Vee

Oh jeez. Lenny Von Dohlen and Itzin? Both amazing and unforgettable in their signature roles - Von Dohlen was amazing as Harold on Twin Peaks, while Gregory Itzin contained multitudes as Charles Logan (the most corrupt POTUS til Trump), and pretty much revitalized a moribund show in a two-hander with himself and Jean Smart as his neurotic First Lady.

This took too long for them to begin to get on top of, but it's a start and I'm very glad for it. Meanwhile: The assassination of Shinzo Abe is shocking. I initially thought from vague reports that he'd died of natural causes. I haven't heard of something like that in Japan since Yukio Mishima or the Aum Shinrikyo subway gas attacks.

Oh God, I'd forgotten the ending of Dogville. What a scene, and he's so good in it with Kidman. More Thief: Thread:

I feel like the Pincher sex scandal in the last few weeks/months? has been the tipping point, though, maybe I'm wrong. Someone else can explain that.

This somehow went even worse than expected, but what I want to know is how long "Semafor" will last after this debacle given the rapturous media reception it got, because access and start-ups while trying to elevate the 'good guys' in the right wing are everything to these people. (The added detail of Smith whining in Sifry's DMs about how they have to stop being 'liberal media' talking only to each other is a bonus gift)

What a legend, especially for Thief and The Gambler.

LOL:

And now: There seems to be some fog of war atm as to whether he is simply resigning as Tory leader, PM or both, or whether he will remain in the PM seat until autumn awaiting a replacement. I have my doubts the latter will hold up for long.

Still bleeding more loyalists straight through the night to morning over in the UK.

That's why I love Drake, right there.

IIRC it was originally intended to film them back to back, but COVID wrecked that. I assume they'll be moving quickly now though, partly since the Duffer Brothers are contracted to do a miniseries of Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman for Amazon (which Lucas reads in the finale). Spielberg has held the rights to it since the '80s. I think S4 is probably their strongest season and I was very impressed. Managing that scale and scope over nine feature length episodes is near-impossible for even bigger shows like Game of Thrones, which failed at it, but they kept up the pace and character depth here. (You can't service every character the same though, which is why I was fine with Finn Wolfhard taking a backseat for people like Max, Lucas, Nancy, Dustin, Eddie, etc., and I suspect Will will return to the forefront next time as well.) Hopefully they can stick the landing. I do have my doubts that it will be a 'bloodbath' though - I think some characters may die, but I think the Duffers seem to have indicated they don't feel constant death is needed to have stakes. Fans were just as invested and afraid for their favorites this season as they were last season or the one before; even though we've been through this before, everyone kept expecting a huge body count. In the end it wasn't that massive. You don't need to turn every show into GOT or Breaking Bad when all that's needed is the perception of risk and dramatic weight.

One of the greats, not only for his stage work but for his unique film productions of Lord of the Flies and Marat/Sade. RIP.

Winter #1 was Lori Cardille, right? I'll always be fond of her from Day of the Dead, which cemented her horror stardom (she had a long association with those George Romero zombie films bc of her family's involvement in all of them); I've never seen her soap work but I'd like to.

Those kind of responses are always going to be there from some, and Twitter is not real life. That doesn't mean messaging and targeting still can't substantially improve, because it definitely can within the Democratic machine. I think Biden was a good candidate, better than a lot of people were willing to admit (both media and on the left), and probably the only one who could've taken Trump in that field. I think he's a good man who I'm glad is there. I admire Pelosi immensely for a lot of the work she's done, and I know she'll spend the rest of her life taking the same ageist and misogynistic slings and arrows she's been taking for years while doing hard work. I'm never going to disrespect the whole of that establishment when my family worked down there most of my life, alongside many of those people, and knows it and some of them intimately - I know how much of the real work is just slow, boring and head-down stuff. And I think Democrats can and are able to be most of what the majority of people who are not Very Online need them to be. But I think the stated belief when entering into office that the GOP fever would break, and the current strategy of putting a band-aid on where we've been at and trying to rewind it back, has completely failed. And that's not all on Biden or his fault, it's systemic. A number of people in the party don't want to accept that we're at where we're at and can't just go back to the relative pre-Trump normalcy of hunting for purple seats with less urgency, just like you still have many burnout leftists still refusing to acknowledge that not engaging in '16 and claiming they 'can't be bullied by SCOTUS to vote for Clinton' helped get us to where we are now. 2016 was it for so many of these things. The truth is a lot of different elements bear different responsibilities and have made different mistakes, and both the responsibility and the urgency have to be acknowledged and reckoned with. The good news is, I think, is that Joe Biden is much more likely to do that than say, Dave Weigel or Will Stancil.

I agree with a great deal of what Valdez, etc. say but I think there's more room for nuance and also broad oversimplification on either side of this device than ever. Not everyone being supportive of the administration doesn't care about abortion, but not everyone very upset atm is a leftist deadender (and I'm not saying you're not very upset). The facts on this judge thing, for example, appear to be that there is a deal on the table for that anti-choice appointment the next time one becomes available. That is not going to be acceptable to Democratic voters in the current climate, and it shouldn't be. That potential deal needs to not exist yesterday. It's important that people screen signal to noise, and righteous anger in the wrong directions vs. complete irrationality - for example, Jude Doyle going around trying to claim that Biden has always been 'rumored' to be anti-choice when his pushing hard for the pro-choice Souter nomination before Republicans found out years ago is a matter of record. That's just flat wrong and needs to be refuted. I do not believe Biden is anti-choice. But pushing back on the WH weighing an anti-choice judge deal, or coming at the WH and party apparatus for its extremely weak and confused response to the last few weeks and months - I think that's fair. I frankly think it's been a rolling shítshow. I think they've been shellshocked since Manchin nuked BBB, as it upended virtually all of their conventional wisdom and have never fully recovered, and I think the overall Dem leadership response to Roe has been embarrassing so far. There's a few nice statements from Pelosi, etc. but that's not enough. Critics are correct IMO when they say the WH and the Dems must be specific about what seats need money where, why and what they specifically will pledge to do when they get them. Not platitudes and clucking about destabilizing the country - it's already destabilized. We are in an asymmetrical war. I think the WH can still do more to fix the problems, and I am very glad Biden finally got on the page of the base today re: the filibuster, but it's going to take a lot more. Which is why accurately parsing what is happening, vs. leaping to extremes of 'they don't care/are doing nothing/are shills' or 'they're doing fine and people are overreacting' is so important. I think both Valdez and say, Oliver Willis have legitimate strong points to make, when they're not demeaning each other and coming off like assholes in the process (or if Willis would stop going off on his stupid joke tangents). That's the box we're all in.

I hate that this isn't the first time I've seen this. Damn you, Faulkner!!

A bit of good news:

I liked a lot of the album as an experiment. Do I prefer it to the originals? Nope.