James Killin'

Watched Goodfellas with my 16-year-old this weekend, who noted about a third of the way through that this was like a darker version of Catch Me If You Can. I hadn't made that comparison before, but it's solid!

I love that LinkedIn tells me "your posts made an impact and your audience showed up" every week. Doesn't matter if I got 6729 "impressions" or 6. They showed up! (The unspoken truth: I don't really have an audience on LinkedIn. I barely have one here!)

What I heard in the '80s, as a kid who didn't watch horror: "Freddy is so funny! He's always making jokes." What I see now watching the Elm Street movies: Freddy makes obvious dad jokes and says "bitch" a lot.

In general with these things I tend to start with whatever people think is the second best one, so there's an even better one to watch (or read / listen to etc) if I like it, but I don't put myself off by accidentally watching a dud. That said, you are right.

"How do I get into this filmmaker?" Pick a movie of theirs that sounds interesting to you and watch it. Fretting about watching in the optimal order is just getting in the way of actually watching a movie.

Oh my god, no. Nope. No fucking way. And it’s more embarrassing for the movie than for the new slang meaning.

The widespread hate for AI "slop" shows the public had come to appreciate a certain basic standard of intelligible deployment & the minute we got rid of the designers no surprise everything stopped working as well including the inputs for how we develop things.

Fun fact: Animal Farm isn’t really about the animals.

If what you want out of You Can See Everything is three hours explaining why Elizabeth Holmes sucks and all the ways Theranos was a scam, no, you're not going to like it. That's not what it's doing, not what they're interested in doing, and not something they could've made.

I think I've submitted "Alfred Hitchcock in the 1950s" as a LearnedLeague one-day quiz proposal three times now, and it's never been accepted. On the plus side, my other proposal was. One-Letter Answers Strike Back will be live for Llamas in late June 2027.

Unemployment has run out, and we have yet to get another TV job (though we've come close!). We have savings, but if my work means anything to you, I would really, really, really appreciate you becoming a subscriber. And now you can make me watch your favorite crap!

"men don't like short hair" "men don't like tattoos" "you'd be prettier if you lost weight" sir, let's get on the same page: I am not trying to fuck you

Not original to me, but I love it.

The most boring answer for a Gen-X dude: Star Wars in 1976, near Neenah, WI. My memory is no longer vivid, but I do remember that my uncle had seen it and told me that people fought with laser swords and I didn't believe that was even possible. So I was very hyped and loud when it happened.

Fuck Me Gently with a Chainsaw, Charlie Brown

New challenge: Be normal about a movie you like. Level up: Be normal about a movie you don't like.

Jon Braun is running straight-up transphobic attack ads in WA-03 yet voting for Perez was nonetheless a hold-my-nose situation. (I have voted. You can stop showing me election ads any time now, YouTube.)

kubrick is a director i *appreciate* but not one that i love

Everything You Can See, I Can See Better

The particular loneliness of being a physical media cinephile who doesn't really want the new Criterion Kubrick box set.

At long last, we have created a way for you to take away Nikki's free will, from the classic horror movie "don't take away Nikki's free will"

Everything You Can See, I Can See Better

“This is a mysterious object that keeps growing in meaning.” Lance Oppenheim is talking about his own movie, You Can See Everything, but that's a perfect encapsulation of how I feel about any great movie, or great work of art. (And YCSE is indeed great.)

Most people are bad at writing around spoilers. 8 times out of 10 I'd rather someone just spoil a movie (with a warning, not just out of nowhere) than perform elaborate textual gymnastics around whatever it is they're technically not spoiling.

Three months on and I haven't replaced the Gabfest with any one podcast. I'm listening more regularly to Blank Check and Screen Drafts but dipping in and out of other stuff as well. Not hard to fill the hour up, but I miss it as kind of an anchor to my podcast week.

I still miss the Slate Culture Gabfest a little every week, but You Can See Everything is the first movie where I've been genuinely bereft at not getting to hear Dana, Julia, and Steve hash it out. (Digger is up there, though Dana is on the Critical Darlings episode.)

question for the audience: if you were ultra rich (let’s say $25M), what completely frivolous thing are you buying? Independent movie theater. In a city, or at least a suburb.

I imagine Merriam-Webster is simultaneously taking notes on this usage of “slur.”

Good thread. Really good thread.

I know this is not really auteur theory but sometimes it seems to be expressed as "you can tell someone made this! five stars!"

Companion (2025). Hadn't seen this since theaters and it's still nicely nasty. Should have been Thatcher's breakout turn, no matter, film is tight, entirely reasonable runtime, and understands how badly we want guys who probably still say "awesome sauce" to be brutally killed with a bottle opener.

I Play Rocky for Tax Purposes

I Confess for Tax Purposes

Add “for Tax Purposes” to a movie: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead for Tax Purposes

The Ree-keeper

Glad to see Camas High School following state law and letting a trans girl compete on the cross country team. Disappointed that 12 teammates decided this was something they needed to "protest." Trans women are women. Protect trans kids.

We live in a world where Jamie Tartt is a beloved fictional character, your kid will be fine.

No joke. I think this is the most important video I have ever seen about mobile games. This guy breaks down how this game psychologically profiles you, and makes the game harder or easier in order to show you ads

I am looking forward to the Holmes documentary. But four hours reminding me how awful Musk is is like taking a deep, four-hour sniff of that carton of milk to confirm that yep, it's reeeeeeeally sour.

LOVE Ellington, though I favored the pre-LP era, from his 20s "jungle music" through the energetic 30s big band sides, to the "pop-inflected" mid-40s singles, with the crowning glories being the 1940-42 Blanton-Webster (& Strayhorn) Band recordings.