#blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

2 weeks ago

2/27/26 - project update I haven't been posting much writing this week. ostensibly i needed to give myself a few days to focus on a larger writing project that i've spent about a year away from and am feeling ready to come back to, a pilot script. writing my little daily newsletters has been pretty effective at providing me some structure and accountability, but it's not a style of writing i've ever planned on doing longterm. i'd like to write for tv/film someday (the sooner the better). That doesn't mean i'm gonna stop writing these any time soon. on the contrary, i've been thinking a lot about how to formalize them a little bit, at least to the point where they're not limited to people with bluesky accounts. it's tricky. i'm a little obsessive about project sustainability, and to me the easiest way to sustain a project is to make it run with the least amount of input possible. posting screenshots of my word processor is *really* low input. upping the production value even a little bit runs a very real burnout risk. But as much as i appreciate the structure and accountability that i mentioned this project has provided, the main point is to put my writing out in front of real, human eyes. i told a therapist a few years back about how long it had been since i had gotten meaningful feedback on my writing and how shitty that felt, so he asked if i had shown my writing to anyone in that time. i hadn't. i hadn't even really realized i hadn't. i did know that at the time i was happy to let most people in my life go on thinking i was still spending all my time doing freelance audio work. i tend to keep my aspirations close to the chest, which is a terrible awful habit. The goal is to balance the daily projects and the long-term projects so i don't have to choose one or the other. it'll take some work, and i'll probably be futzing around with my schedule while i'm figuring it out. don't give up on me in the meantime, i'm not planning on going anywhere. || derek

a little about why i haven't been writing much this week and about the future of this project #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

2 weeks ago

I joined my sister's family at a nearby regal cinema to watch Fellowship of the Ring on the big screen for my brother-in-law's birthday. we got into the theater a little late, while Galadriel is yapping and there's big armies on screen. we found our row and shuffled in, and noticed suddenly that the chairs we shuffled past were shaking, violently. we were shocked. my sister didn't know she was buying tickets for a "4DX" showing. 4DX is the future of cinema, according to the ones shaking the chairs and blowing water and puffs of smoke at us and piping fake snow and smelly chemicals into the room. theme-park-ification. i was actually delighted to learn about the mixup, i've been wanting to try it. i was a little concerned about the runtime of the movie, though, especially when i started feeling nauseous after the first few bumps (the excuses they found to rattle us after the intro action were things like a vibrating wagon, a small wooden gate articulating, the patter of hobbit feet, etc). They shake you like a dog in there, it's unsparing. i'd always pictured these chairs giving you a little extra nudge when the sub-woofer hits, but i was underestimating them. they put 4 seats on a big sled together, and i'm guessing they have a hydraulic piston under each corner. it's a great setup for replicating airplane turbulence, and so all the action starts to feel a lot like airplane turbulence. then there's the occasional blast of compressed air right in your face. the artificial rain/blood splatter. a lot of extra noise from the devices. speaking for myself, this all distracts somewhat from the picture. When i die, i'll have them hold my funeral service in one of these theaters. i'm gonna program it myself while i'm drawing up the will. i'll do a pleasant floral smell when everyone's arriving and a gentle rain while they leave, but everything in-between is improv. the final acts of my lingering spirit will be bumping shaking splashing and spraying. || derek

everyone will want to be there for my 4DX funeral #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

3 weeks ago

2/19/26 - Ramsay Bolton My plan for today was to write about friedkin's Sorcerer, which i caught a rep screening of last night. i was excited to write about Sorcerer. apparently that will have to wait for tomorrow, because i've been watching some Game of Thrones and i find i can't focus on anything but Ramsay Bolton. We've been watching through the show for the first time, kind of. i watched the first four seasons about 12 years ago but dropped out by the time the 5th season was airing. so i had some experience with Ramsay, and have held him in my mind for the last 12 years as a demonic little elf sent to atone Theon for his sins. i knew by the end of that watch-through that he was positioned for a role outside of Theon's tormenter, but i didn't realize at the time quite how big the part was he had to play. I might have been surprised to learn that back in 2014. for one thing i probably would have raised some questions about the casting choice. a load-bearing character seemingly cast solely on his talent for curling the pinched corners of his mouth upward, his affected shit-eating voice, and his annoying-kid-next-door overinsistence on reminding you he knows the basic mechanics of a kubrick stare? feels like a long shot. It's in poor taste for me to denigrate an actor like that, especially because i realize now that across four seasons he would never once be asked to display an ounce of range past those three party tricks. Ramsay Bolton was only barely more a character in Game of Thrones as Jame Gumb's dirty basement pit was a character in The Silence of the Lambs, and he served the same basic purpose: a dirty holding cell. Jame Gumb's pit was his own, Ramsay Bolton belonged to the writers. if a character's been floating too long unattended, what easier way to give them some purpose than dropping them into the devious little torture pit.

It's a wonder they even asked him to move from place to place, he could have managed his entire arc from a chair in front of a comfy fire. all he's ever asked to do (after his introduction, which was clever and set extremely unreasonable expectations for him) is wait patiently for each of his encounters to walk, aghast at all his shocking little proclamations, into his outstretched knife. he didn't even have to be patient about it! there was always a fresh supply of meat for him to tenderize. the single ounce of initiative i can remember them writing into him was to go burn down some tents, and as if by magic the job is done, as far as we can tell he was never even there. I mostly reject the philosophy that a villain needs to "raise good points" or "believe in something" to be three dimensional (that was such a craze for a while there), but i would ask of my villains that they be presented with dilemma, that they make consequential choices, that at the barest minimum they're given the chance to show a single flash of interiority. Ramsay Bolton, a fragile thing apparently, was never once asked to clear those marks. We just watched The Battle of the Bastards, that's why i'm thinking about all this. The Battle of the Bastards. i've heard the name plenty of times before, it has a real presence in the culture. the battle itself was a pretty handy piece of filmmaking. i definitely haven't seen anything like it on TV, and i can't readily think of anything like it in movies. considering that, i think it's a weird choice to undercut it completely before it's even started. all that pageantry at the beginning with Rickon running to Jon, Ramsay playing his little game. if you've been awake for even half of the previous 40 episodes then you know Ramsay's always given his man.

What is Winterfell but a single raggedy set with too much gray. why should we, the viewers, care about Winterfell? all the people we saw there 60 episodes ago are dead or gone. taking Winterfell represents some lip service toward tactical advantage, and, infinitely more important, taking Winterfell represents Rickon's life. we've been primed for that reunion. if it felt so good to watch Jon and Sansa come together, it'll feel doubly good for them to scoop Rickon from the devil's arms and *finally* give him a real sense of presence in this show. if we're to endure 30 minutes of a grueling, muck-covered, borderline sadistic display of war, we had fucking better have that carrot to lead us through. it's snuffed out before we even have the chance to hope. The battle ends, Jon gets his pound of flesh and Sansa gets the rest, but what's the point anymore. of course Ramsay was going to die here, there wasn't a damn thing left for him to do. the pit was played out. there's no more satisfaction here than in shoveling dirt over a mass grave. || derek

back yelling at a show no one's wanted to talk about since we were cloroxing groceries. spoiler warning, if you need it #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

3 weeks ago

2/18/26 - Three Roosters The weather still sucks. spitting rain and bad air. but for the first time in a couple of months i wandered the city, and that felt nice. nowhere really new, though i tried to take different streets than the ones with the least of some intangible resistance. it's a big city, but it's as easy as anywhere to find yourself wearing down familiar paths. In hell's kitchen i stopped into a small thai restaurant called "Three Roosters" because they serve chicken three different ways: grilled, fried, and poached. it opened in 2020 (i thought about asking how unlucky that must have felt, but didn't) and it has some chic touches of fast casual, with a snappy menu and a wall showing off plaudits from local food publications, but they were speaking what i assume was thai in the kitchen and there's enough cluttery tchotchkes around the walls (including big plastic plucked chickens) to feel homie. overall, i think it must feel relatively approachable for people like my parents, who went to a japanese restaurant for their very fist time last month. good job guys. I got the grilled chicken platter. it came with a 9-inch row of sliced chicken, a foil-wrapped loaf of sticky rice, a bowl of clear chicken broth, a small salad, and a tamarind sauce. it was good. good good. the highlight was right where you wanted it to be, the chicken (perfectly cooked, tender, juicy, maybe the best grilled chicken i've had the pleasure), but the rice was a sturdy base and the broth was a prime bookend: i started the meal with a few spoonfuls, and i ended the meal by sipping straight from the bowl. The salad could have been more interesting, sure. the tamarind sauce was fascinatingly dynamic but frankly a little challenging for a guy like me who doesn't have that flavor locked into their palette already. they're aware of that, they serve it in a separate sauce dish. all my complaints are non-complaints. i was back in the rain feeling completely satisfied. || derek

better late than sorry #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

3 weeks ago

I had a strong reaction to this one, and i'm not sure what to make of it. The texture of the movie is familiar, similar to other recent del toro movies. it floats constanly through stylish if not slightly cartoonish sets, immaculately designed and realized in the physical world and pushed to the edge of digital rainbow sheen by an empowered colorist. real sets blend into sweeping VFX sets that should have given pause to christoph waltz, who confidently declared "CGI is for losers" on the Frankenstein press tour. my appreciation for del toro's visual palette is on a scene-to-scene basis, but i'm charmed by the conservatorial classicism of the camera work which lets the actors sweep through his jewel-box settings like living dolls. I thought the acting was admirable. sometimes hammy but only in proportion to the dialogue, which was often hammy. elordi, as always, has an arresting physical presence, and his reanimation around the half-way point marks a clear quality shift towards the better. i would have liked to have seen him break out of the stereotypical frankenstein lurch at some point, which felt disproportionate to his slender symmetry, but that might have been too transgressive for a script that generally holds close to a smoothed over version of shelley's original story. This is all adding up to a movie that i admire without putting my heart into it, but i already gave away that that's not what happened. i *reacted* to this movie. strongly. emotionally. not at any specific point during the film. it came on afterwards, a few minutes after credits rolled. it welled up and overflowed. i cried. i cried a lot. i wasn't totally sure what i was crying about, and i still don't think i can explain why. maybe i wasn't reacting to the movie itself, but the story, which i've felt connected to since i read it as a teenager. maybe it had nothing to do with frankenstein at all. but watching this movie picked at something in me, and whatever that thing was, it was ready.

you post the vulnerable ones late night #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

3 weeks ago

2/16/26 - Wuthering Heights I'll get to the film. allow me to take a quick detour first. It's nerve-racking to come out of a movie feeling like i didn't think it was all that good, but not be able to put my finger on why. i start to wonder if it's a me problem. maybe i've already closed myself off to it. maybe there's a cultural disconnect. maybe i'm being influenced by outside opinions. it's impossible to fully gird myself against any of these iniquities, but i like to think i'm *mostly* impartial. when i'm struggling to find specifics to back my impressions, though, i get nervous. Saltburn (emerald fennel's antecedent to Wuthering Heights) gave me these fits. i bought my ticket to Saltburn under the impression, imparted by some critics i like, that it was an abject failure. that's a compromised position, but i wasn't planning on writing about the movie, and nobody should take themselves so seriously as to deprive themselves of the kind of indulgent hate-watching that can spoil your supper. then the film started and i caught myself sort of enjoying it. Chalk that up to the power of low expectations? by the end of the movie i felt, like many others, that it wasn't all that good, but it was so hard to pin down the moments where i wasn't having fun. how can those feelings coexist? when faced with this uncertainty, a lot of critics will start bandying terms like "vapid" and "unintentional", and while i don't disagree with those points as they apply to Saltburn, they don't give me any resolution about *where* in the movie or *how* the vapid unintentionality manifests itself. i still don't have any answers about that film, so i'm left wondering if maybe i've just been riding the easy wave of critical consensus.

With all that in mind, i tried to maintain my virginity for Wuthering Heights. i avoided pre-release chatter and early reviews and bought my ticket as quickly as a buzzy movie from a buzzy filmmaker released on a buzzy valentine's day weekend could allow. there was no chance of completely neutralizing my predispositions regarding fennel and her work, but, relying on the power of positive attitude, i found myself watching the opening warner brothers title screen with a sense of pious neutrality. come what may. You can imagine my disappointment, then, when the end credits started rolling and i found myself sitting in that familiar Saltburn sting. not disappointed in the movie, but in myself. did i not learn my lesson? did i shirk my preparations somehow? am i just a thoughtless automaton doomed to forever serve my own partiality? i didn't like Wuthering Heights very much. but i spent much of its runtime drawn into it, engaging with it, even being entertained and eventually moved by it. where do i get off trying to wave that all away for an overall impression that i'm not sure i can even explain? Luckily, as i've sat and thought about the movie, i've started to notice patches of blue sky in the black clouds. there's a greater overall amplitude to Wuthering Heights. higher peaks and lower troughs. it's like the edge case to Saltburn's more fluid intangibility, and edge cases can provide clarity. The problem — my problem — with this movie lies in its inability to synthesize itself. there is, at the risk of sounding green, *a lot* going on here. there are major tonal shifts on a dime, there are pop-y music video sets on wind-scoured gothic vistas, there are regency-laden parlor conversations abutting slangy bdsm encounters, there is a well-stocked continental breakfast-worth of options for viewers to pick their poison from.

You wouldn't be wrong to call it maximalism, but the raw edges and surprising sparseness at the corners reads more like brutalism to me, multi-faceted and craggy brutalism. i'd see that as a good thing (just a personal preference) if i felt a steady hand guiding all these extremes toward some gestalt, but i never felt that intentionality. to mix my metaphors, it felt more like a bucking bronco with a half-dead rider struggling to disentangle themself from the tack. Unfortunately for the rider, there's still a great deal of entertainment value in that kind of rodeo, and there are artists who have gone far under similarly dire conditions. the greater sin of Wuthering Heights, and another way i think it differs from Saltburn, is that it *was* easy to identify the moments where i wasn't having fun, and not just because of the grim tragedy underpinning the whole affair. for a movie that seems mostly interested in creating moments, it is an adaptation, and there's so much plot to sort out. it's sorted with all the grace of wading through an irrigation ditch. boring. uninspired, annoyingly necessary. a movie with a some high highs and long stretches of low lows. But by god i recommend it. we don't get a lot of movies like this and i think we ought to savor the ones we do. provocation is worthwhile, and emerald fennel seems like a natural. the worst case scenario for Wuthering Heights is that it bleeds out of the cultural conversation over the next year or so, only to reemerge every 6-8 years by a new group of teenagers entranced by the way it legitimizes and amplifies their own juvenile longing. it's not my intention to belittle them or this movie by writing that. i was a teenager once, and i wish i had watched more movies like Wuthering Heights then. back when i had a higher tolerance for boredom, as long as it was in exchange for a glimpse of self-affirming transgression. || derek

something fantastical happened at the end of our screening of wuthering heights. after the movie faded to black and before credits rolled, a single, shuddering sob rang out. and all was silent again. and then we all began to laugh. i didn't write about that here, but i wrote about the movie #blug

🇩🇰 Klaus Alexander Seistrup 🇬🇱

@takis.eurosky.social

3 weeks ago

Att.: #Blålys

Er der nogen #Linux brugergrupper på #Bornholm? 🐧

#BLUG ser helt død ud. ⚰️

Cc: #LUG

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/13/26 - Send Help I missed the first like, 15 minutes. i wasn't even coming from anything, i just sat around a little too long. That's gotta be one of the weirdest aspects of ADHD, having a hard time with time. i never know how to explain that shit to people. it sounds like i'm yanking their chain, trying to give myself an eternal tardy pass. yeah, i'd love one. I don't even have a good metaphor. maybe like a drunk guy playing darts in a dark room. i'll know the time i need to be somewhere, i'll be watching the time before i leave, and then poof, i'm 15 minutes late. Sometimes i'll try extra hard to get somewhere on time, and then i'll get there way too early. that's the only way i know how to do it. and this doesn't happen that often, it's almost always getting there late. I don't really like to be late, so i get anxious whenever i'm going out for something. i need to start wearing a watch again. i was wearing my grandpa's watch for a long time but i dropped it once and it hasn't worked ever since. i need to get it serviced, but once i do that i don't really wanna daily drive it anymore, just special occasions. I like a traditional watch face, they look nice. it's helpful to be able to look at time relatively. i only really look at the intervals on a traditional watch face. something's in 15 minutes, or 45, or 47. i'll just look at where the minute hand should be at the time i'm supposed to be somewhere and compare that to where the minute hand is now. it's easier. So i got there 15 minutes late or so and i think i missed some really key character motivation, but it wasn't too much i couldn't fill in the blanks. i had a really fun time. || derek

i'm watching the medal ceremony for the men's snowboard halfpipe and the silver medalist keeps trying to walk away early #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

accompanied someone to an mri today so here's a #blug rerun bsky.app/profile/dere...

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/11/26 - Dash's Fried Chicken Sandwich This place is in midtown. i walk in and order a sandwich that's bad, and take a seat at a window counter by a couple of she.e.o.s talking about the difference between working in new york and working in london. they bring me water. i wonder where i'm supposed to put my jacket at a bar stool, they bring me the sandwich. Buttermilk tenderloin, sweet n' hot pickles, and chipotle mayo on a sesame bun with fries or salad (i got the salad). It's not bad, it's uninteresting. the chicken is seasoned to an acceptable limit, and the breading is more crunchy than crispy. the sauce is mild and under-applied. the pickles are pretty good, but you don't really want the pickles in the driver seat. Really the best part of the sandwich wasn't the pickles, but the bun. it's crusted with roasty sesame seeds and provides as much flavor to the sandwich as it does structure. I ate and watched out the window and finished my sandwich. so i ate the salad, and enjoyed it more than i did the sandwich. i mean the sandwich is better food than the salad, but the sandwich is a worse sandwich than the salad is a salad. || derek

the things i do for #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/10/26 - skiing vs snowboarding It's such a silly idea to dig this shit up in 2026. boards on snow is neat, that's what matters. I don't even know how much "skiing vs snowboarding" was an actual debate, because when i try to pin down when it was "bad" i think of like, 2006. i was ten in 2006, and dumb. and we all think times were — in this case i guess not *better* when we were ten, but truer somehow. (plus that movie Johnny Tsunami came out around then, and all the nice cool kids at the high school in Johnny Tsunami are snowboarders and all the rich assholes are skiers and that was a blow to my ego). Okay but i'm digging this shit up because it still feels like snowboarding has more cultural capital as the "freestyle" sport. the "aesthetic" sport. so help me the "steezy" sport. you're watching big air? your watching slopestyle? you're watching half-pipe? "better be boarding". (My embarrassment about digging this shit up is not abating like i had hoped. it's getting worse. i have to keep writing, not purely because nothing noteworthy enough to write about happened to me today but because of a conversation that i had, several years ago, about this shit, that's been clanking around ever since). Skiing is the superior freestyle medium. skiing provides more visual contrast. more edge area for grabs, lots of cross options, and, most importantly, the superior switch. switch means going backwards. snowboarding backwards looks like snowboarding forwards, which is boring. skiing backwards looks like your skiing backwards down a mountain, and that's flair, that's drama. (i just checked and actually Johnny Tsunami came out when i was three and i wasn't skiing yet when i was three ). || derek

#blug i wrote this one for myself, and for some asshole who i can't remember and who will never read this

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/9/26 - curling I went to a curling tournament once. i believe it was the national championship and it was held in las vegas, which the mormons first settled (with all the caveats). sitting in that arena, one could imagine dusty mormons looking around that hot windy hellscape valley, envisioning a great coming together of midwesterners in their own icy jousting arena. I don't think curling would have nearly the reputation it does if it weren't for the sweeping, which elevates the spectacle from "chilly shuffleboard" to something much weirder and more holy. why do they rub the ice so? A brother of mine has forever been beguiled by the olympics and bewitched by curling. it was he whom i attended the curling tournament with and it was he who convinced the family to spend an evening at curling night at the local rink. so not only have i watched the stones curl, i have curled them. It's a strong sport, worthy of your attention. i think it's fit for a diversity of appreciators, because it scratches such a diversity of itches. strategy and technique and a high action scoring system. sweeping. do you know why they sweep? the friction from the broom melts a tiny layer of ice, which makes the stone move faster, and makes it curl less. sweep for fast and straight, stop sweeping for slow and curvy. I don't know if any of that shit is true. it's mostly true i think. i'm no expert. The curling teams are trying to get points, and you get points by sliding the stones close to the middle of a big target. the team with the middle-most stone at the end of the "end" gets a point (each team throws several stones per end and there are several ends in a match), and they get another point for any of their stones that got closer than the other team's closest. Building tension, investment, anxiety, euphoria, heartbreak. You owe it to yourself to watch a match. || derek

on curling #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/5/26 - Celsus Burger I think i've written about hamburger america before but i'm not gonna check because it's late. they make hamburgers. and every month they do a special burger, they find one being served somewhere around the country and they recreate it here. they tell you what the burger is called and where it comes from and it's nice. It's the "Celsus Burger" this month, from The Blazer Pub in north salem new york, only about an hour's drive from here with midnight traffic. Hamburger america's house burgers are smash burgers. smash burgers might be falling out of favor as quickly as they arose, but they're ubiquitous for a reason. good quality control, they come together fast, they portion well, and i don't care if everyone's sick of hearing it, they taste damn good. But yeah, i've been to 10 or so different burger spots in the last year only to realize they're all doing it the same way. i've been looking for a break, looking for a chance to reacquaint myself with a big fat patty. i was excited to see that the celsus burger is just that, a half-pound hunk of beef built up high like a meatloaf. gooey swiss cheese, auburn bacon, and grilled onions on a toasted bun. What a happy reunion. there were downsides (i had to salt on the go, the bun fell apart quickly, i just generally don't love the sweetness of grilled onions), but it's impossible to deny the power of such a simple burger, or the daunting height of it. portion control *was* a nightmare, and for perhaps the first time in my life i felt afraid of what all this meat and cheese would do to me (i felt the burger's presence well into the evening), but it was huge, it was delicious, and god bless it, it was different. || derek

you know the routine #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/4/26 - Kielbasa and Sauerkraut I was at the grand central dining concourse grabbing lunch with my brother-in-law. we went to Veselka, which has a stand there. Veselka is ukrainian restaurant i think. they serve a lot of hearty eastern european classics, or things at least we think of as eastern european classics, or that they think we think of. reuben sandwiches and latkes and matzoh balls and stroganoff and kielbasa and sauerkraut, which i got. I have little to say about this dish but that it was flavorful and satisfying. the sausage was cooked beautifully, cut in half and ribbed with cuts that made it curl up when cooked. well seasoned and well paired with a couple of little spicy mustard packets. i'm a little choosy about my sausage, but kielbasa has never let me down. i think sauerkraut goes nicely with a lot of other foods, but it's not something i tend to judge all that much one way or the other. most of the sauerkraut i've had over the years has tasted like sauerkraut. the stuff here was a little softer than i generally prefer, but definitely better seasoned. and most importantly, it did it's job. there was a lot of it piled up in the bowl, supporting the sausage, and i ended up throwing a lot of it away and not feeling too bad about that, which was wasteful of me. Next time i go i'll probably try the beef stroganoff, i love beef stroganoff. of course before i went this time i was dead set on the reuben, and i deviated at the last minute. it's important to be a little flexible. you never know. || derek

