Martin Zeller-Jacques

... which you can find at work in things like Ford's The Searchers. Things like Interstellar, Inception, Nolan's Batman Trilogy, etc. work very much in that same vein. Sure, there's ambivalent and ambiguity (as there often was around those figures in Westerns). But the ideology is still there.

I'd also point to the way Nolan's movies often centre around the terrible burden of a male genius who does what no one else can and who is unable to fully partake of the society he helps to build/protect. That kind of Moses-like figure is straight out of a conservative tradition ...

I mean, Batman (and really all superheroes) are exist somewhere on the libertarian to fascist spectrum of conservativism. They're inheritance of Slotkin's American tradition of 'regeneration through violence'. Pretty hard for them to be anything but conservative.

Clint Eastwood, hands down. An incredible filmography which is often brimming with generous humanity despite coming from a deeply conservative mindset.

Did a full franchise rematch with my wife last year. This remains the best thing Star Trek has ever done.

What about using sodium citrate to improve the melting qualities of non-processed cheeses?

See, I don't even know if you're joking about the sour cream thing. But I would have thought that of all the soured dairy products creme fraiche is the woke one.

I know it's a low bar, but I'm genuinely impressed that when firing Jennifer McEntarfer, the expert in charge of the jobs report, Trump didn't refer change her name to McEnfarter. I didn't think he was capable of that kind of self control.

A whole bean orchestra (them being musical fruits and all).

Summer Highland Falls

Yeah... very good observations of middle-aged folk on that show. But weirdly dated caricature of young millennials.

Always a class act, Gail.

You might be looking for Cities & Eyes 1, from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It describes the city of Valdrada, where everything in the city is mirrored by its twin in the lake.

A lovely article. I never tire of hearing thoughtful appreciations of why this character endures and how people come to appreciate him as they mature. 'It's a Bird...' By Stephen T Seagle is my favourite, but the release of the new Superman film has created so many more!

Ultimately, a soft 'no contact' worked for me. She was self-involved enough that I didn't have to declare anything or have a confrontation. I was able to just remove myself from her influence and not contact her and she didn't do much to bridge the gap.

Gave her chances to reconnect when when I got married and with her grandkids, and helped her pack and move when she retired. In all those instances she repeated the toxic behaviours which had led to the rift, but I was glad I'd opened the door and tried.

Not completely 'no contact', but I put an ocean between myself and my mother at seventeen and spoke to or saw her less than once a year for the rest of her life. By not having her around, I was able to reach a place where I wasn't constantly provoked and angry.

I've seen a lot of this in students over the years. In the best cases they're able to use diagnosis as a tool for understanding themselves and the world around them, and to adapt effectively and thrive. But in lots of others it seems to become an ingrained form of self-limitation.

Low-key the best? I agree.

Probably best understood not as food but as a combination of ballast (to keep punters afloat on a sea of cheap pre-game lager) and sedative. You try knocking seven bells out of someone in the wrong coloured shirt with a lump of congealed starch and fat in your stomach and see how far you get.

How often does Charlie scratch his anus? Like, my butt itches sometimes, but if I'm having to scratch my anus something has gone very wrong upstream of that moment. Can somebody check on Charlie Kirk to make sure he's, one: wiping properly; and, two: washing his hands thoroughly afterwards.

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy.

I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

Only American Jellyfish are sad about this. In Britain they long for the companionship of the elusive Ice Cream fish.

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif.

A still from Barton Fink (Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 1991). In the foreground, Barton sits in a dark wool suit, a cardboard parcel beside him, facing the ocean. In the foreground a blonde woman sits just in front of a breaking wave and raises her hand to her eyes.

It's hot out! Share some movie or tv characters at the beach.

Of course there are lots of examples of franchises trying and failing to achieve this kind of thing - but I think most franchise fans are carrying around one or two times where it worked and they're always hoping for more.

I think one of the things that confuses this issue is that long running serialised storytelling can deliver emotional impact in a way that few other popular art forms can. Cap summoning Thor's hammer in Endgame hits so hard precisely because of the twenty or so movies which lead up to it.

You can tell this is satire because it's about Congress doing a thing.

An all-time great montage. I love it when genre movies go harder than they need to with their film-making.