A good example of the "plotcel" ideology in a lot of pop art crit. What the OP here clearly means is that it's not clear what the final scene adds at the level of plot, because it isn't about that. What the final scene MEANS, though, definitely ain't opaque.

Few things as satisfying as watching a team do the candy-ass thing of baiting for an offsides/false start penalty getting punished with a brutal loss. I have no rivalry reason to hate the Eagles (Seahawks fan) but after the cheating of the tush push I root for their downfall.

Braxton Berrios sounds like a grandpa cereal

Let's make Meghan's life's work Open Access! Chip in if you can... gofund.me/08aa0ed6b

This factoid's in my book!

I know it was in fact Shakespeare’s son’s name, but Hamnet is so funny as a name in that it sounds like a straight-to-DVD rip-off of HAMLET, in the same way that “Rossencraft” and “Gilderstone” do in Q1 HAMLET.

TIL that (a) Grimace is a taste bud, (b) I learned this fact because there is a McDonald's wiki, and (c) this is Grimace's "bio"

I am of two minds about TRAIN DREAMS (the movie). If I pretend I don't know anything about the source material, I like it quite a lot. But because I do love Johnson's novella, and especially the wolf-boy scene at the end (horribly butchered here), my like is at arm's length.

Someone really needs to write the “American Catholics that are Actually Protestant” book.

Everything I've heard/read from Nuzzi's book violates this classic writing "rule" of Elmore Leonard's. (I, for one, don't always agree with this rule, but it is 100 percent true here.)

Immediately snatched up @hamrahrama.bsky.social’s new book upon reading this. Our best working film critic, for what my opinion’s worth. I use his stuff all the time in my teaching. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Tom Stoppard was born, escaped the Nazis, and died as they were making their comeback.

I don’t want to be pollyannish about the past, but it was basically inconceivable twenty years ago that a president would say this publicly

What did Xavi Simons do to anger Thomas Frank?

If ENIC listen to the Spurs fans baying "Frank out," they're giving in to a contingent who think that if we had a good manager we'd be right back to where we were with Kane and Son, which... is not close to where we're at right now.

Sondre Lerche's solo acoustic cover of Prefab Sprout's "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)" is great AND it makes you wonder how THOSE are the chord progressions Paddy McAloon landed on. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkMx...

*Martin Sheen in THE DEPARTED voice* Jukt Micronics

Did much of my dissertation work at the Ransom Center, and had a summer fellowship a few years ago to work on my book project on Stoppard's dramatization of topics in analytic philosophy. Cannot recommend spending time at the HRC enough; literary heaven, far as I'm concerned.

Well, was wondering if this would happen while I was writing a book about him. RIP to one of the greats of the modern theatre. www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/n...

Those black Bayern Munich jerseys they have for the Champions League are top-notch.

But some rando on TikTok the other day, as so many people do, said that the best advice for those who want kids but fear the finances is: "Don't worry, you'll make it work." Sure thing!

@brofromanother.bsky.social’s review of TRAIN DREAMS aptly speaks to why, as much as I like the movie for what it’s trying to be, I can never fully love it for the adaptation that it is. What they did with the wolf-boy scene alone keeps me at arm’s length. boxd.it/bQnR5P

I get why studios think they can put out slop in the theatres when this is the kind of box office return you can get from a movie whose only reviews I’ve read are “this is one of the worst things ever made”

Ok, maybe there is such a thing as take addiction

My one indulgence in this year’s B&N Criterion sale, a masterpiece of our time.

Signing a guy who looks like former Vine star Nick Colletti... very LA-vibes move for the Lakers.

Seeing Spurs fans call for Thomas Frank to be fired immediately is sending me into more of a doom spiral then losing 4-1 to a team that is decidedly better than us on every metric, even if that team is a hated rival.

THE LIFE OF CHUCK really surprised me. It’s not perfect, but it’s much more ambitious and free-spirited than its trailer let on (its vibes were “what if CLOUD ATLAS was THIS IS US?”). It’s certainly the best artwork in 2025 to have THE LIFE OF as its first three title words.

