Covid-19 is Deadly, but It Will Never Kill the Relentless Stupidity of Wokeness

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 16 seconds

As the ‘woke’ reaction to coronavirus has shown, even a pandemic won’t slow down the incessant political correctness of woke culture.

The coronavirus pandemic is a very scary and unsettling time for all of us. Everyone one I know is worried about their health, their finances or both.

Every cough or sniffle feels like a potential calamity and every missed paycheck and new bill coming due like the onset of economic ruin.

No one knows if or when life will get back to normal and we can resume working without fear of infection and with it the possibility of death. All of this uncertainty is extremely unnerving.

But thankfully there is something that can anchor us to our carefree, pre-coronavirus past…something persistent and reliable that, like herpes, will stick with us through thick and thin. I am, of course, referring to the idiotically self-defeating, painfully myopic and infuriatingly insipid, politically correct philosophy known as wokeness.

Like the ever-resilient cockroach surviving and thriving in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, that strain of vacuous thought known as wokeness is proving itself to be immune to the Covid-19 contagion.

In those halcyon days before the disease ravaged the U.S., the ‘woke’ narrative was that coronavirus was a human problem, not a Wuhan problem.

Social justice warriors resolutely decreed that coronavirus was not to be attached to ethnic identity and declared that blaming the disease on China or Chinese culture - with its penchant for wet markets and eating bats, was racist, and somehow a slur against Asian-Americans. Of course, only the most in-bred troglodytes believe that Asian-Americans go to wet markets and eat bats and would blame Asian people for the Chinese government’s abysmal failure.

Diminutive, two-bit hack comedian Bill Maher ran afoul of the woke brigade last weekend when he went against this specific politically correct talking point in a much-publicized, and shockingly accurate, rant on his HBO show, where he lambasted those who would deny empirical facts blaming China because it might trigger idiot racists to be racist. This quickly resulted in a cavalcade of woke panties once again getting all in a bunch.

It seems though that woke dogma is shifting now that the deadly coronavirus has spread like wildfire throughout the U.S., either that or these pandering nitwits are just brazenly and shamelessly hypocritical.

For example, the newest decree handed down by the politically correct twitterverse and vapid dopes in the mainstream media is that coronavirus is racist because it “disproportionately” effects black people.

Apparently coronavirus isn’t about identity…unless it is.

The aptly named Charles Blow of the New York Times has become the standard-bearer for this new race-infused woke storyline. Blow, like all social justice hammers that see the whole world as a white racist nail, acrobatically twists logic, the English language and statistics to fit this theory of Covid-19 as the ”Brother Killer”.

In Blow’s latest column, creatively titled “The Brother Killer”, he states that black men are particularly at-risk of coronavirus because they make up larger percentages of the vulnerable prison, homeless and poor population than their percentage of the overall U.S. population.

Blow writes “For these (black) men, the devastating effects of this virus may be as much about pre-existing social conditions as pre-existing medical ones.”

If Blow, and the rest of his woke minions, wanted to be accurate and weren’t blinded by race and flaccid identity politics, that sentence should read, “for poor people of all colors, the devastating effects of the virus are about pre-existing economic conditions.”

The calamity of the coronavirus isn’t about black men in prison, in poverty or living on the streets….it is about PEOPLE stuck in those conditions being susceptible to the disease.

The coronavirus does not care about race, ethnicity, gender, nationality or sexual orientation…just like the ‘woke’, it only cares about propagating itself.

Blow ends his piece with his usual straw man racial calisthenics when he writes, “History has shown that we are callously comfortable averting our gaze away from (black) men like these. We construct racialized rationales that allow us not to care, to say that they courted their fate, that pathology is at play, that one reaps what one sows.”

In what social justice warrior fever dream did Charles Blow conjure up people not caring about coronavirus and shaming its victims? The entire country has shut down in a quixotic attempt to contain the pandemic and minimize its spread, and no one but the most barbaric sociopaths feel anything but pity and sympathy for the poor souls who’ve lost their lives to the disease.

Are the adherents of wokeness, like Charles Blow, correct that alarming numbers of black people are dying from coronavirus? Yes. But it is also true, and equally unjust, that white, Latino, Asian and Native American people are dying in alarmingly large numbers. In other words…a lot of HUMAN BEINGS are dying of coronavirus…regardless of their racial or ethnic background. The Covid-19 pandemic is not a racial tragedy, but rather a human tragedy.

The cold, hard reality is that coronavirus has killed over 30,000 Americans of all races and ethnicities, and more than 130,000 people from nations across the globe. The disease could very well kill me, or you in the coming days, weeks, months and years. But rest assured, no matter how bad it gets or how long Covid-19 rages, it will never, ever kill wokeness – the indestructible cockroach of belief systems.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

UFC 249 is Cancelled. Can We Now Direct Our Bloodlust at the Elites Who Deserve It?

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 48 seconds

With no more live sports to use as an outlet for our anger and frustrations, maybe now we can focus our fury towards the big fight that really matters…the one against the ruling elite.

Last Thursday night Mickey Mouse and the suits at Disney put the ever ornery and defiant president of the UFC, Dana White, into a rear-naked power play/money choke hold and forced him to tap out and shut down UFC 249 due to Covid-19. Thus ended our last and best hope of live sports in the age of coronavirus…at least for now, and probably well into the near future.

I totally understand why Disney forced UFC 249 to shut down, and why every other sport is closed for business too, it is the logical and safe thing to do during a pandemic. I’m just trying to come to grips with how mentally devastating it is not to have any live sports to watch.

First the virus took away the NBA and NHL, then college basketball’s March Madness, followed quickly by baseball’s opening day and I wouldn’t be surprised if even the juggernaut of football ends up on the chopping block too.

Things are so bad they’ve even closed the bars here in Los Angeles so I can’t watch the drunks flex their beer muscles and square off in comically ineffective combat on the sidewalk at closing time. Hell, I can’t even go to the gym and watch myself fight to a respectable draw with my old nemesis - the heavy bag, because of coronavirus.

Sports are cathartic, and combat sports in particular give us a psychological release from the more primal impulses we all carry in our psyche. Watching two combatants enter the ring/octagon and put it all on the line helps us to live vicariously and not channel our own animal instincts by pummeling our idiot neighbor who plays his music too loud…even though that idiot neighbor most definitely deserves a serious pummeling.

UFC 249 was to be headlined by an intriguing bout between current Lightweight Champion, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and former interim champion Tony Ferguson. Coronavirus circumstances and confusion led to the undefeated Khabib bailing out of UFC 249 and being replaced by Justin Gaethje even before Dana White officially put the kibosh on the event. The Khabib-Ferguson pairing has seemingly forever been a star-crossed match-up as UFC 249 is the fifth fight between the two to be cancelled over the last four years.

As much as I wanted to see Khabib back in action, I have to be honest, I am so desperate to watch any fight or sporting event I’d settle for a septuagenarian slap and tickle duel between Donald Trump and Joe Biden at this point…just as long as they keep their shirts on.

In order to satiate my thirst for sport I’ve re-watched a cornucopia of old UFC battles featuring George St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, Chuck Liddell and even Khabib’s bitter rival Conor McGregor. I’ve also indulged in the entire canons of boxing greats like Ali, Arguello, Ray Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Tyson, Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker and the villainous Floyd Mayweather. I even re-watched the first Gennady Golovkin – Canelo Alverez fight and tried to comprehend how anyone could score it 118-110 for Canelo…I still haven’t figured it out.

The depressing truth is the only new fight left for me to watch nowadays is the fight against coronavirus…and that is not in any way, shape or form an entertaining fight.

Sadly, we are losing this one-sided bout against Covid-19, as everyday more and more people are dying brutal deaths at its cold hands.

In addition, small businesses and the working class are being economically destroyed by this insidious disease, all while the fat cats and oligarchs are once again using a crisis to socialize their losses and privatize their gains through copious corruption-fueled, tax-payer funded bailouts.

While I lament the loss of sports, I am also well aware that it is a frivolous distraction meant to anesthetize the populace so they placidly accept without complaint the malignant ruling corporatocracy that continuously oppresses and depresses them.

Sports have long been a way to reduce, or at least distract us from, the stress and tensions of everyday life, which are only heightened during our communal coronavirus lockdown.  Maybe, just maybe…the absence of sport as a release valve for our anger and anxieties will bring about a breaking of the stranglehold of the status quo. With the masses here in America no longer able to cathartically release their pent up rage by watching two gladiators square off in a brawl, maybe they will cultivate that fury and direct it with laser focus at the ruling class that exploits and brutalizes them.

Americans versus Washington and Wall Street! The people versus the politicians and the corporations! That would be a fight I’d truly love to witness…and engage in.  

Who am I kidding? I know that once sports comes back from its coronavirus exile it will numb us all back into complacency almost as quickly as Khabib will put Ferguson to sleep once they finally meet in the octogon.

Until then, I’ll have to quench my bloodlust by dreaming about beating the daylights out of my idiot neighbor who plays his music too loud. Like those bastards in Washington and on Wall Street, he really does deserve a beat down.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Podcast: Episode 14 - Hell or High Water

This week on Looking California and Feeling Minnesota we go with Barry's next choice for a must see (rewatch) movie while on quarantine…2016’s Hell or High Water (currently playing on Netflix). Come join us in breaking down this extraordinary modern masterpiece that is remarkably relevant to the current political moment.

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA: EPISODE 14 - HELL OR HIGH WATER

Thanks for listening and please stay safe and healthy!

©2020

Coronavirus Thoughts and Musings

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

With the coronavirus currently kicking us all in the ass and with Dear Leader announcing that the “self-distancing” protocols will stay in effect for at least another month, now seems as good a time as any to throw out some thoughts regarding this entire viral nightmare that has become our reality.

One of the benefits of being stuck in self-imposed isolation is that it gives one time to reflect and ponder on things. What follows are some of my reflections and ponderings.

PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLAGUE

The psychology of coronavirus is pretty fascinating to observe, in others and in myself.

In the weeks leading up to March 12th, when all hell broke loose in America when the NBA and NHL postponed their seasons over Covid-19 marking a new stage in the seriousness of the pandemic, I spoke to a bunch of people living across the U.S. to ask them what they thought about the coronavirus story.

At that time, every single person I spoke with told me that the coronavirus story was overblown or media hype. Not a single one of them took it even remotely seriously or adapted their lifestyle or began preparing for a prolonged pandemic.

I bought into the coronavirus story pretty early and was genuinely concerned about it, enough so that I stocked up on food and supplies back in February. When I spoke with people about coronavirus, I did not try to convince anyone else to change their opinion, but instead only listened to their perspective. I was keenly aware that to challenge people on their coronavirus beliefs of the moment could be interpreted as “judging” them, which was not my intention. I was only aware that human psychology being what it is, if I pressed people on their beliefs that would only engender defensiveness and further strengthen the belief I was questioning.

What I discovered through these conversations was that the consensus of doubt appeared to be a manifestation of both denial and cognitive dissonance.

What further bolstered this finding was that when I stopped to examine my own journey regarding coronavirus, I quickly discovered that I too went through some stages of palpable denial fueled by cognitive dissonance.

Proof of my cognitive dissonance shows itself in the fact that my concern regarding Covid-19 was so striking that I actually prepared my home for quarantine back in February and at the same time even began lobbying my wife (unsuccessfully) to pull our young son from pre-school, but despite all of that I still engaged in foolish and dangerous behavior anyway.

For example, in the first week of March, even though I was deathly frightened to do so, I still went to two concerts. On March 4th I took crowded public transportation to the Staples Center and saw Kiss, and then four days later went to the Saban Theater to see Buddy Guy. I was hyper-aware of the risk, and was vigilant in avoiding touching things and my face and every fifteen minutes or so doused my hands in Purell, but still, going to those concerts was incredibly reckless.

My thinking when deciding whether to go to these concerts or not was this…”well, I already paid for the ticket so I don’t want that money to go to waste.” This thinking, which my good Irish friend Liam called “Potato Famine Mentality”, is utterly insane. In my mind I was risking my life to go to these concerts, but still went out of not wanting to “waste money”. This is denial in action and shows the power of my own cognitive dissonance.

On March 9th, the day after I attended the Buddy Guy show, consensus was finally reached in the Politburo of my household and so we pulled my son from school, and my wife stopped going to work. This was one full week before all of LA and LA schools were shut down and three days before the NBA and NHL shut down. So basically my family has officially had a one week head start on wrapping our head around the very difficult-to-grasp concept of quarantining. From this vantage point it has been enlightening to see other people go through the same mental gymnastics we did, just a week or two after us.

For instance, days after I pulled my son from school both LA and New York City began debating whether they should shut down schools. The arguments they used were, like my Potato Famine Mentality, utterly insane, such as “kids don’t die from the disease” or “parents can’t stop working to stay at home with kids” or “kids get their meals from school”. These statements may be true but they are entirely irrelevant when dealing with a deadly pandemic. LA and NYC schools were victims of their own cognitive dissonance and stuck in denial because to acknowledge reality was too heavy a burden to bear. The officials in LA and NYC were simply incapable of wrapping their heads around the gravity of the situation because it was in their own personal best interests to not do so. Thankfully, they eventually came to their senses and a week after I made the same decision, they closed schools.

President Trump, the federal government and some state governments, have gone through that same roller coaster ride of denial, until reality crashed upon their heads and it could no longer be denied. Trump, ever the American id, sometimes goes through masturbatorial episodes of cognitive dissonance and denial even in the course of a press conference or in the answer to a single question.

The biggest lesson I learned from my struggle with cognitive dissonance and denial was that people really are entirely resistant to the concept of their own vulnerability and massive upheaval and change.

For example, baby boomers seem to be in deep denial about the dangers of coronavirus, and have been very slow to grasp the dire nature of the situation. Added on top of that is their denial of the reality that they are, in fact, elderly. It seems the vast majority of that generation are oblivious to the danger of Covid-19 and to the fact that they are not invincible, and have acted recklessly and selfishly in an act of adolescent defiance. You’d expect the delusion of invincibility from teenagers whose brains haven’t even fully developed yet, but not from 70 year olds with a lifetime of experience.

The baby boomer’s delusions of invincibility as well as their coronavirus denial fit nicely into American’s overall persistent inability to grasp that things can and will change, and will do so in a hurry. The one basic rule of life is this…things will not always be the way they are now. The aggressively delusional nature of our entire culture is stunning to behold when you step back and take a good look at it….and right now we all have time to step back and take a look at it.

Speaking of the delusional nature of our culture…

THE POLITICS OF A PANDEMIC

The coronavirus is a black swan event that is obliterating expectations across our culture and throwing everything, be it the economy, politics, entertainment, sport, you name it…into chaos.

As I argued in my last piece, crisis is always an opportunity for change, but the things that need to change in America won’t, and the things we shouldn’t change will…but for the worse.

Which brings us to the presidential election. My first thought regarding the election is I wonder if it will even happen.

There have been some epidemiologists saying that they believe that Covid-19 is a seasonal disease. This is good news and bad news…the good news is that it means that the disease will recede in the summer which will give people a much needed break from isolation.

The bad news is that being seasonal means it will return in the fall…right around election time. So if it returns in early November, that means that polling places could be a prime place for transmission and the pandemic could intensify over the winter beyond the nightmare through which we are already living.

