R.I.P. Gerrit Graham, who got some of the best laughs in Used Cars, a film where everyone was fully committed to the bit.
Perman Waters in Cannonball. Beef in Phantom of the Paradise. Sam (the fisherman) in Old Boyfriends. Any time he showed up, you knew you were in for a treat.
Paint me like one of your French dipsades.
Today I learned that Peter Medak ended up going on an after-hours bar crawl with Peter O’Toole to discuss The Ruling Class (the actor held the rights to Peter Barnes’ play at the time), and when they were done, O’Toole drunkenly called his manager and gave him 24 hours to set up a deal for the film (which United Artists offered Medak the next day).
Here me out…
Over on the Stanley Kubrick Appreciation Society YouTube page, there is a new interview clip from 1972 where Burt Lancaster is diplomatically discussing Oscar nominations & winners, closing out with the opinion that for the previous year, Malcolm McDowell should have won Best Actor and A Clockwork Orange should have won Best Picture. I found this both refreshing and surprising, but also that if anyone of the Old School would have that opinion it would be someone like Lancaster. I imagine Mitchum might have, too.
In all my adult years I can’t recall any actors (or contributors to any stage of the filmmaking process, really) give such huzzahs to McDowell and Clockwork.
(Seems like as good as any place to reiterate my love for The Train, easily my favorite Lancaster performance and an all-time favorite film.)
The 2014 anthology film Word with Gods has a single paragraph page on Wikipedia. If you look it up on Just Watch, there is no available platform on which to see the film. YouTube has trailers and some Peter Gabriel videos Gabriel provided the title song and soundtrack to the film), but no film. If you search the film under “shopping” you will find only other films with the words “word(s)” or “god(s)” in the titles.
It just isn’t there, anywhere.
And yet in 2015 I watched the film at a local festival, after which it seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. I assume there was a distribution issue and none of the 9 teams involved could agree on some aspect of the business of committing the film to a disc. Or, perhaps there was something else? Gen Sekiguchi’s Survive Style 5+ has never had a formal distribution due to music rights, so maybe it was Gabriel that gummed up the works? Though he’s never struck me as someone who would impede a project that way, especially one with such a spiritual angle.
And I may have talked about this before but I forget sometimes…I just know I would slap down cash for a copy of the film if it ever became available. With so many boutique film distributors trucking in obscurities, I wish someone would make that happen.
SMERSH POD has a soft spot for Carry On films. So I decided to give them a try.
I watched the first 30 minutes of Carry On Cleo and the first 20 minutes of Carry On Columbus, and I have now decided I do not need to watch any more Carry On films.
Dolly Parton and Tim Curry dying within roughly a day of each other has had an adverse effect on my peace of mind. Starts you asking questions like “why do good people die when evil ****s seem to be thriving?”
For both Parton and Curry, you could simply say “I love (their) voice,” as her sweet country croon and his slippery posh velvet-tones were undeniably gripping. Then, their smiles. Dolly always looked like she was about to hand you kindness; Curry had the broad, insinuating grin that made his being born in Cheshire seem a tad on-the-nose.
Both were beloved, and built to last. Both are deeply missed. If these things do come in threes, I don’t know if our collective hearts can take whatever is next.
No, that was the extent of it.
Stumbled across a clip from The Gaby Roslin Show where Ian Dury and Bob Hoskins are sharing stories from their youth, and my gosh, it’s a great segment. They’re both absolute naturals. I miss Mr. Hoskins.
There is always a chance I will misspell one or both of their names.
Both directors have made five features in roughly the same 25-year period.
Personally, I think they exemplify the reason for Criterion box sets.
Kudos.
Here to provide answers to questions you didn’t ask:
A BlueSky user has stated “Nicholas Winding Refn is actually doing important, beautiful work in an era of imperial collapse.”
Mr. Answer-Man responds: “I liked his Viking film, but he is insufferable and his work, largely, grotesque and despondent.”
In December of last year I caught a song on Shazam while listening to KXT, the coolest local station I know. The artist’s name is Pierre Braun, and the song’s title, as reflected in Shazam, was “I Am an Uglier Bird”…and when I got home that first day, I went to my then Apply Music account, looked up the song, and found nothing. A month or so later I had given up Apple and moved on to YouTube music, and there was no listing there, either. There was no result when I did a basic web search. There was nothing to be found in music stores. In the following months I continued all of these searches, over and over, with no luck. Had it been a brand new/unreleased song in December 2025, I thought, surely by August 2026 someone would have referenced it somewhere in the vastness of the internet.
No. No, they have not.
It’s been so long now, I don’t even recall what the song sounded like. No idea what the genre was, the tempo, the general vibe. But I’ll be damned, I cannot erase my Shazam listing until I find the thing.
