The forthcoming Hulu series Woke is about a mild-mannered African American cartoonist (“keep it light”) who becomes ultra-attuned to systemic racism after he gets beaten up by cops. Everywhere he looks and everything he hears tells him that the world is not what it seems and that “the fix is in” against people of color. Or something close to that.

This is a righteous concept, but it’s a bit out-of-time to call the series Woke because black-dude woke was a thing about…what, eight or ten years ago? We all know that since Trump’s election in late ’16 “woke” stopped alluding to hip-black-guy consciousness and became a “white progressives committed to destroying the careers of non-wokesters in order to stop the twin scourges of racism and sexism” thang…Khmer Rouge, cancel culture, Left Twitter, resurrecting the legacy of Maximilien Robespierre, the New McCarthyism in academia, etc.

So I’m sorry but Woke is out of step with the times. I’m not saying that hip African Americans embracing a “woke” perspective isn’t valid. Obviously it is. I’m saying that the term “woke” began to be co-opted by the white lunatic progressive left four years ago.

Woke arrives on Hulu on September 9. Lamorne Morris plays Keef, the lead character. Sasheer Zamata, Blake Anderson and T. Murph costar.

One, I’ve said over and over that leaping off tall buildings isn’t allowed any more because too many hack directors have done it. (Damien Chazelle is obviously not a hack so I don’t get it.) Two, it’s okay to rescue a character from terrible death at the last instant, but the manner of rescue has to make some kind of spatial sense. If a guy is about to become instant hamburger on the pavement due to falling 50 stories, he can’t be saved at the very last instant (10 or 15 stories before impact) by a woman who wasn’t in the scene to begin with. You have to set this shit up, and then pay it off. And three, you can’t just stop a body falling at 200 mph by hugging them. This is cartoon stuff, Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote.

Wolfgang Petersen‘s Enemy Mine (20th Century Fox, 12.20.85) still ranks as one of the biggest disasters in Hollywood history, or certainly by ’80s standards. It was a parable about brotherhood between enemies, but it basically boiled down to The Defiant Ones in space. A lunkheaded human with a limited emotional range (Dennis Quaid) and a hermaphroditic “Drac” named Jeriba Shiga (Louis Gossett, Jr.) are forced to get along and defend each other against hostiles on a sandy windswept planet, blah blah.

I attended an Enemy Mine all-media screening in Westwood with a friend, and said to her as we began to slowly exit the theatre, “That was a baahllagghhd mooovie!” I conveyed this opinion in the gurgly, rolled-tongue patois of Gossett’s “Jerry” character. Here’s a recording of how I sounded.

From David Friendly‘s 12.30.85 L.A. Times story, titled “One Studio Has Seen The Enemy, And It Is Costly“: “Originally budgeted at about $17 million when the movie received the green light to go into production in 1983, Enemy Mine wound up costing the studio more than $40 million in production and marketing costs. (One insider insists the total price tag is closer to a whopping $48 million.)”

The studio (20th Century Fox) naturally hoped for a big first-weekend opening. The film made only $1.6 million at 703 theaters nationwide. As of Christmas day, it had taken in $2.3 million. When asked exactly how much the movie would have to take in during its theatrical run to make its money back, an executive with Fox replied, ‘It doesn’t really matter because it’s not going to do it.'”

Again, the mp3.

A streaming rental of Enemy Mine costs $3.99.

Joe Rogan around the 51:05 mark [“Joe Rogan Experience,” #1520 w/ Dr. Debra Soh / Aug 5, 2020]:

“We’re living in a very confusing time in terms of the blowback people get [for a dissenting opinion] and in terms of when you are compliant the support that you get …[this is] all influencing the way that people behave. This willingness to go along with that narrative because you’re terrified of being criticized or you’re terrified of being attacked **…this is where we find ourselves.

“This is not the left that I know. This is what’s so strange. I guess I’m old. I’m 52. When I was young, the left was tolerant and open-minded and absolutely committed to freedom of speech. That doesn’t seem to be where we’re at now. We’ve gotten into some really radical place where the left is now. They’ve almost weaponized a lot of left-wing ideological values to combat right-wing values. It’s like they’ve gotten more loony to deal with loony people on the right, and they don’t even realize they’ve become their own enemy.

