Wisconsin Film Festival 2026: The Last Critic

A heart-warming look in shallow focus at a man who has built a career out of confusing clever, pithy turns of phrase for serious engagement with the art of music. I now know why Ann Powers' work makes me nauseous.

B

Abandon all phones ye who enter here

A few weeks back The Capital Times published an article on Lake View Elementary School here in Madison and all the outdoor education opportunies it offers.

A series of ropes tied together make a “spider web” that students can lie down on; a “music garden” with a variety of noise-making tools allows students to create their own rhythms and beats; a jumble of tree stumps and logs create a “ninja course” for students to hop across; and a “construction zone” once filled with sticks and branches for students to play with is now a towering tree fort.

These spots make up Lake View’s nature stations, which are part of the north side Madison school’s outdoor education programming. With the help of volunteers and grant funding, Lake View’s five-acre campus has transformed over the last decade into a collection of vibrant outdoor learning spaces.

I think it's absolutely wonderful that kids have so many opportunities to spend time in non-man-made environments and to explore some of the things nature has to offer. (Plus the kids get away from f*cking computer screens.) It only seems right in a town with such strong ties to Aldo Leopold.

The school's principal, Nkaujnou Vang-Vue, was recently named the 2026 Administrator of the Year by the Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education for her promotion of environmental education. Congratulations, Ms. Vang-Vue!

Not long after running across this article, I learned of a study published back in 2012 which looked at the illustrations in Caldecott Medal winning books from 1938 through 2008. The Caldescott is awarded for to the "most distinguished American picture book for children". The study found that illustrations of non-man-made environments have decreased over the years.

Researchers looked at whether images depicted a natural environment such as a jungle or a forest; a built environment such as a house, a school or an office; or something in-between, such as a mowed lawn. They also noted whether any animals were in the pictures – and if so, if those creatures were wild, domesticated or took on human qualities.

Their results, Williams said, visibly exhibited a steady decline in illustrations of natural environments and animals, as well as humans’ interactions with both. Meanwhile, images of built environments became much more common.

...

“This does not mean, of course, that environmentalism is not an important part of American culture, but it does suggest that the current generation of young children listening to the stories and looking at the images in children’s books are not being socialized, at least through this source, toward greater understanding and appreciation of the natural world and the place of humans within it,” the authors wrote.

It's good to see that we have places like Lake View Elementary and the Aldo Leopold Nature Center to help foster an appreciation for the natural world in the youth of today - and tomorrow too.

A Wurst by Any Other Name

The sun was just above the horizon when I arrived at the hotel. It was a Saturday morning and normally I'd be relaxing at home with a cup of coffee but the siren call of kielbasa lured me to the far west side for the annual convention of the Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors where I'd be a judge in the product competition. Along with the Wisconsin Film Festival, the WAMP convention is a sure sign of spring for me.

It had been a couple two tree years since I'd been a judge and I was looking forward to sampling processed meats from across the state. Theoretically the most skilled sausage stuffers, the masters of curing, and the demiurges of dehydrating would all have their best works on offer. Sadly my friend Ed, who got me into this whole rigamarole, would not be there as he had family obligations. A shame as the WAMP convention is the only time I get to see him these days. He's a grandfather now and so he has new non-processed meat responsibilites.

A few days previously we received an email detailing the categories we'd be judging and whom we'd be paired with. My jaws quivered in anticipation as I read the message and I breathed a huge sigh of relief after seeing that I was not assigned whole muscle jerky duty. Chewing through two samples is enough to make my jaws ache for 24 hours much less 20 samples.

This year I'd be judging Bratwurst - Specialty (Cooked & Uncured) and Kielbasa/Polish sausage, fairly easy products to deal with as you don't need to throw them on a slicer or use a hacksaw to get through bone.

After introductory remarks and a briefing from Jeff Sindelar, a UW-Madison professor of meat science and organizer of the competition, we headed to the room where the entrants lay. And the dashing lab coats.

Here's what my fellow judge and I found awaiting us:

There were many fewer entrants than in the pre-Covid days but Jeff noted that, overall, the competition had more product than any year since Covid landed back in 2020. We had 15-20 products in each of our categories this year whereas we'd be at 30+ back in the teens. Not a problem as I don't need the extra salt in my diet.