i like posting these white background ones late at night because i feel they're probably more attention-grabbing for those scrolling in the dark #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/3/26 - Hamnet I've tried and failed to write effectively about Hamnet once already tonight. cmd+a delete. it's tricky to write negatively about a movie with a mostly positive reputation, especially a movie like Hamnet. it's exploring a sensitive topic. an emotional topic. frankly one i don't have much real life experience with. I'll try to put those feelings to the side for a second, because i also think a sensitive and emotional topic deserves a well made movie to plum its depths. i think Hamnet is a poor, poor movie. i think it does a disservice to its subject matter. i think it looks down on its audience. i think it squanders the talents of the artists involved, many of whom i really like. I frankly don't know where it went wrong. in times like these the only knowledge i can fully rely on is the memory of my own experience watching the film. i can't remember sitting through a movie whose runtime i spent more of actively wanting it to end. not as a squirmy, knee-jerk reaction to the pain and raw emotion being depicted, but because for every step forward i made in connecting with this film, i was quickly ushered three steps back. It's not a poorly made movie on a technical level. if i was shown each scene in isolation, with no memory of the scene before it and no knowledge of what's to come, i think i would find a lot to admire. the distaste is a reaction to something central, something wrong with the foundation of the thing. critic adam nayman calls it a "rot" in his review (it's a good, much more comprehensive critique than what you're getting here). So the task at hand is trying to understand this rot. i would maybe make a lot of headway here if i were willing to rewatch the film. that not being the case, i have to rely on the seeds of an idea: i don't think the filmmakers felt any imperative to *convince* us that this story is worth our engagement. to convince

us that our time spent engaging with it will be rewarded. in abandoning that imperative, they lose sight of the hard work required to move us. to enlighten us. to do that thing all art should aspire to: finding the pieces of us we haven't found ourselves and shaking them until we can map our way back. More succinctly, they over-rely on plot points they think are inalienably "powerful" and "serious". a ton of movies about emotionally traumatic events do this, it's apparently very difficult to overcome (at least among awards contenders). a tip-off in Hamnet is how much the central event *consumes* the sequences leading up to it. they seem terrified of their audience's boredom, and take every chance they can to remind us of what we've come here to cry about. it suffocates the top half of the movie. are they protecting us? warning us to keep their characters at arms length for fear of devastation? whatever the reason, it leaves very little room for us to develop a relationship with their creations, and that strips the major plot points of the "inherent" power they're relying on. It's hard to make art about serious things, and i'm knowingly judging this film against a standard i don't bother with for others. the higher the aspirations of a movie, the higher the mark it needs to clear. and for about 20 minutes close to the end i felt it reaching up toward those lofty heights. that happened conspicuously in sync with the work of shakespeare taking a more central role. the movie's relationship with the play Hamlet is actually really thoughtful. it changed my relationship with the work, and for a short while it changed my relationship with the movie. But it makes sure to remind you before credits roll that it can't be trusted with narrow strokes. weigh anchor, open the hatch and douse the audience with import. we're talking about shakespeare, dammit. || derek

finally put some words together about Hamnet. it's short and i was really tired while i wrote it, but i think it's a pretty good (the post i mean) #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

2/3/26 - random stuff I'm trying not to write too much about this writing project, but i'm having a hard time writing about anything else. nothing on my mind today. It's much harder to go find things to write about in the winter. i was expecting this. it's cold and wet and i don't wanna walk around and a bunch of restaurants don't have a lot of seating. plus we got a bunch of snow last week and it got piled up and hasn't melted and now there's dog piss and shit stains all over them, and god loves the dogs. this has been partially good for me in that i'm writing on the couch and having to dig a little deeper for subject matter. also it's a lot easier on the ol pocketbook. But i started this project because i was having a hard time concentrating. i haven't had access to my adhd meds for a year, for literally almost a year (for the most mind-bogglingly stupid reasons that i had little to no control over, including the country's idiotic stimulant quota that keeps pharmacies chronically understocked). i spent most of the year angry at myself for not being able to work on a writing project for more than 2 or 3 days at a time, and for all the days i just couldn't be bothered to try. I was sitting on a table in this little fenced off street-side patio attached to a gelato shack, feeling nervous i was gonna get kicked out for not buying gelato in october (i was nervous about everything last year), and i thought "damn, if i had my laptop i could write about this shit. better than nothing" so next time i went out i brought my laptop. Anyway, i'm doing better these days but i still can't concentrate for shit, so that's why i'm writing all this stuff at 1:00 in the morning. || derek

some thoughts about the #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/30/26 - late night sushi thoughts I'm not having late night sushi, i'm having late night thoughts about sushi i had at a reasonable hour. there's this japanese market nearby that i went into once a month or two after moving here and never went back to until today, when i thought to myself "i wonder if they've got sushi". They did. i either didn't notice the obvious sushi chef behind the counter the first time i came or i excised my memory of him for reasons unknown. i ordered a spicy tuna roll and a salmon and avocado roll. I like sushi a lot and i don't know how to judge its quality. i feel competent with all other foods i have experience with — even a little — to say 'good' or 'bad' or even 'excellent' (that's all just my opinion, by the way), but basically all sushi i've had has scratched the same itch. I'll normally weigh a food's quality by the macro effect, measuring my simple, carnal enjoyment before i break it into parts and search for meaning. but as best i can tell, sushi, at least in its traditional form, is a platform for appreciating the microscopic attributes of whatever fish or sea creature it's highlighting. that requires experience, or until you have experience it requires direct comparison. i don't have experience, and i've never the luxury of comparison. and it probably doesn't help that i'm allergic to shellfish, which cuts pretty deep into my exploration of the form. The rolls were good. the spicy tuna wasn't maybe as tuna forward as i'd prefer and my texmex-addled tongue wanted more salt with the avocado (probably only my soy sauce strategy to blame for that), but they used roasted black sesame seeds for some darker, almost smokey notes, and the salmon was rich and satisfying. I bought some frozen gyoza before i left and two big prepackaged "pastry buns" for us to try sometime. i'll be back soon (i hear everything's half off for an hour before closing). || derek

