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House of the Dragon is back, and the Dance of the Dragons is underway. The Targaryen war of succession will come down to control—who can control their impulses, their sycophants, and, yes, their dragons. With each passing episode, The Ringer will examine how Westeros’s key players are aligning their pieces on the board. As the saying goes, chaos can be a ladder. Welcome to the House of the Dragon power rankings.
In the opening scene of Season 2 of House of the Dragon, Cregan Stark—a.k.a. the Wolf of the North, a.k.a. the ancestor of the Starkfam we know and love from Game of Thrones—immediately comes across as the most righteous dude in all the Seven Kingdoms. Hosting disputed prince Jacaerys Velaryon at the Wall, Cregan shows him around with all the pride and extreme patience of a college senior giving a pre-frosh and their parents a campus tour: Here’s the bazillion-foot-tall elevator built by my ancestors, and over that way is basically death’s door; yes, we believe in single-sex education at this institution, our motto is “Duty Is Sacrifice,” and did you know that our admissions rate is a steady 10 percent?
After all that, Cregan also makes sure to educate the naive, young Jace about the ways of the world. “Do you think my ancestors built a 700-foot wall of ice to keep out snow and savages?” he asks, explaining that the Wall also fortifies Westeros against that oldest and wiliest of foes, Death. (These taciturnt Starks sure love to bring everything back to first principles.) He remarks that, as legend has it, Jace’s Targaryen forebears once showed up flaunting their dragons—and that the mighty beasts, for all their fire-breathing power, instinctively knew not to cross the Wall. And, crucially, Cregan agrees to uphold his family’s old oath to Rhaenyra—but stresses that it’s super not his top priority right now and that the best he can do is send the “thousands of graybeards who’ve already seen too many winters,” take them or leave them.
As the Targaryens continue to bicker about who gets to sit the Iron Throne, Cregan, quite simply, just rules. Sadly, though, like all the best sigma males, the Wolf of the North will be leaving everyone wanting more. According to showrunner Ryan Condal, we’re not likely to see Cregan Stark again until some future season. Terrible news for viewers, but if the good, cold lord has taught us anything, it’s that “this is not a sentence—but an honor.” I bend the knee.
The total opposite of Cregan Stark in so many ways! Far from being motivated by pure familial loyalty, Larys is a dirty double kinslayer. Rather than viewing King’s Landing squabbles as distractions from a broader existential crisis, Larys’s entire existence is defined by the subtle art of the throne room scheme. Whereas Cregan speaks plainly, Larys prefers to insinuate and suggest … like when he murmurs to the Dowager Queen Alicent that he knows she was “indisposed” recently. (By “indisposed,” he means that she was Ser on Criston till she Cole.) And instead of defending against Death, he orders it up: In the Season 2 premiere, we learn that Larys, seeking to root out disloyal servants, has taken the liberty of ousting members of Alicent’s previous castle staff. (By “ousting,” I mean, in his words, that “they no longer breathe our air.”)
Still, while he may be a weird dude through and through, Larys’s lurker shtick does seem to be working. He has long had a certain podiatryst arrangement with Alicent (sorry), but now that he’s personally handpicked all her maidservants, he doesn’t even need to be in the room to make her feel vulnerable and violated and claustrophobic and in need of a good scrub-a-dub-dub. That’s quite some power to wield over the mother of the king! And speaking of the king, Larys is getting in Aegon’s head, too: “Otto Hightower was your father’s hand, your grace,” he tells the young monarch, ostensibly laying the foundation for a Small Council shake-up.
It can be hard out there for Larys types: In Game of Thrones, both Littlefinger and Varys, two elite-level manipulators, eventually made one too many chess moves and met their respective dooms. But for now, Larys appears poised to take a big leap: from Alicent’s wanker footman to, potentially, the hand of the king.
Need to stay anonymous in some seedy crowd but don’t feel like hiding even an inch of your face? In the mood to conspire on, commit, or conceal any number of crimes? Look no further than the humble cloak, the hottest garment in Westeros.
Are you someone nicknamed “the White Worm”? Perhaps you’d like this version, which resembles crushed silk. Need to easily reach your various swords and jacket buckles? This one gives Aemond great placket access when he’s on a mission! Rhaenys rocked the cloak when she escaped the castle ahead of Aegon’s coronation, and so did Otto Hightower when he made a business proposition to the White Worm herself. But the GOAT cloaker remains Daemon Targaryen, who really is a man for all seasons. His collection includes a bulky overcloak (worn for the occasion of killing his pesky first wife) and a cloak with lovely trim (his boatwear). He has even sported (while in the midst of grooming his teen niece and future bride) a sort of Flea Bottom version of the Investment Banker Patagonia: a cloak that kind of looks like a vest, worn over a white collared shirt.
With a lewk that is part collegiate swim team parka and part Dark Kermit, and with a hood that somehow never gets blown off by a breeze and ruins the whole disguise, the Crime Cloak comes with all sorts of options to fit one’s sinister style—all while you’re blending in, lying low, and/or planning the murder of an heir to the Iron Throne.
The Sea Snake and his dragonriding bride may not be the most powerful people in the realm, but as Season 2 begins, they are each in possession of a tremendous amount of leverage. Consider:
For now, it behooves the Velaryons to align with Team Black. But if that personal calculus changes even a little, suddenly everything from sky to sea becomes a whole different equation altogether.
This brother-sister, husband-wife, dalliant-dreamer, king-queen duo has always been a bizarre couple, and not just because of the whole inbreeding thing. “The queen is an enduring mystery, is she not?” says Aegon early in the Season 2 premiere, having just heard Helaena anxiously whisper something about being scared of rats. Indeed, going into this episode and this season, one thing that most excited me was finding out more about this wedded set of sibs. Like, do they have any common interests? What do they possibly talk about?!
In the wake of “A Son for a Son,” I now have my answer: It’s safe to say that they’re about to share the common interest of “avenging the gruesome murder of our sweet, dead, 6-year-old, heir-to-the-throne child.” (Aegon doesn’t know about it yet as the episode ends, but he obviously will soon.) This is a potent motivation—particularly when it comes to Aegon and Helaena, both of whom are powerful people.
One of them, of course, is king, and not just any king: He’s (a) a young king who is (b) eager to prove himself and (c) soon to be grieving his fine boy and, oh yeah, (d) was already close to shaking up the ranks of his nearest advisers. In other words, there’s really no telling what he might do next, only that it will be something drastic. And then there’s Helaena, who has consistently, if cryptically, predicted the future. If she can start harnessing her soothsaying into more actionable thoughts and ideas, she could have a weapon as vital as any flying dragon.
Speaking of flying dragons: Aemond’s mount, Vhagar, remains Team Green’s best weapon by far at the moment. Yet: “You do not have a seat at this council,” snaps Otto Hightower to Aemond when the latter enters the Small Council room in the midst of a meeting. But Otto’s boss begs to differ: “Aemond is my closest blood and our best sword,” says King Aegon II. “I welcome him.” Aemond may be in his mother’s doghouse for that minor mistake of accidentally killing his nephew, but in the Season 2 premiere, he demonstrated that he’s more than ready for the warfare to escalate further.
“My brother is hostage to my grandsire and mother,” Aemond complains to Criston Cole as they plot paths to victory, “and they tell him that a war of dragons can yet be avoided.” Not anymore, needless to say—which means that Aemond is almost certainly about to take flight.
As Aemond positions himself to become the new Daemon, this week’s episode sort of made Daemon out to be the new Aemond: Daemon took his zest for vengeance a little too far, then everything got out of hand, now a boy is dead and war is coming, and probably thar be dragons. He has simultaneously made the world chillingly simple—tit for tat, a son for a son, repeat as often as necessary—while also complicating everything. And the scariest part, as ever, is that he’s probably pretty OK with all that he’s done.
The queen in exile had only one line this episode, but it was a doozy: “I want Aemond Targaryen.” Those four words were all it took to set off the Rube Goldberg contraption of events that culminated in another dead kid. The good news: That’s some power right there! The bad news: Aemond Targaryen still lives.
Jace’s diplomatic visit to the Wall was a definite success. And the guy also appears to have some semblance of a moral compass, the likes of which we don’t typically see in the halls of power south of Winterfell. But that makes me nervous for him! If we’ve learned anything from Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon thus far, it’s that Westeros has a way of punishing intrinsic goodness and curdling warm hearts.
one of the best scenes of episode 01, it summarizes perfectly what matt, emma and ryan talked about how daemon deal with grief, he’s angry but the more she explains the more he backtrack, the more he gets soft and hurt again, it’s not her fault. pic.twitter.com/nV2fqsmUiR
— thai. (@nyracult) June 17, 2024
Tired: Constantly dealing with Daemon’s bullshit.
