I’ve taken all other social media apps off my smartphone and I happen to be in Japan without my laptop, so I’d just like to say Fred Wiseman, what a admirable career. RIP.

RIP Béla Tarr. His collaborations with László Krasznahorkai and directing partner Agnes Hranitsky – for instance, Sátántangó, Werckmeister Harmonies and The Turin Horse – are impeccable monuments to a European sensibility of melancholic endurance. He was also a lovely, passionate man to talk to.

www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so... Here is my Sight and Sound review of Gianfranco Rosi’s BELOW THE CLOUDS.

when she had her job at msnbc i was always frustrated because i could see her biting her tongue and then finally boiling over and they could not contain her, now that she is free and easy she is a lot more fun to watch. and i am "spicy" AF 🤍☪️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

9/3/93: Kieslowski's astonishing Blue, w/Juliette Binoche Our feature on Blue, the 3 Colors & Mr. K via @cineastemagazine.bsky.social: midcenturycinema.org/wp-content/u... More @filmnickjames.bsky.social: www.criterion.com/current/post... @davidehrlich.bsky.social: www.indiewire.com/features/gen...

BOTD Nicolas Roeg!! MCCT5: 5)Walkabout 4)Performance 3)Bad Timing 2)Man Who Fell to Earth 1)Don't Look Now More: @filmnickjames.bsky.social: www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so... Jason Wood: mubi.com/en/notebook/... @brofromanother.bsky.social: www.theringer.com/2018/11/26/m...

David Stratton, Australia’s star TV critic of films, was already white-haired and grandfatherly when I met him in the 1990s. I broke bread with him often and he was great, encouraging, supportive company, full of tales of festivals in the 1960s laced with wicked humour. I already miss him. RIP

BOTD Peter Yates!! D key 60s/70s films incl Robbery, Bullitt, Friends of Eddie Coyle, more. From us: "On Location in the New Hollywood": drive.google.com/file/d/1OHuj... More: @peterhartlaub.bsky.social: www.sfgate.com/movies/artic... @filmnickjames.bsky.social: www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...

Here's my slightly belated review of F1 The Movie for @sightsoundmag.bsky.social . www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...

Today my book on Michael Mann's film Heat is published. Anyone who loves it will find plenty to enjoy and argue with in this quick hit of a read. It's not just a fan's appreciation, but a probing critical study. My thanks to @rebbarden.bsky.social and the @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social team.

Here’s my BFI tribute to the great documentarian Marcel Ophuls www.bfi.org.uk/features/mar...

This second edition of my BFI book on Heat is published 12th June is proofread and edited to a higher standard than the first; the stills are better quality and in an afterword I ponder changes in film reviewing fashions, Heat's continuing influence, the Heat 2 novel Mann is hoping to film and more.

The oil industry buys off Congress. No action on climate. The NRA buys off Congress. No action on guns. Insurance companies buy off Congress. No action on health care. The list goes on and on. Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction.

Filmmaker Hamdan Ballal may be just one of tens of thousands of victims of Israeli state violence but his symbolic importance is huge. Please sign this petition. www.change.org/p/global-fil...

Will @theacademyusa.bsky.social use its worldwide prominence to speak up for an Oscar-winning director? Hamdan Ballal was attacked and seriously injured—and the IDF arrested HIM while he was in the ambulance. No charges, no sign of him since. Where are you, AMPAS? chng.it/dzMJYfSbqM

I was lucky to get this image on my iPhone yesterday while visiting @londonzoo.bsky.social with my granddaughter Alba.

This splendid edition also contains my review of Walter Salles's excellent film I'm Still Here, starring the phenomenal Fernanda Torres.

When I joined this platform 2 months ago I anticipated some of the political pain Americans would go through (and yes, some is coming the UK’s way soon, I’m sure) but the flow of alarm and numb despair at so much wilful destruction here is truly hard to witness. I wish you all strength.

Londoners and visitors, please sign the petition.

