In a 1997 speech called “Fighting the Culture War in America”, the late Charlton Heston, whom I regarded in the ’90s and early aughts as a wrong-headed guy because of his NRA representation, said something I agree with in a present-day context. Here, with edits, are Heston’s words:

“The law-abiding, Caucasian, middle-class Protestant or even worse, rural and apparently straight, or even worse, an admitted heterosexual, or even worse, a male working stiff…not only don’t you count, you are a downright obstacle to social progress. Your voice deserves a lower decibel level, your opinion is less enlightened, your media access is insignificant, and frankly, you need to wake up, wise up, and learn a little something from your new America. And until you do, would you mind shutting up?”

I didn’t relate to these words 26 years ago, but I do now. I didn’t even relate that much to the prickly political resentments that spawned Bill Maher‘s Politically Incorrect (’93 to ’02), or its title at least. I didn’t get on the anti-woke train until 2017 or thereabouts. What a difference a quarter-century makes.

Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is authoritatively reporting that Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon is not three hours and 54 minutes, which is what the Movie Database had or reported on or about 4.14, but three hours and 26 minutes. Nearly a full half-hour shorter — not so bad!

Here’s Jordan Ruimy’s rundown of the various reported running times over the last several weeks.

It is my considered belief, supported by many years of arduous viewing, that Guy Ritchie is a highly skilled but superficial-minded hack. I’m not using the term “soulless whore,” but if someone were to accuse Ritchie of same I wouldn’t argue strenuously against this. And yet…

In the view of Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, The Covenant (MGM, 4.21) is proof that “against all odds, Guy Ritchie has become one of the best directors working.”

This Afghanistan war thriller “isn’t another Ritchie underworld caper,” Gleiberman claims. “He has put his confectionary flamboyance on hold. [For] The Covenant unveils something new: Ritchie the contempo classicist. We’re seeing a born-again filmmaker.

“The Covenant is a superbly crafted drama, [and] yet the most eyebrow-raising aspect of the movie, in light of Ritchie’s career, is the bone-deep humanity that animates the story. This is a war film dotted with heroism but dunked in despair.

“As a rescue thriller, it’s tinglingly suspenseful and real. What gives the film its power is the way that its climactic final act grows out of an organic metaphor for the flawed vision of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. We came in with the best of intentions, but got too lost in the quagmire to follow through on our promise to the Afghan people. And so we stranded them.

“In The Covenant, Ritchie tells a story of two men, but he’s really giving this war that never succeeded a kind of closure. He uses the power of movies to coax out the heart that fueled our actions, and that made our loss so hard to bear.”

Despite what happened in Chicago’s Loop district last weekend, which was basically sporadic violent chaos by roving mobs of urban youths, nobody’s allowed to sound too angry or draconian. Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson warned against demonizing the hordes who smashed car and store windows, beat people up, started bonfires, clashed with cops, etc.

“In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend,” Johnson said. “It is unacceptable and has no place in our city, [but] it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”

Translation: “Many non-white Chicago kids have been leading difficult lives and are understandably hot-tempered and economically frustrated, so we don’t want to racially simplify matters if they trash the Loop district and bust a few heads. We can’t tolerate this kind of thing, but at the same time we need to try and turn the other cheek because decades of political white power structure oppression have had an unfortunate effect.”

Chicago Tribune editorial: “Mr. Mayor-elect, this is not going to work.”

Everyone understands that they’re not allowed to say anything that even vaguely resembles alarmist sentiments heard in early April of 2010 after incidents of “wilding” in Times Square, and certainly nothing that resembles what Orange Plague and other riled-up, short-tempered Manhattanites said about the Central Park Five incident (and the wilding that preceded it) in 1989.

The 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination will be upon us before we know it (concurrent, by the way, with the 11.22.23 opening of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon) and I’m asking myself something.

Why after all this time has no one ever suggested that Lenny Bruce may have been on to something when he suggested that Jackie Kennedy was simply, immediately terrified about being shot herself (as anyone would be) and was following a blind instinct to avoid a similar death by getting the hell away from the line of fire by climbing out of the back seat and onto the limousine trunk?

That has always seemed to me like a very natural and default kneejerk response — haul ass in order to save your own terrified, freaked-out ass.

And yet every last person who’s ever analyzed what happened during those fateful seconds in Dealey Plaza…they ALL say she was trying to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull that had been blown onto the trunk. And maybe she was, but why has no one ever suggested that Bruce’s interpretation was at the very least a reasonable possibility?

If so, Jackie wasn’t behaving in some cowardly or ignoble fashion. She’d just seen half of JFK’s head — very close, only inches away — explode into blood and skull and brain matter and vapor — soaking her gloves bright red and all that cranial flotsam spraying upon her own face. Naturally she came to a split-second realization that she might be next and immediately thought about saving herself from a similar fate and, not incidentally, staying alive in order to care for her two children.

Would that have been such a terrible instantaneous reaction?