Christopher Nolan is one of them. And if you’re around my age and into movies, whether you love or hate him, you might say something similar.

I happen to quite like him. I remember watching The Dark Knight (2008) at sleepovers and ensuing nightmares of Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent. I remember shitty piano covers of the Interstellar (2014) soundtrack, my ears popping in my first-ever IMAX theater for Dunkirk (2017), watching TENET (2020) on repeat in the early months of the pandemic. I have thought, talked, and argued about his movies for nearly 15 years now.

Growing up is a lot of playing catch-up. It’s discovering a song and piecing together the band’s discography, alongside videos of concerts and far-flung Wikipedia pages. It’s being told what the reaction was to a movie, how it changed everything that came after. It’s a sometimes profound sense of FOMO. It takes a long time to understand the present at all, and it takes even longer to understand that present changing. In other words, it takes time to experience history.

THE ODYSSEY

Nolan released his newest movie, THE ODYSSEY, last weekend. It is a direct adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek poem, a pillar of the Western Canon.

It is a remarkable and ambitious undertaking, only possible because Oppenheimer (a 3 hour-long rated R biopic that made a billion dollars and won 7 Oscars, including best picture), gave him a ‘blank check’ to make whatever he wanted next.

He cashed that check well. I’ll pause here to say I loved The Odyssey. It is a breathtaking piece of work, everything one could hope for in a film. At minimum, it is richly entertaining, a reminder of what movies can do at their best, an undeniable journey through history and mythology. And I’d go further: it has a brilliant and compelling message as well.

Those who have read the poem seem to have mixed opinions (I haven’t, though I was very moved by the Sparknotes in high school). Adaptation of the source material aside, I was floored by Nolan’s adaptation of Odysseus’s story — a man contending with a collapsing civilization and his role in that collapse. It is timely and masterfully done.

Going through Changes

Part of the beauty of growing up with an artist is watching them change. Nolan is a director who I can say I have seen, firsthand, grow over the years.

It remains something of a miracle to me that movies, multi-million dollar affairs with tens of thousands of humans touching them, can have any sort of throughline to their director. A Christopher Nolan movie has always been a Christopher Nolan movie. The Odyssey certainly is too. Its grand scale, tortured male protagonists, at-times wooden female protagonists, insistence on practical effects, non-linear storytelling, obsession with time, technology, and journeys home. People call these ‘Nolanisms’, and this movie is full of them.

I’ll talk about one: Non-linear storytelling.

I can’t believe I’m typing this, but there is truly, genuinely a Young Sheldon quote I’m reminded of:

Sheldon, at some point we ask of the piano-playing dog not, “Are you a dog?” but, “Are you any good at playing the piano?”

Memento (2000) and The Prestige (2006) are two of Nolan’s earlier, career-making works. The former put him on the map, and the latter has become a fan-favorite classic. Both are demonstrations of his affinity for non-linear storytelling. Both tell the same story from two different points in time, bouncing in-between one another to meet in the middle.

They are both impressive. But they are showing off. They are in your face. If it’s not your thing, you’ll hate it, because it is impossible to ignore. Non-linearity is not the vehicle, but the point. I love both, but can understand why a movie that relishes in being a puzzle might be off-putting.

To many, this is the work of a piano-playing dog.

The Odyssey is non-linear too. The movie bounces between 3 parallel lines: the sacking of Troy, Odysseus on Calypso’s island, and his son and wife waiting for his return in Ithaca. But here, you don’t notice it. Not at all.

There is something effortless about Nolan’s embrace of non-linearity now. Even Oppenheimer didn’t feel this seamless. The full picture of the sacking of Troy, the inciting incident of the poem, only comes to life by the very end, and it’s enough to transform the whole movie. It is the purest distillation of why non-linearity is so powerful. It goes from parlor trick to revelation.

Maybe it’s his collaboration with the brilliant editor Jennifer Lame (his editor since TENET). Maybe it’s a level-up in his writing and subject matter. In any case, it is a delight to see. And it is inspiring on a personal level — it makes me want to keep growing too. And it is just one example of Nolan coming into form, over and over and over again.

The dog has become quite good at piano. The dog is a virtuoso. The dog is the definitive filmmaker of the 21st century. This movie cements it.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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This year, I went 16/20 on my predictions.

Most of the night was par for the course, no big swings or upsets. Lovers of the two big frontrunners — OBAA and Sinners — had a great night in particular. I don’t think you could’ve engineered a better split between the two (6 and 4 Oscars apiece), a testament to how much love they both generated.

The biggest surprise of the night for me was Best Cinematography. I really didn’t see it going to Sinners, especially after OBAA won at every precursor (including the American Society of Cinematographers!). But it’s an inspired win for Sinners, which is jaw-droppingly beautiful throughout. AND!!! Autumn Durald Arkapaw is the first woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Cinematography!

Last year, I wrote about ‘Oscar Bait’ after ANORA won. It’s a term that gets bandied about often, but one that I argued no longer dominates the big night like it used to. Indeed, I don’t know that we’ve ever had such an interesting stretch of Best Picture winners as now (Everything Everywhere All At Once, Oppenheimer, Anora, OBAA). This year, I saw a lineup almost devoid of ‘Oscar Bait’ entirely. And I think the wins speak volumes.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

You might think that with 16/20 correct predictions, I’m walking away a much richer man following my Kalshi Betting experiment. You’d be wrong.

After 5 years following the awards and 4 years of writing this newsletter, I managed to lose $73 out of $100 on my bets. A recap of them below:

If you’re interested in someone who really committed to this sort of experiment, you should read this brilliant (and harrowing) piece from The Atlantic. But for now, here are my immediate takeaways:

1. Let’s say I put $10 on each of my predictions the same day I sent them out. I would’ve lost $40 on the 4 misses, but I would’ve made gains on the other 16 bets, right? Looking through those odds now, I would’ve still lost $7! The odds are really tight! If I had gotten Cinematography and Casting right, the two big upsets, I would’ve made $73. You can eke out incremental gains on these platforms, but with these all-or-nothing binary contracts, likelihoods get priced in, fast. Right answers don’t matter. It’s the undervalued answers (right or wrong) that matter.

2. I’m more convinced that prediction markets are at best, deeply stupid, and at worst, deeply evil. You can watch millions of dollars pour into each of these contracts, live, during the ceremony. Kalshi will show you a live scroll of each bet coming in, the numbers disappearing just as quickly as they emerge, a carousel that spins faster and faster beckoning you to join. In the comments section you’ll find people jousting over their picks, as though their $200 wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment craving for a movie they had only just heard of.

3. And above all, it wasn’t a fun feeling. Best Actor was one of the big questions of the night, and given the split between Chalamet and Jordan, people had begun speculating about a Leo surprise win. My $20 something bet from December, with a $93 pay-off, grew more exciting as the days bore on, after I’d given up all hope of his win. Minutes before the announcement, I thought about putting even more money down. And when Jordan predictably won, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dismay that I would never have felt otherwise.

I wonder if I’d be writing something different had I made a bunch of money. But I don’t intend to find out.

Speaking of disappointments, I have one last section for you today …

LETTER FROM A CHALAMET APOLOGIST

One of my favorite things about my personal echo chamber is how warm and fuzzy and smart and correct it makes me feel. So it was only in the aftermath of the Oscars that I saw just how much the vibe had shifted on Timothée Chalamet, star & producer of MARTY SUPREME, ardent awards campaigner, who, along with his film, ultimately went home empty-handed.

Timothée Chalamet began his quest for an Oscar in earnest last year, with a boisterous campaign for his role as Bob Dylan in A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (ACU). Oscar campaigns tend to be humble, reserved, aimed at winning the sympathies of an old and sprawling Academy vanguard (especially for Best Actor, which tends to go to older actors who have ‘paid their dues’).

His unorthodox campaign — hosting College Gameday and singing at SNL — sat somewhere between provocative and charming, exemplified by his winning speech at SAG. He was the youngest two-time Best Actor nominee since James Dean in the 50s, competing to be the youngest Best Actor winner ever. But there was an audacity to the campaign, something new, something that tied together the commercial needs of the film (people actually saw the movie) with an awards narrative. That intertwining of commercial and prestige — two very different types of campaigns, for very different audiences, with very different sensibilities — was new.

This year followed the same contours, with a less approachable film and a less approachable campaign. Chalamet atop a Ping Pong illuminated Sphere in Vegas. A remix of UK rapper Esdeekid’s song 4 Raws (following memes that they’re secretly the same person). Marty Supreme merch adorned by the world’s greatest athletes. There’s plenty of hand-wringing online about Chalamet promoting the film as Marty Mauser — loud, brash, abrasive, cocky. Call that the commercial campaign, one that worked even better than ACU (Marty Supreme is A24’s highest grossing movie ever).

But there were hints of a more full-throated prestige push as well. Oft-comparisons to the acting greats, a cinematic retrospective at the age of 31. What was potentially charming a year prior seems to have worn thin, boyish turned entitled (Not to me, of course. But for enough people).

To which I say, who cares! The movie did well, and good movies don’t do well anymore!

There’s this notion, though, that Chalamet would have cakewalked his way into an Oscar if only he had kept his mouth shut. Which I think is ridiculous. Sure, with early wins at the Globes and Critics Choice (neither of which track very well to the Oscars), you could say he was the presumptive season-long favorite. But I’ve long felt that Marty Supreme’s Christmas Day release, and Chalamet’s penchant for generating hype, would mask a murkier awards story.

A turning point for me was when Marty Supreme, a major ensemble film, did not receive any supporting acting nominations (especially for Odessa A’zion). A common theme here is that movies are packages, not disjoint parts, and acclaim for a titular role in a major ensemble picture needs to trickle down-ballot as well (Monica Barbaro did get nominated for ACU). You may think the volume of Marty Supreme nominations (9) disputes that, but like ACU the year prior (or other 3rd/4th place movies of olde — The Irishman (2019), Banshees (2022), KOFM (2024), The Power of the Dog (2021)) it wasn’t a real favorite in any of them. It wasn’t even a second place. It was stacked up against SINNERS and OBAA, two of the winningest powerhouse favorites in a while. I just don’t buy that it was Chalamet’s Oscar to lose. But it was a high-profile loss.

Could he have won it? Maybe. But SINNERS had the right kind of surge at the right time, against a favorite that to me, was never really a favorite. In a time when less people watch less movies, I think one-off wins for ensemble films will only grow rarer. It’s all about the package.

But that’s alright. DUNE 3 coming soon.

As for the ballet/opera thing? Blown out of proportion and a completely reasonable argument — you think any artist wants to fight for the survival of their industry? A career as an opera singer, dancer, jazz musician, orchestra conductor, poet, novelist is increasingly dependent on the whims of a handful of the globe’s wealthiest benefactors, and those aritsts will be the first to tell you they hate it. Of course you’d rather be in da movies.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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With the Oscars coming up on March 15th, I’ve finished my predictions for the show! As always, I have two components for each category – who should win and who will win.

Last year, I got 15 out of my 19 predictions right. This year, I feel far less confident. It’s been a hell of an awards season. There are a lot more toss-ups than in any year since I’ve started making predictions.

Diligent readers know that I also have some money on the line this year. Back in December, I placed $100 in bets on Kalshi, a prediction markets platform. You can read about some craziness in these markets on the morning of the nominations here:

As for this Sunday, I’ll likely have lost all the money (barring some best actor/ supporting actor upsets). A lot’s changed since December! Ever since I stopped paying attention to the money post Jan, I’ve begun enjoying the season anew. More on this later, but it goes to show — gambling on stuff usually makes it worse.

Anyways! Predictions! And this year, I starred the awards categories where I’d watch for an upset.

TECHNICAL AWARDS

Awards honoring below-the-line talent that makes film possible

Best Hair & Makeup:

• Should Win: FRANKENSTEIN

• Will Win: FRANKENSTEIN

Best Costume Design:

• Should Win: MARTY SUPREME

• Will Win: FRANKENSTEIN

Best Production Design:

• Should Win: SINNERS

• Will Win: FRANKENSTEIN

Best Visual Effects:

• Should Win: AVATAR 3: FIRE AND ASH

• Will Win: AVATAR 3: FIRE AND ASH

*Best Cinematography:

• Should Win: TRAIN DREAMS

• Will Win: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Best Sound:

• Should Win: N/A

• Will Win: F1

MUSIC: Best Original Score

• Should Win: MARTY SUPREME (Daniel Lopatin — not nominated!)

• Will Win: SINNERS (Ludwig Göransson)

MUSIC: Best Original Song

• Should Win: ‘I Lied to You’ (SINNERS)

• WILL WIN: ‘Golden’ (KPOP DEMON HUNTESR)

Best Casting (NEW AWARD!!!):

• Should Win: MARTY SUPREME

• Will Win: SINNERS

Best Film Editing:

• Should Win: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

• Will Win: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

WRITING, ACTING, AND DIRECTING

WRITING: Best Original Screenplay

• Should Win: MARTY SUPREME

• Will Win: SINNERS

WRITING: Best Adapted Screenplay

• Should Win: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

• Will Win: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Best Director:

• Should Win: Paul Thomas Anderson (ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER)

• Will Win: Paul Thomas Anderson (ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER)

*Best Supporting Actor:

• Should Win: Benicio Del Toro (ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER)

• Will Win: Sean Penn (ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER)

*Best Supporting Actress:

• Should Win: Odessa A’zion (MARTY SUPREME) - not nominated!

