The Drama (2026)

Zendaya and her character are good. The male protagonist is a fashionable weakling. The movie's dilemma is whether three people who did wrong ought to ostracise a self-confessed one-time thought criminal who did not. The moral of the story is that everyone deserves to be forgiven, weaklings and thought criminals alike.

"Churchill: Walking with Destiny" by Andrew Roberts (2018)

Throughout his life, Churchill held remarkably modern, enlightened views. Many prominent figures throughout history—including the Founding Fathers—did. Enlightened views possess universality, by definition of Enlightenment.

Churchill remained consistent in his views throughout his life. This consistency is typical of great men. They perfect their views all while betting that their time will come instead of scheming how to best take advantage of prevailing political fashions.

Churchill respected tradition but challenged norms. This quality would have helped him in American politics, had he been born there.

Churchill's privileged upbringing prepared him well to thrive on adversity. Perhaps the same upbringing has also taught him what kind of adversity the British people were willing to endure and what kind they would have had none of. Only a great man can live with the enormous responsibility of choosing action over inaction: of sending his people to fight in a world war instead of surrendering. A defining feature of greatness is the willingness to accept responsibility.

Pluribus (2025)

The AI is well aligned beyond anyone's wildest expectations. And yet, in spite of its best efforts, it somehow fails to please two out of a dozen remaining humans. The two do not want communism. They even reject the interim feudalism that is lavished upon them while their joining the AI race is pending. Why refuse favours if the end is inevitable? Why not be the last glorious individual on earth? Why waste energy on resisting change instead of embracing and perfecting it?

The hive mind that is the AI race in the series can be viewed literally, as a sudden arrival in the near future, or metaphorically, as the population drawn to the LLMs that are already here.

The series is a two-part affair: the first two episodes followed by the remaining seven. Cinematography by Marshall Adams and Paul Donachie is superb. Rhea Seehorn is superb as the rather mediocre Carol Sturka. On paper, Carol's lines are dull, as is her character. Onscreen, Seehorn's character is alive and interesting, an intense one-man aggregation of the personalities that have not (yet) made it into the AI hive mind. Carol is a remarkable achievement by Seehorn and the series' directors.

Also remarkable is Karolina Wydra, who portrays Zosia, a retconned Pole (why? because her English is so pure?). The series is ultimately about them two, Carol and Zosia. It is hard to imagine a sequel adding much to the story. 

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World

(The National Portrait Gallery, 21 December 2025)

Beaton's failing as a fashion photographer lies in succeeding as a fashion photographer. People like to connect with other people, and fashion can serve as a catalyst. The subject of the photograph is always the connection, never the fashion itself. There is precious little of human connection in Beaton's photography. Beaton was an aesthete, not a humanist.

Fashion photography as a genre is generally rather good not (only) because its subject matter is beautiful but also because it is answerable to the objective metric of market success.

Boris Mikhailov: Ukrainian Diary

(The Photographers’ Gallery, 20 December 2025)

One becomes a photographer because one does not find what one is looking for in others’ photography. For this to be true, one’s tastes must be rather niche. With niche tastes, one is unlikely to create that which many others would find pleasing. As a result, most photography is bad. 

“No politics, no whining” is not an uncommon refrain on bulletin boards. The photographs from Mikhailov's exhibition would not have belonged on this board.

The Importance of Being Earnest

(The Noël Coward Theatre, 20 December 2025)

The production diminishes Oscar Wilde’s characters by erasing their principal traits: class, Englishness, sex, and manners. The time and the place are gone. All that is left is director Max Webster’s lazy caricature of the here and the now. All history has been abolished. The future that remains is the perpetual depreciation of the now.

In Webster’s now, only a priest and a governess—perhaps also Lady Bracknell—remain straight. Actors and actresses adopt an improbable menagerie of manners and speech patterns. The text is true to Wilde but is often recited as a mantra in a foreign tongue; Shakespeare is spoken thus when the meaning eludes the player. What remains of Wilde is carried and carried out by Stephen Fry in his two scenes.

If one believes that historical figures ought not to be judged by present-day prejudices—whether those prejudices are correct or mistaken—then one also ought to be sceptical of ascribing modern-day mannerisms and affectations to each and every character in Wilde’s classical play. By rejecting the past, the production insulates the present from scrutiny by comparison and thereby denies the future.

Webster’s is a decadent production in the best sense of “decadent.” It illustrates how a society in which the past looked exactly like the present would have no future.

Pastkartes Ziemassvētkos

(Latvijas Nacionālais Teātris, 17 December 2025)
One may assert the inferiority of AI companions relative to human friends because humans are shaped by their unique circumstances and friendships, whereas AI is trained on generic text and, therefore, in some ineffable way, is less human and, so, is inferior. This criticism may become untenable rather soon. AI may not become more human. Humans will become more AI because they will end up being trained on largely the same data. These data will consist not only of shared X and Instagram feeds but also in increasingly expansive conversations with AI, from whom humans will adopt both factoids and style. There will be silos. Within silos, though, humans and AI will become directly comparable, and not in the favour of humans. Some–the Amish-lite–will refuse to be trained on the common feed and the common AI and will stick to human friendships. Most won't.