On May 22, 1981, for the finale of the show’s 12th season, Mister Rogers visited Sesame Street. With apologies to the Avengers, this has to be the greatest crossover event in history.
In the episode, Rogers agrees to judge a race between Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, a character that no one on the show but Big Bird has seen. When BB tells his friends he met Mister Rogers, they don’t believe him, including Mr. Snuffleupagus! Later, BB & MR have a conversation about what’s real and what’s make-believe. Here’s more on the episode from the Neighborhood Archive and the Muppet Wiki.
Mr. Rogers comes to visit Big Bird at his nest. Big Bird wonders if Mr. Rogers is really here, because no one believed him before. Mr. Rogers observes that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and suggests that they both pretend some more. Big Bird imagines a teddy bear riding a race car, and realizes that he can’t touch him — except in his imagination. Mr. Rogers, on the other hand, is real. They both share a hug.
A couple of weeks later, Big Bird visited the Neighborhood of Make-Believe on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. There’s no good clip of this on YT, but you can see some of the footage here and the full episode on Mister Rogers’ official site.
Big Bird didn’t visit Mr. Rogers directly (in the real world) because of the two shows’ differing views on make-believe:
Caroll Spinney agreed to appear in the episode as Big Bird after some dialogue with Fred Rogers; when Spinney originally received the script for the show he saw it required him to remove the costume and discuss the inner-workings of the Big Bird puppet. Spinney protested, as he didn’t believe in ruining the illusion of Big Bird for the children. Rogers agreed, but only under the stipulation that Big Bird’s appearance was restricted to the fantasy segments of the “Neighborhood of Make-Believe,” as he didn’t believe in perpetuating the deceitful blur of real and pretend to children that occurred when presenting the character as real in the “real world.”
While Sesame Street Unpaved mentions that Rogers understood Spinney’s concern over showing the children how Big Bird works, Spinney said at some of his book signings (promoting his autobiography, The Wisdom of Big Bird) that he and Fred Rogers argued over the phone for roughly twenty minutes over whether or not to have him tell the kids how he performs Big Bird.
And then there’s this, included here because I ran across it on YouTube: Arsenio Hall gifts Fred Rogers a very fly jacket.
Christian Marclay debuted his 24-hour film The Clock 15 years ago. The film is made up of thousands of clips from movies and TV shows that show timepieces or otherwise make reference to the time of day. I’ve seen chunks of it in a few museums & galleries and it’s wonderful.
Using this extraordinary minute-by-minute timeline of nearly all the scenes that make up The Clock, one person is attempting to reverse engineer the entire film. It’s not The Clock, but it’s A Clock. Here are a couple of excerpts:
Says the creator:
So, when I stumbled upon this Fandom Wiki, where the mysterious user ElevenFiftyNine had seemingly started the task of listing all the movies in The Clock, I couldn’t help myself; I started remaking the whole thing from scratch.
So, since I can’t really say this is The Clock, it is my best attempt at making a Clock, by following the excellent effort by ElevenFiftyNine.
A ten-minute excerpt is free on the website but you need to join the Patreon to watch the entire work-in-progress. According to their most recent update, the film is finished but the final version isn’t online quite yet; October 15th is the release date.
BTW, here’s the creator’s definition of “finished”:
I spoke some months ago about what 100% means for this project, and it is not that it is a fully perfect copy of Marclay’s work. The information available online is incomplete, and new information might appear in the future. For now, 100% means that all available information, is in a Clock.
And incredibly, they have never actually seen The Clock in person:
Unfortunately I have never had a chance to see The Clock, as it is only visible when exhibited at a museum. This is increasingly a rare occurrence, and even then, apparently the queues when it is on show, are monstrous. Never mind that it might be anywhere in the world!
Aside from the clips, I haven’t watched any of this yet, but it is a very tempting alternative to waiting for a rare showing somewhere I happen to be.
Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these but I’m gonna skip the apologies and get right into it. Here’s a list of what I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, and experiencing over the past several months. Let us know what movies, books, art, TV, music, etc. you’ve been enjoying in the comments below!
Dinosaur. It’s a huge pigeon on the High Line — what else do you need to know? (A-)
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Entertaining and engaging. It’ll make a good TV series. (B+)
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I hadn’t seen this in several years but I still knew all the words. (A-)
My Brilliant Friend (season four). If there’s one thing I’ve watched in the past several years that I wish had gotten more attention from viewers, critics, and awards panels, it’s this wonderful show. (A+)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow might be the most perfectly cast role in the history of cinema. Great story too. This movie surprised me when I saw it in the theater in 2003 and it’s still in the top tier of action/adventure movies. (A)
Andor (season one). A rewatch to prep for season two. I didn’t understand what the fuss was about this show the first time around, but this second viewing was a revelation. Andor is easily the best Star Wars thing since Empire. (A+)
Galleria Borghese. As previously discussed, the Bernini sculptures were a highlight of the summer. (A+)
Caravaggio 2025. Fantastic exhibition. (A)
The vivid blue color of the Mediterranean. (A+)
La Vita è Un Mozzico. We waited for an hour for sandwiches and it was probably worth it? (A)
Black Doves. British spy thriller? Keira Knightley? Ben Whishaw? Twist my arm. (B+)
Captain America: Brave New World. I’m sorry Sam Wilson / Anthony Mackie, there’s a “we have the Avengers at home” vibe here that’s hard to shake. (B)
Music to Refine To: A Remix Companion to Severance. I love this album; one of my favorite things of the past several months. (A+)
Mickey 17. It was fine? I was distracted while watching it in the theater, which is never a good sign. My favorite Bong Joon Ho film is still Snowpiercer. (B)
Amy Sherald: American Sublime. Absolutely fantastic. (A+)
The French Dispatch. This has quietly become a favorite of mine among Anderson’s films. (A)
The Royal Tenenbaums. However, this is still my favorite. (A+)
Paris Is Burning. Classic documentary of a bygone NYC era & a subculture that is now both flourishing and threatened. (A-)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season two). I love these characters, always the sign of a good Trek. The crossover episode with Lower Decks was delightful even though I’ve not watched any of the animated series yet. The musical episode I liked less (not a showtunes guy) but I appreciated the experimentation. Bring on the Muppet episode. (A)
Severance (season two). Perhaps not as good as the first season — there was a lot in the mid-season episodes that didn’t land for me. Still, I always watched when a new episode dropped. (A-)
Army of Shadows. Part of the unplanned resistance film festival I’ve been screening for myself recently. Not quite as good as I remembered it, but it’s nice to watch something that doesn’t just lay everything out on a platter for you so you can emote properly. (A-)
Best in Show. So many lines from this that I use in my daily life. (A-)
The 99% Invisible Breakdown: The Power Broker. This is such a good series with fantastic guests about a legendary book. Who knew that Roman Mars was such a gigglepuss though? (A)
Johnny English. I didn’t find this quite as delightful as my family does. I prefer Mr. Bean. (B+)
Paddington in Peru. Not quite the magic of the first two, but entertaining. (B)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I have likely said this before, but while Raiders is likely the best Indy movie, Last Crusade is my favorite (probably due to Tom Stoppard’s heavy rewrite of the script). (A+)
Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi. It’s interesting to watch the original trilogy having seen so many subsequent movies & TV series.