“When I was a young person the left was always the most tolerant of the groups, and that just doesn’t seem to be the case now. It seems that they’re only tolerant if you follow the ideology that they follow, and if you don’t, there’s no discussion about it. You’re a hateful person and there is this immediate hot take — you HATE. It’s bigotry, etc. There is no room for discussion, for information, no room for actual science, no room for understanding the nuance of psychology and of human beings.

“There are so many of us that are on the left that are so confused now. We feel like we’re people without countries.” HE interjection: Which is why we call ourselves “sensible left centrists.” Back to Rogan: “It’s like, who am I now? I’m not these people who want to defund the police and light the federal buildings on fire so what am I? You have to be that to be left [these days].”

** 95% of today’s film critics think and behave this way when they review a film made by POCs or women, or which deals with wokester values. Some know who and what they are (i.e., straight out of Bertolucci’s The Conformist) and some don’t even realize it.

Posted on 3.5.20: “It would appear that Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz‘s Antebellum is a female-branded revisiting of Twelve Years A Slave by way of H.G. Wells. Successful author Veronica Henley (Janelle Monae) suddenly becomes a slave in the cotton fields after time-travelling back to the Antebellum pre-Civil War South. The trailer tells us, however, that it’s Veronica’s fate “to save us from our past.” So she’s going to overturn slavery in the same way that Rod Taylor lead an Eloi rebellion against the Morlocks? Or lead a Spartacus-like revolt a la Birth of a Nation? Or maybe a little Harriet action? Or transport her plantation pallies back to 2020 and find them jobs in online publishing?”

Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros., 2021) is a biographical drama film about American Black Panther Party activist Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) and how FBI informant William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) inadvertently aided in the murder of Hampton. Directed and produced by Shaka King, from a screenplay by King and Will Berson, and a story by King, Berson, and Kenny and Keith Lucas. Costarring Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback, Ashton Sanders, Algee Smith and Martin Sheen.

From a 1.25.90 Chicago Reader piece by Michael Ervin titled “The Last Hours of William O’Neal“. The subhead reads, “He was the informant who gave the FBI the floor plan of Fred Hampton’s apartment. Last week he ran onto the Eisenhower Expressway and killed himself.”

I had some lenses left over and the only frames that fit them are made by RayBan. I wanted bright blue frames but they aren’t available, the eyeglass guy said. All he had were lavender or greenish-yellow frames, so I went with lavender. I’ve been wearing semi-flashy socks and eyeglasses for a long time now so no biggie.

A completely deranged Trump claims Joe Biden will "hurt God" if elected president pic.twitter.com/cJ8fbghmAm

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 6, 2020

At 1:19 pm today Exhibitor Relations Co. (‪@ERCboxoffice‬) announced that Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix, sometime in November) has been rated R for “language throughout, drug content and some violence.” HE question: In what realm does “some” violence warrant an R rating? And who cares about drug use and salty language? What is this, the mid 1950s?

Sundance ’21 will basically be doing a TIFF next January, which is to say they’ll mostly be streaming films with a drastically reduced physical presence in terms of theatres, ticketing and office space. And they’re cutting down from the usual ten days to seven (Thursday, 1.28 through Wednesday, 2.3).

Plus limited screenings, a heavy digital component and, if it’s “safe” again, an assortment of world premiere screenings in a number of U.S. states all around the country. In short, they don’t see the pandemic situation getting much better six months hence.

In other words, fizzle fuck. Relatively few people cared about wokester Sundance fare before. Now they REALLY won’t care.

From a 2.1.20 HE rant called “Official Verdict: Sundance ’20 Blew Chunks“: “Like I’ve said a few times, Sundance has more or less woked itself into a corner, and now it’s pretty much stuck with that brand or identity badge and can’t hope to free itself. The wokeness has been strident and persistent. The die is cast.”

There was always the chance that Charlie Kaufman might try to re-shape Iain Reid‘s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” into something less spooky and malevolent and a little more dryly comedic and perverse (i.e., Kaufmanesque).

The just-released trailer for Kaufman’s film suggests not. It feels like a psychological Middle American horror film by way of a 21st Century “Wisconsin Death Trip“…perhaos a subtle, less emphatic version of Ari Aster‘s Hereditary or at least a film that flirts with the creepy. Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley are the victims; Toni Collette and David Thewlis are the ghouls.