Monday, July 13, 2026

New York Times puff piece on Milly Alcock can’t save "Supergirl" from bombing at the box office


Photo by Retiring Guy
New York Times, 6/26/2026

Clarissa Cruz reports from Beverly Hills:
But in her first lead film role, she’s carrying the weight of the retooled DC Universe’s second movie, the follow-up to the $618 million-grossing “Superman” from 2025 and a big bet from the DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran. “Supergirl” reportedly cost $175 million not including marketing and needs to make $315 million just to break even. And unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe heyday of the 2010s, superhero movies are far from a sure thing in 2026: One hasn’t crossed the billion-dollar mark since “Deadpool & Wolverine” in 2024.  [emphasis added]
After 3 weeks in theaters, Supergirl has grossed $66,001,114 -- including an anemic $3,560,000 on its third weekend of release (July 10-12).

Variety offers a post-mortem.


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A changing story: The job of garbage collector is being transformed through automation

 
Headline:  New York Times, 6/8/2026
Screengrab:  YouTube

 From a 2021 WKBW broadcast:

Keeping tabs on authors in LINKcat: Herschel Parker

 
 
New York Times, 7/10/2026

Richard Sandomir reports:
Mr. Parker’s dogged, nearly lifelong devotion to Melville was deep and consuming. “He was fanatical about his approach to scholarship and infatuated with Melville,” said Anne Gendler, the managing editor of Northwestern University Press, the publisher of the definitive Northwestern-Newberry edition of the writer’s novels, nonfiction, poems and correspondence, a 15-volume project released from 1968 to 2017. 
Mr. Parker was an associate general editor for 13 of the volumes and general editor for the final two, taking over from Harrison Hayford, whose graduate seminar at Northwestern in 1960 had inspired him to become a Melvillean. 
But Mr. Parker’s magnum opus was his Melville biography. When the first volume came out in 1996, William Cain wrote in The Boston Globe that “every page of this new book attests that Parker is a consummate professional who has hunted down every scrap of evidence and inspected each item rigorously.”



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