→ April 11, 2025
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Nosferatu.

I came into Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu knowing relatively little of the lore behind the story; I’ve read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but had never seen any adaptation of it, not even the 1922 silent film of which this is a remake. It’s about as spot-on a gothic horror film as I’ve seen … maybe ever, really, with sound effects that will curdle your soul and a strong-as-always performance from Nicholas Hoult as the tragic real estate agent Thomas Hutter. (You can stream it free on Peacock or rent it on iTunes, Amazon, etc.)

Eggers’s screenplay adheres closely to the 1922 story, which changed several substantial elements of the Stoker novel, altering some major plot events and making the story darker and more violent while removing much of the sexual subtext in favor of more physical horror. Hutter is a young, ambitious real estate agent whose wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) has a psychic connection to the monster Nosferatu, who poses as the Romanian Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) and demands that Hutter visit him to sign the contract for Orlok to purchase an estate in Wisburg, where the Hutters live. Thomas has no idea of the grip the vampire has on his wife, other than that she has intensely realistic dreams and a history of sleepwalking and seizures, but he is terrified by Orlok and realizes that he’s some sort of undead or otherwise unnatural creature during his brief stay at the castle. Upon his return home, he finds that bubonic plague is spreading through Wisburg, along with a huge number of rats, but the occultist Prof. Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) sees that this is not a medical disease but a spiritual one and leads the effort to find Orlok and kill him once and for all to save Ellen and the surviving townspeople.

The story is somewhat beside the point in Nosferatu and even in Dracula, as neither even has a real protagonist; the main character is the vampire, and he’s off screen (or page) for large portions of both works. He is everpresent, often working through his acolyte Knock (Simon McBurney) or just spreading fear because we know he’s coming for Ellen and know of the destruction he’ll wreak when he arrives. It’s all atmosphere, amplified by the way Eggers always shows Orlok in shadow, or from the back, so that we very rarely see him clearly until his final scenes in the film, when we see just what a deformed monster he has become; we hear Orlok much more than we see him, with Skarsgård speaking in a slow, guttural, overenunciated accent that sounds like he’s moonlighting (pun intended) from his job as the lead singer for a melodic death metal band from Gothenburg.

Most of the best scenes in the film don’t involve Skarsgård at all, though; he’s scarier when we don’t know when he’s coming or what he’s up to. McBurney is just as horrific, because he is utterly insane; we know what the vampire is doing, but Knock is unpredictable and his violence is all the more shocking for it. (He’s the equivalent to Renfield from Stoker’s novel, but here Knock is Hutter’s boss and appears at first to be a mild-mannered real estate man, more like an accountant or a barrister than the asylum inmate that Renfield is when he first appears in the book.) Rose-Depp’s main function in the movie is to appear terrified, which she does well, as she’s the only character who understands all along what the true nature of the threat is. For most of the film nobody believes her, including her best friend Anna (Emma Corrin, underutilized here), except for Dr. Von Franz, the man everyone else thinks is a crank, further underscoring Ellen’s terror – she knows he’s coming, she knows she is inextricably bound to him, and everyone thinks she’s a hysterical woman.

Nosferatu sounds great, by which I mean it sounds absolutely awful, especially if you watch it with headphones. You may never want to eat again after hearing this movie. I would imagine sales of black pudding plummeted after this film hit theatres. Some of this is obvious – you wouldn’t expect any less from a scene where a vampire feeds on a victim – but even when Hutter is eating dinner at Orlok’s castle, every bite or sip feels like a menace. It’s a crime that this film, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, didn’t get anything for sound; three of the five nominees in that category went to musicals or films about music, which seems to exclude films that rely on other forms of sound, which Nosferatu did more than almost any other movie in 2024.

Hoult is excellent here, as he is in pretty much everything, although even his character isn’t that well-developed, and the acting as a whole is probably the one weak point of the film. Ellen is a damsel in distress who only develops any sort of agency at the very end of the film, so Rose-Depp doesn’t have a lot to do, and spends most of her time on screen looking terrorized (with reason) but not doing much else. Dafoe seems like an obvious choice for a mad scientist, but that works against him here – he is so obviously Willem Dafoe, and is the only actor who doesn’t really do a proper accent for his character, that he isn’t terribly convincing as a character whose main job is to convince everyone, us included, that he isn’t mad. It’s also not a film that depends on the performances to work its dark magic, as Eggers creates such a bleak, foreboding atmosphere, and then layers increasing degrees of shocking violence on top of it, that it works extremely well throughout without getting as much from its actors as it might have. I’ve got one more major 2024 release to see, but this is easily in my top 5 from last year.

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→ April 10, 2025
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Transcendent Kingdom.

I read Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing a little over three years ago, because my daughter had been assigned it in her high school English class and said it was good but “grim.” I thought it was marvelous, and also grim, but beautifully crafted with a series of compelling characters through the time-shifting narrative.

Her second and still most recent novel, Transcendent Kingdom, has a far more conventional structure and is built around a single family of four, only two members of which, the daughter Gifty and her mother, are still around in the present day, although we don’t learn immediately where her brother Nana and father are or if they’re even still alive. Gifty is a graduate student in neuroscience at Stanford, while her mother, a Ghanaian immigrant, lives alone in Alabama; Gifty gets a call that her mother has taken to her bed in a severe bout of depression, so she brings her mother to California to take care of her. We learn that this isn’t her mother’s first such episode, and the recollection brings us the story of Gifty’s father, brother, and how Gifty turned away from the devout Christianity of her childhood and towards the science she hoped would explain everything that religion couldn’t answer.

This isn’t a huge spoiler, since it’s mentioned on the back of the book, but if you want to know nothing stop reading here … Nana died of a heroin overdose after a doctor gave him Oxycontin for an ankle injury Nana suffered playing basketball. Gifty wants to learn about the neuroscience of addiction, to understand why someone would be unable to stop when they know it’s hurting them, killing them, and hurting everyone who cares about them. She was about eight years younger than her brother, and watching him go from a lively, popular kid who seemed to be going places to a zonked-out addict, and a thief, and worse has shaped huge swaths of the last eighteen years of her life. It forced her to grow up and take more charge in the house than someone her age should have to do, it broke her faith in God (but not her mother’s), and it turned her inwards, especially when it came to talking to anyone outside of her family about her brother – or even that she had one.

As someone who grew up with religion, devout perhaps in my blind belief but not exactly in practice, but who is secular now, I found particular resonance in Gyasi’s descriptions of Gifty now, knowing something is gone and won’t return, but that there is no regaining it. Religion serves a purpose for many people, and often becomes a core part of one’s identity, but if you lose your faith, as Gifty does and as I did, you can’t simply go to the God store and buy a new one. Once you realize it’s not true, the spell is forever broken. That absence is real, and you may grieve for all that once was, from your belief in a benevolent God to the hope of an afterlife to the fact that so many adults told you these things were true when they’re not. (I recognize not everyone shares my nonbelief, of course.)

Beyond the question of religiosity, Transcendent Kingdom functions as a different sort of coming-of-age novel: The protagonist loses her innocence about the world, and then spends the next eighteen years following one narrow path that she believes will help her make sense of it. Her mother returning to the isolation of her bed and near-total silence bookends the period of Gifty’s quest for an answer to everything, from why Nana fell so quickly into addiction and death to why their mother is so prone to these severe depressive episodes. Faith couldn’t answer these questions, so why can’t science? This structure also allows Gyasi to retell parts of Gifty’s story that don’t involve Nana or their mother, including her time at a certain college in the Boston area and her tenuous relationships with people around her at Stanford. The novel puts Gifty together piece by piece in front of us, jumping back and forth in time to show how she got to this point of a sort of crisis of unfaith.

