Charles Dickens’ line from “A Christmas Carol” is probably the most famous example of the phrase “dead as a doornail,” but it’s certainly not the only one. Shakespeare used it in Henry IV Part 2: “Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.” An unnamed poet used the idiom for the first time in print in a poem published in 1350, but it’s still not uncommon to hear it used today.
“Dead as a doornail” obviously means dead, deceased, definitively not alive. But why a doornail and not just a nail? All nails are dead by their nature of being metal, right? So why even use a nail at all? Why not “dead as a door” or “dead as a rock”? Those are dead, too. What makes a doornail specifically deader than other dead things?
There’s a surprisingly interesting answer to that question. As it turns out there really is a good reason for specifying a doornail to convey being really, truly dead.
YouTube creator Malcolm P.L., who mostly makes videos about the history of armor, shared an explanation as well as a demonstration of what a doornail actually is:
So it turns out that a doornail isn’t just a nail in a door, but a nail that cannot be removed and reused. Way back when, nails were made by hand and quite valuable. People would salvage and repurpose nails whenever they could. The way doornails were bent and driven into the backside of a door made it virtually impossible for them to be reused as a nail.
So not only are doornails dead simply because they’re nails, but because their future potential for any other use is also dead. They are doubly dead, if you will. Extra deceased.
How many other idioms do we commonly use without knowing their full origins? Let the cat out of the bag? The whole nine yards? Spill the beans? Get someone’s goat?
Language is so fascinating. Time to do some Googling.
Mariah Carey’s uber famous “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has been a staple of the holiday since the late ’90s. Who can remember the last time they entered a department store without trying–and failing– to match that impossible whistle tone during the final chorus? It’s about as synonymous with Yuletide cheer as Rudolph, only sassier.
Well, apparently a (still unidentified) bar in Texas has had quite enough of the holiday pop hit. Someone there taped an unceremonious piece of white paper next to the jukebox that stated plainly “Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You will be skipped if played before Dec. 1. After Dec 1 the song is only allowed one time a night.”
I mean, the whole “when to start playing Christmas music” debate has been a source of contention for years. I personally cringe when November 1 rolls around and carols permeate the radio stations, but clearly this bar had an even stronger stance. The paper was tweeted by a critic for National Review. From there, the tweet went viral.
Those familiar to retail had a shared trauma response. “If you haven’t worked retail then let me explain.The song plays 50 times a day on the store radio from November 1 (maybe earlier) to December 25. It’s hell,” wrote one “victim.”
If you haven’t worked retail then let me explain.
The song plays 50 times a day on the store radio from November 1 (maybe earlier) to December 25.
Another (soon to be divorced) man wrote: “I need to print this out for my wife,” which received the prompt response of “How about you let your wife enjoy things she likes before she decides you aren’t one of those things?” Yup, holiday drama is already coming in hot.
One Twitter user responded with “Is this the war on Christmas I’ve heard about?” which caught the attention of Carey herself.
Carey’s response? In a word, iconic. The pop singer posted a photo of herself from a 2015 ad for the mobile video game “Game of War,” completely decked out in battle armor and holding a sword. Move over Xena, there’s a new warrior princess in town. And she’s ready to defend her Christmas kingdom.
Another wrote “me on my way to fight for the queen” accompanied by a video of Carey on a jet plane and singing yet another holiday song. That’s some kind of allegiance, if you ask me.
me on my way to fight for the queen 👑 🎉 🎄⚔️ 🐑 🦋 🐑 🌬
Carey posted another video on Instagram, showing three jack-o-lanterns sitting in a row with the words “it’s not time.” Scary, sinister music plays and a bell tolls. Carey, wearing a sparkly red gown and sky high heels sneaks in through a door holding a giant candy cane the size of a baseball bat (you might see where this is going). With a swing of her candy cane, Mariah destroys one of the pumpkins, changing the message to “it’s time” while her famous-slash-infamous song plays. If a war on Christmas is what they want, a war on Christmas is what they’ll get.
This got even more fan responses, including the person who wrote, in all caps, “MARIAH INVENTED CHRISTMAS.” Not historically accurate, but the sentiment is palpable.
If you think that’s something, check out the other Twitter user who wrote “SHE IS CHRISTMAS SHE IS SANTA SHE IS THE GODDAMN TREE.” Seriously, don’t mess with Mariah fans.
Though that one bar in Texas might have won the battle, the victor in this War for Christmas is still Queen Mariah, most definitely. She’s already promoting her new Apple TV special “Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues,” following up last year’s “Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special.” Which might be maddening to some, but to many, it embodies a fun, cheeky, more modern way to invite the holiday spirit. And hey, at least you know TV specials don’t play on repeat while you do your Christmas shopping…
Tucker Carlson generally makes headlines for his adversarial stances, including this week’s admission that he’s never actually understood critical race theory, despite complaining about it for the better part of a year. Strangely enough, however, news has surfaced surrounding a medical procedure that reportedly went down on that the same day of that declaration. Page Six reported in their “We Hear” column that Tucker underwent Carlson reportedly had been ailing for “several weeks,” and one of his producers drove him to the hospital on Tuesday night following election night coverage. He had surgery early Wednesday and popped back on the Fox News airwaves by Wednesday evening, and throughout all of this, he never missed a show.
Vice reports more details via its Motherboard blog, which reported that Tucker described the incident as “one of the most traumatic things that’s ever happened to me in my whole life, ever.” Details on what prompted the severe back pain remain unclear, but here’s more from Vice, including statement from Fox News:
“Tucker Carlson had emergency back surgery yesterday and did the show anyway. He thanks all those who tuned in and watched closely.” But before Wednesday night’s broadcast of his Tucker Carlson Tonight program, Carlson–who by all accounts doesn’t drink or use drugs–spoke in detail on set to his production team about what he experienced, and said that because he was treated with intravenous fentanyl and other powerful painkillers, he now understands America’s opioid crisis in a deeper way.
