Brianland

Best Movies Watched in 2025 . Since people seem to love year-end lists — from critics’ picks to people’s own music streaming results — Sky suggested I make one for the best movies I watched this year.  Never did one of these before, but thought I could share some highlights that might lead some to […]

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Art Is My God   Late on election night November 2024 as the nightmare of America’s choice of ugly over decent became clear, I wrote in my notes — “spend every minute in the world of art.”  And that’s what I’ve done ever since. You can’t control elections — like you can’t control sports.  I […]

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The PTA Movie We’ve Been Waiting For Since Boogie Nights . . Fifteen minutes into Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another I jotted the note — “The movie we’ve been waiting for since Boogie Nights!”  Sumpthin else I wrote down a couple of times (and thought many more) – “Great cinematic storytelling!”  Words like […]

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. The Jerry Garcia-directed film “The Grateful Dead Movie” will be back in theaters for one night (Thurs Aug 14th) — and for *the first time* it’s been remastered in 4K for IMAX and remixed for their high-end surround-sound speakers.  (!) Revisiting the film, here’s some deets you may not know … or knew and […]

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  I’ve been on a James Mangold deep-dive recently and this guy needs to be in any conversation about the greatest directors working today. He’s averaged a new film roughly every two years since his first low-budget indie (Heavy) in 1995, which won a Special Jury Recognition for Directing at Sundance and kind-of jump-started his […]

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  I recently stumbled on a Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) interview about Boogie Nights from 1997 and began revisiting of his work. I’ve now seen all of his nine written-&-directed films, most more than once, and he’s certainly up there with the greatest of the active mid-career contemporary filmmakers. Since Boogie Nights he’s been compared […]

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  This is a scene-by-scene breakdown of the Dylan biopic masterpiece A Complete Unknown co-written and directed by James Mangold.  Besides being one of the best living filmmakers, Mangold was undoubtably tapped because of how well he handled the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line. After Jeff Rosen and Bob’s management team optioned the […]

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On this weekend 17 years ago — in the heat of the Democratic primary of 2008 between Hillary & Obama — I started BrianHassett.com. Every month since then for 17 years I’ve written at least one new piece for the site. “17” has been a weird number that’s followed me around my whole life from […]

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  A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man   Here’s what I riffed to social media after I got home from the advance screening on December 18th . . . Caught the sold-out “A Complete Unknown” IMAX screening in Toronto last night — and boy was it GREAT to see it on a […]

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Here’s part of the script I’ll be riffing from when I introduce the movie “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac on Sunday October 13th.   Edit Update  —  Here’s video of the event . . . . Here’s the post-screening Q&A . . . ============================================ This is the original […]

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