#amelodie

I literally created an emergency News & Deals text thread* that day with two other movie freaks, what THE fuck, VF!

But it is of course not the first time they've pulled something like this, and because of that, thank you for this question: I do have the answer for you! Prior Vanity Fair fire-ee Katey Rich's deliciously inside baseball Prestige Junkie podcast, and her associated column on The Ankler. In fact, she even gathered up Richard and David as special guest co-hosts for an episode immediately following their last Little Gold Men episode, which I loved for reasons of reunion and also reasons of cheekiness. You don't own them anymore, Conde Nast!

The regular edition is free, typical podcast style, but I did also subscribe to her After Party bonus feed with Chris Rosen, which takes a myriad of forms each week, but often really genuinely feels like you're just crashing calls within the film critic friends community. (You can also get this as an audio-only edition in your regular podcast app, if you too have the general feeling of, I don't think I need to watch a podcast...)

oh man I've for some reason kept putting off going to see The Fabelmans (partly due to those trailers you mentioned) and Aftersun (because I need to be emotionally ready) but it sounds like I've got some tickets to buy

amelodie replied to your post "Happy Day After Oscars Day"

I've similarly been putting many of these off, so thanks for the insights and encouragement! I'm really curious about these parasocial critic friends though. Who are some of your favourites to follow?

Oh man, my close personal friends! Many of them responded to The Fabelmans and Aftersun so similarly to me, while also some others really did not!! But maybe the true ~magic of the movies~ was the different ways they affected us all along.

Here are some of my folks and where you can find them:

Richard Lawson, Chief Critic at Vanity Fair His reviews are on VF.com, and he's one of the co-hosts of the 'Little Gold Men' podcast, one of my stalwarts. Next week I believe they will be doing my FAVORITE episode of the year, the one right after the Oscars where Joe Reid (stay tuned) comes on with his spreadsheet of what's coming out this year and, sight unseen, they have to make their wild guess of what's gonna win Best Picture. Do they replay their predictions from the year before too? Oh you bet. A riot. I'll add the link once it drops.

David Sims and Griffin Newman, co-hosts of the 'Blank Check' podcast David is a film critic at The Atlantic, Griffin is an actor and comedian, and 'Blank Check' is their podcast where they cover directors' filmographies, in...depth. These episodes are long as hell. You know you're lost in the sauce when you realize that's become a feature not a bug. I have an intro episode! It's the start of their Bob Fosse miniseries from last summer, on his first movie musical, Sweet Charity (1969). I mean first of all you should absolutely watch Sweet Charity, dazzling and a hoot, but even if you don't see it first, this episode is so great. A lot of it is from their dossier on Bob Fosse (the Fossier), as the introduction of this series, so it's a lot of fascinating history and context of both Broadway and Hollywood at the time, but also they're just all in a particularly bouncy mood and it's a treat to listen to. Ben Hosley, their weird little sound guy of a producer, is basically discovering in real time that maybe he loves musicals?? It is so fun. Anyway. Lots of running bits, sure, lots of guests also (hi Richard!), LOTS of hours, but I just vibe so much with the way these two love movies.

Joe Reid and Chris Feil, co-hosts of the 'This Had Oscar Buzz' podcast Let's just stay on the podcast train for a stop longer. Joe and Chris are both Oscar historians and freelance critics, popping up on places like Vanity Fair and Vulture. Their podcast has the pretty brilliant premise of covering movies that once had dreams of Academy Award nominations, but it all went wrong. Their appreciable cattiness is perfectly suited for this. They also have really good film festival recap episodes, for the current year. Edit: Ahh I forgot my intro episode! It is this one from February on Magic Mike XXL, a film I have not seen, with special guest, their friend Pamela Ribbon, the reason we got this moment, and every moment in this episode where I almost crashed into something laughing.

Emily St. James, of, sigh, I guess just Twitter right now Emily was recently laid off from her job as a cultural critic on Vox, in the on-going horrors of the media job landscape. I'm sure she'll be somewhere else soon, and can't wait. I've actually followed her longer than anyone on this list, and this is where this gets so delicate and complicated!, but you may actually be more familiar with her under her old name, as she's been a noted voice in especially TV criticism for decades, and really shaped The AV Club for years.

Fran Hoepfner, Bright Wall/Dark Room, 'Fran Magazine' First found Fran through BW/DR, where she still turns out incredible essays on the regular, now a loyal subscriber to Fran Magazine, her stellar newsletter, and she is easily the best Letterboxd reviewer in the business (not a business). She's just so astute and so funny, how the FUCK does she do it! Best in the business!

Demi Adejuyigbe, of one million things but on Tumblr: the 21st of September music videos He's just on Letterboxd, but we should be so lucky. Any time I have relayed a Demi Letterboxd joke to someone they've lost their mind. Most recently it was him calling the white love interest in RRR Phoebe Waller-Bridgerton.

I've just realized that of course, ALL of these people are also on Letterboxd. Haha what a dumbdumb! I've gone back and made all their names links to their Letterboxd profiles.

our local library had a bin of almost all the asterix and tintin comics and we read whatever was put in front of us, so as a young’in i always just assumed that tintin was a part of everyone’s childhood

Great write up! You explain it perfectly. God I love Joanna Hogg, but it feels so difficult to say she’s a favourite cause it feels like it SAYS SOMETHING

yedrindax replied to your post “what are your complex thoughts on Neil Gaiman the Author?”

This is why Good Omens works so well imo. Gaiman came up with the initial ideas for the plot, but I think Pratchett wrote more of the first full draft. Pratchett was able to execute some of Gaiman’s concepts better than he would have been able to himself.

BOOK CLUB has got more THOUGHTFUL THOUGHTS. These are for you, the people sending me messages like:

amelodie replied to your post “pineapple-split replied to your post “what are your complex thoughts…”

please, i wish to join this club

morvidra replied to your post “pineapple-split replied to your post “what are your complex thoughts…”

I’m in - I find I enjoy adaptations of his books far more than I enjoy reading the books

and

hello-viridian5-things replied to your post “pineapple-split replied to your post “what are your complex thoughts…”

I’m not alone!

I was actually recently talking to someone about the It’s Not That Deep thing, just in general not in Gaiman. Because it’s kinda puzzling to me that it happens since like, not everything has to be deep? Plenty of stuff is dumb and great! But I feel like more and more we’re getting creators making things that are not deep—not itself a problem!—that they clearly THINK are deep—there’s the problem.

you & an anon both got these tags, but @wavelette got #film and #poetry, so i guess it doesn’t show exactly the same tags for everyone which is interesting!