Perhaps we’ll hear more from Tucker on-air, although one thing is clear: if Tucker wants to talk about it, he will talk, and if he doesn’t (as with his vaccination status), then we won’t hear anything at all.
Wes Anderson movies: we love to rank them, don’t we, folks? It’s both one of the most hack listicles a movie writer could write, but also dishonest not to write. Sure, I could pretend I’m above it; that I’m better than ranking Wes Anderson movies, that I can simply enjoy things without assigning numbers to them. But let’s be honest, I’m 100% not above that. I’ve seen them all, I have strong opinions, and pretending otherwise would just be an affectation. KNIFE FIGHT ME, COWARDS! Meet me behind the internet at dawn.
It’s fair to say that I have a love/hate relationship with Wes Anderson movies, as I do with most things smug and overeducated (for the simple reason that I’m both but I try not to be). I get about as fed up with his precious, fussy, practiced kitsch as any inveterate Wes Anderson hater. Yet I still find myself mostly enjoying all his movies, even when parts of them press hard on my gag reflex. Once you reach a certain level of liberal arts education I believe you’re simply powerless to resist Wes Anderson’s bullshit.
Or maybe it’s that he’s usually just vulgar enough — think the vagina painting in Grand Budapest Hotel, Max Fischer bragging about handjobs — that I forgive him for being so twee, and for probably being the reason I ever learned the word “twee.” Whatever you think of him, he’s one of the most easily parodied directors working, possibly the most easily parodied director that ever lived. He wears his tics on his tweed sleeves, with an instantly recognizable style (a “shtick,” one might even call it), and a list of interests and affinities that seems to carry through all of his movies.
Having seen them all at least once, here is an incomplete list of things that Wes Anderson loves:
Mustaches
Uniforms
Warm colors
Centered frames
Mid-century modern styling
Precocious children
Yellow text
Overwrought prose
Little kids falling in love
Lists
Child-like drawings
Sons desperately trying to please emotionally withholding father figures
Precocious boys desperately trying to please female authority figures whom they are also horny for
Berets
India
France
Rascals
Hucksters
Bureaucratic jargon
Motorcycles with sidecars
Trains
Harpsichord music
German convertibles
Social clubs
Pun names
Girls with too much eye make-up
Men with interesting noses
Men with bandaged noses
Man servants
Pets
Funerals
Now then. Let’s begin:
9. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Fox Searchlight
This was always one of my least favorite Wes Anderson movies, so I rewatched it this week to see if maybe I had been wrong about it. While there are definitely things to love, it still feels somehow both overlong and incomplete, even clocking in at barely 90 minutes.
Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Adrien Brody (the unique nose crew, I call them) play three brothers who have come to India following the death of their father (Bill Murray, in the briefest of flashbacks) for a journey of self-discovery and also to track down their mother, played by Anjelica Huston. The Darjeeling Limited is the name of the train on which they travel.
A trip through India on a train is, visually, a perfect Wes Anderson setting: colorful, retro, and orientalist, but there’s something shallow about the whole endeavor. The scene in which the boys try to save three Indian boys from a rushing river and one of them drowns seems to confirm this shallowness. A little boy drowning as an emotional anchor for Adrien Brody’s disaffected rich guy with daddy issues? It mostly just ends up being offputting. Irrfan Khan gets 15 seconds of screentime and then the boys just sort of carry on trying to figure out their family, with a father we never really learn much about and a mother who has fled to Tibet to live at a monastery.
What the hell was the deal with that mom, anyway? It seems like Anderson may have had some kind of emotional reckoning planned but couldn’t quite make it come together. So instead we’re left delving the emotional issues of a family that feels remote and a little esoteric. I don’t quite relate and just sort of leave feeling, “Rich people sure are weird, aren’t they?”
8. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Vince Mancini
Moonrise Kingdom is perhaps Wes Anderson’s most mixed bag. A story about a delinquent-ish “khaki scout” who goes AWOL with a raccoon-eyed Francophile girl on the fictional New England island of “New Penzance” (always with the fucking pun names), Moonrise Kingdom is a film with a promising opening and a glorious crescendo at the end that forces us to watch a lot of pre-pubescent love in between. The ending, set amidst a massive storm as foreshadowed by The Flood, an opera the local children are staging, is so magnificent, and yet the love story it bookends feels like a Hallmark movie sponsored by Stella Artois.
Coming on the heels of The Life Aquatic, Darjeeling Limited, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, three movies that feel like Anderson doing his best to expand his repertoire, Moonrise Kingdom always felt to me like Anderson going back to the well. The story feels a little like the Royal Tenenbaums subplot where Margot and Richie run away to the museum stretched into an entire film. Only it doesn’t work as well, because Margot and Richie we knew as adults. Sam and Suzy are just two little kids.
And yet… those actors. That setting. The ending. It’s hard to hate entirely. Wes Anderson’s ability to stage a genuinely heartfelt finale always saves him in the end.
7. Isle Of Dogs (2018)
Fox Searchlight
Another movie where a kid with a drawn-on mustache falls in love with a kooky blonde? Jesus, man, see a shrink.
This movie came out just three years ago and yet I barely remember anything about it, other than that it was still mostly a good time. Animation does have a freeing effect on Wes Anderson. In some ways, it even feels like his true form. He can just stick characters exactly where he wants them for the sake of his picture-book compositions without having to worry about constraining the actors and making their performances seem awkward or stilted.