• Will Win: Teyana Taylor (ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER)

*Best Actor:

• Should Win: Timothée Chalamet (MARTY SUPREME)

• Will Win: Michael B. Jordan (SINNERS)

Best Actress:

• Should Win: Jessie Buckley (HAMNET)

• Will Win: Jessie Buckley (HAMNET)

OVERALL FILM AWARDS

Best Animated Film:

• Should Win: (no opinion)

• Will Win: KPOP DEMON HUNTERS

*Best International Film:

• Should Win: HOMEBOUND (India) — not nominated!

• Will Win: THE SECRET AGENT (Brazil)

*BEST PICTURE:

• Should Win: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

• Will Win: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

God. This year’s Best Actor race is baffling. MBJ and Chalamet are the two frontrunners, and they feel neck and neck on this one. Both winning would be a first for the Oscars. No one has ever won Best Actor with only a SAG award (MBJ) and no one has ever won Best Actor without an industry award (Chalamet, who only won GG and Critics Choice).

Stats are no help, so much of the conversation has revolved around momentum. SINNERS has taken off in the past month, generating a lot of love at exactly the right time. It’s a far stronger film than MARTY SUPREME, which will come up with 0 wins without Chalamet and got no other acting noms. Maybe MBJ’s win at SAG shows that the momentum has slowed for Chalamet, who has been the favorite since his film released. Then again, SAG doesn’t like to reward repeat winners (Chalamet won last year for his role in A COMPLETE UNKNOWN).

But Chalamet also came up short at the BAFTAs (albeit to Robert Aramayo, hardly nominated anywhere else). If only we knew who came up second at the BAFTAs, I’d bet all my money on that person. But still — is that a sign that Chalamet has lost steam? The Christmas-release bubble has popped?

You can argue yourself in any direction. You can do the same for the other 3 nominees as well.

Anyways. I’m going to just play it safe and pick Michael B. Jordan. But I won’t be surprised if/when I’m wrong.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

Thanks for reading The Kino! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

A quick recap. After a months-long battle, Paramount-Skydance beat out Netflix with a whopping $110 billion offer to acquire Warner Bros Discovery. CEO David Ellison made a compelling case — less antitrust risk thanks to political connections, studio alignment, and nearly $45 billion from his father. The Ellisons will now have to navigate a long antitrust battle (one that I think they’ll win).

But the finances of the deal, paying $31 per share for a company that was trading at $12 before they announced they were up for sale, have driven me insane. Debt is the big question here. WBD already has a ton, and Paramount is taking out a mountain more to make the purchase. The combined company will have $79 billion in debt, per Ellison’s investor call on Monday. It’s so bad that Paramount’s debt has already been downgraded to ‘junk’ status.

How are they going to pay this off?

The Model

I did some back-of-the-napkin math last week but wanted to dig in a little further. With the help of Claude Code, I read through the past year’s worth of 10Q’s and 10K’s from WBD and Paramount, built a model of the merged company, and made a dashboard. You can see it linked here.

It’s grossly simplified (my heart goes out to my banker friends), but in my view, there are 4 things that will make or break Paramount-WBD:

1. How much more does cable TV continue to decline?

2. How many more subscribers can Paramount-WBD get?

3. How much can they increase their subscription cost?

4. How much can they cut costs?

I’ve assumed a goal threshold is 3x leverage (Debt to EBITDA ratio), which is still risky but manageable for a high growth business. They’re at 6.6x to begin. You can play around with the sliders for each of these 4 categories and see how many years it’ll take to get to 3x.

Mad 3x: Fury Road

The model doesn’t paint a pretty picture. We have some information about Paramount’s plans: they foresee $6B in cost cuts without selling any of the cable assets (that’s a lot of layoffs btw) and plan to produce at least 30 theatrical films a year (an increase for both studios from last year).

I see 4 scenarios. In the ‘The Plan’ (what Ellison outlined on Monday) and ‘Everything Clicks’ (the extreme bull case) Paramount-WBD hit their 3x goal in the next 2-3 years. Not bad!

But both outcomes are wildly unrealistic.

Cable TV for example. What evidence is there at all that the rate of decline (~10% in 2024 for WBD) slows at all, as is needed here? Or subscriber base growth, where they would need to match Netflix growth numbers right off the bat? All this assumes they execute on $6B (or more) in cost cuts, all while somehow increasing content production.

The contradictions are stark. Here’s one example. We know that new content, either originals or licensing existing work, are how streamers attract new subscribers and keep old ones from leaving. But new content costs a lot! So do licenses! AND you can also assume that Paramount-WBD will start licensing its own valuable properties away for more revenue (to companies like Netflix). $6B in cuts — cutting whole departments, analysts, creatives, talent — doesn’t square with a ‘growth engine’.

(I can hear you yelling at your screen: But Atharv! AI! 2028! To which I say: No. Maybe in 5 years, but they’ll lose money on AI for years before it can meaningfully move the needle).

An insane amount of things — painful, difficult, improbable things — need to go right to save Paramount-WBD within even 3 years (barely less time, btw, than between the Warner Bros’ 2022 merger with Discovery and their sale announcement).

The other cases are far more challenging. ‘Trends Hold’, the base case, shows 6 years till the company hits 3x. And the ‘Perfect Storm’, while pessimistic, shows a merged company that never crawls out from under mounting interest.

Zooming Out

Even if everything goes right, it’s not clear that Paramount-WBD will even get 2 years of grace either. This market and this industry are unforgiving, especially with behemoth competitors like Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple who are all flush with cash that they can pour ceaselessly into streaming growth.

Paramount-WBD, the last bastions of the core Hollywood system, do not have this luxury. They’ve been dealt a shit hand. This project has actually helped me better understand why media companies have had to merge to keep up with Big Tech.

But mergers like this are not how it happens. They’re not what keeps the media ecosystem competitive or sustainable. Not for antitrust reasons, but because this gross overpayment, $110 billion for ego and executive paydays, destroys companies. It’s how Paramount-WBD gets sold for parts a few years later.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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Netflix’s $83 billion offer (~$27 per WB share) back in December seemed to be the final word. The Ellisons kept up their efforts, beginning with a hostile offer to the WB board at $30 per share and adding all sorts of perks like paying the $2.8 billion break-up fee to Netflix, a commitment for more equity if bankers got skittish, and a $7 billion fee if the regulators block the deal. Through it all, Netflix remained steadfast, with CEO Sarandos traveling to DC to testify before the Senate and yesterday to meet President Trump and DOJ officials.

But finally, after submitting an offer of $111 billion (!!!) for WB, the board succumbed. They gave Netflix 4 days to counter, and Netflix immediately backed out.

It’s an insane deal. I’ve written about it a few times before, and am still shocked by the outcome. I have all sorts of thoughts:

Antitrust

I felt strongly that the WBD-Netflix merger would be blocked, or heavily amended, for antitrust reasons. One of Paramount’s selling points was that they could actually get a merger past regulators.

Why? For one, they’re a much smaller player in the ecosystem than Netflix. But more importantly, the Ellisons are long-time friends and mega donors to Trump. Last year, the FCC only approved the Paramount-Skydance merger after Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle the President’s lawsuit against “60 Minutes”. They’ve since shifted CBS News to the right, hiring Bari Weiss as its head, and ingratiated themselves with the administration in all sorts of ways.

What happens next? I don’t see European regulators doing much — neither Paramount nor WB have a presence abroad like Netflix does. The deal is all but confirmed at the federal level. I don’t see the DOJ or FTC challenging this deal. Legislators, even Republican antitrust hawks like Mike Lee, have no standing here either (although more corporate establishment Dems are up-in-arms than when Netflix was buying).

But these deals still take time, right? 12-18 months sometimes? Maybe not. Matt Stoller has written about Paramount lawyer Makan Delhrahim, a Trump 1.0 Antitrust official, and his plan to fast track the approval process by preparing all its document hand-over in advance, well beyond what the DOJ usually negotiates for its ‘second request’ period. In a recent livestream, Stoller predicted approval as early as April.

State Attorneys General, like California’s Rob Bonta, will still investigate. But their resources pale in comparison to the Feds, especially on such a short timeline.

Industry Implications

But political sway aside, is this as bad from an antitrust perspective?

I don’t think it’s great, but I do think that of the two options, this one leaves the industry slightly better off (To be clear: I still think WBD should have just split up).

Netflix still dominates after a Paramount+ and HBO Max merger, and if anything, you’re left with a more considerable counterweight in the streaming ecosystem.

What about theaters? David Ellison has pledged theatrical releases for 30 movies a year (a very high number — last year’s highest was 20 from Universal and 16 from Disney). I think it’s still a grim outlook for theaters in general. When Disney bought Fox, those studios’ number of released films fell by 44%. But still, both Paramount and WBD have historical production studios at their core — I think the combined company is less hostile to theatrical releases than Netflix.

There are certainly concerning elements. A Paramount-WBD is a classically ‘horizontal’ merger, the original focus of antitrust law. WBD is far more similar to Paramount than Netflix, with a mix of production studios, TV channels, news, streaming services, and more. But none of these piecewise combinations, within their larger markets, are singularly dominant from an antitrust perspective. WBD + Netflix is a more disjoint merger, but the overall size of Netflix is what leads to broader ‘portfolio effects’

That is … unless Paramount crumbles under the financial strain of the acquisition, and Netflix buys them both for pieces in a few years:

Show me the Money

The finances of this merger are insane to me. If you couldn’t tell, I’m trying to become more financially savvy, so here are some immediate and half-baked numbers —

Paramount’s market cap was around $11 billion when the news broke. It makes around $3 billion in earnings a year and is 1/30th the size of Netflix. Their offer of $110 billion values WBD at $31 per share ($WBD traded at $12 last September, before all this bidding kicked off). Already things aren’t adding up.

The only reason this is possible is because Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and third richest person on the planet, committed at least $45 billion in equity himself.

Paramount borrowed the rest of the money — $60 billion — on top of the $10 billion in net debt they already had on their books. WBD comes with around $40 billion in debt of its own (as of 2025, lingering from its 2022 merger). That’s $100 billion in gross debt for the combined entity. Let’s be generous and say $90 billion in net debt, subtracting the cash both companies might have on hand.

Paramount-WBD combines 1:1 to generate around $12 billion in adjusted EBITDA (a measure of earnings). It needs to use this cash to chip away at their mountain of debt.

Let’s say the debt pile carries an estimated blended interest rate of ~7%. Interest alone is going to be around $5 billion a year. Add taxes, and Paramount-WBD is left with maybe(?) $5 billion a year to pay down its debt, without any spending to grow the business.

That’s 8x leverage (debt-to-EBITDA ratio). Let’s say they want to get to 3x — still high but more manageable for a high growth business. It would take at least a decade to get there, probably much longer. This is the same problem that has long strangled WBD.

And that’s if nothing changes! Mergers are expensive! And neither company is exactly a rocketship — both have big segments of TV channels and news networks that bleed more and more money every year. Streaming is the growth engine for both, and maybe their combination has ‘synergies’ that make them greater than their sum. But enough to tackle all of this?

Maybe they can cut redundant costs throughout (Paramount sees $6 billion in cost savings by eliminating “duplicative operations”). I can’t even imagine how many people are going to get fired. But these are still really overwhelming numbers!

Netflix is a cash machine. It could offer $83 billion for WBD and have a reasonable plan to pay. Nothing about Paramount-WBD feels reasonable.

There’s a reason why Netflix’s stock jumped 13% as soon as they gave up on the deal. It’s not a good one!

But maybe Larry Ellison can just keep chipping in. Pennies in the piggy bank.

Parting Thoughts

I’ll keep this brief. I think what dismays me the most here is less the impact on the filmmaking industry (definitely less so than a Netflix acquisition) but the political implications. The Ellisons are building a media empire with which they can shape the world as they see fit. They have a clear viewpoint and have now built the largest microphone in the world. They did this with overwhelming sums of money and political favor, pure and simple.

I’m worried about what happens to CNN. I’m worried about the precedent this sets for other companies and how they approach this administration. I’m worried about the quality of our media landscape as more of it comes under the same pairs of hands.

Above all, it’s jarring to see it laid out so bare: You can always throw more money at a problem, and the world will part ways for you.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

Thanks for reading The Kino! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

January means it’s year-end list time. My annual fear is that there are several movies that would certainly make this list, maybe even top it, if only I had watched them! So, January becomes catch-up time, which is a dumb way to go about things. 1) I hate having a watchlist and 2) Going into a movie hoping for some sort of ranking is a bastardization of everything I stand for.

