Sam Gray
England
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Articles by Sam Gray
Rhetoric Without Restoration Is Retreat
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m almost forty years old and that I’m often talking to people down to half my age. Many young adults don’t remember the world before it became the way it is now. They didn’t grow up in the same cultural atmosphere that I did and they haven’t seen the same shifts that I have seen. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Highlights and Lowlights
This week we're featuring WNBA AND PWHL items! Sam Gray: *Mariah Carey high-pitched voice* It’s tiiiiime! I am SO pumped to get things going with the Golden State Valkyries. Not just because Valkyrie Violet is gorgeous, but because this is fantastic for the Bay Area. Women’s sports continue to grow in the region; the Bay FC of the NWSL debuted there this year. Plus, expansion-wise, there is something so exhilarating about seeing a team grow from scratch.
I am so excited the New York Sirens are playing in New Jersey this season
Full disclosure: I was born and raised in Jersey and I still live here. On the heels of me lamenting to Nicole and Liz two weeks ago that the (now) New York Sirens had yet to announce where they’d be playing this fall, the team shared that the Prudential Center will serve as their primary home arena for the 2024-2025 season, which is fantastic news for me, personally! And even though it's not New York, it's good news for the team, the league and the fans, as well.
Before the Legacy
Set before Lunchtime of the Damned, the game puts the player in shoes of Davy Jones on his mission to clear the road to the Reality-on-the-Norm blocked by cows. Unfortunately the town is almost empty, excluding presence of Mr. Reaper and some other guy. Walking around the town, talking to inhabitants, and collecting the items, the player should help Davy to clear the road to the town in this classic point-n-click icon-based adventure game.
Energy & Sustainability Connections Newsletter - July 2024
M Mintz More Mintz is a general practice, full-service Am Law 100 law firm with more than 600 attorneys. We are headquartered in Boston and have additional US offices in Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, as well as an office in Toronto, Canada. Congratulations to our client, Tiburon Subsea, for their recent discovery of the WWII submarine USS Harder! United States Energy and Natural Resources
Tackling Food Waste in China’s Restaurants
China Environment Forum // Cool Agriculture // Guest Contributor Back in 2020, Shiyang Li at Rare visited restaurants across China to interview over 30 different owners and staff about the attitudes, beliefs, and everyday behaviors that contribute to food waste. Similar to global trends, food waste in China remains a significant challenge. A 2020 survey found restaurants in Chinese cities wasted at least every year, which can feed as many as 49 million people.
BASKETBALL | Lubbock-Cooper photo gallery
1 of 11 Lubbock-Cooper's Carisa Cortez looks for a path past Amarillo High's Jada Graves. LCP's Catalina Cortez surveys the defense as Lacey Rice applies pressure. Lubbock-Cooper's Majik Esquivel pushes the ball up the court as Amarillo High's Lacey Rice defends. LCP's Catalina Cortez signals her teammates to trigger the offense. Lubbock-Cooper coach Kyle Lovorn Cooper guard Catalina Cortez makes a move to get past Amarillo High's Lacey Rice.
HBO Max decision harms theaters for profit
Warner Brothers announced that their upcoming movies will be streamed on HBO Max in December. Since these films will be released simultaneously in theaters, this decision has robbed promising blockbusters of an exclusive theatrical release. After New York City reopened movie theaters on March 5, audiences will get the chance to see long-awaited films such as “Matrix 4,” “Dune” and “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” Only this time, many will have had the chance to watch them at home.
‘The Devil All the Time’: A Meditation on American Violence
“The Devil All The Time” is a new epic drama from director Antonio Campos.The film takes a few style cues from the Southern Gothic genre. The storyline is mostly linear with different groups of characters as their arcs intersect. (Staff Illustration by Charlie Dodge) Content Warning: this article contains spoilers. No one leaves unscathed or unstained from “The Devil All The Time,” a new epic drama from director Antonio Campos.
