The film director Christopher Nolan tries to avoid critics but technology is bringing them into his home. He told the New York Film Critics Circle that he had been exercising anonymously in an online Peloton class when the instructor savaged one of his films. “This song is from a movie called Tenet,” she told the class. “That’s 2½ hours of my life that I want back.” When told of Nolan’s comments, the instructor backpedalled. “I may not have understood a minute of Tenet but I have seen Oppenheimer twice,” she said, then offered Nolan an in-person class and said he could criticise her as much as he wanted.
Tim Loughton, a former children’s minister, refuses to make new year resolutions after the Worthing Herald one year asked local celebs for theirs. Sir Peter Bottomley, a fellow Tory MP, vowed to create a community centre, while an Australian soap star who was doing panto in the town hoped for a cure for Aids and an end to poverty. Then they went to the model Katie Price. “I want to grow my nails long,” she said. Less philanthropic, maybe, but I bet she delivered on it.
David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, has been using voice-recognition software to write letters to his clergy. Unfortunately AI doesn’t speak CofE, he says. “Diocese” appeared as “darkness”, “missional” as “miserable” and “stipendiary” as “Skype injury”. At least he didn’t dictate the Lord’s prayer, or AI would decide that Our Father in Heaven’s name is Harold.
Home discomforts
Emerald Fennell’s film, Saltburn, has divided opinion. Essentially a blend of Brideshead Revisited (though with more bare than bear) and The Talented Mr Ripley, this dark comedy is too gruesomely icky for some. Beatrice Gove, daughter of the levelling-up secretary, told her mother, Sarah Vine, that it was the perfect family film but Vine writes in The Spectator that it was Too Much. “It’s about a dysfunctional family,” Beatrice explained. “I thought you would feel at home.”
He conquered 800 and 1,500 metres, but Seb Coe balked at going further. He tried 5,000 metres once, at the Yorkshire championships, where he stormed into a huge lead and then coasted. Coe tells the Leading podcast that he was bored and the spectators felt it. He can place the moment when he knew it wasn’t for him. “It was the pint of beer thrown at me,” Coe said, “with the immortal words ‘Get a f***ing move on’. ”
Guest minister
Tired of studying our actual leaders, the Institute for Government has assembled a fantasy cabinet with the Lionesses’ head coach, Sarina Wiegman, as PM. Severus Snape from Harry Potter is chancellor, mainly because they wanted Alan Rickman’s voice to deliver a budget speech (CGI can do wonders), while Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar will root out bent coppers as home secretary. Most eye-catching is the appointment of C-3PO as foreign secretary. “He speaks over six million languages,” the team said of the Star Wars droid. “And the idea of politicians that we can just turn off is not unappealing.”