It gives me absolutely no pleasure -- only immense sadness --
to see the demise of Weinstein. It is a measure of our eternal
contradiction that someone so corrupted, selfish, and despicable
was also capable of such good taste in cinema, especially in
the early years of Miramax. The films released and promoted
under that once celebrated label included Greenaway's _The
Cook, the Thief, the Wife, and Her Lover_; Hare's _Strapless_
(granted I am the only one who ever loved the Blair Brown
vehicle and allegory about Thatcher's Britain); Verhoven's _The
Nasty Girl_, not coincidentally about an intrepid young woman
digging into the past to unearth hidden crimes, like _She Said_;
Zhang's _Ju Dou_ (made before his Fascist days); Jordan's
_The Miracle_ (before he was famous, and in fact my favorite
film of his); Hartley's _The Unbelievable Truth_; and of course,
_The Double Life of Veronique_ and the Three Colors Trilogy.
These are among the greatest films of the 90s, perhaps of all
time. It becomes significantly more middle-brow afterwards, but
still promoted Alan Rudolph, Takeshi Kitano, and Leos Carax.
Cinema has always been disproportionately about the beauty,
grace, intelligence, and integrity of women, but it also uses up
so many of them so brutally. Hollywood was likely always
been this way; journalists were just never allowed to expose the
dirtiest side of the business. Or maybe they didn't care.

The "Me Too" movement spawned by the articles on Weinstein
righted many wrongs. But a few milder offenders who apologized
lost everything while some of the worst denied all charges and
survived. One of them is running for President again. Perhaps
it is time to call "time served" on, say, Charlie Rose?
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Amazon prime wants us to know, in its very first "trivia" pop-up
in _She Said_, that Megan Twohey, the real-life heroine depicted
in the film, was criticized for her 2022 writing on transgender issues.
Why is that even relevant? 2022 also saw another special interest
far-minority group, convinced of their moral superiority and
righteousness, impose their will and laws on all Americans, causing
untold hardship. They are called the Anti-abortionists. (Although
not even they try to silence those who criticize them.) As one of
those who cheered the corporate America punishment of North
Carolina because the trans student bathroom row, this was a look-
in-the-mirror moment. Surely there was a third way, a compromise.
Allowing a special-interest (no matter how justified) to dictate and
dominate public policy and discourse isn't just bad politics -- it is
terrible governance. That is how civil wars usually get started.