Ocean’s Twelve. The dancing lasers scene is completely ridiculous. (A)
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Well, I wasn’t expecting a critique of AI and the role of technology in society from this animated feature, but maybe I should have? (B+)
A Complete Unknown. Liked this more than I thought I would. (A-)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Just a wonderful book — witty and fun. (A)
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Fantastic book. Listen to the audiobook version if you can — Scott Brick’s narration elevates the story. (A)
A Quiet Place: Day One. I only watched this because I was on a plane. (B)
Severance (season one). After watching the second season, I rewatched season one. There was apparently much I missed the first time around. (A-)
Black Bag. Soderbergh is always worth watching, especially when he dips into Ocean’s Eleven territory — although this was more serious. (A-)
A Minecraft Movie. The first half was tolerable, enjoyable even. And then not so much. (C+)
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Watched this in the theater for the 20th anniversary. There are some good bits in here, but some of the acting really stinks. Folks in the theater cheered when Anakin slaughtered the younglings, which is probably some sort of meme that I don’t want to know about. (B+)
Sinners. I loved this movie. (A+)
Thunderbolts*. Thought I would like this more than I did. (B)
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The last scene is a masterclass in not having the faintest idea how to end a movie. (B+)
Andor (season two). Only a slight dip from season one. Overall, the series was a brilliant look at radicalization, the messiness of rebellion, and the oppressive flatness of authoritarianism. (A+)
There There by Tommy Orange. Devastating. (A-)
The Fear of Never Landing. Good album to chill out to by Marconi Union, who previously brought you the most relaxing song in the world. (A-)
Novocaine. This was bad. (D+)
Glass Onion. More Benoit Blanc mysteries please — I love watching Daniel Craig and his CSI: KFC accent chewing scenery. (A-)
The Gorge. Half of this was great and the other half was just another pseudo-horror action thing. (B-)
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Marvelous. (A)
Andor: The Rogue One Arc. This fan edit of Rogue One in the style of a three-episode Andor arc is as Gilroy-esque a cut as you’re ever going to get. (A-)
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. I had been kinda ambivalent about the M:I movies, but Fallout converted me, so now I’m slowly making my way back through the back catalog. (B+)
Via Carota. Best meal I’ve had in a long time. The tagliatelle was better than any pasta dish I had during my trip to Rome — it’s true, don’t @ me! And the roast chicken was perfect. (A+)
V for Vendetta. Underrated. (A-)
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. I’m going to tell you the embarrassing truth: I thought this was about actual samurai and perhaps related to the Tom Cruise movie. It is very much not. I gave it a real shot but ended up abandoning it about halfway through. (C)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Still a marvel of animated creativity. (A)
The Phoenician Scheme. Didn’t vibe with this at all. (B-)
Downhill mountain biking. This is giving me so much life right now. (A+)
Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death. Not my favorite W&G but still. (B+)
F1. Like Top Gun: Maverick crossed with Ford v Ferarri but Cruise and Bale played the aging outsider role much better than Pitt. Is Pitt even a good actor or is he just extremely charismatic? (B+)
Superman. I thought it was fine but didn’t like it as much as others seemed to. Better than anything Zach Snyder did for DC though. (B)
Shōgun. Rewatch with my son. Just an incredible show all the way around. (A+)
The Last of Us (season two). This show was always fighting an uphill battle with me — I don’t like zombie media and I dislike characters (Ellie!) who wouldn’t survive/thrive in the situations that they’re in with their personalities & characteristics. And I finally won. (C+)
The Handmaid’s Tale (season six). *sigh* No idea why I started watching (and then finished) this season; I’m a sucker for closure I guess. (C)
Nintendo Switch 2. I bought this to play Kart with my kids and also for a better Fortnite experience. So far, so good. (B+)
Mario Kart World. I haven’t played a ton of this, but it’s good so far. Free roam mode is pretty fun. I’ve gotta write up my Kart wishlist sometime…Nintendo only checked off one or two items in World. (B+)
Sargent and Paris. Caught this on the very last day of the show and hoo boy was it crowded. (A- for the show, C+ for the crowds)
Let God Sort Em Out. Need to listen to this one a few more times but I’m liking it so far. (B+)
Right now, I’m watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season three, listening to Deacon King Kong on audiobook (fantastic, a lock for an A+), rewatching Wandavision, and picking at Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane.
Past installments of my media diet are available here. What good things have you watched, read, or listened to lately?
