Gerwig’s White Knights

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Given the general presumption that certain fellas aren’t exactly into Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women, and given that the film has a robust army of progressive-minded female champions, it’s worth noting certain male critics who’ve stood by Little Women and generally bonded with Gerwig, given her a comradely hug or poke, sung her praises, insisted that reticent males should re-think it and so on.

It’s been observed that Gerwig’s “white knights” include rogerebert.com and N.Y. Times contributor Glenn Kenny, Vanity Fair‘s Mark Harris, MCN’s David Poland, N.Y. Times critic A.O Scott, Variety music guy Chris Willman, TheWrap‘s Alonso Duralde, THR‘s Todd McCarthy, New York‘s David Edelstein and L.A. Times critics Justin Chang and Kenneth Turan.

Kenny responds: “I am fine being listed as a booster of the movie, but not as a ‘white knight.’ I’m not being chivalrous. Gerwig [is] a real filmmaker. From my year-end blog post: ‘Guys, it’s good! It’s got mise-en-scéne! I kept hearing about how radical and stuff it was, but what more impressed me about the picture was its genuine tenderness…there’s a rare delicacy of feeling here.'”

Willman responds: “I wouldn’t object to [the white knight thing], although it’s hard to take it as anything other than tongue-in-cheek. Unlike Poland or Kenny, I have no clout in film circles. I should never have gotten caught up in the Twitter debate with [redacted], but it was just hard to resist pointing out that it’s not some kind of even split on the movie and vast majorities really like it just fine. I did not realize I was joining a ‘pile-on.’ Anyway, as there are so many critical voices supporting Gerwig or the movie, mine hardly counts.”

The Wurst

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I’m not particularly qualified to riff on the worst films of 2019 as I almost always steer clear. I can smell them a mile away and will only occasionally endure. I could mention Cats, of course, but I feel mostly pity for that film. I could complain about the Miss Bala remake (the Mexican-made original was 17 or 18 times better) but I didn’t see It: Chapter Two, Glass, Last Christmas (even though I have a screener), Men in Black: International, Isn’t It Romantic, the Hellboy remake, the Shaft remake, etc. I’m not saying Alex Ross Perry‘s Her Smell was one of the year’s worst, but I really hated it. Long Shot pretty much stunk, I thought. I never saw Tolkien or Ophelia. I hated Spider-Man: Far From Home. Almost everyone felt that Stuber blew chunks. I hated The Goldfinch and was mostly dismissive of Ad Astra. I never saw Rambo: Last Blood. I didn’t care for The Aeronauts at all. I ducked 21 Bridges. I avoided A Million Little Pieces, etc.

My heart’s not in this, I guess.

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Dying Breed

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Race is the principal reason that your Fox News bumblefucks are so blindly loyal to The Beast.

The U.S. was generally a European-descendant white country during the 18th, 19th and most of the 20th Century, and it technically still is with 60.7% of the U.S population composed of non-Hispanic whites. But by 2050 whites will only represent 47% of the population. The country is basically tipping in a pluralistic, multicultural direction. For a half-century the Republican party, which adopted a kind of Anglo Saxon Maginot Line mentality (the “Southern strategy”) and which today is represented by guys like Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan, has been the party of white resistance.

And so lunatic righties see themselves as defending the Alamo, and they see Trump, for all his appalling ignorance, arrogance and self-destructive behavior, as a fat Jim Bowie or an orange-faced Davy Crockett mixed with a New York City crime boss.

This is their last stand and they know it, and he’s all they’ve got. They know that sooner or later General Santa Anna‘s troops (multiculturals, LGBTQs) are going to scale the walls and bayonet them to death and ravage their daughters and mitigate the bloodline all to hell.

On top of which they know that urban liberals not only despise them for their Trump allegiance but because they embody what has become a full-on racial epithet — “crusty older white person.” (Just ask Rosanna Arquette.)

So they don’t care. They’re the Wild Bunch shooting it out with General Mapache‘s troops. They’re dead men, but at least they’ll know the dark satisfaction of causing as much chaos and destruction as possible before they fall to the floor, bleeding and cut to pieces.

What’s the current U.S. population? Roughly 330,149,796 as of 12.16.19. In 1620 the non-Native (i.e., immigrant) American population was around 2300 persons. That number had grown to 2.5 million by 1776, and then 31 million by 1860, 76 million by 1900, 180 million by 1960 and 282 million by 2000.

White guys “settled” this country (i.e., stole, slaughtered, railroaded, plantationed, bulldozed, capitalized) fair and square. And now the non-elite, non-urban, under-educated sector of whitebread culture has been marginalized and discredited, and is on the verge of being finished.

