And following in the path of Glenn Powell‘s character in Twister, relegated to the sidelines during the action-packed climax, there ain’t no savior prince in the new Snow White (Disney, 3.21) — this is apparently a militant, storm-the-barricades show aimed at progressive women of all ages. (The script is by Greta Gerwig and Erin Cressida Wilson.) Okay, there’s the kind-hearted, mild-mannered Jonathan character (Andrew Burnap) as well as the Huntsman (Ansu Kabia)), but, like Powell, these are second-banana characters.

The Gotham Awards abandoned quality for its own sake some years ago. They’re basically become the gender-neutral, identity-celebrating, social virtue-signalling Wokey Awards…like their West Coast Spirit Award brethren they’ve become cultists in a kind of Branch Davidian way.

I haven’t seen Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man so who am I to talk, right? My avoidance impulse admittedly stems from weakness…from a sense of prospective anxiety and discomfort about hanging with an actual neurofibromatosis sufferer (in this case Adam Pearson). Which makes me a terrible person, of course.

I don’t want to avoid the disfigured…well, okay, I guess I do but I certainly don’t want to darken their lives in any way, shape or form. I merely choose to avert my gaze. If you ask me these feelings are benign and hands-off. And you know what? 98% of humanity feels the same way. Just ask Victor Hugo, Tod Browning (director of Freaks, which Andrew Sarris called “one of the most compassionate movies ever made”), Charles Laughton, Rod Serling.

I suggested in a piece last July that in response to my alleged or seeming cowardice and narrow-mindedness a certain kind of virtue–signalling hate snobbery (I called the proponents of this faith “neurofibromatosis wokeys”) would praise and embrace A Different Man as a way of trumpeting their open-hearted virtue and emotional support for not only the sufferers of this disease but anyone suffering from any oppressive handicap, biological or social.

They’re also determined to condemn anyone like me…anyone from the benign avoidance community, I mean…to eternal agonizing damnation. They are committed, trust me, to applying the bullwhip and sending we narrow-minded uglies straight to hell.

Last night the Gothams re-affirmed their social justice warrior belief system by giving their top prize to A Different Man — bingo! Like wind-up tin soldiers they walked right into their own self-lampooning satire…right into the mindset behind my snide little perception. In so doing they more or less said “we’re 100% sincere and real about this….neurofibromatosis sufferers have to be loved and supported and hugged, and we’re just the kind of enlightened organization to spearhead this social movement.”

Let me explain as carefully as I can that while neurofibromatosis wokeys are primarily guided by kind and gentle social impulses (as I am or at least try to be — I simply don’t want direct visual access to a manifestation of nature’s random cruelty) but they are also SJW snobs and haters. Remember Charles Bukowski’s “The Genius of the Crowd”? He nailed these detestable little scolds like few had ever managed. I’ve endured their slings and arrows in HE comment threads so I should know.

..sez that Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (Focus, 12.25) sorta kinda blows a bit, and especially that Lily Rose Depp’s lead performance doesn’t cut the mustard.

I’ve spoken to a friend who feels this way, and at least one just-posted trade review agrees; another doesn’t argue all that strenuously. Any Eggers film is a must-see, of course, but this one sounds dicey.

Wait…IndieWire’s David Ehrlich thinks Depp is just swell!

Blurry but funny. Peter O’Toole was 74 at the time. This was taped sometime in early December of ’06, the subject being Roger Michell‘s Venus. O’Toole passed in 2013 at age 81. The great Peter Finch (aka “Finchy“) died in ’77 at age 60….heart attack.

I don’t think often about the fun I occasionally had during my drinking days, but every now and then I do.

“If you’re going to look like this, you’ll have to settle for the fat-girl parts.” — a drama teacher to Kate Winslet when she was in her mid teens, according to Winslet’s account during a 60 Minutes essay that aired yesterday (12.1).

By “like this,” the drama teacher meant not slender or rail-thin, a physical state that all competitive actresses aspire to whether they want to admit it or not.

What the drama teacher also meant, I suspect, was that Winslet wasn’t so much “fat” as zaftig (curvy, fleshy, wide-hipped). During the filming of Titanic James Cameron allegedly referred to Winset as “Kate weighs-a-lot.” I’ve personally never said an unkind word to any woman’s face for the misdemeanor of being a bit hefty or bulky, but I’ve held critical thoughts about such qualities for nearly my whole life. Everyone has.

Catherine Breillat made a film about a French obese teen and called it Fat Girl. Was that a size-ist slur or a statement of fact?

Things have changed over the last 30-plus years, but women of size and bulk are still not generally regarded as being in the 8, 9 or 10 categories…be honest. Nobody wants to be so impolite or coarse to put such women down for this, and it’s certainly permissible if this or that guy finds “big girls” attractive…knock yourselves out.

It’s noteworthy that the 60 Minutes interviewer (Cecilia Vega, who blends ardent feminism with standard obsequiousness) didn’t ask Winslet to explain or reiterate her own statement of self-condemnation for the crime of having worked with Woody Allen (Wonder Wheel) and Roman Polanski (Carnage).

Winslet: “It’s unbelievable to me now how those men were held in such high regard, so widely in the film industry and for as long as they were. It’s fucking disgraceful.” I’ll tell you what was disgraceful back in ’21 — knee-jerk #MeToo Stalinist sentiments from Johnny-come-lately, trying-to-curry- favor activist actresses.

Jane Mayer’s 12.1 New Yorker expose, based on a Concerned Veterans for America whistle-blower report from 2015, all but certifies that Fox and Friends weekend cohost Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s Defense Department nominee, is the new Matt Gaetz.

Edward Berger’s Conclave finale was cooked up by author Robert Harris in 2015 (the book was published in ‘16), or well before the trans wokey thing (another factor that tarnished Biden and helped to ruin Harris in the eyes of bumblefuck voters) kicked into gear in the early ‘20s.

I feel soul-sick myself but the Great Woke Legend is that straight men are generally broken and corrupted and bad news, and that it’s time for women (and in one particular situation a cardinal with a uterus) to step in and call the shots.

Obviously a slight majority of voters disagreed with that scenario on 11.5, and so here we are…totally fucked as a nation and about to endure the pains of MAGA fascism.

I blame the wokeys. I really do. They brought this about. Right now they’re understandably searching for tall grass.

And I solemnly believe it would be wrong, wrong, wrong for John M. Chu’s handsome, uber-industrial pile-driver of a musical to take the Best Picture Oscar. Because if you put aside the musical numbers it has no great scenes.

Some Facebook dude wrote this:

But you’re a black sheep and a wrong one, and you fucked up repeatedly so ya gotta do the time, man. Really. No skating. It’ll build character. You’ll be a better, tougher person at the end of your sentence. It’s a growth opportunity.

HE comment: I think President Biden pardoned his bad-seed son Hunter out of resignation and despair.

Joe’s inner dialogue: “Obviously I’m reversing myself but my reputation is in the toilet anyway. Future generations will be taught to despise me as I’m the obstinate old coot who surrendered our nation to MAGA fascism because I wouldn’t collapse my ill-conceived campaign for a second term until it was way too late.

“You might be horrified by the return of Donald Trump but I’m the deluded scumbag who blew open the border and ushered in his second term so what difference does it make? History hates me now and will certainly hate me going forward.

“At the end of the day I’m defaulting to an age-old sentiment when it comes to broken-down fathers and weak sons: ‘The heart wants what it wants.’”