The New York Times should start running fake Claude-generated A.O. Scott reviews just so that someone else can run the headline AO AI AF.
Mike D’Angelo
@gemko.bsky.social
I may live badly, but at least I don’t have to work to do it. https://www.patreon.com/gemko
No Mungiu in NYFF. Looks like New Yorkers will be pining for the FJORD. (Sorry Waz I couldn’t quote-tweet without killing the joke.)
“Quite a few slates you have here, NYFF. Which one would you say is your main slate? You know, like ‘my main man.’ But for a slate of films. Because that’s what everyone calls a program of festival films: a slate. Which one’s main?” (Celebrating not sure how many years of hating that designation.)
So we conquered it seven years ago. “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”—Pete Conrad, 19 Nov 1969
@claudialamb.bsky.social Random MHMH Q (sorry for your loss): Were you unavailable in March-April 1977? I’m toward the end of a month-long stretch with zero Heather, and they’re starting to cover for your absence by e.g. having Mary keep calling Heather to breakfast but you never show up.
Has anyone ever started their Criterion Closet video by saying “I’m here to recommend a handful of great movies but I’m not actually taking anything ‘cause I’m rich as fuck and I already own all this shit”?
On the one hand I don’t love the idea of the Arclight becoming an Alamo Drafthouse with servers a recurring distraction but on the other hand I’m glad that WONDER WHEEL might not forever remain the last film I saw there.
Predictably, that dolt who “unskewed” THE ODYSSEY’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score thinks it’s totally valid to vote on films you haven’t seen. Ignorant opinions based on social-media discourse are just as valid as any other!
“Rhiannon” fading out mixed with “Over My Head” fading in is one of the all-time segues. Those two songs should be paired à la “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions.” #latenightexercisewalk
Met a lot of friends and fellow future critics on rec.arts.movies. Turns out I was also hanging out with others whose work I discovered years later. Here's me and @sepinwall.bsky.social in 1994 responding 20 minutes apart to someone who thought Hugh Grant and Richard E. Grant were brothers.
Lotta people only now discovering that TSG’s vanity card is an ODYSSEY reference. youtu.be/4fVmLoexuVQ?...
TSG Entertainment Logo
YouTube video by Austin Alexander
youtu.be
Another reason to be annoyed by the dominance of superhero movies for most of this century.
Anyone else hear “Bennie and the Jets” as a little kid and think the line was “She’s got electric boobs”? I remember trying to picture what that might look like.
I see they’re doing 3am IMAX screenings of THE ODYSSEY in NYC. I saw INDEPENDENCE DAY at 3am in 1996 (at the Ziegfeld) and exiting a movie theater at sunrise is an experience I recommend having exactly once. (This movie’s a much better choice.)
Just now realized why Telemachus saying “my dad” was distracting to me despite my knowing it’s not an anachronism per se.
Tried using Claude to do some list-related grunt work. It goofed a little, but its explanation for the error sounds creepily human. I can kinda see why people anthropomorphize these things.
Released 20 years ago this week. What a time to have been alive, etc.
Wait until this dude finds out about what happened to virtually every non-anamorphic movie shot on film.
Foremost among the many things I enjoyed about THE ODYSSEY were the two separate occasions on which Damon almost literally does the HOLY GRAIL “Run away!” bit.
Belatedly learned that the last surviving arthouse theater from my youth finally shut down after 42 years (irregularly and not always under the same name). I was an employee ca. 1987–88. Appropriately, the last film I saw there was DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAND FINALE. Many cherished memories.
Think I need to reclassify the 1997 Konchalovsky ODYSSEY miniseries (which I reviewed for EW almost 30 years ago) as TV, as I can’t find evidence of any theatrical screenings. If anyone (@bilgeebiri.bsky.social?) knows otherwise, drop me a line.
Finally saw TENET on the big screen (70mm) and had the experience you’re supposed to have: exiting the theater and seeing multiple groups of people standing around talking animatedly while moving their hands in opposite directions.
Fun fact: If you go back two Senators in that particular seat the movies that have just opened in NYC are OKLAHOMA! and GIANT and FRIENDLY PERSUASION and RIFIFI.
Fascinated by others’ use of online slang. I don’t suppose that anyone who types this intends for me to read it the way I involuntarily do, as “laughing my fucking ass ooooooooooofff.” Extending the final letter has been fully divorced from sound, merely signifying emphasis.
