Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried both having unsuccessful serious movie Oscar bids and yet also a hugely successful mainstream work at the same time is the most “they actually do make ‘em like they used to” of 2025. Pretty common for the biggest stars to have both in their catalogue. It’s not new.

Love these images from the opening of Patricio Guzman’s THE BATTLE OF CHILE from January 1978 that the Film Forum posted (based out of an old location, a few blocks south of the current Film Forum location).

Sublime.

His golden globes commentary has been truly awful. The people do not want Marc Malkin!

Went to the Westwood/Kawakubo exhibit on the weekend. Really good stuff although with my usual caveats about NGV’s exhibit setups and lighting. NGV should just have a custom fashion wing, I reckon, given all the exhibits they do.

The latest HR nonsense: A gay man in Utah attends a watch party for the gay hockey show wearing a “Gay AF” t-shirt & is forced to leave the bar because multiple women complained to management about the presence of a man who they feared might get turned on by the TV show.

Oh yes.

holy fuck it’s real

Apparently my friends’ Castlemaine property has survived and his family is safe. Likewise the one in Harcourt although that one is less known at this stage.

What was your #childhoodcinema I had two in Geelong. The Village on Ryrie Street was a large multiplex twin initially (upstairs and down) that rapidly expanded in the ‘90s. The other was The Pix in Geelong West, around the corner from dad’s work. A brown library-lookin twin with sticky floors.

What was your #childhoodcinema I had two in Geelong. The Village on Ryrie Street was a large multiplex twin initially (upstairs and down) that rapidly expanded in the ‘90s. The other was The Pix in Geelong West, around the corner from dad’s work. A brown library-lookin twin with sticky floors.

I have friends with properties in Harcourt and Castlemaine. Devastated for them if they’ve lost them in the fires. And even if not, seems like their adopted towns have been decimated. Not going to bother them at this hour, though. They have bigger worries.

At Melbourne’s Astor Theatre for a special evening of the Twin Peaks pilot + eps 1 & 2 of s1. I can’t attend next weekend’s marathon of The Return, but honestly this is the screening i have waited for. Big crowd across generations, loving every moment. Basking in the glow of the greatest thing ever.

Cash, “claimed the $322 daily allowance, which is designed to cover accommodation costs, more than any other frontbencher who owns a 2nd home in Canberra. Cash has claimed $123,978 over 40 mths, or more than $3000 a month.” These greedy cunts then wanna lecture us. www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s response:

Summer vibes

Truly, can @variety.com just fire this Marc Malkin guy? He’s bad at his job and only brings disrepute to their brand (which is already dirt low due to their pro-Zionism and overt racism). He keeps appearing like some cursed troll to ask humiliating questions on red carpets with impunity.

Summer vibes

Not just how craven but how bloody stupid are Australian arts administrators? I hope that authors show no mercy and absolutely decimate Adelaide Writers Week over this. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

When a shuffle of my 2000-track deep gym playlist throws this up at the very start of a workout…

This is just so fucked up and utterly predictable. The person with an Arab name gets censored. What a shock. It’s the Venice biennale all over again. Don’t wanna spook people into having a thought at a writer’s festival.

The definitive Celine Dion 90s movie soundtrack single quadrilogy

Yesterday was by seven-year workiversary, which (I think!) means I finally start to accrue long service leave. In three years time I’ll be able to take potentially up to six months off! I don’t know what the world will look like in 2029, but I’m already planning a sleep in.

The AI Tai Chi (T-AI Chi?) man in all those YouTube ads is so ridiculously obviously fake it's amazing that anybody falls for it and yet I can believe it entirely.

Thoughts and prayers with whatever the film production is that’s been going on around Melbourne Town Hall in today’s 42-degree heat.

It’s not even about the oil youtu.be/RiitxrHxruo?...

I recently downloaded Hinge and now I’m having to schedule dates like I’m an executive assistant. And they (the app owners) want me to pay so that I can ‘like’ even more people each day (the free limit is four + whoever likes you first) that I couldn’t possibly have the same conversation with.

First Tarr I saw was THE MAN FROM LONDON because I figured it had Tilda and the film still in the festival program looked like THE THIRD MAN. That was an education. When I saw THE TURIN HORSE, the cinema had a fit and 20mins from the end turned into a discotheque of flashing lights and sounds.

Criminally Queer: The Bolton 7 is out now! The 5-part series tells the story of seven men from the former mill town in Northern England who in 1998 had their lives turned upside when they were arrested, interrogated and charged with archaic crimes solely because they’d had consensual group sex.

29

40

Drag Queen, 1975 https://botfrens.com/collections/19/contents/3950

IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU: a bit like REQUIEM FOR A DREAM if they replaced heroin with a child (a natural substitution). Rose Byrne is typically fab, but that Golden Globe nomination is insane. Even DANCER IN THE DARK was like, "hey, we made a real musical, but this is too bleak for that category."

A hacker known as Martha Root broke in and deleted three white supremacists websites at the end of a talk during the annual hacker conference Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.

IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU: a bit like REQUIEM FOR A DREAM if they replaced heroin with a child (a natural substitution). Rose Byrne is typically fab, but that Golden Globe nomination is insane. Even DANCER IN THE DARK was like, "hey, we made a real musical, but this is too bleak for that category."

I do not have a "best of 2025" list because these days I feel bad about not being able to see enough stuff. But we did do a silly little yearly wrap up on the radio show talking some of our fave songs from the year. La Bouche! Tom Petty! Selena! Wang Dang Doodle! joy.org.au/strictlysoun...

All of this tracks.

"As I watched Twin Peaks: The Return each week, I couldn’t help but recall the words of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky: “The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

Man, imagine being a journalist — a “chief political commentator” no less — and not being able to understand this quote. It’s pretty clear.

"We get up and we find out something terrible has happened almost every single day, and we just have to go do our job." In this week's episode of the podcast, @donatobomb.bsky.social and @monagle.bsky.social discuss the numbing, existential horror of Alexander Ullom's IT ENDS.

Watched 360 first-time watches in 2025. Excluding shorts and 2024/25 titles, these were my favourites. 1. Lost in New York (Rollin) 2. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky) 3. Shoah (Lanzmann) 4. Ronin (Frankenheimer) 5. Wavelength (Snow) 6. The Grand Bizarre (Mack) 7. The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood)

Watched 360 first-time watches in 2025. Excluding shorts and 2024/25 titles, these were my favourites. 1. Lost in New York (Rollin) 2. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky) 3. Shoah (Lanzmann) 4. Ronin (Frankenheimer) 5. Wavelength (Snow) 6. The Grand Bizarre (Mack) 7. The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood)

The American government stealing the artwork of Hiroshi Nagai of all people to push racist messaging is yet another plain-as-day example of the right wing having no idea about art. The only stuff they can actually use that looks/sounds any good is inevitably always stolen.

Why even bother scheduling a delivery for the day I will be home?

This is a fact.

Second viewing of AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH left me more profoundly moved by it on an emotional and a filmmaking level than I had been before. More strongly taken by its message of how religion is weaponised. Loved taking this time to navigate the frame and find minute details down to the smallest pixel.

Kanye is going to die. Nicki is going to die. Stallone is going to die. James Woods is going to die. Curb Your Enthusiasm core cast member Cheryl Hines is going to die. We'd better get used to pissing on the graves of people who once made work we loved when they've dedicated their lives to hate.

Members of neither the legislative nor the executive branch had a financial stake in the prevalence of heavy metal music.

This 'Gift of Room Tone' featurette from Criterion is charming, but, man, I wish it didn't have that music score. Seems to defeat the whole purpose!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjBI...