As for myself, I’ve been in California for the past two weeks and change. The highlights of what I ate will be in my next end-of-month report!

The Last One for the Road

Opens today in NY at Film at Lincoln Center and IFC Center, with expansion to more markets in coming weeks.

There is no better substance than alcohol for bringing a group of dudes closer together—when it’s not tearing them apart. This charming Italian film from director Francesco Sossai captures this tension while keeping the tone relaxed. (It turns out we don’t have to go full Cassavetes.) “È l’ultima?” is a constant refrain for Doriano and Carlobianchi, two middle-aged buddies who are perpetually one last drink from ending the night. In this particular slice of their lives, they’re up late to pick up a long lost friend from the airport. To pass the time, they drive around the rural plains of their native Veneto.

Hopping from one bar to the next, the pair search for a satisfying final sip, but they never quite reach the point of satiety. During one stop, they meet Giulio, a lovelorn architecture student, and take him along on their journey. This chance encounter will alter the young man’s philosophy on life and love.

The film’s Italian title, Le Città di Pianura (The City of the Plains), refers to a conversation between Giulio and Doriano midway through, which reveals Sossai to have motivations for his film that go beyond providing nice vibes. Standing before a Renaissance-era painting of the Veneto region, Giulio notes that it places Venice next to the River Po while “ignoring the cities on the plain between them.” The painting is made in the capriccio style, which juxtaposes buildings and landscapes in a manner outside of reality. Today, the land largely serves as a backdrop that one zooms past on a high-speed rail, just as ignored as it was centuries ago.

Sossai’s homage to the commedia all’italiana is a lovely little yarn, told with the whimsical realism of Aki Kaurismäki—Allora Kaurismäki, if you prefer—and textured with a musty film grain and sludgy rock soundtrack by the Italian honky tonk musician known as Krano. Just don’t attempt to recreate this film’s roadtrip on your own!

Tasting Notes: It’s one grappa after another for this trio, which they spike with coffee come sunrise. They alternate the liquor with beer. Variations to this rotation during their adventure with glugs of kalimotxos out of a plastic water bottle and sips of daiquiris mixed by a handsome Count. He adds in two drops of Pernod, which was apparently a trend back in the day. Remarkably, no one gets visibly wasted in this film; the characters drink just enough to keep a light buzz going, a level of moderation I am always trying to achieve.

Foodwise, Doriano and Carlobianchi speak warmly of their favorite restaurant and their favorite dish is snails over a bed of polenta, which I hope to cook soon as I love polenta. But when they take Giulio to Mery’s, they find it boarded up. The film ends with a couple scoops of gelato: limone and fior di latte. Doriano got a different flavor than what he had ordered, but keeping with the film’s casual air, he’s cool with it. His remark echoes my own when it comes to The Last One for the Road: “I expected a bitter flavor but in the end, it’s sweet.”

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Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)

Now playing in limited release.

Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel (known for international arthouse faves La Ciénaga and Zama) makes her first foray into documentary with an examination of how the founding cruelties enacted by her country against its indigenous population have persisted to this day. It begins with a chronicle of the criminal trial of three mining surveyors who are accused of murdering the leader of the Chuchagasta indigenous community during a dispute over land ownership.

Without losing sight of the people affected by that incident, Martel expands beyond the initial true crime framework. Ever since the establishment of Argentina’s modern bureaucracy, tribal lands have been bought and sold without any benefit to the people living on them. An ostensibly neutral government continues to uphold colonial-era conquests; as one native notes, “paper doesn’t question the pen.” And as the killing of the Chuchagasta chief shows, bureaucratic violence is only one bullet away from reverting to its corporeal form.

Martel makes her point of view known from behind the camera—though it’s pretty tough to “both sides” the issue at hand—and the film is indisputably potent. Drawing from her body of work in narrative cinema, she leads you to her intended conclusion without being overly didactic.

Last weekend saw the conclusion of New Directors/New Films, an annual festival of, ahem, new films from new directors. This collaboration between Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art is always a highlight on the spring movie calendar.

This year’s ND/NF lineup boasted 24 features; I had the opportunity (and, more crucially, the time) to screen ten of them, along with half of the short films1. Here’s what I thought about everything I saw, presented in no particular order.

(And if you saw anything at the festival, let me know what you thought!)

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Leviticus

Opening Film. Screens April 8 & 9. Opens in theaters June 19 via Neon.

The films in this festival tend to be on the artsy side, so I was a bit surprised that this year’s Opening Film selection turned out to be a relatively straightforward horror film. This isn’t my typical thing, but I’m glad to have seen it because Adrian Chiarella has made a very effective debut feature.

The plot centers on an illicit romance between two teenage boys in an insular Australian town. Niam (Joe Bird) just moved there with his single mother (Mia Wasikowska), while Ryan (Stacy Clausen, essentially an Aussie Connor Storrie) is the pastor’s son at their fundamentalist church. Out of boredom, the two hang out in an abandoned mill, and their awkward horseplay soon morphs into a proper makeout session. When their sexualities are found out, the pair go through a strenuous exorcism. There are supernatural side effects. The Devil begins to stalk both of them, luring them in with temptation by taking the form of the person they desire most: each other. Isolated by their homophobic community, Niam and Ryan must figure out whether staying together will lead to salvation or perdition.

Chiarella doesn’t really strive to make an “elevated” horror film, which is for the best because Leviticus is genuinely frightening—and not just because of a few well-placed jump scares. Tight craft and deft motifs keep things interesting beyond surface-level thrills, and the teen romance is stark in its tenderness amidst the cruelty. Special attention is paid to the oil refineries and petrol stations lurking on the edges of this backwater down under. Hellfire doesn’t just come to the Earth’s surface. We summon it.

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Aro Berria

Screens April 9 & 10. Seeking distribution.

A different kind of exorcism occurs midway through Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe’s film, though to opposing ends. While the “deliverance healer” in Leviticus aims to sever his victims’ connection to their bodies, the men and women in Aro Berria seek a positive form of liberation. Set in 1978, the film tracks a group of disenchanted leftist metalworkers in the Basque Country who, dissatisfied with the latest union contract, join a hippie commune. (The title is Basque for “New Age.”) Blindfolded in a windowless, orange-painted room, the converts engage in esoteric dances, sustained floor writhing, and what appears to be a version of primal scream therapy. This sequence lasts ten excruciating minutes, and there’s more where that came from.

Aro Berria is more or less a reenactment of a real-life community’s practices, and Gorostidi successfully conjures the spirit of a bygone era. (Photographs from the actual commune are displayed over the end credits.) But to me, the experience was more akin to witnessing a cult indoctrination. My overriding thought was that leftists aren’t taken seriously because they do weird stuff like this. All of which is to say this film was really not for me, though I did take pleasure in the sun-dappled cinematography during the outdoor scenes. How wonderful it would be, Basque-ing in a perpetual golden hour.

Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest

Screens April 18 & 19. Seeking distribution.

I had just finished watching Aro Berria before launching into this next film, so I shuddered when it began with a depiction of a European hippie summer camp. Fortunately, the happenings were not nearly as esoteric and it was but one part of an artist’s globe-spanning quest to find community.

Born in Beijing and based in Berlin, filmmaker and artist Viv Li is the kind of global citizen who struggles to find the place where she truly belongs. Back home, she bristles at her family’s traditional attitudes. (There’s an amusing moment where Li’s aunt is convinced that the United States created the virus to weaken China, a mirror image of American’s homespun conspiracy theories.) The art scene in Europe is accepting, particularly when it comes to her queer identity and vegan diet, but she discovers cultural assimilation is a one-sided affair. During a trip to New York to see friends, she vents her frustrations with loneliness, with a brief moment of catharsis at the top of Luna Park’s ferris wheel.

This sort of self-reflexive documentary is by definition navel-gazing, but Li approaches the material with aplomb, playfully cutting across locales in a way that mirrors her own internal whiplash. It helps that the filmmaker herself is such a charming subject. Aided by an amiable soundtrack of German and Chinese pop music, Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest feels like we’re directly tapping into its maker’s stream of consciousness. The film ends without a tidy resolution, but she comes away with a better understanding of her two cultures. Comparing the West to China, she observes, “We’re both brainwashed, but in different ways.”

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Chronovisor

Screens April 10 & 11. Opens in theaters this fall via Grasshopper Film.

In 1972, Father Pellegrino Ernetti, a Benedictine monk and respected musicologist, announced the existence of the Chronovisor, a machine that allows its user to view an objective record of anything that has ever happened. (The idea is that everything we do emits particles, and thanks to the law of conservation of energy, the Chronovisor recovers signals from the ether.) His claim to have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ through this device caused a stir in the Italian press. But the scant proof provided was swiftly debunked. The Chronovisor was sealed in Vatican archives; its creator would die in obscurity, decades later.

In 2026, Columbia philosophy professor Béatrice Courte (Anne-Laure Sellier, a real-life academic) comes across a brief mention of Ernetti and his Chronovisor. Intrigued, she launches into a line of scholarly inquiry that comes to consume her. The Chronovisor was dismissed as a fraud, its inventor along with it. But what if it actually worked and the Vatican, afraid of the implications of laypeople learning the truth behind the Bible, orchestrated a cover up?

While the premise could be right at home with The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, what directors Kevin Walker and Jack Auen have to offer is not a globe-trotting pulp thriller starring Tom Hanks. Its adventurousness lies in its formal technique: it is a deskbound, lo-fi conspiracy thriller in which the viewer watches Béatrice read a bunch of old academic journals in beautiful private libraries and her well-appointed East Side apartment. It is one of the most compelling movies I’ve seen this year. I’m still trying to figure out what alchemy the directors were doing to make it so.

As we read alongside Béatrice, we hear excerpts from Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets, which turns her research process into a grand voyage2. The archival material—books, journals, magazines—spans multiple languages; English translations are superimposed over the text to highlight relevant information. I figured that these were expertly fabricated, but it turns out that nearly all of them are authentic and the result of original research on the part of the filmmakers. Chronovisor is, at once, an ode to the tactility of analog media and the bleary frenzy of the late-night internet rabbit hole—all based on a real conspiracy.

This was by far the best movie I’ve seen at ND/NF and I haven’t stopped talking about it! The festival screenings have already passed (sorry) but New Yorkers have another opportunity to see it before the fall release! It’ll be playing at Anthology Film Archives on May 2, as part of Prismatic Ground, with a director Q&A. Anthology reminds me of some of the old buildings at my old college. It’s kind of the perfect venue for this film. Tickets here.

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Maddie’s Secret

Screens April 12 & 13. Opens in theaters June 19 via Magnolia Pictures. Filmmaker John Early has curated a repertory series at Metrograph: Thrust It!: The Films That Inspired Maddie’s Secret.

I’m always skeptical when an actor jumps into the director’s chair for the first time. The results too often betray a loose grasp of cinematic grammar. Even worse, sometimes they are merely a vanity showcase. Fortunately, John Early’s satirical melodrama is an exception. In addition to writing and directing Maddie’s Secret, he also stars in the titular role in drag, which is never remarked upon within the world of the film. The initial chuckles during my screening quickly faded once everyone realized that Early’s performance was meant to be taken seriously if not literally.

At the beginning of the film, Maddie is a lowly dishwasher at the test kitchen for a Condé Nast food brand. (It is, of course, a thinly veiled stand-in for Bon Appétit.) Although she struggles to be noticed at work, she has a best friend alongside her in the dish pit (Kate Berlant) and a loving husband (Eric Rahill) to come home to. After a video about an eggplant omelette smashburger launches her into social media stardom, the disruption to her routine triggers a relapse of her childhood eating disorder. Maddie ends up having quite a few secrets to keep.

Early nails his parody of the 1990s “movie of the week,” complete with a cheesy muzak score and soft fill lighting, but the film flattens when it crosses into reverent homage. Coming to the rescue during those moments are well-deployed supporting players, including Berlant as the toxically co-dependent BFF and Conner O’Malley in the role of a horndog creative director.

Tasting Notes: You bet I started taking copious notes of all the dishes in the film. I’ll try to write a bit more about this for the theatrical release, but the most underrated satirical element has to do with Maddie’s signature style: a Californian riff (or ripoff) of Asian cuisines3. Let’s see if I can reverse-engineer her eggplant omelette vegetarian smashburger, which is based on the Filipino dish Tortang Talong.

And of course, there’s fertile ground with unpacking the irony of being a food influencer who has to stay in shape for the camera. A bit different situation but my mind went to Pete Wells having to reset his eating habits after stepping down as the restaurant critic at the New York Times.

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Erupcja

Screens April 11 & 12. Now playing in NY & LA via 1-2 Special, with further expansion to follow.

Reviewed in a separate post, in case you missed it:

Two Seasons, Two Strangers

Screens April 17 & 19. Opens in NY at Metrograph April 24 via Several Futures.

One would think that the definitions of “new directors” and “new films” would be straightforward, but as far as this festival is concerned, they appear to be quite malleable. Sho Miyake isn’t a particularly new director: four years ago, his film Small, Slow but Steady was programmed at this very festival. (It’s a lovely movie that is true to its title.) Two Seasons, Two Strangers is his fifth feature overall. And the contours of its bifurcated narrative—two strangers traveling to isolated locales in a futile attempt to outrun their melancholy—are pretty much the same as The Height of the Coconut Trees, which screened at last year’s edition of ND/NF. In that sense, this is not a particularly new film either.

This pedantry wouldn’t matter if Two Seasons, Two Strangers were a better film. Adapted from two of Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga, the story begins in a dilapidated fishing village, with a beachside meet-cute between a young man and a young woman who bond over their respective sadnesses. Then comes a narrative beat switch. Struggling with writer’s block, a Korea-born screenwriter escapes to snowy Hokkaido, where a stay with an isolated innkeeper rejuvenates her creative practice while reframing her perspective. These twinned tales of solitude contain plenty of potential, but it never quite achieves the resonance they deserve.

Despite these shortcomings, the gorgeous cinematography is an undeniable virtue. Framed in the square-ish Academy ratio, the recurring multiplanar landscape shots belie the smallness of human drama when set against the heights of mountains and the vastness of the sea. It’s in these moments that Miyake’s film, to borrow the title of his previous work, is small, slow, but steady.

Brand New Landscape

Screens April 15 & 16. Seeking distribution.

Yuiga Danzuka’s quietly ambitious debut uses the story of a fractured family to explore the alienation and displacement wrought in the name of urban renewal, as well as the coincidences and contradictions essential to life in a big city. A chance encounter between workaholic architect Hajime (Kenichi Endo) and his estranged son Ren (Kodai Kurosaki) resurfaces their long-suppressed grievances, while also giving Ren the opportunity to reconnect with his distant sister (Mai Kiryu).

Hajime has returned to Tokyo to spearhead a controversial redevelopment project that would force out the area’s unhoused population, in an echo of his star-making work designing Miyashita Park, a shopping complex in Shibuya. Danzuka inserts archival footage of the homeless encampments that used to be there. (I’ve been to Miyashita Park. Admittedly, it’s very nice.) It’s an inspired intervention, if incomplete in execution. Hajime is a fictional character, and the family drama doesn’t quite connect to how the twinning of contemporary architecture and capitalism has led to the domestic space becoming as transactional as the built environment. This only really comes together at the very end, when Danzuka makes an onscreen dedication: “In memory of my mother and the city.”

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If On a Winter’s Night

Screens April 14 & 15. Seeking distribution.

Urban alienation is also the subject of this Delhi-set neorealist drama by Sanju Surendran, though here the causes are India’s hierarchical society and economic precarity. A young couple, both artistic strivers, have migrated from Kerala to Delhi in search of better opportunities. They soon find that the language barrier between Malayalam and Hindi is the least of their problems.

The premise is very similar to All We Imagine as Light, and its director Payal Kapadia is an executive producer on this project. While it’s great that her majestic film seems to have inspired a new generation of Indian filmmakers, the comparison does not work in Surendran’s favor. Quoting the title of Italo Calvino’s most famous work for this film’s English-language name suggests a playful postmodernism that simply isn’t there. More descriptive is the original title, Khidki Gaav, which is simply the name of the South Delhi neighborhood where the film is set. Surendran has a keen observational eye, but the overly listless pacing hampers what ought to have been a more propulsive story.

Do You Love Me

Screens April 10 & 11. Release plans TBA by Icarus Films.

A note at the beginning of Lana Daher’s non-chronological essay film cautions that its mixture of disparate works may confuse the viewer. But “this disorientation is part of the journey. Welcome to Lebanon.” Built from 150 fragments of existing media—including film, music, and found footage—this history of life in Daher’s home country is a feat of archival research not unlike the journey undertaken by the directors of Chronovisor.

Working with editor Qutaiba Barhamji, Daher intermixes scenes from documentary and narrative cinema across the past 70 years, with each sequence interrogating different tropes in Lebanese media. The cumulative effect is a portrait of how entrenched conflicts in the Middle East and sectarian divisions in Lebanese society have affected ordinary living. In Beirut, time and history don’t exist in a linear fashion. It loops and loops, constantly threatening to collapse in on itself. That Do You Love Me had its New York premiere amidst Israel’s relentless bombing of Lebanon only underscored this destructive cycle.

Daher leans heavily on nostalgic music, and it’s highly effective. One memorable sequence is soundtracked by “Monday, Tuesday... Laissez-moi danser,” a French-language disco song from 1979 that was a huge hit in Lebanon. “Day after day, life slips away… / Let me dance, sing freely all summer.” Juxtaposed against scenes of destruction and displacement, the joyous tune becomes a song of resistance.

This was the only public ND/NF screening I managed to attend this year. Given the political situation, the audience was eager to receive this film. There was a sustained standing ovation for Daher after the Q&A. The director noted that during the recent premiere in Beirut, the audience could hear an Israeli drone buzzing. At first, she thought it was a sound effect she forgot she had added, and thought it was a smart choice. Then she realized the border between cinema and reality was more porous than she imagined.

Can I make a confession: On my way to the theater, the breakdown of “Straight Up” by Paula Abdul got stuck in my head. (“A-do, do you love me? / A-do, do you love me, baby?”) I wondered if this song would appear in the film, but I can report that it does not. (For starters, Abdul is not Lebanese, but of Syrian Jewish descent.) Rather, the film’s title is taken from a 1978 pop classic by the Bendaly Family, the chorus of which was recently interpolated by Palestinian singer and rapper Saint Levant. The “you” in “Do you love me?” may be Beirut itself, or the wider world.

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Shorts Programs I & II

And last but not least, a quick word on the short films programmed at New Directors/New Films, half of which were made available to critics. Somewhat surprisingly, most of these were more plot-driven than I’ve come to expect from this festival.

• The mundane aftereffects of institutional cruelty are captured in Division (directed by James Paul Dallas), a brief documentary in which the filmmaker helps an absent friend pack up his apartment over video chat. Revealing the reason is saved for the very end.

• I haven’t seen much of the What We Do in the Shadows TV series but apparently it’s quite gay. Those looking for more of the same should seek out Time to Go (Renzo Cozza), a surprisingly sweet sketch about a vampire in Argentina who meets a nice guy and begins to doubt the ethics of killing his Grindr hookups for their blood.

• While I admired the punk sensibility of Unleaded 95 (Emma Hütt and Tina Muffler), in which a trio of German sapphics fight, fuck, and fuss on the day of a bachelorette party, the short felt like it was straining to be a longer feature.

• My favorite of what I watched was Taxi Moto (Gaël Kamilindi), a tenderly metafictional fantasia. After a filmmaker has a shoot in his native Rwanda suddenly cancelled due to its gay subject matter, he pivots to film the script in Paris. He meets a prospective actor and the two spend the day walking and talking. They discuss the precarity of queer life in Africa, the balance between compromise and censorship, and the friction of a storyteller returning from the diaspora. Reminiscent of Before Sunrise, the vibes are strong—the 16mm cinematography is lovingly gauzy—and so are the ideas being advanced.

• The most directly personal short of this bunch was Buckskin (Mars Verrone), a tribute and testament to the filmmaker’s grandfather, the first Black man to join the U.S. Forest Service. Though technically a documentary, there are no traditional talking heads. Instead, Verrone points the camera at his weathered hands, the Forest Service mug that has accompanied him to the twilight of his life. Avant-garde interventions take the form of archival clippings superimposed over serene shots of Californian redwoods. While her grandfather muses on what we leave behind for future generations, both on a familial and global scale, Verrone takes note of the fallibility of memory in old age.

One is a French New Wave/mumblecore indie that stars Charli XCX. The other is a documentary that follows avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson as he embarks on an ambitious project. In addition to sharing a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, both feature a man whose grand plans are waylaid by extenuating circumstances.

Also: a quick word on Kogonada’s newest film, which has been undeservedly pilloried, and some recs for Polish food in Greenpoint.

Erupcja

Now playing in NY & LA, with further expansion to follow.

Most people who have heard of Erupcja know it as “the other new movie that stars Charli XCX,” and will probably have two questions. For starters, is she any good as an actor? (I’d say so; Charli is decidedly not brat here, but her naturalistic, subdued performance befits a naturalistic, subdued film.) And how exactly do you pronounce “erupcja,” anyway? (“Eh-roop-tsyuh,” per a helpful press agent. Or “ɛˈrup.t͡sja” if you can parse IPA.)

The film’s title comes from the Polish word for “eruption,” which happened on Mount Etna in August 2024. Meanwhile, Ohio-born filmmaker Pete Ohs had arrived in Warsaw to make a movie. Arriving with half of an outline and a small group of collaborators, the day’s scenes were written each morning in collaboration with the four principal actors.

The story centers upon the friendship between Nel (Lena Góra), a Warsaw local who inherited her mother’s flower shop, and Bethany (Charli XCX), visiting from London with her boyfriend Rob (Will Madden). The bond between the two women subsists on brief but intense reunions. They only see each other every few years or so, but every time they do, a volcano erupts somewhere in the world. Surely that has to mean something. (Surprisingly, this is not a metaphor for sex; their relationship stays strictly platonic. I’m not sure whether that comes as a relief or is frustratingly underexplored subtext.)

During the course of the film’s brief runtime, there is a scuttled marriage proposal, an ill-advised night out at the club, and a fortuitous encounter with an amiable American painter (Jeremy O. Harris, the award-winning playwright recently liberated from a Japanese prison). The principal concern appears to be taking the common desire for relationships to be the result of fate and dismantling that notion. We find out that volcanoes erupt, on average, once a week. An extraordinary friendship may be quite ordinary. And perhaps a steady, low-key boyfriend is the right partner for a 365 party girl.

Overall, this is a pretty solid movie, but its methods lead to it feeling a bit too unpolished. This scenario seems to have deeper layers to explore, but the improvisation inherent to this filmmaking process does not lend itself much to introspection within the story. Equally indebted to the French New Wave and American mumblecore, Erupcja is much like visiting a European capital for the weekend: a fleeting pleasure where the potential for further profundity remains unresolved.

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Tasting Notes

Rob makes reservations at some fancy looking spots in Warsaw. He and Bethany never end up eating at either: Kieliszki na Próżnej, which has a Bib Gourmand, and Opasły Tom, which was noted by the shadowy organization behind those “World’s 50 Best” lists. Next month I’ll be in Warsaw for a few hours on an extended layover. Maybe there will be time to dine at one of those restaurants.

The most notable food actually consumed on-screen? Buckets of KFC.

I did my research: According to Setlist.fm, Charli XCX has performed four times in Warsaw, Poland, but zero times at Warsaw, Brooklyn.

She did make a brief appearance at the now-shuttered Schimanski nightclub, on the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The latter, you probably know, is a historically Polish neighborhood whose community is on the verge of becoming vestigial.

I asked my buddy Byron, who lives in Greenpoint, for his favorite Polish spots:

• Pierozek – Best quality (I second this rec, especially the cheap infused vodka shots)

• Karczma – Best vibes

• Pyza – Best value

• Kiszka – Best deli/butcher. Look no further for kielbasa.

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Zi

Screens April 30 at the Museum of the Moving Image for a New York premiere. Seeking distribution.

In many ways, Erupcja reminded me of Zi, the new “back to basics” film from director Kogonada.

After breaking out with Columbus and After Yang, he made a foray into big-budget filmmaking. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which starred Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, was widely considered to be a misfire. In response, he decamped to Hong Kong with a crew of close collaborators to make a movie. Like Ohs, he largely wrote the story on the fly.

The sci-fi inflected plot follows a violinist (Michelle Mao) who is plagued with visions of her future self. While anxiously awaiting the results of a neurology test, she makes a fateful encounter with a lonely American expat (Haley Lu Richardson) on her own quest for belonging. As with Erupcja, the French New Wave influence is apparent. The inciting incident in Zi quotes Cléo from 5 to 7. But Kogonada also owes a considerable debt to Wong Kar-Wai (as every artsy movie set in Hong Kong does) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I had the chance to watch this a couple months ago during virtual Sundance, and it currently has one of the lowest Letterboxd ratings of the entire lineup. I think I’m one of the five people who unreservedly love it. But it was built in a lab to appeal to me: sad hotties wandering through a neon metropolis where the protagonist finds catharsis by singing karaoke.

If this write-up piques your curiosity, Zi is receiving its New York premiere on April 30, thanks to the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival. Kogonada, Mao, and producer Christopher Radcliff will be in attendance. I don’t believe this has yet secured distribution, so it may be awhile until you get another opportunity to watch.

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Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars

Now playing in NY at the BAM through April 23.

No, this is not a movie about the mid-aughts folk duo who had an apparently acrimonious breakup.

This 1985 documentary, directed by Howard Brookner, follows experimental theater director Robert Wilson during his attempt to mount what would have been his magnum opus: a six-part opera tied to the Los Angeles Olympics. The ambition is admirable, but the endeavor collapses amidst a fundraising shortfall; it was not, it turns out, safe and sound. Adding insult to injury, the Olympics themselves wound up with a budget surplus ten times the amount that Wilson needed.

Gazing upon the concept art for the thwarted project, his best laid plans destined for a storage unit, Wilson laments, “Imagine all this, for something that didn’t happen.” For someone who creates some very avant-garde stuff, he comes off as remarkably relatable. He does care about his art being seen by the widest possible audience. There are a lot of documentaries that track the making of a grand artistic project; what makes this one so remarkable isn’t just that it was unsuccessful, but it was halted by capitalist forces.

This new restoration premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival as part of the Revivals section. And it truly was a revival: long unseen, the original negative was lost after Hurricane Sandy. Brookner’s nephew located a surviving 16mm print and audiotapes containing the soundtrack.

Go deeper: If you’re intrigued by Wilson’s work, as I am, his production of Moby Dick (we see some clips in the doc) is being performed at the BAM from April 29 to May 3.

“2026 is the new 2016” was (is?) a big enough social media trend that it has its own Wikipedia article. This newfound nostalgia may befuddle those who associate that year as The One When Trump Won, but I think it applies specifically to those precious months before the election. Summer Sixteen, as Drake immortalized it, is one I do fondly remember because I reached some personal milestones. I graduated college, started my first big boy job, and lived on my own for the first time.

But one event was more life-changing than the rest. Ten years ago, I visited New York City for the very first time.

The trip came together pretty quickly. I wanted to do a graduation trip on the cheap and I had cousins living in Boston and New York. My other cousin Eric, then a freshman, was down to join me. (I finished college a quarter early so we went during his spring break.) Boston was fine. It was those five days in New York that really made an impact. Both of us live here now.

I recently dug up the journal I wrote during the trip1 and it was funny to read, in between me crashing out over a crush, how quickly I fell in love with this city:

• Day One: “NYC reminds me of SF, only supersized and harder to drive in.”

• Day Two: “The city has an intoxicating pull, with the promise and mystery of being in a sea of people and events.” (21-year-old me thought he was a poet or something?)

• Day Three: “My desire to one day live here has grown more…. One is constantly on the cusp of being swallowed by New York.” (See above note.)

• Day Five: “It’s now time to return to my boring old life. 🙁”

When I realized that March marked a decade since our trip, I proposed to Eric that we spend a day retracing part of our itinerary. Ten years older and twenty pounds heavier, I was curious to find out how much has changed and how much remains the same, for both this city and me.

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NYC 16/26

It was a very warm, very bright Saturday, which was pretty ideal when our plan was basically “walk to a bunch of places.”

Eric and I began our day at Kevin’s old apartment in Park Slope, where we had stayed during our first trip. He’s lived in three different places since. Then we went to Bergen Bagel and ran back our first bagel orders: sausage egg and cheese on everything, toasted, yes salt pepper2. I had written in my old journal that it was “worth the $5 for sure.” A decade later, the same sandwich costs $8.49, and that’s cheaper than the going rate these days.

From there we trekked over to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (still my favorite sightseeing spot in the entire city) and compared a photo we took ten years ago to how the view looks today: there’s a few new buildings in the Lower Manhattan skyline and Pier 17 is no longer under construction. One of the piers in Brooklyn Bridge Park was bare concrete; now there’s a big lawn with lots of trees. (At this point our buddy David joined us, and other friends came and went throughout the day.)

Then we went to Times Square, the heart and soul of the Big Apple, and on our way to The High Line we walked right by Rudy’s, which opened before any of us were alive, and not somewhere we went on our old trip. But Eric had somehow never been and we were there. I used to drink here pretty often when I first moved here, drawn in by the $3 pints, which are now $4, but the hot dogs are still free.

Besides the bagel, we didn’t feel particularly drawn to eating at the same places we did on our trip. Some of them have long since closed: Momofuku Ma Pêche, Gallito’s Kitchen, Barbonchino. Under the influence of Master of None3 we ate at Parm and it was a highlight of the trip. But since then it’s fallen off. Throughout the day we ate at a couple places that weren’t open ten years ago but have become new favorites: Los Mariscos in Chelsea Market (which opened later in 2016) and Mixteca/Tacos 1986 (opened last year).

It was funny, this tour wasn’t nearly as nostalgia-inducing as I thought it would be. What were once novel attractions have become familiar sights. They’re kind of just places now, and once we got into Greenwich Village I thought more about all the new memories I’ve made in the decade since that first visit.

Around this point, the day pretty quickly morphed away from rehashing an old itinerary that was planned by two people who were barely adults. We let intuition guide the way, encountered friends new and old, and complained about what was and shall never be again. In short, it was a typical day (and night) spent in New York. And as Eric pointed out, “what the city means to us is still the same” as it was ten years ago. We just happen to live here now.

It was more interesting to talk about what we didn’t do, knowing what we know now. We didn’t go to the usual touristy food spots: Katz’s, Joe’s, Russ and Daughters. We didn’t walk the Brooklyn Bridge, nor did we explore Chinatown or the Lower East Side or the East Village. We did see Washington Square Park. I have aged out of hanging out there but it’s nice to walk through and see the youths hanging out and skateboarding around the fountain.

At the time, Eric was under 21 but one of his friends was an NYU student who knew which bars didn’t card and she took us to one of them. Headless Horseman, next to Union Square, was where Eric had his first drink in a bar. It has since closed. I remember it being a pretty chill place where I sipped on a Guinness and a cocktail. The cobblestone building itself was very distinctive. It felt like being in a 19th century alehouse.

The building is still there, and it’s still a bar, but it’s now called The High Note. I’m not sure if the bar changed or we did, but man this place really sucked. It was loud and super bro-ey and there weren’t any visible menus, so we asked what beers were on tap, to which the bartender replied “the taps aren’t in use” which is a little insane. So we just called for gin & tonics and they were… not good. We drank them as fast as we could and left.

After trying and failing to find a bar in the East Village where we could sit down and relax with our friends, we took a car to Bushwick for a nightcap at Orion Bar. Eric lives around the corner from there and it’s become his local. We downed a shot of soju and a can of Terra beer—to get us up to ten drinks consumed that day, in honor of ten years—then called it a night.

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Music

For one last dose of 2016 nostalgia, see below for my most-listened to songs of that year. These are the songs that accompanied my drives between Sacramento and San Jose, the last of the college parties I hosted, and my late-night gaming sessions4. In the interest of radical transparency, the playlist is unabridged. Feel free to judge me.

When it comes to March of this year, it was a really good month for new releases! The long-awaited BTS album is mostly fine (Ryan Tedder is a pox on pop) but I really dug the new records from Underscores and Charlie Puth.

My favorite new album: “Tirakat,” by Charif Megarbane and Ali. It came my way thanks to NPR’s New Music Friday.

Here’s the description from Habibi Funk Records:

Tirakat brings together Jakarta-based trio Ali and Lebanese composer and multi-instrumentalist Charif Megarbane in a collaboration shaped by long-standing cultural exchange between Indonesia and the Arab world. Ali’s blend of 1970s Indonesian psychedelic funk, Melayu traditions, disco grooves and Arab melodic forms meets Charif’s long-running exploration of cross-regional sound, rooted in a shared musical vocabulary rather than genre.

Concerts

First shows of the year!

• Tuesday March 3 – Mitski, Sex Week at The Shed w/ Giselle

  • I wasn’t sure what The Shed would be like as a concert venue but it was one of the nicest I’ve been to. It’s clean, there’s lots of bathrooms, and there’s good acoustics. Also rare: after the show ended they opened the emergency exit doors on the sides for easy egress. I really hate when venues like Brooklyn Steel make everyone funnel back out through the entrance where the fire doors open right out into the street.

• Tuesday March 24 – Joyce Manor, Militarie Gun at Brooklyn Paramount w/ Karen

  • Brooklyn Paramount is also very nice, and very conveniently located. I hadn’t been to a proper rock show in a very long time and I missed the energy. There were like a dozen crowd-surfers who repeatedly got carried to the front of the stage. They’d be escorted back out into the pit, then in due time they would get right back up there.

It Turns Out I Love Cold Plunges

So I went to Othership, the culty, clubby sauna at the vanguard of New York’s trendy bathhouse scene. I admit I was skeptical of the whole affair—my ideal of wellness is two fingers of scotch—but the experience lowkey changed my life. (Winnie organized a big group outing for her birthday. Thank you, Winnie!)

The sauna part I can take or leave, but submerging my body in an ice-cold pool of water? Incredible. Most of my friends could barely last a minute, meanwhile Robin and I kept going back for five-minute sessions. The health benefits seem entirely made up and that’s fine. I just think it feels good and it makes me alert.

A key reason why I enjoyed this so much was that this wasn’t a guided class, but an open-format night at the sauna. I’m sure this has already been written about in The Cut or whatever but this was one of the few spaces where people were entirely offline. Not a phone in sight, and even clocks were scant. Just replacement-level house beats and sweaty people and a good time. (Not for nothing, they should host speed dating events in Othership, but I get the feeling that these hip saunas attract the worst kind of people. There were a lot of manbuns.)

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Movies

• The first movie I saw at home: Wuthering Heights (1939), which is somehow even more emo than the Emerald Fennell version. But the best Wuthering movie I saw last month was a Japanese adaptation from 1988.

• The first movie I saw in a theater: Goat, a very heartfelt movie with silly animal puns and sight gags. Shame that the editing is paced for people with ADD.

• The last movie I saw at home: Two Seasons, Two Strangers, for forthcoming New Directors/New Films coverage.

• The last movie I saw in a theater: Amadeus (1984), first time viewing. F. Murray Abraham gave a surprise introduction. He was there to watch this and Scarface, which he’s also in and played earlier that day at the MoMA, and the staff asked if he’d want to share some words with the audience. Very cool!

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Food & Film Pairing of the Month: Project Hail Mary, Hoppers, and Instant Ramen

As far as I’m concerned, Project Hail Mary was a Project Hell No. It’s 2016 nostalgia in movie form. The obvious antecedents—Arrival and Interstellar and Ad Astra and First Man—are not uniformly perfect, but they strove to offer more besides stunning images and science geekery. They were about something. This movie is as empty as deep space. (Not to mention the protagonist’s noxious characterization: a guy whose only flaw is that the world didn’t recognize his genius.)

But I really dug Hoppers. Disney/Pixar animation has been slumping but this was a positive step towards a rebound. The second act of this film is genuinely unhinged and weird in ways I don’t want to spoil. While the political/environmentalist message winds up neutered into a lukewarm lesson about bridging partisan divides, it’s built around a terrific human character. (Fun fact: Mabel is voiced by Piper Curda, who plays one of the kids in May December.) My one gripe: for a film set in Beaverton, Oregon, there is a conspicuous lack of Nike footwear.

The protagonists of Project Hail Mary and Hoppers both live off of instant ramen, though they eat it differently. We see Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling’s science teacher turned astronaut) slurp out of a Cup Noodle a handful of times, which I suppose is an efficient meal to have on a spaceship. Back on Earth, Mabel munches on an uncooked block of Top Ramen, a nod to her Japanese American heritage. Dry ramen was a very popular snack among us Asians when I was in fourth grade. We’d pour the seasoning packet into the bag, then break up the ramen into pieces and treat it like very crunchy chips.

I personally cannot remember the last time I ate Instant Ramen. I made Chapaguri with steak a bunch of times in 2019-2021, thanks to Parasite, but it has been years since I touched a canonical Cup Noodle.

Good Things I Read

• Lost City: How the Soul of a City Vanished: Very Slowly, Then All at Once by Robert Simonson, The Mix with Robert Simonson

• ‘There’s a problem with the sauce’: Times Square taqueria’s salsa sparks lawsuit by Walter Wuthmann, Gothamist

• How Gin, Wax and Heat Guns Make Onscreen Meals Look Delicious: The ‘Hamnet’ food stylist Olivia Somary reveals the tools of her trade by Adrea Piazza, The New York Times

• Behind the scenes of Alysa Liu’s Olympic victory tour and her new level of fame by Marcus Thompson II, The Athletic

• A visit to True/False Film Fest (and also back in time) by Delia Cai, Deez Links

• Opening Up to Foie Gras by Alisha Miranda, Guts Magazine

• A Brown Peoples’ Version of White Peoples’ Lives: The gleeful inauthenticity of South Asian Italian cuisine by Sharanya Deepak, Vittles

Theater

• Saturday March 28 The Wild Party (NYCC Encores!)

  • Getting Betty Boop (Jasmine Amy Rogers) to headline this R-rated Roaring Twenties-set musical is a casting coup.

Dining In

Cooking for Friends

• Saturday 2/28, Sunday 3/1, Sunday 3/8 - Annual Oscars Dinner

  • This wasn’t really “for friends” since it was a ticketed event and a good chunk of guests were friends of friends, but I’ll list it here, why not.

  • For that third dinner I actually had time to make a proper family meal, and I need to always ensure we have a full meal before every event I host, because we were in a much better mood on this day. I took the unused chicken parts (as well as duck and chicken livers) and marinated them in buttermilk overnight and then deep fried them all.

• Monday 3/9

  • “Turducken” Pho (made from bones and poultry parts unused from the Oscars dinners)

• Sunday 3/15 - Oscars Watch Party

  • I made black hummus and muhammara for Avatar: Fire and Ash and served a couple leftovers from the dinner parties: pão de queijo plus chips and salsa verde. And I ordered Domino’s.

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Cooking for Myself

There were a lot of random meals scrounged together from leftovers and unused ingredients from those Oscars dinner parties and pho night. The fanciest thing I made was a lox chirashi, using Shalom Japan’s recipe published in the New York Times. It’s really good but my palate is not meant for meal prep: I had to eat this four days in a row and was tired of it after the second day.

After the Oscars were exorcised from my fridge, I cooked a couple bean stews. A recent shipment from the Rancho Gordo Bean Club included ceci neri (black garbanzos), which are fairly obscure. I’ve certainly never heard of them before. They boast a lot more fiber and iron than normal chickpeas, and take quite a bit longer to cook. I used some to make the black hummus for my Oscars watch party, and the rest I made into a stew with swiss chard that was quite delicious.

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Dining Out

There were four times I had set plans to eat at a restaurant, all of which were during the last week of the month.

• Cuerno w/ Caro

  • Steakhouses are not my usual genre of restaurant—we actually do have steak at home—but it turns out a Mexican spin is all I needed to enjoy it. This is the kind of place where you’ll balk at spending $12 on a taco until you eat it and think to yourself, not bad for a minor splurge. (Highlights: hamachi crudo, taco richi, arrachera [skirt steak]).

• Bé Bếp Pop-up at Bar Americano w/ Eric, Diana, Aeron, Lance

  • Ever since Ha’s Dac Biet settled down into brick and mortar, chef Phoebe Tran’s Bé Bếp concept has become the best Vietnamese pop-up in the city; I think I’ve been to three of her events and they’ve always been the dining highlight of my month. A recent Wednesday in Greenpoint was no exception: I still think about the bánh tiêu, which came with an insanely sumptuous compound butter mixed with crab tomalley.

• Grandma’s Home w/ a bunch of people (Winnie’s birthday)

  • An upscale Chinese restaurant in Flatiron that can accommodate a large group. It doesn’t hurt that it’s pretty good!

• Chama Mama (Brooklyn Heights location) w/ David, Sam, James, Elle

  • Some time ago, I would dine at the original Manhattan location fairly regularly and it was nice to see they have expanded. Adjaruli khachapuri is uniquely suited for brunch.

Incidental meals have put me in a very Mexican time in my life: Taqueria Ramirez (still great after all these years), Yellow Rose (same), Son del North (a much-needed burrito after a couple cocktails)—including aforementioned Los Mariscos and Tacos 1986, this month proved to me that anyone who still says New York has bad Mexican food just has no idea what they are talking about.

And the other day I was doing some Chinatown grocery shopping and walked past the new L’Industrie location in Little Italy. There was no line so I had to buy a slice; I don’t make the rules. It’s actually kind of annoying that even after years of immense popularity, it remains one of the best pizzas in the city. (Here’s my occasional humblebrag that I’ve stumped for them ever since I first moved here, when it was still a bit of a secret. It didn’t really explode in popularity until post-COVID.)

In memoriam: Eric showed up for work on the last Friday of March, only to find out it would be his last shift. Lower East Side cocktail den Chinato is now closed thanks to certain shenanigans from the new owner.

On the last day of the month, the staff hosted a friends & family party to give the establishment a final sendoff. I thought the vibe would be funereal but it was more like a wake. “This was the sixth place that has closed on me,” remarked one grizzled bartender. “I feel like the Angel of Death.” Many drinks were served and memories were shared, but conversation quickly turned to future plans. It had only been a few days but folks already had other gigs lined up. Such is the transience of this industry.

RIP, Chinato. You were a good bar.

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March Grog Log

Tracking my first alcoholic drink of the day.

1. Unico Yuzu vermouth & Soda at home

2. Nothing

3. Nothing

4. Bichi “Listán” 2023 (leftover/half-glass) at home

5. Nothing

6. Nothing

7. Nothing

8. Carnaval do Marcelo at home

9. Bojo do Luar Deu Bode at home

10. Nothing

11. Nothing

12. Like a Virgin at Chinato

13. Paper Planes Trains and Automobiles at Ruth

14. Nothing

15. Brooklyn Brewery IPA at home

16. Nothing

17. Nothing

18. Brooklyn Kura Lunar Shiboritate at home

19. Nothing

20. Rockaway Black Gold nitro stout at The Emerson

21. All American Shot and beer combo at Rudy’s

22. Lagunitas at Whiskey Trader

23. Shiner Bock at Yellow Rose

24. Floral Daiquiri at Rockwell Place

25. House Vermouth at Bar Americano (Be Bep pop up)

26. Lychee Colada at Spring

27. Matic Wines Šipon 2021 at Olo’s

28. Master Gao Baby Jasmine lager at Grandma’s House

29. Georgia 1991 at Chama Mama

30. Nothing

31. Karma and Friends at Chinato (Last night for friends & family)

Another week, another round of artsy movies to review! It’s nice that every movie I’ve covered lately has been pretty good. I’m still perfectly cranky with some other movies I’ve watched; I’ll drop my take on Project Hail Mary soon enough.

That could be an alternate title for Revelations of Divine Love, a DIY chronicle of spiritual searching and fulfillment in the Middle Ages, which I discuss below. Also reviewed: Living the Land, a naturalistic chronicle of wheat farmers in rural China in the early 1990s (out in next week), and Kontinental ‘25, Radu Jude’s sly morality comedy about ordinary Romanians contending with late-stage capitalism in the 2020s.

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Revelations of Divine Love

Opens March 27 in NY at Anthology Film Archives for a one-weekend run, alongside a director-selected series of films set in the Middle Ages. Further screenings at various NY venues will be held throughout April, and a Seattle run begins April 15 at Northwest Film Forum.

There’s a pretty stark difference between “religious movies” and “movies about religion.” The former category, also known as “faith-based films,” tend to be little more than Evangelical propaganda underwritten by right-wing millionaires. (Not that I’ve actually watched any; I try not to be in the business of misery.)

Movies about religion, in contrast, are more likely to have artistic merit. The best of them explore universal subjects that resonate with even the most secular of viewers. But recent entries in this canon view their subjects at a distance; I found The Testament of Ann Lee to be curiously incurious about faith, as both an interior and a collective experience. In that context, it was refreshing to encounter Revelations of Divine Love, which was directed by Caroline Golum on a shoestring budget. Centering on the life and work of the 14th century religious figure Julian of Norwich, the film treats its central figure’s notions of spirituality earnestly and seriously.

When we first meet Julian (Tessa Strain), she’s being sealed into a cell. A bishop administers rites while a laborer builds the wall that will shut her in for the rest of her life. But this isn’t The Cask of Amontillado—Julian has chosen to become an anchoress, someone who sequesters herself from wider society to devote her life towards God. She stands with confidence, her piercing gaze looking out as the last stone is placed.

She has good reason for such conviction: around the age of thirty, Julian fell severely ill and was close to death when God revealed Himself to her through a series of visions. Her account of these “showings” is considered to be the earliest surviving book in the English language that was written by a woman. (The film borrows its title from this collection of writings.) Not much is known about Julian’s life—it might not even be her real name; she lived in St. Julian’s Church in Norwich—and Golum (who wrote the script with medieval scholar Laurence Bond) provides informed speculation to fill in the blanks.

Despite being a bootstrapped production—the budget was only $100,000—the film provides an expansive insight into a proto-feminist figure of medieval Christianity. Perhaps I watch too many movies about organized religion being used as a tool for persecution, because I found it remarkable that when Julian tells her priest about her divine visions, he simply believes them to be true. But that must have been the case in reality; otherwise, how would she have had the support of the church to become an anchoress?

Though Julian is sealed in an austere cell, she is not fully isolated from the world. Nuns bring her food every day, while townsfolk line up to catch a glimpse of this cloistered woman through a small window. In turn, she offers them counsel and prayer. Sometimes there are unintended consequences: her advice to a farmer frustrated with high taxes inadvertently sets off a peasant riot. This being the Middle Ages, Julian bears witness to upheavals both personal and societal—uprisings and plagues and the like—all the while remaining steadfast in her belief of God being a force of love. Her ministry is one of positivity despite hard times: “God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall.” She remains equally committed to life as an anchoress; she could ask the bishop to unseal her at any time. The only exception to feeling like she was born for this life comes when her mother appeals for her to come back home. Julian was not the only one who made a sacrifice.

Throughout the film’s fleet 75-minute runtime, we see Julian write what would eventually become Revelations of Divine Love. It wasn’t always smooth sailing. Water seeps into her cell when it rains, jeopardizing her manuscript, and as the years wear on, she finds it harder to decode the meaning of her initial visions, asking “how can all things be well when sin is still common?” Despite these lofty concerns, watching the film is overall a calming experience. The reverie of a score, composed by Zachary Koeber, consists of medieval instruments set against new age synths, and the charming sets and costumes come off as Ren Faire in Ridgewood. (Remember the $100,000 budget.) Those used to total verisimilitude in their movies, upon encountering such handmade textures, may be left a little wanting. But they should keep in mind one of Julian’s key proclamations: “seeking is as good as beholding.”

Tasting Notes

One of Julian’s visions involves the humble hazelnut, which becomes a recurring motif throughout the film. God tells her “it is all that is made,” to which she reflects: “In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it.”