If coronavirus returns earlier than that…say in early October, that could be even more troubling, as there is a distinct possibility that the election could be “postponed”. I know that sounds alarmist…but does anyone think that Trump would hesitate for one second to postpone/cancel the election if it were to his benefit? Does anyone think the Republicans in the Senate and the House, or conservatives on the Supreme Court would challenge him on that? No way.

It would also be difficult for Democrats to make a compelling case against this action since they will no doubt spend the campaign slamming Trump for having not done enough to prevent the coronavirus crisis in the first place or to fight it when it arrived. Trump would of course frame the “postponed” election as a preventative measure and would then turn the issue onto Democrats who are being reckless with America’s health.

Of course, this is all just speculation, and I hope the virus is soon eradicated and life returns to some semblance of “normalcy”. But normalcy seems much farther away than tyranny at the moment.

As far as the candidates go, due to coronavirus, they are not as set in stone as we might think they are. Both Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, are in their 70’s and not exactly the picture of health. It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Trump or Biden or both, could get sick and ultimately die from the disease….or something else.

Trump dying from Covid-19 (or another health issue), would, depending on the timing, presumably put Pence on the ballot. It would also kick off a furious civil war within the Republican party that would obliterate any chance for their victory in November. Trump and his personal ambition are the foundation of the Republican party right now, and without his cult of personality, the party will crumble.

Even Pence being the VP choice is tenuous at the moment. Even though he is one of the most aggressive sycophants of the Trump era who has brought shameless ass-kissing to new lows, I could totally see Trump just kicking him to the curb for Nikki Haley or someone else.

Even though Trump has been excruciatingly awful in his handling of the coronavirus crisis and in leading the country through it, his poll numbers are skyrocketing (for him at least) so he may not have to cancel the election to win it. Trump is greatly aided by the fact that the Democrats seem to be rolling the dice with Joe Biden, who looks as though he reeks of formaldehyde. it is hysterical to me that Democrats chose to make their decision in the primary on “electability”, and landed on Biden, who is an absolute disaster of a candidate. He is obviously suffering from dementia, and appears to be having a stroke almost every time he is on camera.

In the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis Biden was totally MIA. In recent days he has come out of hiding and everyone now wishes he was back to being MIA.

Biden persistently appears like a doddering old man who has just awoken from a very long and disorienting nap. Even with the absurdly soft treatment he gets from the media, the incoherent Biden still looks so physically and mentally frail that it is painful to watch.

Beyond Biden’s age and health limitations, he is also just a dreadful politician, and always has been. He is exactly what we don’t need or want at this moment. He is a corrupt establishmentarian who believes in absolutely nothing except his own advancement. A brief glimpse at his long track record reveals a target rich environment where selling out isn’t just a recurring theme, but the only theme.

It is very apparent to me that Trump is not up to running the country, but it is also very apparent that Biden is not up to running for president. I think even the dipshits at the DNC can see that he is not up to a grueling campaign. I believe there is a decent chance that at, or before, the convention, Biden steps down, or is pushed…in fact I’d put the odds of Biden being the nominee in November at less than 50%.

There is a lot of speculation afoot that the current “savior of the moment”, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, or as I call him, Rudy Giuliani with a Prostate, may be foisted upon the nation at the convention. I have an intense dislike for Andrew Cuomo, who is an absolute piece of shit and one of the biggest assholes we have in public life - quite an accomplishment.

Governor Cuomo is out there now bitching and moaning about a lack of hospital beds and supplies in New York needed to fight the plague of coronavirus, but it is his policies, including gutting medicaid - which he is still doing even during a pandemic - that have closed hospitals and removed 20,000 hospital beds from the state. Once again a politician makes it rain outside then complains about the weather.

Andrew’s brother Chris, who just tested positive for Covid-19, is a CNN host and may very well be the dumbest human being to ever walk the face of the earth. I sincerely hope that Chris recovers in full, if only because I hope to meet him one day, call him “Fredo” and then beat the few brain cells he actually has out of his stupid, dopey head.

It has been well established that Chris Cuomo is Fredo Corleone…but make no mistake, that does not make Andrew Cuomo - Michael Corleone…or even Sonny or Tom. No, Andrew Cuomo is Phillip Tattaglia…and just like Tattaglia, Andrew Cuomo is a skeezy pimp.

Besides Cuomo as a Biden replacement, there have also been rumblings that Hillary Clinton would, like a nasty strain of chlamydia, resurface once again. This is unlikely, but considering it is such a catastrophically bad idea, the DNC might just do it.

Regardless of who the candidates are, there is one thing we can count on…the American people are going to get fucked over six ways to Sunday by whichever douchebag wins.

PLAYING PANDEMIC DURING A PANDEMIC

Ten years ago this April 14th, my good friend Ben Morris died from cancer. Ben’s death was a staggering blow to all of us who loved him.

Ben battled the disease for over two years before it took his life. In those years, where he was more or less stuck in his brother Jem’s apartment in Los Angeles or at his parents house in Seattle, Ben became interested in, and sort of obsessed with, high end board games.

Ben, Jem and I would play these pricey board games for hours and hours on end. Games like Catan, Puerto Rico, Die Macher, Princes of Florence and many others were on the menu for our marathon sessions.

Board games were perfect for us because playing them was a social act, we could converse and joke and actually look at one another as we played, unlike with say video games, where there is very little human connection.

Ben and I got so into board games we actually designed our own, which I have to admit was a pretty cool game. Sadly, a mutual friend (former friend actually) stole the idea after Ben died and is now trying to sell it as his own. Rest assured, if I ever see this cunt again I am going to kick him in the mouth so hard his teeth will fly out his asshole, and then I’ll decapitate him with a wooden spoon and throw his empty fucking head into a septic tank.

Sorry…I got distracted by rage…what was I talking about? Oh right…board games.

Anyway, one game that Ben really got into when he was sick was Pandemic. Pandemic is a board game where you work as a team to try and stop a series of disease outbreaks across the globe. It is a pretty cool game.

Ben went through a period during his illness when he was obsessed with Pandemic…so much so that he would play solitaire games of it for hours on end. The psychology of someone battling cancer being obsessed with a game where you are trying to stamp out disease popping up across the globe is fascinating. It seemed obvious to me that Ben was using Pandemic as an avatar for his own battle to stamp out the disease in his body.

Which brings me to today and the coronavirus pandemic.

When Ben died Jem gave me a lot of the board games we all used to play. Not being much of a social entity, I have not played the games a great deal over the last decade. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit I immediately thought of Pandemic and went to try and find it. I couldn’t though. The game is somehow missing from my collection. So I searched online and found a video version of it instead that only cost $4.99…which is a huge bargain since high end board games can run $50 or more. So I bought Pandemic online and began to play it on my own.

I can now fully understand how the fear of dying from a disease can fuel an obsession with Pandemic. There is an urgency and profound meaning to every game I play. When I lose and the pandemic runs out of control over the earth, my heart sinks as I ponder the chance of that happening in the real world. My mortality doesn’t just feel inevitable, but impending.

When I actually win the game, which is maybe 1/3 of the time, I find myself being much, much more optimistic about the coronavirus pandemic and how bad it will get and how soon it will end. After wins I find myself gravitating to more positive news regarding our own pandemic…away from death counts and toward cures, vaccines and optimistic timelines and such.

I think my current fascination with the game Pandemic is just another extension of the denial I mentioned earlier. In the coronavirus pandemic we all feel hopeless and helpless and there is nothing we can do…but when I play Pandemic it feels like I am doing something. The thing I am doing is, every time I win at least, purging my anxiety, and when I lose it is an exercise in embracing humility in the face of a gargantuan existential problem.

Beyond that, I have no further insights on coronavirus at the moment, so I will conclude my rambling by telling you to stay safe, stay healthy and stay alive.

©2020

Lost Opportunities and Dastardly Deeds in the Age of Coronavirus

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

On March 17th, I published an op-ed titled “Coronavirus Will Eventually Get Better, But America Never Will”, that made the argument that while everything should change because of coronavirus, but nothing would change because of corruption. This week the Republicans and Democrats did me the great favor of once again proving me correct when they passed a gargantuan $2 trillion “stimulus” bill that is really just a massive bail out and corporate coup, all while fucking over the middle, working and lower class people of this country.

The coronavirus is the iceberg that has hit the U.S.S. Good Ship Lollipop as it wandered lost in the fog of its own decadence. The delusional, the duped and the damned are left in shock, stunned that such a calamity could actually befall The Greatest Nation on Earth® they thought was invincible.

What the ruling elite are doing with this bailout bill is once again stealing from the poor in order to try to reinflate a bubble, in this case the post-2008 bubble, which is actually a bubble on top of a bubble on top of a bubble going all the way back to Reagan. What ends up happening when you reinflate bubbles is that they become more and more unstable and more and more untenable, and when they burst it takes more and more effort to reinflate them until there is nothing left in the lungs to exhale. Eventually U.S. economic policy will be reduced to bailouts that are the equivalent of a corpse giving CPR to another corpse.

For example, when the tech bubble of the late 90’s burst it was propped back up with the housing bubble. The housing bubble burst in 07/08 and that was propped up with the stock buy back bubble of 2009-2020, which has now burst upon the rocks of reality revealed by the coronavirus. The stock buyback bubble is what they are trying to reinflate with the yet another bazillion dollar corporate handout.

The bottom line is this, our economy is as fundamentally unstable as a one-legged stool and as crooked as a dog’s hind leg and has been for decades. The Reagan/Clinton casino banking model has always been just another Titanic, and this trillion dollar bailout package is nothing more than the hoarding of deck chairs by the rich as they throw the poor into the icy Atlantic of inescapable poverty to try and keep their financial monstrosity afloat for just a few glorious seconds longer.

As long time readers know, it wasn’t just last week that I was a bringer of bad news. In 2015 in a review of the Ridley Scott film The Martian, I wrote about how our economy was fatally flawed and that a tsunami was coming. I did the same thing in my 2016 review of The Big Short, where I wrote, “The house of cards is coming down whether we are ready for it or not…it isn't a matter of if…it is a matter of when. You can either prepare for the coming tsunami* or not, that is up to you…but what you cannot do this time around...is say that no one told you it was coming.”

CRISIS AS OPPORTUNITY

I have always maintained that crisis is an opportunity…for good or for ill. The coronavirus pandemic presents a unique set of problems, and the correct answers to those problems could possibly transform our country and society in extremely positive ways. The problem though is that our political class is so riddled with the cancer of corruption that any chance of good coming from this is basically nil, and the odds of bad things coming from it are so high they are off the charts.

With that in mind I decided to put together a little list of things that should or could have happened in response to coronavirus to save this country and its people…but never will. I’ve also compiled some terrible things that most likely will happen that are even worse than the $2 trillion bailout we just had rammed into our collective anus.

No doubt these lists will infuriate most everyone for one reason or another, but as you can imagine I am pretty used to that.

HEALTH CARE AND HEALTH INSURANCE

Coronavirus has shown that our deplorable health care and health insurance system is not just a health crisis, it is a national security crisis, and yet we have two political parties dedicated to preserving the corporate status quo that fails Americans and leaves the nation vulnerable.

Health care must be made not only a human right, but a national security priority.

Pandemic preparation must be as great a priority as our military preparation, as coronavirus has proven that we are much more vulnerable to invasion by illness than by enemy.

The for-profit health insurance industry must be eradicated from the face of the earth. In order to do this health care must be classified a national security priority so that funds from the bloated Pentagon budget can be diverted for a massive rebuilding of our medical infrastructure. This infrastructure includes building more hospitals, building a medical manufacturing base and training more nurses and doctors, as well as implementing a Medicare-for-all, single payer insurance system.

The implementation of single payer healthcare will also have the benefit of releasing working Americans from the indentured servitude that is employer based health insurance and the corporate slavery that is the abomination called Obamacare.

In terms of economics, having a robust national health care system and Medicare-for-all/single payer health insurance will create a safety net that will put American business and enterprise on equal footing with their competition across the globe. It will also free people from staying in jobs that mistreat them, thus giving more power to workers, and will invigorate the entrepreneurial spirit, freeing people to start their own businesses knowing that they wont have to carry the burden of their employees health care or worry about not having health care themselves if their business fails.

Another instrument that would spur economic growth and entrepreneurialism would be a Universal Basic Income. As Andrew Yang showed in his Quixotic presidential campaign, it is a manageable program that could be funded simply by fairly taxing a behemoth like Amazon. It would also be good to see a stake through the heart of the trickle down thinking that has brought the U.S. to this point in its demise. Some “trickle-up” economics would be a wise change of pace.

ECONOMICS, TRADE AND IMMIGRATION

Another national security crisis is the globalism and free trade that has decimated the working and middle class in America so that corporations and the investor class can increase their wealth and power.

Free trade is a national security crisis because our supply line runs through China and other nations, which leaves America, its citizens and military, weakened and defenseless since we rely on the Chinese for many of our medications and medical supplies. This is the equivalent of relying on Japanese manufacturers to build the engines of our fighter planes during World War II.

It is simply untenable for any nation to rely upon others for vital goods, be it weapons, food, energy or medical equipment. For the U.S. to be so intertwined with China and other countries is good for investors, but bad for America.

I don’t think we should go to war with China or be belligerent towards them, but I do think we need to unwind our economic relationship with them so that it benefits American workers and companies, and solidifies our national security.

China always behaves in its best national security interest, so why don’t we?

Immigration is another national security issue highlighted by coronavirus. If we were an actual country in control of its borders, and had even the the most basic competent leadership, we should have shut the borders down the second the disease began to pop up around the globe. But ever the buffoon, the orange shitbag Trump was afraid of acting decisively and spooking the markets that got spooked anyway, and he, as always, failed magnificently.

The reality is that illegal immigration leaves us exposed and it leaves the working class in America unprotected. I don’t blame illegal immigrants for trying to come here from the third world shitholes they’re trying to escape. Much of the reason why those third world shitholes are third world shitholes is because of malignant and malevolent American empire, colonialism and meddling.

That said, when the third world migrates to the first world, the first world deteriorates into the third world. Drive around the streets of Los Angeles and you’ll notice something pretty quickly, this is unquestionably a third world city. 60,000 people live on the streets in the shadow of multi-million dollar homes, where they all shit and piss and where many steal and shoot drugs…and the LAPD are basically mandated to not do a single thing about it.

The cheap and easily exploited labor of illegal immigrants creates third world conditions by depressing the wages of working and lower class Americans and enriching the corporate and investor class, thus expanding our extreme wealth disparity. To deny this is to be willfully ignorant and blinded by sentimentality.

What needs to happen is that our border must be closed and illegal immigration stopped entirely, and legal immigration must be put on hiatus for the next 5 years. If we don’t get our immigration situation under control we are doomed. The best way to do this is to punish companies that use illegal/undocumented immigrants…and don’t punish them with fines, punish their managerial class with actual jail time. The market for illegal labor will then quickly dry up, and American workers (of all ethnicities and races) will have more leverage to demand higher wages and better working conditions.

Temporarily stopping legal immigration and eliminating the often-exploited H1B visas for “skilled workers”, would force American companies to solely hire American workers, thus elevating the standard of living in…AMERICA.

Now, the counter-argument is that this will lead to corporations moving overseas for cheaper labor. Good for them. But the way to stop that is to put exorbitant tariffs on all products made outside of the U.S. All of them. If a product isn’t made by American workers, it should cost an arm and a leg to sell it in America…and missing out on the American market would be a death knell for most any company.

