I'll be moderating this Brooklyn Bookfest panel with novelists @jasondiamond.bsky.social, Denne Michele Norris and @katiekitamura.bsky.social. I hope you can join us.

If you have opportunities to get out and do things with others, jump at the opportunity: meetings, classes, social events, etc... Get out and be with other people. It's essential. If virtual is more convenient, then take advantage of those opportunities to be with other people.

In case you missed it, Monday was my last day at Rolling Stone, and for the time being, I'll be doing all of my reviewing, recapping, and other TV analysis at my newsletter. I hope you'll consider subscribing:

Would anyone ever explain to him he’s wasting six hours a day of his life and he’ll never get back?

Watching Paul Newman and Robert Redford act together is one of the most supreme cinematic delights. I wish they made more (and even better) movies together. What amazing, kind, politically astute dudes.

Chicago is a major frontline, both in terms of what's happening on the ground, right now, and what's permanently happening in the right-wing imagination.

I've been thinking a lot about the body in film as a site of cultural ideals and sensuality. Also been thinking a lot about what it means to write embodied criticism as people seem more and more disconnected from their own bodies and each other. These ideas run through my Movies That Fuck column

My latest is an interview with director Bing Liu about his film “Preparation for the Next Life” www.vulture.com/article/prep...

I’m on crazy pills, apparently. Hats off to Ezra Klein for virtue signaling with his whole pimply ass out without any shame. Let’s be clear, Kirk was not our era’s most effective practitioner of persuasion, he was an activator for the bigotry and hate that was already thriving in people’s hearts.

without daily, impassioned criticism, stan-driven ephemera on decaying platforms will be how we will remember today’s artistry and times, if we are lucky. good criticism considers the long arc of history whereas standom praises without reflection…

The Right is about to have field day of self-victimizing as targets of political violence so they can create cover for the fact that they actually instigate most of the political violence in this country.

Is denying people healthcare, kidnapping people from their jobs to be sent to detention camps, targeting minorities with legislation and hate speech campaigns not political violence?

The Charlie Kirk shooting happened essentially as another school shooting happened a state away

7, with a touch of number 9.

feminist analysis requires that you understand power relations and harms to marginalized communities, and fight to destroy those forces. to use AI is one of the most anti-feminist things you can do on many levels, and that’s why tech bros and AI boosters love it.

What I think about nightly at 3am: “The irony of the decline of written criticism is that nearly everyone I spoke to agrees it is more necessary than ever.” nymag.com/intelligence...

Just finished this Herculean reporting & writing effort from @eminietfeld.bsky.social and I’m just blown away by the cruelty and depravity that surrogacy—but frankly, more pressingly, the legal system—is allowing this VC investor to exert upon an innocent woman www.wired.com/story/the-ba...

Anyone that believes an algorithm can fully predict what an artist would've done has no respect for art

There is no way you can answer the questions people have around the lost footage by using AI to construct what can ultimately never be experienced. This is so ghoulish, anti-art, and ultimately, anti-human to me. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

the hurricane katrina series i co-curated, “when the world broke open: katrina and its afterlives” continues at MoMA through september 21. on saturday at 7 pm, we screen the pilot episode of “treme” with creator david simon and star wendell pierce in conversation with me. join us, won’t you?

The administration plans to attack public festivities in Chicago around Mexican Independence Day (which may include this weekend's parade in Pilsen or related activities) because they want to attack folks in settings where people will try to protect and hold onto community members.

This by @charoshane.bsky.social is one of the most vulnerable and actually beautiful pieces that I have read about becoming published. Also so grateful for the honest accounting of numbers of books sold and what that all actually means: meantforyou.beehiiv.com/p/the-mortif... - thank you

"[James] Cameron is on the board of directors at Stability AI, and is therefore among a group of (generally very wealthy) people who think that using generative AI to replace jobs and depress wages further is the key to saving the mainstream film industry."

