Controversial opinion, maybe, but: This sort of throat-clearing is why literary men are disappearing.
I am … skeptical of the overarching thesis (we need male novelists to turn men away from Trumpism) and VERY skeptical that this sort of wishy washy “ugh, we need SOME men” take will produce the sort of writers that appeal to Trump-friendly men. nytimes.com/2024/12/07/opi…

I have mostly given up on the GOP electorate, but the way the people at this debate stopped cheering for Vivek and started cheering for Haley when she made the succinct case for killing lots of Russians for very little money at the cost of 0 US lives, well, it warmed my heart. There's a part of the collective GOP lizard brain that still understands "killing Russians, good; not killing Russinas, bad." We need more of that.

A few weeks back, I saw folks suggesting the audience score for THE WOMAN KING on Rotten Tomatoes was being astroturfed by the studio because it was at 99%. I thought it was possible, though unlikely, since it was the verified audience number and you have to buy a ticket to vote. (It would actually be a pretty good use of $50-$100K by the studio: buy tickets to the movie, mildly inflating the gross; leave short reviews, wildly inflating the score; tout the audience number in your press release, leading to more buzz. But I digress.)

The Salman Rushdie news reminds me that there are few people on this planet I have less respect for than the PEN America members who protested the organization bestowing an award on Charlie Hebdo following the slaughter of that mag's staff by terrorists. pen.org/pen-receives-l… I'm still furious about that, seven years on. Fucking quislings.

Glad to be joined on BGTH this week by @jaketapper to talk about the adaptation of his book about Combat Outpost Keating in Afghanistan, “The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor,” into the film THE OUTPOST. bulwarkhollywood.thebulwark.com/p/jake-tapper-… With Afghanistan in the news I’ve wanted to get someone on to talk about the (rather limited) depiction of that war on film. I think THE OUTPOST is perhaps the definitive look at the war from a soldier’s-level view, where the goals of the mission were often opaque, at best.

Finally! Every critic should be raising their voice in alarm about this.

https://twitter.com/NatSocFilmCrix/status/1359185359922319363

The most amusing part of the replies to this are the people who are JUST OUTRAGED anyone would suggest Mulligan and Variety are doing an awards-season-related two-step. Spoiler: ALL OF THIS IS BEING DONE TO HELP CAREY MULLIGAN WIN AN OSCAR.

So, funny story: Amazon’s currently offering my number one and two movies of 2020 as part of their buy two, get one free Blu-ray sale. Here’s THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW: amzn.to/2N5ZYZG And here’s FATMAN. I’d wanted to pick this up since it was released, since I’d heard that the Nelms Brothers have a great commentary track. Excited to dig in. amzn.to/2N81jiC

Like @richardrushfield, I remain shocked that so few critics have said *anything at all* about Variety throwing their reviewer under the bus at the behest of Carey Mulligan. theankler.com/p/what-remains @richardrushfield "Also let us note, that when it counted, when the critics of America had a chance to stand up for one of their colleagues, when you had just about the lowest cost opportunity to demonstrate moral courage that the world could provide, almost none rose to the occasion."

this is so incredibly embarrassing my god newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/h… imagine being this woman just imagine it newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/h…

This is it, this is the whole thing. As long as Trump is lying about the election—as long as he is lying about having the election stolen from him—and as long as *people believe him*, we are in serious jeopardy as a nation. This is not an exaggeration! thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/the-biggest-… If you can’t back the impeachment and conviction of Donald Trump when he is literally putting the country at risk because he’s so comically, buffoonishly self-obsessed that he would rather spark a civil war than admit he lost, when *could* you back it?

And all this time all we had to do was get one guy at State to put up some bullshit to bring this nightmare to an end. That’s some real Dorothy-had-the-power-to-return-to-Kansas-all-along BULLSHIT, screenwriters.

No one ever listens to Sonny. I’ve lost about 100 followers today and, honestly: I’m pretty okay with that.

Alright. Debate thread! Please mute this thread if you generally prefer my (infallible) movie takes as opposed to my (often quite fallible) political takes. (It’s a double, so: 3oz High West Double Rye, 1.5oz Dolin’s Sweet Vermouth, five or six dashes of Angostura bitters. Shake with ice. Pour into chilled martini glass. Enjoy!)

If you don’t at least find the Trump taxes story *interesting*—if your default response is a casual “no one cares” or a strained “AvOiDanCe IsN’T EvaSioN!”—I am kind of curious what would you *would* find interesting. I don’t think this is going to have 1/1000 of the impact on the election the SCOTUS fight will have. I don’t really care if it changes a single vote. (It probably won’t!) But an in-depth look into the taxes of a fabulously wealthy celebrity is kind of by-definition “interesting.”

split every state until every county is one state and then split the states further until every township is a state then split the states one more time until every HOA is a state

then let the HOAs go to war with each other

truly the civil war we deserve

oh fuck me

https://twitter.com/johnfund/status/1307109321721995265

Knowing 2020, we’ll have a 269-269 EC split decided by a 4-4 SCOTUS.

Well. That certainly sounds like what the state-controlled media in an authoritarian regime wrote about the movie after they put it on the shitlist following US reporters highlighting atrocities against Uighurs in areas where MULAN filmed. finance.yahoo.com/news/nearly-on… Anyway. I’d be curious to know how accurate the numbers in this piece are. They’re based on a fair number of suppositions.

Cuomo’s just fucking with people at this point, right? deadline.com/2020/09/ny-gov… opening gyms and casinos while leaving theaters closed, what a world

Yes, well, that skirt was very short. nytimes.com/2020/09/01/wor… One of these things I just have no patience for is people in the press kinda-sort-sidling-up-to-suggesting that the Charlie Hebdo folks should have just shut up if they didn’t want to get murdered. Drives me fucking batty.

Will Elon’s brain implant let me stream anything at any time in my brain? [stuck in traffic]

“Ugh, Neuralink, gimme some endorphins.”

Neuralink:

I dunno, it’s complicated, I guess, but: I’m basically of the opinion that people writing about movies that are playing in theaters should see them in theaters. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/… At a minimum there needs to be some consistency. “We only review things that are opening in theaters AND online.” “We only review via screener link.” But this whole “We’ll only review things IN a theater IF we don’t have to be near normies” is … at the very least, a bad look!