In the canon of Swift videos, You Belong with Me is pretty huge, and pretty iconic. Also, as good as Single Ladies sounds and looks, that’s a dumb-ass song with shit lyrics (not that Swift’s is much better). Anyway, Pink’s song and video that year (So What) is more fun than either of them by a long stretch, which…

Tell your story walkin.

“Old Town Road” also benefitted from being the favourite song of every kid in the known world. If my 8-year-old, his friends (girls and boys alike), the kids of my friends on social media are anything to go by, every kid in the world has been demanding their parents “play ‘Old Town Road’ again!!!” all summer long!

“Old Town Road” also clocks in at under two minutes (probably the shortest number 1 song in ages), so it never really wears out its welcome.

It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I don’t remember them being “repulsive.” He spends a lot of time with her early in the book, and talks a lot about important her support and advice is to him. I remember him learning not to talk about Joyce around her . . . but what were the repulsive bits?

Ah yeah, that’s right! Yeah, great book for burgeoning writers, or travellers, 

They weren’t rich - she had an “inheritance” that helped support them. And he did work - he filed a ton of stories with the Toronto Star (in the book, if I recall, this work comes to an end when he decides to dedicate his time to fiction). Hemingway was a dick, no doubt. But in this book, I don’t think he’s a dick to…

Love this book for so many reasons (particularly the earlier, superior version). I don’t think it’s whiney or bitchy, as some have claimed - it’s Hemingway as a young, damaged dude with no cred, no money, and an ego that makes him prickly because he’s trying to carve out a space for himself as a writer and, mostly,…

Ha ha, there’s actually a scene in the book where Fitzgerald (having only just met Hemingway) is worried that his penis is too small and Hemingway takes him into the toilet at a restaurant (or bar, can’t remember), explains foreshortening to him, and tells him his penis is fine. It’s pretty funny.

I remember leaving the cinema thinking it was just sort of okay and having a vaguely confusing feeling of not wanting to be as disappointed as I was. But the friend I went with said, “jesus, that was shit,” before we even made it to the car.

Hard Eight is a crackerjack little film and Paltrow’s performance is excellent - one of her best early roles.

Disagree. She’s paid to act in them (and, I guess, do some of the promotion), and, as even this article points out, she does a pretty damned fine job. I really like her Pepper, and the fact that she does such a good job in the films while actually not caring all that much about them, I’d argue, shows that she is…

Agreed, I guess that’s what the whole “plastics” thing was about, and why the delivery of that one word still resonates.

Haven’t seen it in ages, did it have a full soundtrack or did it just play “Rock Around the Clock” a bunch of times (which, in itself, was pretty major)?

Yes, great points!

Well, I think the point is that the narrative that those two blockbusters “killed” the New Hollywood era (in which most of the successes, barring maybe The Godfather, weren’t really blockbusters), isn’t quite so simple. That’s all. And regardless of their gestation period, some of those later ‘70s films still did…

Yeah, of course, wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. You could probably add Being There, Blue Collar and Hardcore from Schrader, some of Altman’s late-’70s films, Cruising, and a few more that were considered “lesser” but have gained prestige over time - including some of the big failures. (Nice call on Mikey and Nicky, a…

I don’t know anything about your situation, but I think a lot of it depends on who you are when you go into the movie (age, distance from the era, expectations, etc.). A lot of people go in thinking it’s going to be some big countercultural rebellion movie, which it so isn’t (I’m sure Benjamin went on to be fine…

Depends what kind of artist/soundtrack you’re talking about. Miles Davis did Ascenseur pour l’échafaud in ‘58. Also, although not single-artist, might be worth mentioning Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), which was maybe the first film whose entire soundtrack was composed of rock/pop songs, and all in a very…

Exactly, it’s worth remembering that after Jaws we still got Days of Heaven, Coming Home, Annie Hall and Manhattan, Apocalypse Now, and Raging Bull among many others. Also, as important as the massive success of Jaws and Star Wars were, equally important was the way many of the most prominent New Hollywood directors…