It’s hard to avoid judging Transcendent Kingdom by the standard of its predecessor, which was a completely different sort of book and wowed with its structure and scope. This is a small novel about a big character, and it doesn’t cast the same sort of spell that Homegoing did. It’s just different, but still has Gyasi’s easy, thoughtful voice, and shows her developing a single character to a much greater extent than she could possibly have done in Homegoing’s staccato stories.

Next up: About to finish Naomi Novik’s Uprooted.

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→ April 9, 2025
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Nashville and Knoxville eats, 2025 edition.

The last two weekends saw me head to two different spots in Tennessee, so here’s my food roundup, starting with Nashville…

Rozé Pony is an all-day restaurant, café, and bar maybe ten minutes southwest of downtown Nashville, and it was packed with day-drinkers when I was there, including one very large party there for some sort of celebration. I had just come from Florida, where eating reasonably healthy food is a challenge, so I ordered a fish sandwich with a side salad. The sandwich was called, unfortunately, the sloppy salmon. (They can’t stop you from ordering a glass of water.) It was tremendous, with salsa negra, a lemon mayo (aioli, whatever), and charred or roasted peppers. It was pretty sloppy to eat, but I inhaled the thing, and the leaves in the salad looked and tasted extremely fresh.

Maiz de la Vida is a food truck turned high-end Mexican restaurant in the South Gulch neighborhood; what I had was very good, but I really wish 1) I’d ordered differently and 2) I could have tried some of their cocktails, but I never drink before games, obviously. I tried the chips with three salsas at my server’s recommendation, and two of the three salsas were excellent, especially the salsa norteña with habaneros; the chips were house-made, but some were too thick or just otherwise greasy and not that pleasant to eat. The duck breast in mole was outstanding, perfectly cooked, with a rich, smoky, just faintly spicy mole negro, served on a very small bed of diced sweet potatoes with a dry cracker made from egg whites and sesame seeds. On its own, it is delicious, but the dish needs something else besides the meat – I expected more vegetables/starch on the side of it, and had no idea that’s all I was getting, or I would have ordered something else. It’s not how I prefer to eat, and because of my metabolic disorder it’s not great for me to eat a meal that’s very high in protein relative to everything else, so it’s a me problem, not a Maiz problem. I’ll go back, after a game, and I’ll order a bunch of different things.

Little Hats pitches itself as an Italian market & deli, and they do have the dry goods you’d expect, but the sandwich I got was all wrong. They have a prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil sandwich, a combo I usually can’t resist, as it’s basically a caprese salad on bread with a slice or two of prosciutto crudo, which adds salt and fat to the equation. Little Hats’ version treats the prosciutto like it’s deli ham, stacking it over a half-inch thick, so it overpowers everything else on the sandwich, and it’s also really tough. Prosciutto crudo, which is cured for months and never cooked, is sliced extremely thinly because the extensive dehydration from the curing makes it tough to chew if it’s thicker. I couldn’t even finish this, which seemed criminal.

I resisted the urge to go to Barista Parlor as I usually do, meeting a colleague at Steadfast Coffee instead; it’s a local roastery that appears to be mostly wholesale business (at least based on their site), and unusual for a third-wave (or -adjacent) shop in that they offered free refills on drip coffee. Unfortunately, I didn’t write down what blend they used that day, but it was pretty balanced, medium-bodied trending towards the lighter end, without any really distinctive notes.

Attaboy is a second outpost of the speakeasy-ish cocktail bar of the same name in Manhattan, founded by Sam Ross, creator of the paper plane and penicillin cocktails; and Michael McIlroy, creator of the greenpoint cocktail. You have to knock on the door and someone will take you in if there’s room, although there’s no secret password required. The bar has no menu; your bartender will ask what sort of spirits or drinks you like and will make or create something for you. I had two different bartenders and tried two different drinks. The first was a rum-based drink with an amaro that was like Averna, but not actually Averna, and the drink ended up a little too sweet for me. The second was a riff on the last word, one of my absolute favorite cocktails, called a Wordsmith, made with rum rather than gin, and in this case using an aperitivo called Doladira that has rhubarb in place of the green Chartreuse. I’d drink that every day until my liver gave out.

The following weekend found me in Knoxville, where I got to walk around downtown for the first time even though I’d been there twice before. It’s a great and booming downtown core, with quite a few restaurants, a ton of coffee shops (I counted six within a two-block area, I think), and bars.

Kaizen was on Eater’s list of the dozen best restaurants in Knoxville, but it was really disappointing. The menu is great, and I ordered three items since I hadn’t had lunch while traveling, but the best of the three was actually the salad: arugula, beets, carrots, a soft-boiled egg, with a sesame-ginger dressing. I tried one of their steamed buns ($3.50 a pop), with fried chicken, but it was really chewy, and the kimchi smeared on it didn’t add any flavor at all. The duck leg fried rice seemed so promising, with duck confit deep-fried till crispy, an over-medium egg, and the rice, but the rice was DOA with the cause of death drowning by soy sauce, and they fried the duck for too long so it started to dry out. Great concept, poor execution.

Stir is an all-day restaurant, at least on the weekends, and their brunch came recommended by multiple people. I’m definitely less adventurous first thing in the morning, but also, seeing Waffle Houses everywhere made me just want a waffle, and not one from a Waffle House (or, worse, a hotel lobby one). Stir’s are good, clearly just made, pretty tender, although it’s odd that it came with the syrup already on it. I got the version with eggs and potatoes, rather than the version with fried chicken, and the over-medium eggs were spot on. The potatoes were nicely crisped but could have used more salt.

For coffee, I hit up Awaken, which is also downtown, around the corner from Kaizen and Stir. They use coffee from Quills in Louisville, a good roaster albeit not my favorite up there (that’s Sunergos). Cute space, solid espresso, credit to the barista for asking if I liked more foam in my macchiato (it was just right).

I stopped at The Vault, a cocktail bar downstairs from the restaurant Vida, where I’d eaten last year, and ordered a Last Word … and that was enough for one night, as it was larger than I expected and a second might have knocked me out. Their house versions of classics all contain too many extra ingredients, though; you don’t have to modify the Negroni or the Manhattan with three more spirits, they’re classics for a reason. It’s a cool space and I was disappointed it wasn’t busier on a Saturday night, when you’d think more people would be out and might appreciate a higher-end place to drink.

I also returned to A Dopo Sourdough Pizza, since I loved it last year; I changed it up a little, going with their “rucchetta” pizza, with arugula and Parmiggiano-Reggiano on a margherita, and added prosciutto crudo. Believe it or not, there was way too much Parmiggiano on it to the point that I scooped some off with my fork because I couldn’t taste anything else. It may be the king of all cheeses, but it’s also basically a salt-fat-umami bomb, and I could barely make out the other flavors. It’s such an odd thing to do because that’s such an expensive ingredient, too. The dough was outstanding, though. I skipped the gelato this year, as I’ve kind of been off desserts while traveling now.

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→ April 8, 2025
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The Brutalist.

Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a vast, sweeping character study rich with detail and allegory, powered by a tremendous (and Oscar-winning) performance by Adrien Brody as the title character, memorable and meticulous scenery, and one of the strongest scores of the year. It’s also far too often a slog, running three and a half hours, with too much inconsistency in the pacing and the level of specificity from scene to scene. (You can rent it now on iTunes, Amazon, etc.)