This new 'bookazine' from @sightsoundmag.bsky.social is an unmissable goldmine for Akerman fans. Among many treats it contains my 2001 interview with her for La Captive, in which she was on brilliant, incisive form.

having succeeded in purchasing positions of influence inside the White House, the billionaires and tech VCs have now set their sights back on Wikipedia

Thank the lord for Private Eye

This obituary is for someone very dear to me, my wife Kate Ogborn’s mother Jane, a wise literary intellect who eventually accepted me into the most impressive and beloved clan it has been my honour to know. My thanks to Kate’s brother Miles for a fine summation. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

The irreplaceable David Lynch has gone. RIP 💔

Shallow thought: if I finish the 33 books I’m half way through it could seem like I will have read a hell of a lot this year. Except that, with some of them, not picked up for more than a year, I might have to start again.

Just caught up with Guan Hu’s Black Dog, a second tremendous new year film for me along with Nosferatu. It’s so rich with ideas, gorgeous landscape, humour and cinematic reference.

Had a recent recommendation to read David Lodge’s first novel The Picturegoers. Guess I’ll do it now. I enjoyed The Art of Fiction more than the campus novels – he was a great explainer. RIP. amp.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

I loved every hokum minute of Eggers’s Nosferatu. All the hamming, all the painterliness, the thumping soundtrack. It’s beautiful.

Our family’s favourite Christmas movie happens to be this one, Meet Me In St. Louis. Here’s wishing everyone a pleasurable holiday

Some folks are pretty good seeing things coming.

It was a great pleasure to attend Boris Giltburg playing four Beethoven sonatas this evening (nos 6, 11, 14 and 3 in that order) @wigmore-hall.bsky.social All benefitted from his energised attack when needed but no.3 was particularly stellar.

My films of the year for @sightsoundmag.bsky.social Might be different next week.

Political question: I remember stories about Syrian soldiers being sent to bolster Russia’s army in Ukraine a year or so ago. Did they ever go and if so, did that also weaken Assad’s grip?

In the Rinko Kawauchi exhibition at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol, is this video piece, part of her Ametsuchi series, which I count as one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Last night, on a train coming into Bristol, all the storm warnings went off at once on everyone’s devices. It was surprisingly like some arranged avant garde noise music event.

Always a pleasurable issue, the end of year poll. Only half of the top ten are on my list, but disagreement is also half the fun.

Saw a core group of ex-Sight & Sound colleagues tonight. The first time in a while and a real delight. We had great times together.

A sly Christmas movie alternative to the inevitable It’s a Wonderful Life and my family’s favourite, Meet Me in St. Louis.

Sight and Sound magazine is now on Bluesky! We will be announcing the results of our 2024 Films of the Year poll here, this Friday

The concert last night @wigmore-hall.bsky.social given by the Tetzlaff Quartet of Beethoven, Widmann and Brahms pieces was extraordinary. I’ve never heard a late Beethoven quartet played so exquisitely as they did the No. 14 in C sharp minor. Seize any chance to see them.

A tour-de-force of scholarship and detective work: Fara Dabhoiwala reveals that a portrait of an 18th-century Black scientist, long dismissed as a caricature, is in fact a record of the man's mastery of Newtonian physics—and the only painting made in 1759 of the return of Halley's comet.

From Saul Bellow’s Humbolt’s Gift: ‘America is a didactic country whose people always offer their personal experiences as a helpful lesson to the rest… – an intensive sort of public relations project. There are times when I see this as idealism… other times when it looks to me like pure delirium.

I see Leos Carax’s C’est pas moi/ It’s Not Me is released in the UK today. It’s short and such a pleasure to watch. It’s like ‘now Godard is dead, I can do what I really want’, a look back over his own extraordinary career done with great wit. There are some astonishing things in it. Don’t miss it.

Just want to say hello and thanks to the surge of followers who are coming my way. One thing I did to make my echo-chamber more various was to follow a cluster of women scientists. I may not know much of what they write about but it is stimulating. I rate the news feed too.

Here’s a promise (and here’s hoping it’s not a pie crust promise). I will only post when I’ve got something worth saying or transmitting. I’m not out to waste anybody’s time. So followers please be patient.

My first Blue Sky post. I’m bombarded with pics of sunsets and creatures in the wild, which is all very nice, but I’m looking for signs of human intelligence too. It sure takes a while to find out who to follow.