Manufacturing simply must be returned to America in full in order to maintain our nation. If a product isn’t made here…BY UNION EMPLOYEES… then it must not be allowed to be profitably be sold here. Protectionism must be our top priority, regardless of what it does to the smoke and mirrors bullshit of the stock market or the investor class.

If we don’t rebuild our country from the working class on up…our boom/bust economy will continue to collapse and reinflate and collapse again until we have wheelbarrows full of worthless paper we used to call money.

In addition to all of that, while we are building a plethora of new hospitals across the country we should also be building government run housing in order for the homeless to have shelter and be accessible to receive much needed health, mental health, addiction and employment services.

Now…will any of these things listed above, that seem not-so-pie-in-the-sky when compared to the magical trillions of dollars the government just conjured up to hand out to corporations, actually happen?

No.

Coronavirus has shown us that the ruling corporate class in America would rather we all die than implement a single payer, non-profit health care system. They would rather have cheap labor from illegal immigrants than a secure border. They would rather have their profits from globalist free trade than protect Americans from the vulnerability of a supply chain that runs through China and other nations. They would rather bail out the wealthy corporate and investor class than hard working Americans who have been struggling just to survive for decades.

That is the ugly, awful, cold, hard reality.

Speaking of terrible things…

CIVIL LIBERTIES

The coronavirus pandemic is much, much, much worse in scope and scale than the catastrophe of 9-11, and as i explain above our response must be much, much, much more aggressive if we ever hope to save this country.

Of course, after 9-11, Bush and company went to work to turn the crisis into an opportunity, so they quickly moved to strangle civil liberties with the Patriot Act, rev up the military industrial complex for some heavy doses of corruption, and invaded Iraq…not to mention put into place a torture regime. All not good.

As evidenced by the bipartisan coronavirus stimulus bill, the same corrupt and tyrannical forces will exploit this coronavirus crisis for their own nefarious ends. The money train has already left the Washington station with its final destination the pockets of millionaires and billionaires as well as those who hold the levers of power.

The next step is the rise of the implementation of the police state and the reduction of civil liberties. What is so ingenious about the civil liberties angle is that people are imprisoning themselves under house arrest and shaming anyone who disobeys. This is an Orwellian stroke of genius for the police and surveillance state.

Another benefit of more than half the U.S. population in confinement is that there is no opportunity for any type of meaningful protest like an Occupy Wall Street or anti-Iraq war marches or even the right-wing Tea Party protests.

I am not saying that people should violate the stay at home orders, or that this is not a legitimate health crisis, but I am saying it is extraordinarily convenient for the ruling powers that the social dynamic now in place is that to leave your home is an immoral act that could kill you or others.

In keeping with this theme of tyranny, the Department of Justice has asked Congress for the power to eliminate Habeas Corpus during emergencies…with coronavirus already officially being designated as a national emergency.

The government will always try to expand its powers when the population is scared and right now the population is scared both for their health as well as for their financial well-being. People are ripe to be manipulated and propagandized to accept just about anything in order to “feel” safe.

In addition,the technology companies in Silicon valley are teaming up with governments across the globe to figure out a way to track every person to see where their have been, who they have talked to and what they have done in order to “track the virus”. Ummm…yeah…that sounds totally benign.

Some states are now even saying they will stop cars and knock on doors to identify people, and decide who may or may not have been to states with high infection rates. States are also closing their borders to travelers from certain areas. Freedom of movement in these allegedly United States of America is no more.

Another wonderfully Orwellian maneuver is that many local governments, like mine here in L.A., are forcing the closing of gun shops. Yes, the last thing we need when our government, led by a voracious authoritarian tyrant, is declaring a state of emergency and moving to impose draconian restrictions on the entire population, is an armed populace.

So as a result of coronavirus we have the federal and state governments eliminating our First, Second, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. What could possibly go wrong?

As Orwell told us, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever”. Well America, the future is now….better get used to the taste of boot leather.

©2020

The Coronavirus Pandemic is Bad, but the Epidemic of Incessant Celebrity Attention Seeking is Much, Much Worse

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 33 seconds

A bevy of house bound celebrities have turned a global calamity into a stage 5 narcissism outbreak, where they compulsively spew their mindless thoughts and feelings upon the rest of us.

Coronavirus is a terrible malady that is killing people and the economy, but it isn’t the most pernicious pandemic afflicting the globe right now. No, the most diabolical disease currently in circulation is the dreaded Celebrivirus.

The onset of the Celebrivirus starts with a steady stream of verbal diarrhea gushing forth from empty-headed, self-absorbed, attention-starved celebrities, which is quickly followed by convulsive puking and rage headaches from the rest of us.

The most recent outbreak of Celebrivirus began with a plethora of Covid-19 related videos from a cavalcade of self-aggrandizing stars.

For instance, the consistently empty-headed Matthew McConaghey thought now was a good time to espouse his incoherent optimism regarding coronavirus.

The Typhoid Mary of Celebrivirus, Madonna, that aging taut-faced tart, rose from the grave that is her moribund career so that the she could, in the nude of course, benevolently inform us that Covid-19 has, in fact, made us all equal.

The perpetually petulant Serena Williams publicly lamented that she was “stressed” over the coronavirus. Poor Serena doesn’t have to worry about losing her job, or being evicted, no she’s stressed because she is safely tucked away in her mansion with her husband, daughter and her gobs of money.

Serena explained, “I don't hang out with anyone, and when I say anyone I mean my daughter. She coughed, I got angry and gave her a side-eye. I gave her that 'angry Serena' and then I got sad.”

Shock of shocks that Serena’s number one priority is the well-being of Serena, and not the health of her toddler daughter. Serena has a boatload of tennis championships, but it seems like the title that will forever elude her is Mother of the Year.

The Celebrivirus that forced McConaghey, Madonna and Serena to compulsively share their idiocy, has also mutated into song version.

Self-adoring U2 front man Bono caught the Celebrivirus bug and decided to share with humanity an original song he conjured related to Covid-19. Yikes…this song is pretentious EVEN FOR BONO, the Crown Prince of Pretension. Note to aging restless rockstars recording shelter-in-place mediocrity: At least make it remotely decent before you drown us in pompous indulgence*.

The most egregious of all the Celebrivirus videos came from Gal Gadot of Wonder Woman fame, who recruited a bunch of her patronizing and condescending celebrity friends like Kristen Wiig, Jamie Dornan, Mark Ruffalo, Amy Adams, Sarah Silverman, James Marsden, Natalie Portman, Sia, Labrinth, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Kravitz and Will Ferrell, who looked like he had just ingested his body weight in cocaine, to sing a truly nauseating version of John Lennon’s iconic kumbaya knock-off “Imagine”.

On the best of days “Imagine” is a cringe-worthy number, but in the hands of these smug and self-satisfied jackasses it rockets into the stratosphere of saccharine dreadfulness.

If John Lennon were alive to see this cloying, celebrity fueled monstrosity he would beat Mark David Chapman to the punch and shoot himself in front of the Dakota Building just to end his own mortification and misery.

The fact that these filthy rich stars, not a single one of which is not a multi-millionaire, chose to un-ironically sing the lyric, “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man”, when there are millions of people potentially facing evictions from their apartments, foreclosures on their homes, losing their jobs and life savings, not to mention the fear of getting sick and dying, is a staggering testament to their delusional fantasism and fatuousness.

Yes Wonder Woman and friends, people can imagine life with no possessions because most of them live a life with few or no possessions…especially now since the ranks of the unemployed are swelling from the coronavirus depression.

It is easy for these inane imbeciles to sing about a world of no greed or hunger because they are rich and nourished. I wonder if they hum “Imagine” to themselves as they drive past the filthy hordes living in cardboard boxes on the street?

It would have been less offensive if Gal and her cornucopia of celebrity clowns started a band named The Marie Antoinette’s then wrote and performed their new song titled “Let Them Eat Cake”.

These oblivious buffoons are so in the thrall of the Celebrivirus they actually thought their syrupy crooning from the security of their golden-gated castles would ingratiate them to the masses rather than inflame hatred.

When I watched these various vacuous and vapid Celebrivirus videos, I didn’t have the insipid “Imagine” playing in my mind. No, my soundtrack was Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” with its wishful lyric, “when I am king, you will be first against the wall, with your opinion which is of no consequence at all”. 

On the bright side, at least the Celebrivirus is bringing ordinary people together out of common animosity toward these despised narcissistic nitwits. I know hate is supposed to be bad, but I think in this case it is healthy and helps to keep our collective immune system robust.

As for a cure for the dreaded Celebrivirus, scientists have found only one…and that is for celebrities to simply keep their moronic mouths shut. In other words…there is no cure.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

*This quote courtesy of my good friend…and an even better poet - The Irishman.

©2020

Coronavirus Will Eventually Get Better But America Never Will

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 27 Seconds

Regular Americans can no longer numb themselves with sports and gluttony, freeing them to clearly see the malignantly craven ruling class that exploits and despises them.

Anyone who has eyes to see can clearly make out that America is an addled empire in steep decline that is firmly entrenched in its bread and circuses stage.

The problem now though is that due to COVID-19, there is a shortage of bread, as supermarket shelves are bare, and the distraction of the circus of sports has been indefinitely removed from our culture, so Americans are left with little to distract them from cold hard reality.

With no brawls or ballgames to watch, and the fear of potential hunger gnawing at their bloated bellies and brains, and with social distancing leaving them isolated with little but their thoughts as company, Americans will now find it harder and harder to ignore the truth about their country and its deplorably corrupt media, financial, government, education and health care systems, that is staring them right in the face.

As the old adage goes, crisis reveals character, and the coronavirus contagion is a crisis of epic proportions that is revealing America to be utterly devoid of any redeeming character whatsoever

If America were a sane, healthy and rational country this would be a great opportunity for change to occur…alas, it is not. America is an insane, unhealthy and irrational nation, and so any genuine change is inconceivable.

For example, this crisis has once again revealed the house of cards that is the smoke and mirrors American economy. The American economy has long been rigged through financialization, where stock buybacks and accounting shenanigans inflate the stock market but create nothing of substance for the masses except the illusion of prosperity. Here in America the economy long ago stopped working for regular folks as evidenced by the fact that despite productivity soaring, for the last forty years wages have remained stagnant while and the cost of living has escalated.

The American Way has devolved to become bizarro-world Robin Hood, where the rich steal from the poor and give it themselves. Proof of this is that this COVID-19 crisis will undoubtedly be used, just like the 2008 housing collapse was, as a way for the malignant narcissists in Washington, Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms to come together to assure that losses are socialized and their profits privatized. Casinos, cruise lines, airlines, hotels and of course, the scoundrels on Wall Street, are no doubt already lining up for their taxpayer funded handout from the incompetent boor in the White House.

Bailing out working and middle class Americans though is an absolute non-starter for the ruling elite. The upper crust will throw around vacuous catch phrases, like the deliciously ironic “moral hazard”, to make their argument, which is pretty rich considering the vermin on Wall Street and their cronies on Capitol Hill are so morally bereft it is a hazard to all of humanity.

Coronavirus is not nearly as deadly as the cancerous corruption that is endemic in our oligarchic corpotocracy. For proof of that look no further than Nancy Pelosi’s emergency “sick pay” bill, that exempts companies of over 500 employees from paying sick pay and has a boatload of special exemptions for businesses below that threshold that leaves all but 20% of workers eligible for benefits. The holes in Pelosi’s sick pay bill are bigger than the gaping void where her brain and soul should be.

The egregious economic divide in America was also highlighted by the COVID-19 debate over whether to close schools amidst the crisis. The reason this debate raged on well past the rational time to act is that our education system is not a system of learning but rather a glorified daycare and food delivery service.

Proletarian parents are unable to stay home and raise their kids anymore because it now takes two working parents - usually working multiple jobs - to make less than what one working parent did forty years ago.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, 70% of all students are below the poverty line and rely on the school system for the majority of their meals. In the wealthiest country on the planet, that is absolutely disgraceful. The virus of structural economic inequality is a much more long-term and deadly problem than coronavirus, and the ruling class and their shameless lackeys in the press, have no interest in ever honestly addressing or acknowledging it.

The corporate whores in Congress and the White House (of both parties) also gleefully inform Americans that universal, single payer health care, which every other industrialized nation in the world already has, is a pipe dream and impossibility.

They tell us they could never ever pay for something so decadent and luxurious as health care, but then they magically pull $1.5 trillion out of their gold plated assholes in order to stave off a collapse of their own making. It is amazing how the Lords of Finance can make money miraculously appear in order to get things done when it is their exorbitant wealth on the line and not ordinary Americans health and well being.

Coronavirus is a crisis that is revealing the ugly truth about America and the malignant character of its ruling class. The coronavirus crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, but hopefully it will eventually get better. America, on the other hand, will only get much worse, and there is no hope that it is ever going to get any better.

A version of this article was published at RT.

©2020

The Official Coronavirus Quarantine Veiwer's Guide

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 03 seconds

BORED IN CORONAVIRUS QUARANTINE? HERE ARE THE BEST EPIDEMIC MOVIES TO CRANK UP YOUR PANIC!

The best way to prepare for Covid-19 and endure quarantine is obviously to watch as many pandemic related movies as possible. Here is a list of the very best ones to catch.

Coronavirus now seems on the precipice of an outbreak here in the United States. Even before Los Angeles was hit with any cases, here in La La Land we made the decision to preemptively panic.

For example, hand sanitizer is liquid gold in Hollywood right now. Drug stores are stripped so bare that hand sanitizer currently costs more per gram than cocaine…or at least that’s what my cocaine dealer told me.

Since we all seemed destined for quarantine, be it mandated or self-imposed, I thought I would do my part to prepare readers for how to survive the coming Coronapocalypse by putting together a quarantine viewers guide.

Here is a list of pandemic themed movies graded on a scale of one to ten for how similar they are to the real world circumstances of Coronavirus.

OUTBREAK (1995) – Outbreak is a decent movie about an Ebola epidemic, most memorable for a scene where a guy coughs in a movie theatre and infects everyone. That visual is pretty unnerving and will make you glad you are watching in a plastic quarantine bubble and not at the Cineplex.

Coronascore: 4/10 Coughs are really scary these days.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011) – Tells the story of a viral based drug meant to treat Alzheimer’s that goes wrong and kills or turns humans mute while making apes super-smart and able to talk.

There has been no news about apes being susceptible to Corona, but they do say that dogs can get it. No word yet on if the infected dogs gain the power of speech…but I wouldn’t be surprised. Thankfully, they lack opposable thumbs so that is a war we can definitely win.

Coronascore: 5/10, the Coronavirus scare has not made anyone smarter yet.

12 MONKEYS (1995) – This mind-bending meditation on time travel and destiny tells the story of a group of eco-terrorists who release a deadly virus into the world in order to eliminate humans, and the band of survivors who travel back in time to stop them.

Corona probably wasn’t released by eco-terrorists, but since China imposed quarantines satellite photos show its pollution has come to a screeching halt…hmmm, makes you wonder.

Coronascore: 6.5/10. Think about it.

28 DAYS LATER (2002) – In 28 Days Later a highly contagious virus is accidentally released upon the world turning people into hyper-kinetic zombies.

Corona may not directly lead to zombie-ism, but the panic around it sure turns people…like me… into mindlessly frantic and fearful beings who attack old ladies in drug stores to obtain a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer!