i would never forget #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/29/26 - Dead Man's Wire Based on a true story, end-of-his-rope Tony Kiritsis (bill skarsgård) enters his parasitic mortgage lender's indianapolis hq and the office of its president, Dick Hall (dacre montgomery). i don't know how that all goes down because i got there a little late, but i made it for the main event: Tony fastens a shotgun between Dick and himself, a wire holding Dick's nape to the sharp end of the barrel and a wire linking the trigger up to Tony's person. the latter is the "dead man's wire". if Dick tries to run, if Tony goes down, if any lurch or jerk befalls either two, the trigger pulls and Dick's a dead man. It's an eye-catching lede, and an effective mechanism both for taking a man captive and for centering what ends up being a fairly paint-by-numbers hostage story. there's a "this thing could blow at any moment" feeling, heightened by the actual explosives rigged up around Tony's apartment, where they wind up for most of the second and third acts. Like any good paint-by-numbers hostage story, we don't have to go very far to find our supporting characters because they all come to us. cops and reporters, lawyers and feds, family members and onlookers all flock to catch a glimpse of the two-man play happening inside. they highlight a few of these characters for human interest (a to-me unrecognizable cary elwes, whom i love, and an ambitious young reporter played by myha'la), but those periphery characters are shuffling and under-fed. The meat is between skarsgård and montgomery, and they held my attention. it's a pleasure to see skarsgård chew on something somewhat down-to-earth (he's still given free reign to inject theatricality into the center of an otherwise naturalistic affair, seemingly true to the real life Kiritsis), and montgomery excels at the role of wasting prisoner, mumbly and downcast and undeniably present. they take the lion's share of screen time which is good, because i couldn't take my eyes off them.

There are other notable actors giving interesting performances and the movie looks good and has a very specific visual flair and the score (danny elfman)/soundtrack goes down smooth and all in all, on a technical level, i was engrossed. a lot of toothsome craft coming together to serve what i found to be a shallow and unengaging script, not at the micro level (the dialogue and scene construction are fine), but at the macro, "what's the big idea" level. the thematics are on some mushy middle ground between too obvious and too broad, and none of them feel novel or thought-provoking. "violence in the media" or something like that, tipped off by a john wayne award acceptance speech on tv (intercut with gun-blasting and women-disrespecting scenes from old westerns) and the persistent returning to a grinning, ratings-obsessed news producer. a healthy dash class struggle, sure. it's all been done, and more importantly it's all been done more poignantly. I can ignore some under-baked intentionality peppered throughout, but the lack of clear vision really dampens the mood when it comes to tying a bow on the saga. you can sense them leaning back at some point, putting their hands up and letting the "true story" take over, easing them of their burden to land the plane anywhere thought-provoking. there's a coda that feels astonishingly weird and completely disconnected from all their earlier efforts to find meaning. again, they have the luxury of true events to guide their pen, but this doesn't relieve them of the obligation to find a story that speaks to something within the true events. the disconnectedness of that ending isn't chalkable to the randomness of reality; the blame lies on a fundamental disinterest in *leading* the audience into some impactful recognition of truth when the cards are revealed. that's the filmmakers' whole job. and it's a bummer because i had a hell of a time watching this movie. || derek

Dead Man's Wire is that movie where a guy wires up a shotgun to another guy in the 70s, and it's a lot of fun. some real structural issues, tho #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/28/26 - time zones We're getting rid of time zones. they've served their purpose but they're boring. plus if you live on the east edge of the timezone then your sun sets a lot earlier than the sun of those living on the west edge, which isn't fair. From brooklyn i'd need to walk (under the current system) all the way over past indianapolis for my clock to change, or i could walk up to new brunswick. but under the new system, instead of zones we'll have a sliding, non-discrete spectrum of time, made possible by gps and practical by our phones and gadgets. you take a step west? your clock adjusts. you take a step east? your clock adjusts. From one side of manhattan to the other you might only gain/lose a fraction of a second, but think of how exciting it will be to watch that fraction of a second melt away/form anew under your own power. and there are obvious advantages, first and foremost being the unity that comes with an identical day for all the stationary colatitudinal people around the world. sunrise at the same time, sunset at the same time. we'll pin 12:00pm to the sun's apex and finally reap all the benefits solacentrism has to offer. A second advantage, the current awkward system of longitudinal distance units will be outdated and outphased. distance and time are one and the same. - "how far do we need to drive due west from here?" - "oh only 30 minutes" - "how long will that take?" - "about 7 hours" We've heard the feedback about possible confusion arising on this point but look to the americans, we do just fine using ounces and ounces at the same time. we'll all adapt. Cowards will gripe and complain and bring up any number of inconsequential inconveniences related to our airtight new system. let them. truth is on time's side. || derek

it's time for a new time #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/23/26 - Game of Thrones season 1 I'm rewatching it for the first time since 2015 and i have a few random thoughts about it. i imagine all of these takes are ice cold by now but frankly it's tough to think of ideas for these entries when it's sodamn cold out, so this will have to do. - Ned Stark was a god to me at 18 years old. sort of infuriating this time around. is he the true symbol of blind obama-era institutional trust? it's forward thinking, really, to show where that lands him. where was the wonk in king's landing circulating the ravens about "Ned's valiant fight for justice", and how long did they keep that gravy train going after he got spiked? - So many crane shots. *so* many crane shots. they got their money's worth. the whole season is walking and talking so sure, try to spruce it up a little bit, but you've got options. you can go up and down, side to side, forward and back. i suppose they figured the crane gives them all of those options in one convenient package. i don't know about that! - same vein, all these tight shot reverse shot dialogue scenes with drifting two shots (often from a crane) had this real CW vibe. i don't actually watch enough CW to pin it down, but there's a real low-rent quality about them. i guess i was surprised at the sort of schlocky visual identity of the whole season, probably because i remembered more of the high-budget location shooting from the later seasons. - this might be stepping on season 2 territory but i kept thinking about how the sex scenes (are there even 2?) between Renly and Ser Loras were so conspicuously PG. those guys looked lost out there, and who can blame them in a pre-hockey world (this joke works if you believe like me that all hockey players are passionate and capable gay lovers, and that the emergence of those traits coincided with the invention of hockey). || derek