We began with Bratwurst - Specialty (Cooked & Uncured).

There were three rounds of judging for each product. For the first we looked at external appearance. Was the casing filled all the way? Were there any air or fat pockets? Was the shape of the wursts consistent? That kind of thing.

Then we sliced one of the links lengthwise and judged the interior appearance.

Were there air pockets? Were the ingredients evenly distributed? Etc., etc.

I think every product in this category had cheese in it. Cheese along with some kind of chili was the most common variation. There were a couple jalapeño cheddar varieties and a couple with names that didn't really explain what the taste would be like. I think one was called "Badger Triple Threat" or some such thing. One of the jalapeño cheddar sausages did not mess around and was very spicy hot. Now that I think about it, we didn't check off "Too spicy" on the sheet as we both really liked the heat but I suppose for the palate of the teeming masses, this was very, very spicy stuff.

The sausages above on the left were green olive, blue cheese, and something something which made for a welcome change from the cheese'n'chili monotony.

There is a large element of personal taste involved in all of this as well as rules and guidelines. How prominent should the flavors of chilies or cheese or beer or olives be in a bratwurst? If you cannot taste the peppers, black & white, nor any nutmeg because your tongue is consumed with capsaicin or cheese, is this alright? It's still a wurst but is it a bratwurst?

Oddly enough, the olives were barely perceptible in those green olive brats. And the potatoes and onions in the potato and onion brats were barely cooked. I give them points for at least putting neither cheese nor chilies in 'em.

With the brats being done, we took a break for lunch. We chatted as we ate and I discovered that my fellow judge used to work for my pal Ed who got me into this whole judging thing. Small world. After lunch we turned our attention to kielbasa. This would be a much simpler category to judge as it was smoked Polish sausage and nothing but smoked Polish sausage.

As were inspecting exterior appearance, we came across one entrant that had the texture of jelly. We were both curious about this sausage and were anxious to cut it open. When the time arrived for the slicing, I had visions of a little xenomorph popping out like in Alien. Instead we found that it was simply not fully cooked.

This one would have to be disqualified and Prof. Sindelar came over and did the deed on the grading sheet.

Some of the entrants lacked a garlic taste, which I found odd, but even stranger was one that tasted like a hot dog with what tasted like that coriander-pepper combo.

Here are the talliers tallying our kielbasa scores:

With our judging finished, I took some time to look at the other products.

Bacon! Slabs as far as the eye could see.

This one was new to me: bratwurst Wellington. I was told that it was pretty good.

Head cheese aplenty.

Not sure what this was. Looks like the bacon rolls I find at Polish delis in Chicago.

Chicken blueberry mozarella sticks?!

Another year of processed meat gluttony. We had fun too, though. As I left the hall clutching my gift cooler, I could feel all that salt pulsing through my veins and wondered if I'd be accosted by a deer's tongue on my way to my car.

The gift pack's contents featured winning products from last year:

Bacon! I am looking forward to trying out that cherry BBQ rub. A friend has a grill to give me - I just need to head over to his place to grab it.

My goodness, will you look at all the animals

Look at this baby bunny! Look at that cuteness! I've heard tell of hawks in our skies so be careful out there, bunny.

With the immanent release of The Sheep Detectives in cinemas, I decided to read the novel upon which the movie is based.

The author, Leonie Swann, is German so this was translated from the original. I had no idea it was a very popular novel 20+ years ago.

An Irish shepherd, George, is found dead, having been impaled with a spade, and his flock sets out to find the killer armed with the deductive powers gained from George having read them detective novels.

I thought it was a really enjoyable read.

Normally it's the mystery and seeking a solution that lures me into these kinds of tales but here the sheep proved irresitably fun. In one scene a trio of them are eavesdropping in on a conversation outside a person's home. It's a fairly serious scene with clues being given to us but one sheep just couldn't help himself and has to start snacking on a nearby shrubbery.

There is plenty of amusing ovine commentary on we humans too - our strange fodder, the way we assemble in herds like sheep, etc. And I liked how the sheep used their sense of smell to discern human characteristics and dispositions.

