Matthew Grainger

1000 Women in Horror From the silent era until today, the nightmares that have haunted our screen have been sculpted and embodied by women, but many of those artists have gone....

🚨 Big news 5 years in the making: some friends and I made a documentary! 1000 WOMEN IN HORROR hits Shudder soon, directed by Donna Davies and inspired by my 2020 book of the same name

If you are in Australia, I hope you can make it to the world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival

Every now and then you get to share a thing you loved with your children and it hits just the way you hoped. My daughter, four episodes into Twin Peaks: "The only healthy relationship in this show is between Agent Cooper and food."

The Electric State makes me appreciate how perfectly Nathaniel Halpern captured the Stålenhag vibe with Tales From The Loop. That show is also a masterclass in mystery box storytelling, complete and satisfying as it stands - while leaving the door open for a future I truly wish we’d gotten to see.

Two figures, a man and a boy, small in a post apocalyptic landscape; still from the film The Road.

What they don’t mention in The Road is that the rest of the world is fine, the US just America Firsted itself into this position and the president is still waiting for foreign leaders to make the first call.

But his stories were about so much more than 'weirdness'. They explored whether true goodness is enough in a world where horrors lurk in broad daylight. They affected me deeply. We were so lucky to have him.

I should have expected that. My imagination could never anticipate the shape of David Lynch’s storytelling. He popularised surrealism, and established dream logic as an antidote to formula.

I’d been dreaming about a third season of Twin Peaks for 30 years, and when it arrived, it wasn’t what I imagined. I loved it. At times, I hated it. I still think about it.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this - it’s GREAT! Lake Mungo is absolutely channeling some of this … and there’s a dash of House of Leaves in here too, in the best way possible …

In no particular order, here are ten movies I loved in 2024: Civil War, The Order, Terrifier 3, Wicked, Caddo Lake, Dune Part Two, Challengers, Hundreds of Beavers, Saturday Night, and Smile 2.

Apple TV+ announces free streaming weekend for its catalog of originals - 9to5Mac After several days of teasers, Apple TV+ today confirmed that the streaming service will be free for all this weekend....

Anyone wanting to check out #Severance this weekend…

9to5mac.com/2024/12/30/a...

What won’t Zaslav take from us?

excerpt reads: "I hear stories about directors who scream at actors, or they trick them somehow to get a performance. And there are some people who try to run the whole business on fear. But I think this is such a joke -- it's pathetic and stupid at the same time. When people are in fear, they don't want to go to work. So many people today have that feeling. Then the fear starts turning into hate, and they begin to hate going to work. Then the hate can turn into anger and people can become angry at their boss and their work. If I ran my set with fear, I would get 1 percent, not 100 percent, of what I get. And there would be no fun in going down the road together. And it *should* be fun. In work and in life, we're all supposed to get along. We're supposed to have so much fun, like puppy dogs with our tails wagging. It's supposed to be great living; it's supposed to be fantastic."

once again thinking about this passage from David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish

YouTube video by Sony Pictures Entertainment 28 YEARS LATER – Official Trailer (HD)

But this morning I want to do precisely that with this two-minute work of art: youtu.be/mcvLKldPM08?...

A great trailer is a microcosm of a movie’s vibe - or when the movie disappoints, a poignant memorial to the filmmakers’ best intentions. They’re tone poems, which is why I tend to scratch my head when people go frame-by-frame to try and unpick them.

One of the best parts of being a producer is when you give notes to a writer and they really understand the assignment, bringing back something better than you were hoping for. Had that happen twice in the last week and you just love to see it.

Well, I only made it to December 7 before I had to hear Wonderful Christmastime. Worse, it came on while I was starting self checkout at the Home Depot, so I had to endure the whole damn thing.

I will say — for years I resisted doing a live album, but 2020 changed things and we made this, and I’m really proud of it — it’s fun and expansive and is actually a good jumping-in point.

I am begging streaming services to add a “I will never watch this. Never show it to me again” button.

Always been prone to motion sickness from gaming. It seems to have gotten worse in the last couple of years; now I'm sitting here queasy from watching a *review* of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Anyone overcome this?

morpheus from the matrix

What if I told you that the only reason I am bald is that I’m afraid of a Ratatouille situation? What if I told you that I’d have so much hair if not for the fear of a rat using me like a puppet? These are modes of control, Neo. This is how they manipulate us. Ratatouilles, Neo. Rats that pull hair.

Robocop is a movie about a guy who gets killed on the job and they still made him go back to work

Massive away win for the little fella.

Brother when I start going to a local club to see a jazz trio instead of a stadium to see the Rolling Stones, it's not because I think Mick Jagger is gonna miss my $300

Open letter 2024 | The Spinoff Open letter 2024

If you're in a position to support The Spinoff financially, please do so

While publications like The Spinoff struggle, disinfo outlet Reality Check Radio remains well funded. The future is grim if real journalism declines and fake news is what remains

https://thespinoff.co.nz/open-letter-2024

What freaks me out more is when you turn off the frame interpolation … AND THEY CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE.

"Wicked" does not synch up to "Dark Side of the Moon" at all. Sorry to everyone in the theater.

TV Writers Found 139,000 of Their Scripts Trained AI. Hell Broke Loose It's 'organized crime,' says one, as scribes from Shonda Rhimes to Robert King face a system where studio policy and law remain murky

As I’ve been saying for over a year:

If your business model doesn’t work without violating the law, you’re not in business — you’re in organized crime.

Great reporting by @elainelow.bsky.social. theankler.com/p/tv-writers...

Can’t possibly ever say it enough: if you love something about someone—something they wrote or made or said, or something that made your day or life even a tiny bit better—tell them. Nobody hears it enough, and it can mean the world.