In that sense, Isle Of Dogs was fun, it looked cool, and it had lots of dog jokes, which is something you can get away within a movie called “Isle Of Dogs.” Still, it felt more like a bloated short than a feature in its own right. I’m not sure if that’s a failing on Wes Anderson’s part or on the film business as a whole, for their fairly rigid notions of what constitutes a feature. Isle of Dogs clocked in at 90 minutes, when the content only justified about 70.
And that would’ve been great! The world could use more 70-minute features.
6. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
Focus Features
Life Aquatic is arguably the hardest film on this list to fit into a ranking. In one sense, it feels like Anderson taking big swings, making admirably bold narrative choices, even if they don’t always work out. It’s also the only Wes Anderson movie that, on some level, I plain don’t get. Even with The Darjeeling Limited, I think I have a sense of what he was trying to accomplish.
I have some very basic questions about Life Aquatic. When is it even supposed to be set? The film tells the story of Steve Zissou, clearly inspired by Jacques Cousteau (the red cap, the “Zissou Society”) but also with Zissou intended as the down-on-his-luck Salieri to a more famous Cousteau-type played by Jeff Goldblum. Clearly, the sets and tech and costumes are all 1970s-inspired, but Zissou is also a deliberate anachronism. He’s exactly the kind of character who would have out-of-date clothes and equipment. Does that mean The Life Aquatic is set in the eighties? The 90s? In 2004, when it came out? Does it matter?
There’s also the stop-motion animated animals. In an otherwise realistic-ish, live-action film about dueling sea explorers, the sea creatures themselves are almost purposefully unrealistic. The animated “sugar crabs,” the “crayon ponyfish,” “electric jellyfish,” and Zissou’s Ahab-esque obsession, the “Jaguar Shark,” they all feel a bit like Jim Henson-esque psychedelia. Which is… fine? Except the rest of the movie mostly isn’t that. And Wes Anderson doesn’t really seem like a “drug guy.” Meanwhile, there are real orcas and more real-looking dolphins (that the dolphins aren’t very smart or useful is one of Life Aquatic‘s better running jokes).
Anderson also seems to have just let the actors do whatever silly accent they wanted, from Owen Wilson’s antebellum southerner (supposedly a modern man from Kentucky) to Willem Dafoe’s German to Cate Blanchett’s Brit Girl Friday. Seu Jorge plays an ever-present intern who sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese, a character who seems to exist solely for vibes. TheLife Aquatic combines expensive, incredibly complex and refined production design with a story that feels like a group of excitable high schoolers are making it up as they go along.
I enjoy the mushroom-trip qualities of Life Aquatic, its exuberant surrealism, its deadpan jokes — but every time it tries to do scenes with life-and-death stakes it falls flat. Are we even watching the film’s objective reality or is this all filtered through Steve Zissou’s addled mind somehow? Wes Anderson should probably just take the Dogme 95 pledge and never film another gunfight or murder.
This week I finally started reading Zweig’s The World Of Yesterday: Memoirs Of A European. Written by a Jewish writer from Vienna who was born in the Belle Epoque and lived to see two world wars, it consists of romantic musings by an author who grew up in a place that no longer exists. Zweig, who killed himself in 1942, is so eloquent but open-eyed about his childhood, both nostalgic for and critical of a time period that seems so many generations past but that he actually lived through. It’s romantic and heartbreaking, and reading it made me feel like I finally understood exactly what Anderson was going for in Grand Budapest Hotel. It also brings into focus all the ways the movie falls short.
Visually, it’s certainly one of Anderson’s best. It’d be hard to think of a more ideal setting for his particular talents than an Alpine spa in inter-war Europe. The story is framed around a present-day monument to a European writer, presumably a fictionalized Zweig. Tom Wilkinson plays this author at one point, narrating one frame of the story, with Jude Law as the author’s younger incarnation, pressing aging hotelier “Mr. Moustafa” (F. Murray Abraham) for his story in the post-war years in another frame. This frame in turn leads into a flashback to Mr. Moustafa as a young Lobby Boy named Zero (played by Tony Revelori) being mentored by the hotel’s squirrely concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). This is back in the 1930s, when the bulk of the story takes place.
The F. Murray Abraham frame is by far the strongest. Abraham has the perfect face and voice for conveying that sense of intense sadness and loss, while filtering it through a mask of elaborate Victorian manners and restraint. The abrupt way his tale of M. Gustave ends — “What happened to him? Well, they shot him, of course” — hits like an emotional gut-punch (Anderson is generally very good at endings, truly a rare skill).
Yet GBH is also, unfortunately, glib and cutesy. M. Gustave actually seems a lot like Mr. Norris, a vain and effeminate huckster in 1930s Berlin created by another inter-war writer, Christopher Isherwood, who likewise lived through those decadent years that gave us the Nazis. Like Norris, Gustave is a courtly bullshitter, and there are times Anderson gets so lost in Gustave’s flowery nonsense that it drags down the film. There’s a lengthy subplot about Gustave inheriting a piece of famous artwork from a widow played by Tilda Swinton, leading to a wacky prison break and eventually a droll shoot-out, in a film that should be neither wacky nor droll. Farcical, maybe, but not zany.
Meanwhile, Zero has a fake mustache he draws on every morning and his girlfriend (Saoirse Ronan) has a birthmark on her cheek shaped like Mexico. Probably the two most infuriatingly cute elements of any Wes Anderson film. Couldn’t we have gotten more of Jude Law and F. Murray Abraham? Of Edward Norton’s reluctant fascist? You can occasionally see what Grand Budapest Hotel is going for, and it’s wonderful, but when it misses it’s excruciating.