George's flock has nearly 20 sheep in it and, while not every one of them has a prominent role here, enough do to keep things interesting and Swann endows them with enough character to distinguish one from another. Miss Maple is the Sherlock Holmes of the bunch, for instance. Sir Ritchfiled may be the lead ram but he's getting on in years. There are also a couple little lambs who are not incredibly articulate but inject some colorful/humorous commentary now and again.

That the investigators here are a flock of sheep may put Three Bags Full into the post-modern mystery category but it is not a dense, intellectual effort like many such novels. Some easy going commentary on humanity and a lot of concern over grazing territory make for a boat load of fun.

I saw this little lady yesterday and now I may be getting a cat sooner than expected. We shall see...

Song of the day, 16 April 2026

Storm Warning

Those were some nasty storms back on Monday/Tuesday.

I don't recall a time when the tornado sirens went off so frequently. At one point I thought I'd better grab Piper and head to the basement but there was no Piper so it was just me.

There was some very large hail. Luckily my car's windows escaped damage. I'm sure it's got some new dents, though.

Song of the day, 15 April 2026

This is featured in Hen, which I saw last night at the film fest.

The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part 4: They're just hunky dory

As I noted previously, while on a flight to Dublin I was told by a genuine Kerrygold eating, Guinness drinking Irishman what the best salt & vinegar crisps of Hibernia were.

His reply to my query about the best his country had to offer was "Tayto but the crinkled ones, not the regular ones." His accent gave the response an authoritativeness that a generic Midwestern one such as mine just could not muster.

Were they truly some pukka crisps?

Although I'd encountered Tayto crisps previously, this was their Hunky Dorys line - thicker, heartier crisps to tame manly appetites - and, unlike the previous crisps where cider vinegar reigned, these were made with malt vinegar.

I don't come across many crinkle cut salt & vinegar chips here. Surely the thicker cut and those crinkles must add more surface area that can accommodate even more vinegar dust than your normal crisp/chip. If only someone could invent a slicer that would yield chips in non-Euclidian shapes. Just think of all the magical vinegar dust they could hold! Lovecraft Snacks, LLC.

These crisps had a nice yellow hue with bits of brown on the edges. They appeared to have skin on them. Thick and crinkley as advertised. Sticking my face in the packet and taking a whiff I smelled a firm vinegar tang, the rich, greasy aroma of oil, and a faint bit of potato on the sweet side.

As expected they had a nice crunch as well as a good, firm tanginess. No need to eat a dozen chips to get an acetic burn on my tongue. They also tasted a bit saltier than normal and I suppose this can be attributed to the extra surface area. As for the potato flavor itself, it was rich & creamy and on the sweet side. 

I think my guide to the crisps of Éire was correct. These were the best. I adored the big malt vinegar tang and the thicker cut gave a big, creamy burst of spud flavor.

 

Well played Tayto megacorp.

 

Hopefully I will have the opportunity to sample more Irish salt & vinegar crisps some day.

The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part 3: Aggressively Pomaceous

The brand name "simply roasted." made me think of the movie Dazed & Confused. Should I eat these at 4:20?

These may have been the first lifestyle crisps I encountered on my trip. (I shall find out when I review the crisps I sampled in Britain.) They're roasted in "one-of-a-kind ovens" and so they have less fat and fewer calories than your typical deep fried crisp. In addition, their website boasts about sustainable business practices such as powering the crisp factory with solar, converting leftover cooking oils into aviation fuel, and so on.

I should note that these aren't Irish crisps, but rather English ones found in an Irish airport. They're made across the Irish Sea in Norfolk.

Given all of this, how did the roasted salt & vinegar crisps taste?

Let's begin with how they looked which was yellow with some brown patches. They appeared to have had the skin left on as the edges were uniformly brown. Without my calipers I couldn't be sure but they seemed to be cut a tad more thickly than their common American counterparts. The aroma was oil, followed by cider vinegar, and then a bit of sweet spud in the background.