Wired: Saying what the hell, selling secrets to Otto, and then spitting at Daemon: “You only blame me because your true enemies are out of reach.”
Inspired: Sure, Daemon may have imprisoned Mysaria, but this is the White Worm we’re talking about; this woman downright thrives in shitty situations. I completely expect her to emerge from captivity with a whole new cadre of associates and operatives.
“They tell me that you are the one that dragged my body out of the sea,” Corlys Velaryon says to Alyn of Hull—a newly introduced, seemingly humble boatsman down at the Driftmark docks—in the season premiere. “I am indebted to you, Alyn,” the Sea Snake adds. Not a bad House of the Dragon character debut! Something tells me this won’t be the last we see of Alyn, who also mentions having a brother … a note that seems to pique Corlys’s interest. This situation is developing …
You know what, in a sick way, I almost felt bad for Otto this episode! He may be a self-involved prick, but the guy couldn’t catch a break. What’s worse: clocking your daughter and her favorite knight basking in clear post-hookup bliss, or discovering your grandson and that same knight discussing battle plans without you? Getting undermined by an amateur king who knows nothing about anything, or being plotted against by a slimy would-be usurper who knows way too much? Otto is a survivor indeed, but even cockroaches know that sometimes the only way to endure is to scatter and hide.
When it comes to lobbying powerful people to make decisions that benefit special interest groups, King’s Landing is a lot like New York City. You have Hugh the scorpion builder guy asking for, and being granted, better benefits for him and his fellow anti-dragon arms manufacturers, like he’s the NYPD getting funding for a bunch of new drones or surveillance vans or something. And then you have poor Jerard the Shepherd, whose simple ask—that the crown return his tithe of livestock so that he can make it through the winter!—is initially granted by Aegon the Magnanimous … only for the young ruler to get an earful from Otto and totally renege on the deal, Kathy Hochul style. Canceling congestion pricing, it turns out, is the feeding sheep to dragons of our time. Sounds about right.
We’ve all known that one horned-up secret couple that thinks they’re being all sly and surreptitious with their dalliances but are actually hooking up all over creation and fooling absolutely no one. Typically, this happens during, like, adolescence. But in the case of House of the Dragon—where very few people have developmentally normal upbringings—it’s the Dowager Queen GILF and her Kingsguardsman who have apparently taken to christening every damn room in the palace.
For Alicent, who spent years married to a decaying, old King Viserys and now serves at the pleasure of her firstborn failson, King Aegon II, all this carrying on seems to be a way to reclaim both her lost youth and her feeling of power. For Ser Criston, it’s maybe a bit more complex. Once upon a time, he raged at a young Rhaenyra for even suggesting a sworn-guard-with-benefits situation, but now that’s what he basically has with Alicent. It’s a direct and dishonorable flouting of his Kingsguard oaths, yet it also helps keep Criston in the room where it happens.
This is all fun and games until someone loses a head. (An eye is so Season 1.) Alicent has for years sought to avoid a truly violent conflict, but it now seems like her window of time to achieve peace has slammed shut. And even outside the Small Council, her image as a doting mother is in shambles. It’s bad enough that Alicent and Criston were indisposed while two assassins breached a royal bedroom and killed a child in front of his mother. But then Helaena walks in on her mom mid-bone? That’s the stuff of nightmares, whether you’re a dreamer or not. I expect to see Helaena posting on the r/raisedbynarcissists subreddit before long.
While Alicent is banging away, the rats will play! And for a moment, this bumbling pair of Hightower-hating, Harry-’n’-Lloyd-coded creeps seems like they might be the most powerful henchmen in the land. First, they pocket the initial half of that sweet, sweet bounty money. Then they sidle straight through the throne room in plain sight, working the “walk with purpose and act like you’re meant to be there” Super Bowl scammer strategy to perfection. And before long, they find themselves with the future of the realm literally right there in their grasp.
But then they go ahead and destroy all these Ws by completing the job that Daemon contracted them to do. Well, sort of: Unable to locate their primary target, the eminently recognizable and full-grown Aemond, they settle for the next (and worst) option: cherubic 6-year-old Jaehaerys, son of Aegon and his sister-wife, Helaena. “A son for a son,” Blood and Cheese explain to a shell-shocked Helaena, making it pretty obvious who probably sent them—and ultimately removing any remaining leverage or value they may have had.
If you’re a youngish Targaryen or Velaryon or Hightower who thinks you have your whole life ahead of you: You probably don’t!!! While “generation” has a way of losing all meaning in the context of the incestuous Targaryen family tree, it doesn’t really matter in this case who is an uncle-husband or who is a daughter-niece: Anyone young enough to have any future at all is highly vulnerable at present, and the horrors only seem to be escalating.
One day you’re monkeying around in a dragon’s cave with your cousins and/or uncles; the next, you’re getting chomped by Vhagar. One minute you’re playing with attendance balls and being promised human horseback rides; the next, you’re missing a head. RIP, little Jaeharys! I’m bummed we won’t get to see what would have happened when you inevitably reproduced with your nearly identical twin sister a decade hence.
Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.
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Katie Baker
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When Viceroy Chicago executive chef Verlord Laguatan moved to the U.S. from the Philippines 16 years ago, he found all Americans knew about Filipino cuisine was adobo chicken and ube.
The success of Kasama, Boonie Foods, and other spots has demonstrated Chicago now possesses a deeper interest in the cuisine. While working in Wicker Park at Indian street food restaurant Wazwan, he supplemented the South Asian menu with Pinoy-inspiredred items.
Laguatan is now seizing a larger opportunity by bringing Southeast Asian flavors to the Viceroy’s rooftop cocktail lounge, formerly known as Devereaux. The space’s new name is Pandan.
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“There were plenty of chefs who have come from high-end backgrounds and now they’re starting to represent themselves and their culture,” Laguatan says. “We are now bringing the spice, we are bringing the funk and people are accepting of that. For many years people were like ‘Ohh, what is that smell?’ or “Ohh, that’s too strong for me,” but now people are starting to accept all of it and there’s a sense of adventure when you’re finding something new.”
While there are still a few outdoor tables near the pool — which is only open to hotel guests — most of the space has been enclosed to allow it to stay open and provide views of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline throughout the winter. The decor focuses on simple elegance, with a main bar lined with leather high-backed chairs and club chairs positioned around candle-lit cocktail tables.
The bar’s namesake shrub is the star of a signature cocktail blended with lemon, lime, and Don Julio Blanco or Seedlip Notas de Agave for a non-alcoholic version. Pandan foam tops a float made with Ron Zacapa rum, amaro, sarsaparilla, and tiki bitters. Other drink highlights include a wood-smoked blend of bourbon and cardamom and the Flight School, a gin and mezcal-based drink colored purple with violet liqueur and served in a bird-shaped glass.
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Viceroy/Neil John Burger Photography
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Viceroy/Neil John Burger Photography
Laguatan’s food takes inspiration from Southeast Asia, pairing Filipino classics like pork lumpia and bistek tataki with sweet corn tempura and spicy tuna on crispy rice. The lobster dumplings with coconut curry, crispy shallots, and cilantro oil are inspired by the Nihari momo Laguatan made when working with chef Zubair Mohajir at Wazwan. The goal is to show the qualities that unify the region’s food.
“Every island [of the Philippines] definitely has their own way of cooking and you’ll find throughout Southeast Asia some people eat spicy, some people don’t,” Laguatan says. “The biggest thing that will always be consistent is that there will be some funk to it. You’ll get your fish sauce and other ferments in there and all tropical fruits and other warm weather ingredients.”
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Viceroy/Neil John Burger Photography
Classic cocktails and more familiar bites like Thai fried chicken and nori fries are also available. Keeping to the farm-to-table focus of Viceroy’s ground-floor restaurant Somerset, Pandan’s produce is sourced from Mick Klug and Nichols farms. Laguatan is also growing ingredients; he operates a garden and beehives on the roof above the kitchen, one of the first projects he started after joining Viceroy three years ago. The menu will change seasonally, with warm cocktails rolling out for winter.
“We’re continuously improving this garden, adding more things and using it as a learning platform for our cooks and sometimes our guests,” Laguatan says. “It’s for them to understand when ingredients are at their best and hopefully we can carry on this learning culture of using what’s around us. Working with our farmers and local vendors is how we keep our community alive.”
Pandan, 1112 N. State Street, opening Thursday, June 20.