4. Bottle Rocket (1996)
Columbia Pictures
I had this ranked much lower last time I wrote these rankings, but I rewatched it again and… I don’t want to say I was wrong about it before but I think I was unfair in some ways? Maybe I was overly influenced by the number of people I hear say this is their favorite Wes Anderson movie. Which to me is mostly just another way of saying “I liked him before he was cool.”
That aspect of it aside, Bottle Rocket is, essentially, Wes Anderson’s origin story in the business. It all started with a short film written by Anderson and Owen Wilson:
Mr. Wilson and Mr. Anderson, who had met in a playwriting class at the University of Texas at Dallas, were sharing an apartment when they decided to make a movie. Their original plan was to shoot a 16-millimeter black-and-white feature. Thirteen minutes of film and $10,000 later, they were broke. So they decided to call what they had of “Bottle Rocket” a short and submit it to the Sundance Film Festival, where it was shown in 1993. –New York Times, February 4, 1996
After that, nothing happened for a while, until they eventually found a champion in Peter Bogdanovich’s ex-wife and former producing partner, Polly Platt.
The screenwriter L. M. Kit Carson, a friend of the Wilson family, had sent the “Bottle Rocket” script and a video of the short to the producer Barbara Boyle, who in turn sent the material to Ms. Platt. Ms. Platt, a successful producer and production designer, was then the executive vice president of Gracie Films, Mr. Brooks’s production company. Under an arrangement with Columbia Pictures, the studio had agreed to finance a low-budget feature of Mr. Brooks’s choice. When Ms. Platt found “Bottle Rocket,” she knew she had the movie.
“Mr. Brooks,” of course, was Oscar-winner, Simpsons executive producer, etc James L. Brooks. This is one of those stories that seems to illustrate why any good movie ever getting made at all is damn near a miracle. Wes Anderson, now recognized as precocious and polished an artist that ever lived, managed to scrape together $10 grand to make a short, managed to get it into Sundance, and even after all of that, he was lucky that he just happened to know someone who knew a producer who knew another producer who worked for James L. Brooks. Who, luckily, loved the short and agreed to expand it into a feature. A feature that ultimately grossed just over half a million dollars in 49 theaters, having been seen by dozens of people. Don’t kid yourself, this making movies shit is hard.
Aaaanyway, the movie. Bottle Rocket was Anderson’s first feature and lowest budget, and because of these logistical challenges, it’s clear that he didn’t have the time and money that he would have on later films to meticulously plan every composition. For other filmmakers, this might be a bad thing, but with Wes Anderson, it might be a benefit. He didn’t have the time or money to be so fussy. Characters seemed to have more freedom to just act naturally, rather than try to fit themselves into some elaborately choreographed camera move.
The feature version cost just $5 million to make and James Caan, who had a small part, was the most famous actor in it. Caan plays “Mr. Henry,” an older eccentric, idolized by Wilson’s Dignan, who Caan’s character later double-crosses (they originally wanted a director for the role, Tarantino or Oliver Stone or Peter Bogdanovich). If Bottle Rocket had been made after Wes Anderson was already famous you can imagine them spending at least half that $5 million just on the sets for James Caan’s character alone. Instead, Anderson had to convey Mr. Henry’s faux worldiness with a shell necklace, one stuffed ocelot, and a sort of modernist-looking couch. Mr. Henry ends up seeming like a character out of a Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) movie, or early Danny McBride. That makes Bottle Rocket feel a little like Trader Joe’s Wes Anderson, made back when he was an artiste but still living in Texas, with caviar tastes on a burrito budget.
The rest of the plot is about Dignan trying to convince Luke Wilson’s Anthony, whom he “breaks out” of a mental hospital (Anthony was always free to go) in the first scene, to do harebrained heists with him. As always with Wes Anderson, there is a decided lack of stakes in the heist scenes. In real life, it would’ve probably ended with Dignan getting shot 37 times by Texas cops.
Mostly, Bottle Rocket feels like what it is: a promising first effort by a future auteur more than a masterpiece in its own right. It’s strong on memorable images and enjoyable dialogue, but you also get the sense Anderson and the Wilson’s spent a lot more time thinking about what would be cool for these characters to do than who they were.
I hear Royal Tenenbaum asking “Characters? What characters? All I saw were a bunch of little kids running around in costumes,” so many times while watching Wes Anderson movies that I wonder whether the line actually grew out of Anderson’s own self-criticism.
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Fox Searchlight
It seems to me that there are two types of Wes Anderson movies, Grand Statement Wes Anderson and Playtime Wes Anderson. He tends to alternate between the two. Fantastic Mr. Fox, coming just after The Darjeeling Limited definitely feels like Playtime Wes Anderson, an attempt to do something light after something heavy. And it works. Wes Anderson’s style might not be the ideal fit for Indian boys drowning or the rise of Fascism, but it does seem very well-suited for a story that asks “What if there was a rascally fox?”
There’s also an obvious advantage to Wes Anderson doing animation: he doesn’t have to worry about actors struggling to seem natural while moving about in highly choreographed ways for very specific compositions. In that way, Fantastic Mr. Fox combines the breezy casualness of Bottle Rocket with the elaborate compositions and ornate production design of The Life Aquatic. There isn’t much about Fantastic Mr. Fox that has necessarily stuck with me, thematically, but it sticks out in my mind as a fun time at the movies, and that’s enough.
2. The French Dispatch (2021)
Fox Searchlight
In my mind, this is my favorite Wes Anderson movie. The only reason I don’t have it higher is that I just saw it, and without any distance from it it’s hard to know what how much of it will stay with me five or six years from now.