Rock and Roll With President Carter in Mary Wharton’s Feature Debut
“Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President,” a new documentary from director Mary Wharton, explores Carter’s friendships with some of the great musicians of the 1970s. The movie begins against the backdrop of Vietnam and Watergate, twin disasters that contributed to the largest drop in the public’s trust in government in the history of polling.
How Men Can Cultivate Deeper Relationships. Even When It’s Difficult.
Counterintuitive tips for men struggling with intimacy. Photo credit: iStockPhoto By Sam Gray Do you want to know how to cultivate surface-level relationships? Do you hold back how you really feel? Do you REJECT the truth of who you really are for what you think others love more? Do you use all of your energy to avoid feeling uncomfortable in your relationships? Beware of the illusion that is self-rejection. IF YOU CHANGE WHO YOU ARE FOR OTHERS… THAT’S REJECTING YOURSELF.
Understanding Unified Labeling migration
TL; DR Unified labeling is here and it is the next step in the Microsoft Information Protection story. Each new Microsoft product and service that utilizes classification and protection capabilities (and 3rd party ones using MIP SDK capabilities) will require unified labeling. Because of this, now is the time to execute a migration to this service as there is zero risk when done properly following our recommended steps.
‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ and the Controlled Chaos of Hideaki Anno
WARNING: The following contains vague spoilers for Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was shortly after I’d had surgery on my knee that I first watched an episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. My leg was in a brace, and I wasn’t allowed to bend it for about six weeks. I could barely walk, let alone leave my flat. I’d had an accident where I’d gone for a jog in the rain and fallen on some loose, upturned paving stones.
Seven Unconventional Ways to be More Productive
Whether you need to get a book done, an essay written, or your taxes complete (I did mine in less than two hours), these tips will bring you to completion faster than before. It’s worth noting that of the four mature masculine archetypes, King energy is the most important. And king energy is about completion. May this article bring you closer to completion in your life while including an abundance of ease, confidence, and calmness along the way. TO PRODUCE MORE OUTPUT, YOU NEED MORE INPUT.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Sibyl | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Sibyl | Review 25 May 2019 It’s hard to think of two subjects less suitable to representation in cinema than writing and therapy. No amount of text flying across the screen can distract from the fact that writing is an internal, boring creative process – while therapy involves people vomiting up their feelings, making it the laziest and least satisfying tool in the storyteller’s toolbox.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil | Review 24 May 2019 A gangster, a cop, a devil… As Tony Shalhoub said to John Turturro in Barton Fink, “Whaddya need, a roadmap?” Almost every year, Cannes programs something crazy from South Korea to show in its midnight slot – last year was North Korea-set espionage thriller The Spy Gone North, the year before that, action films The Villainess and The Merciless – and this year is no exception.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (A Vida Invisível de Eurídice Gusmão) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (A Vida Invisível de Eurídice Gusmão) | Review 24 May 2019 The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão may be a dramatically ungainly melodrama, but it’s so well-acted that it almost makes up for it.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Zombi Child | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Zombi Child | Review 23 May 2019 Few filmmakers are as capable of uniting the past and present through their cinema as Bertrand Bonello. His great House of Tolerance from 2011 was as much about late capitalism as it was about its subject, a family of prostitutes living in a brothel at the turn of the twentieth century – as indicated by its epilogue, which showed sex workers standing on the streets of modern-day Paris, alone and defenceless.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Summer of Changsha (Liu Yu Tian) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Summer of Changsha (Liu Yu Tian) | Review 23 May 2019 Zu Feng’s Summer of Changsha is a mystery thriller, revolving around a detective, A Bin (Feng), who’s on the trail of a scattered set of body parts. It’s also a serially miserable affair, a story involving grief, self-harm and the death of a terminally-ill child – and one that has fallen afoul of China’s notorious censors, meaning the production team was unable to attend Cannes.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Fire Will Come (O que arde) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Fire Will Come (O que arde) | Review 23 May 2019 While Fire Will Come may be difficult to parse on first glance – so specific is its milieu and so ambiguous is its storytelling – it’s nonetheless a haunting experience. Spanish director Oliver Laxe has the ability to conjure up gorgeous, terrifying images, and he starts with a stunner of a sequence: a forest at night, lights darting across trees that suddenly start collapsing.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Climb | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Climb | Review 23 May 2019 The Climb is an outlier in the modern American comedy landscape, in that it actually seems to have been directed. It’s an epic tale of a toxic bromance, divided up into several chapters, and each one appears to unfold in one or two continuous takes.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Parasite (Gisaengchung) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Parasite (Gisaengchung) | Review 22 May 2019 Is there anyone else quite like Bong Joon-ho? A graduate of the kinetic Korean New Wave of the mid-2000s, his films look, sound and move unlike anything else, often combining broad slapstick with gruesome violence and surprising bouts of melancholy.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: La belle époque | Review - The Upcoming