As for Corona being “accidentally” released into the public, maybe by a biological weapons facility in China, I have heard crazier conspiracy theories…that’s for sure.

Coronascore: 7/10. If the virus doesn’t start a zombie apocalypse, at least it will prepare you for one.

WORLD WAR Z (2013) – Another entry where a virus turns people into zombies…this time who are attracted to sound. In order to overcome the zombie hoards Brad Pitt travels the globe looking for a vaccine. He eventually finds one and hope is restored to humanity. I have considerably more confidence in Brad Pitt solving Corona than the U.S. government.

Coronascore: 7/10…same as above plus Brad Pitt.

ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971) – In this film a satellite falls to earth carrying an alien organism, which upon contact with humans crystallizes their blood. I have yet to read of any blood crystallization regarding Corona…but to be fair I am not a big reader.

Scientists have praised Andromeda Strain because “it accurately details the appearance of a deadly agent, its impact, and the efforts at containing it, and, finally, the work-up on its identification and clarification on why certain persons are immune to it."

For scientific accuracy I give it a Coronascore of 8/10.

CONTAGION (2011) – The gold standard of pandemic movies tells the story of a virus that starts with a bat in China and then spreads across the planet due to an inter-connected global economy. Sound familiar?

Contagion also has the distinction of killing off super annoying actress Gwyneth Paltrow. The filmmakers knew audiences would love Gwyneth’s demise so much they even put it in the trailer.

The superbug in Contagion is much more potent than Corona, but the movie’s depiction of the struggle of health officials to contain and identify the virus and the ensuing collapse of social order all seem to be spot on if Corona gets really bad.

Coronascore: 9/10…It even has a bat!

In conclusion, while I am not “technically” a doctor…here is my very cinematically informed opinion of what will happen with Corona.

I believe some guy will Corona cough in a movie theatre and then Gwyneth Paltrow will fall ill and her Goop inspired vagina scented candles won’t save her.

The virus then mutates and turns people into mute hyper-zombies attracted to sound and gives apes extreme intelligence and the power of speech, which predictably leads to a zombie-ape war.

Then a time traveling space ship, hopefully piloted by Charlton Heston, lands carrying a space virus that wipes out the zombies and apes, leaving behind a rag-tag bunch of surviving humans, led by Brad Pitt, who live in the eco-utopia that is now earth.

Either that or this whole Corona thing blows over and we all live happily ever after…at least until the next pandemic comes along and scares the living hell out of us once again.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Invisible Man: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This movie starts off well but spins out of control and becomes ultimately a whole lot of silliness. Even if you are a big horror fan, you can wait to see it for free on a streaming service or cable.

The Invisible Man, written and directed by Leigh Whannell, is the story of Cecilia Kass, a woman in an abusive relationship whose controlling ex-boyfriend goes to remarkable scientific lengths to torment her. The film stars Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia, with supporting turns from Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer and Michael Dorman.

The Invisible Man is H.G. Wells’ iconic story of a mad scientist who tries to play God and turns himself invisible, this film version however is set in modern times and turns the story on its head by giving the viewer not the perspective of the scientist, but that of his long suffering girlfriend trying to get away from him.

The trailer for The Invisible Man was terrific and while I am not much of a horror film aficionado, I was excited to see it. The film’s opening sequence lives up to the trailer’s promise, as it is extremely well-done and directed, and immediately captivates the audience by throwing them directly into the tension. The problem though is that the opening sequence is scuttled by its illogical conclusion, as the film quickly deviates from a real-world setting into make-believe movie-dom, thus defusing the tension and knee-capping the suspension of disbelief. Things go down hill from there.

The first half of the film is a decent thriller, and director Whannell effectively uses long, slow pan shots that hold on seeming nothingness, as well as natural sound and a paucity of music, to convey an ominous sense of tension.

In the second half of the movie though, Whannell abandons this successful restrictive directorial approach for more conventional movie making and the film and its narrative spiral out of control and stumble into a morass of melodrama.

Whannell, who also wrote the screenplay, made the fatal error of not committing entirely to his perspective choice, namely having the audience see the world through Cecilia’s eyes. By breaking perspective and periodically showing things from other viewpoints besides Cecilia’s, the connection between audience and Cecilia, and spell of the movie, are broken, and thus we are left with a rather mundane movie of little impact.

Whannell’s other error is that he expands the story beyond the bounds of its natural power. This film, about an abusive relationship, needed to stay within the intimate confines of that relationship, and eschew the wider world, which dilutes the claustrophobia and terror of the premise. Whannell’s failure to contain things neuters the drama as well as the film and its feminist message.

I genuinely like Elisabeth Moss as an actress, as she is a highly skilled and compelling screen presence, but with The Invisible Man she repeats herself and comes perilously close to caricature. Since 2017 Moss has played Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale, and won an Emmy for doing so, but her Offred and her Cecilia seem to be the exact same person.

Cecilia, like Offred, is the noble female victim who finally “stands with fist” and fights back against the deplorable patriarchy that has its hands around her neck. The seams of Moss’s work are definitely showing as she spends a lot of her time on screen in both A Handmaid’s Tale and The Invisible Man, not blinking so that her eyes well up with tears, and then blinking so that the tear gracefully falls down her cheek. She also locks her jaw and steels her eyes in an act of defiance that always feels a lot more faux than formidable.

Moss certainly has greatness within her, but I wish I could see her get lost in a performance rather than being forced to see her act.

The rest of the cast are fine, if underwhelming.

Aldis Hodge is a very likable actor and does the best he can with his under written and rather illogical character James.

Stormy Reid is another likeable screen presence but she too is handed a thin character that doesn’t amount to much.

Michael Dormand and Oliver Jackson-Cohen fall pretty flat in their roles which needed to be much sharper for the premise of the film to work.

The Invisible Man is obviously a #MeToo allegory about the patriarchy and the “gaslighting” of women, and that is actually a pretty fascinating take on the story. The feminist politics of the movie and the portrayal of an abused woman’s PTSD work very well in the first half, but they do lose steam and coherence in the second half.

Another troubling thing of note in the movie is its racial politics, which can be boiled down to this… The Invisible Man movie doesn’t hate all men…just the white ones. It is made very clear throughout that The invisible Man wants all white men to vanish. Not only is every single white man in the movie is bad, but every bad person in the film is white. Every single one. The villain, his brother and even some throw away small characters are the token evil white men.

I have no issue with the villain and his brother being white…but what I find disturbing is the film’s decision to paint all of the even mildly prominent white male characters as bad.

For instance, there is a scene where Cecilia goes for a job interview and her interviewer is a nerdy white guy. The scene and the nerdy white guy character are not very important…which is why it is so striking that the choice was made to have this nerdy white guy sexually harass Cecilia. Instead of just a throw away character with meaningless dialogue, this choice of having him be a predator sends a clear and undeniable message, that all white men are intrinsically evil. The choice to have this sexually harassing nerd be white is also no accident. He could have been any race or ethnicity…but he was specifically white.

Further proof of the film’s anti-white racial politics are seen when James, who is a black cop, sits down with a white cop to speak with Cecilia. Cecilia won’t speak freely with the white cop in the room, so James asks him to leave. You may think that this scene makes sense devoid of the cop’s race as Cecilia is friends with James and wants to confide in him…this is true…but just like the sexually harassing nerdy architect, the choice here is subtle but very deliberate. They could have had the other cop be of any race or ethnicity they wanted…he could have been black, Asian, Latino…a woman…but they didn’t, they made him white and once again reinforced the message that not all men, but just the white men, cannot be trusted.

Of course Aldis Hodge’s character, James, is black and is a really good guy…a great father and friend who is patient and kind and never even considers being inappropriate with Cecilia.

The only reason I bring this up is because it struck me as being such a blatant piece of racist misandry (with racism defined as - "prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity” and misandry defined as “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men”) as to be propaganda. I would certainly mention the same thing if other races, ethnicities or genders were universally painted with such a negative brush by a film.

Regardless of this questionable ideology, I would still have been all on board with The Invisible Man if it had just been consistently good, and sadly, it isn’t.

In conclusion, The Invisible Man never lives up to the hype, to its trailer or to its source material, and thus squanders a golden cinematic opportunity. I do not recommend spending your time and money seeing this film in the theatre, but if you are interested in seeing it at all then you should check it out on Netflix, cable or a streaming service when it becomes available.

©2020

Good Riddance to Harvey Weinstein, A Repugnant Pig Who Brutalized Both Women and Cinema

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 49 seconds

Harvey Weinstein has ruled Hollywood for the last three decades, harassing colleagues not only over sex, but also art; assaulting not only women, but also movies. His long and thuggish reign is finally over.

The first blockbuster that Harvey Weinstein produced was Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. In that movie there is a male rapist named Zed, who gets his comeuppance at the hands of one of his victims, crime boss Marsellus Wallace. Once Wallace escapes Zed’s clutches, with the help of Butch (Bruce Willis), he promises to extract revenge on Zed by getting “medieval on his ass”.

“Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead,” Butch tells his girlfriend Fabienne,  after he returns with Zed’s chopper as a trophy.

Zed is Harvey Weinstein…grotesque and vile…and about to get payback for his depravity.

Unlike Zed, Weinstein isn’t dead…but his iron grip on Hollywood certainly is. With Weinstein’s conviction today on one count of sexual assault and another on rape in the third degree, he is either going to prison or into exile, with any chance of a return to the film business he so dominated for the last thirty years, long gone.

As the Weinstein era officially comes to an end it is worth looking back on the good, the bad and the very ugly of it all.

It is sort of amusing that Harvey’s most notable accomplishment is that he was the unwitting father of the #MeToo movement. It was when his degenerate, lascivious and predatory behavior over the course of his remarkable career finally became public in 2017, that #MeToo was born.

Weinstein’s also culpable for instigating the relentless campaigning for Academy Awards, a nasty sport that began in the 90’s and continues to this day. His most striking victory at the Oscars came in 1998 when he willed Shakespeare in Love over the Best Picture finish line ahead of the odds-on favorite, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.

In terms of cinema, Weinstein’s greatest legacy was that he was directly responsible for the glorious independent cinema movement of the 1990’s. The movie that started it all was, ironically, Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 Palme d’Or winning hit Sex, Lies and Videotape, produced by Weinstein.

Weinstein not only made the career of Oscar winner Soderbergh, but also 90’s cinema darlings and current Hollywood cornerstones Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow among many, many others.

Harvey’s business blue print was simple, he would take art house movies and market them aggressively. His brand was that of independent cinema with big bucks behind it…and it worked exceedingly well, especially in the 90’s.

Despite his success at elevating independent movies, Weinstein was also notorious for being a brutish bully and egotistical control freak when it came to the film’s he produced and distributed.

Weinstein was a pig in the china shop of cinema, and would often demand directors make enormous cuts to their films in order to get them to his preferred running time. He didn’t just do this with nobodies…he even strong armed cinematic masters like Martin Scorsese, whom he demanded cut 40 minutes off of Gangs of New York. Scorsese, like nearly everyone else in Weinstein world, acquiesced, and the movie and the art of cinema, suffered for it.

Like Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn an Robert Evans before him, Weinstein was the archetypal over-stuffed movie mogul. But with Weinstein’s conviction, his time in Hollywood is thankfully over, and it seems the movie mogul era itself is waning in Hollywood.

Yes, there will still be perverts and predators among Hollywood’s most powerful, that is unavoidable, but at least women will no longer be silent about it. And in terms of artistic freedom and directors being forced by power hungry Hollywood big shots to take a hatchet to their films, those days too are receding very quickly.

The obsolescence of Weinstein world-view is highlighted by the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, who have a very different business model than the coarse and crass Weinstein approach.

These streaming services have very deep pockets and an insatiable hunger for new material, but unlike Weinstein, they offer artistic autonomy, not arrogant authoritarianism.

For instance, Netflix wanted to work with Martin Scorsese so they financed his last film The Irishman. That movie ran three hours and thirty minutes, and in the hands of Harvey Weinstein would have been, like Gangs of New York, butchered beyond recognition. Netflix, on the other hand, didn’t lay a glove on it, and let Scorsese do exactly what Scorsese does best…make the movie he wants to make…and the art of cinema was better for it.

The bottom line regarding Harvey Weinstein’s conviction is this…good riddance to bad rubbish. The women of Hollywood and the art of cinema are much safer today without Harvey Weinstein and his filthy hands pawing all over them.

Zed is dead, baby. Zed is dead. And we are all better off because of it.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

6th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™ Awards: 2019 Edition

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker - The geniuses at Disney decided it would be a good idea to strip the final film of the Skywalker saga of all dramatic consequences…well done shitbags! A mind numbingly incoherent movie that does away with death…and drama…and interest.

Knives Out - This is less a whodunit than a who-inherits-it. A film so full of white self loathing it should run for the Democratic nomination. It is nice to see director Rian Johnson ruining original films after he ruined his Star Wars movie.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix - One of the cheapest, least consequential and poorly made superhero movies in recent memory. Thankfully it is so flimsy you literally forget it as you watch it.

The Souvenir - This art house poseur is such a vacuous and pretentious piece of garbage it made me want to shoot heroin into my eyes. A truly awful film.

AND THE LOSER IS…Knives Out - If watching terrible over-acting, being completely bored to tears, and hating white people is your thing…then this steaming pile of shit is for you. This mess of a movie is so self-satisfied with its wokeness it is incessantly imbecilic to the point of absurdity. A glorious monument to everything that is currently wrong with Hollywood.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR - Julie Hagerty - Marriage Story : Julie Haggerty is a tour-de-force of awfulness in Marriage Story. Haggerty didn’t light up the screen but made me want to light myself on fire every time she appeared. Haggerty’s forced and strained performance felt like watching someone have a stroke while you are having a stroke.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR - Marriage Story - Being Alive : You would be hard pressed to find a worse scene in cinema in recent history than the one in Marriage Story where Adam Driver gets up and sings “Being Alive” by Stephen Sondheim at a karaoke bar. Driver is a shitty actor…and this is a shitty movie…but this scene…which is interminable…is the apex mountain of pretentious shittiness. I have never wished harder for a random act of violence in a movie than I did watching this scene.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR - Marriage Story : Establishment critics adore Noah Baumbach for some mysterious reason (I have a theory to explain it called the Elvis Costello Theory!). Marriage Story was Baumbach at his most pretentious and phony…and he brought the sycophantic worst out of his adoring critics. The praise for this movie is utterly baffling as this is an actively awful movie. The performances are dreadful, the writing trite and the direction amateurish…but besides that it was really good.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE - JJ Abrams : Rise of Skywalker - It takes a special kind of asshole to take a gigantic dump on a beloved forty year old movie franchise…;and JJ Abrams is that asshole. Abrams direction on Rise of Skywalker is jaw droppingly atrocious. The decision to remove death from the Star Wars universe basically undermined the entirety of the previous collection of films. His inability to even tell the most rudimentary of stories, or to put together a coherent film…earns JJ Abrams his Special Achievement in Cinematic Malpractice.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

Jeffrey Epstein - Epstein gets his much deserved plaque at the POS Hall of Fame this year for being an insatiable pederast, sexual predator, Israeli spy and for not even having the common decency to kill himself. Epstein is dead of course, but if you think he actually hung himself I have a no-longer-a-Virgin Island to sell you, round-trip Lolita Express transportation included.

Epstein’s fortune, which he used to get close to people in power whom he then compromised by luring them to his underage sex parties, is a complete mirage, no doubt created by Israeli intelligence in order to give him cover as he plied his despicable trade.

Speaking of despicable…Epstein’s client list is a who’s who of scumbags. Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, John Kerry, Tony Blair…and even everybody’s favorite douchebag, Alan Dershowitz. No doubt many, if not all, of Epstein’s clients will soon be joining him in the POS Hall of Fame…and with any luck they’ll also be joining him in hell soon too.

If you want to understand the demonic cult at the heart of the ruling elite and powerful in America and across the globe…look closely at the Epstein affair. This is who these people are…and their brazen murder of Epstein, and the media’s allergy to actually taking the story seriously, reveals their depravity and arrogance.

P.O.S. ALL-STARS

Bret Bed Bug Stephens - Stephens has always been a gigantic piece of shit…but he raised his game this year with his chickenshit claims that people pointing out his awfulness were anti-semitic, which was quickly followed by his attempt to get one of said critics who called him a “bed bug” fired. Then Mr. Bed Bug wrote a repugnant piece boasting of his and his fellows Jews’ superiority over other peoples. I look forward to picking Mr. Bed Bug’s teeth out of my knuckles one day.

Chris “Fredo” Cuomo - Chris Cuomo is easily the dumbest person to have ever appeared on television…which is an astounding achievement. Cuomo, who hosts an unwatchable program on CNN, makes the POS All Stars this year by threatening some guy at a party who called him “Fredo”. Cuomo claimed that calling Italians “Fredo” was just like calling black people the “n-word”. Ok Fredo…oops…is it better if I call you a fucking numbnuts dago greaseball guinea wop twat? Or better yet…how bout when i meet you I don’t say anything and just gouge your eyes out and skull fuck you, you useless piece of shit.

And thus concludes another Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards. If you are one of the people who “won” this year I ask you to please not to take it personally and also to try and do better next year….because remember…this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award winner could be next year’s Mickey™® Award winner!!

©2020

6th Annual Mickey™® Awards: 2019 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: The Mickey™® Awards are much more prestigious than the Oscars, and unlike our lesser crosstown rival, we here at The Mickeys™® do not limit acceptance speech times. There will be no classless playing off by the orchestra here…mostly because we don’t have an orchestra. Regardless… expect this awards show article to last, at a minimum, approximately 5 hours and 48 minutes.

The ultimate awards show is upon us…are you ready? The Mickeys™® are far superior to every other award imaginable…be it the Oscar, the Emmy, the Tony, the Grammy, the Pulitzer or even the Nobel. The Mickey™® is the mountaintop of not just artistic but human achievement, which is why they always take place AFTER the Oscars!

This year has been a fantastic one for cinema with a multitude of outstanding films eligible for a Mickey™® award. Actors, actresses, writers, cinematographers and directors are all sweating and squirming right now in anticipation of the Mickey™® nominations and winners. Remember, even a coveted Mickey™® nomination is a career and life changing event.

Before we get to what everyone is here for…a quick rundown of the rules and regulations of The Mickeys™®. The Mickeys™® are selected by me. I am judge, jury and executioner. The only films eligible are films I have actually seen, be it in the theatre, via screener, cable, Netflix or VOD. I do not see every film because as we all know, the overwhelming majority of films are God-awful, and I am a working man so I must be pretty selective. So that means that just getting me to actually watch your movie is a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself…never mind being nominated or winning!

The Prizes!! The winners of The Mickey™® award will receive one acting coaching session with me FOR FREE!!! Yes…you read that right…FOR FREE!! Non-acting category winners receive a free lunch* with me at Fatburger (*lunch is considered one "sandwich" item, one order of small fries, you aren't actors so I know you can eat carbs, and one beverage….yes, your beverage can be a shake, you fat bastards). Actors who win and don't want an acting coaching session but would prefer the lunch…can still go straight to hell…but I am legally obligated to inform you that, yes, there WILL BE SUBSTITUTIONS allowed with The Mickey™® Awards prizes. If you want to go to lunch I will gladly pay for your meal…and the sterling conversation will be entirely free of charge.

Enough with the formalities…let's start the festivities!!

Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin...

Ladies and gentlemen…welcome to the fifth annual Mickey™® Awards!!!

Best Cinematography

Joker - Lawrence Sher : Sher was a relative unknown, at least to me, prior to Joker. His work on the film is truly remarkable as he composes really exquisite classical shots and juxtaposes them against fluid shots that in a thrilling dance with lead actor Joaquin Phoenix.

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - Robert Richardson : Richardson is one of my all-time favorite cinematographers. His work with Oliver Stone in the late 80’s and early 90’s was revolutionary (JFK for instance). He has proven himself to be a very flexible and adaptable talent and his work in this film is sublime. The last shot of the film, where Leo Dicaprio’s Rick Dalton walks up Sharon Tate’s driveway, is a glorious piece of cinematic myth making.

1917 - Roger Deakins : Deakins is Deakins. The guy is a master, as evidenced by his previous Mickey award for Sicario (2015) and he brings all his formidable talent and skill to bear on the “one-shot” structure of 1917. For all the gimmickry of the one-shot approach, what impressed me so much about Deakins work here is how he was able to continually frame such gorgeous shots while constantly on the move.

Ad Astra - Hoyte Van Hoytema : Hoytema is another of my favorite cinematographers working today. He is already a Mickey Award winner (Dunkirk 2017) and his work on Ad Astra is magnificent. He paints the film with a bleak palette and vivid contrast that accentuates the narrative and is gorgeous to look at.

The Irishman - Rodgrio Prieto : Prieto’s work on The Irishman is superb as he perfectly paints the film with a rather lush and nostalgic sense that contrasts well with his camera movement and framing.

Parasite - Hong Kong-pyo : Hong is someone I am not familiar with…but his work on Parasite is so precise it is a joy to behold. Hong’s greatest strength is in his camera placement, as he uses it as a a way to draw the audience into the narrative while also keeping them at a cool emotional distance.

And The Mickey goes to…Lawrence Sher - Joker : Sher pulls off the big upset going against heavyweights like Deakins, Richardson and Hoytema. Joker is beautifully and artfully photographed and Sher’s work was a major factor in the films artistic success.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Irishman - Steven Zaillian’s ability to contain and focus the sprawling story of Frank Sheeran while keeping things tight and dramatic, is impressive.

Joker - Todd Phillips was able to imbue comic book intellectual property with profoundly insightful political and social commentary. Wow.

The Two Popes - Anthony McCarten created multi-dimensional characters where others would have made card board cutouts. Too bad his director undermined his fantastic writing.

Transit - Christian Petzold adapted a book about the holocaust and made it about modern times. It is chillingly effective in subtly showing the similarities of the rise of fascism then and now.

And The Mickey goes to…Todd Phillips - Joker : Todd Phillips must have sold his soul to the devil because nothing in his prior career would give any indication he was capable of such intelligence and artistry. Now he has a Mickey™®! The world is a wonderful place.

Best Original Screenplay

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - Tarantino is an even better writer than he is a director…which is a staggering thought to contemplate considering his directing greatness. OUATIH is a crackling script that holds on tight…but not too tight that it loses its humanity. Extraordinarily well done.

Parasite - Bong Joon-ho’s script is a whirling and twirling piece of magnificence. As original and well-crafted a screenplay as you’ll find.

Ad Astra - James Grey’s script is the most psychologically mature and resonant of the entire year. It is an utter field day for anyone with any background in Jungian psychology.

A Hidden Life - Terrence Malick brings the spiritual struggles of a anti-Nazi crusader down to earth in the most glorious and profound way.

Ford v Ferrari - James Mangold gives us a rip-roaring script that covers a lot of ground but never loses its way.

And The Mickey goes to…Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Tarantino’s ability to write characters, dialogue and story is unparalleled in modern cinema. Guy is amazing…now he has a Mickey™® to prove it!

Best Supporting Actress

 Margaret Qualley - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: Qualley, a Breakout Performance Mickey™® Award winner (2017), makes good on her promise and delivers a deliriously intoxicating turn as one of Manson’s seductive minions.

Margot Robbie - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Robbie doesn’t say much as Sharon Tate…because she doesn’t have to. An effervescent and luminous performance that highlights her supreme craft and skill and proves she is way, way more than just a very pretty face.

Park So-dam - Parasite : Park is super sexy cool as the sister who poses as an art teacher. She imbues her character with a certain sense of almost spiritual fatigue cloaked in a devilish charm that is beguiling to witness.

Lee Sun-kyun - Parasite : As the mother of the rich family, Lee is wonderfully funny as her desperation to be worthy and perfect keeps wrapping her tight and unwrapping her too quickly.

Zhao Shuhzhen - The Farewell : Zhao’s turn as an ailing grandmother is delightful for its humor, humanity and power. Zhao’s Nai Nai is no wilting flower, she is both tough and tender…and reminded me so much of my late wee Scottish grandmother I was thoroughly enchanted.

The Mickey goes to…Margot Robbie - Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. The usual suspects complained this film was misogynistic because Robbie’s Tate had a paucity of dialogue, but it’s a testament to her talent and skill that she was able to convey an affecting story with more than just words.

Best Supporting Actor

Brad Pitt - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. In an industry with a paucity of genuine stars, Pitt gives the movie star performance for the ages…where women want to be with him and men want to be him.

 Joe Pesci - The Irishman : Pesci is usually plays combustible characters, but his Russ Buffalino is an imposing figure of self-containment. Maybe the very best and most subtle work of his career.

Al Pacino - The Irishman : Pacino brings Jimmy Hoffa to life with a vibrancy and dynamism only he could muster. A truly masterful performance.

Jonathan Majors - The Last Black Man in San Francisco : A finely crafted and glorious performance that is filled with a deep humanity and vivacity.

Sam Rockwell - Jojo Rabbit : Rockwell is an absolute joy to behold as he subtly but magnificently devours scenery as a down on his luck Nazi.

Song Kang-ho - Parasite : Song is the epicenter of Parasite as a man without answers trying to figure out the questions. He is blessed with a face that tells a story all its own.

The Mickey goes to…Al Pacino - The Irishman. Pacino has become a sort of parody of himself in his later years, but his portrayal of Jimmy Hoffa was a perfect manifestation of self-defeating tenacity and combustibility that is one of the highlights of his superb career.

Breakout Performance of the Year - Julia Butters : Butters is mesmerizing as the whip smart child actor who works with Rick Dalton as he hangs on to his career by his finger nails. Butters is just a kid but has the presence and magnetism of someone twenty years older. I hope child stardom does not weigh heavy upon her…because down the road she has the opportunity to be very special.

Best Foreign Film

Transit - This is a close-up view of what fascism feels like…and it does not feel good.

A Hidden Life - A profound examination of the spiritual battle a man must wage to save his soul in Nazi Germany.

Parasite - A masterful contemplation of class and family dynamics set in Korea.

Rojo - A terrific under the radar movie that shows the corrosive effects of our old friend fascism as it descends upon 1970’s Argentina.

Shadow - A terrific Chinese Wuxia film with spectacular fights and inventive visuals.

And The Mickey goes to…Parasite - Exquisitely directed with an amazing cast. One of the very best films, foreign or domestic, of the year.

Best Actress

What a dismal year for female performances. I literally cannot think of any actresses worthy of even nominations never mind wins. After a very testy emergency meeting of the Mickey™ council, a compromise was reached.

The Mickey goes to…Florence Pugh - Midsommar. Pugh, a Breakout Performance Mickey Award winner (2017), is on her way to becoming a movie star and her two Mickeys will no doubt only accelerate her ascent.

Best Actor

Robert DeNiro - The Irishman : DeNiro does the very best work of the latter part of his career as Frank Sheeran, the cog in the wheel of the mafia and union who sells his soul to survive.

Franz Rogowski - Transit: Rogowski is just a phenomenal actor and his intricate work in Transit is transcendent for its humanity and honesty.

Robert Pattinson - High Life : Who knew Pattinson could actually act? In High Life he does surprisingly complex and detailed work as a man condemned to be lost in space.

Leonardo DiCaprio - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : DiCaprio has been among the biggest movie stars for decades now…but his performance as Rick Dalton is the very best of his remarkable career.

Joaquin Phoenix - Joker : As precise, dynamic and committed a performance as we’ve seen in years. Phoenix is the best actor of his (and maybe every other) generation and he proves it with Joker.

Brad Pitt - Ad Astra : :Pitt proves himself to be more than a pretty face with a powerfully subtle, skilled and nuanced performance as a man in search of his father. This is easily the very best acting Brad Pitt has ever done.

The Mickey goes to…Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix’s work in The Master (2013) was a gargantuan evolutionary leap for the craft of acting, and his performance in Joker is a powerful continuation of that evolution.

Best Ensemble

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - DiCaprio, Pitt, Margot Robbie, Pacino, Bruce Dern…an absolutely loaded cast that all give top notch performances.

Parasite - This cast overcomes the language barrier and does exquisite work in bringing Bong’s twisted vision to life.

The Irishman - DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci do some very heavy lifting and elevate Scorsese’ late era masterpiece.

And The Mickey goes to…Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - The very best of Pitt, Robbie and Leo is the very best of the Mickeys™®!

Best Director

Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Tarantino truly is one of the great directors of his time, and OUATIH is his very best film . Not a flaw to be found.

Martin Scorsese - The Irishman : Scorsese brilliantly turned this late era gem into a referendum on his entire stellar career and imbued the movie with an existential power than would have been missing in any other auteur’s hands.

Todd Phillips - Joker : Who knew that Todd Phillips, the guy who made The Hangover movies…was capable of such exquisite direction as Joker. This movie is so well conceived and executed it is astonishing.

Bong Joon-ho - Parasite : As detailed, specific and skilled a piece of direction as you’ll find.

James Grey - Ad Astra : Grey finally puts all the pieces together and makes the great movie he’s been striving for for years.

Terrence Malick - A Hidden Life : Malick is a master…and A Hidden Life is a monument to his talent, skill and spiritual inquisitiveness and intellect.

And the Mickey goes to…Bong Joon-ho - Parasite : All of the nominees did extraordinary work but Bong’s direction of Parasite was extraordinary. Parasite is an intoxicatingly detailed, precise and specific master class in the art and craft of film directing.

Actor/Actress of the Year - Brad Pitt : Pitt flexed his movie star muscles in Once Upon a Time and also proved himself to be a formidable thespian in Ad Astra. That sort of high level versatility earns him the Mickey™®. Now maybe women will find him attractive.

Best Comedy of the Year - Jojo Rabbit : Taika Waititi hysterically dons Hitler garb and brings an ecstatic Mel Brooks-ian humor with him to great affect. The film isn’t great...but the comedy parts of it certainly are.

Best Blockbuster of the Year - Joker . Avengers: Endgame was the obvious favorite in this category…and it is a fitting end to this phase of the MCU, but it got out beat by the scrappy lunatic from Gotham. Joker cost $60 million to make and grossed over a billion dollars, and actually made more profit than Endgame and is the most successful R-rated movie of all-time. That is a blockbuster by any standard. The fact that it was a real movie hidden within the cloak of a comic book story, makes it the most unlikely, but most delicious blockbuster in recent memory.

Best Picture

10. Transit - This is such a finely crafted and effective film. I can’t recommend it enough to people who think in the abstract about fascism. The suffocating sense of impending doom is palpable…and unnerving.

9. High Life This ingenious movie can be at times frustratingly French (even though it is in English), but I found it mythologically resonant and dramatically impactful.

