Can you name a Jane Fonda or Lily Tomlin TV show released between 1992 and 2025?
Emily Palmer Heller
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Tag: paywall exclude
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Telematrix No. 79: November 24, 2025
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Play Cinematrix Every Day? Soon, You Can Prove It.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture
We get so many emails from folks telling us that they play Cinematrix every day, and while we love to hear it, we can’t help but wonder, Really? Every day? Well, as of Monday, you can put an end to that skepticism. Personal stats, including streak tracking, are on their way.
Starting on Monday, you’ll find an expanded endgame pop-up that provides a tally of your current streak, plus a record of your longest one. Below them will be a chart containing a history of how many squares you got correct each time you played. Are you consistently going nine out of nine? Now you’ll have proof of that, too.
For the purposes of your streaks and distinctions, we defined a “play” as having made at least one guess on a grid that day. You can play any Cinematrix to maintain your streak, so if you’re daunted by a given day’s new grid, you can play one from the archive to keep your run going. (Only one play per day counts toward a streak, so you can’t hammer the archive to pad your stats.)
The new stat screen.
Photo: VultureNext up: Let the group-chat screenshots and trash talk fly! And don’t forget to join us on Discord to see how you stack up against other Cinematrix regulars.
Vulture Editors
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MFL Week Five Recap: Gothams Kick Off the Awards Rush
Illustration: James Clapham The first major nominations of awards season are here and everything is still coming up PTA. Thanks to a 2023 rule change that removed a $35 million budget cap on eligible films, One Battle After Another led the Gotham Awards nominations with a record total of six nods (Best Feature, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Outstanding Supporting Performance for both Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor, and Breakthrough Performer for Chase Infiniti). The points have been tallied and added to the leaderboard, but you’ll have to wait till next week’s newsletter for a full analysis of the Gotham noms and how they will affect the league. In the meantime, let’s just say you should be feeling pretty good if you bet on Rose Byrne’s performance carrying If I Had Legs I’d Kick You into the awards conversation.
If you’re not already signed up for the MFL, it’s not too late to join — you can still build a contending team with movies that haven’t yet been released. Joe Reid’s draft guide runs through each eligible film. The final draft deadline will be Thursday, December 18. If you don’t want to miss out, draft now.
Join us on Discord for expanded stats and discussions.
Leaderboard
Last updated October 28
The Basics
➼ The first step is to draft a team of eight eligible movies released in 2025 using a budget of 100 fake dollars. Each movie has been assigned a value based on its points-earning potential.
➼ New for This Season: In past years, we closed registration when the season started: If you didn’t sign up by that date, you couldn’t play. This year, we’re extending registration through December — with a catch: drafting after September 25 means you’ll be limited to only films that haven’t yet started accruing points (i.e. you can only draft unreleased movies that haven’t been nominated for any awards.)
➼ Starting on September 26, you’ll accrue points based on the box-office performance, awards haul, and critical reception of the movies you picked. Each week starting Tuesday, September 30, the updated leaderboard will be available on this page and in the weekly MFL newsletter.
➼ The teams that earn the most points when the game ends after the 2026 Oscars will win one or more of the great prizes below.
➼ If you want to compete against your friends, family, or co-workers, you can create a mini-league. Alternatively, you can join a mini-league associated with your favorite creator. You’ll find more details on that below.
➼ There’s a limit of one entry per email address. You can’t modify your team once it has been submitted, even if a movie you picked gets rescheduled to next year.
See the complete Official Rules. Questions? Need help? You can email us at moviesleague@vulture.com.
Mini-Leagues
The Creators Division: Dozens of our favorite culture-podcast hosts and producers, Substackers, and newsletter writers are competing in a subset of the MFL. When the leaderboard is live, you’ll be able to filter to see how the various creators are faring against each other. At the end of the season, the winner will receive an ostentatious championship belt, because why not?
Mini-Leagues: You can play against a set of friends in a mini-league. Have everyone in your crew enter the same league name on the ballot when you each register, and then you’ll be able to filter the standings to see how everyone in your group is doing. There will also be mini-leagues associated with most of the participants in the Creators Division; stay tuned for more info on those groups. You can only participate in one mini-league, so that may mean choosing between your friends and your favorite creator.
Prizes
Oh, look, it’s an array of fantastic prizes. Here’s what’s up for grabs:
Grand Prizes (1st–3rd Place)
The overall winner gets to select one of the following devices:
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Retailers ➼ 70-Inch Pioneer Roku 4K TV
➼ Xbox Series X
➼ Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 Noise-Canceling HeadphonesThe second-place finisher gets to choose between the remaining two, and third place will get the final item. You can’t go wrong.
Criterion Channel Subscription (1st–10th Place)
Photo: Criterion Channel Everyone who finishes in the top ten will be rewarded for their efforts with a yearlong subscription to the Criterion Channel’s streaming library, otherwise known as Ben Affleck’s idea of heaven.
Pick Your Players
Registration is open for the 2025–26 season. Once you’ve done your research, you can select your team by clicking the ostentatiously colored button below. Now that the early draft window is closed, you’re limited only to unreleased films that haven’t started accruing points. Sign-ups will close for the season on December 18.
Not ready to draft yet? Sign up here for a reminder to build your team before the draft window closes for good.
