The info is two days old, but after 48 years N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick is packing it in. I didn’t post anything yesterday because I couldn’t think of anything…well, affectionate to say about him. I’ve always respected Lumenick’s diligence and critical judgment (for the most part), but from my perspective he’s mostly been this scowly, morose dude I’ve run into at film festivals. I’ve been reasonably polite with Lou for years, and most of the time he’s acted as if he’s barely been able to contain his loathing. Life is short. I wish that Lou had found a way to be a nicer, gentler person, but he didn’t have the stones.

Lumenick gave me props when Hollywood Elsewhere’s Shane aspect-ratio battle ended in triumph, at least as far as the Bluray was concerned. (Woody Allen‘s sentiments tipped the scale in favor of the 1.37 crowd.) But it should be noted that all N.Y. Post links to Lumenick’s reports about the Shane a.r. brouhaha and particularly Warner Home Video’s capitulation have been wiped. That’s spite, pure and simple.

I should also note that the piece Lou wrote about Gone With The Wind‘s stock dropping due to racist content prompted one of the best critical rebuttals I’ve ever posted, so I’m glad that Lou trashed GWTW because it allowed me to deliver a more profound observation, which is that GWTW is not a film about the South or slavery or the Civil War as much as a parable about the deprivations of Great Depression.

Lumenick’s membership with the New York Film Critics Circle will stay active through to the end of 2016 film awards season, and I presume I’ll run into him at some NY Film Festival screenings at the Walter Reade in early October. I’m sure he’ll go into his act the second our eyes meet.

Lumenick to NYFishbowl on his Gone With The Wind piece: “That Gone With the Wind rant is far and away my most controversial piece. It generated more than 200 pages of almost entirely negative comments, ignited a social media firestorm, got picked up around the world and drove both the DVD and Blu-ray editions of Gone With the Wind to the top of the Amazon bestseller lists for a solid week.”