So did he, for a while. He’s quite open about his former substance abuse. He claims to have been so thoroughly coked up that he has no memory of writing Cujo. Dreamcatcher was written following a incident where a van ran him over and nearly killed him, and while he was using (and probably overusing) Oxycontin for pain relief during his recovery.
So, yeah. Apparently, it’s always been a bit of mixed bag in there.
Ghost World . 2001 . Thora Birch , Scarlett Johansson , Steve Buscemi . A classic.
First movie in which I noticed Scarlett Johansson, as I hadn’t seen The Horse Whisperer yet at the time.
We caught up with the first 3 episodes of the new Yellowjackets season.
Not sure where this is going, but we’ll keep watching for now, if just for Melanie Linskey alone. Kinda relieved Juliette Lewis is gone, who seems to play the same character in everything she’s in.
Ai! Spoiler alert! Some of us aren’t caught up yet.
Oops. My bad.
Maybe she’ll come back? 
The most recent installment of Asia: Tangled Worlds that focused on the forestlands and jungles. Gorgeous Persian tigers and the stunning footage we’ve come accustomed to with the Attenborough series.
Breathtakingly gorgeous.
Bummer. She’d been having medical issues of late. As someone who still likes the occasional Buffy/Angel rewatch, this was unexpected. She was only a few years older than my daughter.
RIP.
I’ve never heard of her before, but that is far too young. Very sad.
Kind of shocking or weird so many young(er) people dying. I wonder if it’s social media now delivering the bad news that usually didn’t. Lots of cancer.
I just finished watching September 5, on Paramount Plus, about the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics. It was told from the perspective of the ABC sports broadcasters, with an untested sports producer at the helm. It was very well done. What a shit show by the host country police in trying to unsuccessfully secure the hostages, who all lost their lives. It’s possible that 9 of the 11 tragic deaths might have been prevented, but it’s hard to tell. ABC might have unwittingly had a hand in it, because their telecast was broadcast live in the room where the hostages were, while police were trying to sneak in. The police should have cut the power in the hotel. It also didn’t help matters, after the fact, that ABC went on the air and said that the remaining hostages were released, without getting a second or third confirmation. They then had to retract that.
I was too young at the time (14), so I didn’t remember all of the details.
Gene Hackman has died.
Hackman was truly a giant of the screen. A 50+ year career with role s as diverse as you can get, from Popeye Doyle in The French Connection to Lex Luthor in Superman, tense thrillers like The Conversation to hilarious comedy like Young Frankenstein.
Shockingly, his wife and dog also passed. One has to think it was something like a carbon monoxide leak.
RIP to one of the greats.
We are currently in the bizarro season of Atlanta, with many disparate episodes set in Europe. Episode 3 with a crazay premise, a naked Alexander Skarsgård, and a whacky party is a good example. I love how creative and uncompromising a writer and director Donald Glover is.
And speaking of Alexander Skarsgård, we also watched The Northman, which had been on our list forever, but I’d so far not been motivated. It was… engaging, weird, and shot beautifully, because this is another Robert Eggers flick.
Carbon monoxide was my guess as well. Who offs themselves at 95? And the dog? WTAF.
The authorities think it was exhaust from a car left running in the garage. 
Well, that actually sounds intentional.
How sad for everyone.
Courts of Gold has been a fun look at the Paris Olympics and getting to know American, Canadian and Serbia basketball teams. Produced by the Obama’s and Barack makes an appearance in the first episode.
I really dug The Northman as well, and I was kind of alone in that. The group I went to see it with was less impressed. Mostly, I think, because it was a much different film than they expected.
IIRC, the trailers at the time seemed to show it as a grungy historical action piece. Folks were expecting lots of Viking battles and swords and axes and chopping and whatnot. Instead we got a dark, brooding, tribal riff on Hamlet with a lot of creepy spiritualism and psychodrama. Because, as you correctly point out, that’s Robert Egger’s jam.
I really admire his work, even if I remain underwhelmed with Nosferatu. What I’d really like to see is something from him that’s outside his wheelhouse. Let’s see him do something funny!
At this point I’d settle for something with actual LIGHT in the scene. Both Nosferatu and The Northman were really REALLY dark, to the point is was sometimes difficult to discern what was going on on screen.
