Dana Stevens

Reasons you should fork over your rapidly shrinking salary to us TK

True enough. So Drive My Car then?

SO good. I often go back and read reviews from his archive. And his social-media presence was the best. Miss that guy.

Very fun roundup. Also read Matt's book Opposable Thumbs, an anecdote-packed tribute to the small-screen critical titans who changed lives--certainly those of us future movie critics.

Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street

The New Wicked Is Not Going to Be As Popular As the First Wicked: For Good suffers from the same problem as the Broadway musical, but one performer saves it.

When Universal & director Jon M. Chu decided to divide Wicked into 2 movies they must have known they were taking a chance, since the show's 1st act is where nearly all the best songs are. So Wicked: For Good suffers from mild sequelitis--but see it anyway, for the divas.

slate.com/culture/2025...

If anyone deserves the set...

Everyone talks about "song of the summer" but this here is the essential song of winter 2025.

📌

Fewer ICE officers abducting daycare workers, more mini-goats grazing in front of BLM yard signs.

As one should and must

My child is A) almost 20 years old and B) was never a Lego kid anyway, but she is an acting student & I am a lit nerd & WE NEED THIS.

Drafting my letter to Santa already

It's also so perfectly cast, Jared Leto and all. Baby Kristen Stewart! Jodie at her steeliest! Forest Whitaker in top form!

The new "It is a truth universally acknowledged": "Every female Marxist researcher would dream of proving that Hitler had a small penis."

I need to read that. I also just thought of Ann Douglas's Terrible Honesty, a book about culture and race in 1920s New York that's so erudite it has no right to also be a page-turner: www.kubikbooks.com/pages/books/...

Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror

Magical!

I love her and I want Mamdani to become NYC's Hidalgo!

Thelma Todd & Zasu Pitts: The Pajama Party (1931) Part 02/02 on Make a GIF _premium

(This comes from a delightful gif that I couldn't get to render on bsky:)
makeagif.com/gif/thelma-t...

Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd in the comedy short The Pajama Party (1931)

Taylor needs to write a song about Thelma and Zasu!

The (horrifying) case Jessica is talking about is from late 2024, and the article linked above came out literally today. She also posted her own 2022 article above in the thread so as to make a point about how long she has been warning about exactly this response from forced-birth advocates.

YouTube video by Second Time Around Clara Bow - Call Her Savage 1932

If they want to see her in an early sound film that also has the great Thelma Todd, and some pre-Code naughtiness including a scene in a gay bar, Call Her Savage is streaming for free on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOwv...

Original Odie content over AI slop any day!

This would be a fascinating experiment but could endanger your career and friendships! Probably wise to keep in drafts file.

Imagining absentmindedly clicking on either & immediately getting fired.

I just did this & my son shall be Hamnet Gustav, thank you 🎥

Oh was that part fake? Fine, I will take this down and be relieved that I don't now have to retain that image in my brain.

Amazing "soundtracking your life" moment!

Oh, also First Reformed, even though it's Protestant and not Catholic. Great movie about the elemental struggle of faith.