Signaling my virtue

Fighting fascism by watching ESPN's broadcast of the Miami/UF game via an illegal stream.

I saw a reel with some muscle head saying that, given a choice between a billion dollars or making more than you spend *and* being the UFC champ, 100% of men would choose the latter. Can't get it out of my head. He was so confident he had insight into masculinity and human nature.

Showing tomorrow at my local 18-screen Regal: Saving Private Ryan, Howl’s Moving Castle, Toy Story, Godzilla x Kong, Top Gun: Maverick, Hamilton, and Apollo 13, along with a dozen garbage new releases.

In hindsight the perfect replacement for Jay Leno.

Sitting at my desk, enjoying new releases from The Divine Comedy and múm like it's 2000.

A Congresswoman calls for everyone like me to be locked up. The world's richest man proposes I be subject to a Nazi medical experiment. I no longer flinch at the sight of the soldiers with assault rifles on my commute. A billboard for AI tells me "keep thinking." One cold brew with oat milk, please

I still haven’t been able to spot Claire Denis. Good movie.

Me when Jonathan Rosenbaum walks by in Four Nights of a Dreamer.

The staff at this bar are annoyed because the opening shift complained about yesterday’s closers. There are two types of people in the world: those of us who relate to this conversation and those who haven’t really lived.

Writing press releases is a thankless job, I know, but describing the 1990s as "one of the most influential decades in recent film history" is a criminal waste of words, especially in a lede.

I am, in fact, right about this.

True story. "Email Robert Redford's people" was on my to-do list for today.

My hot take is Sqürl are bad (I left their Big Ears show after 15 minutes) and the Man Ray films should be watched silently.

Someone needs to ask Cameron Bailey, "How many people attended the one screening of The Road Between Us? How many votes did it receive?" I'm sure he knows the answers. And if the latter is more than the former, he should also be asked, "How often do People's Choice votes outnumber ticket sales?"

I just ordered the Ranown box because I deserve a little treat don’t I?

Productivity tip: I discovered recently that PowerPoint is a surprisingly good design tool. When I need to throw together a quick, simple, decent-looking document and don't feel like messing with InDesign (not my strength), I set up an 8.5x11 PPT, paste in text and images, and save it as a PDF.

Most popular film on Letterboxd I haven't seen, per decade: 20: Everything Everywhere All at Once 10: Interstellar 00: The Dark Knight 90: 10 Things I Hate About You 80: Scarface 70: House 60: Once Upon a Time in the West 50: Sabrina 40: Laura 30: Gone with the Wind 20: Haxan 10: Birth of a Nation

Unlike most of my friends and colleagues at TIFF, I had a really nice week of watching good-to-great movies. My favorite four features (in alphabetical order): Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari) The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler) Dry Leaf (Aleksandre Koberidze) Sirât (Oliver Laxe)

If you care to hear me and other, smarter folks talk about the first few days of TIFF. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

Sitting down to watch TV at a film festival. Such is my commitment to late Marco Bellochio.

One big difference between this year and my first trip to TIFF in 2004 is I’m having a lot more conversations with friends about our cholesterol numbers.

In case you overlooked at, there's a market screening at TIFF today for Little Angels, directed by and starring Dean Cain.

Or you can follow along here. Day one was pretty great: Magellan, Sirat, The Fence, Mirrors No.3, and Bouchra. letterboxd.com/longpauses/t...

I’m posting quick reactions on the Moiree TIFF grid this year. moir.ee/critics/darr...

"You figured out the twist before I did." "I love a good plot!" I wish I could still enjoy movies like the wholesome older couple standing in front of me in line at Kohl's yesterday.

Heading back to Toronto tomorrow for what I believe will be my 20th TIFF. Who else is going?

I’m not saying I’m right, but I’ll take All the President’s Men over any American film of the ‘70s.

The new Jurassic Park movie, which is already available for online rental, still screens twice a day at my closest theater. We were planning to go, but the theater is marketing it as a "reissue" on ScreenX so the matinee child price is $18.99. Zero seats sold today. I don't understand the strategy.

"So, what's it like to be artistic director of a regional film festival?" "I've written 147 emails since Tuesday."

It's impossible to choose a side in a game between Brian Kelly and Dabo Swinney.

Go 'Noles?

Someone should make a film loosely inspired by Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc in a style that Alexis would've loved.

I've listened to "Music for 18 Musicians" a hundred times but had never taken the time to learn about its structure. This short interview with Reich is delightful.

My most unexpected, never-thought-THAT-would-happen concert experience was seeing Supersilent from the second row in 2017. Even more impossible-but-true was eating BBQ with them at the Big Ears after party the next day.

A new Midlake song! And a new album on the way! Sounds like Midlake! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph_n...

Whenever I see Trey Gowdy I'm reminded of that scene in one of the X-Men movies when a corrupt politician is turned into a mutant and squishes his own face through prison bars.

It was the cruel and heavily eroticized desire to see fat people tortured on live TV that got us here, and now we're not just validating that power she held as some form of expertise, we're covering her pivot to sociopathic Nazism.

Fun fact about that dumb viral tweet: One of the first times my wife and I hung out was at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee.

I want to start an '80s hardcore/post-punk cover band called Modesto Pinochet

You can recite facts at these people—that the homeless are a result of policy choices, that they are more likely to be the victims of crime than to commit it—but none of that can erase these guys’ real grievance against the homeless, which is that their suffering provokes a sense of guilt.

People who care about a corporate rebrand are exactly as strange to me as people who get corporate brand tattoos. This is my proud legacy as a someone from the Fugazi wing of Gen X. We would never.

Dobson's Dare to Discipline was published two years before I was born, if you want a short-hand explanation of my particular psychoses.

Thinking about becoming one of those old people who collects cats and dogs and gives up on humanity. Seriously thinking about it.

The Indiewire 1970s list doesn't mention Hal Ashby.

I've had a mild but distracting headache all day -- the kind that feels like a buzzing gnat -- and it's 100% caused by the crippling stupidity of the world right now.

Here's a picture of Mikey from American Chopper wearing a rad Tarkovsky t-shirt. Now you have seen this picture too.

Why would anyone agree to be in a scene with Dwight Yoakam, knowing he's going to hand your ass to you. Dude's got Timothy Carey-level presence.

Few things more wholesome than Milla Jovovich’s instagram when she and Paul pack up the girls for a family vacation.

I'm on another Desplechin kick and, look, there aren't good and bad Desplechin films. The pleasure of his work is always the same. If you think Kings and Queen is brilliant and Brother and Sister is an embarrassment, then you and I just don't watch movies for the same reasons, I guess.