love to end up on napoleon dot org for legitimate work research

nothing beats the high of scoring two opera tickets for under £30

I reviewed very different but very good British films out this week 🎥🍿

Looking for history / scholarship on operas in concert, can anyone point me towards their favourite work (or your own)?

spent time writing about Sondheim carmencp.substack.com/p/summer-of-...

Ludwig (Visconti)

Modus operandi: go to museum, find its birds

This is the lead story in the New York Times. If you're in the business of communicating, whether through journalism, commentary, or art, this is the five-alarm fire. People are going to remember who spoke up and who stayed conveniently silent or postured about "neutrality."

MJ's @carmenchloie.bsky.social calls LONDON CALLING, "a perfect film for a friends’ trip to the cinema or a night in with the (older) family members." #LondonCalling is in theaters Friday.

Real talk (reel talk?): BWDR recently lost a partnership that covered nearly half our operating budget, so things are suddenly very tough. If what we do has ever meant something to you, or you’ve ever thought about subscribing, now’s the time—it *truly* makes a difference.

Disastrous. Our @ucu.org.uk members in prison education do amazing work. What even is this government doing.

Re-upping this because we still need some help 🙏

Tickets booked for Knives Out, Hamnet, and The Mastermind (or, Shakespeare sandwiched between Josh O'Connor)

Lots of style with questionable substance... is a good description of this new book for cinephiles about Wes Anderson. Carmen Paddock @carmenchloie.bsky.social reviews WES ANDERSON: ALL THE FILMS.

Operation Gideon is an embarrassing name if you fail in your rogue mission, isn't it? Carmen Paddock @carmenchloie.bsky.social reviews MEN OF WAR, a documentary about Jordan Goudreau, the private military contractor who led a failed coup of Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro in 2020.

Pietà Michelangelo, 1498-1499

Oh. Hmmm

The way I will not be able to afford a NYC trip while Jack Wolfe is Orpheus and Jane Krakowski is Mary Todd 🥲

unfortunately none of the films I'm most excited about are playing regionally, but at least it seems like most will be relesaed within a few months of the festival

I wrote about my Recent Times carmencp.substack.com/p/summer-blues

the LFF FOMO is going to be something else this year

YESSSSSSSSSSSS

How am I just now finding out about Refinery29 UK winding down and laying off its staff? Gutted for their writers and for the industry, these stories are all too common

I'll be very very very normal in November I promise variety.com/2025/tv/news...

they think they can just erase trans joy and trans freedom. they can't. they can make things a lot harder and more painful. but that joy and that freedom is not theirs to take and it is incumbent on all good people to say so.

MJ's @carmenchloie.bsky.social says, "MATCH IN A HAYSTACK is a vital testament to the power and necessity of dance and art even in a war zone." #MatchInAHaystack is now playing in Los Angeles.

Late to sharing this but Blue Film was a standout at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, extremely difficult but absolutely fearless filmmaking movieswetextedabout.com/blue-film-ei...

Booked my ticket for True Grit at @glasgowfilmtheatre.bsky.social - the next in their Coens of the Month strand - which will be my first time seeing it in cinemas since I took my first solo cinema trip on New Year's Day 2011

Pros of being in a choir: making music as a group, new challenges, camaraderie Cons of being in a choir: learning Christmas music in August

Among all the other things, "The President has screwed things up so badly that the world's other rich countries won't deliver mail to us anymore" really should end it immediately.

PANDORA’S BOX (1929) w/ Louise Brooks is streaming on Criterion Channel if you'd like to celebrate G. W. Pabst's b'day. This is the new restoration, released on Blu-ray in Oct, 2024. Janus released it theatrically last year and I saw it twice. It's stunning. Very glad to see it streaming! #FilmSky

The atomisation of the internet and collapse of public and private spaces makes it very, very confusing when trying to contact sources for a story

The people who say we talk too much about slavery are the same ones who insist that we need public monuments and statues of men who are famous solely for waging a war of treason in defense of slavery. Statues that were created explicitly to deny any sense of "hope and progress" after the Civil War.

New Taylor, Florence, AND Nick Shoulders PLUS the Mountain Goats re-releasing The Sunset Tree for its 20th anniversary this October, things are looking up for me personally!

I have a huge soft spot for Flanagan in schmaltz mode

An excellent no nonsense statement from the Women's Institute.

you simply love to see it

"PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK is not a neutral film but it should not be. Farsi’s documentary is urgent, heart-wrenching, & deeply personal, profiling a single life among the tens of thousands lost too soon." - @carmenchloie.bsky.social's first EIFF2025 dispatch: buff.ly/ab3qwQe #edfilmfest

My Edinburgh Film Fest coverage to date!

Calling historians and researchers. The BBC Written Archives Centre has changed its access rules without consultation. This means an end to proper independent research into the BBC's rich history. 178 have already signed the open letter. Please join the campaign: tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign

Terence Stamp's first day shooting TOBY DAMMIT with Fellini. RIP. Via Wyatt Doyle on Facebook.

My first EdFilmFest 2025 review is live! Their opening film is very strong

Between buying a piano and having a neighbour's washing machine leak through our bathroom ceiling, I'm learning far more about managing indoor humidity than I thought I'd have to

Everyone rightly celebrating the 20th anniversary of Grizzly Bear, a great documentary of our age, the same week a film 'narrated' by an AI Werner Herzog makes its UK premiere is beyond parody

just realised that one of the films I had scheduled into my EIFF viewing plan is made by AI... absolutely not

It's an English summer now, so cool, so grey. Yet I think of my revenge and hurricanes.

Dolly Parton currently sends a new book to 2.2 million children every month. The number has steadily increased for years. It's in honor of her parents, who were illiterate. She works with hospitals. Many people have told us they had no idea the books would come. They are addressed to the child.

It's Edinburgh Film Festival day! I'll be covering for @takeonecinema.net, @theskinnymag.bsky.social, and Movies We Texted About and can't wait for some great new films 🎥🍿

Mild Gilded Age s3 finale spoilers but Julian Fellowes really missed a trick not having a James Garfield assassination-style clash between 1880s American doctors who believed in germ theory and antiseptics and those who didn't. (Otherwise, what a show!!!)

Last week my 2011 blu-ray of INCEPTION finally succumbed to disc rot and I was genuinely upset. Physical media stops working because it ages, like us. Films stop streaming because some rights changed hands between two rich pricks in a boardroom.