Notes from the Last Row (Netflix) is pretty gripping tv. Great performances, nice to look at. Given the lead actor, it makes for an obvious, but still interesting, pairing with Oldboy.
Kyle Stevens
@cinementalist.bsky.social
Another film queer. Professor. Book on Mike Nichols. Ed. of The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory. Tons of essays. Boston.
Just got my DVD of In the Spirit, starring Elaine May and Jeannie Berlin. Suffer.
As of this year, I’ve outlived Oscar Wilde, a fact that I’m posting about simply because I can’t get my head around it.
JULIE DASH directed Wanda Sykes’s new special. JULIE DASH.
I keep arguing that Dem leadership (Schumer, Jeffries, etc.) are stuck in the 90s, as are many of the high profile Dem consultants and advisors. They think most voters are de facto moderate. This is why their thinking is outdated:
Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 2d agoWe find that the benefits of moderation found in earlier eras (~1980s-2000s) are gone. Why? Many likely explanations.
Finally caught Obsession. Don’t usually do horror but was sold (queer lead actors! $$ makes it Important). It’s well made, no doubt, but just an incel fantasy? It’s so uninterested in Nikki.
If your movie review doesn't go viral, shut down websites, and inspire wars across genders, academic subfields, and bot systems, it's a failure now.
God, I wish Nora Ephron were here to flawlessly roast every single Odyssey opinion in a brief, delightful op-ed.
“Why don’t people want to have kids anymore???”
Anne Lutz Fernandez@lutzfernandez.bsky.social · last wk.America is at war with its children.
I cannot believe Ari Emanuel would write this and @wsj.com would publish it without disclosing that they are business partners, and Ari’s company TKO got $7 billion from David Ellison’s Paramount for UFC rights. www.wsj.com/opinion/the-...
Opinion | The Paramount-Warner Merger Could Save Hollywood
California’s attorney general ignores the reality of competition in the entertainment business.
wsj.com
I think the response to her review of The Odyssey is largely misogynist and plain dumb. I also think a review of a film that never mentions film language (mise-en-scene, editing, etc.) is lacking. It can all be true!
I think Cultural Studies is slowly losing its grip on reality through the use of "entanglements."
what if the lrb responded to the wilson essay crashing their site by committing to regularly publishing serious film criticism perhaps even occasionally from film scholars
Aw, just read that Bill Oddie of (to me) The Goodies fame died. If you don't know this weird, weird, wacky '70s Titlshow it's a delight!
Calling your movie Doomsday in this day and age feels, um, unappealing.
A friend of mine (some of you know Genie!) is vacationing with family on the NC coast and just sent me an amazing portrait of the US.
As with so many things, it is critical to realize this is not bumbling or ineptitude or not thinking through policy implications. On the contrary: making it impossible for foreign students to do the doctorate here is THE WHOLE POINT. It’s about starving higher ed under the guise of America first.
Ben Allen@evodynamics.bsky.social · 3w agoCongrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...
"The myth of technological and political and social inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience. Its service is to remove responsibility from the shoulders of everyone who truly believes in it." —Joseph Weizenbaum
Can the Classroom Ever Be Automated?
Long before AI, teaching machines promised to make education more efficient. Their forgotten history reveals why that dream keeps falling short.
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
Ah, I think I know Hegseth's mistake. As so many do, he's confusing high tea with afternoon tea. So important to know the difference:
A Wedding: the swings from farce to tragedy are a lot to handle, but it’s a solid critique of American sexual Puritanism from Altman (and its attendant WASP racism). Nothing is Nashville, but he had a PROJECT in skewering America piece by piece.
My Instagram algorithm basically just feeds me Olivia Colman clips, so now social media is good, essential, best invention since the lemon squeezer.
As someone who has lived in SC (and whose family is from there), all I’ll say about Lindsey Graham’s death is that I hope that Columbia’s gay trade finds more and better work.
It's Proust's birthday so I must share this photo again!!!!!
Emily Herring@emilyherring.bsky.social · 3y agoMarcel Proust playing air guitar on a tennis racket appreciation moment
Thanks to @bcdreyer.social, something I say often generally, but in this case because I’m now watching The Model and the Marriage Broker. (Cukor is my fave! I have a tattoo for him!) Somehow I hadn’t seen it—probably because I’d seen Jeanne Crain in State Fair.
I long for the Erma Bombeck collection “Thank You, Autocorrect.”
Trudging through the final episodes of The Bear. Apparently, the vibe on set was “what you can say in 5 seconds should be said in 30.”
today in destroying higher ed, the country's second largest export (not for long now!), the largest employer in 10 states, 60 cities, dozens and dozens of counties economic sabotage AND epistemic warfare www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...
Decline of Ph.D. Admissions Could Imperil a ‘Generation of New Talent’
nytimes.com
It would be so funny if it happened on the 4th of July. And, ya know, the writers lately haven’t exactly been subtle, so 🤞.