Film and television

Hello, dear reader!

February is gone, but its links remain.

I owe you a belated “Happy new year!” since I failed to get this newsletter out the door the past two months. If you’re desperate to see the links that never made it to your inbox during those months, you can find December and January (along with every other edition) on my site.

In February, I finally launched Tinnitus Tracker, a live music diary I’ve… See more →

Best internet of the year so far. twitter.com/electrolemon/s…

Reading aloud from my music theory homework. Every time a grand staff is mentioned, @ChamberMonster declares, “You shall not pass!”

RIP Albert Finney. We’re exactly as big as he let us be, and no bigger, and don’t forget it, ever.

Fuck yeah.

In my dream, there were whole capitalist and socialist movements based on competing interpretations of the design of the Brady Bunch house.

The Leaked Louis C.K. Set Is Tragedy Masked as Comedy

Over the years, C.K.’s comedy evolved, as any comic’s will, but at their best and most well known, his jokes were about interrogating himself as a means of interrogating American culture. As C.K. shuffled uncomfortably on stages and sets, clad in rumpled T-shirts and slouchy dad jeans, he served as his own act’s useful idiot: C.K., author and character at once, played the privileged guy… See more →

A lot happened in 2018. The ruinous Trump administration continued doing its ruinous thing. I finally deleted my Facebook account. I had a stressful couple of months caused by something that rhymes with “head hugs,” which I would gladly trade the life of any loved one to avoid going through again. I visited the UK for the first time. I published 33 blog posts, including several well-received posts on design and development.

Projects

Let’s check in… See more →

RIP revered genre film fixture Dick Miller. I always loved that he played the same part in two of these Corman productions, 30 years apart: twitter.com/robweychert/st…

I don’t know who is going to the Super Bowl and I don’t know who got Oscar nominations and I intend to keep it that way.

capitalism is working just fine why do you ask twitter.com/nytimes/status…

They Photoshopped Adam’s junk out of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Best part of the God’s Not Dead trilogy so far is when they Photoshopped Adam’s junk out of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

This profile of Apprentice creator Mark Burnett makes me want to set things on fire. newyorker.com/magazine/2019/…

During its first run in theaters, I saw Pulp Fiction seven times. twitter.com/IMDb/status/10…

Best dance sequence since Ex Machina.

What a time capsule. A 1968 high school faculty struggles to maintain the conformist status quo with a changing world beating at the door. When Vietnam finally comes to the fore after hovering in the background for much of the film, it’s a wrenching indictment.

brb skipping across town from an apocalyptic jazz show to a film noir screening at 10:14 on a monday night #iloveny

Mostly irredeemably sadistic trash, but its periodic flashes of artfulness—and Meiko Kaji’s withering glare—are enough to recommend it.

Hello, dear reader!

November is gone, but its links remain.

I published a couple of nerdy blog posts in November: one about how I’m using my Letterboxd data to address my cinematic blindspots, and one about a common convention of editorial design that’s currently incompatible with CSS Grid.

Lots of interesting stuff in the links this month; for what it’s worth, my favorites are Earworm’s series of videos about jazz.

As usual, you can get many… See more →

Has its moments (including what is possibly the highest quality jump scare of this decade), but taken as a whole it’s overwritten, too long, too polished, and too corny.

I never noticed before that Jack Nance is the dad in Suicidal Tendencies’ classic “Institutionalized” video! youtu.be/aYItTxqTc38

I have not seen Swiss Army Man but are you ready for my review

Twee-kend at Bernie’s

I woke up convinced Oliver Reed was one of the narrators on @blind_guardian’s Nightfall in Middle-Earth, but I was wrong.

the knee bone’s connected to the
something
the something’s connected to the
red thing
the red thing’s connected to my
wristwatch

uh oh

“[@FilmStruck’s] impending demise makes for a terrible comment on the current state of our culture.” subtraction.com/2018/11/06/goo…

Having just wrapped up another successful Robtober, I’m already thinking ahead to next year. Making a month-long schedule of horror movies is always more work than I think it will be, especially because I aim for most of the movies to be ones I haven’t seen before. As I’ve covered previously, my curation process is fairly involved, but I recently realized I’ve been ignoring a hugely valuable resource.

It’s Letterboxd, dummy

Anyone who’s paid any… See more →

Hello, dear reader!

