“If the nomenclature sticks, then we will afterwards have Generation Gamma and Generation Delta, but we won’t be getting there until the second half of the 21st Century so there is plenty of time to reflect on the labels.” — Mark McCrindle, co-author of “Generation Alpha,” McCrindle.com.

Because a voice is telling them “whatever happens, it’s time for some wild-ness in your life so fuck it…take the leap.”

When people say they’re “ready” for something that may be adventurous or demanding or exotic or even a bit scary (who knows?), it means they’re hungry for it — looking to bite into something new.

When people say they’re “not ready” for something, it means they’re tucked into a foxhole of fear.

HE is casually enroute to a 6 pm screening of David Leitch’s Bullet Train (Sony, 8.5). If I was running Sony, I would retitle it Bullet Train: Bing Bang Bop–shu–wop. (Sounds more rock-and-rolla that way.) Screenplay by Zak Olkewicz, based on Kotaro Isaka’s “Maria Beetle.” Brad Pitt’s character is nicknamed “Ladybug.” What’s your insect name? Mine is “Gnat,” as in Nathaniel.

I have to be honest: Sandra Bullock playing a peripheral character scares me.

I don’t care how you try to slice it — a 70 % second-weekend drop is not cause for celebration. It basically means that while a fair-sized percentage of the first-weekend audience was more or less okay with it, a similar-sized percentage was not especially enthralled. That’s what it means.

I don’t know for a fact that Woke Hollywood is unhappy about director Paul Haggis having been more or less cleared in that Italian sexual assault thing, but it’s fair to presume there’s at least a vague feeling of disappointment out there.

Who knows what really happened between Haggis and that 28 year-old British woman who pressed charges? But if I was a #MeToo cadre, I would probably be annoyed by this development, not to mention irked at the woman in question. (Why go to the authorities if you don’t have a steel-trap case?) We all understand that a presumed bad guy getting off scot-free does not help “the narrative.” Especially in the wake of Amber Heard‘s loss.

Woke Hollywood wants convictions, tarnishings.

I’m presuming that the majority of your #MeToo progressives are regarding Haggis’s good fortune as an unwelcome technicality. Because to them what matters is the accusation. The basic rule of thumb is that once you’ve been accused of sexual misbehavior you’re as good as guilty and more or less untouchable in terms of career prospects. Unless, like Louis C.K., you can generate your own opportunities.

Just ask Aziz Ansari, who’s been clobbered twice over complaints from women that involved an idea of bad or inappropriate behavior — “Grace” of Brooklyn accusing Ansari of sexual insensitivity in 2018, and then Keke Palmer‘s alleged complaint about Bill Murray‘s failed attempt at humor on the set of Being Mortal, which Ansari was directing and starring in, terminating the film and with it Ansari’s career re-start.

Basic #MeToo Industry Lesson (repeated for the 179th time): “Older guys who try to have sex with Millennial or Zoomer women are basically ASKING TO BE KILLED. They’re deer and the younger women are hunters. It’s suicide.”

Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli: “A judge in the southern Italian city of Lecce has ruled that there are no grounds to further pursue an investigation into allegations that Oscar-winning Canadian director Paul Haggis had sex with a young woman without her consent.

“The court ruled in favor of Haggis late on Friday, Italian news Agency ANSA reported on Saturday.

“After viewing the evidence and hearing arguments from both sides, the District Court of Lecce, an appellate court with three judges, unanimously rejected a prosecutor’s appeal to have Haggis’ house arrest reinstated,” said Haggis’ Italian lawyer Michele Laforgia in a statement issued on Saturday.

“Haggis was arrested on June 19 in Ostuni, a location in the southern region of Puglia on the heel of the Italian boot, on charges of sexual assault allegedly inflicted to a 28-year British woman over the course of two days in June.