A truly excellent @kphipps3000.bsky.social rumination today on video stores, inspired by Alex Ross Perry's VIDEOHEAVEN and the Criterion Channel VHS series. Not a nostalgia piece, but a more clear-headed remembrance of a bygone era. (Also free to read!): thereveal.film/ghosts-of-vi...
Passes for The Chicago Critics Film Festival at the Music Box Theatre go on sale TOMORROW at NOON. Allows you to see every film in our lineup from May 1-7 with priority seating.
Once again, the voice of resistance is coming from People Magazine.
This is a great read, and makes you reconsider whether you're really nostalgic for the $5/5 movies/5 days promotion, or just for your younger days when you actually had the time to follow through on the promise of it.
This hit home and made me incredibly nostalgic for Video Spectrum in Bowling Green, Ohio, a place I alternated between taking full advantage of and taking for granted far too much.
(Also, subscribe to The Reveal, some of the best film writing you can ask for these days.)
Today at The Reveal: Spurred by Alex Ross Perry's VIDEOHEAVEN and Criterion's "VHS Forever" series I wrote a bit about video stores, what we had, what we lost, how it made us feel, and what it all meant. (Also, we're making everything at The Reveal free all week.)
www.eventbrite.com/e/damien-obe...
If you’re in NYC and free tomorrow night, please come! Voidverse is an absolutely unbelievable sci-fi novel by client Damien Ober. And I’d be excited to meet some of my fellow Bluesky people in person! @claymcleod.bsky.social
Transphobia is a cancer of the heart and mind.
It is a useless fear, based on ignorance and cruelty.
Trans people are not responsible for a single one of the problems we face.
Do the world a favor and grow the fuck up.
Yep.
Confidential to Annie (last name unknown), a woman in Philadelphia who apparently used my email address to sign up for a dating service over the weekend: I hope you find the love you're looking for but I'd rather not be involved in the process.
I’d forgotten that Baby Nathan Fillion is in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
Today at The Reveal: It's a new episode of The Laser Age. @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social joins me to talk about MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, misguided 20th century science, and what the two have in common:
Inspired by seeing his Walmart ads during every World Baseball Classic break.
Check out @scotttobias.bsky.social and @kphipps3000.bsky.social at The Reveal. Great writers who remember that film has a history, bring interesting perspectives to the table, and know how to craft a sentence. I’ve been reading them for (Jesus!) more than 25 years and regret none of them.
2024: Probably not enough Walton Goggins
2025: Proper level of Walton Goggins
2026: Dangerously approaching too much Walton Goggins
THIS WEEK IN THE FIVE SPOT
-- Colin Firth is having a blast
-- the curling stone heist is somehow only my second favorite heist of the week
-- I love when the video of Tom Holland lip-synching to Umbrella becomes relevant again
AND MORE
type-click-type.ghost.io/the-five-spo...
I got to watch a 13-0 Japan vs. Chinese Taipei drubbing over breakfast this morning.
I'm game for whatever.
Somehow I missed that @kphipps3000.bsky.social has a podcast about pre-Y2K sci fi films! With a bunch of smart people I respect! And this one has @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social on it!
How exciting!
Surprisingly tense Mexico vs Great Britain matchup happening at the World Baseball Classic right now.
Today at The Reveal: It's a new episode of The Laser Age. @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social joins me to talk about MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, misguided 20th century science, and what the two have in common:
I contributed to @theringer.com.web.brid.gy's retroactive casting Oscars. It's a fun read. I wrote the entry for 2009 (a competitive year with a clear winner, to my eyes:
For @tvguide.com I reviewed ROOSTER, a new comedy starring Steve Carell and created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses. It's not _quite_ there yet but I enjoyed the six episodes I watched. The deep-bench cast helps: Danielle Deadwyler is great as always as is Charly Clive (who's new to me):
Well... Huh. These things happen.
Today at The Reveal: Reviews of THE BRIDE! by me (the exclamation point is part of the title) and HOPPERS (no exclamation point, and @scotttobias.bsky.social wasn't that excited by it):
Mads Mikkelsen in Bleeder.
Me watching your movie.
For The Reveal, I wrote about Jonathan Glazer’s BIRTH, in which an everlasting love that transcends death is, more simply and unromantically, grief: thereveal.film/the-rebirth-...
Casting two English actors as the hero and villain of this otherwise very American movie gives North by Northwest a weird energy. Grant plays everything Yanks like about Brits while Mason gets to play the opposite. There’s something rotten beneath those impeccable manners and literate airs. He might be impossibly handsome and clever, but, here and elsewhere, Grant seems approachable. Mason plays Vandamm as a man who looks at almost everyone else like something he scraped off his shoe. That he’s betraying and trying to escape the uncultured United States of America makes a lot of sense for the character.
I know I did but I doubt I'm the only one.
If you aren’t following The Reveal (and, if you can, paying for it), you should start now. Then catch up on all of these Sight and Sound 100 Best conversations. I am always excited when the notification shows up for a new one!
