Overstweets
Bookmark this page for almost-daily breaking news, essential links, and post-it notes.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve made progress on massive site maintenance project. I’ve restored and improved a bunch of posts, including:
- Coming Home to Ohio: A conversation with Over the Rhine’s Linford Detweiler on Over the Rhine’s new double album
- Gangs of New York: original Christianity Today Film Forum coverage
- The inaugural Looking Closer blog post: Narnia casting news
- Eternal Sunshine of the celebrity interview: My conversation with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman
- A memorable complaint from a reader
I’ve also restored a bunch of my earliest film reviews, including these:
Today I opened my new director-approved blu-ray of the Oscar-winning animated feature Flow, and I discovered a sheet of stickers celebrating the film’s colorful cast of critters.
All I can think about now is how much I want Criterion stickers to become the new normal. Re-release Kiarostami’s The Koker Trilogy with a sticker of that trudging donkey from Where is the Friend’s House? that I can stick on my laptop case alongside the donkey from Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar. I want the Agnes Varda box, but with stickers of Varda at different stages of her career. Give me Monsieur Hulot and a backdrop of Paris so I can move him around a Playtime stage. Imagine the possibilities for Obayashi’s House! Imagine Johannes from Dreyer’s Ordet reaching out to you from your stainless steel water bottle!
Then again, Blue may not be The Warmest Color for stickers . . . unless they’re stickers of Julie from Kieślowski’s Blue complete with her accessories: the blue chandelier, a blue lollipop, some scrolls of sheet music that she can throw in a garbage bin.
I saw this trailer for Fackham Hall on the big screen a couple of months ago, and I’ve been talking about it ever since. Did I dream it? Why isn’t it on YouTube? It made me laugh more than any trailer I’ve seen in a long time. Well, today, it has arrived online. I hope the movie delivers on the promise of this glimpse!
FYI: Criterion is currently having a 50%-off flash sale.
And if you subscribe to The Criterion Channel, you may have received a coupon that you can add to sweeten the deal.
Reader, I did not hesitate.
As a young film journalist, I encountered Diane Keaton only once, briefly, as she ran down a hallway in The Four Seasons — Beverly Hills, while multiple film junkets were going on in the hotel. I remember being startled as she passed me. She was wearing a bathrobe and had giant curlers in her hair. I cherish that memory. I seems like the perfect way to run into her.
The Godfather, and The Godfather, Part II; Sleeper; Love and Death; Annie Hall; Reds; Twin Peaks (episode director); Father of the Bride; Elephant (executive producer); Something's Gotta Give; The Family Stone; Finding Dory (voice of Jenny). Keaton was a singular screen presence: stylish, radiant, comic, joyful. Her performances, while seemingly effortless, drew our attention even in crowded scenes. She first got my attention in Sleeper (which I saw before I saw The Godfather), and she had a lot to do with why it immediately became one of my all-time favorite comedies, and has remained so (in spite of the necessary Woody Allen disclaimers).
I’m stunned and saddened, as are so many of the world’s film lovers, by her passing. May she rest in God’s grace and peace. Thank you, Ms. Keaton, for being a bright light in the world.
Read: "Diane Keaton was Nobody's Fool"
It’s the Devil’s way now
There’s no way out
You can scream and you can shout
It’s too late now
Because
YOU HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION
PAYING ATTENTION
PAYING ATTENTION!
— Radiohead’s Thom Yorke over Johnny Greenwood’s raging guitars on Hail to the Thief in 2003
I never thought this f$&@er would come back for us. I got lazy and wasn't paying attention.
— Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) over Johnny Greenwood’s climactic score in One Battle After Another in 2025
Don’t go dark on me, Bob.
Ages ago, in Twitter’s glory days, before a tech-billionaire neo-Nazi got involved, my handle was Overstweet. I abandoned that platform. It cost me my largest, most rewarding online community, but I refuse to be a reason readers show up on the doorstep of democracy-smashing villains. I’m on Bluesky now, and I’m excited about this new adventure: Overstweets on my own website! Bookmark this page and check back regularly!