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Samantha Nelson
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Brown Shipley& Co Ltd increased its stake in shares of Agilent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:A – Free Report) by 7.9% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 29,206 shares of the medical research company’s stock after buying an additional 2,136 shares during the period. Agilent Technologies comprises 2.0% of Brown Shipley& Co Ltd’s portfolio, making the stock its 18th largest holding. Brown Shipley& Co Ltd’s holdings in Agilent Technologies were worth $4,061,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Blair William & Co. IL lifted its holdings in shares of Agilent Technologies by 1.9% in the third quarter. Blair William & Co. IL now owns 18,002 shares of the medical research company’s stock valued at $2,013,000 after purchasing an additional 334 shares in the last quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of Agilent Technologies during the third quarter valued at approximately $662,000. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Agilent Technologies by 5.7% during the third quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 167,831 shares of the medical research company’s stock valued at $18,767,000 after buying an additional 9,099 shares during the period. Aviva PLC lifted its stake in shares of Agilent Technologies by 2.6% during the third quarter. Aviva PLC now owns 279,860 shares of the medical research company’s stock valued at $31,294,000 after buying an additional 7,155 shares during the period. Finally, Kestra Advisory Services LLC lifted its stake in shares of Agilent Technologies by 12.6% during the third quarter. Kestra Advisory Services LLC now owns 15,636 shares of the medical research company’s stock valued at $1,748,000 after buying an additional 1,749 shares during the period.
In other news, SVP Dominique Grau sold 15,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, June 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $133.28, for a total value of $1,999,200.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now owns 49,486 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $6,595,494.08. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. In related news, SVP Philip Binns sold 2,827 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, March 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $147.54, for a total value of $417,095.58. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 9,997 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,474,957.38. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, SVP Dominique Grau sold 15,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, June 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $133.28, for a total value of $1,999,200.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 49,486 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $6,595,494.08. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 19,785 shares of company stock valued at $2,670,836 in the last quarter.
Shares of A stock opened at $129.85 on Monday. Agilent Technologies, Inc. has a 1 year low of $96.80 and a 1 year high of $155.35. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $140.91 and its 200 day simple moving average is $138.21. The firm has a market capitalization of $37.89 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.70, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.40 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a current ratio of 2.15, a quick ratio of 1.64 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34.
Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A – Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, May 29th. The medical research company reported $1.22 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.19 by $0.03. The company had revenue of $1.57 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.58 billion. Agilent Technologies had a net margin of 18.84% and a return on equity of 26.25%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was down 8.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $1.27 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Agilent Technologies, Inc. will post 5.25 EPS for the current year.
The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, July 24th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, July 2nd will be given a dividend of $0.236 per share. This represents a $0.94 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.73%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, July 2nd. Agilent Technologies’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 22.22%.
Several equities research analysts have recently issued reports on A shares. Oppenheimer increased their price objective on shares of Agilent Technologies from $67.00 to $90.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 26th. UBS Group dropped their price objective on shares of Agilent Technologies from $155.00 to $141.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, May 30th. Robert W. Baird decreased their target price on shares of Agilent Technologies from $147.00 to $136.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, May 30th. Evercore ISI decreased their target price on shares of Agilent Technologies from $145.00 to $126.00 and set an “in-line” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, May 30th. Finally, Citigroup decreased their target price on shares of Agilent Technologies from $145.00 to $135.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, May 30th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, six have assigned a hold rating and ten have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $136.50.
Check Out Our Latest Report on Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies, Inc provides application focused solutions to the life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets worldwide. The company operates in three segments: Life Sciences and Applied Markets, Diagnostics and Genomics, and Agilent CrossLab. The Life Sciences and Applied Markets segment offers liquid chromatography systems and components; liquid chromatography mass spectrometry systems; gas chromatography systems and components; gas chromatography mass spectrometry systems; inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry instruments; atomic absorption instruments; microwave plasma-atomic emission spectrometry instruments; inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry instruments; raman spectroscopy; cell analysis plate based assays; flow cytometer; real-time cell analyzer; cell imaging systems; microplate reader; laboratory software; information management and analytics; laboratory automation and robotic systems; dissolution testing; and vacuum pumps, and measurement technologies.
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ABMN Staff
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Rachel Lindsay and Callie Curry kick off today’s pod by discussing the unproductive lunch between the Fudas and the Ruelas on Season 14, Episode 6 of The Real Housewives of New Jersey (3:11) before jumping into a recap of Taleen’s chaotic party on Season 2, Episode 2 of The Real Housewives of Dubai (13:27). Then, Rachel and Callie discuss Part 2 of the Summer House Season 8 reunion (26:28) before Rachel is joined by none other than the Summer House breakout star himself—Jesse Solomon! Rachel and Jesse chat all about his new single, his theory for why things between West and Ciara fell apart, and his response to the internet’s collective desire for him and Amanda to get together (50:41).
Host: Rachel Lindsay
Guests: Callie Curry and Jesse Solomon
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Theme: Devon Renaldo
Subscribe: Spotify
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Rachel Lindsay
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Reservations are now live via for the newly relocated Khmai, the Cambodian restaurant that earned accolades after two years in Rogers Park. Khmai 2.0 is sleeker and more upscale than the original, and with its new location along Sheridan Road near Loyola University, chef and owner Mona Sang has added a casual new sister spot in Kaun Khmai.
Before the restaurants’ debuts on Thursday, June 13 in Rogers Park, Sang previewed her restaurant to friends and media members earlier in the month. Those who attended witnessed firsthand just how far the restaurant has come since its founding in 2022. “This is a huge upgrade,” one diner audibly whispered to her companion.
The menu draws inspiration from Khmer royal cuisine, or mahob preah barom reacheaveang, a style developed in palace kitchens and one of three overarching culinary genres in Cambodia. It’s distinguished by the quality of ingredients and more elaborate cooking techniques — a style that’s evident in new menu options like the show-stopping trei chien chuyen, a whole fried red snapper that smacks of powerful umami, ginger, garlic, and fresh herbs.
Another addition, bangkea tuk ampil — large and juicy head-on shrimp marinated in Khmer spices, breaded, and slathered in spicy tamarind sauce with palm sugar and shrimp paste stars. Meanwhile, an old standby, kaw ko — a braised oxtail with bone marrow, galangal, star anise, and fragrant lemongrass, soothed. Sang offered a special preview menu for guests, with Khmai’s signature “dips” — in essence Khmai’s answer to crudités. The beloved egg rolls — filled with ground chicken, shallot, onion, garlic, and taro —were also available. The restaurant was still waiting for its liquor license, so a wine list wasn’t available.
The new space, the former Onward Chicago, is more striking than the original Khmai and includes a soaring arched ceiling and a stunning wall-size mural of a Khmer dancer. The ornate Regency-style gold and black tableware is a product of Sang’s Bridgerton fandom. Chopsticks, forks, knives, and spoons sat on the tables.
The reopening represents a pivotal moment in the saga of Khmai, which Sang originally conceived as a therapeutic project with her mother, Sarom Sieng, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. Their endeavor rapidly grew and they soon accrued a customer base with church catering gigs before opening a permanent location on Howard Street near the Evanston border. A rare specialist in traditional Cambodian cuisine, it was a surprise smash hit that garnered a semifinalist nod from the James Beard Foundation. In 2022, Sang and Sieng were named co-winners of Eater Chicago’s Chefs of the Year award and Khmai was dubbed one of the 15 Best New Restaurants in America.
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Behind the scenes, pressure on Sang and her team was mounting. Between a contentious dynamic with her former landlord and the structural limitations of the original location, she knew that a move was essential to the restaurant’s survival. Khmai closed in November 2023, and in the intervening months, Sang has slowly unfolded her plans to the public — including the pending debut of a relaxed second restaurant that would feature fruity cocktails and Khmer street food like skewers of grilled beef, chicken, and squid. A smash burger made with spicy, sour twa ko (Cambodian sausage) will also appear.
Both restaurants share the space on the ground floor of the Hampton Inn, but Khaun Khmai channels a more relaxed energy without reservations. There’s a large rectangular bar, large windows that fill the room with light, and colorful Cambodian artwork displayed on the walls and around the room. Sang will also launch the city’s only Cambodian brunch services at both restaurants alongside dinner and hopes to begin offering breakfast and lunch in August.
Khmai and Kaun Khmai, 6580 N. Sheridan Road, scheduled to open Thursday, June 13, reservations via OpenTable.
