Us was fantastic! Upped the scare factor and the thinkiness from Get Out, and that was a high bar.

I highly recommend the podcast Unspooled

Thanks for the podcast rec, Megan. I listened to their 3 (!) Oscar specials and laughed a ton. The two hosts have great chemistry and opinionated in a fun, not obnoxious way. Looking forward to listening to their take on various AFI 100 films!

I love Howards End but not as much as I love some of the smaller Merchant & Ivory films -- A Room with A View and The Remains of the Day remain my all time faves. The book has one of my all-time fave literacy passages (the "Only Connect..." bit, which may now come across as hackneyed but never fails to pack a punch for me.) That reminds me to finish watching the recent BBC adaptation of the book, with Hayley Atwell as Margaret (which is AMAZING casting) and Matthew MacFadyen as Henry Wilcox. I watched the first ep, and... I think my reluctance to continue may be due to my fondness for MacFadyen (loved him since his MI-5 days) and not wanting to see him as Henry fucking Wilcox, who is THE WOOOOORST.

Cereal:

I basically want to spend all day reading articles about Us

I have read several articles and am still not quite sure what the central metaphor is. Or maybe it's supposed to be open to interpretation, sort of like Annihilation? I rather like that, the elasticity of it all, but I would imagine folks who need concrete, logical answers to puzzles would hate it. I found it gorgeous and thinky and thrilling at any rate, and the performances were dynamite, esp. Lupita Nyong'o's.

One of the most interesting, slightly critical pieces of writing on it comes from Tasha Robinson at the Verge (assume ALL the spoilers): [link] I totally see where she's coming from, although I was bothered less by it. I think the text is rich either way.

Yeah, Vonnie. It's funny, but I basically decided to stop trying to figure Us out but still keep thinking about it!

I also just listened to my first ep of unspooled and also really enjoyed it. I listed to The French Connection ep since I just finished with my 1972 Oscar Watch. I agreed with so much of their observations and opinions.

I found it gorgeous and thinky and thrilling at any rate, and the performances were dynamite, esp. Lupita Nyong'o's.

On this point, there was recent Twitter discussion on which film comedy performances were Oscar worthy (but overlooked because the Oscars rarely reward comedy).

I'm thinking it would be cool to have a similar discussion about performances in horror movies.

FYI, Criterion Channel goes live on April 8: [link]

I am torn. I have cable, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime and have so many things to watch already for which I have no time. But this will have so many classic films that are really not available elsewhere (and signing up now will save you $10 per year for as long as you are a member). I want to support them, but can I really justify spending yet another $10 on streaming service?? Aeeeiii.

I'm thinking it would be cool to have a similar discussion about performances in horror movies.

It was heartening to see Daniel Kaluuya nominated Oscar for Get Out 2 years ago, although he had no chance at winning. Given that, i think it'd be not to too far-fetched to imagine Lupita Nyong'o getting nominated (honestly, I am still sore that Toni Collette wasn't acknowledged for her harrowing turn in Hereditary).

I wonder if the barrier for award acknowledgement might be lower for horror than comedy, esp. with all the recent talks about "elevated horror" or whatever? Hmmm.

Silence of the Lambs won all the Oscars.

Silence of the Lambs won all the Oscars.

That's true, but as you know, Tom "it transcended the genre."

Whereas just about everybody in Alien deserves a supporting Oscar nod, especially Veronica Cartwright.