Cannes Film Festival 2019: La belle époque | Review 22 May 2019 A somewhat charming French comedy in its own right, the major problem with La belle époque is that its premise is too good. It’s about cartoonist Victor (Daniel Auteuil), an old-fashioned man who repeatedly squabbles with his dissatisfied wife Marianne (Fanny Ardant). He’s stuck in the past, moaning about modern technology, while she goes to bed with a VR headset on.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: An Easy Girl ( Une Fille Facile) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: An Easy Girl ( Une Fille Facile) | Review 21 May 2019 There’s something disconcerting about watching a film that’s set where you’re watching it. Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile) takes place in Cannes, primarily aboard one of the private yachts lined up along the seafront – looming objects of enviable wealth and status.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Young Ahmed (Le jeune Ahmed) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Young Ahmed (Le jeune Ahmed) | Review 21 May 2019 Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s latest naturalistic drama caught a few raised eyebrows in the lead-up to Cannes. It’s because of its premise: a young Belgian boy, Ahmed (Idir Ben Addi), plans to murder his teacher (Myriem Akheddiou) because of her attitude towards his Islamic religion.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Lux Æterna | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Lux Æterna | Review 20 May 2019 It’s a bit embarrassing to identify as a fan of Gaspar Noé.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Wild Goose Lake (Nan Fang Che Zhan De Ju Hui) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Wild Goose Lake (Nan Fang Che Zhan De Ju Hui) | Review 20 May 2019 The modus operandi in The Wild Goose Lake is chaos: a country in chaos, a story in chaos, a directorial vision that embraces chaos and unpredictability at every turn. But there’s a difference between a film about chaos and a film that’s out of control. Diao Yinan’s latest after his Berlin-winner Black Coal, Thin Ice is another grimy neo-noir, defined by sudden explosions of unpredictable violence.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Whistlers (La Gomera) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Whistlers (La Gomera) | Review 20 May 2019 Kicking off with Iggy Pop’s The Passenger and descending into a Cold War-style espionage thriller, in which cop Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) must learn a complex language of whistles in order to recover a large sum of money with some gangsters, Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers certainly isn’t lacking in style.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Too Old to Die Young | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Too Old to Die Young | Review 20 May 2019 Nicolas Winding Refn likes things … slow. He likes … to take … pregnant … pauses … before something … bad … suddenly … HAPPENS! This can go one of two ways. When there’s the threat of violence, a dramatic tension reverberating throughout the scene, it can be good fun – in the vein of patient genre subverters like Tarantino and S Craig Zahler – particularly when he drops the pretentions and goes for an exciting set piece.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Rocketman | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Rocketman | Review 17 May 2019 In 2007, Columbia Pictures released a film called Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, starring John C Reilly. A pitch-perfect parody of 2004’s Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, it eviscerated the cradle-to-the-grave clichés of the genre, from the traumatic childhood, to the montage of the singer’s meteoric rise, the drug problems, the fall, and the eventual redemption – with pictures of the real person over the closing credits.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Pain and Glory (Dolor y Gloria) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Pain and Glory (Dolor y Gloria) | Review 18 May 2019 There is a grand tradition, late in a director’s career, to make what might be referred to as their 8½. The most obvious example is Fellini’s 1963 opus, but the idea of a director making a veiled autobiography that prominently features their industry – and doubles as an interrogation of their own process – is a common one.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Little Joe | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Little Joe | Review 17 May 2019 How much do we know about plants? They sit in our homes and offices, and they’re alive, responsive, undergoing constant chemical changes. But we don’t think of them as ever posing a threat. Jessica Hausner’s new film – her fourth feature at Cannes, and her first in the English language – takes a premise that once interested M Night Shyamalan and runs with it in a completely different direction.
