Going to the beach is a dream, of course — we especially love Rockaway Beach in Queens — but for a long time, it also felt tricky. Does anyone else feel the same? Toby would get restless, I would get hot, and Anton… well, Anton would love it, but the two of us would be so hot and restless!
But then I got a tip that changed everything…
Bring a good shovel. Not a flimsy toy one, but a good heavy-duty one. A mom of five, who once sat next to me at the beach, gave me this advice, and I looked up and saw it in action: her kids played happily the whole time while she watched over them and read her book. It felt like the answer to a riddle. After that, we started bringing a good shovel every time, and the boys would spend ages building castles (with moats!), or digging small holes and watching the waves close them up, or any number of fun things; and other kids would drift over to join them, and I, too, would watch over them and read my book.
Other beach toys we’ve liked are Uno, frisbees, and nets, but nothing beats a good shovel!
Relaxing after a good dig.
What do you always bring? Any other beach — or travel — pro tips?
Today’s NYT Strands hints are easy if you’re a veteran.
Strands, the New York Times‘ elevated word-search game, requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There’s always a theme linking every solution, along with the “spangram,” a special, word or phrase that sums up that day’s theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.
By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.
If you’re feeling stuck or just don’t have 10 or more minutes to figure out today’s puzzle, we’ve got all the NYT Strands hints for today’s puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.
Every day, we get another reminder that the internet isn’t real life. For example, right-wing voices have been hating on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey for months, backlash that mysteriously began when the director cast a Black woman and a trans man in prominent roles. The haters spent plenty of time, energy, and endless social media posts trashing the film and predicting it would fail because it’s woke garbage. Of course, when the movie actually premiered, it was a critical darling that made over a quarter of a billion dollars in its first weekend.
In a sane world, that would have ended the discussion. The movie thousands of people thought would fail succeeded; end of story, right? Well, you’re not in a sane world, bucko, you’re in Hellworld. Case in point? Spurred on by comments from his loyal army of sycophantic followers, Elon Musk has now pledged to use his pet AI Grok to create a more “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey. His fans are excited, but I’ve got some bad news: not only would such a film be a critical and commercial flop, but there’s no way in hell this movie ever comes out.
The Odyssey: Video Game Cutscene Edition
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
Why am I so confident that Elon Musk’s Grok-powered version of The Odyssey will never come out? Simple: while Musk has achieved massive financial success (he was, for a moment there, the world’s first trillionaire), he has spent much of the last decade promising things that just never happened. Like, he previously promised SpaceX would be landing humans on Mars by 2025 at the latest; not only did that never happen, but SpaceX’s stock value is currently tumbling following several engine failures and an aborted flight.
The list goes on. Fully self-driving cars straight out of a sci-fi movie? He made the promise, but that never happened. The Hyperloop, announced in 2013? The project shut down in 2023. The pledge to have a million robotaxis on the streets by 2020? Yeah, that project died quietly amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. For all of his successes, this is who Elon Musk is: a relentless hypeman who promises more than he can deliver and tries to cover up his failures with more breathless announcements that he thinks his biggest fans will respond well to.
This AI Movie Is Its Own Trojan Horse
That’s what this AI Odyssey announcement is about. After years of being lauded by liberal fans as a real-life Tony Stark, Musk went fully right-wing, complete with pivotal endorsements of Donald Trump and a temporary role in Trump’s government. As such, Musk has become one of the most popular figures in conservative circles. While his political allegiances shifted, one thing never changed: Musk’s absolutely palpable desire for people to like him. Accordingly, he spends plenty of time on X, engaging with conservative fans and platforming both conservative thoughts and movies (like Citizen Vigilante). By and large, his fans hate Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, so he has pledged to give them an alternative.
