Otis Wheeler

Just in time, only this morning I was hate listening to a popular movie podcast and wishing for a cinephilic/autueurist pod

It’s like saying you’ve never heard Ben Webster, Clifford Brown, Elina Duni, or Bill Evans. Ah well.

There’s lots of music that I don’t listen to bc it doesn’t have a use value for me. Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Joanna Newsom. Good music that I (mostly) don’t listen to

Someone told me they don’t like jazz bc it’s not emotional enough. That’s like saying you don’t like furniture bc it’s not emotional enough, you don’t like Montreal, cafes, wool sweaters, porcupines or the letters X, Y & Z bc they’re not emotional enough.

The worst Walsh protagonist a guy could ask for

Thanks Dan! Happy holidays

Norman Rockwell painting, depicting little Roby Bridges being escorted into a school by Feds. Racial slurs are pained on the wall behind here. A thrown tomato lies on the ground.

65 years ago on Nov. 14, little Ruby Bridges was escorted into an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. Norman Rockwell, renowned for blissful depictions of Americana, did this remarkable painting for Look magazine. Printed as a double page, over-size spread, it's his masterpiece.

The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is above all an invocation. When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges. It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.

Some inspiring words on cinema in the streaming era from the Pope.

Yes, THAT Pope.

My mom watched S01 as it aired but I was 9 & only caught snippets. As soon as I could drive, I rented the whole series on VHS from a video store 30 minutes away, and rewatched parts of it when it came out on DVD. Notoriously, the pilot wasn’t included in either release, so I didn’t see it until 2014

We stan a queen (of wasting patriarchal studio $$). I can’t tell if GWTW estimates take into account the three strip Technicolor process

Sure sounds like a lot! I saw somewhere claim that Selznick & co shot 81 hours of footage for Gone With the Wind, which would work out to almost a million feet (?) of Technicolor reels

PTU: rich, funny, theatrical, mannerist. The first Johnnie To movie I didn’t just admire but loved, with arguably the defining role for Lam Suet, the greatest supporting actor since Walter Brennan. Endlessly rewatchable.

The Fishing Place (2024, Rob Tregenza) eluded me as narrative but the photography sure hits

I’m two ★★★★ Letterboxd logs of late Linklater or Assayas away from admitting I like the movie equivalent of soft rock

The most confusing things to me about dating are when they've never heard of cross-contamination, and when they don't believe clicking on a trackpad with your thumb is a thing. Plus everything else

Diablo was solid

Scene Check out this great listen on Audible.com. A kaleidoscopic memoir by acclaimed filmmaker Abel Ferrara, director of the cult classic films Bad Lieutenant, King of New York, and Dangerous Game, offerin...

Sorry to post this at 9pm when Bluesky is tumbleweeds but everyone should know that Abel Ferrara narrates his new memoir on audiobook. He even pronounces the words

www.audible.com/pd/Scene-Aud...

No one on that stage believed him for a second. I like Conan but it's impossible not to look like the biggest square in the universe next to Abel Ferrara. I met Abel and also felt like this

YouTube video by Conan O'Brien Abel Ferrara On "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" 10/23/96 | Late Night with Conan O’Brien

History's littered with beautiful ideas for movies that never got made—Soderbergh's conclusion to Star Wars is the latest—but Abel Ferrara saying on Conan in '96 that he wants to do "Cheers with a little T&A" and ACTUALLY DOING IT 10 yrs later kinda makes up for all of them

youtu.be/aY7yyhjOXWw?...

Snickers bar and a metal whistle

Parents, please check your kids’ candy this Halloween. I’ve just found an ancient metal whistle with the inscription “QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT" inside a Snickers bar. I blew it and heard a note of infinite distance, and now I’m haunted by a figure in pale, fluttering draperies. Be safe.

A few years after it came out, when I was 13-14 and saw the Head Like A Hole video on Alternative Nation or 120 Minutes and became obsessed. PHM has never been my favorite NIN album but it's always been my favorite to sing along to or pull from at karaoke

"I haven't thought much about parades tbh" such an iconic answer that Cuomo immediately tries to pilfer it

Great movie though. I feel like Garrel's movies get released or restored stateside in fits & starts. Someday I'll watch them all in a row and actually get a full picture of one of the greatest living French directors

In order to watch Emergency Kisses, a Philippe Garrel movie I'd never seen, in 1080p, I had to subscribe to UniversCiné, rent the movie, dl English subtitles, convert the subs from 25fps to 24, find a website that could overlay SRT on streaming video, and correct for drift. I just love streaming 🫩

If you haven't already read it, Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is terrific

The bonsai-trimming episode in Safdie's remake of The Smashing Machine is a highlight but the way it pales next to its wordless counterpart from Hyams' original speaks to the dangers of transposing work from a minor to a major key

I love this song (and first heard it, last year, through your blog)

This Clint bio is readable as summary, worthless as judgment. Why aren’t biographies written by critics, instead of hacks? We need more bios by people like Tag Gallagher, Bernard Eisenschitz, and Dan Nadel, less by journalists who purport to have taste and lack imagination

I didn’t know him personally but his writing of late felt like the only honest thing on the internet. What a loss.

If Sergio Leone were alive today, he’d still only be a year older than Clint Eastwood