*squints at side-by-side photo*
is ... is Rupert Murdoch actually Hugh Jackman's Dorian Gray portrait, given unholy life?
10.03.2026 21:18
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*squints at side-by-side photo*
is ... is Rupert Murdoch actually Hugh Jackman's Dorian Gray portrait, given unholy life?
This is just how we do remakes now for movies that don't have a recognizable brand/franchise. Thanks, Streaming Era, I hate it.
For the lazy Sunday crowd, @dodgyboffin.com has a review of THE BRIDE! Sarah knows her filmic Frankensteins, so listen up: seeingandbelieving.substack.com/p/the-bride?...
Few voices in the culture and media landscape are irreplaceable. MZS is irreplaceable. Not just a clever, cutting, and insightful critic, but a champion of other writers and artists in so many ways big and small.
Do yourself a favor: buy from his bookstore. Buy a lot. Read, read, read: mzs.press
very enjoyable diversion here, in case you need one youraislopbores.me
"I could get behind believer's-baptism fascists, but infant-baptism fascists? Now you go too far!"
Least surprising byline ever
"why did you become a writer" because no one gave a shit about my special interests growing up. now i make them everyone else's problem. next question
As always
I was working for the publisher that put out the series when the Cage adaptation came out, and we had a company-wide watch party with the screener when it was released. Some people in the audience had literally helped make/market those books. The prevailing energy in the room was "uhhhh"
A video essay from Kogonada about Richard Linklater and the Before trilogy that never doesn't hit hard, slows down your brain a little, and makes you cry in the good way
The people who voted for Trump heard him call my family and neighbors "vermin" and thought that was a-OK, so pardon me if I don't care that their fee-fees are getting hurt a lot these days
On criterion and a must-see.
An Iranian girl, about seven years old, standing on a bus. She's holding her bookbag, and her left arm is in a sling.
My film rec for everyone now is Jafar Panahi's THE MIRROR (1997). A story about a schoolgirl on her way home. At one point, a change occurs (which I won't spoil) showing the girl is bigger than the film around her, with a life richer and more mysterious than anything a mere filmmaker could dream up.
so uhhh how's this whole thing going
real monkey's-paw moment for ex-conservatives like me who sometimes wish we could have a do-over on our shameful 2003 political stances
GALADRIEL (selectively editing the backstory): and three rings were given to the elves, who were barely involved
Oh yeah? The online rando says. You think every author has to read? Well, maybe you haven’t considered an author who gets caught in a freak basement explosion that lodges a rusty pipe from the boiler into their skull, which after being surgically removed leaves them unable to comprehend written words, and also they have a preexisting ear sensitivity that means they can’t listen to audiobooks with headphones—and before you ask, they live in a crowded home of screaming war orphans so they can’t play audiobooks on speakers—and even if they could still read, they literally do not even have a single free second of the day between work, cooking, cleaning, and posting on social media. Are you saying they can’t still be a writer? Huh? You’re saying a disabled war orphan caregiver with literally no free time because of late capitalism can’t be a novelist? You elitist gatekeeping @&%*#^$*! (As a side note, I’ve never seen a great term to define this common rhetorical move. It is a bit like straw manning, except you’re inventing an imagined exception instead of an imagined argument. And a bit like white knighting, though not on behalf of anyone real. I hereby propose “straw knighting” as the term.)
i always enjoy @thelincoln.bsky.social’s Counter Craft newsletter and i want to flag his coinage of ‘straw knighting’ because i hereby accuse yall of doing it all the damn time lol
countercraft.substack.com/p/what-not-r...
I personally think it is not good that the best employment prospect for freshly graduated humanities majors is to play nursemaid to the bullshit machines that are eroding the foundations of a literate, humane society
that, to me, sounds like a bad development that we should fight tooth and nail
Do not love that this article's angle can be summarized as "Good news! People used to think English majors were useless, but now companies want to hire English majors to make their AI-generated copy marginally less parasitic and depressing!"
that ... that is not good news
Image of young mothers from the Dardenne brothers' film "Young Mothers"
YOUNG MOTHERS, the latest film by the Dardenne brothers, is now available to watch via streaming at Amazon amzn.to/3MXFykU
the number of things I have not posted about are near the squintillion and it is always because I am confident the world would not be better for my opinion and I’m not sure why you think the world would be better for yours
The first edition of this book was very good, and I'm excited to read this new edition. Don't miss out on a chance to get a signed copy from a person some are calling "one the best up-and-coming Chicago critics in the business" (me, I am saying that)
Cover of the 2nd edition of Becoming Alien: The Beginning and End of Evil in Science Fiction's Most Idiosyncratic Film Franchise. The only colors are white and green. Dominant element in the image is a the water-drinking bird toy shown in the first movie. The first additional only had one of them, but the second has two, arranged like reflections in a mirror.
MZS.press is proud to offer pre-orders of the 2nd edition of @dodgyboffin.com's Becoming Alien, which includes a new chapter on Alien Romulus. I wrote the foreword for this edition. Copies purchased here are signed by both of us. Link: mzs.press/PRE-ORDERS-c...
Will bet money there's a sizeable group of people whose opinion amounts to "MLK was okay I guess but he would have been better/more effective if he hadn't messed around with all the God stuff"
i have one more (long) clip that i wanted to wait until after the show dropped to share
i cannot fuckin believe they let us do this.
#GodDoesReal
I genuinely don't know why some people persist in the fantasy that a handgun in every household is going to deter a hypothetical authoritarian crackdown. Too many action movies?
more like withering heights, amirite
In the end, I don't think it's always condescension from AI boosters, at least not as much as it is a failure to think carefully about *why* the boss wants what he wants. What does "success" look like for them?
I don't intend to demean the loved one to whom I spoke about this, by the way. You have to find and keep a job, and the best way to do that in many fields right now is to accommodate yourself as enthusiastically as possible to the project of making AI seem useful somehow. It's what the boss wants!