So for 2025, I’m treating this list as more of a diary instead. The eight movies below might not be the year’s exhaustive best, but they’re the ones that spoke to me the most.

If there’s a movie you can’t believe isn’t here, I probably didn’t watch it. That, or you have horrible taste.

#8: NO OTHER CHOICE (Dir. Park Chan-wook)

After being laid off and humiliated by a ruthless job market, a veteran paper mill manager descends into violence in a desperate bid to reclaim his dignity

I spent most of 2025 searching for my first big boy job, and despite having a very advantaged and picky job-hunt, it wasn’t fun!

A lot of job hunting is packaging yourself. We do it over our LinkedIn DMs and cover letters and resumes, before recruiters and networkers and interviewers. There are all sorts of reasons to chafe against this, and it creates a lot of pressure to compromise on yourself. The more you’re willing to compromise, the easier it gets to find a job. But personally, as an idealist with vague notions of a ‘perfect job’ (without knowing what that was), I struggled with this.

NO OTHER CHOICE is about one such idealist who would kill for his dream job. And he does. He kills people. Yoo man-soo, our main character, refuses to compromise in any way on the outcome he believes he deserves, so he instead compromises on how he gets there.

The movie made me laugh at a lot of my feelings from the past year (although I watched it, thankfully, after getting a job offer). The irony is, of course, that our main character has several other choices. Would you kill to be a paper factory manager? It’s like another great movie from this year – what if your dream is, at best, incomprehensible, and at worst, kind of stupid?

But if work is inextricable from our basic selves – if the packaging becomes the self – then taken to the extreme, who knows?

#7: HAMNET (Dir. Chloé Zhao)

After losing their son Hamnet to plague, Agnes and William Shakespeare grapple with grief in 16th-century England. A healer, Agnes must find strength to care for her surviving children while processing her devastating loss.

A dirty little secret is that I’m not great with slow burn movies. For all my talk as a cinephile, I am, after all, a kinosexual, a lover of cheap thrills and big screens and very important things like sand worms and temporal pincer movements and Ethan Hunt. But alas, I also care about sounding smart and things like the ‘zeitgeist’, so I watch movies like HAMNET too.

And sometimes, when I watch movies like HAMNET, I walk out of the theater choked up and shattered. I’m reminded that you can do so much more with so little, and that all the great stories boil down to the same elemental nuts and bolts. Grief, family, sorrow, love, all are quiet and intimate and small in HAMNET, which make them all the more subsuming.

The most cathartic scene of the year is the ending of HAMNET. That’s the advantage of a slow burn, right? The sort of tour-de-force Jessie Buckley pulls off in those final shots, the camera trained on her in the center of the audience, staring up at her husband’s play as we all watch her. I remember feeling light-headed when the score swelled, when I realized what was happening, and I know I’ll never forget the look I saw in Buckley’s eyes.

#6: THE NAKED GUN (Dir. Akiva Schaffer)

Following in his father’s footsteps, a detective works to solve a murder case and save his police department from closure.

At a time when most comedy is mean, stupid, or both, THE NAKED GUN reminded me that you don’t need to be a horrible person to make people laugh. Nor, for that matter, do we only laugh when we’re being horrible.

Every 20 seconds or so in this movie, you’ll find a new joke ranging from slapstick to political commentary to farts and poops, often all in the same scene. A good amount is eye-rollingly bad. It’s still the hardest I’ve laughed in a theater in years.

It’s the kind of comedy that feels scant now, or the kind that has been relegated to the skit-makers and AI slop clogging our infinite scrolls. There’s a lot of talk these days about how comedy is dying, in part because we all have trillion-dollar machines trained on our every neuron to feed us our express comedic desires. I laugh harder at my reels algorithm than anything else.

But THE NAKED GUN brought me that same pleasure alongside an audience of others. The laughter was shared. It was universal. That meant a lot to me.

#5: SINNERS (Dir. Ryan Coogler)

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

On that note, SINNERS reminded me this year that film is communal. Not just while watching a movie in a theater, but how a movie can snowball to consume your life before and after.

It was the weeks-long chatter as soon as SINNERS came out – “Have you seen Sinners?” “Have you heard of Sinners?” “You need to watch Sinners.” It was in the weeks after, over pints and meals and phone calls, discussing favorite scenes, dissecting them, quoting them, arguing if it was overrated, and hearing it was underrated, somehow. It was watching this movie take on another life of its own online, across memes and skits and jokes and discourse. It was seeing a great movie make ridiculous amounts at the box office and now break records at the Oscars.

SINNERS was the last movie I watched at the BFI IMAX, the greatest movie theater ever, before moving back to the states. It was awesome, but more than that, the movie was the kind of increasingly rare flash-in-a-pan that I’m grateful to experience at all.

#4: BLACK BAG (Dir. Steven Soderbergh)

When intelligence agent Kathryn Woodhouse is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband - also a legendary agent - faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage, or his country.

During my creative writing course, writing a ‘dinner party’ scene was something between a running joke and a rite of passage. Why? Because 1) every writer gives it a go at some point, and 2) they usually suck.

A dinner party is rife with storytelling potential. Eating is vulnerable. The food that’s served, the table setting, the way people eat and chew, what they say and don’t say, their suppressed reactions; in the right hands, all of this can be immensely revealing. My personal favorite is this Raymond Carver short story. This also means, of course, that they’re easy to butcher.

BLACK BAG is about two dinner parties, each attended by the same six MI6 spies. It takes the potential of a dinner party scene to a brilliant extreme, where each of our attendees are literally in the business of secret-keeping and secret-finding. The movie is nothing revolutionary, but it does the next best thing: it executes on something tried and true extremely well. We don’t give enough credit, in my opinion, to movies that do this. Ones that don’t reinvent the wheel, but instead just make a really damn good wheel.

#3: HOMEBOUND (Dir. Neeraj Ghaywan)

Two childhood friends from a small North Indian village chase a police job that promises them the dignity they’ve long been denied. But as they inch closer to their dream, mounting desperation threatens the bond that holds them together.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry’s novel about four strangers brought together in 1975 India, was my favorite book I read last year. There’s a line that I could not stop thinking about while watching HOMEBOUND, a similar tale of friendship and struggle set in 2020s India:

“Please, bhai, no more adventures for us,” said Ishvar. “Stories of suffering are no fun when we are the main characters.”

I bought my friend a copy of the book for his birthday, to which my mom said: “He’ll have a very bad impression of India after reading it.” It’s fair – the novel is bleak. I think great art of any country reckons with the country’s lows, but I’m aware that India especially gets painted as backwards. I wondered if HOMEBOUND, with its stark depictions of caste-based and religious discrimination in a post-industrial hellscape, might do the same.

But it doesn’t. Ghaywan’s India is not defined by these scars; it exists despite them. Ghaywan’s India is one defined by a towering friendship between main characters Shoaib and Chandan. It’s defined by stunning visual language, a camera that finds beauty everywhere from dusty tenements to smog-laden factories. His movie is in service of a broader vision than just poverty or hate; it’s about humans first and their world second. It’s incredible, and it’s why this film’s ending delivered, for me, the hardest gut punch of the year.

#2: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own.

In my earlier review of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, I wrote: “Every layer of the text speaks to the anxieties, absurdities, and realities of American life just months into the second Trump administration.” I praised how this movie speaks to its present moment, something few films manage to do without sounding pedantic or pandering.

Things are worse since I wrote that. ICE has since ramped up its depraved campaign of violence across the country. Words do little to describe the horrors coming out of Minneapolis these past weeks, let alone nationwide.

What justice, then, can a movie do? My review feels quaint and misguided in retrospect. In the months since I wrote the review, watching OBAA sweep its way through award shows, I’ve wondered whether the film really had the bite and voice I remembered.

But when I think about the movie, it’s Benicio Del Toro’s character that assuages that thought. Months ago, my reaction centered on the film’s depiction of the present. But amidst all that imagery, OBAA’s real staying power, to me, lies in the quiet and timeless revolution we get from Del Toro’s character. I can’t stop thinking about him, the example he sets for us in the audience.

I sometimes blink when people describe films as ‘resistance’, certainly when it’s a $120m Big Studio production like this. But looking back, I’m moved by the lengths to which OBAA tries. Maybe it’s naïve, maybe it’s superficial, but it’s a movie that has made me feel a little bit hopeful too.

#1: MARTY SUPREME (Dir. Josh Safdie)

Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.

Last year, I began writing a novel of my own. I began writing it for my creative writing course, over which my classmates and I spent months defining what ‘voice’ is for a writer. Beyond my rich and sultry baritone, though, I had never tried to understand mine.

When I watched UNCUT GEMS for the first time back in 2019, I didn’t get it. I expected jump scares, sure, but not the under-your-skin-fight-or-flight that I felt for 2 hours. It felt wrong. I didn’t think movies were allowed to do that. Yet because of that, the film stuck with me.

That was my first real understanding of voice. I learned that your voice is what makes people complain about you, not your work.

The frenetic and maximalist energy of the Safdies has since crept its way across my favorite music, books, and movies. And over the past year, I’ve watched it infect my writing as well, chapter after chapter.

MARTY SUPREME did to me what inspirational art always does: it made me want to delete everything I’d written and start over.

Not out of insecurity or some pale comparison, but because (ha ha) the film made me dream bigger. I want to write dialogue like the kind Timothée Chalamet delivers as Marty Mauser. I want my characters to feel just as fleshed out, even if they only get mere moments on the page. I want the world I’m painstakingly crafting to feel just as lived-in and tactile and alive. And more than anything else, I want my book to sweep a reader away the same way the film swept me up.

MARTY SUPREME has a hell of a voice. I think that’s so moving. I left the theater wanting to write something that is as uniquely mine.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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The optimistic case, preached by platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, is that markets are the best gathering grounds we have for information. Prediction markets, by enabling the masses to put their money on anything, will thus lead to a greater understand of the world. If you have an edge somewhere atypical, you should be able to make money on that, and we should benefit from your knowledge. You’ll now see prediction markets everywhere, from the news, to sports broadcasts, to awards shows.

The pessimistic case is that they’re 1) still basically sports betting sites, 2) rife with insider trading, 3) wholly unregulated, 4) creating adverse incentives where there shouldn’t be (like war), and 5) Making Everything Gambling. It’s funny to contrast the high-minded stuff out of Kalshi with the ads I see of people live-betting Jerome Powell’s next greeting.

But maybe it’s something in between. I’ve spent a lot of time now watching movies and predicting what Oscars they’ll win. If there’s anywhere I might have some edge, it’s here.

So, back in mid-December, I placed $100 across 6 Oscars bets on Kalshi (with a total payout of $280 if they all cashed).

My questions were as follows:

• Do I really have any sort of meaningful edge here?

• How do predictions markets work?

• Is gambling on the Oscars going to ruin them for me?

This will be a multi-part series leading up to the Oscars themselves. Beginning today, because the nominations were just announced!

NOMINATIONS

As an upfront spoiler, I lost $35 on Chase Infiniti (OBAA) and Odessa A’zion (Marty Supreme) missing their nominations. Thank you, Ethan Hawke, for the $7 in profit.

I bet $10 on Odessa A’zion back when her odds were around 26%. This was before MARTY SUPREME was released, but I had a feeling it + Timothée would do well enough to get someone into supporting. I kept reading that Odessa was great and figured there was room for a Monica Barbaro-esque dash to a nomination.

I wasn’t far off. A’Zion missed the nom, but in a crowded category with four rock-solid options, she was a strong contender for a 5th slot against Ariana Grande (WICKED) and Elle Fanning (SENTIMENTAL VALUE). Her odds peaked around 80% when the movie released, and have since hovered around 60-70%.

FLASH CRASH

This morning, in the lead up to the announcement, all of that went haywire.

At around 6:40AM, I got an email saying her odds had dropped to 7%. Not a steady downwards trickle, but a full crater.

My two initial thoughts: 1) someone found out noms early and was insider trading or 2) Ariana Grande Stans (it was early in the morning, sorry).

But if that were the case, you would have expected someone else’s odds, either Grande or the known 5th spot, to skyrocket. Grande went up ~15% but only to the 60-70% range.

To be clear: Kalshi does not decide these odds. It’s not like a sportsbook. Instead, like the stock market, traders place bids for contracts at a certain price (e.g., “A’zion will be nominated”), while others list prices they’re willing to sell at (an ask). When a bid and ask match, a trade happens, and that price becomes the market price.

There are two ways to do these transactions. You can place a market order: buy/sell ASAP at whatever the first price is. Or a limit order: only buy AT OR BELOW THIS PRICE and do nothing otherwise.

On Kalshi, you can see the order book for a contract and see what bids/asks people are submitting. To understand how the odds collapsed 50% in a minute, I looked at the order book.

At around 6:40 AM, thousands of contracts got sold all at once. The going price for this contract was at around 60 cents. But suddenly, 3000 contracts got sold at 6 cents each, then 1000 contracts at 4 cents each. The odds cratered.

