‘Phantom of the Paradise’ (Brian De Palma, 1974)

Brian De Palma has a cinematic vision and like it or not it’s on full display in Phantom of the Paradise. It’s garish and over-the-top, and too much is never enough so if that’s not what you’re looking for go watch some Ozu.

Not only is Phantom inspired by The Phantom of the Opera, but it brings in bits of the Faust legend (selling your soul for worldly success) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (there’s a portrait in the attic that looks like hell while Dorian stays fabulous), plus the shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho. And that’s not all. Far from it, in fact. To take one more, the stage set for the final musical number is taken from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the male singers’ whiteface makeup is inspired by Caligari’s somnabulist Cesare.

Put it all together, stir well, and what DePalma presents is a cautionary tale. Richard Leach (William Finley), who is not a leech but is leeched off, trusts one-named music mogul Swan (Paul Williams) to produce his magnum opus, a cantata based on that hoary old archetype the Faust legend. Swan wants it for the opening program of his rock palace, the Paradise (Dallas’ Majestic Theater), and Leach wants his one-named singer-muse Phoenix (Jessica Harper) to be the featured soloist. Swan being a person without scruples steals Leach’s music and Leach being a true artist without any sense doesn’t call his lawyer or file a protest with ASCAP or BMI to shut the production down. Plausibility is something in short supply here, as one Gothic horror follows the next, culminating in a spectacular and bloody climax that (once again with the homages) recalls Hitchcock’s Albert Hall scene in both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Phantom of the Paradise has its devotees, and Pauline Kael was one, though to an outsider it doesn’t inspire that level of awe. The acting isn’t great, the production is cheesy, the satire of the music business doesn’t land, and music itself is mostly unimpressive. One viewing is enough to get a good idea of what the fuss was and is about.

Amanda's Mild Takes’ ‘Ls of the Week’ for July 10, 2026

Pay no attention to the bozos in front of the curtain. Everything is going according to The Plan!™

Ls of the Week, July 10, 2026

25 47

 

This is a transcript of the president's remarks at a press conference with Erdogan before the NATO summit in Ankara, taken from the YouTube video.

28 minutes, 33 seconds

That's what hurt my relationship with NATO. Because Greenland doesn't help Denmark. Denmark doesn't spend money to really help Greenland, but it's an important part for the United States. And it's surrounded by China ships and Russian ships. And that's not going to happen. The ships is, it's not going to happen. It was Greenland that in my, and it continues to be... That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark. And when they 

28 minutes, 56 seconds

wouldn't go along with it and with all the money we spend to help them with Russia and we don't have to spend any money, we could remove all of our soldiers out of Europe. Because as you probably noticed, Europe's a very different place than it was 20 years ago. A lot different. Much 

29 minutes, 12 seconds

different. It's a much different, and they better be careful with immigration and energy. If they're not careful with those two things, you're not going to have a Europe anymore. 

 

Okay. Thank you very much everybody.

 

The way it's punctuated it might seem vaguely coherent on first reading. Looking more closely, he jumps from grievance to grievance, doesn't finish a train of thought, and is practically babbling. Here it is with my annotations:

 

That's what hurt my relationship with NATO. Because Denmark doesn't spend money to really help Greenland… but it’s an important part [He's looking for a word, can't think of it, says "part."] for the United States. And it’s surrounded by China ships [He can't think of "Chinese," says "China." He may be remembering "China virus."] and Russian ships. And that’s not going to happen. The ships is... [That's a blatant grammatical mistake, of course.] It’s not going to happen. [He doesn't say what isn't going to happen. Something to do with the ships? Denmark won't give up Greenland? We know they won't but he's still obsessed with it.] It was Greenland that—in my [He leaves out opinion.], and it continues to be ["my opinion"?]—that should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark. And when they wouldn’t go along with it... [He doesn't complete this thought and jumps to the grievance about NATO members not spending enough on their defense.] 

And with all the money we spend to help them [He's forgotten about Denmark and Greenland, and jumped to Europe.] with Russia... And we don’t have to spend any money, we could remove all of our soldiers out of Europe, because as you probably noticed, Europe’s a very different place than it was 20 years ago. A lot different. Much different. It’s a much different... [It seems to be immigration that he's trying to think of now, not the money. It takes him a couple of tries to complete the thought.] And they better be careful with immigration and energy. If they’re not careful with those two things, you’re not going to have a Europe anymore. Okay. Thank you very much everybody.” 

