Jerry Seinfeld‘s comments during an ESPN interview about how politically correct agendas are stifling stand-up comedy (particularly on college campuses) feeds right into A.O. Scott‘s 6.5 N.Y. Times piece, titled “Adjusting To A World That Won’t laugh With You.” “We’re…in the midst of a humor crisis,” Scott writes. “The world is full of jokes and … Read more
Last night in London Idris Elba spoke with Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye prior to the BFI premiere of a documentary, Mandela, My Dad & Me, that Elba made with director Daniel Vernon. Baz, of course, asked about Elba possibly playing James Bond down the road, and Elba’s answer was quoted this morning by Vulture‘s … Read more
Over the last 12 years there have been, by my count, three significant films about journalistic screwups at major publications, two of them concerning the N.Y. Times. 2003 saw the release of Billy Ray‘s Shattered Glass, about the exposure of several fabricated news stories by New Republic staffer Stephen Glass. Ten years later Samantha Grant‘s … Read more
So what’s the verdict on the Get Hard outrage? Some HE regulars must have seen it last night. Is saying “take it easy, this is way overblown” a semi-legitimate view or not? Does the politically correct anger seem excessive or more or less appropriate? Is Get Hard a rough equivalent of Eddie Murphy‘s “Mr. T … Read more
Sometime during tonight’s Academy board of governors meeting a small cabal of old-fart conservatives will reportedly push for a return to only five Best Picture nominees, and it’s possible, I’m hearing, that this change might be adopted. (Last Thursday Variety‘s Tim Gray reported that “a faction will propose a return to five best-picture contenders and … Read more
Expressing disgust or nausea at the culture of Twitter rage-heads out there isn’t the half of it. Roving mobs of howling, hyperventilating scream queens…scolds, fools, goons, brutes, low-lifes. Hair-trigger responses, short-attention-spans, no nuance, saliva missiles, spray pissings. “A few spotters will shriek at this or that provocateur like Donald Sutherland shrieking at Veronica Cartwright at … Read more
I haven’t seen Get Hard (Warner Bros., 3.27), the preparing-for-prison comedy starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. Chances are I’ll find it over-the-top coarse and unfunny, but Drew McWeeny’s politically correct slapdown review, filed tonight from Austin, makes me want to bend over backwards to find something I can enjoy or praise about it. Remember … Read more
It’s a measure of how entrenched and militant the politically correct Stalinist goons have become that Gunman star Sean Penn is still getting pestered about that harmless little green card joke he shared at the end of last month’s Oscar telecast. Before announcing that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman had won for Best Picture, Penn said, … Read more
Average Joes don’t care who’s running the big studios, but I do. Especially if the studio honcho isn’t some mushy corporate toadie but someone with a little passion and gumption and force of personality. In this sense Tom Rothman, who’s just been appointed Sony’s Motion Picture Group Chairman, or in layman’s terms the successor to … Read more
Standards of hotness change over time. I’ve said more than a few times (most recently in an HE piece posted on 8.15.14) that sexual attractiveness standards have definitely evolved in favor of the notties over the last…oh, 10 or 12 years. We’re now living in an age, partly if not largely perpetrated by the films … Read more
Niki Caro‘s McFarland USA (Disney, 2.20), which screens this Saturday at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, has been given a mixed-respectful review by Variety‘s Justin Chang. In keeping with the politically correct view that white guys are a drag and ethnics are more planted and soulful, Chang complains that the film, a Hoosiers-like tale of … Read more
You can dispute or dismiss this, but a guy I was speaking to this morning feels that in liberal Hollywood’s politically correct realm and more precisely in creative filmmaking circles of 2015, older white guys are getting the shit end of the stick in more ways than one. In one sense this is an old … Read more