This is an important poem to me. It feels like the capstone of the soda collection I've been working on. My friends @thatjackanapes.bsky.social and @leonoralermontov.bsky.social helped me with the rainbow mountain dew image. Thanks to @westtradereview.bsky.social for selecting this poem!

Looking for a place to have your company party, live performance, wedding or film premiere? We're pretty much done it all here at the Kiggins! Send an email to [email protected] for more information.

Every so often I'm reminded that Tom Hiddleston can be genuinely tremendous

Multiverse action-comedy starring many versions of Bob Odenkirk: NOBODY, NOWHERE, NONE OF THE TIME

Liang directed the hell out of this movie, and this situation still fills me with such irritation for her.

Finally watched this and they are a powerful parable for the mischief an autistic brother and an ADHD sister can achieve together

My new short film is now available for online viewing! Made possible by my very talented and wonderful friends. If you watch it, please let me know what you think :) youtu.be/bnTHFVDZj_s?...

Might be the first year where I've seen all but one of the Picture noms already (got no Netflix so Train Dreams passed me by, hopefully they will do some theatrical now). Not as much to catch up on as usual...makes it fun, the predictions can start right away!

Thinking a lot about micronations again lately

First up at 4:40pm head to the Kiggins to catch the terrifying WEAPONS. Then at 7:30pm Michael B. Jordan stars as twins in Ryan Coogler's brilliant scarefest SINNERS. Each film is $10 per ticket. Add the second film (at the door) and see it for just $5 more. www.kigginstheatre.com/now-playing

Gone one year today.

My apartment complex's intense email subject headings would make such good song titles, it actually makes me wish I was a musician. Just saying, if there was a song called "Holiday Tree Disposal!! DO NOT PLACE IN TRASH COMPACTOR!" ... I'd listen to it.

Oh and btw 2026 is for art, for craft, for direction, for growth, and for creation. With these, we nourish ourselves

Not a normal year in various other ways, but just from looking at this you'd be forgiven for assuming so

Even more fun perhaps? Favorite new-to-me films discovered in 2025: - Hamlet ('48) - Millennium Actress ('01) - Sexy Beast ('00) - Tongues Untied ('89) - Farewell My Concubine ('93) - The Wages of Fear ('53) - The Heiress ('49) - Babette's Feast ('87) - The Fountain ('05) - Se7en ('95) - Bug ('06)

Leonora's Favorite 2025 Movies (no particular order really): - Black Bag - The Phoenician Scheme - 28 Years Later - Rebuilding - After the Hunt - Twinless - Sinners - Wake Up Dead Man - Marty Supreme - Boys Go to Jupiter - Sentimental Value - Blue Moon - Frankenstein - One Battle After Another

The first Olivier v. Branagh face-off on The Shake Up, and undoubtedly the most major. Ashley & I were the real winners, honestly, we got to watch so much Hamlet & then talk about it for y'all. Hope you enjoy this new years' treat!

I feel like if Redbox still existed, THE SMASHING MACHINE would be absolutely massive on there right now. It just seems like that kind of movie. I have almost no interested in watching it, but if I was passing by on my way out of the grocery store & saw it there, I might have given it a go

This is your annual reminder that no Muppet movie has only one human actor.

Coming to the pod next week: Hamlet!

The way Marty Supreme models Jewish-American identity is really fascinating. The 1980s motifs really work, too. Great movie.

Josh O'Connor was in 4 films this year. So I made the #Joshcars Hey @letterboxd.social can we hold an award ceremony just for Josh? Here are my votes.

The beacons are lit. Tess calls for aid. Please consider helping out for the holidays. 🎄

Impossibly horrible news. He gave us all so much ❤️

When I lived in LA 97-99 (and you may recall this @davidjroth.bsky.social), Rob Reiner led the smoking ban in bars. I couldn’t believe bars could exist without cigs. And I don’t even smoke. He kickstarted all of it. I still go to bars. I never have to Febreez my clothes. So, also that.

No matter what horrid slop nonsense keeps happening, I'm confident that movies (specifically) and the human creative spirit (more generally) will never truly die. Two of the best new movies I've seen this year were animated entirely in Blender by very few people. There's always a way!

The most important political fault line of our time is over whether children are people or property.

Saw someone claim that it's "statistically more likely" for someone to write a hit book & have it optioned for film, than for them to write an original script & successfully sell it. And I know they were being figurative and probably just guessing, but...can that even be measured statistically?

Love her.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN may nominally be about turmoil and murder in a Catholic parish, but make no mistake. I know an "Ex-vangelical Processing Some Stuff" movie when I see one! (as both that, and a cozy mystery, it's maybe not revelatory but definitely Very Good. I felt at home with both aspects)

let's see how many Robert Altman movies I can blaze through this weekend, and how that affects me psychologically

Happy 48th anniversary to the best adaptation of THE HOBBIT. You know I’m right.

It's Trans Day of Remembrance. It's hard to neatly encapsulate my thoughts and feelings. I just hope you'll take a second for them, even if it's just to register their names and faces. This is far from complete, and just the US. Still, they are important. www.transremembrance.org/in-memoriam

the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.

I can't think of a better deterrent for me personally going into a Target. Don't look at me, don't fucking talk to me

ChatGPT is doing everything 80s parents thought heavy metal and D&D did and I wish this was hyperbole

Anti-EBT people have never really struggled and you can tell. "OMG! You're buying cookies & soda? With OUR money?" Like, yeah, dickcheese. Those are calorie dense foods, which is exactly what you need when you're trying to survive. Some people need others to suffer so their efforts feel validated.

For some reason I keep thinking about that movie The Beach

However you come down on these two versions, Harry Perrineau looks fantastic in a miniskirt

Nature is healing when one MCU movie after another can’t get any traction while every month or two some Japanese anime I have never heard of called “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle” makes a fortune. This is how it should be

I don't actually remember WHO told me years ago that they hated The Fountain, but they thought I'd love it, in a way that I perceived as being somewhat insulting 🤣 but now that I have finally seen the movie...they were right, and I've decided it was definitely a compliment. Had to be 😅

Love to hear this, can't wait to see what they've cooked up!

Maybe tonight I will finally finish GHOSTS OF MARS, which is shot & edited like a 1950s western on lots of drugs, but scripted like half the John Carpenter filmography got tossed in a blender, with a design strategy somehow combining those two things! It's not great, but I love that it exists 😅

GHOSTS OF MARS has been on the Criterion Channel since the first of the month, and I have been watching it in bits and pieces since then. I don't even hate it, I just put it on for a bit and then about 10-15 mins later I think "that's enough Ghosts of Mars for now." I'm about 3/4 of the way through

This one's for the #classicfilm nerds: why don't people talk about Ronald Colman more? Only seen him in 2 or 3 movies but his charisma was devastating. He arguably out-suaves Cary Grant in TALK OF THE TOWN, but Cary cast a much longer shadow culturally. What happened there?

September 30th / October 1st

Need to escape the horrors? Come listen to us talk too long about horny Athenians!

If you’re canceling subscription services with giant companies with ties to terrible people, you should think about replacing them with a library card. Many library systems give you access to physical media (some of which you can’t find on streaming!) as well as other great stuff.