As always, respect for your ethics and willingness to practice them, regardless of external pressures. If there are ways even us intermittent podcast listeners can be supportive, I hope you’ll let us know.
I first saw NATCHEZ on something of a whim last August when I was up in Middlebury, VT to speak on a panel about journalism at the film festival there, and I have thought about it an awful lot since then. It's starting its theatrical run, and worth your attention.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/m...
Who will be the first pro poker player to get cast on The Traitors?
FYI film industry folks - “leopard” in today’s NYT Connections has nothing to do with Locarno.
Would be curious to hear your thoughts. Dustin is an acquaintance from the film world, but I didn’t know he played until I saw the film and asked him. I think he and Michael both play in a regular LA home game (probably with other film folks)
@thirdwalking.bsky.social a poker(ish) movie recently that flew way under the radar - THE ADULTS, (dir. Dustin Defá, starring Michael Cera) uses poker as a B plot to reveal the protagonist’s interior (at least that’s how I read it). But is also a quite realistic depiction of small scale home games.
I’d be shocked if Courvoisier didn’t pay for “Pass the Courvoisier”.
In the early 2000s there was a brand placement chart kept up by some agency that tracked references (paid or unpaid) to brands in pop songs (mostly hip hop). It led me to a theory that David Beckham had paid rappers to mention him as part of an image-building campaign.
I have rarely felt more like a grown-up than just now when I pre-ordered collard greens for my NYD hoppin’ John
Read train dreams a few years back and loved it. Like Stoner (with which I think it shares some DNA) I would have thought it extremely difficult to translate to film. Eager to see the results (and I’ve got a lot of time for pretty much anything Joel Edgerton does)
A rare point of disagreement for us. I had no patience for this flavor of filmmaker navel-gazing
Great culture can save lives. Literally.
Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard
Quality socials
I named my fists Kuleshov and Effect because you won’t know how you feel until the second one hits
Oh absolutely. Didn’t read the Deadspin article (so maybe I’m repeating) but they’d actually made content for Keating (the first player to bring it up) in the past. Was really just the height of sloppiness and/or lack of ability to find their story in the actual footage.
Thought of you and your article the moment this broke in the poker world. Where it is a BIG DEAL. What’s more, they had full access to the players whose quotes they faked - this was pure laziness
If I were a progressive candidate looking to advance a big-tent platform, I would be screaming about this. No consumer wants dynamic pricing. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/o...
So good. I don’t even know how to describe the waves of emotion that I felt watching it. I wept, but it was almost joyful? One of the deeper emotional journeys I’ve ever gone on with a film.
Nu Shooz & The Jets (5th grade)
Pixies (Doolittle tour)
Chumbawamba, Drop Dead, Crash Worship (Hampshire College)
ESG & Bratmobile (Ladyfest Chicago)
The Faint w/ Bright Eyes (my basement)
Ok, wait, what?
I have had that exact thought process so many times. Lucky us.
I hope that somewhere out there a Native Alaskan filmmaker is writing an indie film about a group of teenage friends centered on Cali Swag District’s 2010 performance at Club Millennium in Anchorage.
Thinking a bit more about this and I’m often judgmental of others when their criticism amounts to “it wasn’t the movie I wanted/would have made.” So good to have to catch myself making a version of that same argument. Though I still wish it was a bit less conventional formally.
Ok, that’s a pretty unassailable retort
I wanted it to feel more like Nebraska feels. Spare, ethereal, non-commercial. JA White is great, and I found moments of real pleasure, but it was ultimately disappointing for me.
Kicking off my new treasure hunt in Ithaca, NY this Saturday. We’ve hidden $10k in jewels somewhere in Tompkins County. Be the first to solve the puzzles and claim the prize. Sign up at www.thehistorycenter.net/tompkins-tre... - first clue is $100, your team can be as large or small as you like.
I’m not normally one for four dimensional chess theories, but if I wanted to decimate a whole raft of arts and media nonprofits, forcing public media to raise billions of dollars would sure do the trick
This interview actually contains a lot of great info about proper care and protocols for doc subjects - even in as weird and as manufactured a setting as THE REHEARSAL www.decodingtv.com/p/an-intervi...
A sad one! R.I.P. Robert Wilson. "Einstein on the Beach" was a canonical work for me as a teenager, long before I saw the piece at its first BAM revival. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/t...
Newspaper photo of a group of cats huddled together on a satellite dish with the headline, "Outdoor cats are using $500 Starlink satellite dishes as self-heating beds."
Cats are and always have been cyberpunks