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Naomi Waxman
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For two decades, the words “cinematic” and “blockbuster” have been, for most game directors, synonymous. During this window, which stretches back to the original God of War and Halo, we’ve enjoyed (or, for others, endured) big-budget video game creators aspiring to emulate their blockbuster film counterparts.
If — somehow — you’ve never seen the films of Steven Spielberg or Michael Mann, you’ve nonetheless experienced them via contact highs from Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto, and practically every other Big Game released this millennium.
But Indika, a game that sounds like a weed strain and plays like being stoned and scrolling through the Criterion Channel, has me hopeful that we’re approaching, with narrative video games, a turning point for what it means for a game to be “cinematic.”
What fuels that hope is Indika’s creative similarities to a micro-budget indie horror film from the ’90s.
Is it possible for one game to change the look of an entire medium? And why would it be Indika, a game most readers haven’t played, or even heard of?
25 years ago, The Blair Witch Project inspired countless parodies with a single shot. You know the one. You can see it in the trailer, the poster, or at the top of this story. The lead actress-slash-camera operator holds a cheap camcorder inches from her face. Tears well in her eyes, and a flashlight casts hard shadows across her dry skin.
She’s terrified. She’s a mess. She’s barely in focus or even in frame.
At that time, few commercial directors would film a shot so crudely, nor would a celebrity offer the audience such an intimate look inside their nostrils. Filmgoers expected movies to conform to a certain look, sound, and feel. But The Blair Witch Project didn’t resemble anything in theaters; it looked like a cheap documentary you’d find on the local PBS station. It looked real.
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Photo: Haxan Films
With that emphasis on “realism” above all else, the amateur camerawork accomplished its goal — scare the shit out of people — better than any expensive shot on an industry-grade camera could.
The filmmakers had taken the empathic visual language of the documentary form and weaponized it. Look again at the shot. You don’t see an actress staring into the camcorder; you see a person. And so, as happens when you look someone in the eyes, a connection forms. This person, you think, could be you. Alone. In the woods. Something unknown stalking through the branches.
The camerawork of The Blair Witch Project wasn’t cinematic, not in the classical sense. But in time, what audiences expected film and TV to look like would change to meet that image. Do we have the sprawling found-footage horror genre without it? Or the mega-popular docu-sitcoms like The Office and Modern Family?
The creators of The Blair Witch Project, because of their limitations (no money! No sets! No actors!) looked for inspiration where others didn’t have to, and wouldn’t choose to. The film’s success then gave future creators big and small permission to follow its lead, forever changing what a Hollywood movie could look and feel like.
Indika, the fantastic new adventure game from Odd Meter, tells the story of a young nun who loses her grip on reality in an alternate-history version of 19th-century Russia. Tortured by a voice in her head that may or may not be a demon, Indika partners with a sickly man who may or may not be divinely chosen by God. Together, they embark on a perilous road trip through beautiful forests, abandoned towns, and literalizations of biblical allegory.
Indika is the latest — and one of the most impressive — examples of a sea change in the look and feel of cinematic games.
You don’t have to play Indika to see what I mean (though, hey, you really should). In the announcement trailer, the game’s creators borrow liberally from filmmakers rarely associated with games. These directors, who can’t afford the spectacle and scale of big-budget filmmaking, rely on more audacious (and affordable) craft to distinguish their work.
“We tried to use a standard limited set of [virtual camera] lenses to depict the limitations of inexpensive auteur cinema,” Indika game director Dmitry Svetlow told Polygon over email. He cited Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos, Russian filmmaker and slow cinema pioneer Andrei Tarkovsky, and former Monty Python member and infamous weirdo auteur Terry Gilliam as inspiration.
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In Indika, the stark exterior landscapes and cold architecture resemble the striking but antiseptic sets of Lanthimos. In the game’s nunnery, a SnorriCam shot — in which the camera is strapped onto the actor and aimed at their face — recalls Blair Witch, of course, but also the works of ’90s music video director turned ’00s filmmaker Spike Jonze and Robert Webb’s comedy sketch series Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.
Where Blair Witch borrowed the documentary aesthetic to force audiences to straighten their backs and pay attention, Svetlow and company are reaching into the toolbox of low-budget filmmaking to do something similar with games.
Or, to put it crassly, Indika doesn’t just look like art films but feels like them. The story opens with the player inhabiting the habit of the titular young nun and fetching a pail of water from a well, then doing it again. And again. And again and again. Her steps up and down a grimy, snow-crunched slope in the abbey echo Tarkosvky’s long shots (like this one of a man carrying a candle for seven minutes) that were intentionally tedious, forcing us to feel time passing not just in a movie or a game, but in our life as we experience them.
To make the game more cinematic, Svetlow wrote the team needed a “greater focus on dramaturgy, on the quality and depth of characters, as well as the necessary level of presentation of events.”
In Indika, you don’t save the world or nail sick headshots. You accumulate poorly hidden collectibles and earn points, though they’re worth nothing and, by the standards of other games, a waste of time — something the game’s loading screens emphasize any chance they get. (“Don’t waste time collecting points, they are pointless.”) Sometimes Indika comes across a bench, and if you direct her to sit down on it, the game hands over the “film editing” to the player, allowing them to swap between different camera angles, some of which Indika doesn’t even appear in.
You could move on, directing Indika to stand back up and continue about her business. Or you could let the camera rest, your mind wandering as your eyes lock onto a field of mud and snow. In a medium full of realistic 3D worlds rife with kinetic empowerment, Indika encourages you to indulge in a moment of peace and ceding of control.
Can we be certain games like Indika will influence their big-budget peers? They already have.
Here’s just one example: In 2009, Naughty Dog released Uncharted 2, a game rife with some of the most iconic blockbuster moments in the history of video games. Its opening, in which the hero climbs up a train that dangles off a cliff, may have inspired the latest Mission: Impossible, which ends with Tom Cruise doing something very, very similar.
But tucked into Uncharted 2 is a sequence meant to contrast with these sorts of set-pieces. Around the midpoint, Nathan Drake hikes through a Tibetan village. He doesn’t climb any deadly cliffs. Nothing blows up. Nobody gets shot. This was, in its time, unusual — a moment in which the player could exist in a beautiful 3D environment without being required to destroy the village or its population.
The Tibetan village sequence (and I swear this was acknowledged publicly, though now I struggle to find any quote) was cribbed from 2008’s The Graveyard, a short art game from the now-defunct micro studio Tale of Tales. In the game, an elderly woman walks the path of a graveyard, sits on a bench, reflects, and then returns from where she came. To younger readers, this will sound tedious. But to game critics at the time, this scene dropped into our minds like a new drug — a total shock to the system.
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With The Graveyard and Uncharted 2 and many other (mostly indie) games of that time period, the video game industry witnessed a surge in what would be dubbed “walking simulators,” a somewhat derisive term for a powerful idea: You make a beautiful, rich virtual space, then afford your players some time to exist within them.
If The Graveyard could reshape the assumptions of cinematic video games, then why shouldn’t Indika help to bring the style of low-budget and arthouse filmmaking to Indika’s many peers?
That’s the magic of this moment in video games: Indika isn’t alone in its ambitions to challenge our assumptions of what makes a game cinematic. Indie developers have been steadily pushing against the confines of what games look and feel like for over a decade. To the Moon. El Paso, Elsewhere. Disco Elysium. I could double my word count with nothing more than titles.
But what’s different now, and what Indika reflects, is the independent games scene accelerating up an exponential hockey stick of creative output.
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Image: Odd Meter/11 bit studios
Much like The Blair Witch Project (and countless other indie films since its release) was made possible by the first boom of consumer-level cameras and filmmaking tools, Indika and its ilk reflect a new era of game production where a small team — thanks to cost-effective and ultra-powerful dev tools — can take a risk on a personal project. In fact, with modern game engines, indie game developers can accomplish visual feats indie filmmakers could only imagine.
“We recreated a non-existent fairy-tale world; to do this for cinema would have cost an order of magnitude more,” Svetlow told Polygon.
Since I finished Indika, I’ve played three more oddly “cinematic” games — Arctic Eggs, 1000xResist, and Crow Country — and it feels like every week another new game appears, its creators taking a bat to the expectations of what a game should look and feel like. Now and then the bat is bound to connect and pop open this medium, releasing an entirely new style that artists will pounce on, like kids grabbing candy from a smashed piñata.
Perhaps Indika, in time, will reveal itself to be one of these special games. The Blair Witch of video games, launching a thousand projects that build on the arthouse aesthetic. Or perhaps this abundance of creativity will — not with one bold release or one inspirational aesthetic — radically change the idea of what makes a game “cinematic” to the point that we’re less worried about how a game can look like a film, and these interactive narrative experiences that we’d previously compare to great films can have a look that’s recognizably and thrillingly their own.
