The Towering Inferno, Irwin Allen’s 1974 disaster epic, is utterly charmless, totally without wit, but in its finale it gives us a tableau from Dante - the venal and stupid plutocrats trapped in the tower will be redeemed by flood, saved from the fire, returned to earth by the movie’s twinned heroes, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. More in GROSS, the Hollywood history newsletter: https://bit.ly/4oGIgI9

The Exorcist isn’t a horror movie, it’s a strident Catholic evangelical text. And from the present moment, a moment in which an aggressive and confident new Catholic fundamentalism has made its home at the top of the Silicon Valley elite and even in The White House, it begins to look scarily prescient. More of this at http://GROSS.ly

It’s almost 90 years old, it’s cheesy and it’s a travesty of English history but it became the model for every action movie that followed. The Adventures of Robin Hood was 1938’s top-grossing movie… http://bit.ly/3Lsn62Q

If I decided - as an old-timer, one of those early-nineties idealists - that the Internet was a mistake - an evil imperial project, a bad actor, an epic error, a world-historic dead-end, a corrosive anti-human experiment - would there be any point saying so? What effect could it possibly have? I mean should I just keep my mouth shut, my head down and plough on. More to the point, should I put a sock in it and try to improve it, like a lot of my well-intentioned friends? https://bit.ly/4odkO62

Eddington is Ari Aster's dark COVID Western: its culture war themes are becoming more relevant daily. Tomorrow, on the GROSS Substack, I'll be discussing the movie with influential University of California film studies Prof Catherine Liu at 11am PDT/7pm UK. Free and open to all: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/59509

🚀 What will it be like to work in space? What will be expected of the workers who go there? https://bit.ly/4n5YslX

There's a dry cleaners in Kilburn that's turning into a bike shop… https://bit.ly/44UJeu3

Is it likely that the Israeli attacks on Iran are the first on a country that manufactures electric cars by one that doesn't? bit.ly/4kTbNO2