Do y'all agree that the hospital confrontation in S1E11 is the ultimate turning point for how we view Rawls? 🙂 Every rewatch just hammers home how incredible the dialogue is during this interaction. McNulty is completely paralyzed by trauma, vomiting into a trash can after listening to the audio tape of the wiretap ambush. Given their bitter history, you expect Rawls to use Kima's critical condition to completely bury Jimmy's career. Instead, he drops an inspired speech that stands as one of the most human moments in the series. He tells Jimmy straight up: "Shit went bad, she took two for the company". By telling McNulty that everything doesn't revolve around him, Rawls uses tough love to snap his detective out of a dark, narcissistic guilt trip. It beautifully builds on the competency he showed earlier at the tracks when he moved the milk crates and cleared out the extra bodies to protect the forensic evidence. The show refuses to let its villains be entirely evil, showing that while Rawls will comfortably exile McNulty to a freezing patrol boat a few episodes later, he possesses the fundamental integrity of a true homicide commander when a officer's life is on the line💯 #TheWire #Mcnulty #Rawls #KimaGreggs

A story of "martial folly" in five parts, all told by The Economist

Mark Mazower, On Antisemitism

Like someone said recently, Hajj for white people...

Amasya Sultan Bayezid Camii Şadırvanından kalemişi süsleme detayı...

My book on the Ḥanafī approach to hadith has gone to print and should be available for purchase soon. More details to follow, insha-Allah.

The Last Almohads? Two Descendants of the Almohad Caliphs in 14th-c. Nasrid Granada ballandalus.substack.com/p/t…

📺 Just a couple of weeks after Roger Moore appeared on Wogan, Pierce Brosnan was a guest talking Remington Steele, his Irish roots, his short appearance in "The Long Good Friday" and the possibility of taking over the Bond role from Roger Moore. June 1985

I am grateful to @AssalRad, who is thoughtful and sharp in her analysis of the media and its role in the genocide (and to @ArabCenterDC for hosting this important discussion)

Bogart delivers and then some as ‘Commander Queeg’ in THE CAINE MUTINY (1954) Apparently after shooting of this take the film’s crew applauded. #HumphreyBogart #JoseFerrer #EdwardDmytryk

Selimiye Camii, Edirne...

This is as fun as it is educational a read. Egyptian food's reputation has long been in tatters. @newlinesmag Middle East Editor @kshaheen makes the case for mahshy, molokhia in duck stock, koshary — and tamiyya over falafel. newlinesmag.com/spotlight/in…

Little did everybody know, Netanyahu had scheduled his speech… on Opposite Day

I genuinely think Jason Statham might have one of the strangest movie-star careers in Hollywood. The guy has spent roughly 25 years making action movies, and somehow he has almost never fallen into the trap that catches so many actors once they reach this stage of their career. He keeps making movies. Not TV seasons. Not a random streaming series. Not a pile of forgotten direct-to-video sequels. He just keeps showing up in theatrical action movies. And it’s not like he has spent his entire career making giant studio blockbusters either. He went from LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH to THE TRANSPORTER, CRANK, DEATH RACE, THE BANK JOB, HOMEFRONT, SAFE, WILD CARD and a bunch of other relatively modest action movies. Then he somehow became part of FAST & FURIOUS, THE EXPENDABLES and THE MEG without abandoning the smaller stuff. That’s the impressive part. A lot of action stars from previous generations eventually ended up doing increasingly cheap movies that went straight to VHS, DVD or television. Statham somehow kept finding distributors willing to put his movies in cinemas. Even when the movie itself is basically a $30 million Jason Statham movie, there is still a theatrical audience for it. And I think the reason is pretty simple: Jason Statham knows exactly what people are paying to see. He isn’t pretending every movie is going to win an Oscar. He isn’t constantly trying to reinvent himself. He found a very specific screen persona and has spent 25 years refining it. You know what you’re getting with a Statham movie. A tough guy. A ridiculous problem. Some excellent fights. A few great one-liners. Probably a vehicle chase. Maybe a corrupt organization. And eventually Jason Statham is going to beat the absolute hell out of somebody. But somehow that consistency became a brand. Tom Cruise has built an incredible theatrical career by being extremely selective and turning almost every movie into an event. Statham has done something completely different. He has made being reliable into a form of stardom. There are very few actors who can put their name on a relatively modest action movie and still make a studio believe people will leave the house to watch it. That might actually be one of the most impressive things about Jason Statham’s career.

Normal

Another Melania doc but with more conversation? At least tell us Nathan Fielder is in it

The only reason Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid got made is that William Goldman stood his ground... something Butch and Sundance don’t do, which is why the movie almost never got made. I’ll explain. Goldman never hesitated to call out Hollywood’s idiocy. One of his favourite stories is pitching Butch and Sundance. In the late ’60s, studios followed a basic rule for American Westerns: the heroes stand, fight, and win. They do NOT run. Goldman’s script broke that rule. Instead of turning to face the relentless “super-posse,” Butch and Sundance pack up and flee to South America. Execs were horrified. To them, it was narrative cowardice. They were sure audiences would reject protagonists who chose exile over a final shootout on American soil, no matter how handsome they were. Only one studio showed interest at first, but with a condition: Butch and Sundance couldn’t go to Bolivia. They had to stay and fight. Goldman objected: that’s what really happened. “But they did go to Bolivia!” The studio head replied with the now-famous line: “I don’t give a shit. All I know is John Wayne don’t run away.” Goldman refused to change the story’s core truth. He made a few minor structural tweaks, then his agent took it out for an aggressive auction. By the time it went back around, the climate had shifted. Studios that had hesitated suddenly went into a bidding war. 20th Century Fox bought it for $400,000, an unheard-of, record-shattering sum back then. By letting his heroes “run,” Goldman helped create the blueprint for the modern anti-hero and the buddy-comedy dynamic. Their vulnerability, their panic, their humanity, was exactly what late-’60s audiences connected with. The film became one of the great Westerns, won Goldman an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and proved his ultimate adage: “Nobody knows anything.”

So say the so-called experts