I hope we get there. In the meantime, I’ll be grateful to play games that aspire to match ambitious and inventive directors, rather than playing yet another video game that could be mistaken for Free Guy.
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Chris Plante
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At first “Dot and Bubble,” the latest episode of Doctor Who, seems to be borrowing from Black Mirror’s bag of tricks. It’s set on Finetime, a planet where everyone is accompanied by a small spherical AI assistant called a Dot, which projects a “Bubble” around their heads. Within their individual Bubbles, people live their entire lives — group chatting, watching funny videos or performances by pop stars — and they do not seem to leave except to sleep. Even walking is mediated by the Bubble, telling them how many paces to move in each direction, guiding them to the office, back home, and to meals. It’s a very “kids these days and their damn phones!” kind of premise, but again: only at first.
The initially blunt metaphor only gets blunter when the monster of the week is introduced: terrifying slug aliens that are eating the denizens of Finetime alive, as they obliviously walk into their gaping maws because they can’t see past their bubbles. Our heroine for the week, the hapless Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke), finds her Bubble’s feed intruded on by the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who spend the episode trying to remotely lead her to safety, in spite of her skepticism.
It’s a clever setup, one that hearkens back to fan-favorite Doctor Who stories like “Blink,” and tropes beloved by writers like Steven Moffat (who, surprisingly, did not write this episode): horrible things at the edge of one’s perception, a hard limit on the Doctor’s ability to intervene, and a world engineered for conformity, with safety dependent on characters’ ability to escape societal gravity. This canny structure clashes with the painfully patronizing metaphor at the heart of “Dot and Bubble” — which writer Russell T. Davies exploits to obscure what he’s really doing.
Image: Disney Plus
Because in between the seemingly lazy satire of the terminally online youth and the chilling thrills of its plot, Davies quietly drops pertinent details about Finetime and what is really happening here. Who are these people? What do they do? Why are they there? Each answer, delivered conversationally in an episode packed with a loud, candy-colored palette, louder social commentary, and one of the creepiest monsters of the season, barely registers. So when you finally get to the ending and the truth about Finetime is made clear, it’s like the floor opens out from underneath you, and “Dot and Bubble” immediately becomes one of the grimmest Doctor Who stories told in some time.
[Ed. note: This means spoilers for the very end of “Dot and Bubble.”]
In the end, there is no saving the people of Finetime. The first hint was in Lindy’s rapid dismissal of the Doctor’s warnings at the start of “Dot and Bubble,” and that she only began to listen when Ruby Sunday spoke to her. More hints piled up, leading to the answer of what brought the slug aliens to Finetime in the first place: the Dots. The Dots, in their algorithmic service to their users, learned too much about them, and grew to hate them. And it’s not because of their tech-addled brains blinding them to the real world; it’s because they’re fucking racist.
Lindy and the other Finetime survivors refuse to take the Doctor on his offer of safe passage away from Finetime, instead choosing to brave the wilds where they face certain death, just because of who the Doctor looks like. It’s here where the last tidbits fall into place: chilling glimpses of selfishness from Lindy, her lily-white friend group, the fact that Finetime is only inhabited by the young adult children of the 1%.
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Image: Disney Plus
Up until now, Doctor Who has been pretty unconcerned with how the Doctor taking on the appearance of a Black man might change the dynamic of the show. On the one hand, this is understandable, desirable even — it would be crass and arguably retrograde to immediately subject the Doctor to racism the moment it became a possible story outcome. It also feels intellectually dishonest to act as if it would never matter. Davies, as the white showrunner who engineered this situation, chose neither trauma porn nor avoidance. Instead he chose specificity: This is how the Doctor’s job is harder now. There are some people who don’t want to be saved by him. There are some problems that cannot be solved by cosmically deep wells of compassion and empathy. There are some people with hearts so mean they will not even save themselves.
“Dot and Bubble” argues that its hero’s role is to stand in the gap and help even in the face of such shocking contempt, because life is precious above all, even hateful little ones — presumably because life can be redeemed, and death is final. It’s hard to accept this, and Gatwa’s performance suggests that maybe such idealism isn’t deserved here. He laughs at the insanity of the situation, and then screams in anguish. Who knows if it’s the right call, but he made one. He tried.
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Joshua Rivera
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Perhaps FX thought fans would forget about The Bear after the network dropped a Season 3 teaser last week before Memorial Day Weekend. Never fear, the network released another trailer on Wednesday afternoon.
While Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are all listed as stars of the show, FX could have listed another: The CTA. The new trailer is chockful of the El whether it’s various train stops or the comforting rumble of the trains in the background. Given the CTA’s well-documented problems, from late-arriving trains to wacky political hijinks, consider this positive PR. Unlike Mayor Brandon Johnson’s nominee for the RTA board, it appears someone involved in production has actually ridden the CTA. Public transportation has been a strong theme in the previous two seasons.
Season 3 debuts on Thursday, June 27, and last week, FX unveiled new signage for the restaurant, which shares the same color scheme as the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies instead of the orange and navy from Chicago’s football team. The remodeled beef stand went extinct at the end of Season 1, with the debut of a new fine dining restaurant. During the two-minute and 20-second trailer, Carmy Berzatto announces his cheffy intentions: “We’re going to get a star,” he declares.
Presumably, that’s of the Michelin variety, but who knows in The Bear universe, a world that includes Chomp Chicago, a digital publication that bears a striking resemblance to Eater Chicago. Another scene shows Tina Marrero (Liza Colón-Zayas) sniffing a black truffle and going to a market set up outdoors in a space that looks a lot like Longman & Eagle in Logan Square (signage from Antioch’s Jacobson Family Farms makes a cameo). Marrero also seems perplexed by Carmy’s intention of changing the menu daily, or as Richie Jerimovich (Moss-Bachrach) calls them “the scribblings of a madman.” Tensions in the kitchen run amok through the trailer, even as an unmistakenly pregnant Natalie Berzatto (Abby Elliot) directs traffic around the restaurant.
The intrigue builds as Carmy offers Sydney Adamu (Edebiri) a partnership in the restaurant so they can be on equal footing and push each other. Not to give everything away, but for folks ardent about ensuring Carmy and Syd don’t fall romantically for each other, there are developments. Especially with the return of Carmy’s ex-girlfriend, Claire (Molly Gordon), who ditched the chef at the end of Season 2 during his restaurant opening meltdown in the walk-in fridge.
The footage also revisits the bulletin board of misfits filled with photos of food critics revealed earlier in the year: “If any food critics come in, it’s code red,” Neil Fak (Matty Matheson) tells brother Ted (Ricky Staffieri). If there’s any irony, there aren’t many food critics left in Chicago, so carry on.
The Bear Season 3 releases on Thursday, June 27 with all episodes available via Hulu.
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Ashok Selvam
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These fabulous things are here to podcast historic! Mal and Jo rev their engines to give you their reactions to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (30:07). But before that, they assess their hype at an all-time high with some light prep for The Acolyte, premiering next week (05:22).
Be sure to check out tickets for the Ringer Residency in Los Angeles this summer!
Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson
Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman
Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal
Social: Jomi Adeniran
Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / Pandora / Google Podcasts
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Mallory Rubin
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Matt is joined by Puck’s Eriq Gardner to discuss the U.S. government’s monopoly lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation
Matt is joined by Puck’s Eriq Gardner to discuss the U.S. government’s monopoly lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation (02:58). They briefly go through the history of the Ticketmaster–Live Nation merger, what led to the eventual lawsuit, why concert prices won’t go down even if the two companies split, whether this lawsuit is just a PR attack against Ticketmaster, what impact this could have on the secondary markets, what a broken-up Ticketmaster–Live Nation would look like, and more. Matt finishes the show with a prediction for this weekend’s holiday box office (27:00).
For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, What I’m Hearing …, click this link: puck.news/thetown.
Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com
Host: Matt Belloni
Guest: Eriq Gardner
Producer: Jessie Lopez
Theme Song: Devon Renaldo
Subscribe: Spotify
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Matthew Belloni
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The Midnight Boys return to the wasteland and dive into their thoughts on the madcap epic that is ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’
The Midnight Boys return to the wasteland and dive into their thoughts on the madcap epic that is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (05:09). From grandiose action to wildly charismatic villains, they have all the best spoiler-filled takes to bring with you into the weekend.
