Author of DAVID CRONENBERG: CLINICAL TRIALS (Abrams, 10/29). Bylines at NYT, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Art in America, Criterion, Reverse Shot, & elsewhere.
REPORTER: Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans?
BIDEN: Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own multi-billion-dollar businesses if they see one of these guys getting all the tax breaks? Is that fair? What do you think?
I’m… so tired of people not seeing through the marketing-lore around the clown who menaces Batman. ACTORS TAKE BREAKS AFTER TOUGH SCENES. PEOPLE WHO’VE HAD SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROBLEMS TAKE BREAKS AT THEIR JOBS. YES I WILL MESS WITH THE ZOHAR
@fauxbeatpoet
People who are constantly like “debate me” are not doing so because they’re interested in intellectual exchange. They’re doing it because they get a boner from thinking they’ve won the argument and humiliated their opponent.
So much of HOUSE OF GUCCI works on a meta level, like when Jared Leto’s character shows Jeremy Irons’s character his terrible designs and and Irons tells him to shut the fuck up because he’s a giant hack
I saw Peter Bogdanovich interview Jerry Lewis in person in December 2008. Jerry, who had his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, was incredibly hostile to every question; Peter was alternately fawning and visibly hurt. A sad yet illustrative little anecdote about him & showbiz.
I was laid off from a corporate job & decided that, while I was collecting unemployment, I would try to do something that I actually cared about. So I began my Film Comment internship in November 2009. This was the 1st issue I worked on.
The most shocking revelation of the new episode of
@blowbackpod
isn’t the connection between the Bushes and the bin Ladens, but about the fake Rambo 3 postscript
As the Netflix algorithm continues to crank out cartoons for “adults” that aren’t very mature (or even funny), I look back on the career of Isao Takahata, a genuine master of form and emotion for
@FilmComment
Damn, Aline Kominsky-Crumb. One of those amazing comix artists (or aht-ists) that is immediately relatable, funny, and wild. The world’s a smaller place without her.
Tania Modleski’s The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory helped me understand why VERTIGO was a great film—no men required. Please refer it to the next snarky Twitter grifter you see.
@libbycwatson
Interesting to see that Benny went to Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids, which had an incident where another blonde, innocent Iowa girl who wanted to start an LGBTQ group was raped in the school's bathroom by two born and bred Iowa boys
.
@jhoffman
inaugurates the beginning of OscaRRR at
@IFCCenter
. I usually hate shit like this but RRR is so good that it bursts my jaded bullshit apart like an English bullet hitting an English skull.
@AITA_reddit
I don’t know what’s more infuriating, the fact that HR isn’t doing anything about this even though it’s THE LAW or the fact that the woman being harassed had to ask the internet if she’ll be the asshole for trying to stop it.
┏┓
┃┃╱╲ in
┃╱╱╲╲ this
╱╱╭╮╲╲house
▔▏┗┛▕▔ we
╱▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔╲
only listen to the version of Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” with the quotes from the 1999 movie GO in it
╱╱┏┳┓╭╮┏┳┓ ╲╲
▔▏┗┻┛┃┃┗┻┛▕▔
@BradfordPearson
@BigMeanInternet
Thank you—in my pitch, I cited this as evidence of Pesci being ahead of the curve. (I also consider Pesci’s decision to essentially retire during the time when Pacino and De Niro just did crap for paychecks as proof of that savviness.)
Happy birthday to Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Perhaps it’s a cliché, but this interview felt like a beautiful dream because I stayed up late preparing for it and had to wake up very early to fit his time zone. 💚💙💗
Reagan never called her again after this encounter. She was invited to the White House while he was president through an aide. Laurie turned the invite down.
After listening to the
@QanonAnonymous
episode about him, I have become convinced that Brother XII used his black magic to reincarnate himself as Jordan Peterson. The similarities are too striking. TWELVE Rules for Life? IT’S RIGHT THERE PEOPLE!!
This reminds me of the old school film mags that would show what different critics thought about new releases or festival premieres. So I read this as “Flu gives diarrhea two stars”
David Lynch visited his grandmother in NYC when he was a child and said that he was terrified of the sound and rush of air as subways pulled into stations. So, every time there’s unexplained wooshing in one of his films, that’s where it comes from!
I’m extremely sad to hear that David Bordwell has passed away. He was such a nice, warm, thoughtful, and intelligent person. Film Art: an Introduction changed my life. I will miss him and his wonderful insights.
Bolsonaro’s government just declared that Kleber Mendonça Filho has 30 days to return R$2.2 million of financing from NEIGHBORING SOUNDS. That’s over $550,000 for a film that was released in 2012.