Later, one of the nuns in the abbey receives honey from her family’s apiary, which the sisters use to make spiced cakes and candied fruits. For a more modern rendition of medieval English fare, try King Arthur’s version of honey cake, or better yet, this recipe for a Hazelnut Honey Spice Cake with Caramelized Apples. Whatever you do, garnish each slice with that singular hazelnut. Drink it with the blood of Christ: perhaps a Sauternes, though that dessert wine may be too indulgent for the likes of an austere anchoress.

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Further reading: For Hell Gate, friend of the newsletter Dan Schindel interviewed Golum about making a medieval movie on a shoestring budget. Other friend of the newsletter Chrissy Griesmer also spoke with her last year for the “Medieval May” issue of film zine 4R Press (PDF, page 14).

In case you missed it: I interviewed the chef who provided craft services for this production!

Living the Land

Opens April 3 in NY at Film Forum, with expansion to select markets to follow.

A year in the life of a family in rural China unfolds in a patient, documentary-like manner in Huo Meng’s remarkable sophomore feature. Living the Land is set in 1991, a period of rapid modernization that flung China away from an agrarian society towards a technological one. But out in the provinces, it’s as if industrialization never even occurred. Farm labor is still done by hand, and people prefer to use the lunar calendar.

Movies with this general form—naturalistic immersion, long observational takes, sociological intent—are typically described as “slow cinema.” And that label applies here, but once you’re in its rhythm, this film feels anything but. The camera is almost constantly panning across the landscape, reflecting this restless time in history, and Meng composes his frames with the precision of a painter. Moments of nostalgia—sun-dappled wheat fields, a popsicle purveyor travelling via bicycle—are undercut by a clear-eyed view of hardscrabble reality. Meng won the Silver Bear for Best Director at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, and I can see why.

Exposition is doled out piecemeal, but you get just enough to understand the dynamics between this multi-generational ensemble of characters. Three of them get an emphasis in the plot: Xu Chuang, a ten-year-old whose parents leave him behind as they set off to Shenzhen in search of more lucrative work, Xiuyang, his young aunt who contends with an unwanted marriage proposal from a wealthy government official, and his great-grandmother, the matriarch of the family who feels increasingly like a relic of the past.

Living the Land doesn’t go as far as to openly criticize the government—various state institutions produced the film—but it is an undeniably discordant portrait of those affected by the changes happening at the turn of the century. (If you want to reach for an easy comparison, think Jia Zhangke script directed by Hou-Hsiao Hsien, with visual inspiration from Millet.) Meng hails from the same province where the film is set and grew up during this time, making this project feel like one of remembrance and reanimation. I sometimes struggle with these kinds of international arthouse movies, but it’s hard to dismiss this as one where nothing happens, because everything is.

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Kontinental ‘25

Opens March 27 in NY at Film Forum, with limited expansion to follow. Adapted from previously published NYFF coverage.

Romanian troubadour Radu Jude has been rather prolific of late, with two of his films having toured last year’s festival circuit. Dracula and Kontinental ‘25 were made in concurrence with each other, with the latter film coming about when Jude felt the need to make a “more down-to-earth film” compared to the maximally bizarre, AI-fuelled Dracula. (I reviewed it last year. It’s a hoot.) Though it was shot using iPhones in just ten days, Kontinental ‘25 doesn’t feel too out of place with his other of-the-moment chronicles of absurdity. It may feel like a retread of his prior works, but I’m not tired of that yet!

This time around, our agent of late capitalism is local bailiff Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), who oversees an eviction of a homeless man that ends in tragedy. Though not legally liable for the outcome, she’s wracked with moral guilt. Through conversations with various people in her life—a co-worker, her mother, a former student, her priest—she attempts to find an ethical framework that can absolve her complicity in enforcing laws that serve capital, not people. It’s quite the crash out.

In a departure from Jude’s usual Bucharest setting, Kontinental ‘25 takes place in Cluj, the commercial center of Transylvania. (This being a natural result of shooting Dracula at the same time.) The most memorable location is Dino Land, an uncanny animatronic Jurassic Park that offers a refuge from the bustling city streets. Perhaps the funniest image in the entire film is of Orsolya kneeling and reciting the Lord’s Prayer while a pterodactyl crows and gesticulates in the background. The Transylvania setting also allows Jude to touch on the active prejudices between Central European ethnicities: Orsolya is a member of the country’s Hungarian minority, and jokes about the vices of Romanians and Hungarians alike are freely volleyed.

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It’s not every day that someone I personally know is listed in the end credits of the movies I watch. So it was a delightful surprise to recognize the caterer for Revelations of Divine Love, which receives its New York theatrical release this weekend at Anthology Film Archives.

Directed by Caroline Golum, the film is about the life and work of Julian of Norwich, a 14th century anchoress whose collection of religious writings (from which the film gets its title) is the earliest surviving book in the English language authored by a woman. Made with just $100,000, it’s a bootstrapped production that nonetheless provides an expansive insight into a proto-feminist figure of medieval Christianity. (I’ll publish my cheeky little review of it very soon.)

A film about spiritual nourishment requires its crew to also be physically nourished. Craft services are an underrated consideration when making a movie—happy bellies beget happy attitudes.

Jenn de la Vega is a chef, cookbook author, and founder of Family Party Catering. (And she’s a big movie buff herself—she co-hosts a podcast called The Cinema Chefs.) Revelations of Divine Love was her first time providing craft services for a feature film, after having worked on a handful of indie shorts and student films. Tasked with serving breakfast and lunch for anywhere between 12 to 25 people for ten shooting days (over the course of five weeks), she resolved to make food that was not only affordable and easy to serve, but also healthy and flavorful.

Based on the menu, I think she succeeded:

I met Jenn earlier this year at my friend Annie’s birthday party/tart potluck1 (also known as a “tarty”). As a semi-amateur chef myself, I had so many questions about what goes into feeding a film set, especially for a scrappy project like this one. There’s a lot more I wanted to know about her work in general; perhaps we’ll have a separate conversation in the future.

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In the Service of Craft

This interview was conducted via email. It has been edited and condensed.

What inspired you to get into craft services?

Crafty is usually an afterthought when it comes to making a film budget. When I was doing some cooking shows for an unnamed culinary TV pilot, I was given McDonald’s and a stale bagel over the course of twelve hours. (Which feels illegal?) I started doing this because any simple food I make would be better than a stale bagel.

I’m also a wedding caterer, so I have an ever-changing inventory and crafty is a great way to use everything up.

How did this particular job come to you?

I am old friends with Caroline Golum, who directed this film. We met when she was curating Cinebeasts screenings circa 2008 in cool, urban places. She is so magnetic and we found ourselves intersecting over the years in creative spaces.

The menu looks incredible. It’s certainly a far cry from the plain meals that Julian and the nuns would eat in the movie. What was your philosophy, both overall and for individual days?

Things you couldn’t get at Dig Inn or Sweetgreen, but still channeled in that format so there was no cross-contamination of allergens or dietary preferences. I rotated a grain, a cooked vegetable, a fresh veg or fruit, protein, and a cool sauce to make lunch bowl buffets. I tried not to repeat items within the same week so it always felt new.

Do you recall any particular dishes being a big hit with the cast and crew?

The harissa chickpeas, adobo pulled pork, and bún chả bowls!

Did you do everything on your own, or were there staffers to assist?

Staffers! Wow, I wish. To keep everything within budget, I did it all myself.

Tell me about your setup for serving these meals. What did you have to work with, and what did you have to bring to the set?

I coordinated with the producer, Kate Stahl. She had already set up a crafty table for all-day snacks and coffee. I came in on the first day with four Sterno set-ups2. Then I packed it away and put it under the table, bringing it back out each day for lunchtime.

I did all the prep and primary cooking off set. I would bring breakfast in the morning at call time, take the subway back home, cook lunch, then take a car back to set. Luckily I live in Greenpoint/East Williamsburg, so the drive was twenty minutes each way to the soundstage in Ridgewood. If there was traffic, I would feel like I ruined everyone’s day being five minutes late, but that was never the case. There was a sense of gratitude every time I was there. Folks were happy to have fresh, hot food.

Caroline did notice toward the end of the shoot that I had stopped frying the tortilla chips myself. You really can taste the love.

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Revelations of Divine Love was your first time doing crafty for a feature production. What did you learn from this experience that carried forward to future gigs?

It’s okay to repeat some dishes from day to day. I didn’t need to be “extra cheffy” and that took a lot of pressure off. I can now pack up better, which makes all the difference for traveling with food. I have better, sturdier gear and figured out how long dishes take me to cook.

I’ve since catered for a larger feature—on location in the woods upstate—and about a dozen indie shorts.

Producing an independent film and running a restaurant—or catering business—share some fundamentals: in particular, the creativity and resourcefulness demanded when working within tight budgets and even tighter deadlines. Were there any nifty ways you stretched your budget?

Catering budgets are absolutely a creative challenge. I often buy in bulk and have a vacuum sealer for saving half a case of pork shoulder, for example, and freezing it for another day. But cold food storage becomes an issue if I buy too much up front. I stock up on various kinds of rice, quinoa, grains, and pasta so that I can mix and match with whatever produce is on sale. And a good sauce can really make a difference. I don’t do too many additions or multiple garnishes—microgreens are expensive!—and keep it simple with either a single fresh herb or crispy fried onions.

For breakfast, I mostly do scrambled eggs because every other preparation takes too long at 4 AM, and I need to be done quickly. I’m often the first one awake, besides the location manager or unit production manager, because I need to be RTS (ready to serve) before most people arrive to set.

Finally, is there anything else we haven’t covered that you’d like to share?

Caroline doesn’t do anything by halves. I walked around the set and could not believe they fit so much in that space. Some of the extras were my friends, so it was cool to feed them, too. I don’t think I ever told them, but I was also on deadline for a cookbook I was working on, so some of the dishes I made during this shoot were inspired by those recipes.

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Now that the Academy Awards have been handed out, we can now turn the page on the 2025 movie year. (Almost: I still haven’t published my own list of the best movies of last year! But I’m almost done putting that together.) The end of Oscars season always sees an onslaught of arthouse releases, and I’ve got quick word on a couple of them below. Both are very very different but happen to center on the unexpected bonds that form within the depths of grief.

I got 18 out of 24 of my predictions correct, with my biggest hit being in Documentary Feature and biggest miss coming from Live Action Short. Owing to a tie, there were two winners in that category and I still managed to pick a loser!

I had 24 of my friends over on Sunday for a watch party, and I placed first in our ballot competition despite not getting the most winners correct. This is because I used a cool Oscars pool website that weighted your score based on Kalshi’s prediction odds1.

While I did not bet any real money on the Academy Awards this year, my friend Jason did. (We spoke about Oscars gambling earlier this year.) He agreed to share the end result of his bets (ahem, “predictions”).

• Action: $8,000

• Implied odds: 53%

• Accuracy: 7 of 12 categories

• Return: $14,000

• Profit: $6,000 (75%)

Compared to last year he did better on profit but worse on accuracy. Jason placed last-minute bets on Stellan Skarsgård and Teyana Taylor, a bad move in retrospect. The sole reason he turned a profit was a prescient bet on Sinners winning Cinematography2, but with a 75% overall return, I don’t think he can be too upset.

I asked Jason what he learned from this year’s outcomes:

There’s no value to betting early aside from grossly mispriced categories (like F1 in Sound). Next year I am going to wait until at most one month beforehand instead of two months. The information gained between then is too valuable and people still don’t really bet well.

I also think the changes to the voting rules, where Academy members must affirm they saw every film in a given category, makes copycatting the results of precursor awards like SAG more prevalent—we saw that with acting, so momentum becomes even more important.

He also gave me this nugget:

My mad man of a friend trusts me too much and put $1,000 down on Sentimental Value winning International Film and Sinners in Cinematography. Safe to say he’s happy. But he’s a fiend. During the show, he wanted to put all the winnings back on Sinners for Best Picture and I had to tell him not to.

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Dead Lover

Opens March 20 in NY at IFC Center, March 26 in Los Angeles, and more markets in April.

A couple days ago I watched Wuthering Heights. Not the one from Emerald Fennell, which I saw opening weekend and feel no particular desire to revisit. Rather, it was a Japanese adaptation from 1988, directed by Yoshishige Yoshida. What sets this version apart from the dozens of other Wutherings is that it pushes the source material’s psychosexual subtext to previously unseen extremities. The novel has an infamous scene where Heathcliff digs up Catherine’s grave and gazes at her still-intact face. (This comes from the second half of the book, which is omitted from almost every adaptation.) But this movie goes further: fully insane, he takes the coffin home with him and plans to fulfill his carnal desires with her corpse. It becomes his undoing.

The protagonist of Dead Lover, an unnamed Gravedigger, is similarly desperate to once again be with her, ahem, dead lover. Fortunately, she need not stoop to full-on necrophilia. Taking after a different classic of Gothic literature (that also got a new Hollywood adaptation starring Jacob Elordi), she attempts to resurrect him through a series of alchemic experiments.

That’s a lot of effort to exert on a man, but there’s a good reason. On account of her profession, Gravedigger has such a foul odor that no one wants to be near her. This really dampens her romantic prospects, until one day she meets someone who is turned on by her smell. Thus begins a passionate love affair, one that cruelly ends when the Lover perishes in a shipwreck. All that’s left of him is a severed finger, which Gravedigger manages to re-animate with the help of reptile blood. You can do a lot with one finger, but she resolves to give him a full body. Needless to say, the consequences are unintended.

Dead Lover is the sophomore feature from Grace Glowicki, who wrote, directed, and starred. In front of the camera, she gives her Gravedigger a frantic energy and a spirited Cockney accent, seemingly inspired by Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd and/or Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Behind the camera, she gives her film an utterly distinct aesthetic sensibility. The sets were constructed on a black box soundstage; with characters lit by spotlights against a pitch dark background, everyone and everything is enshrouded in a permanent nightfall. The grainy cinematography (shot by Rhayne Vermette on 16mm film stock) evokes both DIY experimentalism and German expressionism, while prog pop compositions from U.S. Girls amp up the gonzo mood. Further adding to the homespun nature of the project, every member of the four-person cast, with the exception of Glowicki, inhabits multiple roles. Handmade and heartfelt, Dead Lover is a cult curio about love, loss, and the unlikely connections made in the bleakest of moments.

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Tasting Notes

Attendees at this weekend’s Q&A events in New York (or next weekend in LA) will be treated to special “Stink-o-Vision” presentations of Dead Lover. They’ll get a scratch-and-sniff card to use throughout the movie. Having watched this at home, I missed out on that olfactory experience. Perhaps I could have re-created Gravedigger’s stench by slicing a durian fruit or popping open a tin of surströmming, that infamous Swedish pickled herring, and then pressing my face into a bed of dirt.

There are certain foods known for having off-putting smells, and certain people who are more sensitive to them than others. I have a friend who can’t be in the same room as blue cheese. But to paraphrase viral academic Ally Louks, there is a politics to smell. The scent of kimchi is revolting to some. For others, it’s culture3.

Further Reading: Marissa Goldman interviewed Glowicki about this movie for Nothing Bogus, a Substack devoted to independent filmmaking. And on page 24 of 4R Press’s Shocking Summer zine (PDF), you can find a conversation about Dead Lover between Skinny Wicky and Relby Raw, which I assume are pseudonyms.

Miroirs No. 3

Opens March 20 in NY & LA. Adapted from previously published NYFF coverage.

After surviving a deadly car crash with barely a scratch, conservatory student Laura (Paula Beer) convalesces in the isolated home of Betty (Barbara Auer), who witnessed the accident. The crash killed Laura’s boyfriend, but if she’s grieving, she doesn’t make it known. An encounter with Betty’s estranged husband and son reveals that they too are also dealing with loss in their own strange way.

At this point, enough critics have pushed back on an initial dismissal that this new film from Christian Petzold is a minor work. It’s now considered to be at least medium tier. The title provides the key of how to view this film: as one movement in a larger series. (Though this is Paula Beer’s fourth time starring in a Petzold movie, not the third, and to be fair, the Ravel composition that gives this film its title was written in F# minor.) Miroirs No. 3 does feel a lot like a short story: it’s diversionary and fleet, but satisfying just the same. Features a typically German sense of humor, as dry as the rieslings consumed at the dinner table.

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Tasting Notes: Laura’s specialty in the kitchen are Königsberger Dumplings, and the family makes a plum cake using fruit plucked by the river. It was made with yeast dough but Betty’s son prefers shortcrust pastry.

How’s this for movie marketing: This weekend sees the release of two NYFF selections: Miroirs No. 3 and Dry Leaf. Screenslate is hosting a “cinema showdown” between the two filmmakers: a friendly football (soccer) match on the West Side of Manhattan. It goes down tomorrow (March 21) and is open to the public.

I’m hosting a watch party and I’m making some movie-themed snacks:

• Pão de queijo (The Secret Agent)

• Black hummus & muhammara with pita chips & crudité (Avatar: Fire and Ash)

• Tortilla chips & salsa verde (One Battle After Another)

• Popcorn (obviously)

Some friends and I also concocted some custom movie-themed cocktails, which I’m excited to serve. For mains, I’ll be ordering Domino’s. (I think we can tie this one to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, especially if I rip the layer of cheese off the pie.)

It’s probably a little late, but this is my big list of food & drink ideas if you need inspo for tonight:

Final Oscars Predictions

Unsurprisingly I’ve changed some of my picks and adjusted confidence ratings since nominations were announced January 22. I think this table should be easy to parse:

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What My Dinner Party Guests Thought of This Year’s Contenders

As I introduced each dish during my ten-course Oscars dinner, I polled everyone at the table about their thoughts on Best Picture race.

First, here’s what was the most watched:

So this was a decently well-informed crew! I asked people to see at least five of the nominees in advance of the dinner. But like the real Academy, there was no way to truly enforce this and a couple people were really just there to enjoy the food. (Which is very nice!)

I also asked everyone to go around and name what they think will win, their favorite, and their villain. Here are those results:

A couple people offered bonus villains, including but not limited to:

• Timothée Chalamet’s press tour

• Gracie Abrams, for taking Paul Mescal off the market

• Diane Warren

• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for not giving any nominations to No Other Choice

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Short Words on the Shorts

I had planned to do a full review of the Oscar-nominated short films but it fell by the wayside. So here are my quick hits. If you haven’t seen them yet, you got some time to squeeze them in! Links take you to the film if they’re freely available on YouTube/Vimeo.

In terms of predictions, I believe it was the Times’s Kyle Buchanan who said that he just imagines what the most basic Academy voter would choose in these categories, and predict that.

Animated

Pretty typical mix of nominees, with old-school styles staking out a contrast to 3D animation. The ascendance of French animation has been apparent to anyone following this category: Butterfly is generally considered to be the “best” of this year’s bunch, with impressionistic painting telling the story of an Algerian Jewish swimmer whose life takes him from contending at the Olympics to surviving Auschwitz.

(Canada and Ireland have also invested in independent animation, and it shows here. Meanwhile, Disney/Pixar have been MIA since the 2020 film year.)

But it’s the simplest film, Retirement Plan, that tugged at my heartstrings the most. Domhnall Gleeson narrates a “when I retire, I will…” essay that will hit home for anyone whose plans for life have been postponed by an obligation to work. And that’s why I think it’ll win.

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Live Action

This crop of nominees breaks a recent precedent: not a single one involves a child in peril. We’ve come a long way from 2019. I remember seeing that package in a theater and it was so funny to witness the audience (myself included) become openly hostile to what we were seeing on screen. We even have an SNL-style comedy sketch, Jane Austen’s Period Drama, in the mix!

Commonalities emerge between various pairs of the live action short contenders: performing arts as a vital form of personal expression, chafing under societal repression, and punny titles.

Two People Exchanging Saliva seems to be the fan favorite, at least on the internet, and for good reason. In a dystopic world where physical intimacy is outlawed, a saleswoman at a Paris magasin forms an illicit connection with one of her customers. Black and white, French, sapphic—this is a So Sad So Sexy vibe. The maid from Portrait of a Lady on Fire stars in it and the dystopic world is fully realized.

I liked that one a lot, but my personal favorite has to be The Singers (on Netflix). In a gruff dive bar, an impromptu singing competition breaks out, with $100 and a case of beer on the line. As someone who advocates for the life changing magic of pouring your heart and soul into karaoke, this was firmly made for me. Knowing the background of its making makes it even easier to appreciate. That guy who went viral for singing “Unchained Melody” at the subway station? He stars in this, as do similar male singers who were briefly famous on the internet. And the music supervision... how the heck did they get the rights to all these songs??

Hewing to the “basic means best” heuristic, I think the winner tonight will be A Friend of Dorothy, which I found to be treacly. Won’t hurt that it has the British star power of Miriam Margolyes (the titular Dorothy) and Stephen Fry (a friend of Dorothy, to be sure, but not the friend referred to in the title).

Documentary Short Subject

The Documentary Branch of the Academy has a type. They prefer works that highlight social issues around the world while demonstrating little tolerance for experimental fare. Of the three short film categories, this was the biggest slog to get through.

I don’t really have a favorite in this category. To that end, the most tolerable were The Devil is Busy (on HBO Max) and All the Empty Rooms (on Netflix) because their artistic simplicity is outweighed by topical salience. (They are about an abortion clinic in Georgia and the victims of school shootings, respectively.) I think All the Empty Rooms will win tonight, given the combination of Netflix backing, the subject being a well-known CBS News anchor, and the inarguable activism on display. But Geeta Gandbhir has the potential to win two Oscars tonight: one for her feature The Perfect Neighbor and another for co-directing The Devil is Busy.

Throughout the past few years, there has been a nominee in this category that can also be described as an avant-garde nature documentary (One such short, Nuisance Bear, was expanded to feature length. It just premiered at this year’s Sundance.) Perfectly a Strangeness (on The Criterion Channel) gets points just for being different from the other four nominees: it’s a wordless, plotless story that follows a trio of donkeys in the Atacama Desert. Think EO except nothing bad happens. (Thankfully!) Beautiful imagery, but I found the throughline to be lacking.

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Further Oscars Reading

• When COVID Almost Canceled the Oscars: An Oral History of a Most Surreal Night by Scott Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter

  • Really great reporting, plus a reveal of the speech Chadwick Boseman’s widow would have given, had he won that posthumous Best Actor award.

• Pulling Bolts Out of the Ferris Wheel by A. S. Hamrah, n+1

  • This just got published this morning so I haven’t read it yet, but A. S. Hamrah’s annual criticism of Oscar movies is always essential reading.

• He’ll Scan Your Ticket and Offer Commentary on the Movie You’re About to See at AMC Lincoln Square by Caitlin Kitson, West Side Rag

  • Not actually about awards, but if you’ve ever had your ticket scanned by Jeffry at the AMC Lincoln Square, you know he deserves an Oscar for Best Cinema Usher.

With the 98th Academy Awards just around the corner, here are food and drink pairings for some of this year’s nominated movies and short films! Whether you’re hosting a watch party for a crowd or settling into the couch by yourself, it’s not too late to put these ideas into action. (Though I recognize this would have been more helpful a week ago.)

Most of these ideas came about as I was brainstorming for my ten-course Oscars dinner party. In case you missed it, here’s my recap of how that all went down:

Best Picture Nominees

Bugonia

At my Oscars dinner party, I served a custom-made ice cream made with buckwheat honey. If you have an ice cream maker, David Lebovitz has a good recipe for this. And if you don’t, Van Leeuwen sells a honeycomb ice cream, which sounds great—but there’s no honey in it. (Rather, honeycomb toffee is mixed in.) I was at the grocery store the other day and saw other brands selling different forms of ice cream made with real honey, usually with berries.

The characters of Bugonia didn’t eat anything nearly as sweet. Jessie Plemons was microwaving frozen meals, guzzling Coca-Cola, and slicing Pepperidge Farm coconut layer cakes. The tense dinner table faceoff with Emma Stone occurs over spaghetti and meatballs.

To drink: The Bee Sting is a classic, and this Honeysuckle cocktail is a solid daiquiri riff. Use hot honey in the syrup to make it just as spicy as Yorgos Lanthimos.