Brody plays László Tóth, a Bauhaus-trained architect in Hungary before World War II who is sent to the concentration camp in Buchenwald by the Nazis, while his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and his niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) are sent to Dachau. Tóth survives the camp and immigrates the United States, where he works in his cousin Attila’s furniture store, although Attila’s Catholic wife clearly doesn’t approve. Attila lands a major renovation project for Harry Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) as a surprise for his father, the wealthy Carnegie-esque Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), putting Tóth in charge. Tóth’s designs transform the library space, but Van Buren is enraged that his son made these plans without him, firing the contractors and refusing to pay. Attila kicks László out, which leads to him working as a manual laborer and living in a charity workhouse, while his previous use of morphine has devolved into a heroin addiction. Tóth’s design for the library ends up earning so much praise that Van Buren tracks him down and hires him for a major new project … and that’s all before the intermission, before Erszébet and Zsófia make it to the United States, before the stresses of the project and the exacting (and conflicting) standards of the two men begin to clash.

The Brutalist is a biopic of a fictional character, much like 2022’s Tár, that feels so specific that it’s easy to forget that Lázsló Tóth never existed. Brody is as good as ever – and I’d argue he’s always good, even in small roles like in Grand Budapest Hotel or Midnight in Paris – as the complex, tortured genius, who has some of the expected art-over-commerce philosophy, but also carries the weight of the trauma of his time in Buchenwald, his long separation from his wife, and his flight to a culture that is deeply foreign to him and that faces him with both its xenophobia and its antisemitism. Even in some of the film’s least believable scenes, his portrayal never wavers in the least, and he carries huge portions of the overlong script by himself.

The padding in The Brutalist is all around the edges, rather than entire scenes that needed to go (although the first scene of the Tóths in bed after their reunion probably could have been left on the cutting room floor). There’s a brief shot of László and some workers carrying a model of the community center he’s building for Van Buren up a flight of stairs into the mansion, probably lasting ten or fifteen seconds; the scene adds nothing, and there are tiny moments like that throughout the film that add up to make the film feel too long. Corbet, who directed and co-wrote the film, has a pace-of-play problem. It’s like he hired James Murphy as his editor.

Jones is somewhat lost here in a bad haircut and overdone accent, although the real problem is that her character barely exists outside of László’s orbit until her very last scene, when she acquires a force and gravity we haven’t seen before, underscored by the character’s infirmity and Jones’s own petite stature. (She’s nearly a foot shorter than Brody.) The movie isn’t about her, of course, but her absence is a huge shadow cast over the first half of the film, with László grieving the possibility of her death and then finding out she’s alive but can’t emigrate legally to join him, making the incomplete development of her character in the second half more obvious.

That’s generally a problem with the plot as a whole: the first half is itself a whole movie, and the second half isn’t. It’s the shell of a movie, but tries to pack in too much while giving it a similar level of detail, and that makes for irregular pacing and some portions that were just outright boring. There are also two sexual assault scenes, one entirely implied, one on-screen but shot from a distance, and neither is handled well – the first one is just dropped entirely, and the second has absolutely nothing to foreshadow it, making it seem like either a clumsy attempt at metaphor or just a very cheap plot contrivance to set up the denouement. After thinking about it what broader points Corbet and his co-writer Mona Fastvold might have been trying to make, I’m leaning towards the metaphor argument: A huge theme in The Brutalist is how inhospitable Tóth finds the United States, a country that, then and now, has held great hostility towards people from just about any other country, and has a very long and shameful history of antisemitism that still exists today. The assault is an act of degradation and dehumanization, emphasized by his assailant’s taunts during the attack. I don’t think the scene fits in the least in the film, but that’s the best I’ve been able to make sense of it.

The Brutalist is a proper epic, an ambitious film that tries to do more than almost any film I’ve seen in the last few years; the closest parallel I could think of was 2018’s Never Look Away, another long film covering a huge portion of an artist’s life, although even that one doesn’t try to tackle the giant themes Corbet and Fastvold cover here. Brody’s performance is remarkable – and I didn’t even mention how great some of his suits are, which would be useful information for me if I weren’t half his size – and the film looks like it should have cost as much as a Marvel movie. I’m holding it to a higher standard primarily because it’s over 200 minutes long, and if you’re going to ask that of your audience, you need to earn their attention repeatedly. I’m not entirely sure The Brutalist does that; even so, it’s a film to laud in the hopes it inspires more big swings just like it.

The Brutalist earned ten nominations at this year’s Oscars and won three, for Brody as Best Actor, for Lol Crawley for Best Cinematography, and for Daniel Blumberg for Best Original Score, deserving of all three of them. (I’ll note that 1) Tim Grierson pointed out to me that Blumberg was briefly the lead singer & guitarist for a British band called Yuck, and 2) the strongest competitors for those last two awards weren’t nominated, Nickel Boys for Cinematography and Challengers for Original Score.) Pearce is strong as Van Buren and certainly has enough to do that he was worthy of a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but Jones’s character isn’t that well-written and her performance within it is one of the film’s weak points; I would have much preferred to see her Best Supporting Actress nomination go to Julianne Moore for The Room Next Door. I have The Brutalist in my top ten for the year, with probably just one more worthy film to go (I’m Still Here), but I wouldn’t have picked it over Anora for Best Picture.

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→ April 7, 2025
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A Sorceress Comes to Call.

T. Kingfisher won the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel for Nettle and Bone, a dark fantasy novel with an indelible main character and outstanding prose, using the fantasy trappings in the setting rather than relying on them to drive the plot (or in lieu of one). Her latest novel, A Sorceress Comes to Call, has been nominated for this year’s Nebula Award for Best Novel, and it features more compelling characters and strong writing, although this time around Kingfisher leans more into the magic aspects of the story and it’s not always to the book’s benefit.

Cordelia is a 14-year-old girl who lives with her mother, Evangeline, a sorceress and a generally awful human, a clear Mother Gothel figure who uses her powers to leech money from men and to keep Cordelia in line – making her Obedient, where Evangeline can completely control Cordelia’s every action and word, while Cordelia is locked in and able to see everything that she’s doing and saying. Evangeline’s most recent “benefactor” appears to be done with her, so she takes her vengeance and sets off in search of new prey. She ends up ensnaring the Squire, whose sister, Hester, sees right away that Evangeline is bad news – referring to the woman as Doom in her thoughts – and eventually realizes that Cordelia is her mother’s prisoner, not her accomplice. The two must work together to try to stop Evangeline from marrying the Squire and casting Hester and all the servants out, and at the same time to free Cordelia from bondage, while, of course, Evangeline is not one to take opposition lightly and lashes out in violent ways.

Kingfisher is a hell of a storyteller; even when Sorceress started to veer more into using magic to resolve major plot points, she never lets her foot off the gas, and almost every plot twist is both well-earned and ratchets up the tension significantly. Cordelia’s a little bit of a cipher as a character because she’s so beaten down by her mother’s iron grip that she hasn’t had a chance to develop much as a person, so Hester ends up the real heroine, and she’s a star. She needs her own series of mysteries or something similar, because she’s rich and complex, smart but not unreasonably so, a little funny, a lot self-deprecating, and torn between her romantic inclinations and her fierce desire to maintain her independence. This becomes her story more than Cordelia’s by her force of personality, and watching her think and work through the problem of Doom is every bit as compelling as reading a classic Agatha Christie novel.

