Megan Garber of THE ATLANTIC on Louis C.K.

It’s all part of another old story: semi-apologies that, in time, nullify themselves. The status quo, reassembling to its familiar, fusty order. Louis C.K., who has been treating cruelty as a game since long before this year, seems to be hoping that he can benefit from “hypersensitivity” in a similarly warped way—and in his new brand of comedy are the contours of tragedy: lessons unlearned, abuses unaccounted for, the people who truly deserve their anger written, once again, out of the story. You could read C.K.’s evolution as a gradual loss of control, as a wayward id winning out over everything else. You could read it, as well, as something more strategic: a calculation that his core audience, now, is the red-pill crowd, with humor that is marketed accordingly. Either way, C.K. has reason to have confidence in his new brand of comedy: In person, his jokes about the inconveniences of empathy have been commonly met with laughter. And with enthusiastic applause.

Re the undoing of Kevin Hart as Oscars host

It’s a more inclusive, less mocking world than it used to be.  One would have thought Kevin Hart, Disney/ABC and the Academy would have foreseen the potential consequences of old homophobic tweets or gay panic stand-up routines before Hart’s announcement as Academy Awards host was made public.

And it’s back to Square One for an institution and a television network trying to land an all things to most people host, instead of accepting the realities of audience fragmentation and the Academy Awards ceremony in classic form as an institution in irreversible decline.

AMPAS and Disney/ABC now have to endure the inevitable fallout from comfortable-with-prejudice viewers sneering at the “political correctness” of Kevin Hart’s enforced departure.

Final comment via Owen Gleiberman in VARIETY:

The fact of Hart’s tweets, and his defensiveness about them, boils down to this: He’s someone who‘s still essentially on record as thinking of people who identify as LGBTQ as “those people.” And that couldn’t be further from the defiantly inclusive spirit of Hollywood today.

Selected Robin Williams films, by category.

Surprised and saddened by the passing of Robin Williams.  For relative newcomers to his three-decade-plus filmography, here's a list of noteworthy theatrical and TV movies:
FAMILY ENTERTAINER: POPEYE (1980)--the Robert Altman musical with Harry Nilsson songs--esoteric but worth watching for Williams' rapport with co-stars Shelley Duvall and Ray Walston.
HOOK (1991)--as an adult Peter Pan in Steven Spielberg's  take on the James Barrie original.
MRS. DOUBTFIRE (1993)--a tremendous hit in its day; the divorced-dad-as-pretend-Nanny tale caused Williams' career to shift for a few years in the direction of "entertaining kids intelligently (then-wife and producing partner Marcia Garces)
COMEDY and DRAMEDY: Williams' prime period for these genres was in the 1980s:
MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, THE SURVIVORS, THE BEST OF TIMES, GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, DEAD POETS SOCIETY
ANIMATED VOICE-OVERS: The two most representative examples are ALADDIN and HAPPY FEET.
DRAMA: GOOD WILL HUNTING, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, SEIZE THE DAY (Fielder Cook's 1986 Saul Bellow adaptation for PBS--where Williams held his own with fine supporting performances from Jerry Stiller and Joseph Wiseman), THE NIGHT LISTENER, INSOMNIA, ONE HOUR PHOTO
INDEPENDENT FILMS: Haven't seen Bobcat Goldthwait's dark farce WORLD'S GREATEST DAD, but Williams received some of his best late-career reviews as the title character.