F1

So I don’t think we actually see anyone eat during this movie. But you can match the luxury nature of Formula One and load up on caviar. This is your opportunity to pretend you’re an oligarch. Here’s a guide on buying and serving sturgeon roe; my favorite way to eat it is with potato chips and crème fraîche. Or just do caviar bumps for true high-low decadence.

To drink: The official champagne of Formula One is Moët, but previous sponsor Ferrari Trento (no relation to the auto manufacturer) still has their specially-branded F1 bubbly floating around at certain wine shops.

Ferrari is also the name of a classic shooter, made with equal parts Fernet and Campari. American F1 drivers are uncommon (there aren’t any currently competing), which makes Brad Pitt an anomaly. You could make a Ferrari “Americano” using domestically produced alternatives. I’m partial to Faccia Brutto’s Fernet Pianta and Aperitivo.

This is also a great opportunity for a mocktail. I don’t have any specific ideas but whatever you come up with, call it the Designated Driver.

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Frankenstein

The Turduckenstein I prepared for my dinner party was extremely fitting. If you wanna try this at home, I just published the method. It’s a bit of a project!

To drink: Gothic and dark are the key words. Brandy or absinthe would be a great match. A classic cocktail with the perfect name does exist: Corpse Reviver No. 2.

If you want to go chaotic, you could Frankenstein something by pouring a bunch of different spirits and liqueurs and juices together. (This is sometimes known as Jungle Juice.) If the constituent parts have different specific gravities, your glass would have an interesting/horrifying layer of fluids.

Hamnet

You can go punny here and serve a big ham. Or lean into the rural English forest vibes: apples and mushrooms and nettles are suitable. If you want to simulate the experience of living in 16th century Stratford-upon-Avon, perhaps a Jessie Buckwheat porridge.

To drink: A Witch’s Brew of some kind would be great: perhaps spiced cider spiked with London dry gin. (This has the benefit of being easy to serve at a party if you have a crock pot.)

Marty Supreme

Like the actor who plays him, Marty Mauser is a Jewish kid from Manhattan. He wants to be the best ping pong—sorry, table tennis—player in the world. He’ll do whatever it takes to get to Tokyo, where his biggest nemesis awaits. Inspired by this cross-cultural connection, I looked up the menu at Shalom Japan, a Jewish-Japanese fusion restaurant in Williamsburg.

For my own dinner, I made their okonomi-latke, topped with ikura to represent Marty’s orange ping pong balls. Some of their other recipes have been published online, including the matzah ball ramen and lox chirashi and would be show-stopping dishes.

Other ideas I had for my dinner party but didn’t use: a sweet potato korokke coated in Cheeto crumbs, orange sorbet (scooped in ping pong ball size), or orange mochi. Clearly, the color orange was on my mind.

But if you want something really easy, mandarins or a box of Wheaties are equally on theme.

To drink: Martini Supreme, however you want to prepare it. Garnish with an orange ping pong ball, or if you wanna get fancy, carefully place a droplet of vegetable oil on top of the martini, then a droplet of St. Germain or dry curaçao on top of the oil (any orange-colored liqueur will do). Then you have a little orange sphere floating on your drink!

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One Battle After Another

Carne asada is the way to go.

To drink: This is a great movie to build a drink menu around. A few small beers is easy: pick up a case of Modelo cans and you’ll be driving like Sensei in no time.

The French 75 is another easy reference. If you want to lean into the California of it all, use St. George Terroir Gin, which has strong notes of fir, bay laurel, and fennel.

And if it’s cold wherever you live, serve eggnog with a candy cane and call it the Christmas Adventurer’s Club. I am a huge fan of Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s tequila-sherry eggnog, but you can use your fave recipe.

The Secret Agent

Pão de queijo is a natural fit for this film, which has similarly become the pride of its nation. Anything Brazilian is a fit here, especially pastéis de bacalhau, which we briefly see two hitmen snack on upon arrival in Recife.

To drink: Is a Caipirinha too on the nose? I don’t think anyone is complaining!

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Sentimental Value

A refined Norwegian film deserves an equally refined Norwegian dish: smørbrød. (The Danish spelling, smørrebrød, is more familiar to most.) Bake or buy a loaf of authentically dense rye bread, then smear (smør) each slice with butter. One popular assortment of toppings would be gravlax, cucumber, pickled ramps, lemon zest, and dill. But the sky’s the limit!

As an alternative, prepare a cheese plate with knekkebrød, a crispy rye cracker.

To drink: Stellan Skarsgård drinks a lot of whiskey in this movie. (I’m guessing it’s scotch.) If dark liquor ain’t your thing, Phil Ward of Long Island Bar workshopped a Nordic Gibsonfor Robert Simonson: “made partly with aquavit and garnished with a cocktail onion and a celery ribbon.”

Sinners

Perhaps the most obvious (and delicious) food pairing among all the Best Picture nominees is the fried catfish and collard greens served at the juke joint’s opening night. To be authentically Southern, bread the fish in cornmeal and braise the collards with plenty of smoked ham hocks. Ward off the vampires with garlic aioli and hot sauce.

To drink: “We got whisky, Irish beer, Italian wine.” You can also riff on the La Louisiane, offering two half-pours that swap out the spirit: one with a smooth rye, the other with Laphroaig or other peated scotch. Call it the Smoke & Stack.

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Train Dreams

I was really satisfied with the Bûche de Joël served at my dinner party. (Joel Edgerton plays a logger. Get it??) Another idea I strongly considered was porchetta, which is similarly log-shaped and rustic. Serve that with morel mushrooms and salad to round out the meal.

To drink: If there was ever a movie that would pair with an Old Fashioned, this is it. Drop in some hinoki bitters. If you need a whiskey rec, Woodinville bourbon is distilled in Washington, where the film was shot, and it’s decent. Personally I preferred the Redwood Empire Pipe Dream, which was too perfect a name to pass up. (I conducted a taste test and people’s favorite was split down the middle.)

Faccia Brutto created a Manhattan riff called the Sawtooth, which uses their Amaro Alpino in place of vermouth. (If you can’t access their products wherever you are, another alpine amaro should suffice. Try Alta Verde or Braulio.) To say it is spirit-forward is an understatement; this is a compliment.

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Other Nominated Films

Although these didn’t make the Best Picture cut, I dare say some of the food and drink ideas here are much better. (Just like the films, in some cases.)

Arco

Skittles: taste the rainbow.

To drink: Make it a party with Skittle shots, which I used to drink a lot back in college. Oof.

Avatar: Fire and Ash

Make a fiery red muhammara. Make hummus with black chickpeas and black sesame tahini. Swirl the two together on a plate. Boom. Fire and Ash. I’ll be making this for my watch party on Sunday. Seared squid optional!

Blue Moon

To drink: By my count, Ethan Hawke drinks six neat pours of bourbon in this movie (which takes place over the course of a couple hours). The label of the well whiskey reads “Old Frontier Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey,” which is not a real brand. But the design combines elements of Old Forester and Bulleit. (Personally I prefer Bulleit but both are great choices.)

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

To drink: To re-create the Rose Byrne Experience—chug a bottle of white wine, smoke a bunch of weed, and get nightmarishly cross-faded. The film is set in Montauk, and Long Island makes some wines that are good and affordable. Channing Daughters is a reliable winery, and I really love Paumanok’s Chenin Blanc.

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It Was Just an Accident

Persian pastries, of course! In New York City, Sofreh Cafe would be your best option unless you can venture out to Jersey. (If anyone coming to my watch party is reading this and you bring a box of goodies from Sofreh Cafe you will have my undying loyalty.)

To drink: Back Home Beer is a Brooklyn-based brewery inspired by the founder’s Iranian roots.

Kokuho

To drink: The title translates to “National Treasure” so you gotta pair it with some good sake.

KPop Demon Hunters

This is a layup, because the Huntr/x ladies love their Korean snacks. The official branded Shin Ramyum is a good start, and Netflix published a full accounting of the food featured in the movie. You could make a terrific spread just based on this movie. Wash it all down with a little soda pop.

To drink: Soju and makgeolli, of course.

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Amélie is awakened by the taste of Belgian white chocolate, and beyond that there’s a few cooking scenes! Nishio-san, the housemaid, prepares a tasty-looking okonomiyaki. But in one scene, food serves as a metaphor for the fraught relationship between West and East. A curious Amélie asks Nishio, “raconte-moi la guerre.” While making a pot of curry (a dish introduced by the British), Nishio recalls the firebombings dropped on her village, represented by chunks of carrots falling into a stew. A pot of rice overboiling, slicing the head off a mackerel: all of it recalls painful memories, but it is also a mark of resilience.

Sirât

Ketamine.

The Alabama Solution

To drink: Dave Baxter at Vintertainment proposed some wine pairings for this documentary, including a street legal "prison wine."

The Lost Bus

To drink: For this dramatization of the 2018 Camp Fire in NorCal, grab a vintage of the same year from nearby Napa or Sonoma. Wildfires can affect the grapes, giving them a “smoke taint” that some find off-putting. It’s a real concern for winemakers in impacted regions.

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The Smashing Machine

To drink: I never got around to creating one, but “The Smashing Machine” would be a great name for a cocktail. Find a way to make the Whiskey Smash your own. Maybe use The Rock’s tequila brand?

Weapons

Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup and way too many hot dogs.

To drink: “Vodka soda. Garnished with lime, obviously” is a note I wrote down but I genuinely do not remember why.

Zootopia 2

Donuts and animal crackers.

To drink: An alcohol pairing for a kid’s movie feels inappropriate.

A Friend of Dorothy (Short Film)

Del Monte canned prunes, but I’m not sure why you’d want to eat this. Unless you are also an elderly Englishwoman named Dorothy.

The Singers (Short Film)

To drink: A domestic macro lager that you knock back before unleashing a killer cover of “Amazing Grace.”

Two People Exchanging Saliva (Short Film)

To drink: Chicha beer is an ancient Andean beer brewed from masticated maize. (That’s a fancy word for “chewed up and spit out.”) Egyptian mint tea would be a great non-alcoholic sipper.

Perhaps the biggest showstopper during my ten-course Oscars dinner was what I deemed the “Turduckenstein.” It’s an assemblage of chicken, duck, and turkey, organized in the shape of the perfect creature. It is not the most optimal way to serve roasted poultry, but it looks pretty damn cool.

The dish was conceived of as a pairing with Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein, which was a Best Picture nominee, but it would be right at home with any horror or gothic-themed dinner party.

It’s fairly easy to recreate if you’re experienced with roasting poultry, but it is time consuming to put everything together. For expediency, I won’t describe all the nitty-gritty; for additional context, I’ve linked to various sources throughout the instructions. (If you haven’t broken down and roasted whole poultry before, please get some reps in before putting this on your dinner menu.)

If you actually make this at any point, please send me photos!

I tried to use Substack’s new native recipe editor but it doesn’t allow for links within the instructions, and formatting options are limited, which makes it pretty useless for this specific case.

Recipe: Turduckenstein

Makes two creatures, which should be enough to feed 10-12 people as a main.

Equipment

• 2 half-sheet pans and wire racks

• A very sharp knife for slicing

• Poultry shears

• Meat thermometer

• Sauté pan or skillet

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (Ideally with head and feet attached. You will find this in your local Chinatown supermarket.)

• 1 whole duck (Ideally with head and feet attached. Alternatively, buy two duck breasts and two confited duck legs.)

• 2 turkey wings (Ideally cut into 3-inch pieces, but whole wings are fine.)

• 2 yellow or white onions

• 2-3 oranges of any kind (blood oranges would be cool)

• Salt

• Olive oil

• Optional: microgreens (I like Farm One’s micro mustard greens.)

For the Cumberland sauce:

• 1 orange

• 1 lemon

• 1 cup Ruby port

• 1 12 oz jar of red currant jelly

• Dijon mustard

• Ground ginger

Plus:

• Additional ingredients for duck leg confit, depending on which method you choose. (See below.)

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Method

The day before

• Break down the duck and chicken

  • Use poultry shears to separate the necks and feet from the carcass.

  • Then butcher into six parts: two each of the legs, breast halves (bone-in), and wings.

  • Hold on to the meaty giblets, such as heart and gizzard, as you’ll use them in the confit. Save the liver, backbones, and fat trimmings for other uses. (Duck chicharróns are incredible.)

• Start the process for the counterfeit confit, which begins with an overnight “cure.” Do this to the duck legs and any meaty chicken/duck giblets (such as heart or gizzard.)

  • If you have the time you can do a proper duck leg confit or sous vide faux-confit, but note this takes a few days.

The morning of

• Follow the counterfeit confit instructions to slow roast your duck legs, wings, and meaty offal. This will take a few hours.

• Dry brine the chicken parts, duck wings, turkey wings, heads, and feet:

  • Set a wire rack in a half-sheet pan, then place the aforementioned poultry parts on the rack. Scatter a generous amount of salt all around the meat. (You can use a calculator if you really want to but don’t overthink this.)

  • Place the pan in the fridge, uncovered. Let it hang out for at least four hours, up to twelve hours.

• Score the duck breasts, following Step 1 of these instructions. Put the breasts in a container and stash in the fridge.

• This is a good time to make the Cumberland sauce, but you can and should do this further in advance so you have fewer things to do today.

To evening you are serving this

• Preheat your oven to 425ºF with a rack set on the top-third. Let the dry-brined poultry parts sit on the counter for 45-60 minutes so they can come up to temp.

• Meanwhile, prepare your sheet pan

  • Slice your onions into thick slices, about 1.5 inches wide. Toss some olive oil on a sheet pan and then scatter the onions everywhere, then place a wire rack on top of the onions

  • Slice the oranges into rounds and place them on top of the wire rack.

  • On top of each citrus slice, place the poultry parts, except for the chicken breast.

  • Drizzle everything with olive oil.

• Roast the poultry parts

  • Place the sheet pan in the oven, on the top-third rack.

  • Take the confited duck legs & giblets out of the fridge so they can warm up a bit.

  • After 20 minutes, take out the sheet pan. Flip the turkey wings over, drizzle with olive oil, and rotate the pan.

  • Set more citrus slices on the wire rack if you have any, then place your reserved chicken breast halves on them. Do the same with the confited duck legs, and duck wings. (If you’re out of orange slices, that’s fine, just place directly on the wire rack.) Drizzle these with olive oil.

  • Place the sheet pan back in the oven.

  • After 15 minutes, take out the pan and place the confited giblets, if using, on the wire rack as well.

  • Start checking the internal temperatures of each piece. The desired targets are below. If anything hits the target before the other pieces, remove them from the oven, set them on a cutting board, and loosely tent with foil. The entire roast should take roughly 45-60 minutes, but follow temperature, not timing.

    • Turkey/duck/chicken wings: 170F

    • Chicken breast: 155F

    • Chicken legs: 195F

    • (The duck legs are already fully cooked, so we’re just looking to warm them up and brown the skin. If needed, you can get a better crisp using a broiler or butane torch.)

  • Ensure everything rests for at least ten minutes.

• Cook the duck breast

  • After the giblets go in the oven, you should start cooking the duck breast on the stovetop. Follow these instructions from Steps 2-4.

  • If you nail the timings, this should be done roughly around the same time as the roasted poultry is finished and they can all rest together.

• Warm the sauce

  • Meanwhile, warm up your Cumberland sauce on the stovetop, covered, over low heat.

Assemble your creature

• Carve chicken breast halves from the bone.

• Slice the chicken and duck breast.

• Scatter the onions, now lusciously roasted in chicken fat, on a large serving board.

• Place breast and legs on the board in a mismatched fashion. For example, if your chicken breast is on the left, place a duck leg underneath it.

• Piece everything else—wings, offal, head, feet—together in a somewhat artful way.

  • I like to place the heart and gizzards in anatomically correct locations, hiding underneath the breast slices. Slide an orange slice inside the beak for some flair.

• Optional garnishes: scatter microgreens and the roasted orange slices around the Turduckenstein.

• Set on the table, with the warmed Cumberland sauce on the side.

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The clocks sprung forward by an hour on Sunday, marking the end of a miserable season. I refer, of course, to awards season. It also happened to be the day I wrapped up this year’s edition of my Oscars dinner.

To celebrate the 98th Academy Awards, I created a menu where each of the ten Best Picture nominees received a thematic food pairing. I’ve done this for five years and counting, and it’s always the biggest event I host. The hours spent brainstorming, budgeting, prepping, and serving this culinary celebration of cinema is a lot of work, but it’s always worth it when I get to the end of the night and I see the looks of satisfaction on my guests.

And it’s so nice, I did it thrice! I usually do two dinners but this year I did a third Encore service. There were 38 guests in total.

Before diving in, I want to give a big thanks to the team that made this event possible. Aaron was by my side for all three nights as sous chef. Eric, Aeron, and Olivia each served as service assistants for a night. They kept the dishes clean and ensured plating was pretty. Byron and Aaron devised the non-traditional wine pairings. Desserts were made by Dan and Karen. None of this happens without them.

Cocktail Hour

The evening began with a cocktail reception, where we served two specially crafted drinks. Aaron came up with the Carnaval do Marcelo to go with The Secret Agent: a black tea-infused whiskey sour sweetened with hot honey and guava. That was a huge hit, as was a fizzy French 75 riff in honor of One Battle After Another. It used St. George Terroir Gin, with strong fir and fennel notes reminiscent of a redwood forest. We called it the California 75.

Those wanting something simpler could opt for a few small beers.

While guests sipped their drinks and shared their movie takes, I passed around the first dish of the night!

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Pão de Queijo (The Secret Agent)

Fermented manioc starch. Minas cheese. Guava paste.

Brazil’s famous cheese bread was a natural fit for this film, which has similarly become the pride of a nation. Inspired by John Carlo’s pan de bono from a previous dinner collaboration, I placed a cube of goiabada inside each bun. We also passed around Romeu e Julieta skewers.

I followed Sohla El-Waylly’s recipe in Serious Eats, but used real-deal Brazilian ingredients purchased from the aptly-named Brazilian Market NYC.

Champagne & Caviar (F1)

Osetra Classic. Buckwheat blini. Crème fraîche.

On the morning that the Oscar nominees were announced, three different people texted to ask what I would do about F1. It wasn’t obvious at first, but I then thought of Kate Wagner’s infamous exposé about the wealth and power embedded in this sport.

Why not, for a moment, pretend we are oligarchs too?

I have to give special thanks to the Great Blizzard of ‘26, because the caviar vendor I had in mind did a one-day flash sale: 50% off anything and everything. Shoutout to Number One Caviar for this insane deal.

Originally I was going to serve 125 grams at each dinner, enough to give each person a couple blini. But now that my caviar budget (lol) was worth twice as much, I had to decide between upgrading the quality or doubling the quantity.

You can guess what I chose…

Wine pairings:

• Ferrari Trento F1 - ® Limited Edition ‘Miami’

  • The winemaker has no relation to the car brand, but for a few years this was the official sparkling wine of F1. (It is once again Moët.) Being made in Italy, it is not champagne, but alliteration outweighed accuracy and the branded bottle was fun to pass around. The bubbly was a little sweet and honestly not the best pairing with caviar. But again, branding!

• Delacroix, Brut Blanc des Blancs

  • This is my go-to sparkler. Dry, crisp, and it’s only $12 a pop.

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Okonomi-Latke (Marty Supreme)

Potato hash. Cabbage. Bean sprouts. Ikura. Bonito flakes.

Like the actor who plays him, Marty Mauser is a Jewish kid from Manhattan. He wants to be the best ping pong—sorry, table tennis—player in the world. He’ll do whatever it takes to get to Tokyo, where his biggest nemesis awaits. Inspired by this cross-cultural connection, I looked up the menu at Shalom Japan, a Jewish-Japanese fusion restaurant in Williamsburg. Their okonomi-latke is an occasional special, and the recipe was published in the Times which was rather convenient. (I have a lot of notes because the recipe wasn’t tested well, as the comments pointed out1.) That the ikura resembles the now-iconic orange ping pong balls in the film was merely a bonus.

A critic friend gave me a few dozen official Marty Supreme™ ping pong balls, so I gave them out as a party favor.

Wine pairing:

• Orange Pét-Nat, Vinha da Malhada - 2023

  • Gotta match the color of the movie’s marketing! Slightly acidic and decently aromatic, it was a good transition from the sparkling white wine from the prior course and meshed well with this fried cabbage and potato pancake.

Smørbrød (Sentimental Value)

Rugbrød. Acme Royal Cut Smoked Salmon. Pickled ramps.

A refined Norwegian film deserves an equally refined Norwegian dish. I baked a loaf of authentically dense rye bread, with each slice smeared (smørred) with butter and topped with Acme’s smoked salmon (shoutout to Fish Friday!), cucumber, pickled ramps, lemon zest, and dill.

Wine pairing:

• Florèz Edelzwicker - 2023

  • I’m a big fan of what James Jelks is doing at his winery2. His spin on the archetypal Alsatian blend was a punchy counterpoint to the earthy rugbrød, with a brightness that matched well with the citrus and pickle flavors.

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Fried Catfish (Sinners)

With braised collards, hot sauce, black garlic aioli.

Although the planning doesn’t happen until the weeks leading up to the dinner, brainstorming is a yearlong concern. Every time I watch a movie I take note of any prominent food or drink scenes, just in case they emerge as an Oscar contender. Smoke and Stack serve fried catfish at their juke joint opening, so the choice for the Sinners dish was obvious.

Each piece of fish was dipped in buttermilk laced with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco (crucially, it was not marinated!), breaded in cornmeal, then fried in a cast iron pan. Collards were stewed with a generous amount of smoked ham hocks, and to ward off the vampires, I made a black garlic aioli to be used as a dip.

Big ups to Aaron for holding down on the fish fry! I turned this course over to him and he knocked it out of the park.

Wine pairing:

• Partida Creus VN Vinel-Lo - 2022

  • A chilled light red blend, showcasing trepat, a grape native to Catalunya. The producers are an Italian couple who set up shop in Pendès. This kind of viticultural immigration is rather, well, foreign but the product speaks for itself. This wine was by far the crowd favorite.

Carne Asada Taco (One Battle After Another)

With avocado, radish, salsa verde. Charred scallion and lime on the side, obviously.

Another easy choice. Like the film, this course is a tribute to California’s dusty border towns and arid Central Valley highways. Bavette and/or flank steaks (depending on what the butcher had each week) were marinated for roughly six hours before searing to medium doneness. (Less cooked and it’s too chewy, which we learned the hard way on the first night.) This was the toughest course to execute: while the steak cooks, I’m warming up the tortillas. Meanwhile my sous and assistant are setting up all the toppings so that we can quickly assemble a dozen tacos at the same time.

California Mexican cuisine usually favors flour tortillas, ideally made with lard. The problem is that it’s exceptionally hard to get such tortillas in these parts. I tried making some from scratch and my test batch didn’t work out at all. While I’m pretty good at getting up to speed on new techniques, I didn’t think I could master this in one week so I went with store-bought corn tortillas, which are more reliable to work with.

This choice of grain was the only compromise. I’m especially impressed with how the carne asada turned out; the recipe I linked above is a keeper.

Wine pairings: These Mexican reds come from Baja California, a wine region close to the border.

• Bichi “Listán” - 2023

  • Funky, acidic, and smoky. We were concerned it would be a little too out there but people went nuts for it. Listán Negro is quickly becoming one of my favorite grapes.

• L.A. Cetto, Petite Sirah 2022 & Casa Jipi, Nebbiolo 2023

  • There was a bit of a break between the tacos and the next course, a prime opportunity to open a second bottle. (Each night got one of these two options.) Both are lighter than the Listán Negro, perfect for sipping while the flavors of the carne asada lingered. The Nebbiolo was an especially big hit.

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Mushrooms & Maple Glazed Vegetables (Hamnet)

Mushroom medley. Carrots. Cabbage.

Took inspiration from Agnes’s forest witch vibes.

A mix of fungi, including maitake (aka hen of the woods) and foraged hedgehog and yellowfoot chanterelles, were sautéed in ghee3 and served alongside carrots and cabbages roasted with a maple (ham) glaze.

During this course, guests mused on the nature of daylight and argued the virtues (or lack thereof) of Chloé Zhao’s film. It got especially spicy during the Encore dinner.

Turduckenstein (Frankenstein)

With Cumberland sauce.

