I'll summarize this: Mamdani asked NYers to keep air conditioning at 78 degrees. A wave criticism hit online. A MSNBC broadcast pointed out the US Department of Energy recommends that 78 degree figure. Immediately after, the US Department of Energy deleted 6,000 web pages related to energy saving.

We went to see a movie and this annoying couple just continued to have a full blown, normal volume conversation through the first 5 minutes of the film until I said, loud enough for them to hear, “Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up.” And they promptly shut up.

If the "takeaway" of a film is widely misunderstood, who is to blame, the filmmakers or the audience? For instance, if Marines watch Apocalypse Now and cheer the destruction and come away thinking Kilgore and Kurtz are awesome, are they media-illiterate, or did the movie fail in some basic way?

I wrote about DISCLOSURE DAY, and I found myself sympathetic to it. It's desperate, and that is not a word I usually use with Spielberg. It's a film about faith from someone whose belief in images has been shaken. www.patreon.com/willowcately...

Since we're ranking Spielberg films, here's my incomplete ranking, using the Key & Peele format

I am a strict “shut up and dribble” guy about exactly one subject: Tom & Jerry. Tom and Jerry should be chasing each other around a kitchen and that’s it. They should not be friends. They should not have a supporting cast. They should not be in French Revolution times.

Stoked for this PERSONA reboot.

Saw someone being offended because they are young and they shouldn’t have been expected to see RAIDERS because “it’s old.” Man, when I was 19 I had seen so many old movies, and I had to work for it. There could not be an easier time in history to pick up on seeing an “old”movie.

"83% of LLM users could not quote a single line from essays they had written minutes earlier. When the LLM group was forced to write without AI in a follow-up session, their brain activity did not bounce back to baseline; the researchers coined the term 'cognitive debt' for the lingering deficit."

For me, I think Inde Navarrette will and should be a star. I think the things that are good and interesting about this bottom-heavy, exhausted masterplot are entirely due to the wisdom of her performance. Entirely. She's the moral rudder. The ship isn't seaworthy, but the rudder is unerring & true.

The people who have spent centuries depicting Jesus Christ, a real brown Palestinian Jew, as a blond haired blue eyed white guy, are upset that a film depicts Helen of Troy—a fictional person—as a Black woman They are upset that another film depicts Snape—also a fictional being—as a Black man 1/2

Oh so this is the "I will spot you some early wildness before I harvest your souls" Misiorowski.

When you realize you HAVE danced with the devil in the pale moonlight.

All the developers 404 Media talked to were excited to try using LLMs at work at first, or were at least curious about them. Their feelings about the tools, based on their personal experience, are now overwhelmingly negative. AI is rotting their brains www.404media.co/software-dev...

Who was that guy having too much fun at that midnight screening of the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival? Here's the answer, along with my top five of the festival. @mkefilm.bsky.social

Most days my son, who attends school where I teach, uses my car in the middle of the day. On Thursday, I found my returned car oddly angled in the parking lot. Then I looked at my texts.

The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival @mkefilm.bsky.social is at its midpoint but hardly slowing down. Check out these under-the-radar picks for the remaining days. This year you can find my fest pieces in area Conley Media newspapers, and online at Greater Milwaukee Today. Link in comments.

The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival @mkefilm.bsky.social started today. Check out the retro program! This year you can find my fest pieces in area Conley Media newspapers, and online at Greater Milwaukee Today. Link in comments.

I'm sure it's because I was a film critic for 21 years and went to a movie theater 2-5 times a week and getting treats every time was untenable, but I do not understand people who think $20 in concessions is "part of the cost of moviegoing." You can bring your own! Or not eat! You don't have to eat!

Some thoughts about the 2026 @mkefilm.bsky.social Festival, which kicks off April 16. This year you can find my fest pieces in four local Conley Media newspapers and online at Greater Milwaukee Today. Link in comments.

The NYT calls it like it is

I think one of the reasons so many films today don’t hit emotionally like they should is so many films shot digitally just do NOT use film grammar well anymore. Film is a dying language. This is a close-up in a 1922 Elvira Notari film. She cuts in close so we feel this woman’s sadness viscerally.

I can't recall a time when more talented reporters and writers on movies and culture who have real skill and knowledge are struggling to find a foothold. We live in an "Everyone's an expert" era. But everyone isn't. Editors: Please take a chance on folks you haven't tried before. Read their clips!

Everybody's asking

There were tiny kids in the audience laughing their little heads off at 99-year-old comedies and I don’t think there’s a stronger recommendation than that

Isn't it fun to watch teams trade clutch buckets in the final minute of a basketball game without stopping for timeouts or for referees to fuss over where to set the clock?

Least aware religious fanatic I’ve ever seen.

When you choose the movie and everyone hates it

No one will ever convince me that having thousands of open hands between the patient, the doctor, the medicines, and the facilities needed is "smarter business."

A truly excellent @kphipps3000.bsky.social rumination today on video stores, inspired by Alex Ross Perry's VIDEOHEAVEN and the Criterion Channel VHS series. Not a nostalgia piece, but a more clear-headed remembrance of a bygone era. (Also free to read!): thereveal.film/ghosts-of-vi...

This really feels like an Orban/Erdogan situation in which the aspiring dictator is making sure his friendly oligarchs control as much media as possible www.cnbc.com/2026/02/26/w...

Look at the mask on the far right. Kubrick knew.

Incredible opinion. It holds that the common ICE tactic of jumping out of an unidentified rental vehicle and seizing suspected noncitizens while masked violates the Fourth Amendment because the *manner* of the seizure is incompatible with a free society governed by the rule of law.

I think i'm a book snob. I have a lit degree, read the classics and settled on a modern american lit focus. Most of the books I read and loved for my degree were old, tightly written and well told. Every time I try to read current fiction, my brain spends the entire experience rewriting the book.

Sometimes very hard not to feel like the rest of the country has abandoned Minnesota. We STILL have ICE everywhere. Our schools, businesses, and economy are in profound crisis. But without Bovino here throwing tear gas, much of the country seems to not care at all what’s being done to us.

Listen, it's not my favorite genre, either. But imagine being so myopic that you can't set aside your personal music preferences for a mere 15 minutes and find a way to recognize the joy, pageantry, artistry and patriotism in a superstar's labor-of-love performance. That sounds so... miserable.

Father confronts ICE after they chase his daughter home…

The execution of Alex Pretti is playing so badly because you can look at his actions and life story - his last act was helping, boy scout, athlete, health care worker to veterans - and compare those to the men who killed him and know which you would want to be your son, brother, father, uncle.

Wouldn’t have made it out of the VEEP writers room

Alex Pretti was a great American. The people defending his killers are not.

This witness to Alex Pretti's murder not only refutes the governmen't story, but says she is afraid to go home because federal agents might arrest her. This is what it feels like to live under state terror. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

It is fun when you’re heading for a screening of a movie called THE SHITHEADS and the volunteers directing people to the correct theater have to keep asking everyone: “Shitheads? Shitheads?” I’m just as God made me, sir.

ICE is now responsible for 66% of the homicides in Minneapolis this year.

Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

RAGING about SINNERS being totally shut out of Best Documentary Short. Time we called out this category's bullshit systemic bias against films that are not documentaries or shorts.