 

He can't put two consecutive sentences together to complete a thought. This is someone who, in my nonprofessional opinion as someone who's taken several cognitive tests, couldn't pass the simplest cognitive test.

‘L’s For the Week So Far’ for July 7, 2026

 

It’s Tuesday, and that means it’s time for Amanda's Mild Takes’ “Ls for the week so far!” She keeps track of how everything is going according to The Plan™! so we don’t have to.

 
https://youtu.be/6mt9vJTz4hs

Amanda’s Mild Takes’ Ls of the Week, July 3, 2026

Amanda’s Mild Takes brings us the Ls of the week.

 

Remember: Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes. Everything Is Going According to the Plan!™

Amanda’s Mild Takes’ Ls of the Week, July 3, 2026

 

When comes AI Revolution, we will have grocery buddy!

Come the AI revolution, we will all have a grocery buddy. Maybe named “Penny,” maybe not.

What’s that you say, you don’t want a grocery buddy? Comrade, come the AI revolution you will have a grocery buddy, whether you want one or not.

 

 AI Tidbits from the humans at magica.ai. July 3, 2026.

 

AI does math, fails biology — for now

 From the humans at magica.ai, AI Snacks for July 2, 2026

AI in your pocket? What won’t they think of next!

 

From the humans@magica.ai, July 1, 2026

OpenClaw is finally available on Android and IOS

Hudson Williams, you better work!

 

The Beauty Products ‘Heated Rivalry’ Star Hudson Williams Uses to the Last Drop

Keep young and beautiful, / It's your duty to be beautiful ... especially if you’re a star.

Neon picks up ‘Artificial,’ hot potato movie about OpenAI

Independent Studio Buys Movie About OpenAI That Amazon Dropped 

Photo by Haiyun Jung/New York Times

 I was waiting for another studio to pick up Artificial. Take that, Amazon-MGM.

 

So much for taking the Mark Twain Prize seriously

 

Mark Twain must be spinning in his grave. According to this column by Marlow Stern from "Variety," Vance played Bill Maher like an old ukulele. I can't think of anyone less qualified to get the Twain Prize.

Bill Maher Gets Played

Sigrid Nunez had a surprising encounter at the Strand Bookstore

 Metropolitan Diary, June 28, 2026

Jay Kuo's “Just for Skeets and Giggles” for June 27, 2026

https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/just-for-skeets-and-giggles-62726?r=1opwqh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Support Jay’s work by subscribing to his Substack.

‘*****’s Ls for the Week’ from Amanda’s Mild Takes

 

Amanda's Mild Takes brings you the Dotard Leader’s “Ls for The Week.” It’s only Tuesday, and Everything is Going According to The Plan!™

https://youtu.be/rpqc-M2JCoU?si=1vBnd4My1SxhAErC

'Keep It Quarterly' call for comments

Not a good idea, no matter how you look at it. Consider also who tried to get it done in his first term, dropped it, and revived the proposed rule change this year. That's all I need to know.

Keep It Quarterly: Stop the SEC's six-month blackout 

Selected ‘AI Snacks’ for June 25, 2026

Here’s hoping that AI won’t cause the world to end for a while. Speaking personally, I have a lot of movies to watch.

In the meantime, software engineers’ jobs are safe. They’ll just have to turn out more code.

AI Snacks for June 25, 2026, from the humans at magica.ai

"Cats: the Jellicle Ball" at the Broadhurst Theatre is a must-see

Check-in: the Broadhurst Theatre for Cats: the Jellicle Ball.

This is not a post coded as a plea for help. It’s me, I’m at home, and everything is fine. What I want to tell you is that Cats: The Jellicle Ball is incredible. See it before it’s made illegal to have so much fun in public, and in a theater. Turning Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats into a gay ballroom competition was a stroke of genius by Zhailon Livingston and Bill Rauch, who absolutely deserved their Tony Award. The cast delivers everything they’re asked to do, and more, number after number. They “all own everything,” as RuPaul likes to say (I looked it up, so don’t give me shade), and the realness is off the hook. It’s also just about the gayest show I have seen in my life, and that includes the original La Cage aux Folles.

Don’t question me, just see it. I don’t want to hear that you don’t have the time. It’s been extended through January 17, 2027. You can thank me later, as I am thanking Randall David Cook, who reviewed it for https://therecs.co.uk/cats-the-jellicle-ball/ and gave the production .