That’s right—three different birds, pieced together to form the perfect poultry. Half a duck, half a chicken, turkey wings, with heart and gizzards tucked underneath. The turkey and chicken parts were roasted, while the duck breast was seared and duck leg confited. Head and feet were essential for presentation, so I went to Chinatown for some meat shopping. The duck I got wasn’t eviscerated, and it was my first time encountering this. It was fun to pull out the entrails and maybe I should have saved them for display.

If you want to try this at home, here’s the method:

In a nod to the novel’s 19th century English origins, the Turduckenstein was served with Cumberland sauce, which is made from red currant jelly, ruby port, and citrus. It also happens to look like blood. Though this sweet, glazey sauce is typically served with Christmas ham, it worked wonders with the poultry, especially when set against crunchy and spicy mustard microgreens from Farm One.

Wine pairing:

• Abbots Table, Owen Roe 2022

  • A delightfully sanguineous bottle to round out the night’s wine pairings. A mix of Zinfandel, Cab Franc, and Cab Sauv from Washington’s Columbia Valley. Fortunately it was an elegant blend, not a Frankensteined one! The label evokes the eras of both Shakespeare and Mary Shelley.

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One Caviar Bump After Another

“Guys, we have too much caviar.” Something had to be done.

Before transitioning from savory to sweet, we all got a big hit of buttery brine.

As I quenelled the glistening Osetra onto the back of everyone’s hands, one person remarked, with some horror, that they felt like the bad guys in a movie!

Folks were rather shy about receiving so much caviar during the first dinner. (No complaints from me, as that meant more for me and the staff!) But everyone at the Encore dinner was quite ravenous. I had an entire 500G tin to go around for that one4.

Sadly, next year’s dinner will not offer such massive amounts of caviar, unless another massive blizzard strikes or a caviar purveyor sponsors me (please).

From here on out, service was smooth sailing because the desserts needed zero preparation. Like any good head chef, I outsourced the sweets to trusted friends.

Beehive Ice Cream (Bugonia)

Crafted by Dan Schindel. Andrew’s Buckwheat Honey. Honeycomb Toffee. Honeycomb.

Jesse Plemons is an amateur beekeeper whose concerns with colony collapse disorder and impending ecological disaster launch him into a rabbit hole of extraterrestrial conspiracy theories. Yorgos Lanthimos may be adapting a two-decade-old Korean film, but it speaks to our current moment of disinformation and societal mistrust. One thing is certain: if humanity suddenly vanished from this earth, the bees would do just fine.

Friend and fellow critic Dan Schindel makes ice cream in his spare time, so I enlisted him for this Bugonia pairing. Inspired by David Lebovitz, the custard included a local buckwheat honey from Andrew’s Honey (a delightful coincidence that the apiarist and I share a name) and honeycomb toffee was mixed in.

Each dessert coupe was graced with a piece of honeycomb and a dazzle of Maldon flakes, necessary to counter the sweetness.

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Bûche de Joël (Train Dreams)

Crafted by Karen Yang. Chocolate chiffon. Cherry. Mascarpone. Pistachio cream. Chocolate ganache frosting. Meringue mushrooms.

The protagonist of Train Dreams is a logger played by Joel Edgerton. So the name of this cake is a pun5, but it also evokes the forests of Eastern Washington, where the film was shot.

I was lowkey banking on Wicked to be nominated again so I could reprise the amazing pink & green cake made by friend and pastry extraordinaire Karen Yang, but I was glad I was able to relate one of these Best Picture nominees to a cake. And it was so, so good.

Unfortunately she wasn’t available to make a third cake for the Encore, so for that night I made a chocolate hazelnut tart with a graham cracker crust, topped with candied Japanese citrus peels. It’s like a Ferrero Rocher in pie form. While not as special as the bûche, it was just as decadent.

Amaro service: Carried on with the piney forest vibes with the digestifs, offering up a variety of amari and one whiskey. Matchbook Distilling’s Day Trip Strawberry Amaro is a perennial favorite, especially for those who shy away from astringent bottles like Faccia Brutto’s Amaro Alpino. When I was at Astor I encountered a bourbon called Redwood Empire Pipe Dream. I had to get it on account of the name; as a bonus it’s a pretty good whiskey!

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Some Reflections

Last year I served 21 people, spread over two nights, and it was the best dinner yet. I thought then that I had stretched the capabilities of what could be done in a New York City apartment, but this time I pushed the envelope even further. This menu was the most technically complex I’ve ever executed. The okonomi-latke proved to be more finicky than anticipated, three courses in a row were a chain of à la minute cooking, and it was only on the third try that timing the vegetables and chicken roasts worked out.

Each service had its own distinct atmosphere. Our first night had a frenetic “let’s put on a show” energy, but there were longer gaps between courses than I would have liked. The next day was much smoother, since most of the prep work from Saturday was carried over. Usually this night is pretty chill but this mix of guests was equally game to drink! Sunday was also the one dinner that we followed up with karaoke. (Naturally, I kicked it off with “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”)

Then there was the Encore dinner, held a week later. Since this was our third go at it, we were a lot more comfortable. But expectations were certainly higher, with everyone having seen pictures from the first weekend. And I had never met about half of the people at the table this time around, which made me a bit nervous. Thankfully everything ran smoothly, and this group had the spiciest movie conversations! There were passionate Hamnet defenders and staunch One Battle After Another detractors.

Although I couldn’t participate in most of the discussions, it was edifying to listen in. Film discourse is plainly on the decline, especially on the internet. Perhaps the solution is to rebuild it in a more intimate setting, in person and offline. The dinner table is a fine place to start.

You may be wondering about the price of this Oscars dinner. Each ticket was $98, plus $35 for the largely at-cost wine pairing. I try really hard to keep the prices as low as possible while maintaining a decent margin, though the compensation wasn’t quite commensurate with the time investment by myself and the staff. There’s a delicate balance because if I charge more, that makes it less accessible and comes with higher expectations with both pacing and plating.

And while I’d love to host these Oscars dinners in a commercial space or partner with a restaurant, that costs associated would be prohibitive. I would need sponsorships to grow this thing beyond my apartment. (Which I am definitely open to… I’m just really bad at getting the word out… so if you want to sponsor/collaborate on any of my future dinner events, get in touch!)

Any Questions?

This was a pretty exhaustive/exhausting recap, but feel free to ask me anything about this dinner!

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The brutally cold weather of January continued well into the next month. I’m stingy with turning on the heat so my power bill was “merely” $200. February started off fairly quietly for me, at least before I spent a long weekend in Arizona where it was very warm and very lovely. When I came back I immediately began planning my annual Oscar’s dinner parties and that has taken over my life for the past two weeks. I’ll be putting together a full recap next week!

In the meantime, here’s a selection of what I was up to in February. As this is basically a journal, everything is loosely written, mostly just lists, and nothing is meant to be taken seriously.

Desert Special

In the middle of February I flew to Arizona for a joint bachelor/ette party. I used to be skeptical of the very concept of a combined bachelor party but came around to it pretty quickly. I’m equally close with both bride and groom, and their respective friends mostly all knew each other. I did eat out a few times, mostly before and after the main event.

• Dog Haus Biergarten (Phoenix)

  • It was decently cheaper to fly in the night before and get a motel room than it would have been to come on Friday, so that’s what I did. This was one of the few places open past 10 PM, and a couple cold beers and a pair of desert dogs was exactly what I needed after the flight.

  • Used to snack-sized glizzies, I ordered two hot dogs and quickly found out that this was a mistake because they were absolutely loaded. The dogs are served on a bun of three King Hawaiian rolls, left unseparated. I’m gonna have to steal that innovation.

• Pizzeria Bianco (Phoenix)

  • An exceptionally popular pizza spot in downtown Phoenix with a James Beard Award. A couple friends told me I absolutely had to go here, even though fancy pizza isn’t hard to come by in New York. Since I was by myself I was seated almost immediately, while families of four had to wait an hour.

  • I got the Rosa, a white pie topped with red onions and pistachios. And it was indeed excellent, though I did get tired of the very oniony flavor two-thirds of the way through. To be fair, it was a 12-inch pie and I ate the entire thing. I should have asked for a 50/50 with something else.

• Fry Bread House (Phoenix)

  • Also a James Beard award winner. I would lovingly describe the fry bread here as an upgraded Taco Bell: the slightly sweet bread is topped with your choice of protein along with cheese, refried beans, and various other accoutrements. Your hands will get messy. I loved it.

• In-n-Out (Phoenix)

  • God bless the west.

• El Pollo Suprema (Tempe)

  • A half mile or so from ASU is a cash-only Mexican joint. The combo plate is the thing to get here: roast chicken and tri-tip, Sonoran style, served with pinto beans and salsa. Absolutely delicious and reminds me of the kind of Mexican food I’d eat back in California.

• Pedal Haus Brewery (Tempe)

  • Closed out my time in Arizona with more cold beer, and paired with a green chile burger, because you gotta stick to the regional specialties. Then I took a Waymo for the first time (it’s weird) and flew back home to New York.

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Miscellaneous Things

• Finally finished Heated Rivalry and yeah it’s terrific! Keith hosted a marathon on Super Bowl Sunday, and the last episode ended just in time to watch the halftime show. I went home right after Bad Bunny and had never seen the subway so empty since COVID.

• For his birthday, my friend organized an ikebana class! Very much outside my wheelhouse but it was very fun.

• Moments at the Winter Olympics that nearly moved me to tears (these are almost all figure skating lol)

  • Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier’s ice dance, complete with Starry Night dress.

  • Alysa Liu’s short and free skate programs, obviously.

    • Side note, this is something I thought of way too late but there were quite a few film scores/songs used bv various skaters, and that would have been fun to analyze. The evil French duo skates to the score from The Whale, an equally evil movie.

  • The extremely unserious figure skating exhibition gala, though the tears were from laughter.

  • One non-skating moment: snowboarder Choi Ga-on going from being stretchered off the halfpipe to coming back and getting the Gold. An incredible storyline. I love the Olympics.

• Did you know that you can change the color of the spires on One World Trade? There’s an app (invite only apparently) that lets you take over the colors for a couple minutes. It costs $10 each time you do it, which sounds ridiculous until you’re at a party and you and your friends are controlling part of the Manhattan skyline.

• The most consequential thing to happen to me last month was that I lost my water bottle and had to buy a new one. I did a bit of research but stuck with my trusty Contigo, as it fulfills my very specific requirements: I have to be able to drink it one-handed while walking, and it can’t have a straw attached to the lid, because the attached straw gives me the ick. Usually I’m filling my water bottle also with one hand (like at a non-automatic water fountain) and am scared of the straw touching something.

Movies

Too busy preparing a movie-themed dinner to actually watch a lot of movies, much less write about them.

Funny that February saw two movies prominently featuring pup play. I thought Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights was very messy but I couldn’t help but be swept up in all the tortured romance and yearning. The Charli XCX songs do a lot of heavy lifting. Pillion was quite lovely, but you can feel the constraints of a low budget indie production. This film is a good example of how these kinds of films may lack certain insert shots or interstitial scenes to really underline the emotional arcs of the characters.

• The first movie I saw at home: zi, to kickoff the at-home virtual Sundance marathon I did with a couple friends.

• The first movie I saw in a theater: Send Help, which was a fun if fleeting time at the movies. What if there was a beach that made you bold?

• The last movie I saw at home: Oscar Nominated Short Films, probably the worst crop in a few years.

• The last movie I saw in a theater: Log in Belgium (2021), a pandemic diary in which Past Lives star Teo Yoo inadvertently reveals why most actors are not good filmmakers. He strives towards the New Wave but stays firmly planted in navel gaze. It’s just as (un) insightful as every celeb vanity project these days, but at least there’s no pretense that any of this is unmediated.

Food & Film Pairings of the Month

Send Help — Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien are marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, and somehow they eat very well. This movie would make for a very fun themed dinner: snapper, sashimi, Thai banana tostones, baby octopus skewered with coconut chunks. And don’t forget the smoked barramundi topped with lemongrass relish, mango salsa, and poison berries! It’s a big upgrade from the sad desk lunch that Rachel McAdams would prepare for her office job: smearing tuna salad on multigrain bread while talking to her parakeet and glugging white wine straight from a one-liter bottle.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die — The opening scenes of Gore Verbinski’s anti-AI time-loop sci-fi thriller are set in the iconic Norms diner on La Cienaga Boulevard (you may recognize it from that Ed Ruscha painting), with a bottle of Cholula hot sauce prominently displayed in one shot. If you want to re-enact Sam Rockwell’s entrance, you only have until the end of the year because they’re going to turn the building into a Raising Cane’s… I personally would not replicate this, but you could assemble the “last supper” of Twinkies, Hostess Snoballs, and red wine that segues us into the third act.

Log in Belgium (2021) — This film is most effective when it captures that early moment of cursed, unhinged quarantine meals. Marooned in Antwerp, Yoo heads to the grocery store only to find every shelf empty (except for the vegan stuff, which is hilariously untouched). In his rental apartment he manages to make mandu, but lacking ingredients to make a proper dipping sauce, he improvises one by combining vegan mayo and ketchup (my friend audibly gagged). We next see him assemble a bagel sandwich with red bean paste and cream cheese.

After a few weeks he’s back in Korea. Unlike the restrictive lockdowns in Europe, people are free to gather, and his in-laws throw a massive welcome home feast. It’s incredibly enviable. Odeng soup, bulgogi, kimbap: all the Korean classics. Later Yoo shows off his home chef abilities, preparing bossam for his friends. I would love an invite.

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Dining In

Cooking for Friends

• Sunday 2/1 (Virtual Sundance Marathon)

  • Recipe tests for Oscars dinner: Carne asada tacos, Pão de queijo

  • Watched the two highest rated movies out of Sundance: Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! And Josephine, and the two lowest: zi and Run Amok. Surprisingly… I liked the latter two more, but all four were very good.

• Friday 2/6 (Olympics Opening Ceremony)

  • Indulged in classic Milanese cuisine to kick off the Olympics!

  • Osso buco (with some beef cheeks swapped in because I had some on hand), served atop Risotto alla Milanese

  • Wine pairing: Barolo “La Morra,” Ciabot Berton 2020

• Sunday 2/15 - Ben & Sravya’s Bachelor+ette Party (in Arizona)

  • The Food Lab’s No-Boil Baked Ziti

    • This is a terrific recipe if you’re in a rental home and making food for a crowd. Doesn’t require a sharp knife or even a large pot (the pasta is soaked before baking). You can use jarred sauce. Just have to buy some aluminum baking dishes at the supermarket.

  • On the grill: pre-marinated carne asada (thank you Safeway), summer squash, onions, bell peppers, corn.

• Monday 2/23

  • Poultry Pho

    • Followed Andrea Nguyen’s recipe for pho ga, but used the turkey, duck, and chicken bones I had saved from Thanksgiving. With 10 pounds of bones I had enough broth for 12 big bowls and had 7 people over, which gave me five days of leftovers. It was nice to do a casual, low-key thing the week before the massive production that is my Oscars dinner.

    • “Having friends for dinner” means enlisting guests to pick the meat off the bones, prepare the herb plate, and put side dishes together.

• Tuesday 2/24

  • Okonomi-Latke recipe test for Oscars cocktail workshop (plus salt-broiled mackerel)

For Myself

I didn’t really cook anything just for myself, as I had intentionally given myself tons of leftovers from when I had friends over. In practice this meant a whole week each of eating tacos, osso buco, and pho. Which sounds fun until reaching day five.

Dining Out

There were three times I made set plans to eat at a restaurant. Incidental meals like pre-show dinners don’t count.

• Karazishi Botan w/ Sravya

  • First bowl of ramen since visiting Japan and it was perfect for a rainy night.

• House of Joy w/ Olivia, Jaidan, Marcus, Brian, Amanda

  • Been a long time since a proper dim sum! There was a big table of old men who had a large bottle of whiskey on the table. It was almost empty by the time we left.

• Askili Orchard w/ Vickie, Daniel

  • Apparently Georgian food is getting trendy again? For good reason as it’s a great cuisine. Highlights: cabbage tolma and the Cornish hen from Guria, which is deboned and “fermented” (I asked the server about that process and am still unclear), then grilled and served with a sweet-smoky mix of sauces and spices.

During a Chinatown shopping run, I finally got some pastries from Elbow Bread. While the challah croissant was just messing with perfection (it’s just a dense croissant), I was much more compelled by the everything-seasoned bialy and chocolate babka.

Music

Maybe it’s just me but the past three months were not particularly compelling for new music. Bruno Mars’s new album is a total dud IMO, the anodyne production sucks the life out of every song. Bright spots were the new records from Joyce Manor and Mitski (it really grew on me, especially after seeing her play some of it live).

These are fifteen new songs I really liked this winter, plus two older tracks I heard on NTS Radio mixes, both of which happen to be covers.

Some favorite NTS Radio mixes:

• Maï-Linh - Tết Special: sounds from Vietnam

  • “For Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar Year, Maï-Linh finally dives into the Vietnam of the 60s and 70s — soul, blues, jazz, folk, prayers and intimate ballads. A journey guided by patience, devotion, and quiet emotional depth.”

• The Early Bird Show w/ Yawning Portal

  • Two hours of classical music!

• Radio 1’s Essential Mix - Danny L Harle (BBC Radio)

  • You need to be in the UK or have a VPN to stream it, but would I get in trouble if I accidentally linked to a rip?

Theater

Anything I particularly liked is bolded.

• Wednesday 2/4 - The Dinosaurs

• Thursday 2/5 - High Spirits

• Wednesday 2/18 - Hate Radio w/ David, Sam, Ben R, Rosa, Paul, Alex

• Thursday 2/19 - Chinese Republicans w/ David, Alex, Liane, Jacky, Corinna, Chi, Andrew

  • You met me at a very Chinese Republican time in my life…

Good Things I Read

• The reporter who tried to replace herself with a bot by Ella Markianos, Platformer

• The Internet that Made Clavicular by Minh Tran, coulda been at the club (Substack)

• Frederick Wiseman: Forced Perspective by Esther Rosenfeld, Rodent Reflections (Substack)

• What Do They Eat at Awards Shows (and Why Do We Care)? by Kyle Buchanan, The New York Times

  • Like many, I’ve been intrigued by the photos of bad food that Buchanan would post as he attends all the pre-Oscar awards ceremonies. My dinners are certainly better quality, but not as Ozempic-friendly.

• The Professor of the Lower Senses by Ruby Tandoh, Vittles (Substack)

  • On Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the food writing legend who inspired the fictional book that was adapted into The Taste of Things.

• When ‘Anora’ Becomes ‘Anorak’: The Art of Wrong Movie Titles by Matthew Huff, The New York Times

• Alysa Liu Just Changed Figure Skating Forever by Chris Schleicher, Slate

What I’m Looking Forward to in March

• Warmer weather… please?

• Marilyn March at the MoMA, with a decently comprehensive retrospective.

• Ten years ago this month, I visited New York for the first time with Eric. We’re going to spend a day retracing some of our steps from that fateful trip.

February Grog Log

The first alcoholic drink I had every day, and where.

1. Vina Zorzal Graciano 2021 at home

2. Nothing

3. Nothing

4. Nothing

5. Nothing

6. Rossojbleo, Gulfi 2023 at home

7. Tiki experiment at Steven and Minh’s (Cocktail coalition)

8. Brooklyn Kura Number Fourteen Aged 1.5 Years at Keith’s

9. Nothing

10. Nothing

11. Earthquake (cocktail) at home

12. Wren House Spellbinder Hazy IPA at Dog Haus Biergarten (Phoenix)

13. The Shop Church Music Juicy IPA at Pizzeria Bianco (Phoenix)

14. Windmill Winery Chardonnay at Windmill Winery (Arizona)

15. Michelob Ultra at the Airbnb (Paradise Valley)

16. Backpacker NZ IPA at Pedal Haus Brewery (Tempe)

17. Nothing

18. Cantine Europa Sensale Nero d’Avola 2024

19. Nothing

20. Hennessy VSOP at Terence’s (Tet Dinner)

21. Neon Lights at Nomad Tea Parlor

22. Nothing

23. Tinto Tradicional, Fronton de Oro 2022 at home

24. Louisiana cocktail at home

25. Chestnut makgeolli slushie at Take 31

26. Nothing

27. Nothing

28. Leftover Brooklyn Kura sake at home

My friends at 4R Press just published a new issue of their zine! I contributed an essay to “Medieval May,” and this time I have a piece in “Faculty Fall.” But it took awhile to get finalized so now it’s Faculty February.

An issue devoted to films about faculty wouldn’t be complete without hearing from faculty who teach film. So I spoke with my friend Matt Prigge, a Senior Editor at The Week who also teaches Film Studies at New York University, and re-arranged our conversation into an essay format. We had to cut a few bits out due to print space, so here’s the extended version of the piece. You can read the full zine, with contributions from a bunch of talented writers and artists, here:

4R Press: Faculty Fall (PDF)

The Language of Teaching Film: An Interview with Matt Prigge

A version of this piece was originally published in 4R Press, Issue #5, Faculty Fall. As told to Andrew Truong. Edited by Chrissy Griesmer and Jake Maher.

I fell into teaching by accident. I started off as a film critic in the mid-90s, back when the Internet was still this nascent information superhighway. I had a blog on Geocities in a section called Hollywood Hills. My reviews weren’t very good. I’m glad they’re not available anymore. Eventually I got hired at the dearly departed Philadelphia Weekly, and that began my career as a professional critic, which lasted twenty years at various publications. Then I was laid off from a job I’d held for a number of years as their film editor and chief film critic. I got a little burnt out.

During that first job in Philadelphia, I had this early midlife crisis and needed something to do besides write for that alt-weekly. So I went to grad school and earned a master’s degree in cinema studies. At the time I had no real plans about what to do with it, but years later that degree opened the door to teaching. A friend of mine was a professor at NYU and he needed a fill-in for one of his classes. He knew I was looking for work and hooked me up. And that’s how I became a professor of film. I usually do three courses a year; it’s something I do on the side to supplement my regular income.

Now I’m coming off my eighth year of doing this, which is wild. It feels like it just started but at the same time, I kind of forget what it was like not to be a professor. I model myself a little after Barbra Streisand in The Mirror Has Two Faces, where she’s a literature professor at Columbia and does this stand-up style routine. I don’t do exactly that, but I try to make it entertaining and slip in jokes that may or may not get a laugh.

The main course I teach is The Language of Film. It’s a crash course in film grammar—mise en scène, cinematography, editing, sound—and we go across different genres. Documentary, the Italian Neorealists, the French New Wave, avant-garde stuff. The goal is to teach students visual and cinematic literacy, so that they become more active viewers and break down movies in ways they might not have thought about before.

There’s usually twelve films on the syllabus. Certain ones are mainstays. I open every term with Rear Window because it trains my students to be aware of their gaze and introduces semester-long concepts. Hitchcock always works; everybody seems to like him. It’s fun to sit there with them when they watch it. They gasp at the same part: when Grace Kelly breaks into Raymond Burr’s apartment and flashes the ring and doesn’t see him coming back in.

Sometimes I show things that I watched when I was a student myself. In undergrad, a professor had us watch a clip from True Stories, the Talking Heads/David Byrne movie. It was the “Love For Sale” sequence. My students today have barely heard of this movie. Maybe they’ve heard of Talking Heads because of Stop Making Sense.

I mix it up sometimes if a film isn’t clicking. One recent movie that did not go well was The Last Laugh by F.W. Murnau, which has gone over well in the past, but this summer they kind of rebelled. Not angry, but they said it wasn’t very good, like two-and-a-half stars on Letterboxd. I had to make a polite, semi-forceful case for why it’s a very good film. They came around a bit, so I’m not discouraged from showing it again.

They also rebel against some of the avant-garde films I show, like Mothlight. There’s no sound, and they’re like, “How do I process this?” I think I finally got a class to enjoy that one. Andy Warhol’s Empire sometimes goes well; I show one or two minutes and say, “It’s just one minute.”

I once looked myself up on Rate My Professors and I’m not actually on there, which is great. I haven’t checked ever again. If I am now, no one has said anything, and don’t tell me. Ignorance is bliss.

