1. MINE IS MANHATTAN, A FILM IN WHICH ALLEN IS TORN BETWEEN AN ADULT WOMAN AND A TEENAGE GIRL. HUH. After a whole lot of back-and-forth about whether Woody Allen molested his daughter at the age of seven, Dylan Farrow speaks up with an open letter that minces no words. In a piece that leads with the question “What’s your favourite Woody Allen film?” she states plainly and unequivocally that Allen sexually assaulted her when she was a child and got away with it. Trigger warning.
2. HERE’S A QUICK GUIDE TO LOSING YOUR ORDER OF CANADA 1) Be Conrad Moffat Black, aka Baron Black of Crossharbour. 2) That’s it, really. It helps to have fraud and obstruction of justice convictions pulling you along like two mighty horses of venality, but you know that Black and Canada would have come to this point by some route.
3. MISTER HOFFMAN, HE DEAD. Thoroughly excellent actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, usually the best thing in any movie he appeared in, was found dead of an apparent drug overdose. The guy who told me about it shook his head, snorted a bit and said “Hollywood.” So there you go. Hollywood.
4. LEX LUTHOR AS MARK ZUCKERBERG. Jesse Eisenberg has been cast as Lex Luthor in the upcoming Man of Steel 2: Batman Loves Superman, in which the two heroes leave their friends behind and open a bar in Chicago Superman movie. Hmm. I see what they’re doing there. Maybe Luthor will invent a ray that puts red underwear on Superman, which is intended to humiliate him, but actually increases his Kryptonian powers. Then Superman punches Luthor into the moon and flies around the Earth a few times in order to reverse time so he can punch him through the moon all over again.
5. YOU STUPID, STUPID, STUPID AND ALSO STUPID GROUNDHOG. Six more weeks of winter. Thanks, ritual animal harbinger. It’s not enough that you get to live the life of Groundhog Riley, with liveried men attending to your every groundhog need. Why are we getting our weather from some glorified marmot?