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Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

110 followers 170 following 440 posts

'Where must we go...
we who wander this Wasteland
in search of our better selves?'
-The First History Man

If you care about what I've been watching: https://letterboxd.com/bstnsx704/

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Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Just some fun connective tissue with the recent actors to have prominently played Elvis and then gone on to take on roles that have them cast as vaguely Engineer-esque figures. Must be something in the facial features... (2/2)

Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Dune: Part Two (2024)

Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in Elvis (2022)

Jacob Elordi as the Creature in Frankenstein (2025)

Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley in Priscilla (2023)

November 17, 2025 at 4:37 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Knowing that Elvis Presley was (along with the Statue of Liberty and Michelangelo's David) one of the major influences on Prometheus' Engineers, this is even more interesting to put into perspective. (1/2)

November 17, 2025 at 4:37 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Some thoughts I had on Hail, Caeser! after a rewatch last year. I love this little movie so much. It's grown into something of a real sleeper hit in the Coens' filmography, honestly, and I am all in on this reevaluation it seems to be receiving now.

Part 1/3 of my Letterboxd review of Hail, Caeser! (2016)

Last week I watched The Woman on Pier 13 after its airing on TCM's Noir Alley. The Woman on Pier 13 is a cheap, little-known, late 1940s crime drama released at the height of the Hollywood Blacklist, recognized nowadays mostly as a hit-piece that Howard Hughes concocted to weed out any suspected Communist activity within RKO by threatening to ostracize anyone at the studio that refused to work on the project when asked. Originally titled "I Married a Communist," the film presents a stilted reality in which the Communist Party is an all-knowing, all-controlling crime syndicate – the Mafia, essentially – responsible for every bit of evil soon to befall the lives of its well-intentioned characters, most of whom are seeking to escape the tightening grip of the Party's looming, always expanding shadow.

I couldn't help but think a lot about Hail, Caesar! and its own presentation of Hollywood during the Blacklist era while watching The Woman on Pier 13. At the time of its release in 2016, Hail, Caesar! definitely felt like more of a minor Coen Brothers work, and the same can probably still be said for it now, given that it has more or less slipped through the cracks of their overall filmography. It's a film I've become pretty endeared to as time has passed, though. I love movies about movies, and I love film noir. I love that specific era and style of Hollywood filmmaking in the 1940s/50s, even when it sometimes lead to wild misfires like, well, The Woman on Pier 13, and I love movies about that specific era and style of Hollywood filmmaking (and the string of misfires it inevitably gave birth to).

Part 2/3 of my Letterboxd review of Hail, Caeser! (2016)

Suffice to say, Hail, Caesar! gives me a lot of what I love. As one of the Coen Brothers' comedies, the film certainly isn't above looking back on the many hypocrisies and absurdities of the factions that populate the very specific time and place that it exists within with a wink in its eye and a smirk on its face (and more than a few understated gags that had me actually bursting out with audible laughter more on this viewing than on any previous one, for some reason), but it also isn't looking to rewrite (the idea of) history, choosing instead to just blow it all up to cartoonish extremes. The Coens and Roger Deakins and the whole ensemble of oddball actors and characters that populate the dream world that is the Capitol Pictures lot present this larger-than-life farce of a reality, with all of its aesthetics and politics and the very specific, self-indulgent quirks of the dominant movie studios as the capitalist caricature that Hollywood always has been (but perhaps especially so during the Red Scare era in which this film is set), in the way that only the bumbling Hollywood of any era could ever produce. But that artifice inherent to the whole system is, to steal a quote from Bogie, the stuff that dreams are made of, and just as I am, Hail, Caesar! is pretty in love with that idea, too.

Hail, Caesar! is a blast, but if you want to get the most out of it, pair it with some no-name, barely remembered movies from the era. Everyone knows the major classics, but really scrape the bottom of the barrel. Watch some of the would be epics or B-pictures that nobody remembers or talks about, and then give Hail, Caesar! another shot if it's been a while since you last watched it.

Part 3/3 of my Letterboxd review of Hail, Caeser! (2016)

Also, Alden Ehrenreich is a treasure. It is such a shame that the rest of Hollywood still hasn't really figured out how best to utilize him, because he's incredible in this.

November 13, 2025 at 7:31 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Has to be said.

Dek and Thia in Predator: Badlands (2025)

Master Chief and Cortana in Halo 3 (2007)

November 10, 2025 at 4:27 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Guys being dudes.

The Sacrificial Engineer in Ridley Scott's Prometheus (2012)

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two (2024)

The Creature in Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (2025)

November 1, 2025 at 4:16 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

If You See This Post A Robot

David kissing Walter in Alien: Covenant (2017)

October 18, 2025 at 1:42 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

FINALLY GETTING SOMETHING FOR THE NEW VINCE GILLIGAN/RHEA SEEHORN SHOW

July 22, 2025 at 7:30 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

If you see this, post a Frankenstein.

June 2, 2025 at 2:09 AM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Can't stop watching this trailer. This is it, this is easily the movie I'm most anticipated for this year. A new Guillermo del Toro movie is always a massive event for me, and he never lets me down.

Totally lost control and lurched forward in my seat at this shot.

June 1, 2025 at 1:20 AM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Even the credits look sick.

June 1, 2025 at 12:44 AM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Happy Alien Day, folks.

April 26, 2025 at 11:13 AM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

Ridley being inspired by the design of his electric razor for the look of this one is such a fun anecdote.

Small ship in Raised By Wolves (2020), with a shape/form inspired by the design Ridley Scott's electric razor, crashed and hanging over a hole on the surface of the planet Kepler-22b.

March 13, 2025 at 12:05 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

This one monster that pops out of the wall to gobble up a dude in Big Trouble in Little China has to be the coolest creature to ever appear in just a single shot in a film, right?

March 11, 2025 at 1:03 AM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

I would very much like to see Mickey 17 again, please and thank you.

March 7, 2025 at 9:22 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

HBO Max used to make TV shows.

March 5, 2025 at 2:27 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

March 5, 2025 at 2:15 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

March 2, 2025 at 2:35 AM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

March 1, 2025 at 3:10 PM

Tom Palleschi

@tompalleschi.bsky.social

On top of all of the other awful crap in the article, there's this little bit that stood out to me.

Poetry! No different from travel plans, of course!