The types of students vary by semester. Fall classes are usually freshman film majors; this is a required course for them. Summer and January term, which is an entire semester crammed into the three weeks before spring, are usually non-film majors or high school students testing out what it’s like to take college courses. They’re all film curious—they like movies and want to learn about them. But I mostly keep the same approach with them as the film students.

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Spike Lee is probably the most well-known member of the NYU film department, but I’ve only seen him twice in the building. I think he’s avoiding me because I did a terrible interview with him once.

Compared to when I first started teaching, my students today barely make a sound during screenings, which I thought was kind of weird. My theory is that they were raised during the pandemic and they’re not used to the experience of hooting and hollering, of talking back to the screen.

What does surprise me is how they don’t really react against material that could be seen as problematic. There’s this idea that young people automatically reject anything that’s really old because the social mores are different now. But they’re actually curious about that. I’m not showing Birth of a Nation or anything like that, but a few times I’ve given trigger warnings and they seem to almost roll their eyes. Maybe this is a flawed test case, because it’s NYU.

Really, I’m just surprised that they like anything that I show them. Not that I think they won’t, but I showed Persona over the summer, and I was expecting them to be a little bored. But they were really into it, and the discussions we had were really interesting. Sometimes, students will say something that I’ve never even thought of, about movies that I’ve been showing for years.

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Professor Prigge’s Favorite Faculty Movies

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Syllabus: The Language of Film, Summer 2025

Required textbook: David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson and Jeff Smith’s FILM ART: AN INTRODUCTION 13th Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2024.

Section 1: The Basics of Film Form

1. Introduction: Filmmaking as the Act of Looking – Rear Window (USA, 1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 112 mins.)

2. Mise-en-scène – In the Mood for Love (Hong Kong, 1952, dir. Stanley Donen, 102 mins.)

3. Cinematography – The Last Laugh (Germany, 1924, dir. F.W. Murnau, 90 mins.)

4. Editing – Daisies (Czechoslovakia, 1966, dir. Vera Chytilová, 75 mins.)

5. Sound and Image – A Man Escaped (France, 1956, dir. Robert Bresson, 101 mins.)

Section 2: What to Do with the Basics of Film Form

6. Structure and Narrative – Singin’ in the Rain (USA, 1952, dir. Stanley Donen, 102 mins.)

7. Documentary: Style, Genre and “The Real” – The Gleaners and I (France, 2000, dir. Agnès Varda, 82 mins.)

8. Animation: Metamorphosis and Meta-Physics – My Neighbor Totoro (Japan, 1988, dir. Miyazaki Hayao, 86 mins.)

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Section 3: Revolutions in Film Form

9. Neorealism – Killer of Sheep (USA, 1977, dir. Charles Burnett, 80 mins.)

   1. Optional: Bicycle Thieves (Italy, 1948, dir. Vittorio De Sica, 89 mins.)

10. Art Cinema and the French New Wave – Shoot the Piano Player (France, 1960, dir. François Truffaut, 81 mins.)

11. Alternatives to Narrative Cinema / The Avant-Garde – Persona (Sweden, 1966, dir. Ingmar Bergman, 83 mins.)

12. Digital Cinema, the Future of Movies, and Pulling It All Together – Citizen Kane (USA, 1942, dir. Orson Welles, 119 mins.)

Last month I talked to my friend Jason (last name withheld for privacy reasons), a management consultant who has never lost money in his seven years of betting on the Academy Awards. We spoke about his investment-based approach, early picks, and how prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarkt differ from traditional sportsbooks. It got a lot of traction thanks to Official excerpting it in their weekly roundup, and it’s still worth a read if you haven’t gotten to it:

That interview took place in early January, after the Golden Globes but before the actual nominations were announced. In U.S. political terms, this was after the Iowa caucuses but well before Super Tuesday. Now that the primaries are over and we’re in the final phase of this Hollywood election, it’s a good time for a follow-up conversation. We took stock of how his initial bets have panned out, the juicy category he’s thinking of jumping into, and whether or not you should bet on a tie happening.

Paid subscribers get full access to his updated analysis, as a treat:

The 98th Academy Awards ceremony takes place on March 15. This is three weeks from now. Jeez.

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Another Interview With the Gambler

This interview, which has been edited and condensed, was conducted on February 19, nearly a month after Oscar nominations were announced and the Director’s Guild handed out their awards. The two biggest precursor awards, the British Academy and the Screen Actor’s Guild, have yet to be handed out. After that, the odds will solidify.

How’ve you been, Jason? It’s been over a month since I saw you.

I’ve had crazy work travel. I was in London for a week. The week after that I was in San Francisco. The week after that I was in Poland and London. And I was back in San Francisco last week. Next week I’m going to Chicago and then San Francisco.

The life of a consultant, I suppose. A lot has happened in the Oscars landscape since our first interview, particularly now that the nominees have been unveiled. Has anything changed?

A lot has happened, but I don’t know if a lot has changed. I think this might be one of the most straightforward Oscar races in recent history. I’m eager to check the historical odds to see if this is true1. Across the board things have solidified toward favorites in a way that is unusual.

Even in categories where maybe when we talked a month ago it was a little bit more of a coin flip, it’s gone toward a favorite, and in some cases a heavy favorite.

How do you feel about your picks overall?

I feel pretty good, better than I did last year. But the odds aren’t as good so I’m not putting as much money down. It was a fraction of what I put down last year. But I look forward to being surprised.

Just to recap, what bets did you place in January?

I bet on eight categories. All my positions have improved, with one giant exception.

One Battle After Another for Picture—the odds strangely got worse so I doubled down this week, we’ll talk about that. I also bet on this for Editing.

Chalamet for Best Actor. KPop Demon Hunters for Song.

Sinners for Original Screenplay—that one’s moved well. Paul Thomas Anderson for Director—that one’s also moved well.

F1 for Sound, I got in at 40%. It’s at 80% now.

And then International Feature Film—we don’t have to talk about it—

You called it for It Was Just an Accident.

We’re gonna start with my miss? We’re not going to start with my seven hits?

It is dead2. I’m still a little befuddled by it, to be honest. I think they completely botched the For Your Consideration campaign.

I think the healthy lesson is this: under no circumstance do you put money down on this category until the nominations come out.

Did you sell3?

No. It’s so low that it’s not really even worth selling. At this point I’m holding on for the chance that there is a late push. I’ve just written it off in my mind.

I’m not sweating it too much because the two picks that I really liked were It Was Just an Accident for International Feature, which was trading around 40%, and then F1 for Sound, which was also trading around there. And that one is like 80-something now. That should more than pay for the International Feature bust. In my head, they cancel out.

What percentage of your portfolio was on International?

About 10%. I really liked this bet. The only reason I didn’t put more money into it was because Kalshi wouldn’t let me without changing the odds.

Besides that one exception, you sound pretty happy with holding on to your current bets. Is there anywhere that you’re doubling down and putting in more money at this stage of the game?

I thought One Battle After Another was a lock for Best Picture. Somehow the odds have gone down. It was 82% on Kalshi when we talked a month ago. It is now 74%. That is the only bet where I doubled down so far. I put in the equivalent of 15% of my original portfolio.

I think what’s happening here is a lot of casual betting. Second highest odds is Sinners. I think that might be a reaction to that film setting the record for nominations. That is a gigantic trap. And then third place is Hamnet at 9%, which is 9% too high.

I actually did the math on this. If you had $90,000—which is the maximum that you’re allowed to bet on this category right now—and you just put it on “no” on Hamnet, you would make more than you would get from a high-yield savings account. So if you’re thinking about putting money in your high-yield savings account, just put it on Hamnet to lose the Best Picture Oscar.

A part of me hopes this take ages really badly and Hamnet somehow wins.

I think the readers who follow your advice will doxx you. So we should do a quick disclaimer: none of this interview should be construed as investment, betting, or financial advice. This is purely for entertainment value. You are responsible for whatever decisions you make.

[sarcastically] And Kalshi is not a gambling platform.

One thing we didn’t get to talk about last time was portfolio allocation. How do you decide how much money you’re actually putting in, both as a whole and splitting across each category?

Hopefully you don’t have enough money in this that you actually have to worry about adjusting risk and stuff. It’s not like a stock portfolio. We talked about this a little bit last time. It depends why you’re in it. Are you looking for the thrill? Are you looking to make some money? How much money do you need to be happy?

With me, I’ll put money down on the things I generally like to see win anyway. If I make a meager sum, I’m pretty good with that. I’m not going to go crazy or anything. With that in mind, I do care about balancing. I look at the adjusted odds of the things I have. That lets me go a little riskier and maybe play in some categories I wouldn’t have played in in a vacuum. That tends to mean putting a lot more money into the popular categories.

I’m starting to wonder if, in this new age of Oscars betting being open to everyone, the most popular categories are getting more populated with casual bettors.

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That’s a really good point: where more people are betting, you’re getting people who are less informed.

And that’s the whole reason I even do this. It’s not sports, where you have really sophisticated bettors using algorithms and stuff. I’m still taking advantage of some market inefficiencies.

Are there any categories you haven’t bet on yet but are a potential opportunity?

There is one, Sinners in Cinematography. I haven’t decided yet whether or not to go in. It’s low odds but good value, if that makes sense. I’m thinking, “How much fun do I want to have?”

About a month ago it was a three-horse race between One Battle After Another, Sinners, Train Dreams. One Battle After Another has kind of gone to the slight favorite. It’s around 52% right now. We talked a lot last time about my downballot theory that it is a One Battle After Another year, so that would make sense.

But if you look at odds over time, it gets a little bit suspicious. A month ago, Sinners was around 40%. At one point it became the heavy favorite at 60% but it’s gone down by half. That shift towards One Battle came after the Director’s Guild Awards went to Paul Thomas Anderson. But best directing is not best cinematography.

And there’s a great storyline around the cinematographer of Sinners. She’d be the first woman ever to win. I don’t think that on its own is a good enough reason to award or bet, but combined with the craft itself—“Hey, this might actually just be the best-shot movie of the year”—you could talk your way into it.

It’s at 30% and that is probably a little too low. It should be 50%. So I think if you were brave—or bored, which I kind of am—you might go in on Sinners. But I haven’t put any money down yet. If the odds go down more, I’m going to get really tempted.

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You usually make bets three different times—January, early February, and then a week before the Oscars. Are you planning to do that last minute betting round again?

I’m keeping an eye on Editing. The first thing I look for is doubling down—categories that I liked before and liked enough to get into. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The things that I like are probably going to be the things that I’m already in on.

Other than that, I just track the odds across the board. See if any of them change in a way that I disagree with or that I think are interesting. But I don’t think that’s going to happen this year.

I was expecting to put more down last week. I was ready to, and then I just couldn’t find the bets, besides doubling down on Best Picture. That’s why I’m a little shy on going in for cinematography, because I’m thinking, man, am I just bored?

Would anything change your position on Timothée Chalamet? We talked about him a lot last time around.

Michael B. Jordan winning a SAG award would change a lot of things. But he’s like the third person now that we’re saying could upset Timothée. A month ago, we weren’t even talking about him. We were talking about Leo.

I think short of Kendall Jenner—is it Kendall or Kylie? I always mix them up. Whichever one he’s dating, short of her doing something crazy like starring in a Coke commercial where she solves racism, I don’t see Timothée not getting it4.

Kalshi lets you bet on a tie—not which two films tie, just a tie in general. Would you recommend this?

I wish I had a clever, thoughtful answer other than no, don’t do it. I just looked it up: it’s happened six times in the history of the Oscars. I’m surprised it’s happened that often.

What if I just want to put 10 bucks on a tie in every category, just to see what happens?

You would lose all your money.

Final question. I’m pretty sure Kalshi will put up prop bets closer to the ceremony, like how long the telecast will be, or what Conan O’Brien will say in his monologue. What prop bet would you feel comfortable putting money on?

Number of times ICE is mentioned. I think there’s a sweet spot between three and ten.

You have a more optimistic viewpoint on Hollywood getting controversial than I do.

I am also considering the non-proper noun “ice.” Just cold.

Doesn’t count.

It’s not a real category anyways.

Thanks again, Jason, for chatting with me and sharing your wealth of knowledge.

It was a very long way of saying not much has changed.

All odds taken from Kalshi as of February 19 and compared to the odds on January 8, when Jason made his initial analysis.

Obvious pick, OK odds

Category: Best Picture

• Pick: One Battle After Another

• Confidence: Very High

• Analysis: It’s going to be One Battle After Another, but somehow the odds don’t reflect that. I doubled down here on what was originally a modest bet. Don’t be fooled by Sinners setting the record for nominations; plenty of movies have come into the night leading in noms and leaving with only a handful of awards (Screenplay and Score are likely, and perhaps Cinematography). This category smells like casual bettors; Hamnet is sitting at 7% and Marty Supreme at 2%. If you have $90k just lying around, you can put it on ‘no’ for Hamnet and come out with a cool $4k a month from now. Honestly as safe as a High Yield Savings Account.

• Odds: 74% ⬇️ (from 82%)

Good pick, OK odds

Category: Film Editing

• Pick: One Battle After Another

• Confidence: High

• Analysis: I had been keeping an eye on this category all month hoping to double down around the 60s, when suddenly it jumped to 75% after the DGA Awards (which is probably outside of my appetite). Editing corresponds heavily to the “down the ballot” effect. Also a case here where the spoiler has shifted, in this case from Marty Supreme to F1. In a vacuum this is a good category to get into, but with Best Picture the way it’s looking right now, I’d rather put my money there.

• Odds: 69% ⬆️ (from 66%)

• Prior verdict: Good pick, good odds

OK pick, good odds

Category: Cinematography

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Kernels is my “life update” column, in which I share a bit of what I’ve been eating, watching, and otherwise doing in the past month. Everything is loosely written and nothing is meant to be taken seriously. It’s pretty long so either I’m oversharing or I’m just doing a lot. Sure, I could just keep a journal, but then no one else would read it and if no one reads it, what’s the point?

What I’m Looking Forward to in February

Let’s start with the future before recapping the past.

• Olympics!! Especially hockey. In Women’s hockey I’m rooting for Team USA, but for Men’s Team Canada.

• Hosting my annual Oscars dinner.

• A joint bachelor/ette party in Phoenix/Scottsdale. Normally I’m loath to leave New York, but it’s been so cold that I’m looking forward to this. Due to a weird flight schedule I’ve got a day or so to kill so please send recommendations, especially if I can get there in a Lyft.

• For the weather in New York to be warmer… please?

Dining Out

Regular readers know that these days, I rarely go out to eat—that is, I left the house primarily to go out to a restaurant. I only did this three times in January, and two of those were for my brother’s birthday.

• Bistrot Ha w/ Frankie

  • How do you score the hottest table in town? You get a 10 PM reservation on January 2.

  • Ha’s Dac Biet does not make traditional Vietnamese food, nor is it really fusion, in the common sense of the term. This is Parisian bistro fare but better. The team remains unapologetic about their roots. As it says on their bio: “Everything has fish sauce.”

  • Bistrot Paul Bert is the obvious inspiration.

  • Frankie and I split five dishes; the menu changes often. These dishes were unusually hard to photograph well. It was all great though.

    • Fried yuba with shrimp & sweet nuoc mam (very spicy thanks to the Thai chilis)

    • “Char sui” beef heart (seems to have been marinated in fish sauce, and sliced onions and ngo gai balance out the irony meat)

    • Calf’s brain & crab soup (A riff on Clown Bar’s famous veal brain soup and canh chua ca. There’s lots of cilantro. Everyone asks what eating brain is like and you should just try it for yourself, I’ve done it many times, but when poached it’s soft and cloudy in texture. It tastes like you’d expect a brain to taste like.)

    • Tomato fried rice with escargot (Sweet and sour, XO sauce vibes. Wow.)

    • Lobster and monkfish liver vol au vent (Fried curry leaves bring this together, bringing an earthy grounding to the rich, spicy curry underneath the pastry.)

  • My half of the meal cost $128, including a glass of wine. I’m less price-sensitive than I used to be since I cut back on sit-down meals.

• Pig & Khao (Brian’s birthday lunch)

  • When our server found out it was a birthday lunch he poured everyone a round of tequila. Because of the party size (ten people) we got a prix-fixe and ended up with a ton of leftovers. No complaints here, this was great, though the brunch side of the menu (ube croissants, ricotta calamansi pancakes) was incongruous with the very savory sisig and pan mee.

• Sukh (Brian’s second birthday dinner)

  • Really good and the price wasn’t as high as I thought it would be. It’s a very cramped space though.

After dropping off food scraps at the Fort Greene Farmer’s Market I had some time to kill before heading into Manhattan and Los Burrito Juarez was around the corner. In warmer weather it would be perfect for fuelling a park picnic.

Flour tortillas are rolled out and cooked in full view, and as with any good burrito joint, you get your order quickly. Unlike the gut bombs I grew up on in California, these are snack-sized, which makes for a more scalable eating experience. I got two burritos, which cost $20. The Colorado (slow cooked pork) was great. The friojoles con queso, which was like an upgraded Taco Bell bean and cheese, not so much. You can definitely tell that the beans are meant to be a side note, not the main protein, so I wouldn’t suggest it unless you’re vegetarian.

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Dining In

Cooking For Others

• Thursday 1/1 - New Year’s Day Open House

  • Black Eyed Peas Extremadura Style (Carillas Extremenas)

  • Beef heart marinated in Thai curry paste

  • Wine pairings: Bierzo “Petalos”, Descendientes de José Palacios 2022 and Finca Torremilanos “Montecastrillo” Ribera Del Duero - 2023

  • Karaoke afters

• Monday 1/5 - 8 people

  • Conservas, baguette, crackers, cheese

    • Aaron brought tinned sturgeon!

  • Braised beef cheeks served atop pomme purées laced with goat cheese

    • Wine pairing: Muga, Reserva 2020

  • Roasted broccolini and parsnips

• Saturday 1/10 - Two different parties

  • Chocolate-Hazelnut Cookies

    • My go-to cookie recipe, from the now-defunct Ochre in Detroit. The honey and ginger powder are subtle but secret ingredients. Made this for a birthday party and a separate sobriety anniversary party, which were on the same day. Turns out for the latter, she’s allergic to nuts. Oops.

• Sunday 1/11 - 3 people

  • Impromptu after Brian’s birthday lunch and we passed by a farmer’s market on the UWS. Picked up scallops and squid and just did a simple sauté. Amanda made fried rice with Pig & Khao leftovers.

• Thursday 1/15 - Film Club (Scarface 1932)

  • Salsa di Noci (Walnut Sauce Pasta)

    • Apparently Al Calpone’s favorite pasta dish so it felt an appropriate pairing with the Howard Hawks Scarface. It is very simple and it doesn’t look like much but tastes incredible. Very easy to make ahead and scale up. It’s basically a pesto without the herbs.

    • Wine pairing: Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi “Loretello”, Politi 2023

• Friday 1/16 & Sunday 1/18 - Tarty²

  • Chocolate Hazelnut Tart

    • For her birthday, Annie throws a “tarty.” It’s a potluck where everyone has to bring something that is either a tart (e.g. fruit tart) or is tart (e.g. orange wine). Pastry is the one realm I dare not venture into, but this David Lebovitz recipe uses crushed graham crackers as the crust. Technically still a tart but it’s a total sweet-tart (pun intended). Another friend had a housewarming party the day before which was a good opportunity to give this recipe a test run. It was a big hit; someone gave it the perfect description: Ferrero Rocher in pie form.

    • I riffed a bit and topped the tart with candied citrus peels made from yuzu and hyuganatsu I smuggled back from Japan. Great addition for flavor, to counterbalance the intense richness of the bittersweet chocolate, but they look like translucent worms.

    • And here are some of the other tarts from the tarty!

• Monday 1/19 - 10 people

  • Cheese and jamón ibérico (the last pack my brother brought me from his Spain trip)

  • Braised Oxtail Stew (I did 50/50 oxtail and short rib for cost control)

    • A fusion of the Jamaican classic and Vietnamese bo kho. Because I was doubling the recipe I did a side by side: one pot had the typical Jamaican spices, the other Vietnamese. I am honestly not sure if anyone could tell the difference but I put a lot of chilis in both braises. The beef is still the star of the show.

    • Wine pairing: Aslina “Umsasane” Red Blend - 2021 though we drank a bunch of other bottles too.

  • Served with rice and peas, roasted cabbage with Royal Corona beans, watercress & grapefruit & nuoc cham salad, and bread. Olivia made a carrot cake for dessert!

  • Karaoke afters

• Friday 1/23 - Film Club (Scarface 1983)

  • Ropa vieja was an obvious food pairing.

    • The meat looked so damn dry after the braise that I thought it’d be inedible, but shredding it up turned it from leather into something… really good.

    • Wine pairing: Field Recordings, Fiction Red 2023

  • Served with black beans and rice. Derek and Han made tostones 🙂

• Thursday 1/29 - 3 people

  • Spanish-style Baked Butter Beans (Rancho Gordo Bean Club recipe, used Yellow Eye beans instead of giant limas because it’s what I had.)

  • Roasted broccolini and brussels sprouts

Great Things I Cooked For Myself

• Charred Cabbage and Lentil Soup

  • Added roasted Mexican chorizo links to round it out some but would work perfectly fine without. Great for meal prep.

• Red Curry Lentils With Sweet Potatoes and Spinach

  • I make this once every winter, a terrific meal prep dish. Essential to eat with rice, parathas, or both.

• Ricotta Pasta Alla Vodka

  • Added mushrooms. I made this on the day of The Big Snow. While I regret not going outside that morning to enjoy all the sledding and good vibes, I don’t regret hunkering down for the rest of it.

Theater

Once again I call on theaters (of the stage and movie variety) to place coat racks in every hallway! Broadway seats are uncomfortable enough without having to press your back against a smushed up puffer jacket. (I stuff mine under my seat when I can.)

Sure, some places have coat checks. But as Sidney Falco sneers in Sweet Smell of Success, that would mean leaving “a tip in every hat-check room in town.” Plus, have you seen the lines to retrieve belongings after a show?

• Tuesday 1/6 - Bug

  • Bug/onia - the play predates the film considerably but they tread the same thematic terrain. Perhaps the material here is showing its age but it didn’t do much for me. Carrie Coon is great, but we need a moratorium on stage actors attempting southern accents.

• Tuesday 1/27 - Marjorie Prime w/ David, Sam

  • In contrast, Marjorie Prime has only become more potent with time. The world has caught up to this play about AI companions, which premiered 12 years ago and its sci-fi future has become our present. But the overall explorations of grief, memory, and what we withhold from them are evergreen. This particular production is tightly structured and features strong performances by all, but I’m mostly in awe of June Squibb doing eight shows a week at the age of 96.

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Movies

You can follow me on Letterboxd for more movie scribblings that don’t make it into this newsletter.

• The first movie I saw at home: The Apartment (1960), in my apartment, as is my tradition.

• The first movie I saw in a theater: Ella McCay (2025) at AMC Empire, which is not so much a “bad movie” as it was an incompetent one.

• The last movie I saw at home: Dust Bunny (2025), which, as someone for whom Pushing Daisies and Hannibal were extremely formative television shows, was a very disappointing foray into filmmaking from Bryan Fuller.

• The last movie I saw in a theater: Rain (1932) at MoMA, a rather stiff early talkie with two brilliant scenes with Joan Fontaine.

Also notable:

• Train Dreams (2025) at home. Not to scoop my Best of 2025 list (coming… this week, hopefully) but it’s been so long since a movie made me cry this much.

• One Of Them Days (2025) at home. Palmer and SZA’s characters invented the “Hot Cheetos Martini” when they were kids but had never actually tried it until the very end of this film. The glasses are rimmed with crushed Cheetos then vodka is free-poured. It looks gross. Even grosser is Empirical’s infamous Doritos spirit. It is literally vacuum distilled Doritos (Nacho Cheese flavor) and really does taste like those chips... and alcohol. As a shot it’s hella gross but it works pretty well in certain cocktails. Try a margarita and replace half the tequila with this.