Hosts: Charles Holmes, Van Lathan, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman
Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman
Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal
Social: Jomi Adeniran
Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts
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Charles Holmes
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Since late April, Next Restaurant, run by the Alinea Group, has celebrated Bobby Flay’s first restaurant and channeled the ‘90s spirit that made Mesa Grill a hit in New York City. The restaurant opened in 1991 when Flay was 25.
Alinea Chef Grant Achatz has touted Flay as one of his influences. Mesa Grill was where Achatz first dined during a maiden trip to Manhattan. A Las Vegas location would open in 2004 inside the Caesars Palace casino; it closed in 2020. Achatz hails Flay as one of the first chefs, along with Brendan Walsh, the chef at New York’s Arizona 206, to bring Southwestern cuisine to the masses.
“Looking back now, nearly 30 years later, it is easy to see the similarities of approach our food at The Alinea Group has with that out-of-the-box, risk-taking, new style that chef Flay (helped) introduce to the American culinary scene,” Achatz writes to Eater.
Achatz adds: “Pre-Internet and culinary globalization, most Americans had never been exposed to the ingredients and techniques featured in his dishes, as French was still the dominating cuisine in American fine dining. The deeply flavored layering of chilies, blue corn, tamales, empanadas, mole — and even margaritas — were still not common.”
Flay dined at Next earlier in May and enjoyed the trip down memory lane. 2024 is the year of the tribute for Next, which honored Julia Child in January. Chicago’s own Charlie Trotter will be featured from September through the end of the year. Next will embrace the Mesa Grill motif until September 1. The common thread for the trio is TV and food.
While Child may have pioneered the role of TV chef, Flay’s presence shows an evolution with the birth of Food Network. He’s brought Next a different sort of attention — Flay’s fans flying into Chicago from across the country for another taste of Mesa Grill. Achatz mentions Flay’s role in “educating and influencing so many home cooks at a critical time in American eating.”
The Alinea Group’s co-founder Nick Kokonas tells Eater that Flay was flattered and graciously gave them his blessing. They considered titling their effort “Next: Mesa Grill” but weren’t sure if most Americans make the connection to the celebrity chef without Flay’s name in the title.
“We emailed him and had a conversation about Mesa Grill and the fact that it was hugely impactful for the industry, but a bit lost to history because of all of the TV work he has done,” Kokonas writes. “He said he was honored that we wanted to focus on his cuisine and he’d let us do the menu without any strings attached — and he’s been very generous with his time, opinions, and historical documentation of the Mesa Grill recipes and ideas.”
Achatz says Flay encouraged the staff at Next to “take some liberties” with their menu: “It was important to both of us that we show some of TAG’s fingerprints within the foundation of his food,” Achatz says. “We were very careful to make sure the flavor profiles and backbone of all the dishes represented on the menu had all the touchstones of the originals.”
The menu provides opportunities for fans to enjoy nostalgia while giving younger diners a chance to see what made chefs like Flay household names.
“I would say that all food and travel-related TV programs raise awareness, education, and create passion within the viewers for food and beverage,” Achatz writes. “This creates and continually builds the group of people that make traveling to dine out a hobby, thereby making our restaurants busier.”
“Getting people curious, educated, comfortable and excited to experience restaurants through TV is a fantastic commercial for all hospitality regardless of the specific theme of the show.”
Next: Bobby Flay, now through November 1, Reservations via Tock
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Ashok Selvam
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There might not be a more appropriate and straightforward way to open an American Western than with a scene of a white settler tracing the foundations of the house he wants to build on some seemingly available plot of land. The colonial question at the heart of the genre is thus immediately introduced in Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1, the first film in Kevin Costner’s epic four-movie series (the second installment has already been shot) that he produced (at great cost to himself), cowrote, directed, and starred in. Costner’s perspective on that question, however, isn’t entirely clear in that opening sequence, but it does end with the settler and his young child being killed by Apaches who are defending their territory, highlighting their rightful anger. In this sequence, a rousing old-fashioned score, plenty of cross-fades, and an orange sunset give the brutal encounter the look of a monumental, foundational, almost elemental event, like a big bang—a natural, terribly meaningful catastrophe.
It is through such small yet symbolic stories that Costner starts to paint his very large and detailed picture of pre– and post–Civil War America. Jumping from one setting to another, the filmmaker introduces us to various archetypes of the American West, from the English settlers too posh and sophisticated to do any work while traveling on the Santa Fe Trail (Ella Hunt and Tom Payne), to the housewife with a dark secret (Jena Malone) and her naive husband (Michael Angarano) hoping to get rich through gold, to the foulmouthed sex worker (Abbey Lee) whom everyone despises, except for the hero (Costner, naturally), who finds himself protecting her. In a series of extended vignettes, their personal dramas unfold and sometimes intersect, with occasional time jumps to speed things up and show the consequences of their decisions. None of these stories are particularly original or compelling, retreading old tropes and recalling television both visually and structurally. (It’s hard not to think of Yellowstone, the Western series starring Costner; it was during that show’s hiatus that he made this film.) For instance, the past of the housewife, Ellen, comes back to haunt her when we learn that she once was a sex worker herself and killed a powerful criminal who had abused her: The idea that the Wild West allowed for self-reinvention but was also fueled by the exploitation of women is a staple of the genre—and could still be interesting to explore—but Costner struggles to keep all his plates spinning at once, offering only a quick glance at one prototypical story before moving on to the next one. Instead of making us feel the unbearable weight of history through this amalgamation of survival tales—or creating at least a sense of time and place—this first “episode” indeed functions as a technically efficient but not very appealing series pilot, setting the scene but not giving its protagonists enough room for us to get invested in them.
Making an American Western in 2024 means coming after a long line of films, the first succession of which established the genre’s often white supremacist and pro-colonial codes. Later, revisionist Westerns adapted these tropes to suit different eras, taking into account changing mentalities about the romanticization of America’s violent past and materialistic tendencies (think of The Wild Bunch and its explosive, balletic, devastating gunfights, or the spaghetti Western For a Few Dollars More), and, eventually, the oppressed were put at the center of the narrative, be they women or Indigenous people themselves. (Killers of the Flower Moon is the most recent example, but Soldier Blue from 1970 may be the most strident.) Costner, however, doesn’t seem all that interested in looking back with a critical eye, and he’s also not trying to tell a story about the past that could be relevant today. Instead, he’s aiming for the timelessness of myth and adopts a centrist approach: Colonialism was an unstoppable engine that everyone, Indigenous or white, was simply caught up in. After a deadly Apache attack, First Lieutenant Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington, who seems determined to act in projects that will be made over several years or decades of his life) has to remind the surviving white settlers that this land is not, in fact, simply where they live, but that it belongs to Indigenous people; still, the pioneers refuse to leave. Costner spends time on the unwelcome inhabitants and their sorrow and helplessness but also cuts to the Apaches—they, too, are having internal disagreements about whether this attack was ultimately necessary. Yet if these two points of view could allow for some interesting ambiguity, revealing the moral dilemmas and doubts of people on both sides, in Costner’s vision, the two parties are stuck in a dynamic that is completely outside their control and has a will of its own—rather than one born of the colonizers’ endless thirst for more land. (Costner’s production company is in fact called Territory Pictures Entertainment.) No one is really responsible. Playing a blasé colonel, Danny Huston puts it bluntly: “Let this place do what it’s done since time immemorial.” But isn’t this time still relatively fresh in the Apaches’ memory?
This idea of a manifest destiny that pushes for colonization, whether its participants approve of it or not, appears as much in the film’s aesthetics as it does in its narrative. Costner’s camera repeatedly focuses on and emphasizes old-fashioned and at times offensive clichés of the genre: a dying white man refusing to let an Apache take his violin, thus defending civilization against barbarism until his last breath; a priest solemnly digging graves for fallen pilgrims on Apache ground; men working hard to build infrastructure where there was once only nature; a teenage son choosing to fight back against the Indigenous alongside his father rather than hiding with his mother and sister. To quote Vampire Weekend: “Untrue, unkind, and unnatural, how the cruel, with time, becomes classical.” If his old-school conservatism wasn’t apparent enough, the filmmaker also gives his actors cheesy dialogue that even John Wayne couldn’t have made cool. (“It’s what drove us across the ocean to this country in the first place: hope.”) Whether they’re full of threat or flirtatious (as between Sienna Miller’s widow, Frances Kittredge, and Gephardt), conversations tend to be tedious exchanges of witty comebacks, with no one saying what they really mean until they’ve exhausted all possible innuendos and the scene just cries out for a resolution—an unintentional parody of the typically charming repartee of the best cowboys of the silver screen, from Wayne to Jimmy Stewart to Montgomery Clift. So far in the film series, only Luke Wilson and Michael Rooker come across as believable men of the time, the former thanks to his Southern drawl and natural ease, the latter because of his ability to find depth and emotion in the otherwise one-dimensional, obedient, and kind sergeant he must play.