These crisps were nice and crunchy. At first a sweet potato flavor predominated but it was followed by some mild vinegar tanginess. After I chewed some crisps into a paste the potato flavor took on some earthy tones. Although there was a paucity of vinegar zip, there was no shortage of its flavor as these puppies had a wonderful, firm cider vinegar taste. My notes say that I may have tasted sherry but I cannot recall if I tasted it before or after reading the ingredients which includes sherry vinegar powder. No doubt the addition of apple powder boosted my perception of the cider vinegar.

Although they were roasted and not deep fried, I couldn't tell the difference. What made these crisps stand out for me was the prominent apple/cider vinegar taste which was just delicious.

The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part Dhá: I go megacorp

One thing you won't see on a bag of salt & vinegar potato chips here in America is text in Irish Gaelic.

When I first got into the Dublin airport and began making my way to immigration to get my passport stamped, I saw a sign and didn't understand a word of it. Were my glasses dirty? Had my eyes suddenly gone bad? No, it was just in Irish. I was used to signs at airports in Spanish and Hmong but not Irish. 

Tayto is a much less posh sounding brand name than O'Donnells of Tipperary but my packet of salt & vinegar crisps were apparently made in a castle that long predates the founding of the United States which is pretty damn cool if you ask me. That castle is in Northern Ireland while O'Donnells are made in Ireland Ireland.

Google says that Tayto is the biggest brand over there, their Lays, I guess you could say, and I get the impression that the company is either not Irish-owned or is a subsidiary of a non-Irish company. But I don't trust AI.

How did megacorp do?

The crisps were a rather bright yellow but had many nicely browned edge bits. It seemed that the diameter of the crisps was on the small side and they were thinner than a typical American kettle chip but not as thin as your standard American chip. The surfaces were home to a fair number of bubbles. Putting my nose in the packet and taking a big sniff, I got a goodly dose of vinegar - hooray! - as well as some oil and a faint aroma of potato on the sweet side.

I found that they had a restrained crunchiness to them - less than the aforementioned American kettle chip yet more than your standard Lays chip. The aroma was a harbinger of the flavor which had a good, firm tanginess. It didn't seem extra salty to me but I did like the sweet-earthy balance of the potato taste.

These were some fine crisps. I appreciated the boost in vinegar tang and caught a flavor like barley that came with a hint of sweetness. The label did say that it may contain barley and I do not recall if I tasted barley after reading the label or before. My inclination is before based on my tasting notes. Again, rosemary extract was used as an anti-oxident. And again the oils were sunflower and rapeseed.

Large corporation or not, these were very tasty.

The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part 1: It's a long way to Tipperary

It's a long way to go for crisps

As we waited for take-off from O'Hare, I struck up a conversation with the gentleman to my right. He appeared to be in his mid-30s and was a ginger who spoke with a decidedly Irish accent. Our flight was to Dublin and I discovered that he was returning to his home in the suburbs of Ireland's capital from a holiday in Chicago. I learned that he had lived in my hometown for a few years but had moved back to Ireland so we were able to talk about Chicago and the U.S. more broadly in some depth. Ireland, however, was a different matter.

I fessed up that all I really knew about his homeland was The Troubles, Guinness stout, Kerrygold butter, and, taking the piss, Lucky Charms cereal. Fortunately he had a good sense of humor and, if his fellow countrymen and women have senses of humor as dry as his, I will enjoy spending time in Ireland. He was quite surprised that I knew of Kerrygold and when I told him that it was available in my little city of 300,000 people he beamed with pride and bragged that it was the best butter on the planet.

I gave him my story about going to Britain for pleasure to see IQ and that one of my goals was to eat as many salt & vinegar crisps as I could get my grubby little hands on. He then offered the brand of his favorite and I vowed to keep an eye out for it with the earnestness of a new seminary student as I do not take salt & vinegar crisp recommendations lightly.

About 9 hours later I saw bags of them on display at the Dublin airport as I made my way to another gate to catch my flight to Birmingham. Although severely tempted to grab one and enjoy some salty, tangy goodness, I refrained thinking that I'd be able to find my fellow flyer's favorite in England. Birmingham is, after all, Britain's second largest city. Surely they'd be on sale somewhere; Tess would cooperate with me on this.

Wrong!