I want to be a writer, not an entrepreneur

New Yorkers: there's an incredible series at MOMA (@moma.bsky.social) commemorating the 20th anniversary of Katrina with a series of films about New Orleans before and after. Curated by @mayascade.bsky.social and K. Austin Collins. My picks: www.rogerebert.com/mzs/when-the...

Oh wait! I just remembered/realized @angelicabastien.bsky.social’s Keanu appreciation was on @bwdr.bsky.social ! That was the first I read. You should subscribe and go read that if you haven’t.

Chattel slavery was so bad that when we tell you how bad it in fact was most of y'all shut down and tell us we're making it up and pass laws against us ever telling you how bad it was again because your brains literally cannot handle how bad it in fact was.

I guess editors don't get enough love, because many of them seem taken aback when complimented. But it's an art, and it deserves appreciation. So here's to all of my editors. Thanks for improving my work, saving me from myself, and pushing me in new directions. Also for putting up with me!

BWDR was so integral to my early years as a critic and essayist. Such an amazing publication. Lend your support by subscribing!

this shot of columbo walking up a city street is one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen

an empire’s dying days. it’s up to us how we will protect one another, and what we will build as the structures we have traditionally relied on cease to function

My latest about another thinly drawn superhero flick that didn’t entertain me. www.vulture.com/article/vane...

Fucking hell. I just posted today about how higher ed always devalues the humanities & how it's linked to legacy media laying off seasoned cultural critics. It's all connected: defunding the humanities & public media, pushing AI on us - it's about destroying critical thinking.

Those aren’t reviews. Those are opinions, and they have their place and uses, but they do not substitute for deeply informed and engaging critical writing, which is a skill that takes time, practice, and experience to develop.

Thanks for sharing my big news @dreadcentral.bsky.social. All hail @mbmcandrews.bsky.social 💜

Jackie Chan

to be clear here, this isn’t what i think is the BEST reeves film, it is just my personal favorite — the one that i regularly rewatch. it is his directorial debut, MAN OF TAI CHI, where he plays the villain

My favorite doctor and companion

Illinois has banned AI therapy, making it the first state to regulate the use of AI in mental health services. www.engadget.com/ai/illinois-...

people are acting like AI is out here doing the things AI companies say they will do one day. it is not! the disruption has not happened! Industries being completely gutted because carnival barkers told CEOs their magic 8 ball will do everything for them

If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages

Love the movie. Saw the damn thing five different times. But Angelica nails the broader problem with all of these movies (and any based on pop culture IP).

I really contain multitudes. Here's an excerpt from this essay about Superman (2025), modern fandom, and the issue with treating film as a mirror. angelicabastien.substack.com/p/superhero-...

I originally avoided writing about Superman to protect my peace. But some of y'all pissed me off so much, I changed my mind. So this new piece for my newsletter is coming in hot and dropping in just a few minutes.

Just as a general point: As a critic I've never labored under the impression that I can or should influence Hollywood stars & execs. I don't write for them. If they read my stuff, cool! But I don't write for or TO them I'm writing for the rest of us — we the audience who watch their TV shows/films

Not since the 1940s, when the automobile industry bribed governments into dismantling street cars, has an entire industry twisted the arm of the American consumer with such force

The distinction between "is this person a vocal transphobe?" and "work on a transphobe's project is not a dealbreaker for them" seems awfully thin, especially when these are financially secure people

If you're using AI to write essays, eulogies, a text to your wife, I do think less of you as a person. Ceding your mental and creative abilities to a machine is an embarrassing thing and people should be ashamed to admit doing it in public.

Few people actually read and STUDY Black women intellectual's work or take it seriously. I believe if they did, their work would be much better. The conversations about love, relationships, ABUNDANCE etc... are all theorized in Black feminist scholarship.

Increasingly I think a major function of “masculinity” IS its crisis — a vehicle for the dominant & dominating group to justify focusing their social attentions primarily on themselves