According to MSNBC’s Joy Reid in one of her “Absolute Worst” essays, Republican-backed legislation that would ban critical race theory has been introduced in “nearly” a dozen states. Reid says that critical race theory is a “decades old” concept, but in fact it’s a relatively recent education-system additive that explains the history of systemic racism in this country (which no semi-educated, fair-minded person would argue with).

It follows, unfortunately, that CRT has also metastisized into a woke belief system that says white Americans are fundamentally stained and poisoned by their history, and so they need to detoxify themselves by picking up a copy of Robin D’Angelo‘s “White Fragility” and work at cleansing themselves of a shameful past. They also need to absorb and accept the theology of The 1619 Project, which states that racism is the fundamental definer of the American experience.

However enlightened or well-intentioned this kind of re-educational process might be, it is believed in many corners of this country (including the better-educated cities) that critical race theory advances a new form of racism (“bad whitey needs to atone and be strictly schooled”) in order to counter historic racism.

I think we all understand that Average Americans (including liberal parents in big blue cities) are not going to go for this, and that CRT will be flayed as a campaign issue in ’22, you bet. I hate that my own distaste for and discomfort with critical race theory puts me in the same camp as a lot of horrible Republicans, but what can I do? All I can say is, you don’t have to be a crazy Republican to have arguments with CRT.

From a 1.27.21 Bari Weiss column: “Critical race theory is a threat to the most basic foundations of American life, including, but not limited to, equality under the law. It asks us to define ourselves by our immutable characteristics” — i.e., skin color. “It pits us against one another in an endless power struggle. It rejects Enlightenment tools of reason and scientific discovery as tainted. And it undermines our common humanity.

“[It holds that] America was born for the purpose of upholding white supremacy and it remains irredeemably racist. It claims that our founders were not primarily political geniuses but slaveholders who wanted to find a way to hoard their property. And while [last year’s George Floyd] rioters may have gotten a little out of hand, they weren’t wrong to target statues of men like Lincoln.”

I greatly fear the ’22 verdict on this issue from American voters.

I was startled this morning by a snap of 20-year-old Paul Schrader in the spring of ’67, taken “in a Quonset hut at Iowa’s Writers Workshop.” “Startled” because he was nearly the spitting image of my son Dylan at roughly the same age. Almost the same brown eyes, definitely the same nose and hair. It appears to be a photo of a photo, hence the odd Rubber Soul album cover effect.

I’ve almost become accustomed to reading Indiewire articles and reviews for the amusement factor. Because whatever they post, eight times out of ten it’s tainted by skewed or myopic political-cultural attitudes (Indiewire being more or less Woke Central) or extremely supportive, staunchly non-judgmental reviews of any indie film at all with a Sundance imprimatur, a #MeToo, POC or LGBTQ stamp, or a general woke-agenda vibe.

So I was almost startled to read what looked like a tough, declarative, Vanity Fair-sounding piece about how Hollywood is no longer a studio-controlled industry and how the struggling exhibition industry has painted itself into a corner.

Written by Anne Thompson and Dana Harris-Bridson, it’s called “This Was the Week That Movie Studios Finally Lost Control of the Industry.” The ostensible trigger was attending “The Big Screen Is Back”, a Century City gathering intended to promote the the return of theatrical, but the big news was AT&Ts decision to turn tail and abandon the movie distribution business. Last Monday the communications behemoth announced that WarnerMedia (CNN, TBS, TNT, Warner Bros. film and Tv + HBO slash HB0 Max) and Discovery are merging into one, and that head of this new company will be Discovery CEO David Zaslav.

Key paragraph #1: “We have reached a point where ‘major movie studio’ has begun to sound like an anachronism. Certainly, Warners and Universal and Paramount and Disney and Sony remain premier global suppliers of films that generate billions — but the studio bosses occupy a lower position on the power charts because it’s no longer the movie business that drives the industry.”

HE retort: Maybe so, but “the movie business” has always had a river running through it, and that river is know as the Grand Tradition of Movie Catholicism — a current that drives the heart and spirit of this town, at least among people with a soul. The more that unfaithful dilletante product assemblers and marketers ignore this basic spiritual current the less “Hollywood” this community will be.

Key paragraph #2: ‘Slammed by global lockdowns, the biggest theater chains are also the victims of their overspending, debt burdens, real-estate deals, and mostly, denying reality. Before the pandemic, they could have struck better terms with the studios on shorter windows and revenue sharing. They held out too long.”

Prano Bailey-Bond‘s Censor, a British horror film that opened at Sundance ’21, costars Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller and Michael Smiley. HE is interested as Censor appears to be an exercise in elevator horror. Magnet will release it on 6.11.21.

“After a shocking murder brings the censorship team’s work under public scrutiny, shy, slightly awkward Enid (Algar) bares the brunt of the backlash, receiving disturbing phone calls and hounded by reporters. At the same time she encounters the lecherous film producer Doug Smart (Smiley) who drops by with his latest offering: a Video Nasty from infamous director Frederick North. Enid is struck by the lead actress’ shocking resemblance to her missing sister, and becomes obsessed with the idea that Smart and North hold the key to unlocking her past.

“The retro styling is reminiscent of Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio while the gore and overt weirdness evokes the early work of Ben Wheatley, but Censor has enough personality of its own to avoid slipping too much into pastiche territory.

“Although it’s more of a mood piece than a narrative one, Niamh Algar is excellent in the lead role (having already proved herself one to watch with her supporting turn in Calm with Horses) and there’s yet to be a film not improved by an appearance from Michael Smiley.” — from a 1.30.21 review by Little White Lies‘ Hannah Strong.

Two months ago the intemperate, hyperventilating woke jackal mob did their best to bring about my death. It was partly about HE having posted an insensitive comment — albeit one that might have been mentioned in passing by any half-attuned industry insider who knows how Oscar-voting sentiments tend to work on deep-down levels — but it was mainly a matter of indelicate timing.

I naturally apologized for this transgression, despite (a) my not having actually written a damn thing myself (I’d posted an excerpt of an email chat) and (b) my having quickly removed the post when the Twitter banshees went nuts.

A friend has pointed out that a similar thing happened in late November 2014, in the immediate wake of an announcement by the Ferguson grand jury that no charges would be filed against Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown.

Right after the Ferguson Grand Jury verdict was read, and just before a Disney-lot screening of Into The Woods, I tweeted that a possible “strike a match rather than curse the darkness” response to this otherwise tragic event might be a surge of industry Best Picture support for Selma. Yup — another instance of the wrong HE tweet at the wrong time.

But all I said was that symbolically lighting a candle rather than lamenting the ugliness might be a good thing in the end.

I was all but roasted alive for saying this. Many people tweeted that I sounded like an insensitive asshole. How dare I suggest, after all, that there was (or might be) linkage between Ferguson and Selma‘s Oscar chances?

But at heart I had tweeted a positive sentiment. I was thinking, you see, of Martin Luther King’s words about how only love can eradicate hate. I was thinking that standing by a film about human dignity, compassion and human rights would serve as a positive response to the Ferguson situation. Okay, I didn’t say it in quite the right way. But I was trying to suggest that in a roundabout fashion this would be a way of showing love and respect for the right things and the right people.

A couple of days later Selma director Ava DuVernay pointed out a direct connection between her film and what had happened in Ferguson.

She did so in an Eric Kohn Indiewire interview with Selma director Ava DuVernay and Fruitvale Station director-writer Ryan Coogler about their support of the Black Friday Blackout.

For me, the stand-out portion was when Kohn asked DuVernay if she saw “any direct connections between today’s climate in the immediate aftermath of Ferguson in the story of Selma.” DuVernay responded as follows: “Yes, absolutely. It’s the same story repeated. The same exact story.

“An unarmed black citizen is ‎assaulted with unreasonable force and fatal gunfire by a non-black person who is sworn to serve and protect them. A small town that is already fractured by unequal representation in local government and law enforcement begins to crack under the pressure. People of color, the oppressed, take to the street to make their voices heard. The powers that be seek to extinguish those voices.”

In short, a filmmaker can point to parallels and echoes between his/her film and current tragic events, but a columnist who wades into the same (or similar) waters is risking life and limb. Especially if the Oscar race is brought into the equation.

Who would suggest that DuVernay wasn’t thinking about (or at the very least was aware of) how the Ferguson tragedy had lent a certain symbolic, metaphorical heft to her film? Was Selma not in Oscar contention as she spoke?

A little more than a week ago Atlanta creator/star Donald Glover complained that call-out culture is diminishing or dulling down creativity in movies and TV series. “We’re getting boring stuff and not even experimental mistakes because people are afraid of getting cancelled,” Glover tweeted.

Now Chris Rock has said the same thing. In a “Breakfast Club” interview with Angela Yee and DJ Envy, Rock said that fears of being cancelled has left everybody “scared to make a move.” He added that Khmer Rouge mandates are “disrespectful” to the audience and have led to lots of “unfunny” comedians, TV shows and movies in the entertainment industry.

Rock: “What happens is that everybody gets safe and when everyone gets safe and nobody tries anything, things get boring.”

Rock said he understands that some things shouldn’t be said but warned that cancel culture is preventing comedians from doing their jobs. “We should have the right to fail because failure is a part of art. It’s the ultimate cancel. You know what I mean?”

