137. Old-fashioned binge-watching
I.
Apple TV features Mr. Scorsese, a film portrait of director Martin Scorsese. Across five episodes, the miniseries takes you through Scorseseās life via the films he has made. Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, After Hours, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, Silence. It is the incredible body of work of a man who is beloved, yet remained an outsider in Hollywood for a long time.
āIn the original script for Taxi Driver, thereās a line about how Travis Bickle looks at the campaign headquarters, like a wolf looks at campfires in the distance,ā says screenwriter Paul Schrader. āScorsese was like that too: a wolf gazing at the fires of civilisation, never quite to be accepted.ā
Scorsese is not a typical Hollywood director. He grew up amongst the wise guys in New York and later drew on that street-smart upbringing in his films. His films often deal with power and powerlessness. With people on the margins of society. According to Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorseseās strength lies in his daring to show the dark side of humanity, without passing judgement. āMarty thinks we all have that side to us,ā he says. āAnd he explores that dark side without any fear.ā
Mr. Scorsese is a string of juicy anecdotes, told either by Scorsese himself or by friends and colleagues. Itās a delight to see his childhood friends ā colourful characters who could have stepped straight out of Mean Streets or Goodfellas.
Thanks to the series, it also became clear to me just how important Robert De Niro is to Scorsese. De Niro sat by Scorseseās bedside when he collapsed due to a drug addiction. At that moment, De Niro convinced the director to make Raging Bull, a film about a boxer (which became a metaphor for Scorseseās own struggle). Nor would The King of Comedy exist without De Niro. And perhaps, without De Niro, Scorsese would not later have worked so closely with DiCaprio, and The Wolf of Wall Street would never have been made.
At 82, Martin Scorsese is still the wolf watching the fire from a distance, though he has crept a little closer. Having watched the documentary series (which feels a bit rushed towards the end), Iām keen to watch some of his work again soon.
- - -II.
Thereās another old-fashioned hype in the podcast world, and itās called Op zoek naar Marlotte. In this five-part podcast series from Zembla, investigative journalist Lizzy Diercks goes in search of a deceased child who never existed. Itās not a spoiler; Diercks tells you that right at the start of the first episode.
The bizarre story begins when Diercks receives an email from Annika, who, whilst volunteering at the Kindertelefoon helpline, gets to know a 13-year-old girl named Marlotte. They keep in touch and chat via WhatsApp. The girl tells her that she is all alone in a burns unit. She is seriously injured, her parents are dead, and she has no friends. Marlotte dies a few years later and Annika scatters her ashes.
At first, nobody knows that Marlotte is a figment of the imagination. The journalist sets to work on the story to highlight a scandal in the youth care system. How could a girl have been left lying alone in a hospital for so long, and why was Annika saddled with so much control over her fate?
Although you hear the punchline right at the start, the podcast still draws you into the mystery. During the first two episodes, I was overcome by an uneasy feeling. Something is completely wrong here. Who on earth would invent a fictional girl in such a dizzyingly detailed way? This isnāt like the stories of people who find love on Tinder only to be scammed afterwards. In this case, no financial damage is done, but psychological trauma is.
The podcast is well made. The creators take you by the hand through their investigation. As a listener, what happens often sounds unbelievable (and a bit implausible). Sometimes you donāt quite understand why something isnāt investigated straight away. Or why certain things arenāt questioned. I was glad that those questions were later asked out loud and explained. Anyone can get caught up in a complex web of lies, even a journalist.
- - -PS.
A fine essay by Joost de Vries, who wonders why no great novel has ever been written about Geert Wilders. Itās not quite that simple. āCharacters like Trump or Boris Johnson, or Wilders or Milei or Graus are beyond satire,ā writes De Vries. āThey are already caricatures, already have cartoonish hairstyles, say things that defy all logic. The joke has already been made, by themselves. And the joke isnāt funny anymore.ā
The dead internet theory is based on the idea that the web will eventually be taken over by AI spam and bots. And how this will make it increasingly difficult to find human posts. Kursgezagt made an explanatory video.
- - -Spencer Chang makes a case for the alive internet theory. āWhere can we sit together on the internet? Where do we go for a stroll? Where do we find the digital equivalent of the remote hot spring up in the mountains, or that hidden hike to the waterfall?ā
In the latest Spike Lee film Highest 2 Lowest, Denzel Washington makes a comment about AI and art. He plays a record executive who doesnāt believe that artificial intelligence can replace the human aspect of music. Lee seems to want to make the same point about film. Highest 2 Lowest feels authentic because it was filmed on the streets and in the underground rather than in front of a studio screen. And itās clearly stamped with Spike Leeās own mark throughout.
- - -This weekend I walked 18 kilometres from Utrecht to Soest. In between a few downpours, I listened to a podcast in which Austin Kleon explains how he writes his newsletters. Seems like it would be inspiring for anyone who writes online.
It was Dutch Design Week again. I was in Eindhoven on Tuesday and wrote about it in my blog for NU.nl.
The Halo game series has a special place in my heart. I played the original as a teenager on the first Xbox, when I was still living at home. The alien adventure was brilliant and the music legendary (ā still is!). I remember the evenings at friendsā houses, where we played multiplayer on a single TV in split-screen mode. We had to make do with a tiny screen: we each had a quarter of the display. I remember the weapons; how powerful the ordinary pistol was. I remember how it feels to blast a grunt with an assault rifle. My girlfriend and I replayed the original trilogy from start to finish in co-op a few years back.
Halo was the definitive Xbox exclusive for years. Thatās changing now, with a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved coming to PlayStation for the first time. Just seeing the first few seconds of the trailer made me want to play the game yet again.
- - -Youāve just read blog post ā137, written during the week of 20ā26 October 2025. Subscribe to my newsletter and youāll receive it in your inbox every Sunday, free of charge.