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The Accused

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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.

Legend of Extra Virgin

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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?

Gen Beta Launches In ’25

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“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.

“All I’m Sayin’”

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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.

How Funny?

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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.

“Nope” Droops

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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.

#MeToo Hollywood Presumably Dismayed About Haggis Release

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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.

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Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard, Cocaine Bear”

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In November 1985, a dead black bear was discovered in Chattahoochee National Forest. Nearby was a torn-open duffel bag that had apparently contained 75 pounds of Bolivian marching powder, and which had apparently fallen out of a smuggler’s plane. (Flown by Tom Cruise’s Barry Seal?) The clueless bear had eaten a good portion of the coke and overdosed.

The guy who found the bear’s ruined body didn’t alert authorities (one guess why) and it wasn’t until 12.20.85 when authorities discovered the carcass. A medical examiner at the Georgia State Crime Lab said that that the bear’s stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine.”

Elizabeth Banks has directed a “character-driven thriller” about the poor bear’s misfortune as well as, one presumes, certain humans who quickly developed an interest in the free cocaine. It’s called Cocaine Bear (Universal, 2.24.23). The film costars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the late Ray Liotta.

The title alone suggests that Banks and her producers see the story as an opportunity for bear thrills, or at least partly that.

The body of this poor, poisoned animal eventually found its way to a taxidermist, and is now on display inside the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall (720 Bryan Ave., Lexington, Kentucky). There’s a sign around the bear’s neck that refers to him as “Pablo Escobear.”

In short Kentucky bumblefucks regard the idea of a furry beast dying of a cocaine overdose as a hoot.

HE to Banks and Universal marketing: HE believes that the death of an innocent animal who died of cocaine ingestion is not in itself an opportunity to do “funny” or “thrilling”. It sounds to me like a metaphorical tale about our casual greed and cruelty and indifference to the natural order of things — about the fact that forest animals have a certain nobility while we have none.

If Robert Bresson was still around and Universal had hired him instead of Banks, the film would be called Au hasard, Cocaine Bear — the sad story of a saintly bear who died because he was unlucky enough to cross paths with a duffel bag full of blow.

What kind of evil mind would listen to this story and go, “Whoa, great idea for a fun, goofy movie…a bear with a cocaine problem! Whoo-hoo!”

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Labute’s Mysterious “Darkness”

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Early last March I reviewed Neil Labute‘s House of Darkness, which had its big debut at the 2022 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

“House of Darkness isn’t that bad,” I wrote. “Creepy, diverting, socially thoughtful — altogether a half-decent sit.”

I described it as “an elevated horror film that uses (borrows?) themes and situations from Promising Young Woman and Midsommar.”

I added that “when it opens, House of Darkness, which costars Kate Bosworth and Justin Long, will probably be attacked as a metaphorical woman-hating horror film. Or a man-hating #MeToo horror film. Or something like that.

“It’s definitely trafficking in social metaphor — #MeToo and #TimesUp and others in the women’s progressive movement looking to bring pain and terror to the male jerks of the world.

“I don’t think House of Darkness does anything phenomenal. All it does is apply the basic LaBute attitude software to Promising Young Midsommar.”

The trailer tries to sell House of Darkness as a reimagining of the classic Dracula tale….except it isn’t. (It’s much more interesting than what that suggests.) The ostensible distributor or at least the producer is Dark House Films, Inc.

Ladykiller

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Michael Caine‘s Jack Carter is an icy, ruthless bastard in Mike Hodges‘ Get Carter (’71). A real brute and a shit of a human being, and yet curiously emotional in a deeply buried sense. Which is to say a psychopath who cares about “family”, or at least about a certain offspring.

Carter is emotionally enraged, to put it mildly, over the death of his brother and the sexual molestation of his brother’s (or more likely Carter’s) daughter, Doreen (Petra Markham) and yet brusquely efficient when it comes to dispatching certain citizens of Newcastle. Five, to be exact, and none of them assassins or muscle types (like Carter) but basically go-alongers.

What stands out in Get Carter isn’t so much that Caine murders three shady fellows — Ian Hendry‘s “Eric Paice” (whose eyes are like “pissholes in the snow”, Carter observes), Glynn Edwards‘ “Albert Swift” and Bryan Mosley‘s “Cliff Brumby” — but also a pair of youngish, attractive women — Geraldine Moffat‘s “Glenda” and Dorothy White‘s “Margaret”.

These two aren’t killed in the heat of rage or passion exactly, but because of their laissez-faire complicity in nudging Doreen into performing in low-rent sex films. They are disposed of without any feeling, but certainly decisively and with absolute precision. (Okay, Glenda isn’t deliberately killed but she certainly wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t associated with Carter, and her ghastly manner of death — drowning in the trunk of a submerged car — rouses not the slightest emotion on his part.)

What other big-screen bastard has killed two prime-of-life women for what boils down to a moralistic motive — for going along with the corruption of a child? I can think of only one other murderer of this generally cold-blooded sort — Richard Widmark‘s “Tommy Udo” in Kiss of Death (’47), although his victim was an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman (Mildred Dunnock).

Seriously, what other bad guy has iced an attractive younger woman or two without blinking an eye? Caine’s Carter isn’t alone, but the others aren’t coming to me.