i'm not running out of things to write about, i just don't think anyone should be made to do real work in january #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

today was snow day #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/23/26 - Mercy Chris Raven (chris pratt), a high ranking police officer in some malcontented future los angeles, has run afoul of the very program he created: "Mercy Court", an unblinking and "impartial" courtroom where those accused of murder present their own defense before the AI Judge Maddox (rebecca ferguson). Sitting in your own execution chair, you have 90 minutes to prove your innocence or its lights-out. Chris Raven stands accused of killing his wife, and he's pretty sure he's innocent. That's all in the trailer. and also in the trailer is a comprehensive display of the visual language of the film. a heady mix of live-action cutscene from an xbox rts game and instruction video in a slightly tech-forward escape room. and a 1ot of digital sets. I never got used to it, but it's charming in its way. a glimpse into a theme-parkified future of cinema (one that frankly i hope isn't the future). It's a secret comedy, tipped off early by the inclusion of a news anchor played by jay jackson, of parks & recreation "Perd Hapley" fame. he plays it straight but i'm not buying it, he's clearly doing Perd. beyond that, we're treated to a reconstruction of Raven's pursuit and eventual capture that includes some of the clearest physical comedy i've seen in a long time. pratt always had a knack for that! It didn't elicit a lot of laughs, though, not in my theater. these days pratt's preferred knack is for throwing a despotic wet blanket of stern-ness over everything he touches. all of rebecca ferguson's knowing playfulness is lost on the man with the alien-esque social awareness. i wouldn't even call his acting ineffective; he can micro-manage his little face muscles with the best of them. but he's so imprecise in the application of that ability it becomes jarring and bludgeonly.

His character isn't giving him much help. They do a lot to convince you from the start that not only does Raven look very guilty, he's also a nuclear-grade jackass. lying, emotionally abusive, prone to outbursts, apathetic toward his wife and daughter's lives. by god he might just be an officer of the law. you can bet that before the end he starts to feel regretful of architecting the program threatening his life, and there's a twinge of "i'll do better i swear!" but we all know where that road leads. i'll spoil what must be the most clearly-telegraphed (and not by mistake) reveal of the film: he didn't kill his wife. but that's pretty much the only crime he's exonerated of, not that you'd know by the way they stage the grand finale. There was skepticism and even disappointment about rebecca ferguson's participation in such a schlock-fest. She's above this now, isn't she? well times are tough for all of us and i won't deny anyone a hard-earned paycheck, but i can also see how the role might have attracted her. beside the fact that she clearly performed the role across one or two days in front of a green screen (she might have done it from home for all we can tell), there's a lot of funny nuance and, as i said before, playfulness you can imbue into this unfamiliar-to-us grade of AI, she gives life to a movie otherwise grasping for it. With all i've said, though, i couldn't help but enjoy myself. the first 2 acts scratch a similar itch as watching an episode of CSI, and the last act gets zany enough to signal some awareness of the goal. they escalate and escalate and my level of enjoyment followed and even my heart rate did too. and chris pratt was deadly serious about the whole matter, god love him. I1 derek

i kinda liked Mercy! despite chris pratt's best efforts #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/22/26 - vada dav I'm back at fonty's in the west village. i've written about their tuna melt and their parsi, and it took superhuman self control and determination to not just order one of those again. hauntingly mouthwatering things. i ought to be studied. my mission is to make my way down their menu and i've been wanting to try their vegetarian options, so i ordered the "vada dav". batter fried spiced potato, cilantro/mint chutney, tamarind chutney, garlic dust, and fried chili on a potato bun. i wanted to order a damn dr pepper too but they only do the "craft soda" thing that i'm pretty sure everyone hates. i got some water. Interesting sandwich. i don't like hedging my opinion that it was a pretty significant step down from the other two i've tried, but it really might just be an issue of unfamiliarity. i was expecting a pan-fried patty of shredded or fluffy potato, but they served something closer to a potato puree that had been formed into large balls and lightly deep fried. these balls were by far the dominant feature of the sandwich, with the rest of the toppings and bun playing support roles. So the success of the sandwich really hinges on the success of the potato, and i just didn't find it all that satisfying, texturally or flavorally. stacked with the soft potato bun and the blended chutneys there was a pronounced absence of mouth-feel diversity. lots of soft, lots of smushy. and the flavor doesn't really read "potato". it takes on the identity of whatever spice blend they've incorporated, which i wouldn't classify as balanced or all that interesting. not that it matters. the flavor profile of the sandwich is ruled with an iron fist, and the ruler is mint. the cilantro, tamarind, garlic are all pretty much lost to the mint. it's surprising. the strength of the tuna melt and the parsi is in their balance. no flavors take control, they pull together. that's not the case with the vada dav, and i'm left wondering where it all went wrong.

a texturally and flavorally disappointing sandwich #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/21/26 - 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple This movie is kinda sickening to be honest. like, they *really* go for it. it's horror in a similar way that cronenberg's Dead Ringers is horror; you will be made queazy. you will squirm. And i really loved it, this weird, unexpected second punch of a one-two combo. i really admired the first 28 Years Later as a thoughtful zombified bildungsroman, but other than some impressively whacky photography i didn't get much of a kick out of it. they were saving the thrills for part 2. maybe not the thrills... the debauchery. horror fans aren't just adrenaline junkies, we're masked degenerates that The Bone Temple caught peeking. But don't let me paint the movie as pure perverted wish fulfillment. it's not pandering at all. the Blood Meridian-esque black hattery of jack o'connell's psychotic "Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal" and his band of Fingers is stomach turning and captivating and purposeful. the anxiety it causes is critical to the film's central argument. it plays on-screen as the racked inhaling before the glorious exhales that take place at the titular bone temple.

