Author: Greg
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The Royal Hotel
Green | 2023 | Australia 99.99% wonderful, and rather unexpectedly so. Unfortunately, it does not stick the landing but everything else (including and especially Julia Garner) is borderline perfect, prompting you to question your own assumptions at every turn. So Australian in idiosyncratic but meaningful ways.
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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Besson | 2017 | France Third or fourth watch. Criminally underrated (I understand the criticisms but I wholeheartedly disagree with them). The ‘Big Market’ sequence lives rent free in my head for both its inventiveness and execution. Just a relentless delight every time I get to revisit it.
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Anora
Baker | 2024 | USA | 35mm Sublime. I will have more to say but THIS IS CINEMA. Mikey Madison is incredible. If Tangerine was proto Sean Baker and The Florida Project was Realised Sean Baker, this is Actualised Sean Baker. An artist at the height of his powers.
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Heretic
Beck & Woods | 2024 | USA I really enjoy Sophie Thatcher but sometimes a movie is so exactly what you expected that it feels almost redundant to have watched it.
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Remembering Jerry West
You knew him as the silhouette in the NBA logo and one of the greatest to ever play the game; I knew him as West Virginia’s favourite son and a personal hero. However you knew Jerry West, the news of his death has likely touched you deeply. There have been two times in my 39 […]
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A Great Cup of Coffee
I am a lover of coffee, though the origin of this love is difficult to meaningfully trace. While working the most romantic of the various jobs I’ve held in my life — cinema projectionist — in the summer between my Junior and Senior years of college, I was handed my first cup of coffee on […]
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Ten Years of ToVa
On this day ten years ago, I launched this blog: Toward Vandalia. That’s me (in my younger and more impressionable days) in the photo above, smiling at Rupert, who helped me with post photos in those early days of the site. In early 2023, I wrote a post outlining how the blog has changed through […]
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When Does the Work Day Begin?
We recently relocated to another suburb of Sydney – one which is farther away from the CBD (where I work) than our previous home was. My commute used to involve only an 11min train ride, which never afforded much of an opportunity to read. Not only am I a slow reader (so I might get […]
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A Silly Little (Very Important) Photo
I snapped this photo five years ago today. At first glance it is wholly unremarkable. However, it’s assumed unexpected – and evolving – importance to my work over the years. It will be immediately familiar to anybody who has seen me present on design thinking. I initially stopped to take this photo because the scene […]
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An Open Letter to West Virginia University President Gordon Gee
President Gee, I am distressed by virtually every proposed element of the West Virginia University “Academic Transformation” as announced by the University on August 11. These proposals include the elimination of the MS and PhD Mathematics programs; the discontinuation of all World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics programs; the elimination of the MFA Creative Writing course; […]