True www.independent.co.uk/tech/grok-ai...

This week's @the-independent.com column, on Orson Welles, Voodoo Macbeth, colour-conscious casting & the Lupita Nyong'o affair www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

What a lovely, lively, scratchy, warm interview this is. Plays like a brilliant little two-hander - Linklater's Before Midnight by way of The Dresser www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...

For @the-independent.com this week, on Lean times at Cannes www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

"... because highlighting the issue of Brexit could make it more difficult for Labour to beat Reform" - the dead-eyed zombie paradigm of modern British politics

Almost as fascinating to see what didn't make the cut here as what did. No Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath. No Updike, no Roth. The 20th-century American lions all diminished & gone into the west www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

Pleased my vote helped get My Antonia over the line in the Guardian's '100 best novels of all time'. In with a bullet at 100, only one of my choices to so far make the grade & a thing of careworn clear-eyed beauty. Perfect 1st sentence sets the direction of travel www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

I have a story in this excellent collection, which is only marginally less excellent for having my story in it. Thirteen Gothic pieces from the modern market, published this week by the fabulous Comma Press.

A bellend from the conning tower

If he'd done this J6 at the Capitol he'd be looking at a full presidential pardon

This week’s @the-independent.com column: on the reissued Fight Club, a film that’s been hegsethed by the incels www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “Trump didn’t just hire incompetent people,” Frank Bruni writes. “He didn’t just hire lickspittles. He visited some perverse preserve of the morally degenerate — some superstore of grifters and goons — and said, ‘I’ll take the worst of the worst.’”

This is such excellent news. The flagship TV documentary series. The ideal choice of skipper to steer it home www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Upward Bound by Woody Brown. This is a fabulous first novel www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

Trump just openly stating his intention to commit genocide at this point: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

Joe Eszterhas on alcohol, cocaine and Basic Instinct, the unholy Easter trinity www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ap...

"I'll be 70 in 2026 if we're all still here" Lovely & strange to revisit High Hopes with its gaswork-studded Kings Cross & defiant last-stand socialism - like finding 1980s England preserved in an air pocket. One of the great film couples (Ruth Sheen, Phil Davis). One of the great final scenes

Start the fire. Walk away. Tell the world they’re on their own.

Wrote about 25 years of Amelie, send help. This week's @the-independent.com column here www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Is It 1914 in America? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/o...

Jamelle Bouie on the gaping fatal flaws of a narcissistic presidency www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/o...

Rounding up Paul Thomas Anderson's win at the Academy Awards. An interesting director who made an interesting film for these extremely distressingly interesting times www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...

Also delighted that Amy Madigan took the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Weapons, a full 40 years after her last nomination. Re-posting my interview with her from last month - she was just excellent www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

Reliably informed* that it was this article that did it (*not informed by anyone ever) www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...

Stumping for the PTA www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...

Managed to catch Sorrentino & Servillo between cigars, like a patient wildfire photographer staking out two lions in the scrub www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...

Growing sense over the past week that this whole elaborate Epstein-Trump-Russia house-of-cards is about to come crashing down. Terrible glorious inevitability to it now www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/u...

Left in the N-word, cut out "Free Palestine". Jesus wept, Bafta, that's not firefighting, that's arson. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

Hoping he sent him Secret Honor instead

Nice to interview an Oscar nominee who's been in this circus for years & simply can't be doing with the endless pomp & glad-handing. Could have chatted with Amy Madigan for hours, which would have driven her nuts, "Haven't you people seen enough?" www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

Jesus, a trio of American titans in the space of 24-hours. Duvall, Fred Wiseman & now Jackson - feels like an alternative Mount Rushmore just collapsed www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...

So long to Frederick Wiseman, the dogged, quiet legend of documentary cinema, who found his films by making them www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

Argh rats, what a loss, like an enormous bank of lights just went out. Duvall seemed elemental, I kind of hoped he'd shine forever www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

This week's Indie column, on Taxi Driver, John Lindsay & the 'bad apple' genre of 70s movies that first stained & then saved New York www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Trump’s ecocide squad: Russell Vought, Jeffrey B Clark, Mandy Gunasekara, Jonathan Brightbill & Myron Ebell. Knew the science & did it anyway www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/c...

I was thoroughly absorbed by James Meek's Your Life Without Me, a family saga dressed up as a terrorist plot. It's about destruction & renewal, the need (or urge) to rip it up & start again www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...

I hadn't clocked the use of the Phantom Thread score in Melania, but the soundtrack also features [checks notes] Gimme Shelter, And Then He Kissed Me, Spandau Ballet's True & Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Were all of these properly cleared & approved? www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

The full transcript of Adam Shatz’s LRB winter lecture is lengthy, knotty & worth every second. What America means, in theory & in practice - & specifically what it means now www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Jeffrey Bezos is destroying the Washington Post for the same reason Musk destroyed Twitter and Ellison is destroying CBS—oligarchs oppose the free press when if it threatens their wealth and power. They don’t want normal people to see what is happening in America.

10 best westerns (not the motel chain)

Only Paul Thomas Anderson at the critics' circle awards last night (from 1hr.12mins). Good heavens, um thanks, I'm in a state of total shock www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXZE...

This looks kind of fabulous: an ICE-age parable, set in the dustblown wild west, starring Alex Cox as a courtly scoundrel/saint who buys the souls of dead Mexican workers. Here's @peterbradshaw1.bsky.social's review from Rotterdam www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

This week's @the-independent.com column, on the Oscar-nominated films that speak up while their makers remain mostly silent www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Dog, meet manger www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/u...

See Melania & almost die www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ja...

Packed house ahead of the first public showing of Melania

This is mind-bending. The Minnesota GOP Governor wannabe who volunteered as the 1st ICE murderer's legal counsel just DROPPED OUT of the governor's race (and seemingly the party) because he can't stomach the 2ND ICE murder www.startribune.com/chris-madel-...