Goldwater-era "Extremism in the pursuit of...." beliefs practiced by progressives.

Excerpt from Teju Cole's recent Facebook article (now online and can be Googled) about rape culture and celebrities accused of being participants (highlighting by me):

(This is why, even after everything we know, it is still possible for the New Yorker to put up a long article praising Woody Allen, as they did last week—"The Existential Genius of Late Woody Allen"—praising him from beginning to end, in every line, as though none of that other stuff were relevant, as though it were somehow gauche to acknowledge what he'd done. That's rape culture for you, at the highest levels: not mere silence, but you have to come out and sing hosannas to the guy.)

We must fight rape culture, even in its allegedly mild manifestations, we must be grieved with the grief of those who commit the crime and those who benefit from a world built on such crimes, we must oppose men who wade in with stupid explanations and caveats and distractions, we must surrender the poisonous sentimentality that makes us believe a "great artist" over a less well-known woman. Indeed, we must be willing to let anyone go—think of any man you admire, any man at all, alive or in history, close to you or far away, and think to yourself that you must be willing to let him go—if such things are true of him too. And understand that such things can be true of any of them, of any of us.

We must be allies in this, in a subsidiary but vital role, to the generations of women who have been fighting it since forever. Why should it be easy? It can't be. We will have to face even the complication of confronting those few women who are themselves invested in perpetuating rape culture. It will cause us extreme discomfort, but our discomfort will be nothing compared to the pain of being a victim of rape or assault or harassment.

Needless to say, if one is certain of the guilt (alleged/real regarding sexual assault) of people in the spotlight such as Bill Cosby, Stephen Collins and (not paid attention to in the US) Rolf Harris/the late Jimmy Savile, but unsure of or have questions about the child molestation charges against Woody Allen from two decades ago (and his guilt or innocence), you're likely to be banished by certain members of social media.

And I'm not singing hosannas to Woody Allen--who demonstrated industrial-strength selfishness during the Soon-Yi affair discovery in the early 1990s--either.

Filmmaker Sophia Takal's nonreview of Woody Allen's latest film.

Southern California residents of a certain age might remember Hugh Bonar's brief reign as a hipster film reviewer at LA WEEKLY; Bonar's routine was to write about movies without actually writing  about the movie--essentially snark that assumed the audience colluded with the Bonar ethos that actual analysis of the movie wasn't necessary because (yuk, yuk) the movie's so lame, so bad, so not worth writing about seriously.

Here's filmmaker Sophia Takal's nonreview of Woody Allen's MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT, focusing briefly (as asides) on the film itself (already building consensus as a subpar follow up to last year's BLUE JASMINE): http://film.thetalkhouse.com/talks/sophia-takal-green-talks-woody-allens-magic-in-the-moonlight/?awesm=tlkh.se_q0K

In fairness to Ms. Takal, she avoids tying the film to references to the child molestation allegations against Allen in the 90s (in which he was not charged) recently revived by Dylan Farrow, her mother Mia Farrow and NEW YORK TIMES columnist Nicholas Kristof.

A.O. Scott did just that in his NYT review: http://nyti.ms/1jXqVcO

Woody Allen compares his work ethic to Ingmar Bergman's.

In the midst of a recent interview in THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (about an Ingmar Bergman retrospective in Berlin), Woody Allen had this to say (highlighting by me):
 "I just like to keep turning them out and doing them and not looking up at how they are responded to because that can drive you crazy. You can obsess over that for good or bad. You can languish in great praise, which you get sometimes, or become depressed with great criticism, and it’s all just a waste of time. You’re better off working."

Brief opinion of Woody Allen's WHATEVER WORKS.

On the good side: Woody Allen's WHATEVER WORKS (essentially a compendium of Woody's Greatest Kvetches, Obsessions and Enthusiams) is better than expected, with a number of funny-to-hilarious lines and good performances all around.

Debits: WHATEVER WORKS looks a bit shoddy and stagebound for a New York-based Allen film (shot by, of all people, the gifted DP Harris Savides--who did a fine job for David Fincher on ZODIAC). And it takes a couple of steps back in quality, ambition and sophistication from Allen's previous VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA--his best film since 1999's SWEET AND LOWDOWN.