But what about Costner the actor? Naturally, he plays the strong, silent type—always his strongest suit—as Hayes Ellison, a straight shooter who accidentally gets involved in the revenge campaign that threatens Ellen because of her past rebellion. Although he only appears after about an hour of exposition, the humility of that delay vanishes almost instantaneously. As he gets off his horse, Marigold (the sex worker played by Lee) lays eyes on him and, for no apparent reason other than the fact that he’s the film’s protagonist, decides to try seducing him again and again—despite his repeated rejection and almost offensive disinterest—instead of trying her luck with any of the other men who just got into town. In one of the film’s most successful and enjoyable scenes, however, Ellison lets Marigold do all the talking, his silence pushing her to almost turn double entendres into just plain sex talk. Here, Lee is showing much more range and playfulness than she’s ever had the chance to as an actress, so it’s particularly disappointing that Costner later gives the two of them a completely lifeless and preposterous sex scene in which she tells him, word for word, “You just lay there,” and he does so, looking almost bored as this beautiful woman half his age does all the work.
With its hubris, traditionalism, and sprawling, messy structure, Horizon feels like a relic of the 1990s, back when Costner was at his peak and he could indeed almost just lay there and be perceived as the masculine ideal. There is still a chance that Chapter 2 will reveal a deeper questioning of the American past and, by the same token, the more toxic aspects of masculinity tied to colonialism and violence. Still, considering how far and with how much conviction Costner has pushed it here, it seems unlikely that the cheesy style of this opus will be abandoned for something that’s more grounded and that spends less time glorifying both its star and conservative ideas of property, national identity, women, and progress. After all, the horizon always appears to stay at the same place.
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Manuela Lazic
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This review of AGGRO DR1FT was originally published after its screening at the 2023 New York Film Festival. It has been updated and republished for the film’s limited theatrical run.
It’s rare to see a movie that challenges basic ideas about how films are made or what they should look like. It’s even rarer to see a movie in that mode that’s actually enjoyable. AGGRO DR1FT, from Spring Breakers and The Beach Bum director Harmony Korine, made in collaboration with rapper and music producer Travis Scott, certainly doesn’t look like any kind of conventional movie, but it also isn’t an exception to the rule. It’s strange and mostly eventless — some viewers will probably jump ship on after five minutes or less. But it’s also utterly fascinating in the rare moments when it’s actually coherent.
AGGRO DR1FT follows BO (Jordi Mollà), a middle-aged man who loves his wife and children deeply. He’s also the world’s greatest assassin. He tells the audience both of these things directly, via omnipresent voice-over narration. The majority of the movie has BO wandering aimlessly around Florida from one meeting to the next. The encounters are only linked by his narration, which seems related to the plot only about half of the time. The plot, such as it exists, is about BO’s attempt to assassinate The Beast, a demonic villain with giant wings who has two katanas and hangs out with scantily clad women who he sometimes keeps in cages.
It isn’t really clear what The Beast did to earn the contract put on his head, but at one point, he stands between two women in bikinis and chants, “Dance, bitch. Dance, bitch” over and over again until the scene finally cuts and BO’s narration says, “There’s magic in this brutality.” I can’t say what that means for sure, but I can say that Korine seems to believe it’s true, and also that it’s exactly in keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie. More than once we see several uninterrupted seconds of The Beast pelvic thrusting while holding his sword and yelling, only for BO to cut in with narration telling us how terrifying The Beats is.
Image: EDGLRD
BO rolls around southern Florida buying sniper rifles, telling the audience to be careful of strippers because if you stare into their eyes for too long, you’ll lose your soul, and meeting with other assassins, including Travis Scott’s character, Zion, who BO seems to take under his wing. But after every brief trip, BO always returns to his home base, where his wife has been waiting in bed for him, while her voice over talks about how much she misses him and wants to have sex with him.
What makes all this fascinating, though, is AGGRO DR1FT is accidentally a more insightful look at an incel’s fantasies than most of the movies that actually attempt to portray incel life.
BO is a bit of a schlub, but he has a cool, sexy job, a cool, sexy wife, and a family he loves very much, and would do anything to protect. He also sees evil everywhere in a cruel and horrible world. It just happens to look like a demon in a mask, holding samurai swords. His wife is perfect and must be protected, but strippers are evil sirens who exist to steal men’s souls.
All this performative hyper-masculinity feels like it’s been filtered through the lens of a 14-year-old boy screaming on Xbox Live over a game of Modern Warfare 2. Evil is something you vanquish with a special sniper rifle, and women are made to be protected, not spoken to. The movie doesn’t create a coherent ideology, but it’s clear BO’s worldview is inherently self-righteous, and the world of the movie contorts itself around justifying him.
What’s unique about AGGRO DR1FT is seeing all of this presented so brazenly, and without the defense of irony or sarcasm to dress it up. Like most of the movie, though, it’s fascinating to think about, but an absolute slog to actually watch.
The most uncomplicatedly interesting thing about AGGRO DR1FT, though, is the way it looks: Shot entirely with an infrared camera, with morphing neon colors that are often inverted, moving characters from bright featureless red to bright featureless blue, the movie looks unique. These aren’t entirely successful choices — the movie often just looks like an ugly mess of colors. But it’s a style that a different, more carefully conceived and directed movie could use well. The blocky neon vagueness of the bright colors often used in infrared photography also grants space to the movie’s best and most interesting feature: shifting illustrations that show up inside of the colors.
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Image: EDGLRD
When a character or space (like the sky, for instance) slips all the way into a deep red hue, ink-like illustrations start to appear inside of the color, creating demonic heads, intricate machine parts, or presumably any other design Scott or Korine thought looked neat. These moments sometimes mean things, like when a massive demon-monster appears as BO commits a particularly nasty bit of violence, which seems to reflect his own self-image. Though these illustrations pop up constantly throughout the movie, especially in the second half, they feel criminally underthought, and like a disappointing waste of a great stylistic choice.
Reading all this, it might be tempting assume that, in spite of its flaws, AGGRO DR1FT is at least entertaining or exciting. I cannot stress enough that it is not. For all the movie’s talk about demons and assassinations, most of the movie’s nearly 90-minute runtime is taken up by characters driving from place to place, awkwardly standing around, or walking around southern Florida.
Writing a review of AGGRO DR1FT is already letting Korine win. It’s defiantly non-traditional and deliberately provocative. I can’t say that the movie really made me mad, but I can say I’m happy to let Harmony Korine win. He’s earned it; AGGRO DR1FT is an obtuse, ridiculous, headache-inducing movie to watch. It’s nearly impossible to tell whether any moment of the movie is entirely a joke or entirely sincere — it’s called AGGRO DR1FT, for God’s sake. It’s a meaningless phrase, rendered in all capital letters with a 1 standing in for an I; for all we know, it might as well be Travis Scott’s Gamertag. But the movie is more than that too. It’s as clear a depiction of a certain kind of distinctly male-coded interior life as I’ve ever seen, and there is value to making that in such a weirdly unfiltered way. AGGRO DR1FT isn’t an enjoyable or particularly well-made movie, but it is the movie I’ve thought about most this year. For better or worse, that’s worth something.
AGGRO DR1FT is currently in theaters for a limited run. See the movie’s website for participating venues.
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Austen Goslin
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Voice performance has become isolating work over the years — these days, for an actor like JP Karliak, a day “on set” is completed from a home studio, and notes come in over Zoom calls. But the goals are the same: find the perfect sound to match a character, and relentlessly chase the perfect take. Karliak has done voice work across the animation and video game spectrum, and is no stranger to IP demands. He’s been in everything from The Boss Baby: Back in Business to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, where he played Batman’s nemesis, Joker. Taking over the role of Morph in Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97, voiced in the original series by actor Ron Rubin, put him under high pressure from nostalgic fans. Still, alone in the room, he found it: his own pure voice.
“My natural speaking voice doesn’t sound all that different from Ron’s original portrayal,” Karliak tells Polygon, “[and Morph] has a new look, he’s changing. And all these characters are going through all of this plot. For me, it was just sort of like, Why don’t we just sit him in this grounded space, and not slap a character voice on top of it?”