How did this happen?

Why would anyone sell contracts for 4 or 6 cents if they’re worth 60 cents?

My understanding is that this was caused by a limit order lying in wait. Basically, someone a while ago placed some long-shot limit orders that said: ‘buy 3000 contracts if this price ever gets to 6 cents’. Those orders sat there for a while and would’ve expired if the price never reached that trigger point.

Yet they did! This morning, someone with a bunch of yes contracts likely wanted to cash out, so they placed a market order to sell: ‘sell ASAP at whatever price’. A bunch of their contracts were probably sold at the reasonable 60 cent price.

But because it was 6 AM, and serious people were not awake and trading Odessa A’zion’s Oscar Nomination Odds, there weren’t enough people buying at the reasonable price. And since the order was ‘sell at whatever the best price available is’, it hit whatever was left: the 6 cent limit orders, then the 4 cent limit orders. The trades were made, and the odds dropped.

I, among other traders on this contract, got an email from Kalshi saying the odds had dropped suddenly. Likewise, I’m sure the millions of automated bots that crawl across Kalshi saw this happen as well. They saw what *should* have been a 60-70 cent contract was now at 7 cents, and so they bought a ton of it.

Within 20 minutes, the price was back to normal. You can see the final graph here, including the dip from 6:40am till 7:10am:

If you bought the 4000 contracts at the 4-6 cent rate, and then sold them an hour later when the price peaked around 80 cents, you would have made nearly $3000.

What happened next?

At this point (from around 7:30am till the nominations were announced at 8:35am), the market went crazy. The difference between ask and bid prices is called the ‘spread’ – basically how much everyone agrees what something should cost. In a healthy market, the spread is close to 0.

For 30 minutes, I was seeing spreads of 30, 40, and even 50 cents. People who owned contracts would only sell them for 97 cents per. People who wanted them would only buy for 40 cents per. There was no consensus at all and it caused the price to go haywire (see the graph from 7:30am till 8:30am).

Once A’zion missed the nomination, though, the contract fell to 0.

SO WHAT?

First of all, I’m not very financially savvy so please tell me if I got anything wrong here. I’m learning! But a few takeaways:

• These markets are ridiculously volatile. They work on the same system as stocks, but because trillions of dollars flow through stock exchanges at millionths of a second, markets and prices are usually stable. Here, however, only $1.8 million was spent on this contract, a lot of which came in only this morning.

• $3000 in profit off a crash in this market is harmless, sure. Congrats to whoever. But a few weeks ago, someone made $400,000 in profit on a bet on Maduro’s capture in Venezuela. These prediction markets, even the most highly traded ones, are flimsy at best, and they can point in far uglier directions.

• You don’t make money in these markets by being ‘right’. You make money by finding stuff when it’s underpriced and selling it at a higher point. Or even better, exploiting price differences between platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. This is how sophisticated traders and bots trade, but feels counterintuitive to our understanding of prediction markets (which are about, you know, actually predicting things). I think it undercuts some of the ‘pie-in-the-sky’ idealism about an information utopia, but who knows.

BACK TO THE MOVIES:

I’ll write more in the future on this. A TLDR; is that I think this experiment has made following the Oscars worse this year (although I am following things more closely).

The nominations themselves were cool - Delroy Lindo making it in Supporting Actor for SINNERS is awesome, along with SINNERS handedly beating the all-time nomination record. I am genuinely shocked by the Chase Infiniti miss, but alas.

If you’re into this more finance-y writing (I've been on a Matt Levine kick of late), you might like these posts too:

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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I adore Josh Safdie’s prior work. More on this in the new year, but I’m writing a book (!) and am hugely inspired in my own writing by their frenetic aesthetic, their ability to create stress for an audience, and their excavations of capitalism and greed through deplorable characters. And, of course, I’m a fan of basically all of Chalamet’s work as an actor. All this to say — I had high expectations.

The film lived up to all of them. It is a wild ride like all of the Safdie’s work, but despite similar depths of reprehensibility, MARTY SUPREME is a far kinder watch. Perhaps because Marty Mauser, the con-artist, thief, narcissist, adulterer, assailant, manipulator, and more, also happens to be generationally magnetic. Nowhere does this come to life more than in the ping pong sequences, which are kinetic and breathtaking. For the first time, we have a Safdie character who gives us something to root for.

This is my favorite of Chalamet’s performances and feels in many ways reflective of this moment in his career. You forget you’re watching him, a mark many argue he missed in DUNE, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, and WONKA. But he does disappear into the role here, perhaps because Marty Mauser is so clearly cut from the Chalamet cloth and gravitas. (David Ehrlich’s review is a great dissection of this, and I also recommend reading the GQ series of features on Chalamet from the past few years).

I have so much more I could compliment. I’d like to buy an actual bound copy of this screenplay. With over 100 speaking roles, every character manages to be memorable, making the rugged cityscapes of MARTY SUPREME feel tactile and lived-in. I’ll almost certainly write something about its marketing campaign & box office performance in the future. I cannot recommend the film enough.

This is a short spoiler-free review, because there’s a scene I need to write about in more detail. Go watch MARTY SUPREME, and then read on:

SPOILERS BELOW!

On Honey

There’s a scene early in the film where Marty is having lunch with Bela Kletzki, the former world champion who gets beaten by Marty in the semi-finals of the British Open. He’s an older man and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Bela views himself as a sort-of mentor and friend to Marty, but it’s a feeling that is very much not reciprocated (we realize quickly that Marty cares about no one besides himself). Just minutes earlier in the film, during a media interview before the semi’s, Marty makes a particularly brazen holocaust joke (which he then says is fine because he’s not only Jewish, but also ‘Hitler’s worst nightmare’).

Per my count, there are only one two moments where Marty displays any sort of real respect for another person. One is his rival, the Japanese champion Endo. And the other is Bela, not for his table tennis abilities, but for a story from his imprisonment at Auschwitz. During the lunch, he implores Bela to recount this story to rich businessman Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary).

Here, we enter a flashback. We find out that the Nazis, impressed by Bela’s table tennis skills, sent him to defuse bombs on the outskirts of the camp, where he one day found a honeycomb. He smeared his body with the honey, smuggling it back for his fellow starving prisoners to eat off him.

It’s a bizarre scene for many reasons. For one, it juts out wildly from the rest of the movie. It’s one of the few scenes where we don’t see Marty, and it’s perhaps the only scene set in the past. More than anything else, it is hyper-stylized. The scene of the other prisoners touching and licking Bela’s chest in a smoky cell is filmed to be almost sensual, with dim light and silhouetted limbs and tongues and close-ups on his chest hair. It seems sensual, until you remember its horrific context. We hear it in the score (titled Holocaust Honey) as well, where the neon 80s-esque synths drop out for a moment in lieu of grand strings sections and and an operatic choir.

The scene is never referred to again, and Bela is quickly left behind as Marty’s nightmarish descent into hell continues. The story lasts maybe 30 seconds. I almost forgot about it entirely.

The scene is based on a real story. Josh Safdie has been clear about how Jewishness suffuses his work, and MARTY SUPREME explores this identity more directly than his prior filmography. Marty himself says little about being Jewish, really only in relation to his messianic self-view: the media interview, the Pyramid stone he gifts his mother (‘we built this’). To speak more sincerely would indicate he cares about a world beyond himself. But we certainly see how Jewishness shapes his world.

Why, then, does Safdie film the scene in this way?

Is it disrespectful? A sensationalized joke?

This nugget is the key to understanding Marty Mauser. I think we see the Auschwitz flashback not through Bela’s or Safdie’s eyes, but in Marty’s imagination. He sees Bela as the camp’s salvation and the recipient of its adoration. Marty sees it in this sensual light, the limbs and saliva and opera. There’s a reason why the flashback cuts so abruptly, and we never hear from Bela again. Adoration is the only real sensation Marty can conceive of, and it’s the only one he’s interested in receiving.

Marty believes that’s the point of Bela’s story: self-mythologizing. It’s not at all, but all Marty’s slick talking, bravado, and at-all-costs mentality is in service of a similar self-mythology.

We see a parallel to the honey scene at the end. Marty finally beats his rival during a non-official exhibition match in Tokyo. As Marty falls to his knees, gasping for breath with tears in his eyes upon victory, the only people to cheer for him in the vast crowd were a group of American soldiers.

When Marty climbs into a US military plane to return home from Tokyo, those same soldiers ignore him on the plane. Marty sits sandwiched between them, incongruous in his suit and tie amidst the uniforms, body language shy for the first time, and receives none of the adoration he had perhaps imagined. Not even a nod of acknowledgement, let alone the touching hands and tongues of his latent fantasy. Even the lighting inside the cramped plane seems to match the camp flashback.

Of all the Safdie movies I’ve seen, this has what you might call the ‘happiest’ ending. I’m not inclined to see any sort of redemption for Marty – he’s so unbelievably awful start to finish – but there is some breathing room for that interpretation. That breathing room stems from this: the hollowness he experiences on the other side of his goal.

It’s just one of a million questions that make this movie so spectacular. I’ll be watching it again soon!

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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I get the question sometimes: how should I get into movies? It’s a bit of a silly question – just start watching them? – but I understand the hesitation. With limited time and the big wide world that’s out there, where do you start? How do you avoid the bad ones? Which ones are the most important? (I clearly have type-A people in my life).

How you get into movies is shaped by why you want to watch them at all. I was driven by some vague sense of cultural literacy, a desire to be “in the know”.

I have a lot of friends who started with the IMDB or AFI or Letterboxd top 100 lists. While the COVID months were more haphazard for me, I certainly felt an obligation to watch stuff like Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver, The Truman Show, and whatever else slots into that ‘classic’ category. But that’s no good way to watch movies, and by the time I 1) actually liked the artform, 2) had opinions of my own, and 3) could go to movie theaters, this sort of exploration slowed down.

So there are some stark gaps remaining. I’ll sometimes mention that I haven’t seen XYZ movie, something everyone and their mothers have watched, and it’ll prompt a “WHAT?! You haven’t seen that?! Despite your wildly successful and tasteful and industry-defining blog?! Even I’ve seen that!”

Anyways, I watched TITANIC (1997) for the first time last night!

You jump, I jump

It’s always charming to watch these classics for the first time now that I’m older. I was shocked at how much I already knew about Titanic just by virtue of being conscious for the past 24 years. I’ve somehow been aware of the whole ‘King of the World’ thing since I was what, 10? Why was I arguing about whether Jack could have fit on the plank in middle school?

It made the surprises all the more sweet. When you know what’s going to happen – not just plot, but the actual legacy of the movie itself – it becomes so much more interesting to see how it got there. I’ve read so much about Titanic, its sweep of the Oscars that year, its astounding box office records, how it made Leo’s career and transformed so many others. And now I’ve seen it firsthand!

But it’s an odd feeling to witness a certain moment or dialogue and retroactively recognize its footprint. It’s a feeling that used to bother me. When I started watching movies, I wanted to understand all the references and jokes and characters that felt part and parcel with the American lexicon. These things seemed like they suffused the world around me.

So the gaps felt like failings, and in filling them so late, I felt behind. More than anything else, it’s a lot more fun to witness a moment firsthand. To be a part of it, get shaped by it, rather than merely observe it.

Last night, I watched Titanic, a movie that is essentially synonymous with Hollywood. But amidst all the heartbreak and thrill and swoon that I knew it would induce within me, just as it has for billions of others, I also felt a sense of confidence that I didn’t expect.

It was just a great movie, one that I’m lucky to have watched at all. I’m lucky there are so many more to go.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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What does this mean for me?

Nothing yet. Netflix expects the deal to close in 12-18 months once WBD carves out its cable unit, meaning a separate public company would control CNN, TNT and Discovery. The details for afterwards are sparse, but once acquired, HBO Max would remain a separate streaming service in the near-term as its content gets integrated onto the Netflix lineup. Netflix has also promised to continue WB theatrical releases, at least through 2029. There will be an enormous regulatory battle (more on this later), so all of this is predicated on merger approval. But if you’re subscribed to both services, you can sit tight.

Is this good?

You can probably guess based on my prior writing about streaming, theaters, and WBD CEO David Zaslav, but I think this is resoundingly bad for the industry. I think it gives Netflix ridiculous market power that it will use to continue pressuring theaters, entertainment industry unions, small production houses, and everything in between. I expect it will raise prices even further (something it’s already led the streaming industry in doing) with even less competition.

Their theater commitment strikes me as particularly flimsy. Whatever they may say, the Netflix model is that any time spent in a theater is not time spent on their platform. In the long-run, I see them continuing their practice of 1-week limited releases across a handful of theaters nationwide before putting them on streaming. I think consolidation is going to strangle the life out of theaters, which are already not getting enough releases to stay alive.

Assuming, of course, it happens at all.