Warning to straight women: If an attractive dude you’ve just met mentions that he’s “got this Yale alumni thing [he has] to go to,” run in the opposite direction. Name-dropping a renowned Ivy-League university = a sure sign of insecurity and a possibly sociopathic personality. That goes double if he says he works in hedge funds. Obviously.

If you’ve known the guy for a week or two and then he mentions Yale and hedge funds, okay. But not in the first five minutes.

This is why I’ve no interest in Iliza Schlesinger and Kimmy Gatewood‘s Good On Paper (Netflix, 6.23). Because who wants to hang with a protagonist who’s too dumb to spot an obvious red flag?

Set in 1954 Detroit, Steven Soderbergh and Ed Solomon‘s No Sudden Move “centers on a group of small-time criminals who are hired to steal what they think is a simple document. When their plan goes horribly wrong, their search for who hired them — and for what ultimate purpose — weaves them through all echelons of the race-torn, rapidly changing city.”

I adore the idea of Soderbergh channeling the spirit of a ’50s Phil Karlson film a la Kansas City Confidential (’52) and 99 River Street (’53).

No Sudden Move will have an outdoor Tribeca Film Festival premiere on 6.18, and then move to HBO Max on 7.1. The costars are Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, David Harbour, Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm, Amy Seimetz, Brendan Fraser, Kieran Culkin, Noah Jupe, Julia Fox, Frankie Shaw and Bill Duke.

Nevada-based friendo to HE: “Have you seen Denis-Carl Robidoux’s YouTube channel? He 3D-printed a film scanner and is uploading old 35mm trailers in 4K, some of them flat or open matte. This Marie Antoinette trailer in particular looks incredible.”

I know it’s heresy in dweeb-film-monk circles but I would definitely pay a fair price to stream classic films of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s that have been given the Robidoux treatment. Not to mention the potential thrill of re-experiencing 1.85 or 1.66 aspect ratio films in 1.37.

I hate linking to anything that gives the loathsome Mike Pompeo a sheen of even-handed credibility, and don’t even mention the psychotic Devin Nunes.

But Bari Weiss’s 5.18 Substack piece about the suspected Wuhan lab leak is worth pondering, especially since she’s up-to-date with other high-profile lab leak discussers like Donald McNeil, Jr.

“Did the Covid-19 virus come from a lab in Wuhan, China?

“To ask that question in public was, until recently, to out yourself as a person wearing a tinfoil hat. It was nothing more than a far-right crackpot conspiracy theory, ‘disinformation’ that could get you banned from Twitter, YouTube and Facebook all at once, the kind of thing you only dared discuss in private.

“Yesterday I asked that question of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. His answer: Yes. He told me he’s believed that it’s come from a lab for ‘some time’ and lays out the evidence. (Evidence, he says, that has troubling implications for Dr. Fauci.)

“Why does this matter? Because we want to prevent it from happening again.

“Virology labs are typically highly regulated and monitored with specific precautions for certain work. If a virus that’s claimed 3.4 million lives escaped from the Wuhan lab — one that former New York Times correspondent Donald McNeil points out was “highly prone to porous leaks” — we should know what went exactly wrong.

“Another reason this matters is because it could reveal important things about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, which disappeared and jailed journalists who dared to report on the virus, silenced heroic whistleblowers, and used the World Health Organization to broadcast its propaganda.

“So why is this theory only now being discussed? Well, at The New York Times, as Donald McNeil points out in a post just published on Medium, staff was hamstrung. Sources in the Trump administration posited the lab leak theory, so it must be untrue, thought reporters and editors. Epidemiologists cast doubt on it, so it couldn’t be true.

“If we’re gonna take on China, if we’re gonna rebuild the country, if we’re gonna reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are living in reality, and [loony Republicans] ain’t one of ’em.” — Democratic Ohio representative Tim Ryan earlier today.

I’ve heard that Leisl Tommy‘s Respect (UA Releasing, 8.13.21) is a generally dependable biopic that hits the basic marks and does what Aretha Franklin fans will want it to do…cool.

A gifted young girl, loved and nurtured, has a singing destiny, and damned if she doesn’t fulfill it. Early childhood in Memphis and Chicago, the usual hurdles and hardships, and then wrapping it all up with the January 1972 Amazing Grace concert inside L.A.’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church.

A friend saw Respect months ago, and I must have asked three or four times if that Muscle Shoals recording studio episode (i.e., the recording of “I Never Loved A Man”) is part of Respect or not. He never quite gave me a clean answer, but I’m getting a feeling that it might not be, possibly because the savior of that session wasn’t Aretha but the great Spooner Oldham, who came up with the Wurlitzer riff that made that song work from the get-go.