8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco A fantastically interesting and entertaining film that tackles a serious subject but never panders or takes the easy road.

7. Ford v Ferrari Good old fashioned Hollywood movie making at its very finest. A captivating tale of men trying to accomplish something great…and overcoming the corporate overlords who kill everything worthwhile.

6. A Hidden Life Malick puts us into the shoes of a man who must choose between Hitler and God…and must face the consequences of his choice. A deliberate, contemplative and deeply moving film that should be required watching for any and all Catholics.

5. Ad Astra This movie is devastatingly profound and it is among the most insightful movies made in recent years about the psyche of men and the meaning of masculinity. It also boasts a great Brad Pitt performance.

4. The Irishman – Martin Scorsese turned the story of a mafia hitman’s regrets into a surprisingly poignant and existentially insightful referendum on his own spectacular career. Seeing Scorsese being Scorsese and meditating on what it means to be Scorsese…is glorious to behold.

3. Parasite – A startlingly original film and one of the most entertaining and interesting dramatic investigations of class struggle and social structure to come along in ages. A brave and unflinching movie that never pulls a punch.

2. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood – A fork in the eye of woke Hollywood, this film is the very best of Tarantino’s career as it is chock full of outstanding performances and crackling dialogue.

1. Joker - The best picture of the year….and also…

The Most Important Film of the Year - Joker

The fact that Todd Phillips, the guy whose previous claim to fame was making The Hangover movies, made the dramatically electrifying Joker is one of the great miracles of modern cinema.

Joker is a deeply profound and insightful film that eloquently and artistically expresses the palpable sense of despair and rage that permeates the consciousness and animates the intentions of the dispossessed in society. Disguising this sentiment within the cloak of comic book intellectual property was a stroke of genius.

The elites loathed Joker because it didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, but rather had the temerity to speak the ugly, unvarnished and unnerving truth.

For its efforts Joker made over a billion dollars…and now it earns the equivalent of that in prestige with the coveted Mickey™ Award for Best Picture.

Thus concludes The Mickey™® Awards…SEE YOU AT THE AFTER PARTY!

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

La Resistance est Mort! The Cesars, L'affaire Polanski and the #MeToo Virus

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 37 seconds

Cesar Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, has promised to make sweeping changes to increase gender parity and “diversity”, after a #MeToo outcry sparked by 12 nominations for Roman Polanski’s newest film.

Anger over Polanski’s abundant accolades for An Officer and a Spy motivated producer Alain Terzian to spear head the protest, which includes 400 notable French film figures, including stars Omar Sy, Lea Seydoux and directors Jacques Audiard and Michael Hazanavicius.

Polanski, an Academy award winner for The Pianist (2002) and one of the great filmmakers of his time, has long been a controversial figure. In 1977 he pled guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” and served 47 days in jail. Due to an erratic judge, he then fled America for France in order to avoid the possibility of more prison and has never returned.

In recent years a handful of other women have come forward with rape and sexual assault accusations against Polanski from the same general time period as the California crime.

The spark of this current French #MeToo conflagration began in November when, just as An Officer and a Spy – a film about the falsely persecuted Jewish-French officer Alfred Dreyfuss, which many said obliquely referenced the director’s own public reputation battle, was about to premiere. Actress Valentine Monnier made headlines by accusing Polanski of beating and raping her in Switzerland in 1975 when she was 18. In response, women’s groups quickly staged protests at the movie’s premiere, forcing Polanski to surreptitiously exit through a side door.

November also saw bombshell accusations from acclaimed actress Adele Haenel who claimed director Christophe Ruggia sexually harassed her starting in 2002 when she was just 12, which furthered the #MeToo fervor.

France, with its very distinctive and liberated attitudes towards sex, has been left reeling and questioning its own identity in the wake of these #MeToo Cesar Award protests.

Prior to this, the French long held out on importing the more hysteria driven aspects of #MeToo. For example, in January of 2018, at the height of the #MeToo mania in America, esteemed actress Catherine Deneuve and 99 other prominent French women signed a public letter denouncing #MeToo as being “puritanical” and born of a feminism that “beyond denouncing the abuse of power takes on a hatred of men and sexuality”.

The latest revelations about Roman Polanski and the fury over his Cesar nominations appear to be the final straw though that has broken the back of la resistance de #MeToo and its distinctly American neo-feminist beliefs.

It is easy to understand the outrage over Polanski, an admitted statutory rapist, being celebrated by the Cesar Awards. But the problem is that what the protestors are really interested in has little to do with Polanski’s repulsive depravity.

The Cesar protestors’ main demands are based on identity politics, as they are not targeting him specifically, but want more diversity and gender parity, no doubt regardless of ability, among the Cesar Academy.

This once again proves that #MeToo outrage is a quick gateway drug to the more toxic narcotic of woke totalitarianism.

Polanski may be both a repugnant sexual predator deserving of prison and a cinematic genius deserving of awards, but contrary to the protestors’ position, the Cesar Academy’s job is not to judge Roman Polanski’s guilt or innocence but rather the quality of his film.

In the case of An Officer and a Spy, it did its job well as even anti-Polanski critics have found the movie to be very good.

One film critic claimed they were “surprisingly taken by it” and another declared it a “technical master work” and “one couldn’t wish for a more painstakingly researched or beautifully rendered account” and another still that “the longer you look at it, the more impressive it grows.” One anti-Polanski critic even admitted, “I was wary of seeing An Officer and a Spy. Then I did. And it is excellent.”

I would tell you my opinion of the film and whether it was worthy of acclaim…but I haven’t been able to see it since it never got distribution, even on streaming sights, in the U.S. or U.K. The movie is essentially banned here as distributors don’t want to face the fury of the #MeToo mob. And therein lies the problem, and the future, for French cinema.

With l’affaire Polanski, France has let the tyrannical and insatiable wolf of wokeness into the chicken coop, and it won’t just eat the bad roosters, it will devour anything it can get its jaws on.

America’s recent history with #MeToo shows that neo-feminists and woke authoritarians despise the quaint notions of individual rights and freedom of expression. They feel accusations are convictions, political correctness trumps quality and that art and artists must conform to their dogma or be canceled.

Just as happened in the U.S., Polanski’s films may soon be banished down the memory hole in France and “diversity”, “inclusion” and “gender parity” will become cudgels used to beat the institutions like the Cesar Awards into submission and force them to disregard quality in favor of political correctness.

Sadly, it seems the contagion of America’s pernicious cultural colonialism continues to spread with the #MeToo virus now jumping the Atlantic.

La Republique du cinema francais held out as long as it could…Madame Deneuve, aidez-nous, s’il vous plait!

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

'Birds of Prey' Hates Men, but Wants Their Money - No Wonder It's Bombing at the Box Office

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

The new film Birds of Prey is populated by despicable men, and feminist women who want to be just like them. The outcome: Financial losses and moral bankruptcy.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) opened on Friday and stars two-time Academy Award nominated actress Margot Robbie reprising her role as DC Comics super villain Harley Quinn.

The film is marketed as a girl power manifesto that re-imagines Harley Quinn without the condescending sexism feminists felt was so prominent in Suicide Squad (2016), the last movie that featured Margot Robbie as Harley.

Suicide Squad was a horrifically shitty movie, and was regarded as a box office underperformer with a notoriously troubled production history, but it still made $750 million in total.

Early numbers suggest that despite oddly positive reviews from woke pandering mainstream critics, Birds of Prey will struggle to do half that number in its theatrical run. With a reported production budget of between $80 and $100 million, and additional marketing costs, Birds of Prey looks primed to lose money for the suits at Warner Brothers.

How did things go so wrong?

Birds of Prey banished the problematic “male gaze” of Suicide Squad that allegedly dehumanized Harley by making her purely an object of desire, by employing an all female creative team that included producer Margot Robbie, writer Christina Hodson and director Cathy Yan. The production goes so far in exorcising men as to even have a soundtrack with all-female artists on it.

The problem though is Birds of Prey tries to thread the needle and make a chaotically cool combination of Deadpool meets Wonder Woman, only it doesn’t have the first clue about the sardonically masculine humor of Deadpool and the appealing feminine power of Wonder Woman, or masculinity and femininity in general.

The film’s sexual politics are aggressive to say the least. In our current cultural moment, toxic masculinity and masculinity have become synonymous, so it is no surprise that Birds of Prey goes to great lengths to denigrate and disparage all its male characters and yet also to venerate all its female ones.

Every man in the movie, with the lone exception being a character (played by the criminally underused actor Eddie Alfano) with fifteen seconds of screen time and no dialogue, is either entitled, conniving, maniacally violent, a rapist or all of the above.

In contrast every female character wears the noble crown of resilient victimhood after having suffered at the cruel hands of men.

The portrayal of men as misogynist beasts is pretty heavy handed, as at one point Harley and female friends are surrounded and the sadistic Roman Sionis (Ewen McGregor) yells to his army of all-male thugs, “Men of Gotham, go get those bitches!”

What’s so bizarre about the supposed girl power message of the movie is that while it relentlessly tells us that men are despicable creatures, all of the female characters are lionized for trying to behave like men. Like the recent batch of feminist movies such as Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Terminator: Dark Fate, Birds of Prey believes that feminism means women should act like men.

Even more baffling is the cinematic schizophrenia of Birds of Prey, as it obviously loathes men yet is so desperate for their attention it serves up a steady supply of hyper-violence. As Harley Quinn says, “nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence…blow something up, shoot someone.”

Totally coincidentally, The New York Times published an op-ed by an actress, Brit Marling, titled “I Don’t Want to be the Strong Female Lead” on the day Birds of Prey premiered.

In the piece Marling describes strong female leads as, “She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.”

In some ways this applies to Birds of Prey, since the women in it are smarter, tougher and stronger than the men, except they have been stripped of their sex appeal in a convoluted attempt to be pro-feminist.

For instance, Harley Quinn wore short shorts and alluring outfits in Suicide Squad, but in the female empowering Birds of Prey she dresses in baggy, Bermuda length shorts and a pink sports bra. It’s as if Harley went full Lady MacBeth and cried “unsex me here” and the filmmakers dutifully complied to stick it to the patriarchy.

Contrast this with the Super Bowl halftime show where Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were declared fiercely feminist when they wore skimpy outfits and literally danced like strippers.

How can female filmmakers like Cathy Yan properly tell an empowering feminist story if feminists haven’t even figured out what feminism is just yet?

This confusion manifests when Birds of Prey defines women solely in opposition to men, but then has them emulate masculinity as a show of their feminine strength.

Brit Marling wasn’t commenting on the troubling Manichean anti-male sexual politics of Birds of Prey, but she could have been, when she eloquently wrote, “I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance?”

That is a good question, but Birds of Prey is oblivious to balance…and quality for that matter. It’s a hot mess of a movie that features derivative, repetitive and dull action sequences, and that tries to be funny, but isn’t…hell…there is a hyena in the movie and even he wasn’t laughing. Watching this thing felt like wading through an Olympic-sized swimming pool of radioactive girl power vomit.

If equality is women making misandrist, hyper-violent, incoherently vapid and dreadful movies…then Birds of Prey is a smashing success for feminism. It is also an abysmal failure for cinema…and probably humanity. It deserves to fail.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

92nd Academy Awards: The 2020 Oscars Prediction Post

THIS IS NOT A BETTING GUIDE. THE OSCARS ARE SACRED AND ANYONE WHO DARES GAMBLE ON THEM IS GOING TO STRAIGHT TO HELL!

The Oscars are once again upon us.

Man’s distant descendants crawled out of the primordial ooze millions of years ago and began the arduous journey to the apex of their evolution…which is Oscar night.

The Oscars are like a Presidential election, Royal coronation, Papal conclave and public execution all at once. It is majestic, glorious, somber and gratuitously gruesome…and that’s why we love it more than life itself.

This has been a particularly good year for cinema, which translates into it being a frustratingly bad year at the Oscars, as the Academy will no doubt over look greatness in favor of blandness.

So sit back, buckle up and let’s take a deep dive into my 2020 Oscar predictions!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Kathy Bates - Richard Jewell : My patience with Clint Eastwood movies has worn perilously thin…so I have not seen Richard Jewell. Kathy Bates is terrific actress though so I assume she’s good in it.

Laura Dern - Marriage Story : The praise Dern is getting for this performance is baffling. Not only is she not great in this movie, she is actively bad. This performance feels so contrived and mannered to me.

Scarlett Johansson - Jojo Rabbit : I really like ScarJo as an actress but I have to say that I found her grating in this role. It is not all her fault as the writing is paper thin but boy oh boy did this performance not work for me.

Florence Pugh - Little Women : I have not seen Little Women…I know, I know…I am a terrible human being. That said, Florence Pugh is undeniably one of the best young actresses working in cinema.

Margot Robbie - Bombshell : I have a screener of Bombshell but just have never found the time to watch it. Margot Robbie is an actress I usually admire a great deal so I have little doubt she does solid work here.

WHO SHOULD WIN - None of the Above. This is an abysmal year for female performances. The one I thought should win…Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood…wasn’t nominated.

WHO WILL WIN - Laura Dern. This is set in stone. Dern is well-liked and respected in Hollywood and this is one of those “it’s her turn” awards.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Tom Hanks - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood : I haven’t seen this movie…and have no interest in seeing this movie. But here is a hot take for you…and I’ve been saying this for a long time. Tom Hanks is not that great of an actor. Yes…I agree…I am a horrible human being.

Anthony Hopkins - The Two Popes : Hopkins is fantastic in this movie as he gives Pope Benedict a humanity that has never been evident in real life.

Al Pacino - The Irishman : Pacino has ocassionally spiraled into self-parody in his later years, but his turn as Jimmy Hoffa is fantastic. He brings a palpable sense of self-destructive tenacity to a role that would have been farce in any other hands.

Joe Pesci - The Irishman : Pesci’s self-contained yet vibrant work as mobster Russell Buffalino is among the very best of his stellar career.

Brad Pitt - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Pitt goes full on movie star while, ironically, playing second fiddle to a fading movie star. I have yet to meet a women who hasn’t swooned when Pitt goes shirtless on the roof to fix an antenna. This is as charismatic and magnetic as Pitt has ever been…and that’s saying something.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Pacino and Pesci technically do the best work in this category. While they have very different parts, they both do supremely subtle and complex work. That said, Pitt also is spectacular in his less complicated but very dynamic role. It would be fine if any of the three won.

WHO WILL WIN - Brad Pitt. Pitt is a lock to win this thing as he turned in a glorious movie star performance and has kept it up with his speeches in at other awards shows. Pitt is well liked and has worked hard to be respected out here in Hollywood…his victory will be roundly cheered, including in my home.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Knives Out - Rian Johnson : This movie and this script are utter horseshit. Awful.

Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach : A narcissistic and vapid script.

1917 - Sam Mendes : This script could have been written on the back of a napkin…and probably was.

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood - Quentin Tarantino : Tarantino is a great director…he is an even better writer. A crisp and crackling script that is astonishing for its brilliance.

Parasite - Bong Joon-ho : An absolutely fantastic script filled with genuine human characters, profound political and social insights and a plethora of entertaining twists and turns.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Quentin Tarantino…with Bing Joon-ho a distant second

WHO WILL WIN - This is a very tough category as Mendes may win this as part of the 1917 Oscar tsunami…but I am actually going to go upset with Quentin Tarantino.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Irishman - Steve Zaillian : Yes the movie is long…but Zaillian’s script is pretty tight considering the vast swath of history it covers.