I wrote about the delirious (yet also totally relatable) final episode of Fassbinder’s BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ and its repeated use of Kraftwerk’s “Radio-Activity” for
@CriterionDaily
.
This film is still available to be pirated. It is on DVD/BluRay for purchase or at your local library. Films are taken off of streaming platforms all the time. So please, don’t act like this is being erased from history forever. HBO did a publicity.
@still_oppressed
Hey, these guys really care about the Jews. They're motivated by a pure desire: to put all of the Jews in one place in order to start the Rapture. What more could you ask for from an ally? It's ok if they share pictures of the happy merchant; their hearts are in the right place.
Very happy to see the artful, daring, and political films Danny Glover has produced get a series at
@filmlinc
. I interviewed him way back in 2015, and he was truly one of the loveliest people I’ve spoken to.
@jjdotbiz
But the Red Army did recreate Napoleon's battles in Russia for the 1966/67 version of War and Peace. The film won an Academy Award for best foreign language film, so it's not like there wasn't precedent.
Jeff Bezos is a super villain who got NY taxpayers to gift him a helipad but the show that opens every episode with “live from New York” makes him out to be a debonair troll. This is savvy political satire, somehow.
I’m not an Eastwood stan, but I loved THE MULE, which is a funny and beautifully crafted critique of how The System (ie: capitalism) fails everyone. My review for
@SightSoundmag
:
@WillSloanEsq
It’s unfortunate that John Landis killing Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen ranks below “Phil Lord and Christopher Miller Get Fired From ‘Solo’ Midway Through Production”
One thing that I wish he'd touched on: Marvel movies have no stakes because there are no repercussions. Any character who dies can be brought back; half the solar system can be destroyed without a second spared to mourn or come to terms with loss.
As far as I can tell, Cronenberg has worn these sunglasses at every Cannes he’s had a film at since 2014 (Maps to the Stars). That year was the last his wife could’ve attended. 💔
After Valentine’s Day, it seems appropriate to share my article about Scorsese’s NEW YORK, NEW YORK that I wrote for
@MetrographNYC
’s Edition. I don’t describe the awful, controlling man I was dating when I first saw it, but thoughts on romance abound:
A handful of House Democrats just helped Republicans pass a rule (attached to the farm bill) that will prevent a House vote on the resolution to stop the war in Yemen this Congress.
I never thought I’d say this, but: Douthat is right to complain about how sexless and unromantic movies are. (The “progressive interchangeability of the sexes” part is very bad, as is the fewer marriages shit.) Still, let’s see less worldbuilding and more smooching and fucking!!
I first saw Ringu when I was in high school Japanese class when our teacher was sick. Now, I have written an essay for this totally sick
@ArrowFilmsVideo
Blu-ray restoration of all the Ringus! I’ve come…full circle.
Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, set aside $2 billion to create a fund that will help homeless families and create kindergartens in low-income communities where “the child will be the customer”; Amazon paid no federal income taxes in 2017.
If you work a Graberian bullshit job, a low-wage service job, a mindless office job, an overly taxing nonprofit job, or a job where you sponge off of the labor of others, please listen to this podcast about work with
@harikunzru
and
@erikmbaker
.
Eventually I got a raise ($125/day). Then I was hired full time in 2014. The road to that was very long and exhausting, but climbing that mountain was important and instructional. I know all of the men who wrote in to complain about my “giggling” on the podcast couldn’t do it!
Twitter has used Trump to raise their profits and profile since 2015. They’re cutting him loose shortly before he ceases to be useful to them and long after the irreparable damage has been done.
Since 9/11, Muslims around the world have been subjected to absolutely vile treatment—including three genocides! You don't have to be Muslim to acknowledge this, or take issue with the fact this doc approaches all of its subjects as terrorists (& puts them in danger). Fuck this!
Meg Smaker's documentary "Jihad Rehab" got a coveted spot in the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. But outcry from Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters over her race and her approach soon followed.
A little Friday bonbon: I spoke with Geoffrey O’Brien about the films of Jacques Tati. Consider putting in your isolating earbuds and not talking to your loved ones for half an hour to listen thoroughly.
@2Bonus2Eruptus
It’s really fucked up everyone has cameras with them all the time but don’t understand basic concepts about how they work….like how the settings/light source/etc. can make the image appear radically different
But I do love that he zeroes in on the cowardice and capitalism, the two great evils of our time. Now I'm imagining Marty stumping for Bernie...perfection!
I want to know Walz’s position on Gaza, but as someone who “had to” vote for Kerry and HRC…I feel something that is best expressed in a scene from The Simpsons