Along with giving Morph a character redesign, the X-Men ’97 writers evolved them into the animated property’s first non-binary character. Karliak, who identifies as genderqueer, was pleased at the change. In the 1990s, using he/they pronouns was less commonplace, but having Rogue make a point of properly addressing Morph in 1997 fits right into the show’s approach to doing whatever feels emotionally right, continuity and era be damned.
“We didn’t fly around and shoot lightning out of our fingers [in 1997 either], so whatever!” Karliak says. “I think the representation is still incredible. And I don’t think it takes away anything from who Morph is. Morph is on a gender journey that will unfold as time passes and he goes through the eras of terminology that we’ve lived through already.”
Image: Marvel Animation
With such a stacked cast, the show doesn’t give Morph a ton of airtime, but their history in the series is deeply felt and considered in each line-reading. X-Men ’97 remains in continuity with X-Men: The Animated Series, which saw Sentinels kill Morph in the first episode, only to have Mister Sinister resurrect the shapeshifter as a brainwashed X-adversary. When his friends rescue him, he disappears from the show again to deal with that trauma.
Morph returns in X-Men ’97 as a goofy but troubled soul finding a place in the world. Karliak says that even if Morph has three lines in an episode, he found himself running through every variation — pure fury, wisecracking, bawling his eyes out, near-deadpan — with voice director Meredith Layne (Castlevania), to give the director and writers what they need to connect the past with present. “As the comic relief of the show, I think he’s burying a lot of things,” Karliak says. “Having him say less was actually the smarter way to go for somebody who’s internalizing a lot.”
Along with voiceover work, Karliak runs the LGBTQIA+ nonprofit Queer Vox, which strives to train aspiring queer VO artists and educate the industry about working with queer talent. He says one quirk of current Hollywood casting is that the group often encounters auditions asking for “non-binary voices,” which he finds funny, despite the attempt at allyship. “It’s like, What does that mean? There’s a lot of conflation of ‘non-binary means androgynous,’ which is not the case,” he says.
And what makes Morph enjoyable for Karliak to bring to life isn’t how the character fits a specific identity slot — it’s how his identity fits into the day-to-day drama at the X-mansion, and the greater global drama of X-Men ’97.
“He’s a superhero who’s got some trauma, he’s got friends, he’s showing up, he’s doing the thing,” Karliak says. “He probably would like to have a significant other at some point — you know, hint, hint, nudge, nudge — and there’s all of that stuff happening. But there’s never a very special Jesse Spano episode of, like, This is the non-binary episode. Because we don’t need it.”
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Many fans have wondered whether Morph’s friendship with Wolverine could blossom into something more romantic in future seasons of X-Men ’97. But Karliak hopes it doesn’t, as much as he wants his character to find love.
“As somebody who’s consumed a ton of queer media over the years — what coded things we had in the ’90s — I think there have been so many stories told about the queer person that’s pining over the straight best friend. Meh!” he says. “It’s kind of meh to me! I think it’s so much more interesting that they love each other like they’re Frodo and Samwise, and that’s great. It doesn’t need to be more than that. And they can support each other. It makes Morph razzing Wolverine by turning into Jean Grey so much less about like, Oh, I’m jealous, so I’m gonna, like, razz you about your girlfriend who I hate, and more about, Hey, buddy, I think this is harmful for you, and I just want to point this out, that maybe you need to move on.”
Karliak lauds the X-Men ’97 writers room for breaking from obvious stereotypes and traditions to do its own thing. And the work is standing up to all kinds of scrutiny. When the news broke that Karliak would voice Morph as a non-binary character, the usual corners of the internet erupted with vitriol and found their way into his mentions. But now, with the season wrapped up, he’s hearing little pushback.
“There are properties, movies, IPs that have tried to do queer representation and done it more as checking a box, and it was received badly when it was announced, and continued to be received badly when the thing bombed,” he says. “And I think what’s great about this is that it’s done authentically, not only from the portrayal, but from the writing, like Beau [DeMayo], but also Charley [Feldman] and all of the other writers. There is a queer pedigree that’s going into this to make this right. So the people that shouted about it before it came out — once everybody saw it, and it’s just so universally lauded, it really silenced everything. You can’t argue with excellence.”
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Matt Patches
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Art Smith takes a quick look around Time Out Market Chicago and softly asks: “Do you know what chefs do after they’re 60?”
Smith, the celebrity chef who worked with Oprah Winfrey and has served dignitaries, like President Biden, didn’t expect an answer. Smith posed the question to justify his new rapport with the Chicago Hounds, a professional rugby team founded in 2022 that plays home matches at SeatGeek Stadium in suburban Bridgeview. In February, Smith and the Hounds announced a collaboration in which Smith’s new brand, Sporty Bird, began selling chicken sandwiches and more at the stadium. Over the weekend, Smith also unveiled a Sporty Bird-branded food stall at Time Out Market, the food hall run by the media company.
Beyond his association with Oprah, Smith is known for restaurants like Table Fifty-Two in Gold Coast, a hit mostly known for its fried chicken. Smith is proud of the restaurant (which was rebranded as Blue Door Kitchen & Garden in 2016) and its alums: “Joe is just killing it here,” Smith says of Joe Flamm, the chef and co-owner of Rose Mary, right down the street from Time Out Market.
Last year, Smith opened Reunion at Navy Pier and he maintains a residence in Hyde Park. But he still travels. He talked about an upcoming trip to India and meeting esteemed chef Francis Mallmann earlier this year during a visit to an island in Patagonia. Even though he joked about his age, Smith’s star continues to shine, passing through open doors closed to most food hall tenants. Most food halls brand themselves as incubators, taking chances on relatively unproven talent. Smith is the opposite.
Still, the venture with the Hounds is a risk. He touts himself as the only professional chef who owns a professional sports team in America. It’s a claim that’s hard to verify. For example, is a burger cook who works at an Applebee’s and has shares in the publicly-owned Green Bay Packers, considered an owner of a pro team?
Smith wants to bring energy to Time Out (“I want to throw a party,” he says) and sees potential — even as the food hall goes through changes. Smith praised chef Jorge Kaum, the chef behind Gutenburg, a food hall burger stall. Kaum is also a chocolatier and made chocolate-shaped rugby balls in honor of Smith’s opening.
Avli is set to leave the market at the end of the month — they’re going to open a stand-alone location in the area. Evette’s left earlier this year. Of the original lineup from 2019, only chef Bill Kim (Urbanbelly) remains. A few of the restaurants had problems with management and didn’t like the terms of their contracts. Food halls have struggled during the pandemic. Two closed in the West Loop/Fulton Market — Politan Row and Fulton Galley. In March, Time Out brought in a new general manager, Steve Pelissero, to bring in some stability.
Sporty Bird features chicken (“I do know how to cook more than chicken,” Smith says). The spicy nuggets have heat, at least during an opening event last week. But there’s a worry that too much heat will alienate customers in the area.
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Unexpectedly, the stall has a familiar face behind the counter. Carol Cheung, the chef and the owner behind Hyde Park’s Jade Court, an acclaimed Cantonese restaurant and longtime member of the Eater Chicago 38, is managing operations. As Smith is a Hyder Parker, he befriended Cheung and wants to find a way to revive Jade Court, which struggled at the University of Chicago’s Harper Court development. Time Out does have spaces available.
What gave Smith the idea to partner with the hounds? Last year, soccer legend Lionel Messi launched a fried chicken sandwich in Miami with Hard Rock Cafe. Smith saw the sandwich become a viral sensation, yet he was hardly impressed by the sandwich: “I could do better,” Smith says.
Some vendors have fled, others say they’ve made money at the food hall. Kaum, who also has a stall in Miami, says things are improving in Chicago. Smith is hopeful that Sporty Bird, and perhaps a Jade Court revival, can take advantage. He’s reminded of something his friend Oprah once told him: “You don’t have to be first,” Smith recalls Winfrey saying. “But you do have to be better.”
Sporty Bird, now open inside Time Out Market Chicago, 916 W. Fulton Market
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Ashok Selvam
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Plus, Chris and Andy remember the legendary engineer and producer, Steve Albini, who passed away this week
Chris and Andy remember the legendary engineer and producer, Steve Albini, who passed away this week (1:00). They then talk of news that the third season of The Bear will be out this June (13:25) and that Shogun will be getting a second season (18:30). Next, they talk about Disney and Warner Bros. reaching a deal to offer a Disney+, Hulu, and Max bundle (28:44), before diving into their new favorite delight on Netflix: John Mulaney’s quasi-late-night show, Everybody’s in L.A. (36:33).
Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald
Producer: Kaya McMullen
Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / RSS
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Chris Ryan
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