The Boy Who Cried Monopoly

The mechanics of the regulatory process are as follows: WBD-Netflix will submit a “premerger notification” of the deal to both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The deal could pass after an initial 30-day review, but what’s more likely is a “Second Request”, which triggers a deeper investigation into regulatory concerns about market concentration, dominance, etc. The regulatory bodies could 1) Not challenge the deal, 2) Approve the deal with certain conditions, or 3) Challenge the deal (per the Clayton Act) in court.

Republican Senators Lee (leader of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust) and Marshall have already pushed back on the merger. Expect pushback from Paramount as well, who argued on Wednesday in a letter to WBD lawyers that they offered the cleanest regulatory path forward for an acquisition. The Ellisons, owners of Paramount, are huge Trump allies (you may have heard about the President advocating recently for their release of Rush Hour 4). Democrats may not love a GOP-leaning Paramount purchase (their offer includes purchasing CNN), but I expect concerns around market consolidation + Democrat ties to Hollywood will outweigh those. I’m certain this goes to the courts

Will it get approved?

My gut says no. Here are some thoughts about why:

The fundamental problem with market consolidation is that it allows a winner to diminish competition, which hurts consumers (whether by raising prices or worse product offerings).

Netflix is going to argue that the streaming marketplace is not just Amazon Prime, Netflix, HBO Max, etc., and that it should also include platforms like YouTube and TikTok. This strikes me as a little ridiculous. The question here is whether these products are valid substitutes for one another. If HBO Max raises its prices, it’s reasonable to say one might switch to Netflix. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say ‘if HBO Max raises its prices, one can just watch more TikTok’. They’re different things. It’d be like suggesting a gas station is a viable substitute for a restaurant. With a reasonable scope on the streaming marketplace, it seems cut and dry to me that the #1 player (~300 million subscribers) buying the #3 player (~120 million subscribers), in a field with ~4 other meaningful names, raises some clear alarms.

Matt Stoller, a commentator who’s an antitrust obsessive in his own right, wrote a good piece about some comparison points that judges will look at. The most compelling one to me was in the publishing industry, when in 2022 the largest book publisher in America, Penguin, sought to buy its rival, Simon & Schuster. Despite lawyers’ arguments around competition with Amazon and economies of scale, it was blcoked, and the case against the merger was clear: “five book publishers combining into four meant fewer opportunities to publish interesting books and less money for writers.” There’s a funny note about WBD’s lawyer (Steve Sunshine of Skadden) being notoriously bad at mergers too:

Sunshine has advised on several high-profile mergers over the past decade that faced federal challenges. In multiple cases where he represented the acquiring company, the deals were blocked or later abandoned after intervention from the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission. Those included Visa’s attempted purchase of Plaid, Adobe’s effort to buy Figma, and Sabre’s proposed acquisition of Farelogix.

One last thing: Netflix offered a $5.8 billion break fee to WBD, paid out if the deal is not approved. Not exactly a vote of confidence. This is a newer component to merger agreements, designed to hedge against regulatory risk. Matt Levine at Bloomberg wrote an excellent piece about these break fees RE the Metsera merger attempt. But the gist is that it’s often sexy & more lucrative to merge with the bigger competitor, but far more risky antitrust-wise. That’s Netflix. Rather than merge with the smaller, less sexy offer (That’s Paramount or Comcast), companies go for the payout anyways and make up for it with a guaranteed payment if it gets blocked. $5.8 billion is, however, just 7% of Netflix’s full offer, not to mention all the legal fees and asset degradation WBD will see over the approval process. So a pittance, really.

So what?

Not to beat a dead horse, but Warner Bros is a Great American Company, responsible for the DNA of the country we live in. It’s being sold for scraps due to a combination of financial mismanagement and greed. And what’s worse, it strikes me as unnecessary! It’s been the most successful studio of the year thus far and seems poised to win a boatload of Oscars including Best Picture for One Battle After Another. I’ll end with a line from Stoller’s piece:

“There are many ways to make money, you can try to profit by making great movies, you can also try to profit by burning down studios and squeezing Americans with streaming price hikes. It’s bizarre that our financiers have convinced themselves the only way to do well is through arson.”

But, whatever. Zaslav will get his $500 million payout one way or another.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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Warner Bros. Discovery announced in June 2025 that it would split back into two companies by mid-2026. Warner Bros. would get the crown jewels—the film studio, DC Studios, HBO, and HBO Max. Discovery Global would inherit the declining cable networks: CNN, TNT Sports, Discovery Channel.

That changed this week, when the company disclosed it had received “unsolicited interest” from “multiple parties” and was now reviewing “strategic alternatives”. AKA, we’re for sale.

David Ellison (the new owner of Paramount) reportedly offered $20 per share for WBD, which was promptly rejected. Then $24 per share. Also rejected. Sources say Zaslav wants $30, maybe more (the stock was at $18 before the news broke).

The Zaslav Era

To understand why Warner Bros. Discovery is now splitting requires understanding why it merged in the first place.

In 2022, streaming was the singular obsession of the media industry.

AT&T, which owned WarnerMedia, had too shallow a content library, while Discovery, led by David Zaslav, was searching for a way into the streaming economy. Warner had prestige brands like HBO and Warner Bros. Pictures, while Discovery had low-cost, high-volume reality programming. The merger thesis was to combine scripted excellence with unscripted profitability, so you’d have something for everyone.

Poor Timings

By the time the deal closed in April 2022, though, investor sentiment about streaming had flipped. Rising interest rates and shareholder fatigue ended the “growth at all costs” era.

But Warner Bros. Discovery wasn’t yet built for profit. The company had inherited roughly $50 billion of combined debt, massive content spending obligations, and two declining divisions: cable and theatrical.

What followed was a cost-cutting spree. Newly anointed CEO David Zaslav shelved completed films like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme for tax write-offs, merged HBO Max with Discovery+, and laid off thousands in a bid to stabilize cash flow. These moves achieved modest financial results—2024 saw improved free cash flow—but still fell flat.

Shareholders have been vocal in their discontent. In June 2025, nearly 60% voted against Zaslav’s $52 million compensation package in a non-binding rebuke. The board, however, maintained the package with modifications.

About Face

By 2025, WBD’s market cap had halved since its debut. Investors were applying a “conglomerate discount”—valuing the whole company at less than the sum of its parts. HBO and Warner Bros. might be worth $X as standalone entities. CNN and Discovery Channel might be worth $Y. But bundle them together and the market values the whole company at something less than $X + $Y.

The solution became to split them (back) up.

Warner Bros. gets the prestige stuff Wall Street wants to pay for, along with a clean balance sheet and manageable debt, while Discovery Global gets everything else (CNN, sports networks, cable channels) that still generates cash flow. Warner Bros. gets valued like a growth streaming play. Discovery Global gets valued like a profitable legacy media cash cow.

One Merger After Another

Of course, splitting up assumes you stay independent, and Ellison’s acquisition offer flies in the face of this logic. It would create a significantly consolidated media outfit, controlling Warner Bros. and Paramount studios, HBO Max and Paramount+ streaming services, multiple cable sports operations, and major news divisions (CNN + a newly Bari Weiss-led CBS?), which would trigger all sorts of redundancies and restructuring. Mergers repeat themselves, once as tragedy and twice as farce.

Other potential suitors have been mentioned. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters noted that “big media mergers don’t have an amazing track record”.

What Comes Next

The WBD saga is ridiculous to me. I’ve long written about the rot at the core of the streaming model. The enshittification is real, and you can see it in the convoluted story above. What will have changed at the end of all this? The billions transferred from point A to B to C and back to A?

Portions of those billions will find themselves in wallets. Zaslav alone could still walk away wealthier than any of his predecessors—his contract includes performance bonuses worth up to $150 million.

But this is the studio behind Casablanca, The Matrix, Harry Potter, and countless films that define cinema. I’m not naïve. Hollywood is a business, and financial sustainability matters. But this isn’t responsible financial stewardship. There’s a cost to constantly reconfiguring these institutions based on quarterly market sentiment.

I can come to terms with the logic behind a split. Warner Bros is doing great, both artistically and financially, and perhaps independence can lengthen that streak. But the emergence of a sale option flies in the face of all that.

The house that Warner built is being torn down and rebuilt, or sold for parts, or both.

See you all again soon. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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There are several time honored *improvisated acting* classics. They’re everyone’s favorite pieces of movie trivia, clips that consistently go viral on the algorithm. Leo’s broken glass scene in Django Unchained. Heath Ledger’s Joker. Funny how?

Whether it’s a mishap in filming, a deviation from the script, a misplaced prop, or simply the spirit of God striking them, we love when actors improvise.

But what is it about improvisation that so titillates us? Why does an action on screen lose its sparkle if it happens to be written in a script, or if a director commands it? If Leo had been meant to cut his hand – if it had been scripted – would we admire the scene nearly as much?

Scripted is the operative, and ugly, word in this scenario. It stands in direct opposition to the beauty we find in improvisation. Today, I’d like to explore why that is.

On Artifice

Tom Gunning, in his ‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment’ essay about early cinema, talks about how film is underpinned by artifice. That is to say, film is artificial. We know this whenever we go to a movie. We know that it cost millions upon millions of dollars. That there was an extensive script, a cast of dozens of actors and hundreds of contributors, countless takes of every scene from every angle, all painstakingly chopped and edited together with soaring music and CGI matted on top.

In other words, we know that none of what we see on the screen is real.

Yet it moves us. It moves us enough that this newsletter exists and you’re sitting on your phone reading it. We see the artifice, suspend every ounce of disbelief, and allow ourselves to be taken somewhere beyond.

Film is wholly unlike any other piece of art. Unlike novels, songs, poetry, or paintings, which – even if they’ve had other hands touch and mold them – are the products of a single person or group.

This is the source of our love for improvisation. It’s the idea that an actor could so wholly be consumed by a character despite the artifice around them. The boldness of side-stepping a script or a director underpinned by millions of dollars. It brings peace to our mental model, because in our heads, why should artificial art be taken seriously? Why should the fake do anything for us? The improvising actor is the real actor, everyone else is pretending.

In an artificial art form, improvisation is suddenly real.

Improverty

But I’d like to push back on this idea. I think most instances of “improvisation moments” are grossly overblown, and they ignore the real nature of how a film comes to life.

A screenplay, for instance, is unique as a writing form because it is inherently unfinished. The screenplay is hollow in isolation, the same way a blueprint is hollow without its ultimate building. Screenplays are plans, and they change. They’re meant to ebb and flow. Sure, sometimes they are bibles. But most times, actors, as well as directors and writers, make them their own. Is every change made suddenly improvisation?

It is still talent that brings these visions to life. It’s just that the talent is less sexy when it’s written out, planned, and honed in advance.

It’s no different than improvisation in jazz. Yes, the music is spontaneous. But any musician will tell you that underneath are miles of chord progressions, intercommunication with other band members, and an entire legacy of trailblazers far beyond onesself. The spontaneity isn’t any one decision, but rather, the confluence of a million small decisions.

It’s interesting that so many view ‘method acting’ so lowly in comparison. As if going too far in the other direction – trying too hard to embody the character in a naturalistic way, at the expense of the self – ruins the magic too. We all want our heroes to stumble into their greatness, not work for it.

The magic that happens on a filmset, in my opinion, isn’t contained in the rogue decisions that are mythologized after the fact. It’s contained in the minutiae. In every tiny decision an actor makes, in every inflection they make with their dialogue, both scripted and spontaneous, just as the camera man pans, the editor cuts, and the score swells.

The magic of a film is that it exists at all. That something so artificial by nature can still soar so high.

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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Today is a Gift. That’s why it’s called:

It’s not hard to write a story set in the present – plenty of your favorite TV shows and movies do so – but it is hard to craft a story about the present.

The present is a moving target. What’s true now, whether it’s slang, tech, references, or political flashpoints, may be obsolete soon after.

The present is a singular point, and it is undefined. We don’t have the security that comes with the past, nor do we know how the future will proceed. We thus lack the reference points by which we define the now.

And finally, the present is real. We’re living in it. Even the most politically minded of pieces indulge in some form of escapism. There are few movies and books and stories about COVID because people didn’t want movies and books and stories about COVID.

The past is a foreign country:

When artists attempt to capture and critique the spirit of now, whenever that may be, I find that they default to three approaches.

Most often, artists look backwards into history. In excavating the sins of the past, they can caution us about what’s to come. History becomes the mirror. These are the biopics and period pieces that tackle capitalism, racism, imperialism, and sexism in its old forms to say something about their current manifestations.

Sometimes, artists look to the future. What happens if we keep going on like this? Alex Garland’s CIVIL WAR (2024) or Adam McKay’s DON’T LOOK UP (2021), for example, are projections of America’s current politics into a near-future.

Sometimes, artists imagine something else altogether. Through alternate realities, borne from science fiction, fantasy, or horror, they create dystopian points of comparison. I’m reminded of works like POOR THINGS (2023), GET OUT (2017), or THE HANDMAID’S TALE.

