I’m presuming that the film critic successor to A.O. Scott, whose decision to shift into book reviewing was announced on Tuesday (2.21), has already been decided upon by N.Y. Times management.

If not, one presumes or at least hopes that the decision will take into consideration the fact that the woke worm has turned, the crazy current is losing its strength and that the Times really needs a sensible, snappy–phrased, Bret Stephens-like cineaste, or someone who doesn’t hold with the wokester criteria that defined the Dargis–Scott Universe essays of the last three or four years.

Someone like Variety critic Owen Gleiberman, for example. A seasoned diviner of great 20th and 21st Century cinema and certainly no friend of the progressive Khmer Rouge, O.G. has always gotten the whole equation and writes entertainingly to boot.

For symbolism’s sake if nothing else, they need to hand Scott’s job to a critic who doesn’t necessarily buy into the “Woody Allen is Satan” narrative, as Scott more or less did five years ago. That article was an ignoble Times milestone, and they certainly don’t need another agenda-tied progressive like Dargis. The readership has had it with that shite.

If the decision is between Times contributors Wesley Morris and Glenn Kenny, I’d much rather see Kenny fill Scott’s shoes. As an act of defiance if nothing else. Because if Times honchos don’t hand the gig to Morris their hides will carry an R brand, right?

I know or suspect deep down that Morris will get the gig but I’ve never liked him. He’s an excellent writer but also an arch know-it-all and a somewhat fey elitist. In 2015 he chortled at the brilliant Love and Mercy. having sneered at it during the 2014 Toronto Film Festival. Like a good little woke Trotsky-ite Morris tried to kill the harmless, warm-hearted Green Book at a crucial stage in the Academy voting game. (Sorry that didn’t work out!) Instead of honorably engaging when I wrote him a few years back with a challenging opinion, Morris shrieked at the alarming fact that I had his email address. Pearl clutcher!

Ray of hope: Word around the campfire is that Morris may not want the job, as he allegedly prefers being a critic-at-large. Covering the waterfront as the Times’ co-lead film critic is a demanding task, etc.

Posted six or seven years ago: “I began my life feeling very angry at God for giving me such a miserable life in suburban New Jersey, and especially for giving me such strict, hard-nosed parents, particularly a mother who made me go to church every fecking Sunday. Then in my teens I went through a period of mocking and taunting Him. Then I reversed gears in my early 20s, embracing and worshipping Krishna as a result of my mystical LSD trips. Then I came to an existential understanding that God is, depending on how lucky or unlucky you are in terms of parental or tribal lineage and birth location, at best impartial about whether you’re living a happy or miserable life.

Then again God does give you the freedom to become whomever, depending upon your hustling abilities. If you want happiness and you’re not living under a horrible dictatorship, orchestrate your own version of it without making things worse for others.

HE / Ahab: “What nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it…what cruel, remorseless emperor commands me against all natural lovings and longings that I keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time, recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I would not so much as dare? Is Wells, Wells? Is it I, God, or who that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of itself but is as an errand boy in heaven, nor one single star can revolve but by some invisible power, how then can this one small heart beat, this one small brain think thoughts unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I?”

God doesn’t care at all. He’ll shine bright sun, love you, nourish your land with rain and rich minerals, make you rich or poor, drown you, plague you, abuse you, Holocaust you, rape your cities, cut off your heads…anything that any earth-residing monster dreams up and wants to do, God will go along.

In the view of the Critical Drinker, Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania “sums up everything the MCU has become…a plot so entirely predictable and generic that it feels as if it was written by an overworked AI, basically consisting of a series of tired and played-out tropes that have been done a million times before…visuals that are so obnoxiously overdone you can barely process what you’re seeing…

“Ant Man 3 is everything that most of us have come to despise about Marvel at this point…two hours of trite, bland, corporatized, predictable, pointless, soul-destroying nothingness…what a pile of absolute shite.”

Posted on 2.17.23:

If Sonny Bono hadn’t slammed into a tree while skiiing in the Lake Tahoe region on 1.5.98 and if he’d otherwise kept himself in good health, he would have celebrated his 88th birthday five days ago (2.16.23).

Bono was 64 at the time of his death. I’m sorry he suffered through that. But he lived an interesting life with an unusual arc — at first a hippie-ish songwriter, singer and performer in the ’60s and ’70s, and then a “protect the small businessman” Republican in the ’80s and ’90s.

An early ’80s memory: I was driving west along the hilly-curvy section of Sunset Blvd. (near Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion) when I noticed Bono in his car, waiting to slip into the eastbound lane.

Two or three years later I ordered a drink at Bono, his Italian joint on Melrose near La Cienega. My immediate impression was that there were too many tables scrunched together.

I’m mentioning Bono because until this morning I somehow hadn’t read that he and Roddy Jackson co-authored “She Said ‘Yeah!’“, a fast and catchy Rolling Stones song from ‘64 or ‘65. The song is basically a horndog thing — a lust-struck guy wants to have it off with a hot girl, and to his infinite delight she’s down for it… “yeah!”**

I’d also never read that Bono co-authored “Needles and Pins,” a 1962 song that took off when a version by The Searchers charted in ’64. Bono co-penned the song with Jack Nitzsche and Jackie DeShannon, who recorded a version in ’63. The song is more commonly known as “Needles and Pinzah.”

