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June 18, 2024

U.S. Olympic Trials Kick Into Full Gear

Coverage of US Olympic Trials and more

Aerial view of Paris with Eiffel tower and River Seine--rendering for 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony.
Aerial view of Paris with Eiffel tower and River Seine--rendering for 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony. Courtesy of Paris 2024.

NBCUniversal just started their record 15 nights of US. Olympic Trials coverage in primetime with swimming leading the way. Diving followed on Monday while Track & Field gets underway this weekend. Gymnastics will close things out during the following weekend.

I’ll touch on this year’s Tribeca Festival in a moment but please keep Bad Shabbos on your radar. It’s the funniest Jewish comedy in years!

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We’re just four days into the swimming trials but there is Katie Ledecky and then there is everyone else. The women’s 1500m free prelims took place earlier today on Peacock and it’s just impressive to see year in and year out what she does against the competition. Other than Katie Ledecky, it was exciting to see Gretchen Walsh set a new world record in the women’s 100m butterfly. Last night, Regan Smith broke her own American record in the women’s 100m backstroke. At the end of the day though, Team USA is going to go head to head with Australia when it comes to swimming.

There was so much to watch last night with much of it being live sports. I’ll watch AFI honor Nicole Kidman on the DVR at a later date. After swimming ended, I turned it over to ABC to watch the Boston Celtics take home a record 18th NBA Championship and followed it up with the live postgame coverage that followed.

It was hard to get much of anything accomplished last week with Shavuot and Shabbos taking me offline for a combined three days. I think I only watched six Tribeca films this year. Most of the bigger titles were not available on the press screener app nor were they sending out screeners. It’s unfortunate. In prior years, I’m only going to cover if I attend Tribeca in person but unless something changes n the financial front, even that is unlikely.

I’ve already decided that I am not going to attend TIFF in September unless a miracle happens. The anti-Jewish boycotts continue to have an unfortunate impact on my budget. Readership is still down and I’m not getting anywhere with freelance work. My last freelance gig still owes $1000 and trust me, there’s no excuse for the publisher to not pay their writing staff. Their last payment came in April and both ad revenue and Buttondown are only bringing in so much. SATM is a full time job but people are not going to the movies as often as they did in pre-pandemic times. That’s the new reality that we have to get used to in this industry, whether we want to or not.

On the reading front, I’ll be writing more book reviews later this week. I finished reading They Call Me Goose by Jack Givens over Shabbos after D-Day. During Shavuot, I started and finished reading Michael Crichton and James Patterson’s Eruption in under 24 hours! It’s 400+ pages and I could not stop reading and turning the page. The film rights have already been optioned.

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Film Reviews:

  • The Muppet Movie

  • Bad Boys: Ride or Die

  • The Longest Day

  • George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin

  • Hit Man

  • D.I.Y. Duck

  • Come Closer

  • Bad Shabbos

  • Inside Out

  • Brats

  • Inside Out 2

  • The Parallax View

  • The Andromeda Strain

TV Reviews:

  • Star Wars: The Acolyte

  • The Battle of Normandy: 85 Days in Hell

Home Entertainment Releases:

  • SCORE: A Film Music Documentary

  • Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

  • Cat Ballou

Book Reviews:

  • The History of Sketch Comedy - Keegan-Michael Key and Elle Key

  • Being Henry - Henry Winkler

Interviews:

  • Gabriela Cowperthwaite - The Grab

News:

  • Academy Museum to Address Antisemitic Tropes

  • Donald Duck 90: Disney Kicks Off Global Celebration

Olympics:

  • Maria Taylor Hosting Late Night

  • Muppets of Sesame Street Are Going to Paris

  • Matt Damon Narrates In the Company of Heroes

  • Minions, Track Stars Team Up in Olympic Promo Spot

  • Golf Commentators Announced

  • Making Team USA Schedule - June 15-30

  • More Paris Commentators Announced

  • Swimming and Diving

Streaming—Coming and Leaving:

  • Hulu

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