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ben kaye

@thebenkaye

what he’s typed will be a window into his madness | writes about movies, theatre | bylines: Cine-File, Chicago Reader, The Spool, Newcity Stage, possibly you????? | chicago-based (they/he) - thebenkaye.com https://benkayewords.org https://boxd.it

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03.07.2023
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Latest posts by ben kaye @thebenkaye

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This is honestly one of the most anti-Jewish things I’ve ever seen from the United States government.

05.03.2026 23:19 👍 12888 🔁 3338 💬 2106 📌 567
People Like Us (From "The Wild Party")
People Like Us (From "The Wild Party") YouTube video by Toni Collette - Topic

musical theater songs used to sound like this. what happened. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh4Z...

05.03.2026 18:59 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

not "dancers" necessarily, but this is also pretty much just Spelling Bee and Hands on a Hardbody.

03.03.2026 16:08 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

there’s a musical/dance sequence in this set in a dungeon that is, no hyperbole, one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen committed to film. a wonder of a movie!

03.03.2026 00:33 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Viola Davis so happy about Michael B. Jordan winning a SAG award that she transcends time space and white supremacy.

Viola Davis so happy about Michael B. Jordan winning a SAG award that she transcends time space and white supremacy.

When it finally happens:

02.03.2026 18:50 👍 1793 🔁 248 💬 22 📌 19

i'm not expecting high-brow humor from a Scary Movie, but the first joke of your trailer being a hacky "lol my pronouns are they/them" joke doesn't instill a lot of confidence if we're being honest!!!!!!

02.03.2026 17:22 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

i see they're also "parodying" the trend of eschewing a more distinct title by forcing us to refer to this as "Scary Movie (2026)"

02.03.2026 15:39 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

this is the wildest year for
acting races i’ve seen in a while

02.03.2026 03:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHA very good

02.03.2026 03:00 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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THE SECRET AGENT (2025)
Streaming Now
Hulu
#TheSecretAgent

01.03.2026 13:46 👍 52 🔁 17 💬 0 📌 9
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theonion.com/this-war-wil...

28.02.2026 11:57 👍 3676 🔁 830 💬 41 📌 23
"When visiting a new city, there’s a lot you can learn from a tour guide, depending on what version of history you’re looking to learn, and what they’re looking to share. It seems only fitting that Suzannah Herbert’s NATCHEZ primarily unfolds through the words of tour guides, tourism being a prominent economic factor in keeping the city of Natchez, Mississippi, alive today. But there are two Natchezes being shared here. In one are lush mansions filled with Antebellum Southern decadence, white guides dressed in hoop skirts gliding between rooms transporting you back to Civil War-era Mississippi, a Southern fairy tale to luxuriate in and forget about the present-day world. And then there’s the Natchez that pops the fairy tale bubble, a city built upon slave markets, cotton picking, and the subjugation of Black Americans, where the echoes of slavery reverberate today. You can get lost in the fairy tale with a guide like David Garner, the Parkinson-stricken, elderly, white owner of Choctaw Hall, whose guile and charm lull you under the spell of his covertly White Supremacist leanings (the casual nature with which David frequently uses the n-word near the film’s conclusions practically gives the game away). Or you can hop in the tour bus with the effervescent Tracy “Rev” Collins, his motto proudly exclaiming that he’ll show you “the REAL Mississippi.” Rev’s tour isn’t shy about how the gorgeous architecture is the product of slave labor, leading his guests to the Forks of the Road Slave Market, a piece of land home to the second-largest slave market in the Deep South, now currently in a land dispute with surrounding businesses who refuse to cede their property to pay proper homage to this piece of tragic but essential history. The white owners of the Natchez Exhaust across the way see little reason to keep bringing up that “slavery thing” all these years later, though, in a brilliant work of editing, Rev eloquently guides a series of tour groups through the path that his…