Where Sorceress loses a little bit relative to Nettle and Bone is in how much it relies on magic to resolve the major conflicts of the story, and how Kingfisher does so. After one of the big plot twists, an entirely new paranormal thing happens that hadn’t been introduced or even implied previously in the story, and it is critical in the ultimate plan to defeat Doom forever. That plan also requires the use of a ritual that doesn’t rely enough on the ingenuity or strength of the characters; they just have to get Doom in the right place and say some words and poof, which reminded me of that insipid show Charmed. That ritual follows a long stretch of time within the book where Hester, Cordelia, and some of their allies spend days poring through books looking for the solution, which is the only part of the book where the plot slows down.

Kingfisher does eventually stick the landing here once you get past the magical hand-waving that gets us to the climactic battle, with an incredibly tense series of scenes through the fight itself and a balanced epilogue that treats both of the protagonists fairly and in ways that are true to their characters. I’m hoping we see Hester again somewhere, as she’s a marvelous creation and too good to waste on just a single book. Kingfisher has said in interviews that she was inspired to write this by reading Regency romances, so perhaps she’ll decide to continue in that vein and bring Hester back for another go.

Next up: I’ve just finished Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom and begun Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, the latter the winner of the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

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→ April 5, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 4/5/25.

One piece from me this week at the Athletic, but it’s a long ’un, as I rounded up all of the draft prospects I’d seen in the previous three weeks, covering Arkansas/Vandy, Arizona State, and high school prospects from Arizona, Florida, Alabama (Steele Hall), Nevada (Tate Southisene), and New York. I also held a Klawchat on Wednesday.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Sarah Harman writes about how she spent years hiding the fact that she was a mother from her colleagues and bosses at the TV network where she used to work because she understood the discrimination, overt and covert, that targets mothers and pregnant people in the workplace. It’s especially sobering to read this when anti-discrimination laws are being rolled back willy-nilly.
  • Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a crank and anti-vaxxer, has a faculty post at the public University of Florida. He’s barely done anything since he got the job, according to an investigative report in The Alligator. I thought we were supposed to be rooting out corruption and waste.
  • The Guardian’s Timothy Snyder writes how JD Vance’s ridiculous posturing in Greenland was more than just embarrassing – it was a huge strategic blunder.
  • A Michigan woman was assaulted at work and reported it to the police. The police then alerted ICE that she was in the U.S. illegally, and she’s almost certainly going to be deported. If the police can do this, then people in the U.S. without authorization won’t go to the police when they’re victims of crime, and that makes them perfect targets.
  • That left-leaning tabloid … uh, The Economist described Trump’s tariffs as “mindless” and said they’ll cause “economic havoc.” I mean, yeah. Any first-year econ student could tell you they’re going to hurt the U.S. more than anyone else. This is the same publication that said France should allow the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen to run for President again, just to give you some sense of their perspective.
  • These economically destructive tariffs are going to cause carnage in the board game industry, where most of the manufacturing takes place in China and small businesses don’t have the margins to absorb the tariffs – nor does anyone expect consumers to spend more money to end up with fewer games.
  • Stonemaier Games is releasing a new edition of Tokaido, an all-time top 100 game for me and a classic from the designer of 7 Wonders.

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→ April 4, 2025
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The Wallcreeper.

I found Nell Zink’s debut novel The Wallcreeper in the $4 section at the back of Changing Hands in Tempe, and figured it was worth the shot given that it was less than 200 pages and seemed on a quick search to be rather critically acclaimed. It was more than worth the cost, although I am having a hard time explaining exactly why this book is so good. It’s a mad, meandering, hilarious book that obeys very few of the rules of postmodern literature, which doesn’t have any rules to begin with.

The Wallcreeper is narrated by Tiffany, who is married to Steve; the two of them are birders, although Steve is the more ardent of the two, and they have a pet wallcreeper. That bird isn’t native to Germany or Switzerland, where they live during the course of the novel, but they kept it because Steve was driving one day while Tiff was pregnant, and when he swerved to avoid hitting the bird, it caused Tiff to miscarry. This sequence, right at the start of the novel, is stated with almost comic nonchalance, setting the tone from the start. Tiff’s narration is close to stream-of-consciousness; it’s nonlinear, nonsensical, unreliable, and very funny, often when it’s hardly appropriate.

The story follows the couple through copious infidelities on both sides, Steve’s obscure job that is keeping the two Americans in Europe, a relocation, more infidelities, a tragedy, another tragedy, and some birds. The two even hook up with an activist group and go on to commit some light ecoterrorism, which has unexpected consequences.

Through it all, it’s hard to tell what Tiff really feels about anything – herself, her husband, her various lovers, everything except for the destruction of the planet, which has Tiff, like most of us who realize what’s happening, reeling from utter hopelessness to the desire to do anything that might make a difference. She’s inscrutable as a character, other than her sheer determination, even though it’s not always applied to the best courses of action.

To say anything more about The Wallcreeper risks spoiling the few plot elements that remain – and the wonder of discovering this character, and Zink’s unique voice. The only novel I can recall reading in the last five years that was anything like this was No One Is Talking About This, where author Patricia Lockwood also utilized a stream-of-consciousness narration technique, although hers is more informed by social media. Both authors employ postmodern techniques without dispensing with plot or character development as so many other postmodern authors do (in my lay opinion), and even when I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on in Wallcreeper or whether I liked the novel, I couldn’t stop reading.

Next up: As I’m writing this review, I’m still reading T. Kingfisher’s A Sorceress Comes to Call.

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→ April 3, 2025
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The Room Next Door.

Pedro Almodóvar waited until his 23rd feature film to make his first one in English, released the same month as the Spanish director turned 75. The Room Next Door, an adaptation of part of a Sigrid Nunez novel, is an intense movie about friendship and duty, driven by two outstanding performances by Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, a sort of women-centered parallel to his 2022 film Pain & Glory. (You can rent it on iTunes, Amazon, etc.)

Ingrid (Moore) is signing copes of her latest book when an old acquaintance reaches the table and informs her that their former colleague Martha (Swinton) has cervical cancer. Ingrid visits Martha, whom she hasn’t seen in many years, and the two begin spending more time together, as Ingrid realizes Martha is quite lonely, with only an estranged daughter remaining of her family. When a promising treatment turns out to be unsuccessful, Martha decides to end her life on her own terms and asks Ingrid to accompany her to a house in the country, so that Martha knows someone who cares about her is in the room next door as she dies. Ingrid ends up agreeing, and the remainder of the film follows the two women through the last few weeks of Martha’s life.

There are only three characters of any significance in The Room Next Door, with John Turturro appearing as Martha’s former husband and Ingrid’s former lover, putting all of the pressure on Swinton and Moore to carry the film – and, naturally, two of the greatest actors of their generation are up to the task. Swinton’s performance is the more surprising of the pair’s, as she’s largely understated throughout the film; she’s played big or weird or both so often in recent years that it’s a treat to see her dial it back like this. Martha’s insecure and maybe neurotic, but resigned to her death, in contrast to Ingrid, whose latest book is about her own crippling fear of dying, and Swinton gives the character the right combination of nervous energy with a touch of irascibility. Ingrid is the more straightforward character, although Moore’s challenge is navigating the wide range of emotions she faces across the film – it’s clear at the start that she and Martha were never that close, or at least Ingrid didn’t think they were, so she ends up growing fonder of Martha as Martha’s death becomes inevitable and the favors she asks become more significant.

(As an aside, I realized after watching this that I’d never seen Michael Clayton, the 2007 film for which Swinton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – still her only Oscar nomination – so I watched it. That performance is also quite understated, and also one of her best.)

