Paul thomas anderson

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Is an Oscars upset around the corner?

Can Sinners pull off the biggest Oscars upset in recent times? That’s the question that many in Hollywood will be asking after Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending period-musical-horror picture has been nominated for a mighty 16 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor and Actress, and more. While it has been looking like a done deal that Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another will be sweeping to victory – and with a far from inconsiderable 13 nominations, it still could – the fact that Sinners is now the most nominated film of all time means that, on paper at least, it’s a serious challenger.

oscars

Monday

Alexander Larman

The steady-as-she-goes Golden Globes

So, One Battle After Another is going to sweep the Oscars. That was fairly certain before last night’s Golden Globe awards, but it is now essentially guaranteed. Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose Thomas Pynchon adaptation won best film in the musical/comedy category, as well as Best Director, Best Screenplay – over the hotly tipped Sinners, which had been expected to win the award as a consolation prize – and Best Supporting Actress for the scene-stealing Teyana Taylor as the superbly named Perfidia Beverly Hills. Those of us who would have liked to see Amy Madigan take that award for her indelibly creepy performance in Weapons will have been disappointed, but in truth the Globes threw up a modest number of surprises.

golden globes

Tuesday

Curtis Yarvin

One Battle After Another may be the worst movie ever made

One Battle After Another may be the worst movie ever made. Not in the petty and obvious way of a normal bad movie, though. It is a grand, multifaceted masterpiece of badness. It is dramatically bad, morally bad, historically bad and even erotically bad. And to cram in all this badness, it is an hour too long. But you won’t be bored – it is even entertainingly bad. This film is so bad that most people will think it is good, and it will probably make a lot of money. Proving only that America is the kingdom of Cain. But we knew that. But why not start with praise, eh? The film has a beautiful celluloid look.

Battle

Thursday

Alexander Larman

The final act of Thomas Pynchon

Whisper it, very quietly, but the now 87-year-old author Thomas Pynchon is having something of a moment in 2025. Not only has his 1990 novel Vineland supposedly served as the loose inspiration for the eagerly awaited new Paul Thomas Anderson-Leonardo DiCaprio collaboration One Battle After Another, but the near-impossible has been announced: Pynchon will publish a new novel, entitled Shadow Ticket, around the time of the movie’s release. It will be his first book in more than a decade, his ninth novel and his third consecutive noir-influenced story.

thomas pynchon

Monday

Amelia Butler-Gallie

Inside Thomas Pynchon’s most underrated novel

Atop the Almaden Tower in downtown San Jose — the world headquarters of Adobe Systems Inc. — sits a singular art installation. Four amber wheels rotate every few seconds in a seemingly innocuous and frankly nonsensical digital display. The installation, known as the “San Jose Semaphore,” is the brainchild of the data-driven media artist Ben Rubin and first appeared — or began transmitting — in August 2006 to the mass bamboozlement of passersby. What was going on, they cried? Was it that most millennial of things — a sign? For those less likely to be beguiled by some concealed piece of chicanery, the circles were little more than frivolous decoration, another example of Adobe splashing the cash on some geometric garnishing.

Pynchon

Monday

Zack Christenson

Inside the April issue: What happened to America’s capital?

During lockdown, crime shot up around the country. Most cities have seen their numbers come down — most aside from our nation’s capital. Why? In our editorial, we ask what’s being done — it might not surprise you that the answer is “not much.” Matt McDonald, a resident of Navy Yard, one of the worst-hit areas, says that his neighborhood is a failed experiment in gentrification — and asks if help is on the way. And Tim Rice looks at why and how DC got to where it is right now. Elsewhere, Patrick Hauf does a ride-along with the Dallas Police Department, and finds an alternative approach to policing that could be a model for departments around the country.

dc safe

Sunday

Amelia Butler-Gallie

Reconsidering Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice

Much has been made in the Thomas Pynchon Reddit community — a crazed bunch — of the author’s rumored cameo appearance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2014 adaptation of his 2009 novel, Inherent Vice. Photos circulate in a frenzied online meta conspiracy: is he this old man? That guy in the hat? Famously reclusive, Pynchon has barely been photographed in real life. His only acting credit was when he voiced himself on The Simpsons, while his cartoon likeness appeared with a paper bag over its head. Pynchon revels in the oxymoron of the anonymous celebrity and his fans simply can’t get enough. He found the right director to bring his work to the screen.

Inherent Vice

Wednesday

Ben Sixsmith

The return of Thomas Pynchon?

The question of whether the novel is dead is one that often occupies those in the business of writing or commenting on novels, much as the question of self-driving cars doubtless occupies truckers. One’s attitude towards the question largely depends on one’s attitude towards genre fiction and Sally Rooney. Still, whatever its truth, it is inarguable that, as Joseph Bottum wrote in his 2019 book The Decline of the Novel, “art forms are not immortal or incapable of collapse when their social foundations shift.” To that end, authors have been attempting to innovate. The “alt-lit” community have been using social media for years, both as a source of thematic material and as a means of publication, and even grizzled vets are learning new tricks.