But discursively, all these dance around the present. The undiluted present seems relegated to other media. Poetry, photography, paintings, which are all snapshots or impressions of a moment. It’s rare to see narrative-based forms like films or novels dare to take on present politics. When they do, it’s often toothless, or worse, cringe.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025), Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, tackles the present in a way I’ve rarely, if ever, seen a film do. It begins from the very opening scene, where the revolutionary group known as the French 75 plots to free a group of migrants imprisoned at a detention center in California near the Mexican border.

From there on, every layer of the text speaks to the anxieties, absurdities, and realities of American life just months into the second Trump administration. The president is never mentioned by name, of course. Nor, for that matter, is there any mention of partisan politics, ICE, or Stephen Miller. But it is impossible to watch the film’s many images of migrant detention centers, hypermilitarized police forces, and protests in sanctuary cities, and not immediately think of the present. It is bold and unparalleled in this portrayal, especially at a time when Hollywood (among many institutions) shrinks away from its independence.

There are a lot of reasons why I loved this film. It is beautiful. It is exceptionally well acted, with one of Leo’s best performances in a long time and stand-outs from Teyana Taylor (been saying this since A Thousand and One) and Sean Penn. It’s maybe the fastest a 2-hour 41-minute movie has ever flown by for me.

But it’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER’s evocation of the present moment that elevates it to five-star territory for me.

The film takes a real stance on its subject matter. It does not merely hold up a mirror, saying “Look how bad!” and stop there. We know that! We don’t need a movie to tell us!

It goes further to avoid hero politics. Too often, films about societal injustices collapse systemic horrors into the triumphs of lone savior figures. We are saved by a single journalist, lawyer, trailblazer, revolutionary, athlete. This ‘great man-ification’ is comforting, especially when we look at history’s greatest figures. But films that simplify today’s oppression into singular morality tales about saviors (or villains!), I find at-best evasive and at-worst condescending.

No, PTA crafts an unflinching thesis about fascistic horrors, and about the revolutions necessary in fighting them. The film depicts these revolutions in all their forms. It depicts their promises and pitfalls, their inherent humor and sacrifice. It takes nothing too seriously, and yet offers the utmost respect to its subject matter. You can interpret PTA’s arguments in a lot of ways – and I’ve seen many disagree with the film – but the fact remains that there is an earnest argument.

Moreover, this argument is told through people. Everything it has to say about fascism, xenophobia, and revolution is crouched not in sweeping declarations or gestures, but in its heroes and their myopic stories. I don’t mean heroes in the heroic sense either. In classic PTA fashion, every character is something of a disaster. But they are beautiful and challenging characters, who live and love and fail, and it’s through them that we find ourselves.

All these combine to make the film feel timeless. Its time does not define it, but it does define its time. It does not shy away from historicization or thorny questions or complicated people. It does it all, and it does it with a masterful hand.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is out in theaters, and I couldn’t recommend it more. Five stars from me.

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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Last night was the 97th Academy Awards. I published my predictions last week, which you can see here.

Overall, I got 15 out of my 19 predictions right. I missed Best Editing, Actress, Animated Film, and Makeup/Hairstyling. (For what it’s worth, for three of those, the winner ended up being my should win).

My biggest mistake was underestimating just how well ANORA would do! The clear winner of the night, taking home 5 wins (with a record 4 Oscars for Sean Baker – who directed, wrote, edited, and produced the movie. No one has ever won 4 Oscars for the same film, and the last person to win 4 awards on the same night at all was Walt Disney in 1954).

ANORA was my third favorite film of the year, and I’m thrilled to see it win. It’s also a surprising entrant into the Best Picture family. Helmed by a young woman amidst no A-list stars, tackling the not-so-sexy topic of modern-day sex work, and striking a wide range of tones — equal parts exuberant, hilarious, and soul-crushing — it’s many things you wouldn’t expect out of a best picture.

In fact, in many ways, it’s the opposite of what many might criticize as Oscar Bait…

OSCAR BAIT (N.)

Osc·ar Bait || /ˈɒskər beɪt/

1. A film that appears deliberately crafted to appeal to the tastes and voting tendencies of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, often featuring the following:

   1. Historical settings, including (but not limited to) World War 2, World War 1, Antebellum or Jim-Crow America;

   2. Biographical subjects, such as legendary artists, politicians, activists, or athletes;

   3. Weighty grappling with appropriately controversial subjects, and the continual embrace of a ‘nuanced’ (often toothless) stance;

   4. Dramatic performances with lots of yelling, often helmed by singular, or paired, A-listers (often-white, often-male);

   5. Directorship, runtimes, period costumes and scores, and more that are impressive, but don’t push the envelope too far;

   6. Bonus points for films that are ‘love letters to Hollywood’, ‘genre-bending’, and beloved by Dads everywhere.

Oscar Bait defines films that feel engineered to not just receive, but win awards. And for a long time, these movies have been successful. GREEN BOOK, the 2018 Best Picture winner, is a textbook example of mediocre Oscar Bait. THE KING’S SPEECH (2010’s winner), also comes to mind. Every year, a few of these are nominated as well (Yes – A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is this year’s most egregious example).

I’m being glib with my definition. There are tons of incredible movies that you could very easily classify as bait. LA LA LAND, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, SPOTLIGHT, all are phenomenal films that are also almost certainly ‘Bait-ey’, as some like to call it.

What bothers me, though, is when the converse is applied. IF Oscar Winner, THEN Oscar Bait. That’s not always true.

An Evolving Species of Fish

ANORA is not Oscar Bait, for the reasons I listed earlier. THE BRUTALIST, another common recipient of the label, is not entirely Oscar Bait either. It’s a nearly-4 hour long convoluted story that is yes, weighty, and yes, features a good deal of yelling about the post-WW2 American dream by A-listers. But it’s hugely inaccessible, leans far more into its indie roots, and confounds and beguiles audiences (especially that second half) more than it charms. Hell, it would have swept this year if it was more like Oscar Bait, with a neater ending and a 1.5 hour shorter run-time.

Aside from a few glaring examples, when I look back at the past 15 or so years of Best Picture winners, I see a changing profile. Movies like PARASITE, EEAAO, MOONLIGHT, THE SHAPE OF WATER, and now ANORA do not easily fit the Bait mold.

The Academy is steadily diversifying. There’s a concentrated effort to widen the tent, to make it more modern, young, international, and diverse in race and gender (although likely not class).

And the 2026 Academy Award for Best Picture is…

Oscar Bait as a term is a condemnation of all that is mediocre. Moreover, it expresses a frustration with the rewarding of mediocrity. But I also think it’s growing outdated. There’s a reason A COMPLETE UNKNOWN walked away nearly empty-handed this year, as have MAESTRO, BELFAST, MANK in years past. Good, some even great movies, but ones we’ve seen before. And they are outclassed by other competitors that push the envelope and deliver something new and exciting.

ANORA is one of those, and it’s a reminder of why the Oscars are important. Both ANORA and THE BRUTALIST have each already crossed $40 million at the box office on shoe-string budgets; these numbers will certainly increase in the coming months. When good movies win Oscars, it’s good for movies.

By no means is the Academy perfect — it still gets more wrong than it gets right. But more and more, I believe we’re seeing inspired wins. So, whether it means changing the definition of Oscar Bait, being more judicious with the term, or throwing it out entirely – I think last night was a good night for movies.

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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With the Oscars coming up on March 2nd, I’ve finally finished my predictions for the show! I have two components for each category – who should win and who will win.

Last year I went 14/19, but this year … the truth is … I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.

At the end, for my best picture prediction, I’ve included a write-up explaining not only my pick, but also some background on how people look at the awards season leading up to the Oscars.

TECHNICAL AWARDS

Awards honoring below-the-line talent that makes film possible

Best Hair & Makeup:

• Should Win: THE SUBSTANCE

• Will Win: WICKED

Best Costume Design:

• Should Win: WICKED

• Will Win: WICKED

Best Production Design:

• Should Win: DUNE 2

• Will Win: WICKED

Best Visual Effects:

• Should Win: DUNE 2

• Will Win: DUNE 2

Best Cinematography:

• Should Win: NICKEL BOYS

• Will Win: THE BRUTALIST

Best Sound:

• Should Win: DUNE 2

• Will Win: DUNE 2

MUSIC: Best Original Score

• Should Win: CONCLAVE

• Will Win: THE BRUTALIST

MUSIC: Best Original Song

• Should Win: It Ain’t Me Babe (A COMPLETE UNKNOWN — not an original song but don’t care. No opinion amongst the nominees)

• WILL WIN: El Mal (EMILIA PÉREZ)

Best Film Editing:

• Should Win: ANORA

• Will Win: CONCLAVE

WRITING, ACTING, AND DIRECTING

WRITING: Best Original Screenplay

• Should Win: A REAL PAIN

• Will Win: ANORA

WRITING: Best Adapted Screenplay

• Should Win: NICKEL BOYS

• Will Win: CONCLAVE

Best Director:

• Should Win: RaMell Ross (NICKEL BOYS)

• Will Win: Sean Baker (ANORA)

Best Supporting Actor:

• Should Win: Guy Pearce (THE BRUTALIST)

• Will Win: Kieran Culkin (A REAL PAIN)

Best Supporting Actress:

• Should Win: Felicity Jones (THE BRUTALIST)

• Will Win: Zoe Saldaña (EMILIA PÉREZ)

Best Actor:

• Should Win: Adrien Brody (THE BRUTALIST)

• Will Win: Adrien Brody (THE BRUTALIST)

(… Although if Timothée Chalamet pulls off the upset, I’ll be thrilled)

Best Actress:

• Should Win: Mikey Madison (ANORA)

• Will Win: Demi Moore (THE SUBSTANCE)

OVERALL FILM AWARDS

Best Animated Film:

• Should Win: (no opinion)

• Will Win: THE WILD ROBOT

Best International Film:

• Should Win: ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Not nominated because not submitted by India, huge mistake imo)

• Will Win: I’M STILL HERE (Brazil)

BEST PICTURE:

• Should Win: THE BRUTALIST

• Will Win: ANORA

This feels like the most exciting BP race in a long time. Unlike past years (Oppenheimer, EEAAO), there’s no bellwether that has dominated the season, nor was there ever a front runner that lost steam to an unexpected dark horse (à la Parasite or Coda). Best Pictures generally capture some sort of package of wins as well, a combination of some (rarely all) of an acting, writing, directing, and sometimes editing win. EEAAO + Oppenheimer won big across the board, but Coda (screenplay + supporting actor), Nomadland (screenplay + director + lead actress), Parasite (screenplay + director), Argo (screenplay + editing), all showcase this.

Then there’s the precursor awards, beginning with the Golden Globes and continuing with the guilds (Producers, Directors, Screen Actors) and other shows (Critics Choice, BAFTAs). The Producer Guild’s Awards (PGA), since switching to a ranked-choice ballot system like the Oscars in 2009, has predicted BP correctly all but 3 times. Many also try to map the the voting bases of these bodies (Globes and BAFTAs being more international, for example), onto the wider Oscar voting base.

Then there’s campaign momentum. Front-runners like 2016’s La La Land or 2021’s The Power of the Dog can amass tons of nominations and start as early as July (with Cannes) as the obvious winner. However, voter fatigue can burn them out as the voting periods are staggered over months (both movies lost to candidates that generated tons of last minute excitement — Moonlight and Coda). Emilia Pérez began with the most nominations and a Golden Globe, but collapsed under controversies swirling around main actress Karla Sofía Gascón.

So what does that mean for 2025? I’m going with ANORA, which 2 weeks ago won PGA (!!!) and best director at DGA (!!! - beating out former frontrunner Brady Corbet for The Brutalist). It also won the Critics Choice Awards earlier. Sean Baker looking likely to win Best Director swings this for me, opening up room for a solid director + screenplay + potential editing win package (and maybe Actress if Mikey Madison edges out Demi Moore — also possible).

But CONCLAVE is the movie to watch out for, mounting its own last minute ascendancy. It plays better with international voters, winning BAFTA, and it just won with the actors at SAG this past weekend. It’s certainly the more palatable film between the two, feeling more like a traditional BP winner. In a crowded arena where it’ll almost certainly place top-3 on lots of ballots, it might rise to win in a preferential system.

Its biggest drawback is that it missed even a director nomination (only 3 films in the past 35 years have won BP w/o a best director). I also don’t see SAG + BAFTAs as a more compelling package than PGA + DGA + WGA + CCA. Especially with Ralph Fiennes seemingly MIA, Conclave looks like too little, too late.

But we’ll have to see!

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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Didi, A Real Pain, Monkey Man, Civil War, Carry-On, The Apprentice

#10: CONCLAVE (Dir. Edward Berger)

“Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts.”

Organized religion has been in crisis for decades now. Film has long captured this, whether it’s specific scandals (Spotlight) or the individual’s fight to find and maintain faith (First Reformed).

What makes CONCLAVE so stunning is its sincerity in its Catholic faith. Despite attempts at realism (including a Cardinal with a vape), there is a larger-than-life, holy, zealous, and devout feeling that courses through it all. It’s rife with grand religious iconography, both gilded and decaying. From the emergence of a messianic figure, to a moment of almost divine intervention, it’s impossible not to lean in.