But right now, Bill Murray’s character’s exhortation to his staff at the French Dispatch, “Whatever you write, just try to make it seem like you did it on purpose” is echoing around my head the way Royal Tenenbaum’s line about little kids in costumes has been for the last 20 years. It’s another perfect Wes Anderson line that doubles as an apt criticism of Wes Anderson movies. I spent half of Life Aquatic wondering “did he mean to do that?”
Told in the form of newspaper sections separated by title cards, The French Dispatch is a kind anthology, a collection of shorter stories a la The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs. Like Buster Scruggs, the French Dispatch‘s episodic structure feels more revealing of its creator than a single storyline would’ve been, bringing all of their pet themes into sharper focus. It’s genuinely horny where some Wes Anderson movies are merely cute, vulnerable where others deflect, heartfelt where others are dry, and above all, it’s a map of Wes Anderson’s three primary obsessions: trying to fuck, trying to please a withholding father figure, and trying to please an authoritarian mother figure (who you also want to fuck).
Because it’s told in the form of a newspaper with a team of overly-enthusiastic writers, it’s also something of a love letter to overwrought prose. Wes Anderson is never funnier than when he’s satirizing overwrought prose.
1. Rushmore (1998)
Buena Vista Pictures
1. Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Buena Vista Pictures
It’s always tough for me to choose between Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums (both co-written with Owen Wilson). They represent the yin-yang of Wes Anderson obsessions. Rushmore is about a precocious, artistic youth. Royal Tenenbaums is about precocious, artistic youths all grown up. Rushmore is about a protagonist trying to screw his teacher. Royal Tenenbaums is about a withholding father figure. Rushmore has two of Wes Anderson’s best characters, Max Fischer and Herman Blume. Royal Tenenbaums has the other two, Royal Tenenbaum and Eli Cash.
Tonally, Rushmore is Wes Anderson’s best movie. It has an anarchic spirit that some of the others lack. Max Fischer is such a perfect shithead that he might be the world’s only punk rock Little Lord Fauntleroy. It has some of Andersonia’s most memorable images, like Bill Murray ascending a diving board with a scotch and a cigarette, and Max Fischer’s towheaded protege (remember what I said about Wes Anderson loving manservants?) hocking a looch on the hood of Herman Blume’s car. The exchange “These are OR scrubs, Max.” “Oh, are they?” might be the best dumb joke in any Anderson movie.
Then again, Royal Tenenbaums has Richie Tenenbaum’s tennis meltdown. It has Royal Tenenbaum shitting on his daughter’s play, and it has Eli Cash the hack novelist, easily the best Wilson-brother character in the Anderson canon.
The phrases “what my book presupposes is, maybe he didn’t?” and “Characters? What characters?” are basically seared into my brain for all eternity.
Certainly, both have their flaws. Royal Tenenbaums is stilted at times, and I probably could’ve done without the Dalmatian mice. It has characters your most obnoxious friend has probably dressed as for Halloween at least once. Rushmore is gimmicky at times, and the Scottish bully feels like he escaped from a different, worse 90s comedy. Tenenbaums drags more in the middle, but crushes harder in the ending.
I go back and forth, but as of today, I’m calling this fight a draw.
Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.
Collecting and sometimes simply drinking Scotch whisky might seem like a rich person’s game. But it really isn’t. Sure, you can spend hundreds (and even thousands) of dollars on rare, hard-to-find, ancient bottles of single malt Scotch. But even if you don’t have a butler who brings you 45-year-old whisky from The Dalmore, there are more than a few bottles of Scotch whisky for you to love.
Today, we’re going to turn our attention to bangers below $60 (and some significantly lower) to help you get into the style from Scotland. For this list, we asked some well-respected bartenders (and drinks experts) to tell us the best Scotch whiskies (not simply single malts) below $60. Keep scrolling below to see the bottles they picked and then hit those prices to try them for yourself.
Speyburn 10
Speyburn
Sue Stia, bartender at TPC Jasna Polana in Princeton, New Jersey
Speyburn 10 Year Old is my value pick. It’s a classic Speyside single malt that is easy to drink. It’s medium-bodied with hints of toffee and butterscotch and a sweet, long finish. It’s has a classic flavor for a reasonable price. What could be better?
Here’s my shoutout to my fellow female Scotch drinkers. I’m going with Jane Walker. Being on the sweeter side, it still has a great smoky flavor with warm vanilla notes. It’s a very easy drinker.
Plus, I love the Jane Walker First Women Grant Program. It’s awesome to see that coming from the spirits industry.
Glenfiddich 12
Glenfiddich
Christopher Rodriguez, lead bartender at Lucy Bar in Yountville, California
I do not purchase scotch often, but the Glenfiddich 12 year is a simple base scotch that is easy to drink and definitely does not break the bank. It’s filled with traditional Scotch flavors like vanilla, caramel, and candied orange peel.
Glenmorangie 10
Glenmorangie
Mike Fayad, general manager at Hearth and Hill in Park City, Utah
Glenmorangie 10 Year is hard to beat. Also known as “The Original”, I think it’s a very solid scotch that is not out of the price point for cocktails, but it’s also very pleasant to drink on its own with notes of honey, vanilla beans, and orange zest.
If you like an affordable, true to its self scotch, look no further than Bank Note 5-year. Bank Note is a blended Scotch whisky that carries all the lightness of a blended scotch while also introducing a strong nuttiness that gives it character beyond the name brands like Dewar’s or Monkey Shoulder. Bank Note comes in at a price between $20 to $30 in store, and packs all the punch you’d want for either cocktails or just to sip on.