Jojo Rabbit - Taika Waititi : I thought the script was a weak point in this uneven film.

Joker - Todd Phillips : A masterful script that turns comic book intellectual property into dizzying social commentary.

Little Women - Greta Gerwig : I haven’t seen the film or read the book…yes…I agree…I must be a misogynist.

The Two Popes - Anthony McCarten : this is a very well crafted script (that was scuttled by very poor direction) that was able to create context and complex characters all at the same time…not a common feat.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Zaillian or Phillips. Both scripts are truly inspired pieces of work.

WHO WILL WIN - This is another tough one. In some ways I think Gerwig has the edge as the Academy wants to reward women…but I also think that a lot of Academy members think the Little Women script is not very good. Jojo Rabbit isn’t very good either…but I may be in the minority in that belief. Coin flip…my pick is…Greta Gerwig.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Irishman - Rodrigo Prieto : A beautifully and subtly photographed movie.

Joker - Lawrence Sher : Sher’s work is the most profound of the bunch as he came from nowhere to produce one of the most visually intriguing movies of the year.

The Lighthouse - Jarin Blaschke : Nice black and white and some inventive use of aspect ratio…but he stands no chance.

1917 - Roger Deakins : The master. One of the greatest of all-time…and 1917 is a major flex.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Robert Richardson ; Richardson is one of my favorite cinematographers of all time. His work here is absolutely stellar.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Deakins is a god and his victory is well earned but I actually think Lawrence Sher also deserves to win here.

WHO WILL WIN - Deakins by a mile. 1917 is really his movie and it is going to clean up at the Oscars this year. Nice to see Deakins get his second award after being left at the altar so many times.

BEST FOREIGN FILM

Corpus Christi - Poland : I haven’t seen it…and yes…I am sure that makes me a Pole-phobe.

Honeyland - North Macedonia : I haven’t seen it…and yes…I loathe North Macedonia…I’m a South Macedonia fan…GO SOUTHIE!!

Les Miserables - France : Not a great movie and certainly not worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Pain and Glory - Spain : Almodovar is a terrific filmmaker, and I enjoyed this movie on a certain level as it was his most quiet and reflective work I can remember.

Parasite - South Korea : A stunningly great piece of film making.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Parasite.

WHO WILL WIN - Parasite.

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese - The Irishman : Scorsese is Scorsese…little else need be said, but I’ll say something anyway. This movie, bad old man face altering aside, is a fantastic piece of work.

Todd Phillips - Joker : Phillips made the The hangover movies…what the hell is he doing at the Oscars. Well…he belongs after making one of the very best and most insightful films of the year.

Sam Mendes - 1917 : Mendes is about to win his second Best Director Oscar and he has no business even having one, nevermind being in the rarified air of two.

Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood : This film may very well be Tarantino’s best…and his direction on it is superb.

Bong Joon-ho - Parasite : Technically as well directed a movie as I have seen in years. Magnificent.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Tarantino is due…and deserving but will get passed over again. Phillips and Bong Joon-ho are also more than deserving but will be left in the dust.

WHO WILL WIN - Mendes. Sam Mendes is literally the only director in this group who SHOULDN’T win the award…which means he is going home with another Oscar. Awful.

BEST ACTRESS

Cynthia Erivo - Harriet : Haven’t seen the movie…you know what that means…

Scarlett Johansson - Marriage Story : ScarJo is actively awful in this dreadful movie.

Saoirse Ronan - Little Women : Haven’t seen it, but i think Ronan is a phenomenal actress.

Charlize Theron - Bombshell : Haven’t seen it but I hear Theron is good.

Renee Zellweger - Judy : I, along with every other human being on the planet, have not seen this movie…i wonder…does that make me a homophobe?

WHO SHOULD WIN - Shrug…no idea.

WHO WILL WIN - Zellweger. For some reason this has been a lock from day one. If there is an upset I think it is ScarJo winning for Marriage Story…but I don’t think that will happen.

BEST ACTOR

Antonio Banderas - Pain and Glory : Banderas does the best work of his not so great career in this film.

Leonardo DiCaprio - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood : Leo has had one hell of a career and he isn’t even 50 yet…and his work as Rick Dalton is the very best acting in a leading role he has ever done. Truly fantastic.

Adam Driver - Marriage Story : The mystery continues. I don’t get it. I don’t get it here or anywhere else. I just don’t get it. How is this dopey mother fucker a thing? How?

Joaquin Phoenix - Joker : Transcedant performance from the greatest actor of his generation.

Jonathan Pryce - The Two Popes : Pryce is a pro and he brings all of his skills and craft to bear in an impressive piece of work.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Phoenix (but Leo is astounding). He should have won for The Master…but now he gets his due.

WHO WILL WIN - Phoenix. Discussion over.

BEST PICTURE

Ford v Ferrari - I really enjoyed this film and am glad it was nominated. In some other years it could have been a real contender.

The Irishman - This is a late period Scorsese masterpiece and a sterling piece of work.

Jojo Rabbit - At times brilliantly funny in a Mel Brooks-ian type of way, but not an Oscar worthy film at all.

Joker - A staggering piece of work that is remarkably profound and terrifyingly insightful.

Little Women - There are women and they are little. Why hasn’t anyone made this movie before?

Marriage Story - An over-rated, bad stage play of a movie. This thing is just God-awful.

1917 - This is juicy Oscar bait for the older Anglophile Academy members who adore these sort of morally simple war movies.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Tremendous, stupendous and glorious. A masterwork from a master writer/director. Everything a movie should be.

Parasite - Sublime direction and a sterling cast combined with a terrific script make for an electrifying cinematic experience.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Joker/Once Upon a Time - Both films are masterpieces in their own right and both deserve recognition for their artistry.

WHO WILL WIN - 1917. 1917 is going to dominate this year’s Oscars. That is depressing news but it is true. It is depressing because there are so many films much more worthy of attention and adoration that 1917. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Joker, Parasite and The Irishman would all be worthy champions but they won’t get the chance.

If there is an big upset in this category it will either come from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or Parasite. I tend to think Once Upon a Time has a better chance than Parasite to sneak in for the win…but what the hell do i know?

THE BEST OF THE REST

My best guesses…

Visual Effects - Lion King - If 1917 wins this then it is going to win big all night.

Makeup and Hairstyling - Bombshell

Animated Short - Hair Love

Live Action Short - Brotherhood

Documentary Short - Learning to Skateboard

Sound Mixing - 1917 : If this doesn’t win than maybe the night won’t be as predictable as I worry it will be. Ford v Ferrari could pull the upset. If Once Upon a Time wins…LOOK OUT! That could mean a big night for Tarantino!

Sound Editing - 1917 : Same exact scenario as above in sound mixing.

Costume Design - Once Upon a Time

Production Design - Once Upon a Time : If 1917 wins here then it will clean up across the awards.

Film Editing : Ford v Ferarri : If Parasite wins here it could portend a big night for the foreign film…and maybe a Best Director or Best Screenplay or even a Best Picture victory.

Original Score : Joker - If 1917 wins here, a distinct possibility, it may be a long night.

Original Song : Rocketman - The Academy likes stars and Elton John is a star.

Documentary Feature - American Factory : It is possible that Sama or Honeyland sneak in for the win, but I think the fact that Obama produced American Factory will put it over the top. The Academy likes stars after all.

Animated Feature - Toy Story 4 - An outside chance that Klaus wins but i think familiarity pushes Toy Story to victory.

POTENTIAL NARRATIVES

1. 1917 dominates - This is the most likely scenario as it seems to be the default pick for Academy members in most categories. Could win in screenplay and editing and is the odds on favorite to win in director and picture and definitely will win in cinematography. If it wins in the sound and design categories than the blowout is on.

2. Once Upon a Time upset - it is unlikely but the film could go on a run and win screenplay, director and picture while winning a bunch of under the line awards too. Look to the sound awards as a bellwether…if it wins there than it has a shot to upset the 1917 apple cart in the big time awards like director and picture.

3. Parasite upset - It is within the realm of possibility that Parasite wins screenplay and sneaks in to win either director or picture. Long shot but possible. keep an eye on the editing award…if it wins there than it has a legit shot to upset in major categories…if it doesn’t win in editing…game over.

4. Joker shocks the world! - Highly unlikely but remotely possible that Joker goes on a miraculous run and ends up with a bevy of awards including picture and/or director. Again…the longest of long shots. if it wins in costume, makeup and editing…then hold tight because we are in for a wondrously bumpy Oscar night.

5. Splits - The most likely shockers would be a split ticket with 1917 winning picture and Tarantino or Bong winning director. It is possible for a reverse of that with Parasite or Once Upon a Time winning picture and Mendes winning director…but that is less likely than the reverse.

©2020

The Super Bowl Halftime Shitstravaganza

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 52 seconds

Last night Patrick Mahomes led the Kansas City Chiefs on a furious fourth quarter comeback to beat the San Francisco 49ers in an electrifying Super Bowl. Much to my surprise, after scanning the headlines regarding the game, it wasn’t Mahomes’ heroics that were garnering the most praise, but rather it was halftime performer Jennifer Lopez who was declared the real “winner” of the Super Bowl for her astonishing halftime performance.

The reality is that these contrived articles celebrating J-Lo’s astoundingly genius halftime performance were essentially written before her performance ever happened as part of the press tidal wave created by the PR machine that handles all publicity around these type of events and this level of celebrity. One need look no farther than the comments section below these gushing articles to find the unvarnished truth…J-Lo’s halftime show was not universally praised…in fact it was pretty harshly panned by an overwhelming majority of people. This opinion was in line with my own and with that of every single person I spoke with about the performance.

My thoughts on the Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira are thus…it was a perfect representation of the depraved inanity of modern America. The show was a mix of tawdry titillation and woke posturing combined with a complete and total lack of any and all integrity. It wasn’t so much cheap entertainment as an insipid imitation of cheap entertainment.

The two extremely thirsty, scantily clad, middle-aged stars, J-Lo and Shakira, did nothing but pose and preen like cheap tarts at a red light street for the entirety of the show because they had no other options. Since their catalogue of songs are not well-known or remembered, and their singing voices are not of high quality (or are technologically enhanced in the studio), the only way they could muster any attention was by pole dancing and gyrating like they are substitute “dancers” working the graveyard shift at a third rate strip club.

Shakira is certainly a beautiful women, and J-Lo, no slouch in the looks department either, looked like an absolute cow next to her, but the attractiveness of the participants did not distract from the vacuity of the contrived performance. No one on the stage actually sang or played an instrument, just lip-synced to a soundtrack…even the dipshit rappers were faking it. Poor Shakira was even reduced to miming the playing of a guitar at one point (even though she can actually play!). There were also a bevy of background dancers who held instruments but didn’t have the foggiest notion of how to play them only how to badly pretend to play them. It was all cringe-worthy for its blatant charlatanry and stylized mendacity.

The requisite genuflecting to woke ideology, this time in the form of a “Born in the U.S.A.” snippet to celebrate immigration, was just as much a piece of duplicitous and disingenuous corporate bullshittery as the lip-syncing and faux instrument playing. The NFL, the same league that has black balled Colin Kaepernick, and does the equivalent of J-Lo’s lip-sync when it comes to concussions and player safety, and says it doesn’t want to be political and yet acts as a flagrant propagandist for American empire and militarism, does not care about people…be they immigrants or natives…they only care about money.

The media fawning over Jennifer Lopez has been going on a lot recently and is utterly baffling. Jennifer Lopez has never been particularly good at anything she has ever done…she certainly isn’t a great actress and has never been a great singer. J-Lo has recently become a sort of Cher type of character, someone who dresses and behaves overtly sexual in a way that feels entirely and uncomfortably inappropriate, especially considering her age. That is not to say that middle-aged women can’t be sexy, they most certainly can and many I know personally (very personally - *wink-wink*) most definitely are, but J-Lo’s expression of her sexuality is self-delusional and classless to the point of discomfort, most notably because it is devoid of even the least bit of dignity.

At this point the only thing that is truly notable about J-Lo at this point in her shameless career is her unadulterated and ever expanding narcissism. For this reason, she and that repulsively fraudulent poseur fiance of hers, A-Rod, are a match made in heaven or hell, depending on your perspective.

The bottom line is that the Super Bowl halftime show, like America, has devolved to become nothing more than an absurdist parody of itself. The entire performance was nothing but empty spectacle for empty spectacle’s sake. That shit show of halftime yesterday would have been right at home at Trump’s gaudy Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, or his gauche White House in Washington D.C. The media celebration of J-Lo over her allegedly “transcendent” harlot, trollop and strumpet-esque lip-syncing performance, is just as fawning, phony and deluded as Fox News’ delirious coverage of their God-emperor Trump.

J-Lo’s insipid halftime show, and the Super Bowl itself - along with its accompanying endless array of advertisements that idiots lap up like they are dung beetles at a feces festival, are a perfect encapsulation of the bread and circuses stage of decay American empire currently finds itself in. We have a Nero on the throne, eunuchs and whores in the Senate, traitors, liars and fools in the press, and a public that is ever more insatiable for mindless distractions while their corporate overlords exploit and fleece them for everything they’ve got.

But on the bright side…at least it was a good game.

©2020

You're Welcome World! Academy Awards Courageously Save Earth From Global Warming

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 31 seconds

Hollywood has been averting doomsday scenarios in movies for decades - but now the Oscars are serious about it, brandishing a ‘sustainable’ plant-based menu for the cream of the virtue-signaling celebrity crowd.

Hollywood has an extended and rich history of depicting mankind in peril from various existential threats.

If you recall, it was Hollywood that showed us the nefarious nature of robots, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Skynet and their T-1000 killer robot minions (that speak with a strange Austrian accent for no apparent reason) in the Terminator franchise, and the dead-eyed evil of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

Hollywood also raised the red flag concerning the threat from other worlds. Alien, Signs, War of the Worlds and Independence Day are among the many films that show what will happen when E.T. phones home and his dastardly reinforcements arrive to even the score.

Hollywood’s most accurate depiction of humanity’s inevitable destruction was shown to us in the various Planet of the Apes films. Watch the news long enough and you will surely stumble across some supposedly heart-warming story of an ape learning sign language….but don’t be fooled, that Helen Keller wannabe mini-Kong is a stepping-stone to mankind’s slavery under brutal ape overlords. I guarantee you that if enough of these monkey bastards learn to sign we will all end up wearing leashes and loin cloths and yelling at some descendant of Harambe to “take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”

Which brings us to global warming…oops…I mean climate change, that scary storytelling device Hollywood adores. Movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Geostorm and Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth have told the all too frighteningly real story of the climate crisis and how it will impact mankind.

Hollywood has taught us that climate change will inescapably lead to a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max type of world where we must wage endless resource wars that include some pretty spectacular car chase battles with Mel Gibson or Tom Hardy, in order to survive.

Thankfully though, the Academy Awards, showcase of Hollywood’s best and brightest, has solved the climate crisis and eradicated it forever as a threat to humanity.

What is the Academy Award’s plan to stop the climate crisis? Well the noble geniuses at the Oscars have declared that instead of serving meat-based foods at their annual luncheon for nominees and in the theatre lobby on the night of the awards, they will instead serve only plant-based foods!!

Take that climate change! Go straight to hell global warming!! Way to kick ass Oscar and you are very welcome Mother Earth!

