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The only thing better than tongue-in-cheek 80s lesbian honky-tonk

is the same band doing an utterly ethereal cover of "Sweet Jane."

They only sell em at the venue, and once they're gone they're gone, but they might still have some left over! If you'd not be averse to using a middleperson I can check to see if they still have any when I'm there tomorrow and pick one up for you if so.

Likewise re: work, but I'd absolutely love that! I'm game to hammer something out if you are.

^ What makes that especially perverse is that the model is designed to simultaneously make people paranoid of spoilers without having anything that's actually worth spoiling. Marvel spoilers below if anyone cares:

Yeah, even outside of blockbusters it's a problem. Lazily Photoshopping stills is just *so easy*. I think the most recent poster like the old-style ones you describe, where even if I hadn't seen and loved the film I'd have the art stuck in my head for all time, is . . . Inherent Vice ? From four years ago now?

I'll never understand why the studio doesn't hire one of the thousands of fan artists who do killer posters and just have them draw/paint something. They're millennials posting their art online for free, paying them couldn't possibly be more expensive than having someone Photoshop six different Avengers onto a generic backdrop.

Solid Dick
Don't let the inflammatory opening paragraph, which states that Iron Man is the most evil movie ever made, turn you off. Jack Graham goes on to rigorously explicate his thesis, eviscerating the MCU's uneasy relationship with war profiteering and capitalism.

Hbomberguy's Sherlock Rant
Again, ignore his inflammatory title. Very thorough analysis of Sherlock specifically and Steve Moffat's worst tendencies as a filmmaker in general, one that made me feel a bit better about my relative distaste for the show post-pilot.

Fake Friends: Parasocial Relationships
Shannon usually talks about film and TV, and while this series is more broad in scope it's firmly rooted in media and celebrity culture so I think it fits. As someone who constantly has to remind myself to rein in my parasocial affections, this one is an uncomfortable but necessary watch.

J. K. Rowling and the Cauldron of Discourse

Again, this one applies a bit more broadly than just film, but since the Fantastic Beasts movies are ramping up all Rowling's worst writerly/political tendencies as discussed in this essay, I hope you'll allow it.

Sustaining Stupidity: Why CinemaSins Is Terrible
Plothole criticism is a cancer.

Stop Laughing at Old Movies, You Fucking Hipsters
I once left a 70mm screening of Vertigo unsettled and irritated after the entire audience decided that Jimmy Stewart's gaslighting of Kim Novak in the final act was hilarious, so this speaks to me on a deep, deep level.

Northern Star: On Twin Peaks, Sheryl Lee, and Laura Palmer

A survivor of incest and abuse shares what the character of Laura Palmer represents for her and others, especially in light of Twin Peaks: The Return.

It's the holiday season, which means it's time for listening to liturgical music in an effort to dredge up the ol' religious feelings. (Flippancy aside, these pieces and others like them are about the closest I'll ever get to believing in something divine again.)

Didn't log this the day I saw it, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Dearly hope it's not the Coens' last movie, but it feels like if it were it would be totally fitting. Each of the six segments seems to serve as commentary on a different facet of their career, and more than ever the brothers seem to be actively engaging the critics who claim there's nothing more to them but cruelty. Not that there aren't plenty of moments of cruelty in the movie, mind—some of them slapstick, some of them crushing—but that's not anything projected onto the world by the Coens. That's just the world, like it or not.

Delbonnel's photography is gorgeous—it's the Coens' first movie shot on digital, and while at some points it can get a bit plasticky the colors and landscapes are awe-inspiring. (Caught it at a local theatre, where Netflix allowed it to play, and am very glad I did.) And Burwell's score is as masterly as ever; he might be the most underappreciated film composer we've got working.

Ranking their films has been a meme passing around film Twitter as of late, so I'll do it seriously here just 'cuz (save for Intolerable Cruelty, which I've yet to see). Apart from The Ladykillers and to a lesser extent The Hudsucker Proxy, they've yet to make a bad movie, and have made at least 11 truly great ones. Helluva batting average.

I have a friend who's attempting to get into Shakespeare; to help him out, I'm drawing up these tongue-in-cheek "program notes" for various film adaptations and having way too much fun with it. Here's the first complete one, for Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.

SPOILER Show

Do you like true stories? WWII dramas? Con artists? Journalism? Satire? Actual fake news conspiracies? My friend's debut novel is for you.

The tl;dr version: fictionalized depiction of a real anti-Nazi underground newspaper whose leaders were captured by Germany and told they had to turn their paper pro-Nazi or be executed. They complied, took the money the Nazis gave them for the task, and instead invested all of it in an insane scheme to start up a second newspaper and turn it into an anti-Nazi publication that would be distributed throughout Belgium.

Tl;dr-er: a group of dissidents and resistance members decide to die for the sake of an anti-Nazi joke.

Tl;dr-est: Ocean's Eleven in Nazi-occupied Europe, but true.

I read the thing as it was being written and can verify, it is great. Most important, it's now available for preorder! Scroll down on this page to find the Amazon link.

This is fair, it's probably forty minutes at most.