This one is not so much about the taste but more about the nostalgia and family. This takes me back to my granny’s Alabama kitchen watching her cook up a storm and enjoy a drink. My granny loved to drink cheap Scotch with ice and water. Over the years the ratio of Scotch to water increased while the water decreased.
Still, as cheap as it is, it’s loaded with flavors like oak, vanilla, and toffee.
Highland Park 12: Viking Honour is a great, moderately priced Scotch whisky. It has a dried fruity flavor since it was finished in sherry casks with a lovely nuttiness you can’t ignore. It’s good for beginners looking to get into the world of Scotch whisky.
Glenmorangie X
Glenmorangie
Nicholas Karel, director of bars, lounges, and beverages at Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans
Glenmorangie X is a new offering from Glenmorangie. It was made for mixing but is still great for a value sipper. It’s full flavors like orange peel, fudge, and a gentle fruitiness with exceptional smoothness perfect for mixing or slow sipping.
Aberfeldy 12
Aberfeldy
Robert Kidd, head bartender at Le Cavalier in Wilmington, Delaware
Aberfeldy 12 Year is great scotch at an approachable price. The highland scotch has soft notes of spice and rich dried fruits. A bar spoon of blanc vermouth and a twist of grapefruit can take this scotch to a wonderful place.
Laphroaig 10
Laphroaig
Alex Barbatsis, head bartender at The Whistler in Chicago
I often want something redolent with peat when drinking scotch. So for a “budget” single malt, I’ll often pour myself some Laphroaig 10 Year Single Malt. It’s reasonably priced and scratches that dank funky Scotch itch with notes of peat, ocean brine, and mellow oak.
Johnnie Walker Black is what I would call a ‘bang for your buck’ whisky. It consists of about forty different whiskies, both grain and malt whiskies, from all the regions of Scotch whisky with Islay being the most prominent. It’s simple and effective with notes of barley, citrus, and warming smoke.
If I had to pick a bargain scotch, it would probably be the standard Ardbeg 10, which is still $50 in my part of the world (Southern California). I love smoky and peaty, and the Ardbeg 10 is so smoky while also having a lovely sweetness.
Monkey Shoulder Blended Scotch
Monkey Shoulder
Nicholas Bennett, beverage director at Porchlight in New York City
I love the Monkey Shoulder if I am looking for a well-rounded scotch that won’t break the bank. This blended malt whisky is made from three single malt distilleries: Kininvie, Glenfiddich, and The Balvenie. There are notes of orange zest, vanilla, spicy and floral flavors that can be just as pronounced using this whisky in a cocktail as sipping it neat or on the rocks.
My selection is Dewar’s 15. It’s a smooth scotch with a slight burn. I usually drink scotch straight but was amazed at the flavor that came out when I added a few drops of water. It is sweet and spicy at the same time but with a smoky finish. Notes of honey, vanilla, and dried orange make for a refined blend.
Enjoyed best on the rocks with one large ice cube.
As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.
While four days after Halloween might seem a pretty unusual time to announce a Halloween special, I’m choosing to assume Marvel just wants to give us a full 361 days to process how exciting their next project is going to be which, to be fair, is pretty exciting. According to a Variety report, Gael Garcia Bernal (Bad Education, The Motorcycle Diaries, Coco) has officially signed on to star in a Marvel Studios Halloween special scheduled to hit Disney+ next fall. While the exact details of the special are being kept under wraps, sources say that Bernal could be playing a character based on Marvel’s Werewolf by Night.
First appearing in in Marvel Spotlight #2 back in 1972, Werewolf by Night is a moniker given to two different characters in the Marvel universe: Jack Russell and Jake Gomez. Both iterations of Werewolf by Night — or Werewolf, for short — are gifted with the power (or curse) of being able to transform into a werewolf at will while still remaining in control of their mind and body.
According to Variety, the special is slated to begin filming in 2022 with intent to hit the streaming service next Halloween. Interestingly enough, Moon Knight is also slated to come out around this time next year, and considering Moon Knight first made his appearance in an issue of Werewolf by Night, it seems likely we could get a surprise Oscar Isaac cameo in it.
Until then, Marvel fans can rejoice in knowing several other MCU entries are headed to the streaming service in the next few months, including Hawkeye starring Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld on November 24. In addition, there are also series based on She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel on the way.
Considering Thundercat dropped his monumental funk fusion albumIt is What It Is in April of 2020, the pandemic and ensuing lockdown orders did not allow for the Los Angeles bass virtuoso to get his well-deserved promotional trip around the sun. But the interest in his album has been unwavering, considering it won Grammy Award for Best Progressive R&B record and his current tour has been going steadily.
Last night, he made a long-awaited appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and he played the first single off of the album, Dragonball Durag, with Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste on the grand piano. It felt like a future-jazz lounge remix of the track, with Batiste moving from elegant to totally nuts on the ivories and Thundercat shifting similar wavelengths on his oversized electric bass and vocals.
‘Cat was dressed in short Gucci tiger shorts and a sparkling Gucci blazer. He also had a Gucci pin on his red beanie covering his green dreads pulled back in a ponytail. Sensing a theme here? Look, when you’ve waited this long to come on The Late Show, by all means, wear all the Gucci you can.
Watch the performance above and check out Thundercat’s remaining tour dates below. Tickets available here.
11/06 — New York, NY @ Terminal 5
11/07 — Boston, MA @ House of Blues
11/10 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
11/11 — Toronto, ON @ History
11/14 — St. Paul, MN @ Palace Theater
11/16 — St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
11/17 — Tulsa, OK @ Cain’s Ballroom
11/19 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Downstairs
11/20 — Dallas, TX @ House Of Blues Dallas
11/23 — Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
11/27 — Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Expo Hall
11/30 — Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
12/03 — Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
12/04 — Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
12/05 — Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory Boise
It Is What It Is is out now on Brainfeeder. Get it here.