October is gone, but its links remain.

I was mired in personal matters throughout October, so there wasn’t any activity on my site apart from the horror extravaganza that is Robtober, which was thankfully not disrupted. I finally finished a project that had been in the works for a few months: a custom-designed story with ProPublica Illinois about a family’s heartbreaking experience with an ill-conceived psychiatric clinical trial.

This round of links… See more →

Just added my 1,000th film diary entry on @letterboxd. 🍾

Every last thing is now officially terrible. twitter.com/Variety/status…

I was like, “If a NYC cinema specializing in esoterica can’t properly mask an arty French film, what hope is there?” but then they fixed it.

To put the film “on either side of the cultural divide is to actively ignore its ambivalence—a key philosophical tenet of Chazelle’s work.” twitter.com/TheAVClub/stat…

It may be the first in the series (other than the original) to have a director and screenwriters with name recognition, but this is just another Halloween sequel, thankfully nothing less but certainly nothing more. It’s pretty boring.

Also, is there any greater talent in Hollywood who is as routinely wasted as Judy Greer is?

The director of The Raid putting his spin on The Wicker Man sure sounds like fun, and Apostle starts off with promise, with a wild-eyed Dan Stevens lurching around a muddy village of Victorian cultists. But the movie kneecaps itself before the halfway mark, rushing to resolve the most interesting aspects of its plot in favor of making a gonzo, gore-soaked spectacle of the superfluous remainder.

I’m honored to be mentioned (at 15:03) in @sillypenta’s impressively researched look at 1990s Lego animation: youtu.be/xQtHWlgZEVI

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Films, dates, and times (all subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me, and ticket links are included for public screenings. The schedule is also available as a handy Google calendar and as a Letterboxd list.

This year, Michael Myers’ imminent return to the big screen has inspired me to binge my way… See more →

I hadn’t planned to publish this post since I failed to document this fest as thoroughly as the previous one, but I decided not to waste the bits I did document, so here they are.

Short Film Competition

The first short film competition screening was probably the least kid-friendly screening at the festival, and sure enough, a family with kids was front and center in the theater. Saturday morning cartoons, right? Literally two seconds in,… See more →

Whatever you’re working on, do it like Mike Ehrmantraut would do it.

Hello, dear reader!

August is gone, but its links remain.

My site was quiet in August, as I’ve been heads-down on a project I’m pretty excited about. Its release is just one facet of the ambitious September I have planned, so if all goes well, there will be much to report in next month’s newsletter.

My alter-ego Windhammer recently returned to the competitive air guitar stage for his 10th anniversary, tying for second in the… See more →

Starting up the final episode of The Americans. 😢

“[Jaws] remains a glistening example of an American filmmaker turning pulp fiction into pop art.” newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

Hello, dear reader!

July is gone, but its links remain.

Apart from brief musings on films I saw recently, my lone post in July was a recap of my vacation in Brighton, from which I was reluctant to return. The ensuing extended brain vacation kept me from doing as much internetting as usual, so the collection of links is a bit thinner this month, but hopefully you can find something below worth scraping across your… See more →

Caspar gets the high hat. twitter.com/TheAcademy/sta…

What a mess. I’m sympathetic to what Sorry to Bother You has to say about the intersection of capitalism, exploitation, and racism, but all of its statements, like all of its jokes, are blared from a megaphone and continue long after their point is made. Its amateur-hour vibe is far more tedious than charming, its gonzo satire is self-conscious, and its progressive politics are undercut by its lone female character functioning primarily as a trophy.… See more →

This has been your #TheFactsOfLifeNBC #content for Saturday, July 21, 2018.

Blair Warner : The Facts of Life :: Zack Morris : Saved by the Bell

George Clooney’s tenure on The Facts of Life was shorter than I remembered: just 17 episodes.

I never knew an 11-year-old Molly Ringwald was in the first season of The Facts of Life, and two Diff’rent Strokes episodes that same year.

Just watched the opening credits for each of the nine seasons of The Facts of Life, so my YouTube recommendations should be 👌🏻 for awhile.

The underlying narrative seems sound, but the mythology driving it is vague and the stakes aren’t really made clear. It’s a short movie but I had to watch it in two sittings because I was getting restless. Visually, however, *The Secret of the Kells *is an unparalleled stunner, worthy of its namesake.