And so, on my return trip, I scoured the shelves of a WHSmith at the Dublin airport and bought every salt & vinegar crisp I could find - four (4) of them, including the recommended brand.

This is the story of one of them.

I think "O'Donnells of Tipperary" is a fine name for a crisp. It just sounds classy and maybe even a little aristocratic. (The American equivalent might be the much lamer "Lays of Plano".) Although the crisps have only been made since 2010, the company owner's family has been farming longer than the United States has been a country. Does Irish cider vinegar taste different from British or American cider vinegar?

The crisps were actually a bit darker than you see in the photo. More of a medium yellow with a tinge of tan. Edges were frequently brown while the surfaces were strewn with bubbles. They were cut more thickly than the average American chip. Taking a whiff from the packet, I smelled oil and a hint of potato that was on the sweet side.

That thickness yielded a big, loud crunch. Vinegar flavor, er, flavour was fairly mellow and I didn't taste any extra salt. On the plus side, these crisps had a really nice cider vinegar flavor and I found that the tanginess built up to a more desirable level after munching on several of them. They also had a very delectable spud taste that had a nice earthy-sweet balance.

While I would prefer these crisps get more vinegar, I enjoyed them greatly and appreciated their nice, hearty potato taste.

Oils on the label were sunflower and rapeseed (apparently we call this stuff canola) and I also spied "sea salt flavour" which flummoxes me. Also on the label was rosemary extract used as an anti-oxident. Immediately upon reading that, I started tasting rosemary on the chips. Not an unpleasant experience but I am unsure if it was genuinely present or just my brain messing with me.

Chock full o'Pine Nuts

Earlier this week I finally busted open my bag of piñon coffee that I bought in Albuquerque.

It was amongst the few edibles and didn't come red, green, and Xmas. A real treat from the Southwest, it's coffee flavored with piñon, a.k.a. - pine nut. But not just any old pine nut. This stuff has New Mexican terrior as the nuts are from the Colorado Pinyon Pine (Pinus edulis), a pine native to the American Southwest and northern Mexico.

I brewed some up and took my first taste...

On the first couple sips the buttery flavor came through but I found that my tongue got used to it leaving the nuttiness to mingle with the coffeeness for the rest of the cup. It was delicious. 

A floral state of mine: Moorvolution by Revolution Brewing & Moor's Brewing

If memory serves, I first ran into this beer last summer at a Binny's. I hemmed and hawed about buying a 4-pack because my basket already had several of them in it and carrying it around much longer with even more weight was going to require eating a can of spinach to quickly build my arm's muscles (pronounced with a hard C). My logic was something akin to "I'll be back in town ere long so I'll grab some next time."

Well, the best laid plans and whatnot happened and I didn't get to a Chicago area liquor store again for a few months or more. But there was a happy ending as by November this limited edition summer brew was marked down considerably yet still decidedly within its freshness threshold. I think I got a 4-pack for $6.

Moor's Brewing, a black-owned Chicago brewery teamed up with the venerable Revolution Brewing for this one. Moor's was founded in 2021 by Jamal Johnson and Damon Patton. It seems they either brew their beer at 18th Street in Indiana, another black-owned brewery, or at a newish brewpub in Chicago. At roughly the same time this brew was released, Moor's won the Samuel Adams’ 2025 Brewing & Business Experienceship award which I think means they get to have the Sam Adams folks as business mentors for a stretch so things are looking good for them.

Moorvolution is a Polish-style pilsner and I am not sure if that's really a style unto itself that is recognized elsewhere in the world or if it's just an ad copy-ready term from the BJCP for any old pils brewed with Polish hops. The can features "The African King Caspar", a painting that dates back to the 16th-century just as most cans of Moor's regular beers do. As their website says, "Our beer pays homage to the rich untold history of our African ancestry". This beer is a homage to the Lipka Tatars, Muslims who emigrated to Poland in the 15th century. ?? Maybe. I am extrapolating from Wikipedia here.

The brew features Lubelski hops which are apparently also known as Lublin which is the name I've always heard them referred to as. A Noble type hop but I am unsure what the Polish spin on it is.

