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That’s what Bill Maher is saying. The Real Time host wrote a blog post about the Stan Lee effect and how the late Marvel creator’s infantilization of our culture is responsible for Donald J. Trump being elected in 2016: “The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning,” Maher wrote. “Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess....

The quirky and nauseating CNN anchor Ana Navarro was on “The View” today touting that the newly installed #OscarsFanFavorite category might be compromised by, wait for it, Russian troll farms: “I think you’re gonna have some big studio hiring some troll farm in Russia or God knows where, and people are gonna be voting over and over again. It’s gonna be all those bots.” Russia has the cumulative GDP of Italy....

The real news however comes in the shape of the summer season closing out with the second lowest weekend total of 2019. Overall, this summer’s BO has totaled $4.22B, sitting 4% down on last year, but still enough to land it in the top ten summer hauls of all time (in eighth place). Back to this rather solemn weekend for moviegoing, it was yet again Universal’s R-rated comedy “Good Boys” that sealed second spot with $9....

The latest installment of Paramount’s “Terminator” franchise, “Dark Fate”, directed by “Deadpool”’s Tim Miller fell flat on its face in its opening weekend domestically, collecting a fleeting $29M. Billed as the ‘true’ sequel to “Judgement Day” following what is viewed by many as a plethora of failed sequels, “Dark Fate” has widely been hailed as the best since “T2”, though evidently not enough to stop it from only just beating the dismal opening of the last installment, “Terminator: Genisys” , which garnered just over $27M on its own domestic opening....

If you had any doubt that American filmmaking is currently in the worst place imaginable, then summer 2022 should dissipate any doubts. As it stands, the best-reviewed big studio films have been “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Nope,” “Elvis” and “The Black Phone.” Yikes. If anything, now, more than ever, to find great movies you have to be adventurous and seek them out at the local arthouse theater: “Happening,” “Watcher,” “Crimes of the Future,” “Pleasure,” and “Fire of Love....

“This is the one thing that has bothered me the most about the left. And as a creative it is something that worries me. I often wonder how you can be a writer, an artist, a director, a filmmaker, and allign yourself with the party that is basically subsidizing an authoritarian language belief on what you can say and what you can’t say and how you can express yourself or how you can’t express yourself....

A little better-received, but not enthusiastically, mind you, was director David Bruckner’s by-the-books horror flick “The Night House,” which Searchlight Pictures reportedly paid $12 million to land the distribution rights for. Starring Rebecca Hall, the film has a recent widow being haunted by the supernatural presence of her deceased husband. Despite Hall going all in with her performance, the film felt too familiar in its over-reliance on very loud jump scares....

With all that being said, according to a report in Le Point, the Cannes Film Festival, set to take place on May 12th, is still holding off on canceling the event until April 15th, when the Cannes comittee will reassess the situation. On April 16th, the festival is set to announce its entire lineup, so it makes sense to have a cutoff date to cancel the day before all the films are revealed....

MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM: Although curiously inserted in this year’s Sundance midnight section, Dylan Southern’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom” is a vibrantly original music doc about the springing New York City indie rock scene of the early Aughts. Bands such as The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, TV on the Radio and Ryan Adams are shown in full-blossom mode. [B] CAUSEWAY: Lila Neugebauer’s film is all about trauma....

James Gunn’s upcoming “Suicide Squad” is rumored to not have Jared Leto’s Joker. Not just that, the unofficially tilted ‘Mad Love’-type Joker and Harley Quinn film has also been cancelled, again according to Forbes. That film looked promising considering Glenn Ficarra and John Requa were the writer/directing team behind it. Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” will be keeping Will Smith and Jai Courtney, but no one else, including Harley Quinn. Call it a soft-rebooting, with most of the old squad nixed....

Protesters from a vocal but minor community in film criticism state that his character in “The Mule” is a racist and the Latinos in the film are unjustly portrayed as caricatured bad guys. Whatever, it seems like there is something to hate about with every movie these days. Eastwood delivers a fantastic performance as an 80-year old who decides to become a drug runner for a Mexican cartel, and his chances of garnering a Best Actor nomination at 88 years of age have risen significantly this past weekend....