These Cardinals really do believe, from head to toe, in the sheer enormity of what they’re tasked with. CONCLAVE is not about an absent God, like so much religious film argues. Rather, it is about the unending fight to best serve a God that has never left, even if we have shunned him.

#9: A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (Dir. James Mangold)

“Two hundred people in that room and each one wants me to be somebody else. They should just fuck off and let me be.”

A few entries below, I spend some time eviscerating the musical biopic (with a much better example of the genre: BETTER MAN). And while A COMPLETE UNKNOWN remains predictable, it still charmed me beyond belief. Anyone who knows me or this newsletter knows that I’m a Timothée Chalamet devotee, and I was wowed and inspired by what he conjured up in his performance as Bob Dylan.

Beyond that, though, I fell in love with this movie’s setting. A budding art scene across dingy New York streets, the promise and peril of folk music in the tumultuous American 60s, cigarettes and cool jackets and dive bar open jams. Iconography that, if a little toothless, still swept me up in its romance. You’ll leave the theater with a smile on your face, your shoulders hunched forward, hands stuffed in too-small-jacket pockets, muttering like Dylan himself, and you’ll imagine what it might have been like to go electric at Newport in 1965.

#8: ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Dir. Payal Kapadia)

“You have to believe the illusion, or else you'll go mad.”

One of my favorite aspects of film is its ability to take people, everyday people, their problems and monotony and laughable stresses, and not only give you a window into their lives, but also a magnifying glass. To show you something so beautiful and large within the small. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT is, accordingly, the most human movie I watched this year.

It’s the small that becomes so all-consuming in Kapadia’s film. And in Mumbai, no less, a city so large, so bustling, so teeming with mass, that these struggles would otherwise be swallowed whole. Instead, a couple looking for a spot to love with impunity, or a nurse with nothing more than an idea of a husband, these struggles escape Mumbai’s tedium and catapult into orbit. It’s a gorgeous movie that takes its time and breaths. And as you watch, you, too, breath with it.

#7: CHALLENGERS (Dir. Luca Guadagnino)

“For about fifteen seconds there, we were actually playing tennis. And we understood each other completely. So did everyone watching. It's like we were in love. Or like we didn't exist. We went somewhere really beautiful together.”

Movies can evoke a lot of feelings, but too often we forget that at their core, they can be fun. CHALLENGERS reminded me of that: a capital-F Fun time at the movie theater. Life-or-death stakes as you fling through the air, at one point literally as a tennis ball, smacked back and forth by hot tennis players over a hypnotic techno score.

Of course, you can’t talk about this movie without talking about its eroticism. Dripping with sexuality and desire and sweat, tennis transforms into something more. An expression of domination and submission, a complex desire between three opponents who can’t resist one another’s orbit, and a rich intimacy that hangs like fog over an outstretched net. Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist all combine to bring the saturated, vibrant, sexual world of CHALLENGERS to life.

#6: BETTER MAN (Dir. Michael Gracey)

“Good evening everybody! My name is Robbie Williams. This is my band, and for the next two hours, YOUR ASS IS MINE!”

The musical biopic has long sought to humanize the larger-than-life, but they rarely, if ever, succeed. To the audience and to the eyes of history, their subjects are no longer just people. Cliché sequences – a fall out with bandmates, a relentless drug problem, a complicated break-up – biopics wave these moments in your face and expect you to believe, suddenly, that Elton John, or Freddie Mercury, or (yes) Bob Dylan, is like the rest of us. If one swallow does not a summer make, then these moments does not a Regular Joe make.

But if these figures are something other, then BETTER MAN (a movie that eviscerates superstar Robbie Williams’ life), takes it the other way. Robbie Williams is no longer a man. He is unevolved, a force of nature, animalistic, both abused and abuser. He is a chimp, and here, he is portrayed as such. A literal CGI monkey.

Laughable as it may seem, it proves to be an incredible choice that elevates this to one of my favorite movies of the year. Dazzling musical sequences, shocking images of a painful life, and an endless well of earnestness and artistry that had me tearing up by the end. And best of all, I can’t stop listening to the guy’s music.

#5: THE OUTRUN (Dir. Nora Fingscheidt)

“United Kingdom is an island off Europe. Orkney Islands is an island off United Kingdom. Westray is an island off Orkney and Papa Westray is an island off Westray.”

Cinema has long grappled with addiction. Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting, Beautiful Boy. It’s a disease primed for the screen, for its images are so striking. Needles in arms, bottles in brown bags. Haggard eyes, gaunt faces. The romance of a high, the gut-punch of a relapse, and above all, the narrative fulfillment of sobriety.

It’s striking, then, that THE OUTRUN, a movie about an addict (played masterfully by Saoirse Ronan, who should be this year’s Best Actress winner), stuns especially where it diverges from alcoholism. The grandeur of the Orkney Islands, the elemental terror of its winds and storms, the beautiful isolation of its wilderness and people. Herein lies Rona’s story, not in a bottle. And it all plays out in non-linear fashion: the genesis, destruction, and rebirth of a life, all spliced and woven together atop a primordial landscape. Two forces of nature meet: Rona’s alcoholism and the Orkney Islands, and I was left transfixed by how they dance together.

#4: NICKEL BOYS (Dir. RaMell Ross)

“How many people you know done that, El? There's four ways out of Nickel. Serve your time -or age out-. Court might intervene -if you believe in miracles-. You could die -they could kill you-. You could run. Only four ways out of Nickel.”

We can learn about history all we want in textbooks and museums. But its most potent form lies in memory, from those who saw and underwent its horrors. As we lose generations who lived history – the civil rights activists, holocaust survivors, nuclear bombing victims, veterans, and more – we lose something inherent in our understanding of these tragedies. We can only aggregate and approximate those memories moving forward.

NICKEL BOYS is more than a film, then. It’s a memory of a horrible segment of American history, shot brilliantly from a first-person POV. The cruel irony of memory. Ugly, ugly, ugly history, trauma, the kind of thing you never want to remember. But it plays alongside beautiful images of everyday monotony, the kinds that manage to sear themselves into your brain even in the worst of times. Light twinkling through tree branches, crumbs of cake on a plate, paint strokes on a porch.

The final song in the movie is titled Tezeta (Nostalgia), and it encapsulates perfectly what NICKEL BOYS is about. Flotsam of nostalgia in a sea of horror.

#3: ANORA (Dir. Sean Baker)

“Oh, stay jealous, babe. Stay jealous, honey. Jealousy is a disease, remember that, Diamond. I'm just gonna go chill in my mansion or whatever, you know, no big deal!”

ANORA is a night out and a chemical high, captured in all its spectacular glory and inglorious crash. Three movies in one, each of which collapses seamlessly into the next. A come-up that drips with romance and neon lights, electric in every way, speaker pounding, heart aflutter. Then the thick of the night. The chaos, the incomprehensibility of glazed eyes and too-loud conversations in ears and zombies frantically trying to make sense of it all. Laughs and hijinks and absurdity. And finally, the sun comes up. Eyes squinting in bleached white light, hangover setting in, stomach churning, nervous system on fire. Who left to pick up the pieces but you?

That’s ANORA, and its balance of all this – its many tones, colors, shades, sounds, atmospheres, and chapters – is nothing short of masterful.

#2: THE BRUTALIST (Dir. Brady Corbet)

“No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.”

A few weeks ago, I explored the question ‘What is the Great American Movie?’ I ended with a perhaps unfulfilling answer: there are lots of valid contenders, but more importantly, your pick reveals what you believe to be central to the American ethos.

THE BRUTALIST is a monumental entrant into this conversation. The story of László Toth’s journey enters an already crowded field unpacking the American immigrant experience. Many movies have shown us how assimilation corrupts. How America’s rivers and industry run thick with immigrant blood, money, bodies, and tears. And how this sacrifice can ultimately give way to success. The first half of THE BRUTALIST follows these beats with devotion. But it’s the daring second half that catapults it into one of the bests of the year. An utter deconstruction of the immigrant story, one that lays bare all its ugly, dizzying, and brutish (hah) horror.

What might this pick as Great American Movie say about you? That the American epic is not neat nor satisfying. That it’s incomprehensible. That it does not fit snugly into a film nor should it. That the very idea of an American epic is a construction and bastardization unto itself.

#1: DUNE: PART TWO (Dir. Denis Villeneuve)

“You shall die. You may see. The beauty and the horror.”

An exercise: Take your favorites of every medium of art. The songs, movies, books, and paintings that are woven into your DNA. If you could summarize the commonality that makes them your favorite, what would it be?

The answer won’t give you a singular ingredient, but it reveals what sings to you. Two people with the same favorite movie can fall in love with it for different reasons. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then great art can sparkle in a lot of eyes.

DUNE 2, by far my favorite film of the year, embodies mine: I love big art. Big swings and big worlds, big images capturing big emotions, big characters grappling with big stakes. Art that’s so big that you can’t help but surrender to it, art that rubs out every last detail of the world around you, including yourself, until you’re wholly at its whim.

Images from this film – insect-like figures floating atop blood orange haze; black blood, gums, pupils, teeth, all flashing across a stark white gladiatorial arena; eruption of sand as a skyscraper-sized worm crashes through a dune – I disappeared in front of these. Monstrous ambition, religious fanaticism you’d kill for, a bitter fight for existential survival. Galactic machinations, millennia of schemes, visions of billions set ablaze. Ideas and made-up words and planets that, at-face value, are so easily laughable. Silly to sit with, let alone with a 20-pound ticket at a plush theater in London.

But here, they are presented in such stunning sincerity and grandiosity that you can’t help but hold on tight to your armrests. How beautiful that we buy into something like this, the grandeur of its vision and enormity of its world? DUNE 2 is a monument to all that is big.

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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Francois Truffaut (legendary French director) said the opposite: “Every film about war ends up being pro-war”.

So … which is it?

A24’s Piece of the Pie

A trailer recently dropped for a new A24 movie – WARFARE – about the Iraq War. I’ve seen a lot of criticism online, which is surprising because it looks like a rather straightforward American war movie. A front row seat to life as a U.S. soldier in Iraq: the existential dangers, the moral ambiguities, the commitment to (and questioning of) duty and honor. And throughout, a lot of gunfire, a lot of trauma, a lot of death.

Why the criticism? Perhaps because WARFARE is being released by A24, a name many see as synonymous with an indie/arthouse scene that resists movies like this. Perhaps because it’s about the Iraq War, hugely unpopular and only growing increasingly so.

But more than anything else, perhaps it’s this question: What makes a war movie anti-war? Does WARFARE, and other movies like it, succeed?

The Spielberg:

First, the Spielberg: war movies can be anti-war. To me, the strongest argument for this is because of the viscerality of depicting violence.

For most, war is a far-off reality, one which we read and hear about but likely won’t see upfront. If seeing is believing, then showcasing war’s realities must serve as a deterrent. Why else would TV reporting of Vietnam have amplified the anti-war movement in the U.S.? By depicting the brutality of the conflict, the senselessness of the violence suffered by both sides, viewers came to question the premise of it all.

Movies like Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, The Hurt Locker, and more, are thus anti-war because they depict this horrific violence, and viewers walk out with a greater understanding of what war really means. This is true no matter the war, whether consensus deems it as just and necessary (World War 2, for example), or senseless and tragic (Vietnam or Iraq, perhaps).

But there’s a counter-argument that Truffaut gets at, that any cinematic depiction of war serves to romanticize it. That putting war on the big screen, even the most tragic depictions of death and trauma, still serves to valorize and glorify war. Attaching a narrative, a plot, a storyline, all this creates spectacle and intrigue and entertainment (not to mention commercial value) out of tragedy. TV journalism in Vietnam differs because it exposes realities, it doesn’t recreate representations of those realities.

Part of this perspective, to me, also stems from a fundamental belief that all war is unjust (Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to solve that question in next week’s newsletter). In other words: one might argue that depicting war as bad is not truly anti-war. Instead, ‘Anti-war movies’ merely advocate for ‘good’ war.

Mass Consumption of Atrocity

David Ehrlich’s review of The Zone of Interest starts with a prelude about Holocaust cinema, which I think applies here:

Holocaust cinema has so implicitly existed in the shadow of a single question that it would no longer seem worth asking if not for the fact that it’s never been answered: How do you depict an atrocity? The most urgent and indelible examples of the form offer equally simple yet perfectly contradictory responses. Documentaries like “Shoah” and Alain Resnais’ “Night and Fog” suggest that you don’t, while historical epics like “Schindler’s List” insist that you must. If the latter argues that seeing is believing, the former maintains that seeing wouldn’t help — that some things are too unfathomable for the human eye to comprehend from a distance, and can only hope to be understood by their absence.

War movies demand a similar question. Is war so monstrous that we can only understand it by its periphery? Where it is absent?

Or is it only by seeing it up-close and personal, its stark and hollow contradictions, the havoc wreaked by it all – is this how one conveys atrocity?