The can looks bad-ass, if you ask me, with King Caspar's, um, regal and slightly imposing visage set against the Chicago flag. He's got a Frederick Douglass-like charisma. The beer also looks like a bad-ass pilsner with it's lovely yellow color and clarity. I got a nice head of pure white foam that lasted a long time while beneath were bubbles aplenty. The aroma was redolent of summer with straw/grass joining a delicate cracker scent along with a faint bit of honey.

A light-medium body was accompanied by a firm fizziness that made for ebullience on the tongue with some astringency but nothing outrageous. A nice cracker taste was complemented by something honey-floral but not particularly sweet. Finally the hops added their Nobleness with some grassy-spicy flavors. The malt taste fled quickly on the finish to be replaced by the Noble hoppiness which gave a firm dryness to the denouement along with a nice dose of bitterness.

This was a very fine brew. The cracker flavor accompanied by a bit o' honey was delicious and the green hop flavors were delectable. Since there was a bit of something floral here and there were floral flavors to be had in a genuine Polish pilsner from Browar Błonie, I am going to assume that "traditional", i.e. - Nobley, Polish hops have a floral component to them that are absent from other similar varieties from, say, Germany and The Czech Republic. And, to be clear, I love love love the floral flavors I've tasted in these two recent Polish(-style) pilsners. Much more to my liking than tropical fruit.

Junk food pairing: pair Moorvolution's light, crisp maltiness with a light, crisp potato chip such as Jays Bacon Cheddar.

Goldfinger #6: Bałtycki by Goldfinger Brewing Co.

As related previously, my tireless search for Goldfinger's Winter Lager led me to their brewery as a blizzard approached Chicagoland. But the great and the good of the western suburbs couldn't care less as they were packed into the tasting room while the beers in the nearby lagering tanks were gleefully awaiting the approaching storm and its attendant drop in temperatures. I was disappointed to find that the sign at the counter didn't list cans of Winter Lager as being available; however it did note that cans of Bałtycki, their Baltic porter, were on offer.

My mind did the hedonistic calculus.

Intensity: At 8.4% A.B.V., likely fairly intense.

Duration: A 4-pack of potent brew? A few hours.

Certainty or uncertainty: It's Goldfinger. It'll certainly be tasty.

Propinquity or remoteness: As soon as I get back to the hotel.

Fecundity: High probability of feelin' good.

Purity: I won't get drunker than a barrel of monkey so the aftermath will be fine.

Extent: The drinking of this beer will affect only me.

Forecast: Blizzard ahead! Beer needed.

Having done Jeremy Bentham proud and it having been determined that buying some Bałtycki would have high utility, I did so.

Like all Baltic porters, Goldfinger's had that Stygian dark brown color that was very hesitant to let any light through lest anyone mistake it for an amber. With the requisite color, I was happy to see that it had that viscous motor oil look to it like Baltika #6 and Żywiec as I poured. My glass was adorned with a big, frothy head of light brown foam. It was like the color of roux when it just turns the corner and you know it's headed for a nice milk chocolate color that will make your gumbo mo' bettah. I really couldn't tell but I am going to assume this stuff was clear as one would expect. The aroma was equally luscious with a prominent roastiness to it along with a stone fruit scent that alternated between plum and cherry in the part of my brain that register beer smells. French roast coffee, a verdant hoppiness, and a wonderfully decocted toastiness rounded things out.

Darkly roasted coffee along with a touch of dark chocolate were the most prominent flavors. The beer's medium-heavy body tasted really smooth underneath generous doses of fizz and hops of a spicy nature. It was a sweet beer but not cloying. The malty sweetness lingered for a spell on the finish but was eventually replaced by a not-insignificant wave of bitterness & astringency. Gotta tame all that malt somehow, I guess. Despite the potency of the acerbity, dryness was rather mild.

Bałtycki was one tasty brew. I was surprised to not get much of a boozy burn despite an A.B.V. of 8.4%. Just as Oceania and Eurasia are locked in perpetual war in 1984, so too are malty sweetness and hops/fizz in the Baltic porter. You want a big, thick roasty malt extravaganza but you also don't want the drinker's tongue bogged down in treacle so you've gotta be generous with the hops and make it fizzy. Goldfinger did a great job here letting my palate enjoy the dark malty goodness yet not drown in a cloying syrupy mess. That bitter finish sure did reset my tongue for the next blast of barley. Without the boozy heat, this stuff went down easily. A bit too easily, if you ask me.

