July 22, 2026

SORE WINNERS: Feminist Author Slams Nolan’s Odyssey (After He Boosted Her Sales).

The auteur behind “The Odyssey” leaned on feminist author Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s epic poem to shape his film. That’s the honor of a lifetime, full stop. And, apparently, Nolan’s stamp of approval led to her book climbing the charts anew.

Thank you, thank you!

Except Wilson has a bone to pick with Nolan’s film. Several, actually.

She called some of the film’s messaging “incoherent,” questioned the absence of Zeus and Poseidon and attacked Penelope, a key character played by Anne Hathaway.

Wilson even found the dog portrayed in the film as pandering of the highest order.

Best of all? She gave the film’s marketing team the worst quote possible to use on the movie poster moving forward.

I didn’t feel it was pulling teeth to engage with it.

A simple “thank you” note would have sufficed. Instead, she found the nearest rhetorical dagger and plunged it into Nolan’s back.

 

Tweet continues:

“The film presents an Odysseus who feels very bad about things that he’s done in war, and is struggling to process them in a very modern, psychiatrised way – and needs drugs to do so! He seems to feel bad about being a warrior, and we never actually see him get to do much warrioring … Nolan makes the protagonist a likeable, all-American hero; Homer’s Odysseus wants glory, and he wants to get spoils from the sack of a city! I kept looking in vain for a sense that this was a film about glory. This is a film that has an interest in shame, but I don’t think it has any interest in glory.”

The Delta House would like a word here:

While the Critical Drinker loves to riff on Hollywood screenwriters arbitrarily going woke to appease mythical “modern audiences,” a literal interpretation of The Odyssey might not have made for an enjoyable night at the movies:

Was [Nolan] really supposed to show, among other things, the mythical Greek hero slaughtering unarmed suitors, ordering the execution of the household maids (after forcing them to clean up the gore from the massacre of suitors), sleeping around with nymphs, and abducting women from Cicones?

And we are supposed to believe that these gaps are offenses *against Western civilization*? That stringing up enslaved women by a ship’s cable or physical intimacy with a witch are what made the West great, such that it speaks to Nolan’s hostility to our own culture that he left them out? Please.

Now, the director does significantly soften Odysseus in ways that I think go too far, but, as has been widely noted, Nolan changes him in a generally in Christian direction, which isn’t anti-Western, either.

Meanwhile: Armie Hammer Disavows Citizen Vigilante as ‘Hateful, Disgusting.’

Citizen Vigilante star Armie Hammer is out spreading the word in Woke Hollywood that he considers his own movie to be “hateful” and “disgusting.”

“The first time he saw it, he was in tears,” someone described as a “source in Hammer’s camp” told the far-left Puck. “He called me and said, ‘Fuck. This is hateful, disgusting.’”

“I think he knew it certainly leaned toward the right, but Uwe works in a very frantic way,” the source added. “It’s not like he sent him a hundred-page script. When he saw the final product, he was, ‘That was not the movie I thought we made,’ and he freaked the fuck out.”

So this is the thanks Citizen Vigilante director Uwe Boll gets after he lifted a broke and broken Armie Hammer up out of the #MeToo Gulag and paid him $250,000 when, as Hammer himself pointed out, he was in such dire straits, “I would have done a fucking cat food commercial.”

What’s happening here is not rocket science…

Not at all. As John Nolte writes, the actor, who supported Biden-Harris in 2020, “is having these comments leaked to a left-wing publication like Puck because that’s how desperate he is to appease the very same people who blacklisted him over nothing more than five years ago.”

Posted at 12:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

UNEXPECTEDLY: Mamdani Finally Admits He Can’t Arrest Bibi.

Last night, in a short video statement, Mamdani acknowledged that he has no authority, and never had any authority, to carry out his campaign promise.

“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here,” Mamdani said. “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.”

No Shinola, Sherlock.

Nothing changed between last fall and now; the only difference is that the U.N. General Assembly is in two months, and Netanyahu intends to be there. (The Israeli leader may feel that he must attend the UNGA this year, to prove the point that no one has the authority to arrest him on U.S. soil.)

In the end, Mamdani is like the kid who runs for middle-school student council promising to replace the school lunches with McDonalds and Chick-fil-A and ban homework. He either didn’t know, or more likely, didn’t care that he didn’t have the authority to keep this promise; he just wanted the applause and to look like a tough guy.

Mamdani added, “The federal government, however, does [have the authority] — and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant.”

No, the U.S. government does not have the authority to execute that warrant, at least not without repealing the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act and recognizing the authority of the ICC, which would give the ICC the authority to indict and arrest U.S. government officials and members of the military.

Roger Simon adds: International Criminal Court: Bad from the Start. “Israeli journalist Amit Segal and others have noted, Mamdani’s overstated attacks only serve to improve Netanyahu’s reelection chances.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

NIFTY: Firefighting drones in the works as wildfires plague US nearly year-round. “Most drones are significantly smaller than crewed aircraft and have shorter flight ranges, meaning they cannot replace large airtankers in delivering massive payloads of water or other fire-suppressing payloads to remote wildfires. But companies and fire agencies—along with organizers of the $11 million XPRIZE competition—are testing whether drones can help firefighting crews respond more quickly to small fires and put them out before they become more destructive.”

Posted at 11:42 am by Stephen Green

LOL, INDEED:

Also, “thousands” might be just the tip of the iceberg.

Posted at 10:55 am by Stephen Green

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE TOOK XANAX AN HOUR AGO: Mullin warns non-citizen voter registrations in NJ ‘could be much higher.’ “He also revealed that DHS had identified 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in cooperative states.”

More: It wasn’t a glitch.

Developing…

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green

INDEED:

But whatever you do, don’t be this guy:

The arresting officer, on the other hand, maybe deserves some kind of medal.

Posted at 9:22 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: GOP Midterm Theme Should Be ‘Joe McCarthy Was Right.’ “The Democrats can’t tiptoe around their future plans anymore. Thus far, the elders of the party have met the youthful zeal of the young Democratic Socialists of America with timid acquiescence. It’s understandable, shouting people down has been the Dems’ modus operandi for a long time, of course the loudest miscreants among them are prevailing now.”

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green

MUCH OF THE TARGETING IS BEING DONE WITH AI NOW, WHICH MEANS THE PATTERNS MAY BE LESS OBVIOUS AT FIRST GLANCE:

Posted at 8:44 am by Glenn Reynolds

HMM: Democrats raise more money than Republicans in every key Senate race except Iowa.

Fundraising in the second and first quarter shows that Democrats hold a strong campaign finance advantage in all key races, except Iowa, the New York Times reported, citing new campaign finance filings.

The party’s financial picture is complicated by the Maine race, where it had to scramble to find a new nominee following Graham Platner’s exit. Republicans also outperformed Democrats in money raised through main party committees and super PACs.

The largest gap between Democratic and Republican fundraising was seen in the Texas race, where Democratic nominee James Talarico brought in $54.5 million through his campaign committee, compared with $3.9 million that Republican nominee Ken Paxton has raised.

Let’s just say that fundraising isn’t always an accurate gauge of actual support.

Still, maybe Republicans need to get serious about supporting their candidates.

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green