To be fair, the Oscars weren’t the first to come up with this ingenious plan, as it is the same plan the Golden Globes put into effect at their most recent awards show in early in January. After seeing the tremendous impact the Golden Globes magical vegetarian menu had on the earth over the last month, it is nice to see the Oscars deciding to double down on the effort.

The impact of the vegan Oscar menu is impossible to over estimate. It seems extremely likely to me that by serving Tinseltown’s elite vegetables instead of chicken, not only will the Academy Awards halt global warming but also bring about world peace and maybe even end the scourge of physical ugliness so prevalent in non-famous regular people.

Just imagine how much better earth and all of its inhabitants will feel when self-satisfied movie stars fly to Los Angeles from across the globe in their private jets and then cruise in their first world limousines past the hordes of homeless that literally litter every nook and cranny of third world La La Land, and then go to an Oscars ceremony with its plant based menu which these stars won’t eat anyway because they’re fasting so they look thin for photographs in their glamorous outfits. A complex problem like climate change doesn’t stand a chance in the face of that kind of total sacrifice and complete commitment.

I personally think serving a mostly vegan menu at an awards show is so much better for the environment than say, living a simple and sustainable life, or refusing to do any business with carbon based energy companies, or better yet, divesting from one of the worst degraders of the environment, The Pentagon, and deciding to stop being the propaganda wing for American Empire.

How about this Hollywood… instead of self-congratulatory awards nonsense why don’t the Academy Awards have a full and healthy menu, but as an alternative to serving it to narcissistic actors who won’t eat it because they don’t want to look bloated in photos, take it into the streets of Los Angeles where 60,000 poor, tired and ill homeless people struggle to find access to clean water, food and sanitation as they scratch out an existence in tent cities beneath nearly every underpass and in every open space in the city. Maybe then the Oscar’s plant-based menu would make an actual difference in the real world instead of just in the delusional minds of self-centered eco-poseurs.

I’m just kidding…let them eat cake!! Just as long as it is an environmentally sustainable and 100% vegan cake!

Speaking of the Academy Awards, “and the Oscar for Best Faux Eco-Friendly Virtue Signaling goes to…”

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

It's a Miracle...Hollywood Finds Religion!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 38 seconds

Hollywood is Allowing Catholics Who Are Not Corrupt or Pedophiles to Appear on Screen Again

Hollywood is currently making some surprisingly good Catholic entertainment with a refreshingly traditionalist bent.

As a practicing Catholic and a devout cinephile, I am constantly frustrated that Hollywood rarely gets religion right. Films and tv shows that touch upon Catholic and religious themes are often reduced to being either saccharine adoration in the hands of believing “conservatives” or vacuous vilification in the hands of agnostic “liberals”.

Considering there are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, and 84% of all people believe in one religion or another, it would seem a wise choice for Hollywood to explore Catholic and religious themed stories with much more regularity, artistic integrity and sincerity.

Hollywood and the Catholic Church need not be adversaries, as they have a lot more in common than one might think. For instance, they both have gobs of money and their hierarchies are littered with perverts and pedophiles. I’M KIDDING! As I said, I’m a practicing Catholic…and as my Catholic gallows humor shows…I definitely need more practice because I’m not very good at it.

Truth be told, now is actually a great time to be a Catholic cinephile because that den of iniquity, Hollywood, has recently shaken off its allergy to organized religion and turned its storytelling eye toward Catholicism with a striking spiritual seriousness and cinematic verve.

Tinsel Town’s recent mini-Catholic renaissance began in late November when it dipped its toe into the holy water font with the Netflix film The Two Popes. The movie, which features two compelling performances from Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis respectively, is visually uneven but surprisingly philosophically vibrant.

This was followed in short order by Terrence Malick’s artistically gorgeous and profound film, A Hidden Life, which hit art house theatres in late December and told the story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic Austrian farmer turned saint for his conscientious objection to Hitler and the Nazi war machine.

Then in January, HBO premiered The New Pope, which is a continuation of the network’s highly stylized 2016 drama The Young Pope, a fictional account of Vatican intrigue starring Jude Law as an enigmatic Pontiff. The Young Pope and its new iteration The New Pope, are cinematically lush and quite theologically robust shows.

Considering that Hollywood is so reflexively liberal, especially in cultural matters, what makes these three projects so striking, beyond their simply being about religion, is that they shine an unabashedly positive light on traditional Catholic ideology.

For instance, I’m not conservative but even I was reticent to watch The Young Pope when it first aired in 2016 because I assumed it was going to be an intellectually lazy and predictably liberal spin on church matters. Much to my cinephile delight the show has consistently defied expectations, with Jude Law’s character Pope Pius XIII being a brazen crusader for old world traditionalism as an antidote to the menace of new world moral relativity and meaninglessness.

The Young Pope is certainly not reverential toward the Church, and this along with the show’s narrative audacity and occasional racy nature is maybe why some conservative Catholics find it blasphemous. But conservatives who dislike The Young Pope/The New Pope are missing the forest for the trees, as the show is a mature meditation on faith and is extremely respectful to Catholic teachings and belief in God.

The truth is that if conservative Catholics were cinematically literate and culturally sophisticated enough they would understand that The Young Pope/The New Pope is a beacon for potential religious traditionalists converts lost in the storm of pop cultural vacuity and idolatry.

The same is true of The Two Popes, which treats Catholicism, its adherents and God with the utmost seriousness. The debates in the film between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis perfectly encapsulate the present Catholic conundrum and the film goes to great lengths to respectfully highlight both men’s arguments as well as their personal failings.

 A Hidden Life furthers the traditional Catholic cause by showing the faith in action. Protagonist Franz Jagerstatter is the living embodiment of the commitment to Catholic faith and while his story certainly isn’t a happy one, for serious Catholics, it is ultimately a spiritually joyous one.

The entertainment industry acknowledging and exploring Catholicism is remarkable, bordering on the miraculous, as religion is usually either ignored, ridiculed or vilified in Hollywood productions.

This is why I find The Two Popes, A Hidden Life and The Young Pope/The New Pope to be such a breath of fresh air. Religion, particularly Catholicism with its hierarchical structure and global nature, is a veritable gold mine of dramatic potential, and it does my Catholic cinephile heart good to see it being so exquisitely utilized in artistically and spiritually satisfying ways.

Art and cinema are about asking difficult questions and potentially opening hearts and changing minds, and it seems we are currently in a cultural moment where the madness of the world has become so disorienting that even Hollywood is considering the unthinkable, that traditional religion might be of value in trying to make sense of it all.

I am sure, soon enough, Hollywood will revert back to its relentlessly diabolical ways and this glorious mini-Catholic artistic renaissance will be but a faded, distant memory…but for now…I am going to enjoy it in all its glory while it lasts.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Hollywood's Arrogant and Ignorant Pandering to Chinese Audiences

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 42 seconds

Hollywood shamelessly panders to China to make money, but they are absolutely terrible at it.

Hollywood thinks that by telling Chinese stories they will woo the Chinese market they so crave…they couldn’t be more wrong, as the failure of The Farewell amply illustrates.

This past weekend The Farewell, a critically adored American film which tells the story of a Chinese-American woman who returns to China to visit her dying grandmother, opened in China.

Due to The Farewell being written and directed by a Chinese American woman, Lulu Wang, and starring Chinese-American, Golden Globe winning actress, Awkwafina, as well as the film’s dialogue being mostly spoken in Mandarin, Hollywood’s expectations were that the movie would be well received in China.

Those expectations proved to be very misguided. The Farewell has been largely ignored by Chinese audiences as evidenced by its embarrassingly dismal take at the Chinese box office of just $580,000.

The Farewell’s failure is reminiscent of the poor showing in China by another Asian themed Hollywood movie, Crazy Rich Asians, which was a break out smash hit in America in 2018, bringing in $174 million at the U.S. box office. American audiences cheered Crazy Rich Asians largely due to its Asian cast, which was deemed a great success for representation and diversity for Hollywood. In contrast, China, which has plenty of its own movies with all-Asian casts, had no such love for the film as proven by its tepid box office receipts.

Crossing the cultural divide and tapping into the Chinese market has long been the Holy Grail of Hollywood, as every studio executive in town is constantly trying to crack the Chinese code in order to fill their coffers. Of course, studio executives are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, so the only plan they’ve been able to come up with thus far is to pander. Not surprisingly, Hollywood’s ham-handed attempts to cater to Chinese audiences have consistently backfired.

Disney thought Asian representation would attract Chinese audiences when they cast Asian-American actress Kelly Marie Tran in a major role in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. The problem was that Ms. Tran (who is of Vietnamese descent) did not conform to classical Chinese standards of beauty and thus Chinese audiences never warmed to her.

Chinese audiences have voiced similar complaints regarding Akwafina, with some Chinese people on social media going so far as to call her “very ugly”, which may be one of the reasons why The Farewell is doing so poorly. And this is before we get to her Mandarin, which was widely considered laughable for a first-generation immigrant, even one who left China early, according to the plot (the actress herself did not speak Chinese fluently before the film).

Another example of this cultural divide is Simu Liu, a Canadian-Chinese actor who was recently cast in the lead of the upcoming Marvel movie Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Liu is considered handsome by Western standards but some Chinese people say he is “not handsome by Chinese standards”, which means Shang-chi might face an uphill battle at the Chinese box office when it comes out. 

Hollywood has had some success in China, for instance, of the top 15 highest grossing films in Chinese box office history, four are Hollywood productions. They are Avengers: Endgame, The Fate of the Furious, Furious 7 and Avengers: Infinity War. It seems Hollywood has not learned the lesson of their Chinese successes though because unlike Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell and even to a certain extent the poorly received latest Star Wars trilogy, the Hollywood films that have found success in China are gigantic franchises telling American stories filled to the brim with spectacle and movie stars…and none of those stars are Chinese.

In 2020 Disney is once again making a major attempt to court the Chinese market by releasing Mulan, a live action adaptation of the 1998 animated film of the same name. While Mulan is based on the Chinese folk story “The Ballad of Mulan” and will boast a very attractive cast of Asian actors, including star Liu Yifei, that is no guarantee of box office success. The 1998 animated Mulan financially flopped in China and one wonders if the live action version is just another culturally tone deaf attempt by Hollywood to try to tell and sell a Chinese story back to the Chinese.

Hollywood’s misguided belief that Chinese audiences want to see Hollywood make Chinese themed-movies with Chinese stars seems to be staggeringly obtuse. China has a thriving film industry all its own and Chinese audiences don’t clamor to see Chinese stories told from Hollywood’s perspective (even if they’re made by Chinese-American artists) anymore than Americans yearn to see American stories told by foreign artists. The bottom line is this…Chinese audiences want to see American movies from America, not Chinese movies from America.

At its best the art form of cinema is a universal language that speaks eloquently across cultural boundaries. For example, American audiences this year have embraced the South Korean film Parasite. Parasite didn’t try to tell an American story with American actors in an attempt to cash in with U.S. audiences, instead it tells a dramatically and artistically profound Korean story about family and class that connects to people of all cultures. Hollywood would be wise to emulate that approach when trying to woo Chinese audiences.

And if it does want to make what it thinks are “Asian” stories, it should be culturally humble enough to know that it’s making them primarily for the art house cinemas in Brooklyn, rather than the multiplexes in Beijing.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Tedious Woke Outrage Over Oscar Nominations

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

The Oscar Nominations came out on Monday morning and the usual woke suspects were outraged by the lack of minorities and women in key categories.

You can set your watch by the emotionalist bitching and moaning of the identity politics crowd come awards season and so I fully expected to be confronted by a cavalcade of absurd hot takes from the woke media bemoaning the racism and misogyny of the Academy Awards when I awoke this morning. I was not disappointed.

The first headline I saw declared “Oscars Nominations Lack Diversity”, and other articles decried black actress Lupita Nyongo’s lack of a nomination as “horrifying”, and deemed the absence of recognition for female directors, among them Greta Gerwig and Lulu Wang, as well as minority actors Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Lopez and Awkwafina as being a result of “snubs”.

As is evidenced by this current Academy Award furor, outrage is the nectar of the gods for the woke contingent, and they fuel themselves and their self-righteousness on its intoxicating nature. Proof of this was found last year when every acting category at the Oscars was won by an actor of color, which should have made the woke happy…but instead the main storyline surrounding the event was that Green Book, a movie deemed “racist” because it depicted racism in America through the perspective of a white character, had won Best Picture.

I must admit that there is nothing so delightful as the vacuous and self-righteous over-reaction of the woke to entertainment award nominations and wins. Ever since the #OscarsSoWhite movement came to the forefront in 2016, you can always count on the identity politics adherents come awards season to make an emotional mountain out of the lack of diversity and inclusion molehill.

In regards to the current woke hysteria, here are some facts to remember. Contrary to the headline mentioned above, the 2020 Oscars did not shut out all diversity. Black actress Cynthia Erivo and Latino actor Antonio Banderas are nominated in the main acting categories, and Korean director Bong Joon Ho and his terrific film Parasite, is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

As for the female directors and minority actors left out of nominations…who exactly is deserving and who should they replace on the current list? This is why I find the woke media outrage over the Oscar nominations so disingenuous as they say all of these minority and female artists should be nominated but never mention what white/male artist isn’t deserving of their nomination. 

Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), and Lorena Scafaria (Hustlers) are often named as female directors who should be nominated…but this seems more like a list of female directors who have made a movie this year, and not a list of female directors who have made a good movie this year. No one but a cinematic cretin and philistine would consider these films, except for Little Women, even remotely serious Oscar contenders. And while critics love Greta Gerwig, Little Women is an umpteenth remake of Louisa May Alcott’s iconic story…not exactly breaking new cinematic ground.

As for the acting categories, does anyone really want to hang their hat on Oscar racism on Jennifer Lopez and Awkwafina not being nominated?

And if the Oscars are racist now for “snubbing” Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy with no nominations, were they racist when they actually gave a Best Actor award to Jamie Foxx in 2004 for Ray, or nominated Eddie Murphy in 2006 for Dreamgirls?

This is why I find the woke media outrage over the Oscar nominations so vapid as it is nothing but emotionalist idiocy that is allergic to context.  

For instance, you wouldn’t know it by listening to the woke media, but if you take a look at the Oscar acting categories since the year 2000, you will find that black artists have won awards at a higher percentage than their population in the U.S. and the Anglosphere (nations with English as a primary language – U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia). Since the turn of the century black artists have won the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor award 15% of the time and the Best Supporting Actress award 30% of the time, which is higher than both the percentage of the black population in the U.S., 13%, and in the Anglosphere, roughly 9%.

The perception that black artists are under represented in Oscar acting wins is false, at least since the year 2000, but that sort of fact does not ignite the fury that the woke so crave and is therefore ignored.

Another ignored fact is that while there is a paucity of Best Director nominations for female directors, the category is truly a cornucopia for ethnic diversity. In the last 7 years the best Director award has gone to Mexican artists 5 times, an Asian artist once and a white American once.

Look, the Academy Awards are little more than a self-serving orgy of narcissism that never fails to fail. Anyone who takes them seriously is asking to be irritated or aggravated in one way or another. For example, I am sure that I will throw something at my television when 1917 wins Best Picture this year. But with that said, the woke turning the Oscars into little more than the diversity and inclusion Olympics will do nothing but further reduce the quality and artistry of cinema, and that is a cultural crime of epic proportions.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020