Junk food pairing: Baltic porters not only demand a junk food with complementary flavors but one with a hearty amount of them to get themselves tasted through the big flavors of the beer. Pair Bałtycki with a big bag of Jays Smoky BBQ Ridges potato chips. A thicker chip means more spud goodness and grease while the ridges mean more surface area for the smoky BBQ flava.

Just some photos

A look at high rises, whole and in-progress, looming over State Street.

Some fine woodcut art.

My friend's hound Wolfy and his gal pal Coco.

Finally, here's my brother. I commemorated the 11th(!) anniversary of his death recently. It's still hard to believe he's been gone that long and I still miss him greatly. I really wish I had him to help me go through this divorce as his pantagruelian disposition would be a great comfort right now.

Song of the day, 10 April 2026

Coming soon, 9 April 2026

Seen before a screening of Exit 8.

I really enjoyed Exit 8. It's a very uncanny, unsettling, trippy Möbius strip of a story. I probably spent more time looking for anomalies onscreen than was necessary. Towards the end of the movie our hero, The Lost Man, and his young companion are beset upon by a swarm of lab rats with human body parts sewn on them or grown in them. This brought to mind the opening scene were the guy is doom scrolling a social media site on his phone while on the train. We see one of those rats - the one with the ear on its side - in the feed and I immediately struggled to recall what else we saw on his phone in that scene. I recalled posts showing flooding and so it was no surprise when the hallway floods with less than salutary looking brown water.

What else was shown on the phone that manifested in the hallway?

Ultimately this is a story about a man's internal struggle but was it all in his head? The Walking Man's story would suggest otherwise. But who knows. I thoroughly enjoyed this ride.

Tangentially, I watched a recent conversation between James Kreul and Rob Thomas in which they previewed the opening weekend of the Wisconsin Film Festival. At one point Thomas makes a cynical comment - though I cannot recall what prompted it - about frequently being in a Madison theater with only 6-8 other people or something akin to that.

While there's more than a grain of truth there, I think it should be noted that the screening of Exit 8 had somewhere around 20 people in it. The showing of The King's Warden I attended had 30+ people in it. Ginormous numbers? No. They weren't sell outs even in the small theaters they screened in. I don't know how AMC and Marcus feel about these numbers, but they don't seem too shabby for foreign language movies in a city of only 300,000 or so people.

As for the film fest, my fest starts today. I'll be attending everyday through Thursday, though I am not seeing multiple movies each day. I'll be seeing 25 Cats From Qatar because, well, cats! I was absolutely thrilled to see that Dead Mountaineer's Hotel would be screened this year because I heard about it just a few months ago after doing a spot of reading at Rachel Cordasco's Speculative Fiction in Translation site. The movie is based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's novel of the same name and I stumbled upon her review there and it sounded like it would be right up my Straße.

Everybody who's been attending the festival for a while has their own gripes about the current incarnation every year. Honestly, I don't have many complaints beyond missing the midnight movies at the Orpheum. I fondly remember seeing the Irish horror flick Isolation there late one Thursday night.

My fest begins at 6 tonight with Man on the Roof followed by The Spies Among Us. I will be seeing a couple flicks on Sunday with someone and a lady I know will be at the screenings of 25 Cats From Qatar and Nadja that I'll be at. I think this is first time I will be accompanied by someone at a screening in years. I used to go to the fest with other people more often back in the day. And I don't run into people I know very much anymore. I will say it was nice to find myself seated next to Lewis Peterson of Four Star Video last year at the screening of Pavements but chance meetings like that are the exception these days.

Looking back, my wife and I stopped attending the fest together several years ago and, in retrospect, this was an early sign of our marriage coming apart. So there's a lesson for everyone: keep your relationship strong by going to the Wisconsin Film Festival together!

OK. Onto the trailers!