The production itself is lavish, visually and metaphorically. Nearly every scene pops with strong, vivid colors, even more so when they head out of the city to a luxurious house in the woods, with gorgeous shots of the forest just beyond the house’s deck. Almodóvar has a long history of using red for its symbolic value; the door to Martha’s room is red, and she wears deep reds many times in the film, while the chaise longue where Ingrid usually reclines on the deck is also red, certainly an unusual color (and fabric) for outdoor furniture. (Martha lays on the green one.) There’s also a sense of wealth and even abundance throughout the film that cuts both ways –these are two privileged women who can afford to do this and, for Martha, face the potential consequences; yet the contrast between this lush setting and the inevitability of Martha’s death underscores that all the money in the world can’t change the fact that we’re mortal.

The estranged daughter does appear near the end of the film, providing a brief but somewhat telling coda that gives a little more insight into Martha’s character – and into Ingrid’s as well. We know Martha’s going to die before the end, but rather than concluding on the most morbid note, or with something clichéd like a funeral, the story ends with a conversation and a scene on the deck that connects to an earlier scene. Both scenes include passages from Joyce’s short story The Dead, while earlier Martha and Ingrid also watch John Huston’s 1987 film adaptation – laying it on a bit thick, I suppose, although it is considered one of the greatest short stories written in the English language. Almodóvar has settled into a mellower groove as he’s aged, dispensing with the sort of shocking elements that helped make his reputation as an avant-garde filmmaker while he focuses more on character development and dialogue. The Room Next Door is (at least) his third straight film in this vein, and I think it’s the best of the trio thanks to the two lead performances.

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→ April 2, 2025
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Klawchat 4/2/25.

Keith Law: My spoon is too big. Klawchat.

Dr. Bob: Thanks for continuing to do these chats here. I love The Athletic, but not its chat feature. I had a question amid the discussion about the torpedo bats. Is this going to change the definition of a barrel?
Keith Law: You’re welcome – I also don’t care for the format of TA’s chats, but I also don’t get and don’t feel like I can answer questions too far afield from baseball there, whereas here anything goes. To your question, no, I don’t think it would change the definition, but it might change the frequency of Barrels.

Smitts: How good can Casey Mize be with the arsenal he showed last night?
Keith Law: The splitter looked fantastic on tv, but he still didn’t throw a ton, and Statcast doesn’t seem to think it’s that different from 2024. I loved Mize in the draft/before he debuted and would love this to be sustainable, but I need to see more.

addoeh: When does your top 50 draft prospects ranking come out?  And still planning on your top 100 in early May?
Keith Law: Top 50 is scheduled for 4/15. And yes to the top 100.

addoeh: More surprising event in Mondays Vagabond A’s – Chicago Cubs game; Jacob Wilson first career HR or Carson Kelly hitting for the cycle?
Keith Law: Oh, Kelly by a mile. Requires four events rather than one, and that Sacramento park is probably going to be pretty power-friendly.

Aaron C.: Best tacos you’ve ever had in the *eastern* time zone and outside of your own kitchen?
Keith Law: Nuvotaco in Durham.

Guest: Jackson Merrill $135MM/9: yay all around?
Keith Law: Yep. No notes.

Heather: Did the torpedo bats injure Giancarlo Stanton, or was the perpetually injured Stanton injured while standing near a torpedo bat?  NYC needs to know!
Keith Law: Are you saying the bats … torpedoed his career?

JJ: Why is Marcelo Mayer in Worcester, and Trevor “.235 Career Hitter Away from Coors” Story in the Red Sox’ starting lineup?  When he’s not hurt, Story’s a lousy hitter.
Keith Law: I think Mayer needs AAA time and wrote as much this winter. He’ll be up soon enough.

Aaron C.: NOT asking you to name names, but have you ever scouted a kid with legitimate “make-up” concerns who went on to have an MLB career of note?
Keith Law: Yes.

Mike Trout: I saw you mention that you are also a big fan of Zone of Interest. Will you be reviewing it?
Keith Law: No, I watched it too long ago to write about it. It was the best movie I saw from 2023, though. It’s a masterpiece of subtlety. All of the evil is just outside of your view.

Finnegan: Was Roki Sasaki really one of the five best SP options for the Dodgers this spring?  I don’t understand why he’s not in Oklahoma City.
Keith Law: Who was a better option? Setting aside his experience in NPB and the hype around him, I think he was one of of their five best SP.

Richard: Baseball is back!!  Dana Brown called Cam Smith an ‘aircraft carrier,’ which I guess is good, but promoting him and immediately putting him in Right seems like a lot to handle…any concerns about long-term damage from pushing him too quickly, or could he benefit in the long run?
Keith Law: I do not like having a player play a new position as he transitions to the majors. Jackson Merrill pulled it off, if you want a counterexample.

Richard: Based on your recommendation I read Nettle and Bone and loved it! The modernization of classic fantasy road trip themes, and abundant humor were great.  Have you read any of her other work that you’d recommend (or someone doing similar things)?
Keith Law: I’m about halfway through her newest novel, A Sorceress Comes to Call, and it’s excellent. Her style reminds me of Connie Willis and Jo Walton.

Alek: This pirates rebuild has not gone according to plan. Looks to be a combo of missing on their trades (musgrove, bell, etc) and their drafted hitters underperforming (davis, gonzales, termarr) . Any other insights you’d add?
Keith Law: The thing about their drafts is that those guys were pretty much all seen as good or apt picks for where Pittsburgh took them. Davis is a special case because they did the thing I just said I hate to see – they promoted him to the majors and had him play a new position, and it seems to have derailed him completely.

Alek: I’m not sure many had Mitchell parker as being as successful as hes been, but hes pitched like a good number 5, maybe even a 4. (which is a relative win)..do you think thats about what he is?
Keith Law: He’s a 5, nothing more.

Johnny Beisbol: White Sox starting rotation has some interesting guys. Between Burke, Martin, Smith, and Cannon, who do you think has the brightest future?
Keith Law: Burke, whom I wrote a little more about last week.

Braydon: Does the top of the draft seem more uncertain this year than in recent years, or is it still too early in the process?
Keith Law: Uncertain in terms of who the players are up top, yes, for sure. Teams generally don’t know who they’re taking this far in advance, but the issue I’m having is that nobody is really a #1 prospect in this class. Lots of guys who’d be good picks at #6 and down. Every player I think could go top 5 has some significant flaw or question mark.

Dana: Is Jasson Dominguez hopeless defensively, or is he just a young player who needs more reps in LF? Yanks keep pulling him for defense in close games late.
Keith Law: Another position change guy. Even weirder because he can really play centerfield.

Insert Witty Name Here: Oh sweet, a Klawchat!  Considering how terrible our political candidates are, who do you think would/could actually do the job of POTUS and be FDR like? If you can’t think of a name, what kind of background that isn’t multiple failed businessman.
Keith Law: I don’t know that that person exists right now. FDR took office in the midst of a global depression, and thus had a lot of latitude to implement big, bold policy changes that probably wouldn’t have flown five years earlier. The New Deal was as close to socialism as the U.S. has ever gotten; can you imagine the reaction today if President Walz or Ocasio-Cortez proposed the WPA and CCC?

Jay: Rafael Devers — some say the switch from 3B to DH is too much of a mental adjustment, and messing with his mind.  Others say the four week staycation he took in lieu of participating in spring training games threw off his timing at the plate.  Where do you stand?
Keith Law: Would guess the latter. Also it’s a tiny sample.