AI news of the day from humans at magica.ai

 

'The money behind a network of sham "progressive" super PACs' from "Popular Information" substack

The APA is a key part of the GOP financial infrastructure. It was established in 2022 and received $5.5 million in seed funding from the American Action Network, a non-profit associated with the House Republican super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund. Brian Walsh, a top aide to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R), is a senior advisor to the APA, according to a 2024 report in NBC News. Walsh was a founder and former president of the Congressional Leadership Fund and former president of the American Action Network.

Since 2022, the APA has raised over $100 million from undisclosed sources. Millions of dollars were routed from the APA, usually through intermediaries, to the Congressional Leadership Fund and its sister organization, the Senate Leadership Fund. The APA has also funneled cash to MAGA Inc, President Trump’s super PAC, the Republican Convention, and a host of other Republican groups. The APA does not have to disclose its donors because it is organized as a 501(c)(4) non-profit group.

Earlier this month, Popular Information connected Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC to the Congressional Leadership Fund through shared vendors, personnel, and addresses. Lead Left, for example, listed its address as a mailbox at a Staples at 2241 North Monroe Street in Tallahassee, Florida. Of the roughly 48,500 distinct political committees that have filed with the FEC since 2016, only two others share an address with Lead Left. Both of those committees are connected to the Crosby Ottenhoff Group, the political compliance firm founded by Caleb Crosby, the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund.

Read more: UPDATE: The money behind a network of sham "progressive" super PACs

Amanda’s Mild Takes: Ls for the Week (and it’s only Tuesday)

 

It’s time for the Ls of the Week, and it’s only Tuesday. Amanda’s Mild Takes does the honors. Just remember, Everything is Going According the Plan!™

https://open.substack.com/.../first-ls-video-without-a...

“The Third Man” in 35mm at The Film Forum

 

The Third Man puts the “N” in noir, to the point that the shadows of post-war Vienna at night should get a co-starring credit. The ginned-up love between Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) and Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli) isn’t altogether convincing, serving mostly as a diversion from the real theme: friendship, and what it takes to end it. 

Having said that, it is an odd kind of friendship. When British officer Calloway (Trevor Howard) asks Martins about his “best friend” Harry Lime (Orson Welles) when they are having a drink after meeting at Lime’s “funeral” in the film's opening 15 minutes, he can only come up with a few things he remembers about Lime. He hasn’t seen him in 10 years and only a few other times since they were at school together. It seems a shaky basis to say “no one knew him better than I did” and call Lime “the best friend I ever had,” yet Martins decides to clear Lime’s name after Calloway calls him “the worst racketeer who ever made a dirty living in this city” and so we have a movie.

It’s news to no one that The Third Man is a classic, and deservedly so. The plot is involving, as a mystery should be; the acting is uniformly first rate; the cinematography is extraordinary, and the climax is iconic. The 35mm print “photochemically printed from original film elements” that played at Film Forum in New York is beautiful, with no scratches anywhere, and a gorgeous palette of grays and deep, deep blacks. If a couple of reel changes could have been smoothed out they’re only momentarily distracting. It’s well worth your time to give the film a second, or third, viewing.

 

"In the Hand of Dante" is a lukewarm mess

In the Hand of Dante might be a hot mess if it weren’t so pretentious. There’s nothing wrong with a heist movie—it’s a perfectly respectable genre. Why attach a biopic of Italian poet Dante Alighieri that stops the action dead in its tracks every 10 minutes and adds at least one hour to the 2½ hour running time? Because the object of the heist is the manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which doesn’t exist, even in the Vatican Library? Surely Julian Schnabel doesn’t have to prove that he’s an intellectual heavyweight. And if the source novel by Nick Tosches follows that structure, then Schnabel should have gotten rid of it. 

But he didn’t, and the film suffers for it. Also worth mentioning is the steady string of murders that begins in the first 10 minutes and continues relentlessly until the next-to-last scene. There are at least 10 and most are gratuitous. Again, faithfulness to the novel doesn’t win points. It slows the movie down. Not content with having half the characters and a dog get shot, Schnabel threw in a leisurely torture scene, which after all the shootings was a change of pace. Not to worry, there are one or two more to conclude the plot.

Schnabel assembled a notable cast, led by Oscar Isaac as Nick/Dante. He also snagged a cameo from Al Pacino and a supporting actor appearance by Martin Scorsese in an Old Testament beard and wig, spouting metaphysical nonsense. John Malkovich is the heist’s ringleader and Jason Momoa is the man with a claim to the manuscript.

