Glen Weldon is an enemy of the people

I’m higher on that Julianne Moore performance than I am on THE DEBUT overall tho I like the film a lot. The outside-the-theatre stuff in it is not as rich or specific as its loving send-up of theatre folk; the fake NOSY NEIGHBORS playbills are funnier than the movie. B+? #mff2026

WICKER is an expansion of Ursula Wills’ short “The Wicker Husband,” which is a better title. My big note on Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s delightful fairy (cautionary) tale: They shoulda kept Wills’ title. The Colman / Skarsgård / Debicki team-up of legend. #mff2026

Welp, WILD HORSE NINE is my favorite McDonagh joint now. Lovely as an 18-years-on companion piece to IN BRUGES but richer, just as funny, more rooted in history. #mff2026

Two totemic teen slashers slash it out for supremacy in our latest @filmspotting Movie Death Match! Gray Lady critic @zinoman reps HALLOWEEN (‘78) while Harvard dream expert Deirdre Barrett rides for A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET! Boo! overcast.fm/+AAPsC3fVFWk

$45 for Signature’s aces MERRILY is a terrific bargain. $45 for Round House’s superb MA RAINEY: A+ value. $25 for Studio’s WISH YOU WERE HERE: Heckuva deal. $0 for a @CityCast_DC State of District Theatre panel: Worth every penny? We’ll do our best. tickets.theatrewashington.or…

DIGGER is not the film I’d feared it would be; it reminded me of a number of Woolly Mammoth plays, particularly the one that inspired me to write this piece 13 years ago wherein I attempted a taxonomy of… spoilers. villagevoice.com/the-four-ty…

I wore a Larry Mullen Jr. Band tee when I saw them play the Sphere without him three years ago.

I was just thinking about how all those students in the audience for U2’s surprise 50th anniversary gig at Mt. Temple School in Dublin yesterday were like 3 years old when early Gen Z-ers were asking “What the fuck is U2 and why is it on my phone?”

The year my family got cable (and MTV), I asked for two cassettes for my birthday: NEVER LET ME DOWN and THE JOSHUA TREE. One of U2’s two best albums; one of Bowie’s worst, I learned. My first favorite band stayed my favorite band. Heartened by the vids from Dublin of U2’s 50th.

To hear a lot of then-and-now rock critics tell it, putting a free U2 album on your phone (which was an overreach, yes, for sure) was absolutely the most insidious & invasive thing a globally powerful tech conglomerate ever did to its customers.

U2 celebrating the 50th anniversary of their first rehearsal (today!) by playing the Dublin progressive school where they formed is almost as cool as when Bruuuce played a benefit at his old Catholic school in ‘96 and included his cunnilingus ode “Red-Headed Woman” in the set.

I loved the story Bono about Joey Ramone asking for “In a Little While” on his deathbed, and I cringed when U2 named a song after him 13 years later. But U2’s tiny set of Ramones covers is good, and after 50 years, they have released a Ramones-length single of their own.

I’m on record in the Paper of Record calling the U2 album that ends with a lead vocal from Johnny Cash (ZOOROPA) their third-best, so I’m down with this Dolly Parton disclosure. I Will Always Love U2, to paraphrase.

I woke this morning from a nightmare that borrowed the plot of 25TH HOUR: I was freaking out on my last day of freedom before beginning a prison sentence. I’d like to chalk it up to the fact I’d seen Brian Cox in a play two nights earlier but it seems more sinister than that.

Amused that in downtown DC tonight, the Garth Brooks show at the hockey rink and the show play where Brian Cox is plays J.S. Bach are starting directly across F St. NW from one another at exactly the same time.

I’m eavesdropping on a heroic @alamodrafthouse concierge who is trying to help a couple of walk-ups decide whether they should see TONY or COYOTE VS. ACME. They are unfamiliar with Anthony Bourdain. They are also unacquainted with Wylie E. Coyote and The Road Runner.

Tim Curry did 2 runs at the National in the 80s, one of them a warmup of the AMADEUS that played 3 yrs and saw him nominated for a Tony. As would happen at the Oscars, that production’s Amadeus lost the Best Actor prize to its Salieri. For @CityCast_DC: dc.citycast.fm/theater-revie…

At the risk of overhyping things, I’m prepared to say that THE DOG STARS is easily the second-or-third-best movie Ridley Scott has made in his eighties. (No, I do not mean “since the eighties.”) washingtoncitypaper.com/arti…

A gentlemanly show! Good family fun despite a high-single-digits body count.