Because the secret identity of this movie is stoner buddy comedy. the buddies are ralph fiennes' Dr. Kelson and a brawny long-membered morphine-addicted alpha zombie named Samson (played brilliantly and up-close by Chi Lewis-Parry). Extended sequences of them zoning out on poppy together. Samson stares and grunts, Kelson laughs and sings, they dance together. it's glorious. Dr. Kelson's compassionate rationalism anchors the existential angst of the first 28 Years Later, so naturally the sequel hinges on foiling and stress-testing that steadfastness. hence the satan-worshipping Jimmy Crystal, and hence the long sequences of crazed blood-thirsty depravity. there's a real debate taking place between the inhales and the exhales. it's not explicit enough to be tiresome, but it cradles so many of the riskier decisions in a sense of meaning. to some degree i suppose it justifies our thrill-seeking. And there's this outrageously kick-ass scene near the end that i don't wanna spoil but DAMN what a showstopper. || derek

wrote about The Bone Temple which i loved and it was honestly like no biggie #adhdismysuperpower #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

1/20/26 - fish spawn charts I've been sitting around telling myself to get off my ass and write about 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which i saw and loved on sunday. but i can't get my mind off of animal crossing fish spawn charts. Seriously, i *cannot* get my mind off of animal crossing fish spawn charts. i'm thinking of ways to optimize bell-earnings while fishing. i cannot stop thinking of ways to optimize bell-earnings while fishing. i have spreadsheets. i'm thinking of scripting a tool. i'm thinking i'll have to learn more about more about spreadsheets and more about statistics and more about python and more about vim and more about how computers work and more about how the internet works and more about how everything works. It's a mania. it happens somewhat regularly. i allowed myself to go down that rabbit hole once a couple years ago. it started with wanting to automate some audio engineering work, and i let that idea sweep me up into a black hole of information consumption for about 3 months. i learned a lot of great stuff. i was jittery and on-edge, i wasn't sleeping well, i wasn't socializing, i was forgetting to shower and forgetting to eat, but i learned a lot of great stuff, and have forgotten all of it since then. So when i feel myself slipping back into that place, honestly, i get scared. it's the damndest thing to be scared of. I get extremely uncomfortable invoking ADHD as a real source of difficulty in my life. i was diagnosed a few years back when everyone was diagnosed. i'll bring it up in conversation or online and poke fun at it because it's a pretty funny condition at face value, but i'm only saying that to cover my tracks. nearly every symptom i can think to associate with ADHD, hyper-fixation being one of them, has made my life worse. tough pill to swallow. || derek

i promise this isn't really about fishing in animal crossing #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

1 month ago

it's been a pretty nonstandard week and i'll be back monday #blug #blug #blug #blug #blug #blug #blug #blug#blug#blug#blug#blug#blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

2 months ago

1/15/26 - S.E.P. on a Bagel S.E.P. stands for "spam, egg, and potato" and i made it myself. i've been thinking about this claim i made a while back after i ate a sandwich with bacon, egg, cheese, and latke. i was mad because they prepped the eggs omelette style: big and puffy and dry and not quite as flavorful as eggs should be. omelettes are the perfect egg prep for people who don't like eggs that much. I've never had a french omelette, just the ones you load up with other stuff and overcook trying to make sure it's set in the center. but that's not really what i'm talking about here, when i say "omelette style" on a sandwich it's basically just a big scramble patty unscrambled. and i'm being too hard on them, they can be alright when done well. the problem comes with putting that on a patty of fried potato like a latke. fried potato is flavorful and filling but relatively dry and just doesn't come together with that style of egg in a meaningful or additive way. So my claim was that this sandwich needed a sunny-side or at least an over-easy fried egg. egg yolk and fried potato were ordained in heaven to be together. It's risky. runny yolk doesn't stay put in a sandwich, we call it runny for a reason. that's not much of a risk, so i went for it. Why spam? i was watching kenji fry it up for fried rice late last night and remembered that spam is pretty good, so i got some spam. i didn't get latkes cuz i have some tater tots on hand. tater tots are fine. i fried them up crispy brown and smushed them under a plate for a patty-esque experience. i'm realizing all the stuff on this sandwich is fried. Fried spam, fried potatoes, fried egg. on a bagel. and it was delicious. it was really good. was it better than that other sandwich? not sure. || derek

realized i hadn't written yet so i wrote this one really fast, probably the fastest i've done one of these. there are still a lot of timesaves, i can definitely get my PR down #blug

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

2 months ago

At the nighthawk theater in williamsburg. my first time here, and i enjoyed it. food service in the theater operation, which i've always been a little skeptical of and was slightly distracting but i had little pigs in blankets with honey mustard and they were tasty as hell. They put on three french surrealist short films and the band The Flushing Remonstrance played an accompaniment they composed. lots of thrumming pads and tidal percussion hits. it was fun, they set an eerie mood which — despite ignoring what i saw as sillier moments in the films — supported the trance-like visuals. The first film, "Un Chien Andalou" by a young Luis Buñuel with Salvador Dalí, was apparently banned in France, not for sex or violence but for perceived anti-church symbolism, which i didn't pick up on. i thought it was quite funny, actually. it struck me as mostly exploratory of the medium, with less by way of technical force and more raw artistry. there's a constant unassailable weirdness, and that's good. The second film, the 3-minute "Le Retour à la Raison" by Man Ray, i saw recently projected silently on a gallery wall at the met. it's brief and narrativeless and strikes me still as reflective of Ray's endless exploration of photographic media. mostly flashing and noisy images. it ends on a few short shots of a woman's nude torso rotating as parallel shadows from a nearby curtain bend and curve around her form. a perfect analogy i think of Ray's obsession with folding three-dimensionality down into height and width. a morphing topography of the body. The last film was Jean Cocteau's first, "Le Sang d'un Poéte", and the longest of the three at 55 minutes. it's saturated with self-admiration and self-loathing and artistic guilt and existential ennui and it's achingly beautiful. the surrealism doesn't pound like in Un Chien Andalou, it creeps and builds. So much interesting technique on display, never overwhelming the narrative; it lets you slip deeply into the dream. || derek

#blug surrealism night at the cinematheque

mammon

@derekhill.bsky.social

2 months ago

taking a day off from #blug, suckas