Phil Hoad

@outlawvern.bsky.social Hello, just hoping for a follow, so I can DM about something I'm working on ?

Aamir Khan: India’s movie legend on a cut-price mission to save Bollywood The superstar actor will release his latest film on YouTube so families who cannot afford cinema trips can watch

Interesting that the main (acting) players in Bollywood are a minority (Muslim), just as Jewish people originally drove Hollywood, and Igbos founded Nollywood bit.ly/4fnftWm

Quentin Tarantino & Michael Madsen on the set of KILL BILL VOL.2

For this very special episode, Quentin Tarantino returns to the show to talk about his 10 favorite Michael Madsen performances (not from his own films)! A lovely tribute to a great actor!
Listen:
open.spotify.com/episode/5wPX...

ANDOR S2 didn't live up to S1 for me. A few magnificent moments, especially Forest Whitaker's Rhydo tirade and the Ghorman plaza massacre. But some actively poor episodes (the first three), it lacked the methodical focus on fascism's infrastucture, and Diego Luna was oddly decentered

I'm serialising my non-fiction book about a great Hollywood rivalry, BEEF: SCHWARZENEGGER v STALLONE, here: beef-schwarzenegger-v-stallone.ghost.io.

A true story of biceps, bulging paychecks and insanely toxic masculinity.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber so I can get to finish it

I'm serialising my non-fiction book about a great Hollywood rivalry, BEEF: SCHWARZENEGGER v STALLONE, here: beef-schwarzenegger-v-stallone.ghost.io.

A true story of biceps, bulging paychecks and insanely toxic masculinity.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber so I can get to finish it

This is great. I had no idea PHANTOM THREAD broke him. Fascinating how a lifetime's internalising finally left him marooned outside a character

The Geek Pie episode is a beautiful sitcom half-hour

But Christ - with Haneke?!? Yes, think you're right. And also I find there's a kind of 20, 25-year hole where film-makers slip out of view for a while before being reappraised. No one talks about Gondry these days, for example ...

And furthermore so English it closed with a joke that went above the head of most foreign reviewers

I adored 28 YEARS LATER : how it turned zombie Brexit UK into a Spencer Tunick happening run amok, dotted with Piers Plowman hold-outs and eccentric nutters overinvesting in outsider art, and Danny Boyle slinging his iPhone around in sync. Probably the best, and easily the funniest, of the series

And strangely overlooked these days ...

Researching Michael Madsen I was surprised to find that SPECIES is actually a satire on LA arriviste gold-digging that only a paranoid 90s studio exec could've dreamed up

Michael Madsen obituary American actor best known for playing heavies, including the ‘psycho’ Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs

My obit of one of the last of the tough guys bit.ly/4lzgyfq

Drink Pastis by the metre and party till dawn! The genderfluid French superclub in the heart of cowboy country Stars, cowboys, village kids and drag queens – they all flock to La Churascaia, the bullring-like nightspot in the Camargue marshes. As it notches up 60 years of freewheeling hedonism, we celebrate an...

I wrote about France's unlikeliest and (in the 60s and 70s) coolest nightclub, la Churascaïa, in the deep Camargue delta www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...

It’s getting to the point where films don’t need plots, just articles about potential ones

The Triptych of Mondongo review – one part art documentary, two parts directorial megalomania What begins as a portrait of Argentinian art collective Mondongo snowballs into Mariano Llinás’s infuriatingly brilliant farrago of colour, conflict and existential crisis

The trickiest review I've written in a while www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ju...

As much as I love the distro work Mubi do and have many friends that work there, their response to Sequoia's investment is embarrassing & harmful. they're far from the only 'indie' studio taking Israeli artwashing $$$ (check who funds A24!) they've always positioned themselves as politically engaged

It is Chantal Akerman's birthday.

Apparently when David Lynch signed a deal in the mid-90s with French industrialist Francis Bouygues to fund his films, Bouygues asked him if there were any buildings in Paris he wanted to see, like Arche de la Défense. Lynch asked to see the Paris morgue

I would just say that if simulations are about control and the replication of what you see everywhere, then Perpignan is the polar opposite of that !

Perpignan

It maybe gets a bit twee in the road-trip phase, but Takeshi Kitano's HANA-BI is still an extraordinarily beautiful referendum on life or death (made in the aftermath of his motorcycle accident/suicide attempt)

Hi Tansy, could you possibly follow me, so I can DM you?

Aw, thank you ! It was amazing to work on

No worries, thanks for replying !

Lovely, thank you - will hit them up !

I've been chipping away for a while now on a Guardian Long Read about how Netflix and other streamers' algorithms and data are shaping cinema. I'm looking to chat to directors, producers and screenwriters about their experiences working with these companies - on or off the record. Anyone keen ?