Alek: A month after your first rankings, Still have Doyle at number 1? Any other big movers lately?
Keith Law: I haven’t re-ranked anyone yet … I’ve started working on the top 50, of course, but it’s preliminary.

Jeremy: Nick Gonzalez has a fractured ankle. Adam Frazier is now essentially the starting second baseman and is batting lead off today while Nick Horne is in AAA Indianapolis. That is insane, right?
Keith Law: Yeah, I don’t get it. Perfect opportunity to bring Yorke back to the majors.

JTW: Do you still vote for the Hall of Fame?  Just curious.  When I look at guys like Billy Wagner, Dave Parker, Dick Allen, and Harold Baines going in these days, I’m assuming the requirements have changed, and that everyone who actually plays ten full seasons is now guaranteed eventual enshrinement.  Wait by your phone, Matt Stairs!
Keith Law: I do. I don’t think I’ve moved the bar as much as those ridiculous committees, where people just vote for their friends.

J-Train: Would you ever consider annualizing a player’s 2020 stats to make a HOF argument?
Keith Law: Absolutely not.

Sean M.: Now that the universe has given them what they deserve with a pick at 7 instead of 1, what is the best case scenario for the Marlins at that pick?
Keith Law: Way too soon to answer that. There are plenty of good players for the 7th pick.

Eric: The Blue Jays have started Will Wagner, 5 of the first 6 games. Are you as optimistic about his future as productive player as they seem to be?
Keith Law: I don’t think he’s a long-term regular.

Martin: Do you think this idea is or could be true?: “Clutchness” in the sense of “avoiding performance degradation under pressure” is an actual skill, but it’s not a real-world differentiator between MLB players because essentially everyone in MLB has it. If you can’t handle pressure, you likely wouldn’t make it to MLB.
Keith Law: This has been my argument for forever. Same with lineup protection: I’m sure it exists in high school; it may exist in college or the low minors; we know it doesn’t exist in the majors (or its effect is too small to capture).

Bobby Digital: Did you ever think you’d see a petty, perpetually aggrieved billionaire literally handing out giant checks in the hopes that people would a) like him and b) vote in a way that makes it easier for him to game the system?
Keith Law: I did not. Looking back, I’ve been too naive about just how harmful Citizens United has been. It’s destroyed our democracy in ways that I don’t think can be repaired.

JR: I’m not as fast of a reader as you, but often take down suggestions from you and read books in order of my list. Meaning, this year I’ve read both Minotaur takes a cigarette break and smoke. Both have had sequels come out since you reviewed them, lol. Any plans to read? Assuming you were aware sequels existed?
Keith Law: I was not! Will definitely read the Minotaur sequel.

Paul: Have you had a chance to check out “The Studio”? I liked the first two eps.
Keith Law: No, other than Adolescence I’ve been all movies this month. Was going to watch White Lotus next, but after reading how they cut a reference to Carrie Coon’s character having a trans or NB child after Trump was elected, I lost interest. Straight-up obeying in advance there.

Ben: Nominating JB Pritzker for closest FDR analogue.  Very rich, a surprisingly compelling speaker, and a former governor who both seems to have fun with politics and be good at the management aspect.  Illinois loves its big boy governor.
Keith Law: And he’s been pretty fearless so far about speaking his mind and speaking out against the Administration. Assuming we’re allowed to vote for anything in 2028, the best candidate will be someone who never bent the knee.

Henry: Can we just indoctrinate small sample size for everything in MLB until at least June, and encourage folks to read Smart Baseball?
Keith Law: I’m on board with that. Was hoping Cory Booker would start reading from it during his speech to fill some time.

Guest: Do you think we’ll see Nick Kurtz called up by the All-Star break?
Keith Law: Honestly don’t know the answer to that. This year, sure.

Lark11: Have you read any books by Lauren Groff? I was pretty damn impressed by The Vaster Wilds
Keith Law: Fates & Furies and Florida. That might be it?
Keith Law: Liked both, though.

Lark11: Has Ben Rice taken a legitimate step forward? Can he be a full-time starter in MLB? A true impact hitter? Thanks!!
Keith Law: No.

How is it done: You do a lot of board game reviews- how many hours a week would you say you spend on playing/writing about games? How about how many hours on watching/writing/analyzing baseball?
Keith Law: That answer would vary widely based on time of year. I’ve barely done anything game-related in the last month because I’ve been traveling so much. The two reviews I posted at Paste were written before March even began, because I knew what was coming.

Ice: I did a Val Kilmer search on your site this morning and saw the only movie review where he was mentioned was for KKBB. Any other of his films that you liked/didn’t like?
Keith Law: Top Secret is an all-time favorite. It doesn’t hold up that well today overall, but there are some timeless jokes in there.
Keith Law: As soon as I saw he’d died, “Skeet Surfin'” popped into my head.

Jim Walewander: For decades, the Tigers did not prioritize the minor leagues or the international market.

Now, seemingly overnight, everything this front office and coaching staff touches turns to gold.

How much credit goes to Scott Harris & Co., versus Hinch, Fetter and the coaching staff?
Keith Law: I think you can spread the credit around. They’ve drafted substantially better since Mark Conner took over as Scouting Director, and I had a pro scout who’s covered them for a while tell me this winter that they have made a 180 in terms of developing players – it went from guys failing to develop at all or up to their potential to guys developing beyond expectations all over the place. Kevin McGonigle might be the best example right now.

Chris: Keith, if you were the GM, how would you solve the Red Sox’ looming need to get Roman Anthony at bats in the big leagues? Should they trade Abreu or move Duran to CF and Rafaela to the bench?
Keith Law: Rafaela’s the odd man out, right? 80 defense won’t carry a .270 OBP. And Statcast has his defense at -2 runs through 5 games!

Matt: At what point do you start to give weight to velo bumps in pitching prospects? Is there a certain workload you want to see them hit before you buy in?
Keith Law: A fair question but I don’t have a specific answer in innings or games. I don’t buy into a single outing, though, especially early in the year when guys are typically not asked to work as deep into games as they are in May or June.

Mike: What do you think of the Angels promoting so aggressively?. Do you think the apparent successes get too much attention compared to players who might be handicapped by that? I’m wondering specifically about Nelson Rada, who doesn’t seem like he’s gotten comfortable at any level he’s played.
Keith Law: I’m not in favor of it. I’m glad Rada isn’t in AAA yet, because he is absolutely not ready, and sending a kid who needs to work on things like pitch recognition to the western part of the PCL with all its parks at altitude is not going to help him one iota. Neto’s been a success for their practice of pushing guys quickly … and that’s it, right?

NL1992: Do you think scouting skills are transferable across sports? Are there other sports where you think you could potentially hang or are particularly clueless?
Keith Law: I think it would take me years and years to figure out what to do in another sport. So much of what scouts do is based on their body of knowledge accumulated over the course of a career – of learning from mistakes, of picking up on patterns or subtle cues in players, etc. I sometimes see a player and know he reminds me of someone else (or several someone elses) but can’t quite put my finger on why. I just go with it, either way, because clearly my brain is seeing some pattern there even if I can’t articulate it.

Jm: Seeing the Cubs feast on Sacramento pitching, is run differential kind of a sham? More runs in two games than the other six combined doesn’t really tell you about their bad hitting
Keith Law: Run differential in a tiny sample is useless.

nelson: how good is schwellenbach?
Keith Law: Maybe a #2 starter?
Keith Law: I’m a big fan, to be clear. It was always about health & his ability to handle a starter’s workload (he was a SS/closer in college, like Shaun Marcum).