Scoring Categories
Once your roster is selected, you will earn points in three categories:
1. Domestic Box-Office Performance
Movies will only be eligible for box-office points if they are released on or after September 26 (once the scoring window begins). Points will be awarded in the following manner (based on Box Office Mojo):
Every $1 million earned: 1 point
Clears $25 million: 10-point bonus
Clears $50 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $75 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $100 million: 20-point bonus
Clears $125 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $150 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $175 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $200 million: 25-point bonus
Reaches No. 1 at the domestic box office: 20 points per week spent at No. 12. Critical Performance
Points will be awarded in the following manner (based on the Metacritic “Metascore”):
0-19: -5 points
20-39: 0 points
40-49: 10 points
50-59: 20 points
60-69: 25 points
70-79: 40 points
80-89: 50 points
90-100: 100 pointsMetacritic points will be awarded all at once on January 6 and will not be adjusted based on subsequent score fluctuations. Only movies that have been released and have a Metascore score at the time of scoring are eligible for Critical Performance points.
3. Awards
Points will be awarded for both awards nominations and wins. See the calendar below for points associated with each event.
Vulture Editors
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In the Dark Releases “Blood Relatives,” an Examination of a Notorious British Crime
On an August night in 1985, five members of one family were shot dead at Whitehouse Farm, a country manor in the rural county of Essex, in southeastern England. The police were alerted by Jeremy Bamber, the twenty-four-year-old scion of a local farming dynasty, whose parents, June and Nevill, occupied the estate. Inside the locked house, officers found the bodies of Jeremy’s parents, sister, and six-year-old twin nephews. The killings initially appeared to be an open-and-shut case of murder-suicide, at the hands of Jeremy’s sister, Sheila. Then, after a series of shocking twists, suspicions turned on Jeremy—and he was sentenced to life in prison the following year. The crime became the most infamous family massacre in British history, and to this day Jeremy Bamber remains one of the country’s most reviled convicts. But, nearly four decades later, the New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake got a tip that all might not be as it seemed.
On October 28th, In the Dark, The New Yorker’s investigative podcast, will release “Blood Relatives,” a six-part series that examines the murders at Whitehouse Farm. The series takes a comprehensive look at the case, airing evidence that was never shared with the jury and conversations with sources whose recollections upend prosecutors’ theory of the crime. The findings raise questions not only about Jeremy Bamber’s conviction but about the entire British legal system.
New Yorker subscribers receive immediate, ad-free access to every episode of “Blood Relatives,” on the New Yorker app and on Apple Podcasts. For non-subscribers, the first two episodes will be released, on all podcast platforms, on October 28th; the remaining episodes will be released weekly, on Tuesdays. Be sure to follow In the Dark so that you never miss an episode.
“Blood Relatives” is the first release from In the Dark since the podcast won a Pulitzer Prize, in May, for its third season, which examined the killings of twenty-five civilians by U.S. forces in Iraq. Since the podcast’s début, in 2016, In the Dark has become one of the most respected programs in long-form audio journalism. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, it has received three Peabody Awards, and in 2019 it became the first podcast to win a George Polk Award, one of the top honors in journalism. ♦
The New Yorker
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Hands On With Googles Gemini-Powered Smart Glasses, Android XR, and Project Moohan Headset – GadgetNutz
I’m wearing a pair of thick-rimmed glasses on my face. They don’t feel heavy, but they feel chunky. I walk over to a poster of a painting—Girl With a Pearl Earring—and ask out loud what was so special about it. A brief answer detailing its expert use of light and color by Johannes Vermeer floats into my ears, and when I ask a follow-up about when it was painted, I quickly hear the same voice say, “around 1665.” I’m not talking to myself, I swear. Nor am I hearing imaginary voices. No, I’m wearing a prototype of Google’s upcoming smart glasses, powered by its Gemini voice assistant. The company teased these smart glasses at its I/O developer conference earlier this year, showing a proof-of-concept video of AI-powered smart glasses using the name Project Astra. The pair I gazed through and chatted with uses that same Astra technology, but here it’s been built into a functioning product. Even though the glasses are still in their development phase, Google plans to release them sometime in 2025. These smart glasses are one part of Google’s big announcement today: Android XR. This “extended reality” platform marks the 10th year of Google’s mobile operating system expanding to new platforms beyond phones, joining the ranks of Wear OS, Google TV, and Android Auto. It sets the stage for a new wave of virtual and augmented reality headsets and glasses with a customized version of Android running on them.Glass, a Decade Later
I remember watching the first-ever Google Glass demo in my college dorm room—truly an iconic moment at Google I/O 2012, where people skydived toward the Moscone Convention Center wearing cyborg smart glasses that were streaming video of their approach over a Hangouts call. These Android XR–powered smart glasses don’t command that much fanfare but, in my limited time with them, I can say this: Of all the smart glasses I’ve tried, they come the closest to realizing the original vision of Glass. But Google is also in a very different place as a company than it was in 2012. A judge recently ruled Google Search to be an illegal monopoly, calling for the company to sell off Google Chrome. Yet Google (with Samsung) now wants to be the platform for the next wave of spatial computing. VR also has had a rocky road due to wavering consumer interest, and given Google’s history of killing off projects, it’s difficult to glean whether a face computing platform that requires special (and expensive) hardware will meet the fate of so many apps and services that came before. Izadi says the platform approach helps in that regard: “I think once you’re established as an Android vertical, we’re not going away anytime soon, so that’s kind of a guarantee we can give.” The big bet seems to be around Gemini and AI. Oh, and the synergy between Google and Samsung. As Kihwan Kim, the executive vice president at Samsung spearheading Project Moohan, says, “This is not about just some teams or company making this—this is different. It’s completely starting from the ground up, how AI can impact VR and AR.” He went on to say the collaboration with Google felt like “one single spirit,” adding that it’s something he’s never experienced before in this line of work.
Kermit
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Cinematrix No. 44: April 25, 2024
Can you name a Liam Neeson movie set in space?
Joe Reid
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December 2023/January 2024 U.S. Credits
Vanity Fair’s December 2023/January 2024 issue, featuring Greta Gerwig