Life Lessons From Jiu-Jitsu
During this week’s Monday morning class, I had the pleasure of experiencing Marc verbalize a philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu that I have been trying to put my finger on for weeks. Here’s what it looks like: Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. I call it’s “Marc’s Windowless Philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu.” Now let me break it down. Before Jiu-Jitsu, I was used to reaching in my life. To best understand what I’m referring to, let’s use the example of reaching for a cup at the back of the cupboard.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: For Sama | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: For Sama | Review 17 May 2019 It’s hardly the most rigorous filmmaking in the world, but the footage on display in For Sama – the work of Syrian journalist Waad al-Kateab, who started filming the dire situation in Aleppo in 2011 and basically didn’t stop – is just undeniable.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Atlantics (Atlantique) | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Atlantics (Atlantique) | Review 17 May 2019 It’s difficult to know where to start with Atlantics. It’s a film of firsts, first and foremost: the first feature from Mati Diop, primarily known for her work as an actress and her award-winning short films; and the first picture from a black woman to premiere in Cannes’s competition.
LETTERS: OSU Police Dept. accreditation
To the editor: Oklahoma State Police Department recently went through a rigorous process to prove that their organization is up to par with Oklahoma Association of Chiefs of Police standards. I was fortunate enough to be an intern during this time, helping rebuild files that help prove that they meet these policies. The department has gone through this process several times before and was the first agency in Oklahoma to have earned the title of accredited agency.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Bacurau | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Bacurau | Review 16 May 2019 A strange, fascinating film from a strange, fascinating filmmaker, Bacurau doesn’t so much defy explanation as provide almost too much to sift through on first glance. It’s ostensibly a portrait of the eponymous fictional small town community, situated somewhere on the border between Paraiba and Rio Grande de Norte in northeastern Brazil.
John Carpenter in conversation: From no-budget filmmaker to horror maestro
John Carpenter in conversation: From no-budget filmmaker to horror maestro 15 May 2019 “Revenge” was how John Carpenter described the director’s fortnight screening of his 1982 masterpiece The Thing. It was a film that famously bombed with both audiences and critics, only to slowly pick up a healthy cult following in its subsequent years.
Jim Jarmusch, Selina Gomez and Tilda Swinton talk gender imbalance and the role of teenagers in our society at The Dead Don’t Die press conference in Cannes
Jim Jarmusch, Selina Gomez and Tilda Swinton talk gender imbalance and the role of teenagers in our society at The Dead Don’t Die press conference in Cannes 15 May 2019 Jim Jarmusch and the cast of The Dead Don’t Die discuss their greatest fears and how the future of the world lies in the hands of young people Jarmusch’s zombie-horror comedy premiered last night to mixed reviews – much of the criticism focusing on tone, whether the film is truly fatalistic in its outlook or contains seeds of...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Dead Don’t Die | Review
Cannes Film Festival 2019: The Dead Don’t Die | Review 14 May 2019 Far more intriguing than it eventually turns out to be, Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die is a zombie movie – in the same way that Only Lovers Left Alive is a vampire movie, Ghost Dog is a samurai movie, Dead Man is a western, and so on.