All-time odd bumper sticker just seen in ATL: “I used to listen to Five Iron Frenzy”

It’s not a good movie (not sure the original musical is much better), but the recent TICK… TICK… BOOM film has some catchy tunes that feel like direct homages. “30/90” is Billy Joel’s “Angry Young Man,” and this is straight up Prefab Sprout (attn @jessehawken.bsky.social) youtu.be/zmSprl2moqI?...

There's an article to be written about artworks that are structured around having a second part, sequel, or series, that are not made better by the story playing out that way. Dan Simmons' novel HYPERION is a masterpiece, and THE FALL OF HYPERION is so not-good that I almost never return to it.

The universe gave us a quarterback with more wow and talent than Brady who immediately got results, but (1) the QB has an actual division, unlike Brady’s Pats, (2) racist mascot, (3) uneven defensive performance. Brady Luck truly cannot be overcome.

Color theory ppl: my favorite color in the world is the way these kind of streetlamps look when they hit water. Anyone got a name for the hue? (EP cover by my favorite band as example)

Been following Frey's writing since the fracas at the U of Tulsa's Honors College (where Frey was sacked, despite doing incredible work there), and I gotta say: if this is the genuine belief of the Great Books crowd, they really gotta start getting anticapitalist. baylorlariat.com/2025/11/11/d...

Correct. Also, even if these articles weren't racist (explicitly or implicitly), the thing is: idk why the assumption always has to be that we have to crank out kids to keep the economic cycle going, rather than altering our economic situation to meet our population reality.

At this point, I'm fully expecting one email to be leaked where some "wokeness has gone too far" public figure accidentally CCes the New York Times on an email sent to Epstein with the subject line "SO THE PASSWORD'S 'FIDELIO,' RIGHT?"

A superb, analytically rigorous review of another one of these books that tries to be “trad” feminist, which, as it turns out, says little substantively at best and at worst provides cover for more insidious thinking. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/1...

For the 20th anniversary of what is in my view David Gray’s masterpiece, LIFE IN SLOW MOTION, I wrote about the ten songs of his you should listen to that AREN’T “Babylon.” (There’s an issue with videos not showing up that’s being fixed.) www.popmatters.com/10-david-gra...

I have a book I for several pivotal moments in my life. 2004: Dan Simmons, HYPERION 2009: Steven Hall, THE RAW SHARK TEXTS 2010: Suzan-Lori Parks, TOPDOG/UNDERDOG 2011: Lawrence Weschler, SEEING IS FORGETTING THE NAME OF THE THING ONE SEES 2017: William Langewiesche, ALOFT

Notice: “work sucks” when directed at men means that we need better working conditions and higher pay. “Work sucks” when directed at women means that they should drop out and have babies.

Same!

My hot take is that if McDaniel looked and talked like Dan Campbell but was otherwise exactly the same, he wouldn’t be on the hot seat and the story would be “what can you expect him to do with Tua?” But because he likes analytics and looks like a coffee shop millennial he’s a target.

My fascination with Henri Verneuil peaked this year with I… FOR ICARUS, basically a French JFK over a decade before Stone’s movie came out. Sleek and sharp mainstream cinema that’s morally clear-eyed in a way that’s sadly all too relevant still. boxd.it/axnQK9

I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than this: if Democrats are willing to scrap something like ACA subsidies, you have to be willing to tell them you’re not going to vote for them. And then actually do it. You can’t keep voting for ppl who sell us all out to compromise with fascists

Medievalists will be pleased to know that Atlanta Vintage Books has Greenblatt’s THE SWERVE filed under fiction.

But people will act like Trump has to come out and say a slur on-mic for us to credibly call this administration racist, which it is.

As a film in its own right, undeniably stunning and emotionally powerful. As an adaptation: kind of a failure. The pros undeniably outweigh the cons, but part of me wonders if there’s an unadaptability to Denis Johnson’s novella.

This is, for my money, the best run of movies by a living director at the moment.

"It's RIDICULOUS and SOCIALISM to ask that the GOVERNMENT get involved in health care... unless I need it pwetty please!"

I have seen at least five moments in the last five innings of this game that could begin a Secret Base "Rewinder" video.