If you had any doubt that mainstream American filmmaking is currently in the worst place imaginable, then summer 2022 should dissipate any doubts. Where was the risk-taking? Where were the filmmakers willing to go for broke and be heard? Nowhere to be found. The “bottom line” is now the operating memo being sent by studio CEOs to producers, filmmakers and actors. Just ask David Zaslav. If anything, now, more than ever, to find great movies you have to be adventurous and seek them out at the local arthouse theater....

The “Get Out” actor now has a personal “life strategist” on the set of every movie he shoots. Insiders are saying that they are concerned by the influence of this “life strategist” who goes by the name of “Heir Holiness.” In her Instagram account, Heir describes herself as “a spiritual gangster serving a life sentence in a human body.” She just sounds like the life of the party. Kalyuuya better watch out, he’s been put on several blacklists recently for his erratic on-set behaviour....

Netflix has just released a first look at the upcoming 9 episodes, which will follow FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench, along with assistant psychologist Wendy Carr, as they investigate the infamous Atlanta Child Murders of the ‘80s. .David Fincher, Andrew Dominik, and Carl Franklin. will share directing duties this season. Fincher hasn’t directed a film since 2014’s “Gone Girl.” At some point he was supposed to helm a Ben Affleck-starring remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on A Train” but IMDB doesn’t have that project’s page listed anymore and it probably won’t be happening any time soon due to Affleck’s personal problems....

It’s been 3 years since Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” changed the TV landscape forever, but, more importantly, signaled the return of a true master. How could Lynch follow up an achievement as monstrous as ‘The Return’? Well, how about making another TV series. A rumor back in March hinted that Lynch was partnering with Netflix for an upcoming limited series. No plot had been revealed, but there were rumblings of a possible “Mulholland Drive” spin-off and, even a continuation of “Twin Peaks: The Return....

EARLIER: Disney’s animated movies generally fare very well with audiences, but their latest offering is turning into somewhat of a fascinating enigma. “Strange World” has received a CinemaScore rating of B, the lowest rating ever for a Disney animated feature, or at least since the rating was measured a few decades ago. Every single Disney animated film since “Beauty and the Beast” has received some form of an A, from A+ to A-....

Groo argues that the two-year-old, for-profit streaming platform reinforced outdated ideas about what films are most significant: “Many lauded the service for the diversity of its curatorial staff and its efforts to highlight films by women, people of color and queer artists — and the attention it paid to non-Anglophone film traditions. All to the good.” But wait, it gets better, Groo goes on to add that “feature-length narrative cinema made by mostly white male auteurs dominated the collection....

The story goes that “No Time to Die” will be Craig’s last outing as James Bond, in this the 25th installment of the 4-decade-old franchise. Craig has been part of two of the very best Bonds I’ve ever seen (“Skyfall,” “Casino Royale”). So, he’ll always be fine in my books. Let’s not forget Craig mentioned, after filming the last 007 movie, “Spectre,” back in 2015, that he’d rather slit his wrists than participate in the making of another Bond movie....

Florence Pugh could clearly see a “Don’t Worry Darling” trainwreck coming from miles away. She’s decided to “severely limit her promotional press” at the Venice Film Festival [via The Wrap]. Meanwhile, Shia LaBoeuf is trying to use this “moment” as a way to kickstart a comeback. Don’t you just love Hollyweird? Pugh has every right not to promote the film. The actress already disliked Wilde for her unprofessional on-set behaviour and today Wilde seemed to passively call her out in the leaked message exchanges she had with LaBoeuf....

I never got the love Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of the famous novel, the umpteenth film version. I’ll be attending a 35mm screening of the film this evening, which I haven’t seen since I caught a screening of it during a snowy Boston evening back in November of 2019. If you remember, a large number of people were outraged when Gerwig was snubbed by the Oscars, Golden Globes as well as DGA....