Somewhere in Between:

Personally, I wouldn’t go so far as Truffaut does. I think there are war-movies that are unequivocally anti-war, and that the mere fact that they portray (and stage) simulations of the violence does not take away the searing impact they have. Films like Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and Saving Private Ryan (and I’ll admit to not being the biggest war movie guy) – they’ve all impacted me.

That said, there’s plenty of war cinema that gets it wrong. Even in their depiction of atrocity, they function as high-octane, entertaining thrillers first. There’s also the long-standing military-entertainment complex in the United States, where the Dept. of Defense works hand-in-hand with productions to supervise scripts, lease over equipment as props, and ensure accuracy and information-transfer. Can productions that take DOD money, cooperation, and supervision, truly be anti-war?

WARFARE looks to be pretty good, but it takes a lot more than death and violence to cement it as something truly anti-war. We’ll see when it releases sometime in 2025.

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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But let’s say there is a Great American Novel. What, then, is the GREAT AMERICAN MOVIE (GAM)?

There are a few picks that jump out. The Godfather? Citizen Kane? Quintessentials. But the deeper I dig into the question, the more I find it reveals.

Lawrence Buell, in his book The Dream of the Great American Novel, argues that the GAN is not a trophy to be won. Rather, the GAN is a genre, with four primary archetypes:

1.) The Reluctant Master Text: A text continually reinterpreted across time & media to become an archetypical work, regardless of whether that was the author's intent

2.) The American Dream: The life story of someone who strives – successfully or not – to achieve prominence from obscurity

3.) The Romance of the Divide: Explorations of divisions – sectional, ethnic, racial, or more – ranging from interpersonal intimacy to multiple generations

4.) Improbable Communities: Stories that collect different cross-sections of characters who become microcosm of society, acting and interacting to constitute an image of “democratic” promise or dysfunction.

Here, the question gets more interesting. It becomes clear how someone who argues Gatsby as the GAN might differ in their opinion on the genre from, say, someone who argues Beloved. But surely this is a cop-out. Everyone is right? All Great American Art slots neatly into one of these four categories? The end?

A Uniquely American Cinematic Experience

We could sit here and sift a hundred movies into each of those categories, and debate endlessly which ones fit where and which ones are better than others. But if we are to take the term seriously – a singular, Great American Movie – then a different question emerges. One’s pick for the GAM reveals America means to them. What is that character and essence of America that a GAM must embody?

Is America a country of wanton greed? Of riches and capital and ambition and ruthlessness? Is the image of Daniel Plainview silhouetted by an erupting oil well in There Will Be Blood? Is it the glitz and glamor and hollowness of wealth in Citizen Kane?

Is there an America that doesn’t float atop centuries of oppression? Interracial tensions exploding in Do The Right Thing? The eradication of the indigenous in Dances With Wolves? The tooth-and-nail fight that is the American immigrant experience in The Godfather (1+2)?

Is America a country of expanse? Of untold possibilities? Is it about epic contradictions and dreams of the West in Once Upon a Time in the West? Is it about America’s place in the stars in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Is America a shaky tranquility underpinned by excruciating violence? Is it Travis Bickle stalking ugly streets in Taxi Driver? Anton Chigurh’s sociopathic havoc in No Country for Old Men? Mobs and crime in Goodfellas? Callous violence inflicted on the rest of the world in Apocalypse Now?

Is America about its people? Raving masses of them, all ambitious, foolish, indulgent, bigoted, loud, garish, violent, hopeful, idealistic. All idiots along the way? Mad mobs of people who assemble into some teeming mass that we know as Americana? Is America’s essence contained in the cast of characters of Pulp Fiction? In Fargo? In Magnolia?

And maybe the Great American Movie is devoid of intent at all. Maybe it is the Great American Movie simply because droves of Americans deemed it to be so. Is the essence of America communicated in the underdog grit of Rocky, in the bloody bravado of Rambo, in the sheer escapism of Star Wars, in the simulated terror in Jaws?

So … What is it?

All this to say, a GAM conversation is a silly exercise as it pertains to getting the *right* answer (hence I, very bravely*, am not sharing my personal pick).

But the conversation is valuable because of this inquiry, in revealing what one believes is the salient idea of America. A dream or a nightmare? An ethos or a contradiction? An opportunity or a shackle? Through it all, there are great films that strive to capture it. By identifying with these films personally, perhaps one finds what they identify with in the greater whole.

* I won’t offer a singular pick, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that PTA is the great American director, and the sum of his filmography is what encapsulates a GAM the best (but of course that’s my contention. I’m just a first year newsletter writer).

A Personal Note:

I know it’s been a while since I’ve sent out this newsletter (June 13th for those counting, so 6 months ago 😬). But! I want to start it back up! Likely not the weekly I used to do, but something! It’s a big time of the year. The awards shows are beginning, nominations are being released, everyones on their award campaigns, the big heavy-hitter contenders are coming out. What a time for da movies. Thanks, as always, for subscribing and reading!

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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Sony Pictures, one of the world’s biggest film studios, just announced its purchase of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

If you haven’t been to an Alamo theater, I can wholly recommend it. A great selection of movies, awesome viewer experience, in-theater dining and drink, and more.

But that’s not just me either. Alamo Drafthouse has become North America’s 7th largest theater chain, receiving more than 10 million attendees annually and 4 million loyalty members. Unfortunately, in a now-classic story, they had to file for bankruptcy in 2021 during COVID, got bought by a private equity firm, and have been exploring a sale ever since. And have just gotten one!

Remember the Alamo

This sale is a big deal. In my opinion it’s a great lifeline to a great brand. It’s good for Sony, the only one of the big studios to not have its own streaming service. With how saturated streaming has gotten, it’s smart of Sony to continue exploring licensing content and now alternative distribution channels (like theaters!). And despite fears by Alamo-goers, I think Sony will be good stewards of the brand. 

This news also opened my eyes to a fascinating period of Hollywood history that continues to make waves. The reason Sony’s purchase is a big deal is because of a landmark Supreme Court case: United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948). This case not only changed the entire structure of Hollywood, ushering in a new era of independent filmmaking, but it also dramatically changed antitrust law in the U.S., setting legal precedent that still shapes how we regulate big companies. 

Down by CaseLaw

Until the 1940s, major Hollywood studios, the largest being Paramount, controlled not only film production but also a vast portion of movie theaters. This is known as ‘vertical integration’, where a company owns multiple key stages of its operations in order to cut costs. This by itself is okay, and is a common business strategy for expansion. It gets tricky when 1) a company merges/acquires another company along a stage of its operations and 2) this integration allows the firm to dominate a market, potentially harming consumers. 

For example, if a large car manufacturer buys a large tire manufacturer, and uses that ownership to hurt customers (predatory pricing, raising rivals’ costs, etc.), that could hurt the competitiveness of the car/tire market. Not good. You could fill an entire library with case law, analysis, and history about vertical integration and antitrust.

But all of that hinges on US v. Paramount.

United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948).

Thus, ownership of theaters meant that studios dominated the entire film industry, leading to anti-competitive practices such as block booking (forcing theaters to show a studio’s entire package of films rather than individual films). Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided that this vertical integration violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act (yay AP US History!). In a standard known as the Paramount Decree, held for nearly seven decades later, the Department of Justice (DoJ) prevented film production companies from owning exhibition companies (theaters).

We Still Don’t Antitrust You

So … How is Sony buying Alamo Drafthouse?

In 2018, the DoJ began a review of ongoing decrees, including the Paramount Decree. They found that the entertainment industry had changed enough where it was  "unlikely that the remaining defendants can reinstate their cartel"and terminated it.

Since then, only Netflix and Amazon have purchased theaters, with the former owning two and the latter owning one. These are primarily prestige theaters showcasing originally developed films to 1) appease famous filmmakers and 2) receive awards contention (which often requires at least a brief theatrical window). This makes sense – the theater business isn’t the hottest in the world. It’s no wonder Disney hasn’t tried to buy AMC, for example. 

BUT! That’s what makes Sony’s purchase so surprising! It’s a resounding commitment to the future of the theater industry. That too for such a promising brand, one that is growing rapidly and commands an impressive commitment from its core base.

So What?

Bigger picture, though, U.S. v. Paramount essentially codified that although vertical integration itself is not illegal per se, the purpose or intent behind the business strategy (essentially whether the firm seeks to dominate the market) is what matters. It’s an idea that still dominates antitrust litigation in the United States. Lina Khan (current chair of the Federal Trade Commission, the main enforcement agency of civil antitrust law) famously rose to prominence from her influential piece for the Yale Law Journal, arguing that antitrust law (and vertical integration violations specifically) should be applied to Amazon and other big tech companies.

The idea of vertical integration is alive and constantly evolving, but has its roots all the way back to the moving pictures of the 40s. As for Sony’s purchase, it showcases to me not only the degree to which the industry has changed since the 40s, but also the ways in which policy, regulation, and law continue to shape the world.

If you liked reading this…

You might like these other posts I’ve done about film’s intersection with history/government!

See you all again soon! Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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My journey with DUNE has stretched for years and years now. I remember leaving Part 1 and just thinking I can’t believe I have to wait 2.5 years for the next one. Despite the (literally) countless rewatches of Part 1 over those years, it wasn’t until I was seated in the theater for Part 2 this past Sunday (and I heard that opening Sardaukar rumble: POWER OVER SPICE IS POWER OVER ALL) that I truly realized it was here.

DUNE 2 REVIEW

And thus, it’s here! DUNE: PART TWO is out in theaters everywhere! My review is short and sweet: go watch it on the biggest screen you can find. The comparisons people are making are apt – this is the Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, The Dark Knight of our time. It’s a monumental achievement. A thrilling blockbuster that’ll have you at the edge of your seat for every second. It’s an improvement on PART ONE in every possible way (and given my love for Part One, that’s high praise). 

Rating: 10/10

I’ll stop there, because my typical spoiler-free review would just be me gushing over the movie for another 500 words, and no one wants to read that. Instead, I want to write about Denis Villeneuve’s work in adapting DUNE, one of the most influential science fiction novels ever, and one that by all accounts is unadaptable. I think Villeneuve’s adaptation of the book was masterfully done, and it offers a lot of interesting lessons in how we translate art from medium to medium.

ON ADAPTATION

A lot of people think of good adaptations as being defined by what the translator keeps the same. This is what makes a faithful adaptation. Accordingly, deviations from the source material are treated as aberrations, as betrayals. The job of the translator, especially from the perspective of fans of the source material, is to perform a 1:1 translation. 

1:1 translation, though, is impossible. The same way language translators are forced to make decisions in their translations – which vocabulary to use, whether contexts carry over, conveying foreign ideas and structures – adaptors must do the same. 

Take the new Percy Jackson show, for instance. It promised to be a more faithful adaptation of the book than the oft-maligned 2010 movie. With Rick Riordan more involved, and a streaming TV series format, they promised that each season would be a novel, and each episode would preserve as much detail as possible.

And what happened? In its quest for consistency, it lost out on what’s most important: its quality as a TV show. The Percy Jackson books are not good because of every single detail in the book; they’re good because of the epic adventure it brought to its readers. The Harry Potter movies miss out on heaps of details from the books, but it doesn’t matter: they maintain the sense of magic that draws readers to the books.

MEDIUM RARE

Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan, in his essay "The Medium is the Message," argues that the form of a message determines how that message will be perceived. The scope of that argument is beyond this newsletter, but the fact remains different media are fundamentally different in how they convey ideas. Efforts to ignore this are what lead most adaptations to peril. 

I argue that a good adaptation is defined not by what the creator keeps the same, but what they change. What betrayals do they make of their source material? And how do those betrayals culminate in a preservation of the original ideas and intent?

DENIS DUNE-NEUVE

Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of DUNE is a masterful adaptation of its ideas. The changes he makes from the novel are nothing short of brilliant. Anyone who has read the book knows how much of it is told through internal monologue, through lengthy descriptions and expositions. Major scenes, like the battle of Arakeen and Paul’s first sandworm ride, are given mere sentences while entire chapters are devoted to a single thought Paul has. A faithful adaptation thus becomes a bad one.

Denis’ decisions about Chani’s and Jessica’s characters, in particular, are what bring this movie to life. Taking Book Paul’s internal monologue about the inevitability of the impending holy war and offloading it into a conscious choice on Jessica’s part (making her a steering hand towards evil) is a phenomenal choice. Making Chani the moral center of the film, the stand-in for the audience as we see Paul radicalize the rest of the Fremen, simultaneously brings her agency and makes clear Paul’s transformation (I think she’s the most important character in the movie).

All these things, and more, make DUNE 2 a great movie and a great adaptation. It seems like purist DUNE fans might bristle against these changes, but I’ve seen a lack of that response. Why? Because Denis gets the ideas right. He gets it. He has often called adaptation an act of betrayal, but to me, this is an act of love. 

In making his movies different from the books, he succeeds in conveying what Frank Herbert always meant to get across to his readers. I think he’d be proud.

See you all again next week. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.

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