"When visiting a new city, there’s a lot you can learn from a tour guide, depending on what version of history you’re looking to learn, and what they’re looking to share. It seems only fitting that Suzannah Herbert’s NATCHEZ primarily unfolds through the words of tour guides, tourism being a prominent economic factor in keeping the city of Natchez, Mississippi, alive today. But there are two Natchezes being shared here. In one are lush mansions filled with Antebellum Southern decadence, white guides dressed in hoop skirts gliding between rooms transporting you back to Civil War-era Mississippi, a Southern fairy tale to luxuriate in and forget about the present-day world. And then there’s the Natchez that pops the fairy tale bubble, a city built upon slave markets, cotton picking, and the subjugation of Black Americans, where the echoes of slavery reverberate today. You can get lost in the fairy tale with a guide like David Garner, the Parkinson-stricken, elderly, white owner of Choctaw Hall, whose guile and charm lull you under the spell of his covertly White Supremacist leanings (the casual nature with which David frequently uses the n-word near the film’s conclusions practically gives the game away). Or you can hop in the tour bus with the effervescent Tracy “Rev” Collins, his motto proudly exclaiming that he’ll show you “the REAL Mississippi.” Rev’s tour isn’t shy about how the gorgeous architecture is the product of slave labor, leading his guests to the Forks of the Road Slave Market, a piece of land home to the second-largest slave market in the Deep South, now currently in a land dispute with surrounding businesses who refuse to cede their property to pay proper homage to this piece of tragic but essential history. The white owners of the Natchez Exhaust across the way see little reason to keep bringing up that “slavery thing” all these years later, though, in a brilliant work of editing, Rev eloquently guides a series of tour groups through the path that his…

on Suzannah Herbert's NATCHEZ, for @cinefilechicago.bsky.social. now playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center! go see it!

27.02.2026 21:58 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

underground art is important (and important to ME personally) but a world where nobody ever gets a big budget to take a big weird swing is still massively depressing

27.02.2026 19:41 👍 1608 🔁 228 💬 4 📌 6
27.02.2026 19:07 👍 50 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 0
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When news is bad I always take comfort from this

27.02.2026 15:28 👍 139 🔁 20 💬 0 📌 2

The kidnappers have names and should be arrested immediately

27.02.2026 01:24 👍 501 🔁 89 💬 1 📌 0

Democrats should run on breaking this up. I don’t even care if they can’t do it right now. Make a stand against state-run media.

26.02.2026 23:06 👍 972 🔁 257 💬 9 📌 7

grim!!!

26.02.2026 22:58 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

stop calling us nazis just because we are invalidating IDs and rounding people up based on their skin color and putting them in concentration camps and sending them off to foreign gulags and using all that nazi imagery and banning books and dont forget about all the pedophilia. so just stop alright

26.02.2026 12:05 👍 12077 🔁 3492 💬 77 📌 40
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Megan Thee Stallion Will Make Broadway Debut in Moulin Rouge! The Musical The Tony-winning musical recently announced it will play its final performance at the Hirschfeld in July.

Megan Thee Stallion?? from DICKS: THE MUSICAL????? playbill.com/article/mega...

26.02.2026 16:28 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
ethan slater in that dang mime show

ethan slater in that dang mime show

you today

24.02.2026 12:38 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

sometimes something bad happens where there are no malicious actors, no one is happy, and everyone gets the worst possible outcome they don't deserve. social media exists to strip such events of context so we can have clear winners and losers

23.02.2026 14:56 👍 1754 🔁 268 💬 29 📌 3
Key art for "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" on Dropout shows its title along with its three principal puppet characters in picture frames.

Key art for "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" on Dropout shows its title along with its three principal puppet characters in picture frames.

one of my all-time favorite weird and wonderful shows - DON'T HUG ME I'M SCARED - is now on dropout!

full web series now; TV series (which less people have seen) over the course of the next few months. big thanks to blink industries, becky, and joe for their faith in us.

23.02.2026 18:32 👍 3847 🔁 784 💬 136 📌 161

I had enough fun with it initially, but the oversized reaction to it has somewhat Joker-fied me to a degree

23.02.2026 17:28 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The amount of copies that the Criterion Collection sells of KPop Demon Hunters is gonna keep that place in business for another 10 years

23.02.2026 17:05 👍 350 🔁 58 💬 8 📌 16

maybe Certain Women?

23.02.2026 17:21 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

you're telling me that an animated KPop film is more popular than Orson Welles?! now i've heard everything

23.02.2026 16:41 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ Joining Criterion Collection (EXCLUSIVE) 'KPop Demon Hunters' and Guillermo del Toro’s 'Frankenstein' are two of Netflix's award season films that are joining the Criterion Collection.

genuinely hilarious that, of the Netflix releases that deserve a physical media release, KPOP DEMON HUNTERS is getting one before THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. variety.com/2026/film/ne...

23.02.2026 16:40 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

couldn't tell you why, but a Subway sandwich always sounds like a great idea to me.

22.02.2026 20:30 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

it used to be a mattress factory and then it was converted into a contemporary art museum!

21.02.2026 14:16 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0