The sad news hit today of Robert Carradine’s death, which immediately made me think of the actor alongside Belinda Balaski in Cannonball (1976), playing a couple of sweet surfer kids taking part in a road race. Their gee-whiz approach, kindness to other drivers, and giddy shock when they end up winning through a bizarre string of circumstances, all make for an incredibly winning part of a film that seems to get lost between Death Race and The Cannonball Run. It’s a favorite of the genre.
Carradine was best known for Revenge of the Nerds, but I loved his work in films like The Long Riders and The Big Red One. He will be missed.
The second film of 2026, and it was a sublime 77 minutes of character and textures. I loved this thing so much.
Just thinking about how The Limey, a Great Film and easily my favorite of Soderbergh’s entire roster, has that exquisite ending utilizing a scene from Ken Loach’s Poor Cow. Its some of the best cinematic punctuation I can recall.
SISTER MIDNIGHT
SORRY, BABY
EEPHUS
ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL
SINNERS
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
TRAIN DREAMS
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
GRAND TOUR
BLACK BAG
ORWELL 2 + 2 = 5
NOUVELLE VAGUE
EX-HUSBANDS
SPLITSVILLE
Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another
CAUGHT BY THE TIDES
FREAKY TALES
WAKE UP DEAD MAN
KILL THE JOCKEY
HARVEST
28 YEARS LATER
HOT MILK
STEPPENWOLF
CLOUD - A brief, pristine shot of darkness enveloping a home. It is beautiful and fleeting, but it may be my favorite single visual moment of the whole year.
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - Every second of banter between DiCaprio and del Toro was a tonic for the urgent threats facing their characters.
EEPHUS, KILL THE JOCKEY, and SORRY, BABY - For me, the best surprises of the year. Films that I went into cold, no knowledge or expectations, and they absolutely walloped me.
FRANKENSTEIN - When the creature touches Elizabeth’s gloved hand; delicate, intimate, chaste. A lovely moment.
WEAPONS - That finale: a rip-roaring chase that is as delirious as its result is horrific.
SINNERS - Sammie playing Charlie Patton’s guitar in the car, and Stack’s reaction when he starts to sing. Priceless.
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - The moment that made me jump more than any horror film or thriller gotcha was the death of Mae West (Alana Haim). Even on re-watch, BAM. Yikes.
WALTZING WITH BRANDO - Billy Zane accomplishes the year’s best imitation, a visually on-point Marlon Brando.
GOOD BOY - The year’s best animal performance? I was worried sick about that dog.
QUEER - The best film I watched a year too late.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT - The year’s best trash? Say what you want about this derivative, messy, noisy film…but I had a blast from start to finish.
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - “Bob?” When the clerk can’t get “Jim Parker” to pay attention. It’s such a flawless moment, no pause, just a line of questioning and then freedom.
THE MASTERMIND - The film with the briefly-met tertiary characters I would have gladly watched an entire film about: John Magaro and Gaby Hoffman’s old acquaintances of Josh O’Connor’s drifting loser were instantly intriguing, and I cared far more about finding out what their deal was than the aimless protagonist.
DYING FOR SEX
(Films I wanted to love, had every reason to love, but one or more elements gave me pause.)
CLOUD
MISERICORDIA
THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME
WEAPONS
THE SPARROW IN THE CHIMNEY
THE DAMNED
FRANKENSTEIN
KOLN 75
THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE KNIFE
My favorite never-before-seen films from the past 12 months:
Ikarie XB1, Louie Blouie, Planet of the Vampires, Porco Rosso, and The Red Light Bandit
The films I didn’t get a chance to see which will have to be part of the 2026 catch-up:
PETER HUJAR’S DAY
THE SECRET AGENT
PREDATOR: BADLANDS
HALLOW ROAD
Radu Jude’s DRACULA
Luc Besson’s DRACULA
NO OTHER CHOICE
DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT
BLUE MOON
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
Favorite songs from this year.
Orbital, “Deepest”
Pete Tong, MoBlack, Max Zotti (featuring MonoLink), “Apocalypse”
Wet Leg, “mangetout”
Geese, “100 Horses”
Ron Gallo, “Checkmate”
Andrew Bird, “Blood”
Morcheeba, “We Live and Die”
Loaded Honey, “Tokyo Rain”
Laufey, “Silver Lining”
Little Simz, “Flood”
…and a few older songs I discovered this year:
“Mondo Bongo” - Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
“Shortnin’ Bread” - Tokyo Cramps
“Where Eagles Dare” - Atom and His Package
“The Worst Band in the World” - 10cc
You know the score. It’s that time of year.
The only things on mine are the only things I could ever want on mine. #perfection