This is why Michael Moore is saying that Trump, God help us, has a fighting chance of being reelected in 2020. Because they’ve latched onto an idea that they’re fighting for their very existence.

Bumblefuck despair and depression is the main reason that average life expectancy in the United States has been on a decline since 2014. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention cites three main reasons: a 72% increase in overdoses in the last decade (including a 30% increase in opioid overdoses from July 2016 to September 2017), a ten-year increase in alcoholic liver disease (men 25 to 34 increased by 8%; women by 11%), and a 33% increase in suicide rates since 1999.

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Thoughts & Prayers

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In short, if Scott Feinberg’s insect-antennae readings are correct, all the ardently woke film twittering and comintern-ing that repeatedly protested the award-nomination snubbing of Little Women…all of that has come to naught. If, to be clear, Greta Gerwig’s film turns out to be a “major threat.”

See?

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Cats is about as unpopular with Joe Popcorn as Uncut Gems. Once again critics are off on their own planet. A portion of the Rotten Tomatoes gang wants Cats to face prosecution in The Hague. Ticket buyers are just “ehh, doesn’t work, whatever…next!”

Boredom

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Left San Francisco around 1:30 pm. 101 south to Gilroy, 152 east to southbound 5. ETA in West Hollywood around 7:30 pm. That zoned-out, droopy-lid feeling.

Hell’s Wake-Up

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Until this morning, I had no idea Travis Bickle‘s apartment was located at 586 Columbus Ave., between 88th and 89th streets. I’d aways presumed his pad was in some ramshackle Hell’s Kitchen building, in the mid to upper 40s between 9th and 10th Avenue.

Careful Sense of Taste

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No Lighthouse or Les Miserables? I’ll cut Barack a break and presume he hasn’t gotten around to either. (Or he’s seen both and shied away because The Lighthouse has currents of madness and Les Miserables stokes unruly rebellion.) And he approves of Diane!

Little Mermaid

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On one hand I’m in league with Joe Popcorn as far as WTF reactions to Uncut Gems are concerned. On the other I’m stunned by negative or “later” reactions to Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse, which is easily among 2019’s ten best if not the top four or five.

The sad truth is that 97% of ticket buyers can’t get beyond subject matter. “So what happens? Two lighthouse keepers go crazy on a rocky island in the 1890s”…no, much more than that. You can’t tell them “it’s the singer, not the song.” You can mention the visual atmospheric highs…black and white, 1.19 aspect ratio, King Triton, the demonic seagull, magnificent production design…and 19 out of 20 popcorn inhalers will reply “so?”

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Cultural Downgrade

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Tatyana wanted to visit Top of the Mark, the 19th story bar-restaurant on the penthouse level of the Mark Hopkins hotel. I hadn’t visited since the mid ‘80s so what the hell. It opened in ‘39 and became quite the essential stopover for WWII officers (slender, nattily uniformed, in the company of classy ladies in bright red lipstick) bound for combat in the Pacific or returning from same.

The cultural atmosphere at the Top of the Mark is a little different these days. A few nice-looking people, sure, but also a fair amount of overweight, horribly dressed proletariat commoners wearing baggy jeans, knitted skullcaps and whitesides. A time-traveling anthropologist comparing the differences between 20th and 21st Century clientele would be struggling for the right politely descriptive phrases while conveying an honest assessment, as I am now.

The truth is that over the last 60 or 70 years certain aspects of American culture have not only gone downhill but sunk into the swamp. We’re talking about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire here. Herb Caen would be in shock.

25 Years of Flying to Utah

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I could do Sundance ’20 without breaking a sweat. I could wangle tickets from publicists like I did last year, and without a single care about wearing a Camp Woke press pass around my neck. And I’d have a good time doing the usual social whirlygig and wearing my black cowboy hat and so on.

But you know what? Fuck Sundance. The films simply aren’t vital or necessary enough — they’re for people in the greater Sundance community who may or may not tell their friends to stream this or that festival favorite down the road, and that’s all.

Yes, they screened Lulu Wang‘s The Farewell last year and that was certainly a good thing, but the classic Sundance glory days are over. The era of debuting Oscar favorites like Manchester By The Sea and Call Me By Your Name is almost certainly drawing to a close. Because Sundance is no longer a launchpad — it’s become a self-absorbed instruction chamber for woke Stalinism and the perpetuation of Sundance movies that say the right p.c. things.

I’d like to go because I’ve been attending for 25 or 26 years straight and it’s in my January blood, but it’s just not worth the money and the hassle any more. The usual five or six standouts will screen and stream in good time. On top of which money is a little tight this year so maybe next year or maybe never again…who knows?

Or maybe not until independent film culture shifts into another mode and instructive representational wokesterism is no longer the dominant tune being played on the bagpipes.

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