Dear Tilly Norwood: Some Blunt Advice, Actress to “Actress,” From Betty Gilpin by Betty Gilpin

I’ve already been compelled to read far more about A.I. than I care to, and I’ve yet to see anyone make a compelling argument for its value. I generally agree with the premise that any use of the technology beyond tasks at the level of checking spelling and grammar is suspect, and that its incursion into the arts is nothing less than abhorrent. The supremely talented Betty Gilpin takes the recent touting of digitally conjured thespian Tilly Norwood as a prompt to offer an emotionally potent assessment of why real acting can’t be created by underlying code. As with all of Gilpin’s writing, the piece is crackling with life and ingenuity. She fights for the integrity of her art. This article is published by The Hollywood Reporter.

How Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl’ Enhances a Movie Scene by Esther Zuckerman

Before I typed out my full review of One Battle After Another, the first impression I shared was “Among the absurd number of triumphs to be found in this film is Paul Thomas Anderson landing the best-ever bigscreen use of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl,’ a superlative I assumed would never be wrested from Jonathan Demme.” With that in mind, I was delighted to open the Arts section of The New York Times this week and find an article by Esther Zuckerman celebrating that very needle drop, complete with a compare and contrast to Demme’s deployment of the tune in The Silence of the Lambs.

Why Can’t Working-Class Kids Make Their Way Out of Ohio? by Beth Macy

I often said that I made it to college in the nick of time. The above chart shows why. I started at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in the fall of 1988 and graduated in the spring of 1993, just as tuition costs started to climb faster than incomes and financial aid support. In this piece, published by The New York Times, Beth Macy, who’s just a few years older than me, looks back on her own experience as student with little familial financial support who nonetheless escaped from the dead end of her hometown because higher education was within reach. She also examines how that path to a better life has been almost eradicated for modern-day students in similar circumstances.