Hello, Tuesday
You'll find enclosed, Mother's Day, Ratatouille, and a Caterpillar...
Checking in…
Thank you to everyone who has listened to my new podcast, ‘What Was That About?’ which recently crossed over two-hundred seventy downloads! It’s been really encouraging to hear from listeners so far, and you can check out the latest episode at this link. Today’s subject: Disney and Pixar’s Ratatouille! I also recently crossed over 3K followers on Instagram and more are joining the family every day. If you’re new here, welcome! I’m so glad you’ve found me.
This past Sunday was Mother’s Day— I spent the afternoon on a lovely picnic with my family! Sharing sandwiches and charcuterie sitting criss-cross in the grass was a great time. Afterwards we traversed a short little hiking trail, and ended the night by watching The Maltese Falcon (review below). Everybody give your mom a hug.
Looking towards the next week: I’ll be joining my friends for another Take Four performance in a couple days, keep an eye out. If you want to hear about a previous performance, you can read all about it here. Additionally, the official website for CITIZEN the Artist might be arriving sooner than you think… designed and written by yours truly. More on that later, I’ve said too much.
As always, I’m glad you’re here!
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Songs That Should Be In Movies
Every week, I highlight one track from my behemoth Spotify Playlist.
Perhaps best known as the opening theme for FX’s hilarious series What We Do in the Shadows, ‘You’re Dead’ by Norma Tanega perfectly sums up the blunt wit and macabre imagery of that television show. But more than that, this is a poetic piece of work; piecing together rhyme and rhythm with a matter-of-fact tone that underlines its haunted warning. You’re Dead, you’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead and out of this world…
You can follow the full playlist here.
The Movies Watched List
I watch a lot of movies. A LOT. Here’s the highlights from the past week:
This week I watched…
The Drama (2026) Favorite of the year so far. Touched a really deep nerve somewhere in my skull that I was extremely uncomfortable with having touched, but the movie was so disarming it forced me to engage with that discomfort and learn to let it go. Twisted, fucked-up, gorgeous, hilarious, touching, empathetic movie, adored it. Can’t wait to watch again. Some of the best subjective POV through editing I’ve ever seen. Zendaya floored me, what a great performance. Insane stuff. ★★★★★
Crazy, Stupid Love (2011) One of the best rom coms fr. That climactic scene in the garden makes me CACKLE every time. Gosling makes such a meal out of this character, and Carell is so naturally hilarious it’s unbelievable. Stone’s ability to conjure boundless charisma seemingly out of thin air is ridiculously watchable. So many great scenes, wonderful chemistry between all the leads, and a delightful appearance from Kevin Bacon. ★★★★
Tangled (2010) Definitely the most spirited and intelligent thing to come out of Walt Disney Animation Studios in the last thirty years. Amazing that this film is sixteen years old and is only recently showing signs of wear. Visually beautiful, sonically gorgeous and thematically persuasive. I only hope my kids someday love it as much as I did when I saw it in the theater at ten years old. Great movie. ★★★★★
Citizen Kane (1941) Kane, the pompous vehicle for the pompous Welles, stampedes onto the screen with breathless fervor, chasing the real newsreels with a fake one just to spend the next two hours deconstructing the myth it has spent its opening minutes building. At first glance, Kane seems to be all anybody is talking about— he is routinely center frame in each vignette, we are watching his face more than anyone else's, and yet as each secondary and tertiary character spins their yarn, we come to realize that they are not telling a story about Kane at all— each individual is telling a story only about themselves, a story in which Kane features as a golden-child, a spoiled brat, a lover, a liar, a politician, a schoolboy, a thief, a vainglorious megalomaniac. The only piece of Kane we get from the horse's proverbial mouth is a single word. And that word is the most famous in the history of cinema. ★★★★★
The Maltese Falcon (1941) The messiest bunch of crooks spend an hour and forty minutes lying through their teeth at one another until half of them break out in tears and the other half laugh derisively. Bogey is always watchable, but it’s the glorious character work of Peter Lorre that steals the show for me here. Mary Astor flips back and forth easily between dangerously alluring and emotionally tortured. And then there’s the falcon itself— one of cinemas greatest macguffins— and a third-act plot-twist so beautifully simple that it subverts its own fledgling trope. ★★★★
For more of Elliot’s film reviews, follow him on Letterboxd.
The Ant-Bullies
The adventures and exploits of some ne’er-do-well 20-somethings.
My friend Scotty is vlogging every day of May on his ScoggVlogs YouTube channel! You can check out some of the shenanigans below, and don’t be fooled— this is, in fact, the best caterpillar edit you will see.
For more Ant-Bullies, subscribe to Under the Paperweight and get weekly stories!
And that’s it! Thanks so much for reading Under the Paperweight, I’m glad you’re here. Please consider subscribing if you haven’t already, and I’ll see you soon. ♥
CARZY STUPID LOVE MENTIONED
def most epic caterpillar edit