Curiously enough, I cannot find the trailer for Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo. At first I was surprised to see a new film by Takashi Miike, he who did Audition, Ichi the Killer, 13 Assassins (which screened at the Wisconsin Film Festival back in 2011), and one of the shorts in Three... Extremes among many others. But those are the ones I recall having seen. My surprise continued when it was revealed to be a Bad Lieutenant movie. It's been a while since Werner Herzog made his contribution to the series.

Look! An Irish horror movie that would have been perfect for a midnight screening at the Orpheum for the festival.

Only 3 trailers vs a million at AMC. But we also got commercials from Eli Lilly and Company and Rolex.

A flower?

If you go down to Mad Cat

To look for doggie treats or kitty trees or collars for fleas

Open your eyes, it's full of curiosities

(Sorry Peter Gabriel) 

Cuteness overload

The morning rush hour at Caenhill Countryside Centre was a daily watch for me during lockdown. What a wonderful way to start my day of sitting in front of my computer with Covid raging outside. The lovely animals, Chris' play-by-play - just great stuff.

This is a short greatest hits kind of video. Cats! Donkeys! Lambs! Such cuteness!

Coming soon, 8 April 2026

Seen at a screening of The Yeti.

I was surprised to learn that The Yeti made its debut only on 3 April at a festival in Chicago yet was playing here in Madison just a few days later. To the programmer at AMC Fitchburg, I salute you.

It was a really fun monster movie about a rescue mission seeking to find out what happened to a previous expedition into deepest, darkest Alaska in 1947. The look and style was old school and it appears there was no CGI which makes it all the more retro. The title font looks like it was from a 1950s b-movie and one scene even had a newsreel look and feel to it. We had the overreach/hubris of scientists, a horror shown largely only in shadow or as a hazy figure shrouded in fog. We'd get an arm here or a tuft of fur there but the movie smartly let the creature exist as sound for quite a bit until the end. A growl or some strange noise or the cries of terror of its victims.

A genuine creepfest full of horror as the crew of the rescue mission are picked off one by one. But the movie also mines a vein of rich thematic material as the Yeti is shown to be less evil, perhaps, than just another facet of Nature doing what creatures do. Plus 2 members of the rescue mission are the children of 2 of the missing explorers. At 90 or so minutes the movie does not mine this vein deeply, I grant you, but it did so just enough to add color and turn the story in another direction which I found to be interesting and in keeping with the movies of yore that The Yeti seeks to invoke.

I arrived to the showing late and missed a trailer or 2 or 3.

 

This one flummoxed me. It was very confusing and weird but I am unsure if that is actually representative of the movie or if it was a ploy. Weird is good! I just found this trailer odd and it deviated from the norm. Could be good, though.

 

This was, unsurprisingly, a red-band trailer. On Monday I ran into Lewis Peterson, co-owner of Four Star Video, who was attending one of the mystery movie screenings at AMC and he was eagerly anticipating it being this one.

Coming soon, 7 April 2026

Seen before a screening of The King's Warden. It was a fine movie. South Korea's version of Oscar bait. The story went from being a comedy with village chief Eom Heung-do as a hapless doofus getting more than he bargained for in hosting an exiled official to something a bit more serious as Yi Hong-wi becomes a man, essentially, and befriends Eom Heung-do. So there's some buddy picture bits here. Things get even darker as the evil, moustache-twirling Han Myŏnghoe steps to the fore.

Plenty of feel-good stuff here with redemption on top.

Lastly, I'll note that The King's Warden was shown in one of AMC's smaller theaters but that it was well-populated. Not SRO but it seemed to be about half full or a little more than that which isn't bad for a Korean-language movie here in Madison on a Tuesday night, to my mind. And I'd bet most were of East Asian descent too.

 

Coming soon, 29 March 2026

Seen before a screening of Alpha which I thought was OK. I enjoyed the themes of family and loyalty but found that it was a bit too dark for my current mindset. The fault, dear reader, is not in Julia Ducournau, but in myself.

Sadly I cannot find a trailer for Passenger, a horror flick from Norwegian director André Øvredal. It looked overly laden with jump scares and so didn't pique my interest. However, Øvredal directed three very fine to excellent flicks: Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Maybe the trailer just isn't doing it justice.

This was a red-band trailer.

 

Song of the day, 7 April 2026