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Philippine director Isabel Sandoval has taken issue with Roger Friedman’s Showbiz 411 report (2.20) that Pedro Almodovar’s A Strange Way of Life, a 40-minute “short”, will open the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. For what it’s worth, Sandoval has tweeted that Martin Scorsese’s 200-minute Killers of the Flower Moon will open the festival.

The fact that the L.A.-based Sandoval runs with other filmmakers suggests that she may be onto something.

On the other hand, there’s always something about an opening-night Cannes booking that says “hmmm.” Ask any filmmaker — it’s always better to play within the festival. Being the opening-nighter always seems to suggest sone sort of difficulty or softness — it sends the wrong message in some odd way. [Thanks to Jordan Ruimy for passing along.]

The obvious bottom line (apparent to anyone paying attention) is that Everything Everywhere All At Once is not just divisive but deeply loathed. It’s my personal opinion that this A24,release (and I mean this from the bottom of my heart) is nothing short of a pestilence.

…as Clayton Davis, Variety’s identity-propelled, award-season handicapper, furrows his brow.

HE to friendo: “When did Kate Winslet become silver-haired?  And with close-cropped silver hair at that?  Would it be insensitive if I mentioned that she might not be slender enough to wear white?”

Friendo to HE: “That’s Emma Thompson.”

HE to friendo: “Oh.”

I think I watched Richard Belzer‘s performance as Detective John Munch in Homicide: Life on the Street (’93 to ’99) and the Manhattan-based Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (’99 to ’13), but for some reason I can’t recall any takeaways. What this probably means, in all fairness, is that I didn’t find Munch an especially rich or compelling character. Amusing, yes, but in a sidelight fashion. Mainly he struck me as compulsive.

Mine is a minority view, I realize. N.Y. Times/Jason Zinoman: “As Detective Munch, Mr. Belzer was brainy but hard-boiled, cynical but sensitive. He wore sunglasses at night and listened to the horror stories of rape victims in stony silence. He was the kind of cop who made casual references to Friedrich Nietzsche and the novelist Elmore Leonard. He spoke in quips; when accused of being a dirty old man, he responded: ‘Who are you calling old?’

I recognize that Belzer, who passed yesterday (Sunday, 2.19) at his home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France, was a funny, witty, ascerbic guy who was highly skilled at stand-up comedy. I loved his comedy-club patter in Mad Dog and Glory (’93) when he introduced Bill Murray‘s character — “Ladies and gentlemen, from Highland Park, the land of velour seat covers and razor-cut hair, the comedy stylings of Frank Milo…dig it.” (He also played the emcee at the fabled Babylon Club in Brian De Palma‘s Scarface.)

For years I had an idea that Belzer owned a home on Huntley Drive in West Hollywood, a couple of blocks from my place and just down the slope from Santa Monica Blvd. I tried verifying this a few hours ago from the usual online sources, but it wasn’t there. This impression is therefore probably wrong. But there’s a pocket in my memory that insists otherwise.

HE’s latest Substack discussion (i.e., Jeff and Sasha) mostly focuses on the glorious, EEAAO-snubbing (except in the matter of editing) BAFTA Awards. We also got into some standard Oscar race pulse-taking. Again, the link.

Roger Friedman‘s 2.20 “Cannes exclusive” isn’t about the certainty of Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon debuting at the 2023 Cote d’Azur festival — that assumption has already gained ground. Ditto the loose talk about Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer, James Mangold‘s Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Fortune Dial of Destiny, Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance and Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla.

Friedman’s new info (alleged but not confirmed) is partly about the festival’s opening-night attraction — Pedro Almodovar‘s A Strange Way of Life, a 40-minute, English-language short costarring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal. With just about every significant feature running 120 minutes these days (and often longer), one can’t help but admire Almodovar’s decision to keep A Strange Way of Life to one-third of that running time.

In my mind a 40-minute film isn’t a “short” — it’s a tweener.

The other announcement is about Maiwenn‘s Jeanne du Barry, a historical drama set during the French revolution that may, according to Friedman, screen on the second night of the festival. Alternately called La Favorite, the film will star Maiwenn as Jeanne Becu (aka Madame du Barry) in a rags-to-riches-to-guillotine story. Accused of treason, Becu lost her head during the French terror, and more precisely on December 8, 1793.

Johnny Depp allegedly plays the aged King Louis XV, who enjoyed Becu as his final mistress. The only problem is that Louis XV died in 1774, or 15 years before the French Revolution of ’89 and nearly 20 years before Becu’s execution so I don’t get it.

Wikipedia says Netflix will release Jeanne du Barry in France in 2023 (probably right after Cannes ’23), but that the streaming release won’t happen for another 15 months, or sometime in the fall of ’24. The Wiki page also states that the film, which finished shooting last October, was financed by the Red Sea International Film Festival. I don’t know…sounds kinda fishy.

The length of Scorsese’s Flower Moon is still in the vicinity of three hours and and 20 minutes. One possible reason is that the story Scorsese is looking to tell (based on David Grann’s 2017 book of the same name) simply required that running time to make it all work. Another possible reason is that Scorsese was fearful of Flower Moon being accused by Film Twitter of being a white savior tale and so he decided to add a fair amount of “Native Americans had their own agency” stuff so he and the film wouldn’t get in trouble with Native American wokesters.

The “Flower Moon has allegedly been woked into an anti-white savior film” angle was fully explored by Jordan Ruimy on 1.20.23. The first hint of this was reported the same date by Variety‘s Zack Sharf.

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