Jm: Any good non fiction book recos?
Keith Law: I had to go to my spreadsheet to see what non-fiction I’ve read recently and it’s not that many – only two this year, one of which, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen’s How to Be Enough, I liked a ton, but bear in mind I know her a bit so there’s some bias there. From last year, Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars was probably the best non-fiction book I read. I didn’t realize I’d been so fiction-heavy the last 15 months or so.

Mike: followup on the Angels – Ben Joyce was pretty good last year in a fairly small number of innings. Do you think the Angels think Schanuel has been a success?
Keith Law: Joyce was a college senior with a crimson-red flag on him in the injury department. Kind of a different story.
Keith Law: Like, you are insane to waste that kid’s bullets in the minors.

Tom: Do scouts attempt to scout knuckleballers or is that world just a total guessing game?
Keith Law: I wouldn’t know where to start. And there are so few anyway that it has never come up in my career. Which is a shame, because they’re awesome.

Mike: Should Mason Montgomery ever try starting again?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Jm: In what world does starting Biggio at 1B make sense? Surely there are other players who can actually hit the ball they could have there
Keith Law: None. You know my opinion on him. Had his one moment in the sun – mostly when the competition was deflated – and then the league figured him out.

Paul: What would be your breaking point for leaving the US? As someone who is lucky enough to have dual citizenship, I have been debating whether or not I am better off raising my family abroad despite all the difficulty that would entail.
Keith Law: If I thought my safety or that of anyone in my family was at risk, I’d try to leave. That’s more likely for the women in my house than it is for me – they’re losing rights much faster than men are. The SAVE act is trying to destroy women’s right to vote.

Guest: Spring training and early results aside, does Leiter’s stuff look better?
Keith Law: He’s throwing harder, but that doesn’t really address the problem of the four-seamer being too straight and hittable – it’s moving less than it did last year. But he’s throwing a sinker more than he did last year, and that could be the entire key for him. His other stuff is fine. Hitters really enjoyed his fastball too much. Like the way I enjoy pizza. It’s not what you want.

Guest: Love the Don Hertzfeldt reference. I am a banana!
Keith Law: I just wish my cable company carried the Family Learning Channel.

Jm: Elon isn’t handing out checks. He’s giving them to republican donors and operatives
Keith Law: Which, as I understand it, is illegal, and yet somehow he is not facing any sort of legal threats!

JR: Men’s college football and basketball has been wild to follow of late. The free transfers and NIL give us a idea of what it would be like if every MLB player was a free agent every year. Would every player being on a one year contract be healthy for the game?
Keith Law: I don’t think that’s a clear yes/no answer, is it? Imagine the excitement every winter when teams scrambled to fill out their rosters!

Mike Trout: What is your take on the democrats potentially adopting “abundance?”
Keith Law: I truly don’t know enough about this to comment, sorry.

DNL: If you were to leave the United States, where would you go? It’s not clear that other nations would accept us as immigrants.
Keith Law: I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.

Saxton: Kristian Campbell just extended 8 years plus 2 club options. Think Boston will be able to get deals done with Anthony and Mayer as well?
Keith Law: He’d probably be the easiest of the three as he’s the oldest and didn’t come into the majors with the same expectations.

Zirinsky: Hi Keith. What’s the rationale behind your notion that Rice isn’t a regular? Lack of defense or something in his hitting that you think will be exposed?
Keith Law: The swing.
Keith Law: And he has no position.
Keith Law: He was awful in the majors last year at 25. What’s the argument that he’s not that guy any more? 10 at bats?

Breslow: Campbell just signed an eight-year deal with the Red Sox. Good idea to lock him up for that long?
Keith Law: As with Merrill, seems good for both sides. Teams take on some risk now in the hopes of severely underpaying the players down the road; the players are set for life.

Tim: Lab leak still a failed theory?
Keith Law: Yep. Evidence just keeps piling up against it.

NL1992: Have you read Paul Murray’s ‘The Bee Sting’?
Keith Law: No, hadn’t heard of it till now. I have a pretty high bar to read anything over 500 pages, though. I’ve loved some super-long novels, for sure, but that is a long time for any work to hold my attention.

DNL: If you were managing the Mets, how would you divide playing time at 2B between Brett Baty and Luisangel Acuna
Keith Law: Can Baty really play second? I’d be surprised, and I say that as someone who’s always argued Baty was better at 3b than people thought.

Chris: Is there a point to having Rice play full time while Stanton is out to see if he can hit lefties rather than keep giving Grisham pointless playing time and stunting Jasson?
Keith Law: You know what I’m going to say – you figure out where Dominguez needs to be, for the team and for his own development, and go from there.

A Man Named Dan: Does the Mets rotation have enough talent to keep them in contention this year?
Keith Law: Sure, if they’re healthy.

JTW: Just watched “Anora” last week.  I read your review this morning, and think you liked it a bit more than I did.  My question:  don’t you think a “Best Picture” winner should be more … “substantial”, for lack of a better word?  When I think “Best Picture”, I think “Godfather” or “Ben Hur”.  “Anora” struck me as another in a string of forgettable winners.  Maybe I’m just getting old.
Keith Law: I don’t agree with that philosophy – it sounds a bit too much like you’re saying a film has to be “important,” rather than simply the best-made film of the year. That almost completely excludes comedies and musicals, and will tend to favor longer films or films that tackle Big Topics like racism or sexism. Now, if you want to argue that Nickel Boys was a more serious film about a more serious topic and was just as well-made as Anora, I won’t fight you. Nickel Boys at least deserved a lot more love at awards ceremonies. The two biggest snubs in the Oscar nominations were Nickel Boys in Cinematography and Reznor/Ross in Original Score (for Challengers).
Keith Law: The Academy did well with the winners, but man, they whiffed on the nominations. The Apprentice? Really??

romorr: How much longer would you try McDermott as a starter? If it’s August, and he’s still walking 12% to 14%, and the pen needs help in Baltimore, do you make the move? Try and start him again in 2026?
Keith Law: Sure, why not? You’re trying to win – you use older prospects like him however they can help the team.

DNL: Are you a Star Trek fan? If so, any thoughts on the Paramount+ shows to date?
Keith Law: I bet I’d enjoy some of them, but I haven’t watched anything Star Trek related in probably 25 years. I watched the entire original series as a kid, and saw most if not all of TNG in college or shortly afterwards. There are still some TNG episodes I can picture like it was yesterday, including the finale. (Never liked Q that much, though. Kind of wore on me after the first appearance.) As with all the Star Wars series, though, I’m overwhelmed by all of the content and end up not watching any. (I did watch S1/S2 of The Mandalorian and S1 of The Bad Batch. Enjoyed both.)

Chris: Wanted to add I also enjoyed Roadhouse more than a lot of other pointless remakes like Gladiator II (which lets be honest was that and not a sequel).  Jake almost always brings the goods.
Keith Law: I watched Gladiator in the fall to prepare to watch the new one … and then realized it was basically a remake that nobody liked as much as the original.

Heather: If Giancarlo Stanton can overcome his allergic reaction to the torpedo bats, is he a HOFer in your eyes?  He had four or five excellent years (I believe all in Miami), but he’s turned into Dave Kingman for the last half decade.
Keith Law: That’s an interesting question, more so than I thought at first glance. B-R has him at 45 WAR, which is low, but would be far from the lowest in the Hall for a position player. (He’s well over the Baines Line.) It’s really a peak argument: 33 WAR in his best 7-year stretch, one MVP and one runner-up. Jay Jaffe’s JAWS seems to have him too far on the outside, so guessing right now, if Stanton retired today, I’d be a ‘no.’ It’s a good one, though.