Like many others, I became a little obsessed with Andor over the past few months. I was lukewarm on the first season when it came out, but a pre-s02 rewatch completely changed my tune — I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen on television. Season 2 was almost as good and the whole thing together was really affecting, thought-provoking, and just marvelously well-done.
In this interview with conservative NY Times’ columnist Ross Douthat, series creator Tony Gilroy nails why the show was so interesting:
The five years that I have been given are extremely potent. You have the Empire really closing down, really choking, really ramping up. The emperor is building the Death Star.
They are closing out corporate planets and absorbing them into the state. They are imperialistically acquiring planets and taking what they want. The noose is tightening dramatically.
There still is a Senate. There are senators that are speaking out impotently.
The Senate has been all but completely emasculated by the time this five-year tranche is over.
And there are revolutionary groups, rebellious groups, and people who are acting rebelliously, who wouldn’t even know how to describe themselves as part of any movement. There is a completely wide spectrum of unaffiliated cells and activists that are rising independently across the galaxy.
At the same time, you have a group of more restrained politicians who are trying to make an organized coalition of a rebellion on a place called Yavin, which will end up being the true end of the true victory of the Rebel Alliance.
I wanted to do a show all about the forgotten people who make a revolution like this happen — on both sides — and I want to take equal interest and spend as much time understanding the bureaucrats and the enforcers of the rebellion. I think one of the fascinating things about fascism is that, when it’s done coming after the people whose land it wants and who it wants to oppress and whoever it wants to control, by the time it gets rid of the courts and the justice and consolidates all its power in the center, it ultimately eats its young. It ultimately consumes its own proponents.
The rest of the interview is very much worth a read as well, particularly the bits where, for example, Douthat presses Gilroy on Andor being a “left-wing show”, Gilroy says no, Douthat scoffs, and, sensing Douthat is telling on himself, Gilroy fires back, “Do you identify with the Empire? Do you identify with the Empire?” And Gilroy continues later:
You could say: Why has Hollywood for the last 100 years been progressive or been liberal? I think it’s much larger. I’ll go further and say: Why does almost all literature, why does almost all art that involves humans trend progressive?
Let’s stick with Hollywood. Making a living as an actor or as a writer or a director — without the higher degree of empathy that you have, the more aware you are of behavior and all kinds of behavior, the better you’re going to be at your job. We feed our families by being in an empathy business. It’s just baked in. You’re trying to pretend to be other people. The whole job is to pretend to be other, and what is it like to look from this? People may be less successful over time at portraying Nazis as humans, and that may be good writing or bad writing, and there may be people that have an ax to grind. But in general, empathy is how I feed my family. And the more finely tuned that is, the better I am at my job.
That is what actors do: I’m going on Broadway, I’m playing a villain for six months. I got to live in that. I’m playing the slave, I’m playing the fisherman, I’m playing the nurse, I’m the murderer — you have to get in there. You have to live lives through other people. I think that the simple act of that transformation and that process automatically gives you what I would describe as a more generous and progressive point of view. It just has to.
Like I said, well worth a read/listen. (via sippey)
Filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt have made a 12-hour documentary series on the Revolutionary War that will debut on PBS in November 2025. Here’s a preview (YouTube, Bluesky):
From the press release:
An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.
An interesting thing about this series that sets it apart from some of his others is the star-studded cast: “Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes, Ethan Hawk, Josh Brolin…” These aren’t narrators; they’re playing actual characters in the series (Giamatti reprises his role as John Adams and Claire Danes plays Abigail):
Our cast list has never been surpassed by Hollywood or any streaming service. [No one could afford to] film all the people who have read for us, but they’ve all generously done SAG minimum: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Laura Linney, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Damian Lewis, Matthew Rhys — and that’s [just] a third.
In this recent interview, a charmingly shoeless Burns shares his team’s philosophy when working on projects like The American Revolution:
Given his and his team’s past few projects, including The US and the Holocaust & The Vietnam War, it will be interesting to see how the Revolution is presented and how the film is received.
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