I recently wrote at length about M*A*S*H, which I watched in its entirety earlier this year. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

Wow, good thing I'm going away next year, because the Belvoir season is trash.

Watching Death on the Nile, the 70s version, with @mzspress.bsky.social . Haven't seen it since I was a kid. Instant reaction to the opening credits: when people make lists of their favorite Nino Rota scores, this one should be considered. youtu.be/wqKLyyrkT_Y

I'm turning forty on Friday. Please donate to the CPJ to usher me into the slow decline into death I inevitably face. www.facebook.com/share/p/1713...

"These cinematic monuments, with some of the largest movie screens you’ll ever see outside of an IMAX, are also survival stories." @colinsouter.bsky.social visited 6 drive-ins with his wife and wrote this wonderful piece. www.rogerebert.com/features/how...

Caught the last performance of GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS. Big standing ovation, especially for Toby Schmitz, who goes characteristically all-in and is excellent. But something was missing for me. Some books, and Porter's is one, are better left felt, not illustrated.

In a vague attempt to try something new, I spoke to my friends Zach Campbell and Adrian Martin (both of whom you should follow on Substack) about film criticism, academic film studies, the old days of film blogging, and which critics they're reading these days. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

So, uh, got some book mail.

If the Weimar Republic had a podcast, it would be the SLATE POLITICAL GABFEST.

The new issue of @meanjin.bsky.social is out and includes my first-ever piece of published fiction. It's a short story titled 'Zheravna' and I am obviously very excited. meanjin.com.au/edition/84-2...

Finished today. Three days and fourteen hours later. A hard thing to pull off, perhaps, but even after thirteen hours the fourteenth hits like a truck: a gripping portrait of a man with nerves so frayed you could braid them, who nevertheless finds grace in the presence of art.

Ten hours in and wishing we could finish it tomorrow rather than Friday. I'll have to write about it.

This is one of those issues on which Pat & I are *diametrically opposed*. I loathe Q&A, and always have. A waste of everyone’s talent.

Pretty wild to think MOUNTAINHEAD the cheap SUCCESSION given how cheap SUCCESSION was.

Five-and-a-half hours in and it's fantastic. A remarkable portrait, not only of the contemporary art world and its discontents, but of the world in the second part of last decade.

Here we go. Day one of the three-day, fourteen-hour screening of EXERGUE - ON DOCUMENTA 14.

Getting to see all of Jafar Panahi's films, in order, introduced by Panahi himself (except CRIMSON GOLD, which I've seen before and which clashed with something else I wanted to see) has been such a wonderful experience so far. Today we entered the period of his ban with THIS IS NOT A FILM.

Read the penultimate piece in my Israel-Palestine series now. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

Exciting to learn that Jafar Panahi will be attending the Sydney Film Festival in person.

I've been reposting my 2012 series on Israel and Palestine. Following pieces on Tel Aviv, the Golan Heights, and Kfar Haruv, I'm up to Jerusalem. The Negev and the West Bank to follow. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

I wrote a not-very-nice review of Anna Funder's not-very-good book. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

Fresh reissues of Harry Mathews from Dalkey Archive: www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Oh, good! "Unlock" is a noun now. That will be very useful.

I wrote a not-very-nice review of Anna Funder's not-very-good book. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

"People, to this day, still yell, 'Mattingly, shave those sideburns!'" www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb...

"'Children have hit balls with bats as long as there have been children,' says BASEBALL at one point, delivered in the inimitable tones of Burns' go-to narrator Peter Coyote. This is obviously as dumb as shit, but when you hear it you think: That’s true.“ open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

New piece on 'Weariness Makes a Good Mattress' about the Jaipur Literature Festival and, after the paywall, about the Newcastle Writers' Festival. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

New piece on 'Weariness Makes a Good Mattress', based on my experience tweeting an image of Australian art every day for two years. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

My latest.

“the books add up, by design or otherwise, to one of the most sustained and damning condemnations of imperialism in popular literature” @mclayfield.bsky.social on the continuing relevance of George MacDonald Fraser’s FLASHMAN novels, for @meanjin.bsky.social 2/3 meanjin.com.au/latest/why-r...

Vote early, vote often. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

I wrote a thing about Orwell's essays Please read and share. substack.com/@matthewclay...

Stephen Graham seems like a really nice guy to have a chat with. pca.st/episode/f8cb...

"[T]he more legitimate charge against Chu is not that she mines novels for theories, which most reviewers have done, but that she does so badly." www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

Sample copies arrived and they are SUPER can’t wait to share this with everyone. Pre-order now to ship as soon as stock is in exactchange.com/books/p/imme...

The opening of Orwell's 'As I Please' column for 8 December 1944. Plus ça change...

"I was a writer there for all of it, and I savored every minute. If I share my part of the story accurately, you will probably hate me." yalereview.org/article/burr...

"His passport photo was taken by Annie Leibowitz." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/b...

Every time I read The Great Gatsby, the final paragraph brings me to tears. Breathtakingly powerful writing:

"[The move] away from the 'television that invites comparisons to the novel to curry a sense of [prestige]' to 'television that must briefly become not-itself to curry a sense of prestige' also registers shifts in television's modes of production and reception." mid-theory.com/2024/10/05/l...

"TV was so highly acclaimed for so long that we were like the frog in boiling water, but in reverse. The medium became lukewarm so gradually that you might not even have noticed." www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/a...

"Everything wants you to know that it's very sincere." thepointmag.com/criticism/al...

“We feel. Machines do not feel, but they can be taught what feeling feels like.“ What a disappointing bit of sophistry. Heavy on portent but light on details. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

I may have paid a mint to attend the JLF, but I reckon you'd drop even more—and without the lunches, dinners, shuttle buses, and parties—to attend the same number of sessions at the Sydney Writers' Festival. Which is, in any case, basically Radio National by another name.

3/9/62: Knife in the Water, Roman Polanski's stunning, disciplined debut More: @geoff-andrew.bsky.social: www.timeout.com/movies/knife... @mclayfield.bsky.social / @sensesofcinema.bsky.social: www.sensesofcinema.com/2008/cteq/kn... @spectrumculture.bsky.social: spectrumculture.com/2010/09/09/o...

Amazing how people who make owning a Tesla a core part of their identity are getting mad that people are now treating them like it’s a core part of their identity.

People don't realize how lazy GenAI use makes 99.9% of users. We've watched real-time as students (and professors) cheating with it has gotten lazier and lazier. Something like "checking the references" just isn't going to happen. We'll see things devolve rapidly unless there are consequences.

One day in Delhi.

Pushkar.