Jm: You should watch Andor. Best tv of last five years
Keith Law: I feel like that would be the one to watch, no? I did watch one episode of The Book of Boba Fett and had a sinking feeling that the rest of the series were just going to be low-effort series to capitalize on the popularity of The Mandalorian. I think Marvel’s kind of done the same.
Keith Law: OK that’s all for this week, but I’ll try to do these more regularly now that the season’s rolling and my travel isn’t going to be nearly as heavy as it was in March. Thank you all for reading and for your questions!

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→ April 2, 2025
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Music update, March 2025.

That was one of the worst months for new music I can recall – I had to stretch a little just to get this playlist to a sufficient length to post it. I figured waiting until the end of April would produce something too long to deal with, though. As always, you can access the playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Courting – Namcy. The new album is called Lust for Life, Or: ‘How to Thread the Needle and Come Out the Other Side to Tell the Story’. It’s really good, though. Maybe not quite up to 2024’s New Last Name, but still very strong, likely to be one of my favorite albums of 2025 when we get there, with this, “Pause at You,” and “After You” all strong (they were the three singles, too). The whole album is only 25:40, though. At what point is it just an EP?

Sunflower Bean – Nothing Romantic. Sunflower Bean started out as a post-punk/new wave band, shifted into more college-radio rock on their last two albums, had a hit with “Moment in the Sun,” and their newest album appears to be almost hard rock, with distorted guitars and lots of minor chords. I’ve liked all of the singles from their new album, Mortal Primetime, due out April 25th, and this might have the best hook of them all.

Anxious – Audrey Go Again. Anxious’ latest album, Bambi, holds serve rather than pushing forward, with the Connecticut emo rockers – I mean, at this point, is it post-emo? Second-wave emo? – trying some different modes, like on this largely acoustic ballad, although they haven’t abandoned their typical sound with tracks like “Never Said” and “Counting Sheep.”

Swervedriver – The World’s Fair. Swervedriver released an EP, also called The World’s Fair, last month, their first new music since 2019’s Future Ruins LP. It’s a softer side of the band, whose 1990s heyday saw a heavier sounds full of swirling guitars, although the psychedelic elements are still evident here.

Greentea Peng – Nowhere Man. Peng had been AWOL since the summer of 2022, but put out two singles at the end of last year and dropped her second full-length album, Tell Dem It’s Sunny, on March 21st. It’s a more mature sound, with stronger lyrics, along with vocals that lean more into the neo-soul part of her sound; on her first album, she often sounded like she was posturing, and I don’t get that sense from this record. Some other standout tracks include “One Foot” and “Stones Throw.”

clipping. – Dominator. Dead Channel Sky, clipping.’s second album, is a whole project, twenty songs including various interludes, shifting sounds and styles, and it’s one of the most interesting and challenging records I’ve heard in the last few years. I think that’s a good thing; Daveed Diggs’ verbal gymnastics carry them through on several tracks where the industrial backing music doesn’t land.


Freddie Gibbs – Nobody. This is unusually accessible for Gibbs, but remains a superb showcase for his skill as a lyricist and rapper; he’s one of the best on the mic right now for flow and style, and he can work over a piano track like this one and still sound hard.

Tunde Adebimpe – God Knows. Adebimpe’s solo debut, Thee Black Boltz, comes out on April 18th; the TV on the Radio singer has put out three singles so far, and this is the weakest one, unfortunately.

Preoccupations – Bastards. These post-punk Canucks have been at it since 2012, and they’ve always hewed pretty closely to the standard sound of that genre – some of their tracks could easily have been recorded in 1983, given their adherence to the production style and sound of that era. This track seems like a departure for them, as the production is more modern, and much softer, which gives a whole new aspect to their songwriting. Their fifth album Ill At Ease comes out on May 9th.

Black Honey – Psycho. A little chill for Black Honey, who’ve churned out scads of pop bangers over the last decade or so (“Hello Today,” “Midnight,” “Somebody Better,” “All My Pride,” “I Like the Way You Die,” “Run for Cover,” “Back of the Bar,” “Out of My Mind”), still catchy but not up to their usual standard. It looks like this is a one-off single ahead of a spring tour.

OVERSIZE – Are You With Me? This English quintet delivers straight-up classic shoegaze circa 1993 on their debut album, Vital Signs, an album that I think works better as a full listen because, consistent with that subgenre, they’re creating a whole wall of sound. This was the best track I could pull out to include on the playlist.

Hotwax – Strange to Be Here. This trio from Hastings, England, just released their debut album Hot Shock; I’ve seen them labelled as “grunge” in multiple reviews, but they’re grunge like Hole was grunge, which is to say they might have shown up adjacent to grunge but that’s not really their sound. It’s messy, often loud, guitar-driven rock, reminiscent of Hole and Babes in Toyland.

YHWH Nailgun – Castrato Raw (Fullback). And you thought Courting’s album was short: YHWH Nailgun’s debut album, 45 Pounds, runs just 21:04. I get that in the streaming era, album length doesn’t carry the same weight as it did when we were talking physical media and labels were asking $15 for anything called a full-length album. This isn’t an album, though. It’s a chapbook. For Christ’s sake, this is a mixtape, not the stuff marketed as such. But despite all of that, 45 Pounds is a weird, compelling listen. It’s driven by the percussion, including the use of rototoms, which allow drummer Sam Pickard to change the pitch of each drum by rotating it. It’s music, but it’s not very musical – the drums take over the record, which isn’t a bad thing by any means, meaning that there are just snippets of other instruments and singer Zack Borzone’s quiet, guttural vocals. Whether you like it or not, 45 Pounds will be one of the most unusual records you hear this year.

feeble little horse – This Is Real. This Pittsburgh noise-rock band is new to me, although they’ve been recording since 2021 and have released two albums. This song, which jams four distinct movements into a barely three-minute run time, is their first new track since their last album and a brief hiatus that saw them cancel their 2023 tour.

Greenleaf – Vat 69. I’d never heard of Greenleaf until this week, as the band reissued their 2001 album Revolution Rock with six bonus tracks. I’m annoyed that I wasn’t familiar with them before, as this album hits my particular nostalgia for this sort of hard-rock vibe.

Witchcraft – Drömmar av is. Witchcraft is a Swedish hard-rock band with doom elements to their music, although I wouldn’t call them straight doom-metal; they’ve been around since 2000 and their upcoming album Idag will be just their fifth. Their 2012 album Legend is their best to date, especially the first track, “Deconstruction,” which starts out a bit Sabbath-y before going full Iron Maiden after about a minute. This is the second track they’ve released from the upcoming album, and it’s better than the first, “Burning Cross.”

Planning for Burial – A Flowing Field of Green. Planning for Burial is one guy, Thom Wasluck, who not only plays all of the instruments on his records, he plays everything in live shows too. I don’t know how that works and, you know, it’s okay to work with other people. I thought Kevin Parker’s schtick was bad enough. Anyway, I happen to love the way this post-metal track builds up a sense of impending doom, and then delivers it in the back half.

Hesse Kassel – Postparto. Hesse Kassel is a progressive shoegaze band from Chile that just self-released their first album, La Brea, with tracks running from 6 to 13 minutes. The whole affair is 78 minutes long, or more than three times the length of Courting’s new album. Anyway, La Brea is fascinating, even if I can’t tell you if I like it yet.

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