• Orphans at MoMA: At Play—Amateurs, Animators, and Avant-Gardes

  • An incredible program at To Save and Project. There was a really long standby line which is very unusual, but rare 16mm projections and live musical accompaniment are going to be a big draw in this town.

  • Got weirdly emotional while watching The Little Farmers of Reynoldsburg, Ohio (1936), the earliest surviving Filipino-American documentary. Immigrant and amateur filmmaker Nicholas Viernes recorded the lives of a family farm in Ohio. Their labor is unremarkable, but the family is not: a Filipino man, a white woman, and their child, living in open defiance of anti-miscegenation laws that were on the books in many states. (It was legal in Ohio.) Typewritten intertitles are descriptive rather than contextual, so we are only left to wonder about their interior lives. It was quite something to see this seemingly peaceful existence, the ideal vision of the American pastoral that draws so many to migrate to this country to begin with. Maybe it wasn’t that weird to feel emotional.

  • The program capped off with a compilation of Japanese paper films. This will go down as the coolest thing I’ll see all year, especially thanks to live musical accompaniment on koto and cello. Developed in the 1930s as an at-home projection system where the images are printed directly to a paper reel, it’s as fragile as you might expect and efforts to locate the few existing prints and digitize them was quite impressive to hear about. I hope they get a home release someday. You can read more about Bucknell’s Japanese Paper Film Project on their website and see some clips on Bluesky, and Shelby Shaw’s essay for Screenslate is good further reading.

Movies coming out in February that I’ve already seen:

• 2/6

  

  • Scarlet

    • Feels like watching someone play a JRPG based on Shakespeare fanfiction. Conceptually rad but executionally a drag, and even ugly at times due to ill-advised 3D elements. The first of Mamoru Hosoda’s works was a complete dud for me, but I can’t bring myself to hate something so earnestly open-hearted about wanting to leave a more peaceful world for future generations. In a way, it’s the same moral as One Battle After Another.

  • Sirāt

    • If you wear a fitness tracker and you see this in theater, please send me your heart rate graph.

• 2/14

  • The Rose: Come Back to Me

    • Both longtime fans and viewers unfamiliar with this independent KPop band will be inspired by their resilience and moved by their vulnerability.

Miscellaneous Events & Scribblings

• My friend published her first novel! The publisher describes Just Watch Me as “Fleabag meets Big Swiss.” I’m familiar with neither but that seems to be hooking people. It’s about a woman who livestreams herself eating really spicy foods to raise money for her comatose sister. That sounds perfect for a dinner menu, so I’ll need to take notes while reading the book. After the launch event we all went to a nearby bar to celebrate. At The Black Bull you can add a shot to your beer order for just $4, a deal I availed myself to a couple times. (This wasn’t the best idea on an empty stomach.) I got to see some of the first friends I made in New York for the first time in years and it was really nice to catch up. When it came time to head home, Lior gave me the last two slices of pizza that were left; I ate both while walking to the train station.

• I’m doing my best to disconnect from braindead Oscars discourse. Stanning is a mental illness and we’re all trapped in their asylum.

• Williamsburgers yearn to go country, if the nightly lines outside Desert 5 Spot are any indication. Inside you’ll find patrons sipping on domestic lagers while bopping to a rock cover band. It successfully replicates the Broadway barhopping experience in Nashville, only more expensive, more cramped, and less diverse. With all the dress-up going on, my first impulse was feeling like I walked into an anime convention for closet Confederates.

• The MoMA hosted an “Artist Party” for Arthur Jafa, in conjunction with the exhibit he curated for the museum. Before the party was a talk with the man himself, which was entertaining and insightful. Dan was going to come with me but had to bail at the last minute due to work obligations. I don’t really like going to parties alone (who does?) so I thought about heading home, but I was literally at the venue already. As I looked at art and people watched, I realized a lot of people were also here by themselves. The DJ Crystallmess did a set in the second floor atrium, where puffer jackets piled up in front of the booth. Most people stood and bopped their heads to the avant-garde techno music, but there was more proper dancing in the center of the floor. There were people dancing with their friends, lovers, what have you, but also quite a few dancing on their own. I closed my eyes and joined them, letting the bass obliterate my intrusive thoughts.

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Good Things I Read

• Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death by Charlotte_Stant, AO3

  • Probably the only time I’ll ever link to AO3. Isaac Chotiner speaks to one of the town leaders of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. If you understand that last sentence, you’ll love this pitch perfect parody.

• What a “Melania” Cinematographer Hoped to Accomplish by Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker

  • Classic Chotiner interview in which he gives the subject enough rope to hang themself with, but Dante Spinotti is absolutely clueless that he’s on the gallows. Usually these get a lot more contentious.

• ‘I once ate a fly thinking it was crispy carbonised meat’: On Ratting by Luke Turner, Vittles

• needle drops that made my heart stop - Aftersun: What’s In a Memory?, The Sovereign Audite

  • Unfortunately I can never get enough essays about the ending of Aftersun.

• Grain of Terror: Why is the Western world so afraid of reheating rice? by Joe Zadeh, Vittles

  • Genuinely didn’t know there were cultures that don’t reheat their rice??

January Grog Log

The theme of this month’s Wine Time gathering was “A Book by Its Cover,” which came from guest host Chris. The prompt: “go to your usual shop and grab a wine that you’ve never heard of before. This usually means you pick based on the label. Maybe it’s beautiful, or it’s intriguing in its simplicity. Either way, this is a bottle that pulled you to it, not the other way around.”

This was probably the strongest overall selection of the Wine Times so far, and for the first time there were barely any French wines. It was interesting to see how people chose bottles solely based on looks: did the label feature a nice illustration, something arty and hip, or was it classically styled?

And here’s the first alcoholic drink I consumed each day of January, and where. I drank on 17 of 31 days.

1. Guinness at home

2. Mugwort Margarita at Bistrot Ha

3. Nothing

4. Nothing

5. Vispra Viola Pinot Nero 2021 at home

6. Nothing

7. Nothing

8. Nothing

9. Whisky shot and high life at Desert Five Spot ($25!!)

10. Baby Vamp at Bonnie Vee

11. Tequila shot at Pig and Khao

12. 3 Floyds Zombie Dust IPA at Franklin Park

13. Simon Smash at The Transcript

14. Nothing

15. Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi “Loretello”, Politi 2023 at home

16. Manojo Mezcal at Snow’s Housewarming Party

17. Ispahan at Experimental Cocktail Club

18. Mansus Sivi Pinot at Annie’s

19. In Sheep’s Clothing Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 at home

20. Nothing

21. Other Half 4EVER IPA and whiskey shot at The Black Bull

22. Nothing

23. Angostura Sour at home

24. Nothing

25. Nothing

26. Nothing

27. Nothing

28. Nothing

29. Nothing

30. Niepoort Drink Me Nat Cool Branco 2024 at Chris M’s (Wine Time)

31. Hervé Villemade Bovin 2024 at Yang’s Housewarming Party

This month I’ve spent a lot of time watching movies at the MoMA thanks to To Save and Project, their annual festival of new restorations. As I wrote in my January movie preview, it’s an oasis amidst the drudgery of Oscars completionism.

Speaking of the Oscars, I got a lot of new readers after Official Substack excerpted the interview I did with my friend Jason about betting on the Academy Awards. I didn’t submit or pay for that, so I don’t really know how it came across their virtual desks.

Jason’s response was “Great. More people to see me miss on my international feature take.” (He put money down on It Was Just an Accident and that is probably not gonna pay off.) We’ll have a follow-up chat in the next couple weeks after he sorts out his second round of bets.

In between catching up on awards contenders, it has been restorative (pun intended) to be part of sold-out audiences for a Russ Meyer sexploitation flick and a century-spanning compilation of independent animation. The series concludes on February 3 and I’ll be at a few screenings this weekend. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve seen so far. I was able to screen one title before its premiere, which I’ve reviewed; next year I’m going to try to do some advance coverage.

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The Long Way Home: Remastered and Expanded (1989/2026)

In 1988, at the peak of Perestroika, Soviet rock star Boris Grebenshchikov travelled to America to record Radio Silence, his first English-language album. With hopes of building a cultural bridge between East and West, he brought on Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics fame) to produce and signed a deal with a major label, the first Soviet musician to do so. He seemed poised for a crossover. But Radio Silence would be met with exactly that: the album barely charted in the States and Russian fans felt alienated. As it turns out, crossing over is difficult; for every BTS, there are a hundred Tokio Hotels.

Accompanying Grebenshchikov on this intercontinental journey was filmmaker Michael Apted, best known for the “Up” series and directing a Brosnan Bond. The Long Way Home is a vérité chronicle of a well-intentioned but ultimately ill-fated creative endeavor. Things are going well, at first: record execs are excited about the narrative behind the album, the singer is infectiously giddy as he watches Annie Lennox and Chrissie Hynde lay down backing vocals. But this early optimism gives way to grueling recording sessions across New York, Los Angeles, and London. Something isn’t quite right with the songs but no one can diagnose the exact cause.

The film culminates with a homecoming concert in Leningrad, where Grebenshchikov, playing alongside Stewart, performs his English songs for the first time. Apted captures the mixture of indifference and betrayal across the audience’s faces. It’s not just because they can’t understand his lyrics. The electronic-driven new wave sound of Radio Silence was perhaps too modern and decadent, especially in comparison to the folkier tunes for which Grebenshchikov’s band Aquarium had become famous. During a break in recording, Grebenshchikov decamps to a dacha outside Leningrad. Surrounded by his family and old friends, he gathers his bandmates for an acoustic jam session. Surrounded by acoustic guitars and cellos instead of synthesizers and soundproof foam, he looks far more comfortable than he did in a foreign studio.

The Long Way Home aired on British television in 1989 and premiered at Sundance the following year, but after a VHS release it disappeared from circulation. The original elements had been destroyed. This new remaster is sourced from a 16mm print that producer Steve Lawrence had kept in his basement. Lawrence and Apted had at one point discussed making a sequel, but it never came to fruition before the latter’s passing. To partially fulfill this vision, this re-release includes a new epilogue, which was directed by Lawrence and Susanne Rostock, the original film’s editor.

Almost four decades later, Grebenshchikov’s blonde Legolas locks have thinned and greyed. He reflects on an earlier era of optimism—for himself and for Russia—and discusses how, after the failure of Radio Silence, his love of music was re-invigorated thanks to the “vodka and churches” of his home country. After speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine, Grebenshchikov’s music was banned and he fled to London. The original documentary ends on a note of queasy triumph, but this coda is more hopeful. Despite his struggles, Grebenshchikov remains resilient as both an artist and an activist.

Vibe check:

• Original Cast Album: Company (1970) and Stereophonic (a play with music) also put you “in the room” during excruciating recording sessions, though the results are undeniable.

• Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars (1985) is another documentary that chronicles thwarted artistic ambition. But at least Grebenshchikov got to make his album: avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson had to cancel his six-part opera tied to the Los Angeles Olympics. (A restoration premiered at NYFF last year; Janus Films has the rights.)

• Grebenshchikov emerged from Leninground’s underground music scene. The Russian rock biopic Leto (2018), which premiered in competition at Cannes, would seem to be a fine introduction to this milieu, and a version of him is a character in the film. But Grebenshchikov denounced the movie as “a lie from beginning to end.” So… perhaps not.

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Also Saved and Projected

Masters of American Animation, 1914–1998 has an encore screening this Saturday, January 31, and it is not to be missed; Donald Sosin will provide piano accompaniment for the silent shorts.

Oscar winner John Canemaker assembled this excellent survey of New York-based independent animators, which begins with one of his own works, Bridgehampton (1998), a study of the artist’s Long Island garden across the seasons. Made just a few years after Toy Story revolutionized the industry, it now feels like an epitaph to an era of exclusively hand-drawn animation. We then travel back in time to Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), one of the first animated films ever made. Sure, you could watch it on a laptop and enjoy it just fine—that’s what I did several years ago—but it’s certainly more fun to see it on a big screen with live piano underscore.

Also included are vintage Krazy Kat and Betty Boop, Paul Terry’s urban mice (which Walt Disney ripped off for Mickey), and an educational program about rocks with an original soundtrack by Quincy Jones. My favorites of the bunch were Canemaker’s Confessions of a Stardreamer (1978), a whimsical visualization of a young actress expounding about her life, and Hawaiian Birds (1936), a Dave Fleischer cartoon about a disloyal oriole whose husband (?) flies to the big city to get her back. It’s an early example of a 2D/3D hybrid; in some scenes the birds fly across a cityscape model, captured on three-strip Technicolor.

For a complete change of pace, I immediately followed that up with Blaxploitation classic Truck Turner (1974), projected from a newly struck 35mm print. The Museum of Modern Art is an incongruous setting for viewing such a film; they have a strict policy against food and I longed for the musty smell of seats soaked in the popcorn of moviegoers past. Nonetheless, I had a fun time.

I could never predict how mixed the ages would be at these screenings. The animation bill and Truck Turner had a really high proportion of younger folks, but a week later I singlehandedly lowered the mean age by five years1).

Usually I appreciate everything I see at To Save and Project, but this duo of mid-century Italian films were a miss for me. La Finestra sul Luna Park (The Window to Luna Park, 1957) was a fairly unremarkable postwar neorealist drama, though it did feature a strong child performance from Giancarlo Damiani. L’armata Brancaleone (For Love and Gold, 1966) is a medieval parody that predates Monty Python and the Holy Grail by a decade. It was massively successful during its time and the film’s Italian title has since become an idiom for “an ill assorted venture that looks doomed to fail.” Perhaps something is lost in translation because this didn’t do much for me, but this sort of meandering sketch-based comedy is usually not my thing. As they might say in Italy, abbiamo i Monti Pitone a casa.

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Queen Kelly (1929)

This is not part of To Save and Project but this new restoration is equally notable! It just wrapped its theatrical run at Film Forum in NY (consequences of getting around to my screener a bit late…) but continues to screen across the country via Kino Lorber.

96 years before Jay Kelly, there was Queen Kelly. Leading lady Gloria Swanson and producer/lover Joseph P. Kennedy (father of John F.) commissioned beleaguered filmmaker Erich von Stroheim to develop an original story and direct it. Though he had made some of the finest silent films in the medium’s nascence, he had cultivated a poor reputation. He clashed with actors and studio execs alike, and throughout his career he was fired on three separate occasions.

Von Stroheim was the first ever auteur terrible, who refused to be constrained by silly things like “budget” and “production schedule.” He’d envision grandiose epics with a runtime to match. His initial cut of Greed (1924) was infamously nine hours long; his compromise was to cut it down to five. The studio wrested the reels from his hands and halved that length. Those original versions are the holy grail of lost films.

Queen Kelly was poised to be just as big. Originally titled The Swamp, von Stroheim conjured a story about a convent orphan (played by Swanson) who becomes the object of desire of a caddish prince. This infatuation sets off a chain of events involving the prince’s jealous bride-to-be (who is the Queen, but not Queen Kelly) that would send the poor orphan to German East Africa. There she would be consigned to a dreadful fate… until her true love finds her. Production went relatively smoothly during the Europe portion of the story, but after shifting to Africa, Swanson began objecting to the content. Her patience thinning and von Stroheim falling behind schedule, the director significantly reduced his screenplay—excising the swamp entirely—but it wasn’t enough. He was fired.

The initial screenplay for Queen Kelly would have resulted in a film five hours long; von Stroheim only managed to complete what was essentially the first act, with portions of the second also shot. Hoping to salvage the film, Swanson devised a new, tragic ending and the Africa plot was entirely excised. This version was still deemed unsatisfactory and it was only released in Europe. Sound film was beginning to dominate and not everyone in Hollywood survived the transition. But it would not be von Stroheim and Swanson’s swan song.

Then came a little movie called Sunset Boulevard, which gave Swanson the greatest comeback any actress could wish for. And Norma Desmond’s obsequious butler was played by none other than Erich von Stroheim. Knowledge of their ill-fated collaboration gives their casting a potent metatextual layer. It’s a bit of a cosmic joke: the once-domineering director now taking orders from his would-be muse. When Joe Gillis and Norma watch one of her old silents together, it’s footage from Queen Kelly that unspools on the projector.

Film restorations tend to be spoken of as purely a technical exercise, no matter how magical they may seem, but sometimes they involve artistic decisions2. In the case of Queen Kelly, the challenge was to bring the film as close as possible to the director’s vision while only using whatever original elements have survived the passage of time. What Dennis Doros and Amy Heller of Milestone Films have made is not so much a restoration but a reconstruction that was the result of extensive research. Filling in the gaps during the Africa scenes are production stills, set design sketches, and newly written intertitles.

And here I’ve fallen into “the fatal temptation,” as Jonathan Rosenbaum calls it, to focus on the extracurricular drama surrounding von Stroheim’s career over his actual work. I just wrote 600 words about a movie without really writing about it3.

The story behind Queen Kelly, both its making and re-making is a great one, but what of the movie itself? Despite the admirable efforts of the restoration team, it still feels like you’re only watching the first third of a story. (I also was not the biggest fan of Eli Denson’s mawkish new score.) As luminous nitrate gives way to fragmented shots and plot summaries that describe what would have been the original ending, I was reminded that, as Norma Desmond declared, “it’s the pictures that got small.”

Despite these insurmountable challenges, I still found myself compelled by this reconstruction of Queen Kelly. Even in truncated form, the sweeping romanticism of von Stroheim’s story nearly overwhelms the senses. I had only known Swanson as the faded diva in Sunset Boulevard, as I suspect is the case for most cinephiles. To see her at the height of her stardom is entirely another experience. With one look, she really could break your heart. It brings to mind another one of Norma’s famous lines: “We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces.” And what faces.

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As always there were surprising inclusions and omissions. (The word “snub” is overused.) I’m doing my best to ignore the braindead reactions on social media. There’s a lot of Oscars analysis out there today, so thanks for reading mine.

The big headline of the morning: Sinners smashes the all-time record for most nominations, with 16 opportunities to win come March 15. Does this mean it’ll win Best Picture? Not really. Like Emilia Pérez last year, this is the kind of movie that is very nominatable: a big budget, auteurist original musical.

Overall, I did okay with my predictions. I called 94 of 125 (75%) nominees correctly. Some of my big swings hit, others missed.

There were 35 features nominated this year. I’ve already seen 23 of them, with the remaining 12 all single-award nominees. Of the 23 I’ve seen, all but 4 were seen in a theatrical setting, usually at an AMC or NYFF.

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My Storylines: An Update

When I published my predictions yesterday I highlighted eight questions I asked myself ahead of the nominations announcement, mostly downballot.

And my questions have been answered!

Will No One Mourn the Wicked?

No one mourns the Wicked, indeed. After landing ten nominations (and two wins) just a year ago, For Good (the retitled “Part Two,” and not really a sequel) was completely shut out. I was really surprised because the two Wicked films were essentially the same production unit. It’s not like the costumes suddenly got shitty, sex cardigan notwithstanding. But I can see the logic. Why reward the same work twice?

That said, Ariana Grande deserved a Lead Actress nomination.

Who Benefits From the International Director Swap?

I thought that It Was Just an Accident would overperform projections, sneaking a Best Picture slot and a Best Director nod for Jafar Panahi. And that was completely wrong. Instead, the International auteur swap-in from the DGA nominees was Joachim Trier, for Sentimental Value. That was not unexpected, and I underestimated The Secret Agent.

Best Casting or Best Cast?

For nominations it was Best Casting, but the eventual winner will be a Best Picture consolation prize.

Will Senti V Overcome the SAG Snub?

Yup, as expected. The surprise was that Elle Fanning also got in alongside the Scandi trio.

Will Anime Ever Ascend?

No. Only one non-Ghibli Asian film has been nominated for Animated Feature and that didn’t change this year. A Demon Hunter/Demon Slayer showdown would have been fun.

Will Netflix Break Their Doc Nomination Curse?

For the first time since My Octopus Teacher in 2021, Netflix got a nomination in this category, but it wasn’t for the films I projected. In fact, this was my absolute worst category. I didn’t get a single prediction right! More on that below…

Will the Oscars Olympiad Ever Be Reformed?

There are flaws with the “one country, one film” system and I think things will come to a head at some point. As reflects the now-sizable international contingent of the Academy, non-English language titles performed well outside of the International category, with two of them in Best Picture and each Acting category featuring a foreign language performance.

Bad Year for Real Pop, Great Year for Movie Pop?

There was potential for an all-pop star Original Song lineup, but Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus will not be taking the stage at the Oscars ceremony. Last year did not have any performances of the Original Song nominees, but it will happen this year. I’m looking forward to HUNTR/X showing us how it’s done, Kesha belting Diane Warren’s obligatory ballad, crying to Nick Cave, a barnburning performance from the Sinners team, and even the operatic curveball from a documentary that no one has seen.

In some of the years when the Song nominees had a mix of performers well-known and… not as well-known, the telecast producers would try to pull some bullshit and only have some of them perform live. Hopefully that doesn’t happen because the Train Dreams song is really beautiful!

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And the nominees are…

I’ve set this up as a sort of scorecard. My incorrect predictions are crossed out and replaced with the actual nominee.

If I have written about a film for this newsletter, there’s a link to that review.

Best Picture

• One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Hamnet (Solid)

• Sinners (Solid)

• Frankenstein (Likely)

• Marty Supreme (Likely)

• Bugonia (Lean)

• Sentimental Value (Lean)

• Train Dreams (Lean)

• F1 (Toss-Up)

• It Was Just An Accident (Toss-Up) The Secret Agent

Will win: One Battle After Another (Likely)
My favorite (ranked preference): Train Dreams, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Frankenstein, Bugonia, Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent, F1, Hamnet
Analysis: When I spoke with my friend Jason about Oscars betting, he mentioned his strategy is to come up with a thesis of the race and make all predictions based on that. This year, One Battle After Another will be a juggernaut, cruising to a Best Picture win.

I feel good about calling F1 here. Despite the internationalization of the Academy, there’s still a big boomer contingent, even if this was just a poor imitation of Top Gun: Maverick.

Films I Wish Were Nominated for Best Picture, Solely Because They Would Have Had a Great Dish in My Annual Oscars Dinner Party

Fortunately some of these can still be snacks at my viewing party.

• Avatar: Fire and Ash

  • Spicy red muhammara or beet hummus, swirled with a hummus made from black sesame seeds and black chickpeas. Fire and ash.

• Friendship

  • The Seal Team Six lunch deal at Ricky’s Bar: Four racks of rib, mac ‘n cheese, caesar salad.

• It Was Just an Accident

  • I love Persian food and the Best Picture lineup is always so American/European.

• No Other Choice

  • See above.

• Wicked: For Good

  • The pandan & raspberry cake that Karen made last year was incredible and I was hoping to reprise it.

Hardest dish to figure out of the Best Picture lineup? F1. Send me your suggestions…

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Director

• Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Chloé Zhao, Hamnet (Solid)

• Ryan Coogler, Sinners (Solid)

• Guillermo del Toro, Frankenstein (Toss-Up) Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme

• Jafar Panahi, It Was Just An Accident (Toss-Up) Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value

Will win: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another (Solid)
My favorite: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another (Solid)

Leading Actress

• Jessie Buckley, Hamnet (Solid)

• Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Likely)

• Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another (Lean) Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue

• Emma Stone, Bugonia (Toss-Up)

• Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value (Toss-Up)

Will win: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet (Solid)
My favorite: Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Analysis: Wow, Kate Hudson! Haven’t seen Song Sung Blue yet but I heard she’s the best part of a decent movie.

No film has ever won four acting awards, and though this wasn’t going to happen due to Jessie Buckley being unstoppable, now it’s impossible due to Chase Infiniti’s surprising exclusion from Best Actress…

Leading Actor

• Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme (Solid)

• Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon (Lean)

• Michael B. Jordan, Sinners (Lean)

• Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent (Toss-Up)

Will win: Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another (Toss-Up)
My favorite: Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Analysis: …But I think One Battle After Another will get three Acting wins, joining the ranks of Network, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and A Streetcar Named Desire. (Shockingly Marlon Brando did not win!) That might be a bold pick since most people are ready to engrave Timmy’s name on that statue, but this award hasn’t gone to a young man in a very long time. I’m not quite ready to update my priors.

These five are all terrific performances and I’d be happy for anyone to win.