Seen at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Rated ½⭐️ for Martin Scorsese’s beard.

Call for comments on the Arch

URGENT – Public Comments Needed by June 15 about the Triumphal Arch in Washington, D.C. 

With little fanfare, a critical federal level review was initiated on Friday, June 5 for the 250-foot-tall Triumphal Arch that would be built between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery; and, remarkably, the public comment period closes on Monday, June 15. So, please submit comments right away—at the end of this article is a hot link to where comments should be submitted.

The review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act is designed to identify how the project could cause negative impacts (or as the feds call it, adverse effects) and how to “avoid, minimize, and mitigate” those negative impacts. The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s (TCLF) recent article Why is the National Park Service Helping the Administration Evade the Law? reveals how the National Park Service (NPS) is twisting, contorting, and manipulating the Section 106 process to fast-track projects such as painting the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.

Now, NPS has hit the gas pedal on the reviews for the Triumphal Arch by compressing the public comment timeframe to a mere ten days. All of the documents concerning the proposed Arch can be found here.

In addition, as noted in TCLF’s article, organizations and individuals that are subject area experts and normally participants in the review process are currently being excluded; this includes TCLF, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, D.C. Preservation League, and others. According to the draft Programmatic Agreement (essentially a final contract): The [Arch’s construction] will be consistent with … the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes …” and other regulations.  Since TCLF’s Founding President & CEO, Charles A. Birnbaum, authored the Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes during his fifteen-year tenure (1992-2007) at NPS, it seems odd that TCLF’s request to be a “consulting party” to the review process has not been approved.

In recent comments submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission, an agency reviewing the Arch project, TCLF stated: “The proposed arch interrupts and severs key visual and spatial relationships that are integral to the Monumental Core’s design intent and its inherent symbolism.”

According to the National Park Service the present Memorial Bridge was “Symbolically … designed to show the strength of a united nation by joining a memorial on the north side of the Potomac River (the Lincoln Memorial) with one on the south (Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial). The architect [of Memorial Bridge] envisioned an elaborate sculptural program … including seated figures of the first four American presidents on the D.C. side and reclining statues of oceans and river gods on Columbia Island. The bridge itself was to have forty allegorical statues.” That entire sculptural program was eliminated by the U.S. Commission of Fine Art, another regulatory agency, as some statuary and pylons were seen as too tall in relation to the memorial.

The Lincoln Memorial is a hinge point (on a bent axis) visually connecting the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool to the east, and Arlington House. The Historic American Engineering Record report of 1988 about Arlington Memorial Bridge by historian Elizabeth Nolin noted: “As the final link in the chain of monuments which start at the Capitol building, the Arlington Memorial Bridge connects the Mall in Washington, D.C. with Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Designed to connect, both physically and symbolically, the North and the South, this bridge, as designed in the Neoclassical style, complements the other monumental buildings in Washington such as the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial.”

The Triumphal Arch would radically alter the visual and spatial relationships of a landscape listed in the National Register of Historic Places and insert a huge barrier between Arlington House and Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.

The deadline for submitting comments is Monday, June 15—do not wait. Send in your comments now.

To submit comments, NPS requires using this online form. 

 

Wednesday afternoon’s movie at the 2026 Tribeca Festival was The Leader, written and directed by Michael J. Gallagher. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject, I won’t include the poster.

The Leader is a harrowing account of the Heaven’s Gate cult, focused on its leaders, Bonnie Lu Nettles a/k/a Do (Vera Farmiga) and Marshall Hepplewhite a/k/a Ti (Tim Blake Nelson). Of the 38 followers who died at Hepplewhite’s behest in 1997, three are featured: Warren (Jim Parsons), Michelle (Grace Caroline Currey), and David (Simon Rex), all of whom stray from the cult’s teachings and suffer as a result.

Not much is said about the other cult members and why they stayed with Ti and Do to the end—Warren did not. Apparently suicide was a dealbreaker for him alone. The need for certainty is as good an explanation as any, then and now. As for the leaders, it seemed to be equal parts believing what they preached, as absurd as it was, and simple grift. Someone has to pay the rent, even when heaven is your destination and ascension is imminent.

No cars exploded in flames, to Gallagher’s credit. What you do get is buckets of fake blood (don’t ask and whatever you do, don’t look) and a completely gratuitous closeup of an operation. The audience reacted to both with disbelief and thoroughly appropriate disgust.

(one star subtracted for the blood and the footage of the operation)