IPA is unarguably one of the most popular beer styles in all of American craft brewing. There’s a whole world of IPAs out there to try — New England, West Coast, double IPAs, and so on — featured at over 9,000 breweries and counting in the US alone. In that sea of IPAs, you’ll find some heavy hitters. But you’ll also see plenty of “beginner brews” for hop newbies and anyone who has historically hated on bitter beers.
There’s no hiding the fact that the IPA can be a bit daunting for newcomers to the scene. The classic IPA is often loaded with floral, spicy, resinous, and bitter hops — which can seem a bit abrasive for some palates. Many opt to stay with their tried-and-true lagers, pilsners, ales, or stouts. But the palate is a fascinating thing… it naturally wants to expand and grow.
To help out the IPA curious, I decided to select eight well-known beginner IPAs and blindly taste and rank them. The best part? While these are beginner beers, they’re good enough to keep drinking for years to come. And they’re all available almost anywhere.
Our lineup today includes:
Ballast Point Sculpin
Brewdog Punk IPA
Firestone Walker Union Jack
Deschutes Fresh Squeezed
Cigar City Jai Alai
Bell’s Two Hearted
Harpoon IPA
Founders All Day IPA
Time for some IPAs!
Part 1: The Taste
Taste #1:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, I found notable hints of guava, ripe pineapple, mango, sweet, tangy orange zest, and piney hops. The flavor was centered around the aforementioned tropical fruits as well as some more tangerine and passion fruit are also thrown into the mix. The hop presence is fairly bitter but tempered well by the fruity flavors.
Taste #2:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
A lot is going on with this beer’s nose. The problem is that it’s all dank, resinous pine, and very little else. Maybe a little bit of citrus zest sneaks through, but it’s mostly pine tree car air freshener. The palate is loaded with piney, bitter hops, and slight caramel malts, lemon, and tangerine.
Sadly, the flavor is totally dominated by bitter, piney hops.
Taste #3:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
The nose is a complex bouquet of lemon peels, orange zest, grapefruit, sweet malts, and slightly, floral hops. Drinking it reveals notes of wet grass, caramel malts, tropical fruits, citrus zest, and a nice, slightly bitter, sweet finish. It’s a great example of malts and hops working in perfect unison. I would come back for another sample of this beer.
Taste #4:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
The aromas on the nose are surprisingly light with hints of citrus and maybe a little caramel malt presence but that’s really it. It doesn’t have much going on here at first sniff. The flavor is slightly better (but nothing to get excited about) with some more citrus peel flavors and grapefruit along with slightly floral, bitter hops. Again, it’s fairly muted in the flavor department.
Taste #5:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Taking a moment to nose this beer, I found scents of a vast, lush pine forest, slight bready malts, and orange peels. Overall, it was pretty basic and unexciting on the nose. The palate revealed a little more flavor with grapefruit, orange zest, and bitter, piney hops taking center stage.
All in all, a decent but fairly boring beer.
Taste #6:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
The first aromas I found were those of freshly baked bread, caramel candy, ripe pineapple, passion fruit, and slight, piney hops. Sipping it revealed sweeter, caramel malts, orange zest, lemon peel, grapefruit, mango, and a wallop of dank, resinous pine that brings everything together well.
Taste #7:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
This beer is highlighted by aromas of lemon zest, ripe grapefruit, tangerine, light caramel, and floral, spicy hops. On the palate, I found bready malts, caramel, light lemon curd, orange zest, grapefruit, and slightly floral, bitter hops at the finish.
Overall, a sweet, well-rounded IPA that I would happily try again.
Taste #8:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Complex aromas of citrus zest, wet grass, caramel malts, grapefruit, and slight pine greeted my nose right away. The palate is filled with hints of mango, guava, pineapple, citrus peels, slight caramel malts, and slight hoppy bitterness.
From my notes, “This is a very complex, well-rounded, fruity IPA.”
Part 2: The Ranking
Now comes the part of this story you’ve all been waiting for: the rankings. If you diligently read through the first half of this story, you were treated to my tasting notes. Notes that were created by merely nosing and tasting the beers. I had nothing else to indicate which beers I was tasting so the results are purely from my own personal taste.
Keep reading to see how they all stacked up. Where did your favorite beer land on this list?
There’s a reason this is called “All Day IPA.” This sessionable IPA is low in alcohol is available year-round. You can crush this crisp, well-balanced, refreshing beer during the fall, winter, or literally any time of year. Not shockingly, it’s one of the most popular IPAs in America.
Bottom Line:
While there’s no doubt this beer is crushable and easy to drink, the flavors are just a little too bland for my taste.
Made the same way since its inception in 1993, Harpoon IPA is brewed with 2-Row Pale, Victory, and Caramel malts along with Apollo, Chinook, and Cascade hops. Brewed like an English IPA, it’s known for its hoppy, citrus-centric flavor.
Bottom Line:
If you enjoy your beer to be mostly pine and citrus, this is the beer for you. It’s fairly muted in the flavor department otherwise.
This is one of the most popular IPAs ever brewed. It constantly finds itself at the top of IPA lists. Named for the Sculpin fish that’s known for its sting, this fruity, citrus-filled beer is well-known for its bitter, hoppy bite.
Bottom Line:
While this is a beginner IPA, it’s also a bit aggressive in the hops department. You might want to try one of the other beers on this list first and work your way to this one.
