If you’re any kind of kneejerk wokester who has more or less believed in the innate malice of white culture since the explosive reaction to the 5.25.20 death of George Floyd, the term “manifest destiny” almost certainly rubs you the wrong way.

Because it basically alludes to a hallowed belief in European-descended immigrant pioneers of the 20th and 19th centuries having brought about essential strengthenings and advancements in the expansionist saga of the U.S. of A.

It also sounds vaguely racist in the view of non-whites (African Americans, Native Americans) who’ve had significant issues and disputes with whites over the last 400 years, to put it mildly.

And yet in a frank, brass-tacks 5.13 interview with multi-hypenate Kevin Costner, director of the soon-to-be-unveiled Horizon: An American Saga — Part One (Warner Bros, 6.28), Deadline’s Mike Fleming, who has apparently seen Horizon, has described the three-hour, covered-wagon saga as “a sprawling film about Manifest Destiny.”

If I was a hair-trigger progressive, I would regard Fleming’s description with a certain degree of alarm. Which is why I, a staunch anti-wokester for the last five or six years, posted a related article two weeks ago, to wit:

THR ‘s James Hibberd indicated as much in a 2.26 interview with Costner.

Horizon will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival early Sunday evening, 5.19.

Followed early this evening by Quentin Dupieux‘s Meet The Parents — aka The Second Act — a “metacomedy” about actors playing real people but also being themselves. Costarring Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, Raphaël Quenard and Manuel Guillot.

Anya Taylor Joy to N.Y. Times guy Kyle Buchanan: “’I’ve never been more alone than making [Furiosa],’” she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.’

“Her reticence reminded me of when I first spoke to the actors who had made Fury Road: During that shoot, the desperation of the characters bled into their real lives, and unpacking that experience took a very long time.

“Sensing that she was skirting a sensitive issue, I asked Taylor-Joy what exactly it was about Furiosa that had proved more difficult than she expected.

“For five long seconds, she contemplated giving me an answer. ‘Next question…sorry,’ she said. There was a faraway look in her eyes, as if a part of her had been left behind in that wasteland. ‘Talk to me in 20 years,’ she said. ‘Talk to me in 20 years.'”

George Miller‘s Furiosa screens in Cannes tomorrow night. Has Hollywood Elsewhere successfully reserved a ticket? Of course not. I’m trying to wangle a way in as we speak. If I fail, I’ll catch it at a Cannes commercial cinema ten days hence.

“Believe It, Democrats — Biden Could Lose,” Frank Bruni, N.Y. Times: “Donald Trump may be the presidential candidate whose midday snoozing has generated headlines and animated late-night comics, but President Biden is the one who needs to wake up.

“He’s a whopping 12 points behind Trump among registered voters in Nevada, according to polls by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer that were released on Monday morning (5.13). Biden won that state by nearly 2.5 points in 2020. [Plus] he’s behind among registered voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan — in all of the six battleground states surveyed except Wisconsin.

“That’s not some wildly aberrant result. It echoes alarms sounded before. It speaks to stubborn troubles.

In short, Bill Maher was 100% dead-on seven months ago when he stated that by insisting on running for re-election instead of allowing a younger and more vigorous sensible Democrat to step into the breach, Joe Biden “is going to turn the country back over to Trump, and go down in history as Ruth Bader Biden — a person who doesn’t know when to quit and [thereby] does great damage his party and his country.”

Every time I’ve brought this up in the succeeding months, 80% of HE readers have pooh-poohed me…it’s early yet, calm down, Americans will come to their senses, stop doomsaying.

“[This is] difficult for Democrats to believe,” Bruni wrote. “I know: I talk regularly with party leaders and party strategists and I’ve heard their incredulity. They mention abortion and how that should help Biden mightily. They mention the miserable optics of a certain Manhattan courtroom and a certain slouched defendant. They mention Jan. 6, 2021. They note Trump’s unhinged rants and autocratic musings and they say that surely, when the moment of decision arrives, a crucial share of Americans will note all of that, too, and come home to Biden.”

A foam-at-the-mouth, anti-Democracy criminal sociopath will become President next January, and this is partly the symbolic fault of those complacent HE commenters.

Over the years I’ve never been more aware of the cries of seagulls than during the Cannes Film Festival. If you’re staying anywhere near the marina (as Hollywood Elsewhere is) their squawking cuts through the night air like an ambulance siren…wailing, aarking, “wake up, you sleepyheads.” Scavengers by nature, gulls are “often heard very early in the morning”, according to their Wiki page, but I’m telling you they are very nocturnal…2 am, 3 am, 4 am. And exacerbating my inability to sleep.

I brilliantly forgot to bring my ambien tablets this year, and so last night I was trying to ease up and let slumber come naturally and failing for the most part. Partly (largely?) because the gulls wouldn’t stop partying.

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I’m at my Heathrow departure gate — terminal 4, gate 10. A full hour before the departure of HE’s Nice flight at 8:55 am.

Yesterday’s London roam-around (see photos posted last night) was fairly glorious, especially ending as it did at Namaste Holborn, a Bloomsbury veggie Indian restaurant with outdoor seating. Perfection in all departments.

Today will be the only low-stress, comme ci comme ca day of the ‘24 Cannes Film Festival. Moving in, shopping, meditating, breathing in the seaside air, getting some dinner and avoiding all the shithead journalists with whom I was once on good, friendly terms with but have since morphed into William S. Burroughs-styled insects.

Hollywood Elsewhere is seated in row 46, right aisle, on a Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow…a flight that should have left at midnight but is only just getting underway at 12:41 am.

I have roughly the same amount of wiggle-breathing room that astronaut Alan B. Shepard had in his Mercury space capsule on 5.5.61. Plus I’m seated next to a person of considerable (dare I say oppressive?) size.

Coach flying is an agony-endurance test. You just have to somehow get through it.

4:38 am update: For purely sadistic reasons our Virgin Atlantic flight attendants insisted on serving drinks and snacks for just under two hours…1:30 am to 3:25 am…up and down the aisle, pushing carts, bumping into outstretched legs and feet. Thanks, guys.