Cannes jury president Iñárritu smooths over Netflix debate, emphasises diversity at inaugural press conferenc
Cannes jury president Iñárritu smooths over Netflix debate, emphasises diversity at inaugural press conferenc 14 May 2019 The funny thing about the Cannes jury is that the relative pedigree of the talent – particularly that of the president – often has little to no bearing on which films are ultimately rewarded. George Miller and the Coen brothers are but two recent examples of canon-worthy filmmakers rewarding the opposite of canon-worthy films.
You Are Exactly Where You Are Supposed To Be
Our family dynamics go deep, and they are anything but our own fault. On my path to relating to other men with more understanding, love, and care, I’m learning to not blame them for their own nature. How a man has been raised is not his fault. His relationship with his father is not his fault. His relationship with his family is not his fault. But the way he has grown up with his family determines exactly how he will relate with me and the rest of the world.
5 Must-Watch Scandinavian TV Shows
5 Must-Watch Scandinavian TV Shows Over the past five years, Scandinavia has entered a golden age (of sorts) in television. That’s not to say that their television has ever been particularly bad, per say, but recently these countries – particularly Denmark – have offered some of the most original, challenging and engaging shows around (typically dark, atmospheric police procedurals).
How to Talk to Girls at Parties | Movie review
How to Talk to Girls at Parties | Movie review In the movies, when aliens land on Earth, they must descend on the Empire State Building, or the Houses of Parliament, with a loud blare and Christmas-coloured lights announcing their presence. Yet there’s something intensely charming about the fact that the Lycra-clad extra-terrestrials in John Cameron Mitchell’s How to Talk to Girls at Parties – adapted from a short story by Neil Gaiman – end up in an abandoned house in Croydon.
London Film Festival 2017: Promised Land | Review
There has yet to be a great film about Donald Trump. Perhaps it’s just too soon. Eugene Jarecki’s Promised Land doesn’t try to present a coherent vision of recent history, which would likely prove to be dated by the end of the first day’s shooting. Instead, he uses an examination of the life of Elvis Presley as an excuse to take the temperature of a nation.
London Film Festival 2017: L’Amant Double (The Double Lover) | Review
After a few attempts at mainstream success, François Ozon has reverted to his craziest, most sexually charged instincts with L’Amant Double – which is basically Dead Ringers by way of Brian De Palma, with a dash of Rosemary’s Baby thrown in for good measure. Beginning with a match cut so outrageous it prompted a round of applause, Ozon settles into the story of Chloé (Marine Vacth), a woman who starts attending therapy in the hope of curing the pains in her stomach.
London Film Festival 2017: Redoubtable | Review
Why does Redoutable exist? Godard has always held sway over French cinematic culture – and for good reason – but he’d no doubt be disgusted by Michel Hazanavicius’s film if he ever bothered to watch it. He’d find it bourgeois. He’d find it reductive. But he’ll never watch it. Because why does it even exist? The galling fact about Redoutable, the thing that makes it a relative disappointment, is that it’s not a complete stinker.
London Film Festival 2017: Nelyubov (Loveless) | Review
If there were a phrase to sum up what makes Andrey Zvyagintsev so great, it would be “epic intimacy”. Having risen to prominence with Leviathan, Zvyagintsev is back with a film that’s equally unflinching and razor-sharp in its focus, out to take apart the moral bankruptcy of the Russian state from within.
Patti Cake$: An interview with Geremy Jasper, Danielle Macdonald and cast
Patti Cake$: An interview with Geremy Jasper, Danielle Macdonald and cast Mix the cinematic ingenuity of Guy Ritchie with the musical direction of Edgar Wright and what have you got? A little bit of Geremy Jasper. Traditionally a music video director, Jasper has been known to dabble in the world of cinema, short movies specifically, but now the creative from New Jersey has leapt into the world of feature length projects, and Patti Cake$ is the end product.
Movie review - The Upcoming
A thorny adaptation of David Harrower’s already thorny play, Una takes on a subject that’s largely been excluded from cinema – and for good reason. For how to depict the truth of paedophilia on screen without showing the act itself, or making the emotionally manipulative relationship seem offensively romantic?
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