Brewdog has really made a name for itself in the last decade with its short-run TV show and its expansion into the US market. The brand’s flagship beer is its Punk IPA. It’s known for its ripe tropical fruit, pine, and malt balance.
Bottom Line:
This is a great beginner IPA. While it has the slightly bitter hop presence IPA fans crave, it also has a nice hit of malts and tropical fruit flavors.
California’s Firestone Walker’s flagship beer is its Union Jack IPA. This seven percent IPA is loaded with hops. First, in the kettle are Cascade, CTZ, and Centennial hops. It’s ramped up by being dry-hopped with Chinook, Amarillo, Simcoe, Citra, Centennial, and Cascade hops.
Bottom Line:
This is a great beer for beginner IPA drinkers. It’s fruity, filled with citrus flavors, and not uncomfortably bitter. I do wish there was more of a malt presence though, as it’s almost non-existent.
Like Ballast Point Sculpin, Bell’s Two Hearted commonly tops “best IPA” lists. Named for the Two Hearted River in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this beer was brewed using only Pacific Northwest-grown Centennial hops.
Bottom Line:
You’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of a well-balanced beginner IPA. It was fruity, citrusy, malty, and just the right amount of bitterness.
Deschutes is a big name in the craft brewing world because everything that comes out of this Oregon brewery seems to be a banger. Its Fresh Squeezed is an incredibly aptly-named beer with its use of 2-Row, Munich, and Crystal malts complemented by Citra and Mosaic hops.
Bottom Line:
Sweeter and fruitier than many IPAs on this list, it has complimentary flavors of citrus, tropical fruits, caramel malts, and gently bitter hops.
Jai Alai is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Popular in Florida where Cigar City is located, the beer named in its honor is dangerously delicious and its high rating is proof. This 7.5 percent bold IPA is brewed with six different hops and is known for its complex, well-balanced flavor profile.
Bottom Line:
It will be hard to find a beginner IPA that’s more balanced than this. It feels like the flavors are a 50/50 split between hops and malts.
As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.
The ManningCast has been a revelation during this Monday Night Football season. While ESPN broadcasts its weekly NFL game on its main network, ESPN2 has played host to a version hosted by Peyton and Eli Manning in which the two hit the balance between having fun with guests and actually breaking down football in a way that has drawn plenty of praise.
According to a report by Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports, the NBA has decided it wants to use League Pass as a way to try out something similar. The league has tabbed a pair of veteran hoopers, Jamal Crawford and Quentin Richardson, to do “weekly commentary for the next 10 weeks.” And apparently, this sort of concept appeals to the league’s two main broadcast partners, too.
Meanwhile, the NBA is ramping up “conversations” with national TV partners ESPN and Turner Sports about creating more alternate telecasts, sources told Front Office Sports. The goal: lure viewers who might not tune in for linear basketball telecasts on ABC/ESPN and TNT.
Now, while this concept very well could work, the ManningCast is pretty unique in that both brothers had wildly successful NFL careers, get the chance to show off their comedic chops and Xs-and-Os know-how, and are discussing a sport with natural, lengthy lulls in play where they can go in any direction they want. Crawford and Richardson certainly had good careers and are two really great personalities, but figuring out how to get this sort of broadcast to work for a game as fast-paced as basketball could be tricky.
At the very least, the League Pass version of this should be a really good test of how it’ll go, and who knows, maybe somewhere down the line, we’ll get Charles Barkley reacting live to basketball games instead of during halftime and on postgame shows.
In what has to be the most earth-shattering revelation in the history of television, The Sopranos creator David Chase has stated — out loud, on the record — that Tony Soprano was inspired by an actual person named, no joke… Toby Soprano. In a wide-ranging interview following the success of The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel film to the hit HBO series, Chase nonchalantly admitted to the real-life inspiration for one of the greatest TV characters of all time. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
Your father’s business partner had a kid who you knew, who was your age, I believe.
Yeah.
And he had a cousin. Who was that?
Toby Soprano.
This is where the Soprano name came from?
Right, yeah. But I don’t know that Toby was connected. He might have been, I don’t know. He had a Cadillac.
Despite the interview being over two days old, people on social media are just finding out about Toby Soprano, and needless to say, it is absolutely blowing their minds right out of their skulls. Maybe we’re overselling this here, but just think about it for a minute. Tony Soprano is based on a real-life person named Toby Soprano who used to own a Cadillac. Clearly, this is bigger than Watergate.
imagining a series about Toby Soprano, who’s not in the mafia, he’s just a guy with a Cadillac pic.twitter.com/91ePptAick
Losing my mind that David Chase named Tony Soprano after some kid he vaguely knew called *Toby* Soprano who might have been in the mob just because he had a Cadillac.
Living through a global pandemic that lead into a global financial crisis then finding out the idea for Tony Sopranos name was based on a real person named Toby Soprano pic.twitter.com/6XJNusR5It
reading this feels like a fucking fever dream when the interviewer just keeps asking more pointed questions about chase taking names for characters from italian people he knew growing up. i lost my fucking mind when chase admitted to knowing a “toby soprano” when he was younger https://t.co/M7ty1Oa9tF
The creator knew a guy named Toby Soprano, that’s where the name came from. Imagine if he hadn’t changed Toby to Tony. That would’ve been wild, following the exploits of mob boss Toby Soprano. Silvio calling him “Tobe” for short. “That’s the guy I went to hell for, my uncle Toby” https://t.co/avfm0NZ5Wm
Of course, now the real question is whether or not The Sopranos is garbage for not sticking with Toby Soprano. Do we throw the whole show out now? Toss it right in the trash heap? There are no easy answers here.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