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Supporting Actress

• Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Amy Madigan, Weapons (Solid)

• Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good (Lean) Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value

• Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value (Toss-Up)

• Odessa A’zion, Marty Supreme (Toss-Up) Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners

Will win: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another (Lean)
My favorite: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Analysis: These five are all terrific performances and I’d be happy for anyone to win.

Supporting Actor

• Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Sean Penn, One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein (Likely)

• Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value (Likely)

• Paul Mescal, Hamnet (Lean) Delroy Lindo, Sinners

Will win: Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another (Lean)
My favorite: Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another
Analysis: Of the Sinners supporters I thought Miles Caton would have gotten in. Though I can’t be upset that Delroy Lindo is getting recognized. Many thought he’d get nominated for Da 5 Bloods but that movie sucked and Sinners is good.

Adapted Screenplay

• One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Hamnet (Solid)

• Train Dreams (Likely)

• Bugonia (Lean)

• Frankenstein (Toss-Up)

Will win: One Battle After Another (Solid)
My favorite: One Battle After Another

Original Screenplay

• Sinners (Solid)

• Marty Supreme (Likely)

• Sentimental Value (Likely)

• Blue Moon (Toss-Up)

• It Was Just an Accident (Toss-Up)

Will win: Sinners (Likely)
My favorite: It Was Just an Accident
Analysis: Feeling very good about going 10 for 10 on the screenplays, with Blue Moon having been a particularly good call.

Animated Feature

• KPop Demon Hunters (Solid)

• Zootopia 2 (Solid)

• Arco (Likely)

• Elio (Lean)

• Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (Lean)

Will win: KPop Demon Hunters (Lean)
My favorite: Arco. But I haven’t seen 2topia yet.
Analysis: The Disney/Pixar bloc will move for 2topia over Elio, and the indie animators will be split between the French productions. Zootopia remains a viable threat but KPop feels inevitable. It would be the first 3D-animated Netflix film to win here.

Documentary Feature

• My Undesirable Friends (Likely) The Alabama Solution

• 2000 Meters to Andriivka (Lean) Come See Me in the Good Light

• Apocalypse in the Tropics (Lean) Cutting Through Rocks

• Cover-Up (Toss-Up) Mr. Nobody Against Putin

• Seeds (Toss-Up) The Perfect Neighbor

Will win: Mr. Nobody Against Putin (Toss-Up)
My favorite: TBD, I’ve only seen Cutting Through Rocks
Analysis: Haha this was my biggest miss, I didn’t get a single Doc prediction right! Funny enough when I made my initial predictions in December I had Cutting Through Rocks in the mix.

My takeaways: don’t dismiss HBO, even if it’s not in the typical style preferred by the Doc branch. I predicted the wrong Russia/Ukraine documentaries. And The Perfect Neighbor busted precedent: it’s Netflix, entirely archival, and popular. So that would make it a favorite to win here, but a film about an ordinary person standing up to authoritarian propaganda may be irresistible.

International Film

• Sentimental Value (Solid)

• It Was Just an Accident (Solid)

• The Secret Agent (Solid)

• Sirât (Lean)

• The Voice of Hind Rajab (Lean)

Will win: The Secret Agent (Toss-Up)
My favorite: It Was Just an Accident
Analysis: A non-Best Picture nominee has never beat a Best Picture nominee in this category. Based on that precedent, only Senti V or Secret Agent can win. I think the passion for The Secret Agent will make it fare well in this plurality vote. That said, depending on how the situation in Iran evolves, it could open a window for Accident to win and for Jafar Panahi to deliver a rousing speech before returning to his home country, where he faces a prison sentence.

I think the Oscars campaign for Accident was flawed, focusing on the political persecution. The way they pushed it made it feel like a “vegetables” movie that would be hard to sit through, when it’s actually a surprisingly funny moral tale.

Casting

• Marty Supreme (Likely)

• Sinners (Likely)

• Hamnet (Toss-Up)

• One Battle After Another (Toss-Up)

• Weapons (Toss-Up) The Secret Agent

Will win: Marty Supreme (Lean)
My favorite: Marty Supreme
Analysis: Based on this year’s nominations there’s definitely a lean towards sprawling ensembles populated with non-actors and/or star discoveries. I feel good about my initial analysis on this new category, though I overestimated the films that had to deal with last-minute recasting: Weapons and Frankenstein.

It remains to be seen if the eventual winner (which everyone in the Academy votes on) will mirror Best Picture or be seen as a consolation prize. I’m guessing the latter.

Some may wonder why Sentimental Value didn’t get nominated here, given it landed four acting nods. It’s very simple. There’s no overlap between the groups that voted in those categories, but more pertinent is that of the main cast, only Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas was found through a casting search.

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Cinematography

• One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Sinners (Solid)

• Marty Supreme (Likely)

• Train Dreams (Lean)

• Frankenstein (Toss-Up)

Will win: Sinners (Toss-Up)
My favorite: One Battle After Another
Analysis: Two of the nominees were shot digitally, one on 35mm, one on 65mm, and one in VistaVision. One Battle After Another would make a fine winner but I think Sinners will edge it out in the end.

Costume Design

• Sinners (Solid)

• Frankenstein (Solid)

• Hamnet (Solid)

• Wicked: For Good (Lean) Avatar: Fire and Ash

• Hedda (Toss-Up) Marty Supreme

Will win: Sinners (Likely)
My favorite: Sinners
Analysis: If someone told you they had Avatar getting nominated here, they are lying. This is the biggest surprise nomination of the entire field. Like Miles Quatrich, the costumers must also be down bad for Varang.

Film Editing

• One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Marty Supreme (Solid)

• Sinners (Solid)

• F1 (Lean)

• Hamnet (Lean) Sentimental Value

Will win: One Battle After Another (Lean)
My favorite: One Battle After Another
Analysis: I can see F1 vrooming its way to a photo finish, but my thesis that Battle cleans up would necessitate a win here. Sentimental Value showing up here is a surprise.

Makeup & Hairstyling

• Frankenstein (Solid)

• Sinners (Likely)

• Marty Supreme (Lean) Kokuho

• The Smashing Machine (Lean)

• Wicked: For Good (Toss-Up) The Ugly Stepsister

Will win: Frankenstein (Likely)
My favorite: Haven’t seen Kokuho or Stepsister, right now I’d vote for Frankenstein.
Analysis: A pure horror film got a nod here! Stepsister was a surprise. Frankenstein not only has a great creature design, but it had to be re-tooled at the last minute when Andrew Garfield had to drop out and his replacement was like a full foot taller. That’s a strong campaign narrative.

Original Score

• Sinners (Solid)

• Hamnet (Solid)

• One Battle After Another (Solid)

• Frankenstein (Likely)

• Bugonia (Toss-Up)

Will win: Sinners (Solid)
My favorite: Sinners
Analysis: The music branch just does not go for dance-oriented scores, as we saw with Challengers missing last year. That’s why I didn’t predict Marty Supreme or Sirât and that was borne out.

Original Song

• Golden, KPop Demon Hunters (Solid)

• Dear Me, Diane Warren: Relentless (Solid)

• I Lied to You, Sinners (Solid)

• The Girl in the Bubble, Wicked: For Good (Likely) Sweet Dreams of Joy, Viva Verdi!

• Salt Then Sour Then Sweet, Come See Me in the Good Light (Toss-Up) Train Dreams, Train Dreams

Will win: Golden, KPop Demon Hunters (Solid)
My favorite: Golden, KPop Demon Hunters
Analysis: Gotta be gotta be Golden!

Diane Warren now has the record for most nominations without a win. At this point she’s a gadfly perennial candidate, the Oscars equivalent of Jill Stein.

Production Design

The links below take you to the design presentations submitted to the Art Directors Guild awards. They’re really cool to look at. Warning, they are PDFs!

• Frankenstein (Solid)

• Sinners (Solid)

• Hamnet (Lean)

• Marty Supreme (Lean)

• Wicked: For Good (Toss-Up) One Battle After Another

Will win: Frankenstein (Toss-Up)
My favorite: Sinners
Analysis: Pretty rare for a contemporary film to be nominated here, so it’s nice to see One Battle After Another be recognized for its blending of California and El Paso locations. Any of these films could win this category.

Sound

• F1 (Solid)

• Sinners (Solid)

• One Battle After Another (Likely)

• Frankenstein (Lean)

• Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (Toss-Up) Sirât

Will win: F1 (Likely)
My favorite: Sinners
Analysis: Vroom vroom! Cool to see Sirât here.

Visual Effects

• Avatar: Fire and Ash (Solid)

• F1 (Solid)

• Superman (Likely) Jurassic World Rebirth

• Sinners (Toss-Up)

• The Lost Bus (Toss-Up)

Will win: Avatar: Fire and Ash (Solid)
My favorite: Avatar: Fire and Ash, though I haven’t seen Jurassic or Bus.
Analysis: This is the first time a Jurassic picture was nominated here since The Lost World.

Animated Short

I will see all the short films in due time, for now these predictions are solely based on how much I like the title.

Also, some of these nominated shorts are freely available, so I’ve linked to them when this is the case.

• Éiru Butterfly

• I Died in Irpin Forevergreen

• The Girl Who Cried Pearls

• The Shyness of Trees Retirement Plan

• The Three Sisters

Will win: The Girl Who Cried Pearls (Toss-Up)

Live Action Short

• A Friend of Dorothy

• Jane Austen’s Period Drama (on Kanopy)

• Pantyhose Butcher’s Stain

• The Boy with White Skin The Singers

• Two People Exchanging Saliva

Will win: Two People Exchanging Saliva (Toss-Up)

Of note: The Singers was directed by Sam Davis, who was nominated for producing prior Doc Short nominee Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó.

Documentary Short Subject

• All the Empty Rooms (on Netflix)

• All the Walls Came Down Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (on HBO Max)

• Last Days on Lake Trinity Children No More: “Were and Are Gone”

• Perfectly a Strangeness

• We Were the Scenery The Devil Is Busy (on HBO Max)

Will win: Children No More: “Were and Are Gone”

Summary of Win Predictions

That’s why the real excitement is in speculating about nominations. They’re more chaotic, since predictions aren’t limited to a field of five. And taken as a whole, the nomination slate speaks to the ever-shifting preferences of the filmmaking industry, as represented by the 10,000+ members of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.

For those whose zone of interest lies on the wonkier side of things, the Oscars are politics. As Walt Hickey puts it, “this thing is just an election.” (Or a conclave.) Who is almost as important as what. Campaigning happens in the open and behind closed doors. Exclusive receptions are the equivalent of donor events. Social media plays a small role but it’s not everything. And I’m pretty sure someone at Disney has the job of whipping votes for Best Animated Feature. Despite the increasingly international membership, at its core the Academy is an elite Hollywood club.

Will Marty reign supreme? Was Jafar Panahi winning the Palme d’Or just an accident? Will the girl in the bubble find herself outside of it?

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards will be unveiled, and those questions will be answered. (The stream will go live at 5:30 a.m. PST / 8:30 a.m. EST / 1:30 p.m. GMT.)

If you’re coming to this post late (i.e. the noms have been announced already), this might still be a useful read for some of the broader analyses! And you can see how wrong I was.

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Oscar Nominees: My Predictions

Every prognosticator has their own theory of the Oscars. Some start with an overarching narrative. Others build mathematical models. Well-connected journalists talk to voters. I don’t really know anyone in the Academy, but I’m one of the few nerds who has actually read the entire rulebook1.

For guessing who gets nominated, I look at correlations and statistics and betting odds, but I also watch the major contenders. I ignore the clickbait guy at Variety2.

I do decently with predicting the nominees. Last year I got 71% of the nominees correct3, which is a better track record than I have with win predictions 4.

Included with my predictions is my personal ballot and, for some categories, analysis. My focus is on the downballot storylines that I don’t really see discussed outside the nerdiest of circles. It’s more interesting than re-hashing the Leo vs Timmy debate.

My predicted winner is noted with a gold square, and my nomination projections have confidence ratings inspired by the Cook Political Report:

• Solid: absolutely certain. Would be a monumental shock if this doesn’t happen

• Likely: very confident. Big surprise if it doesn’t get nominated

• Lean: pretty sure this gets nominated, would be a bit surprised if I miss the mark

• Toss-Up: not at all sure, going off my gut

I’ll check back in on Thursday after the nominations announcement, with a quick update on how I did and how they affect my Oscars narratives!

Best Picture

Personal ballot: To be revealed later this month, when I publish my list of the year’s best films 🙂

Storyline: Will No One Mourn the Wicked?

A couple months ago I would have had Wicked and Avatar pretty firmly in the mix, but it looks like neither blockbuster will garner anywhere near the same level of support of their predecessors. Before Wicked: For Good opened in theaters, Joe Reid at Vulture surmised that it would need to do three things to overcome the Academy’s aversion to sequels: “be seen as a creative improvement on its predecessor, make it rain money, and have undeniable performances.”

When it comes to the latter, Ariana Grande was undeniable and she has a fighting chance to be nominated in Supporting Actress (though she ought to be a Lead.) It’s the first two criteria that have failed. The Metacritic average for For Good collapsed from 73 to 585 and box office was only 70% of the first movie. A similar downshift on both metrics also apply to Avatar: Fire and Ash.

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Director

Personal ballot: Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident / Nia DaCosta, Hedda / Benny Safdie, The Smashing Machine / Sarah Friedland, Familiar Touch / James Sweeney, Twinless

Storyline: Who Benefits From the International Swap?

For several years the nominees go 4 for 5 in alignment with the Directors Guild of America, with an American/populist film being swapped with an arty international title. It’s usually pretty obvious but this year is trickier. Which one of Guillermo Del Toro and Josh Safdie will be replaced with the director of a non-American movie? Perhaps both get subbed out?

My gut says the beloved Del Toro lands a nom due to cross-appeal with the Hollywood bloc, and Jafar Panahi will edge out the International vote, but it’ll be a close one.

Casting

Personal ballot: Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Freaky Tales, The Voice of Hind Rajab

Storyline: Best Casting or Best Cast?

We have a brand new award! This is the most interesting category to me, because we have no precedents or guild precursors. The Casting Branch, with 176 members, is the smallest one in the Academy. Per Steve Pond’s invaluable number crunching in The Wrap, it takes just 30 first place votes to snag a nomination here.

What keeps this inaugural category from being totally impossible to predict is that the branch created a ten-film shortlist. (Most of the crafts employ this whittling down of contenders.) The shortlisted films represent different aspects of the casting process: extensive searches, introducing new talent to the world, nabbing non-actors, and last-minute recasting.

If the branch emphasizes that latter element, that would be good for Frankenstein and Weapons. Both films had to replace key cast members as a result of post-strike scheduling conflicts. Andrew Garfield was supposed to be Frankenstein’s creature; the nine months spent designing his look had to be re-configured for Jacob Elordi just nine weeks before production commenced. All but one original cast member of Weapons had to drop out.

The presence of Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, and Sirât on the shortlist are intriguing, as this branch strikes me as being fairly Hollywood oriented.

I thought the branch might act as a gatekeeper here, knowing that when the entire Academy votes for the winner they’ll think this is Best Cast instead of Best Casting. But the top Best Picture nominees do have great casting. Marty Supreme may be the Timothée show, but he’s surrounded by a sprawling collection of non-actors. The child actors in Hamnet are genuinely terrific. And the ensembles of One Battle After Another and Sinners seamlessly mix established Hollywood headliners, beloved day players, and newly minted stars.

At the end of the day this might just become a Best Picture-lite category, similar to Directing and Film Editing, but until Thursday this is all speculation.

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Leading Actress

Personal ballot: Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You / Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good / Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another / Zhao Tao, Caught By The Tides / Kathleen Chalfant, Familiar Touch

Storyline: Will Senti V Overcome the SAG Snub?

The reliable heuristic for acting categories is that the Actors Branch overlaps with 4 of the 5 SAG nominees. Similar to Directing, the “basic Hollywood” role swaps with someone in an artsier movie. The big revelation this year was the SAG nominating committee’s complete unwillingness to read subtitles, with every non-English language performance being shut out. But that’s not too surprising if you’ve spent any time overhearing the audience at their screenings.

If my predictions in these categories are borne out and the Scandi trio from Sentimental Value are nominated, it might be the first time that three of the SAG-Oscar swaps are from the same movie. But I don’t have the dataset to check this.

Leading Actor

Personal ballot: Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon / Josh O’Connor, Wake Up Dead Man / Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another / Dylan O’Brien, Twinless / Tim Key, The Ballad of Wallis Island

Supporting Actress

Personal ballot: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another / Son Ye-jin, No Other Choice / Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value / Kirsten Dunst, Roofman / Amanda Seyfried, The Housemaid

Supporting Actor

Personal ballot: Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another / Miles Caton, Sinners / Ralph Fiennes, 28 Years Later / Kevin O’Leary, Marty Supreme / Guy Pearce, The Shrouds

Adapted Screenplay

Personal ballot: Hedda / One Battle After Another / Train Dreams / The Naked Gun / The Ballad of Wallis Island

Original Screenplay

Personal ballot: It Was Just an Accident / Blue Moon / Happyend / Splitsville / Lurker

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Animated Feature

Personal ballot: Arco / Boys Go to Jupiter / KPop Demon Hunters / Endless Cookie

Storyline: Will Anime Ever Ascend?

Not this year. Though Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man did big numbers at the domestic box office, their appeal is limited to existing fans of those anime series. Asian animation is frequently excluded here, unless it’s from Studio Ghibli. The only non-Ghibli Asian film to ever be nominated was Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai. His newest film, Scarlet, was seen as a contender until people actually saw the movie. Chinese title Ne Zha 2, the highest grossing title worldwide last year, wasn’t even submitted. (Bizarrely, A24 picked up rights to the English dub and proceeded to barely market it, but that was always going to be a hard sell.)

On the other side of the globe we may be seeing the beginning of a renaissance in French independent animation, with Arco and Little Amélie tipped to be nominated. The former counts Natalie Portman as a producer, and she features on the English dub alongside some of her Marvel co-stars. Expect her to continue campaigning for it in the coming weeks, but we all know that KPop is taking this one.

Documentary Feature

Personal ballot: BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions / Pavements / Predators / Mistress Dispeller / Natchez

Storyline: Will Netflix Break Their Nomination Curse?

The word “snub” is way overused by Oscars talkers, but when it comes to the Documentary Branch, they really do have their preferences. Vérité docs about geopolitical and social issues are in. Anything heavily archival, hybrid narrative, or celebrity driven are always shut out. The most popular acclaimed docs are even shut out at the shortlist stage. I sincerely appreciate the gatekeeping.

There’s also a demonstrated anti-American slant. Since 2020, only 6 of the 25 nominated documentaries were U.S. productions.

Another stat: In 2021, The Octopus Teacher won the Oscar for Best Documentary. Perhaps having learned a lesson, the branch has never nominated a Netflix movie since then. So it’s actually quite bold for me to predict two Netflix docs to get in this time around, but given Laura Poitras and Petra Costa’s prior nominations, I think they can break the curse and would even win if given the chance.

I was thinking another Israel/Gaza doc would get in this year too, but the two shortlisted titles don’t seem to have any heat. Which probably improves their position.

International Film

Personal ballot: Sirât / It Was Just An Accident / No Other Choice / Sentimental Value / Happy Birthday

Storyline: Will the Oscars Olympiad Ever Be Reformed?

This category has always been both fascinating and frustrating. The contenders, on average, are better than their Hollywood counterparts. Ted Hope rightly declared “International Films were muchmuchmuch better than American movies in 2025.”

Each country may submit one title for consideration. This year there were 86 selections, and there was a process to determine a 15-film shortlist, from which nominees are decided by voters who opted-in to view all of those titles. It’s a bit like the Olympics, which can be fun, and this system sometimes brings lesser-known titles to the fore. (Recall the delightful surprise of Bhutan’s Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.)

But this system has two big flaws. Sometimes a country produces more than one great film in a given year. There was an outcry when the French board selected The Taste of Things instead of Anatomy of a Fall, which went on to get a Best Picture nomination.

The more pertinent issue is that films are usually submitted by some form of government arts council, which makes them subject to political pressure. China routinely ignores their internationally renowned auteurs in favor of domestic blockbusters that stand zero chance of a nomination, let alone a win. India’s snub of All We Imagine As Light spurred chatter about reforming this category. And as long as Iran is ruled by the Ayatollah, they will never, ever, ever, submit a film by Jafar Panahi, who himself noted that this process does not work “for countries with despotic regimes.”

This reliance on government support forces dissident directors to find another country that can reasonably claim partial ownership. In the eyes of the Academy, It Was Just An Accident is a French film. Last year, the Iran-set The Seed of the Sacred Fig was submitted by Germany6. In both cases, they qualified because post-production occurred in those European nations.

Outsiders have proposed some sensible solutions to this problem. Whether or not the Academy implements them remains to be seen.

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Cinematography

Personal ballot: Sound of Falling / One Battle After Another / 28 Years Later / Sinners / Train Dreams

Costume Design

Personal ballot: Sinners / The Shrouds / Frankenstein / Bonjour Tristesse / Marty Supreme (Merch Collection)

Film Editing

Personal ballot: Caught By The Tides / BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions / Pavements / A House of Dynamite / One Battle After Another

Makeup & Hairstyling

Original Score

Personal ballot: The Smashing Machine / Marty Supreme / Sinners / Bugonia / Train Dreams

I have Marty Supreme on the outside because the Music Branch isn’t really a fan of aggressively electronic scores and they are generally suspicious of newcomers… the exception is if the film is a strong Best Picture contender. And Marty may well be.

Original Song

Personal ballot: “Golden” - KPop Demon Hunters / “Train Dreams” - Train Dreams / “Trunks” - Highest 2 Lowest / “Give Your Love,” The Ballad of Wallis Island / “Love and Obsession”, Lurker

Storyline: Bad Year for Real Pop, Great Year for Movie Pop

Songs were woven into the fabric of many of this year’s movies, whether it be A$AP Rocky spitting in the booth in Highest 2 Lowest, the fittingly mid-tier R&B of Lurker, or the Shaker hymns refashioned into chamber pop for The Testament of Ann Lee.

This year had the strongest crop of original songs in ages, and maybe it’s unfair that “Golden” will run away with it. “I Lied to You” structures the best scene in Sinners, but “Golden” is a bonafide hit, has a great narrative behind it, and is integral to its film.

It’s the very fringe of this category that I find interesting. Diane Warren is going to get her obligatory nomination and I feel pretty good about one of the new Wicked songs getting a nod. That leaves one more spot. Train Dreams has a lovely end credits from Nick Cave, or another Sinners tune can get in. This branch tends to have poor taste, so a snoozer like Miley Cyrus’s “Dream As One” or the Highest 2 Lowest title ballad could make it. But I’m going to go with “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet,” from Come See Me in the Good Light, which was sung by Sara Bareilles and Grammy darling Brandi Carlile; Andrea Gibson’s poetry inspired the lyrics.

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Production Design

Personal ballot: The Secret Agent / Sinners / Frankenstein / Marty Supreme / Grand Tour

Sound

Personal ballot: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You / Sinners / Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning / Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere / Die My Love

Visual Effects

Will Mavity’s report from the VFX bake-off was very helpful here.

The Short Films

I don’t know anything about these! No one really writes up a rundown of the shortlisted shorts and I don’t have time to do it myself. So these toss-ups are literally just based on what had a good title and/or had a distributor that does well here (Netflix, The New Yorker, LA Times).

Animated Short: Éiru, I Died in Irpin, The Girl Who Cried Pearls, The Shyness of Trees, The Three Sisters

Live Action Short: A Friend of Dorothy, Jane Austen’s Period Drama, Pantyhose, The Boy with White Skin, Two People Exchanging Saliva

Documentary Short Subject: All the Empty Rooms, All the Walls Came Down, Last Days on Lake Trinity, Perfectly a Strangeness, We Were the Scenery

Congrats for making it to the end! If you have any bold Oscar predictions, narratives that you’re following, or just nominations that you’d love to see, let me know!

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See everyone tomorrow!

He was kind enough to share his notes with the class. As betting odds may have changed, his verdicts may be different now, but the analysis largely holds.

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