Once again, Musk is telling his fans what they want to hear. Hate that “woke” movie everyone’s talking about? Well, he’ll make his own, and he’ll do it without help from Hollywood! That’s the promise, at least, and Musk’s fans are eating this up with a fork and spoon. None of them seem to think that this project, like so many others, will quietly disappear. Or that the man who has spent years running a social media platform into the ground might not actually be the best guy to deliver an actual film and not sloppy shorts that look like a PS4 cutscene.
Elon Musk’s Movie Is Already History
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Musk actually makes his more “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey. Why does anyone think this thing will be watchable, much less better than Christopher Nolan’s version? Not only does the proof of concept suck, but Musk’s rejection of Hollywood has seriously reduced his talent pool for things like voice acting, art design, and so on. Plus, the very announcement brings up an obvious question: why has Musk given himself until the end of the year to make this film? Nolan shot a real movie with real people in only three months, so why will it take Grok’s prompt engineers almost twice as long to make their own?
The answer is simple: this movie is never going to see the light of day. Elon Musk’s biggest fans are frothing at the mouth about Nolan’s The Odyssey right now, but soon enough, they’ll have something new to obsess over, like Spider-Man saying something too woke in Brand New Day. As they move on, the once and future (?) trillionaire will move on as well, making even more promises he never plans to keep. With any luck, all of the people demanding an AI version of The Odyssey will start clamoring for an AI adaptation of another ancient text. May I suggest The Bible, complete with a historically accurate, very brown Jesus Christ?
2024’s Shelby Oaks is a unique watch because it effortlessly integrates found-footage filmmaking into a more traditional storytelling framework. Much of the first act plays out like a true crime documentary, establishing the mystery and the characters navigating it. Then the perspective shifts to the footage the documentary is about, and suddenly we’re in a straight-up supernatural thriller. While I’m a huge fan of found footage and analog horror, I can’t recall another film that switches filming styles depending on the scene, which makes Shelby Oaks, as far as I can tell (but please correct me if I’m wrong), a sample size of one.
Granted, I haven’t seen every found-footage film ever released, and I have my blind spots like everybody else, but my main takeaway was that Shelby Oaks earns serious points for its camera work and the layered storytelling built around it. While the ending was a bit predictable for my tastes, everything leading up to it was solid, and I’m glad I sat down with this one because it’s incredibly fluid in its delivery, allowing its mystery to unravel naturally.
From YouTubing To Doom Snooping
Shelby Oaks starts out like a documentary, introducing us to Mia Brennan-Walker (Camille Sullivan). Mia’s younger sister, Riley (Sara Durn), disappeared 12 years earlier while working on a project for her YouTube series, The Paranormal Paranoids. While investigating a prison, three of Riley’s collaborators, Laura (Caisey Cole), David (Eric Francis Melaragni), and Peter (Anthony Baldasara), also disappear. Their bodies are eventually recovered, horrifically mutilated. The only lead police have is one of the group’s two recovered video cameras, which contains footage of Riley during what many assume were her final moments.
This entire opening sequence blends documentary and found-footage filmmaking while establishing Shelby Oaks’ central conflict: Mia believes Riley is still alive, everybody else thinks the YouTube channel was an elaborate hoax, and her husband Robert (Brendan Sexton III) is ready to leave her because her obsession with the case has consumed her life after years without answers.
That all changes when a man later identified as Wilson Miles arrives at Mia’s doorstep carrying a tape labeled “Shelby Oaks,” the town where Riley was last investigating. After handing over the tape, Wilson tells Mia, “She finally let me go,” before blowing his head off on her front porch. It’s a horrific sequence that comes completely out of nowhere, but it’s enough to convince Mia that whoever “she” is may have imprisoned Riley as well.
While examining the tape and some of Riley’s personal effects, Mia comes to the horrifying conclusion that Riley had been stalked by a demon ever since suffering night terrors as a child, and that those experiences likely fueled her fascination with the paranormal in the first place. Her amateur sleuthing sends her down a twisted path involving demonic hellhounds, incubi, and the revelation that Riley, and possibly Wilson, were caught up in something much larger involving forces she doesn’t begin to understand until she discovers what, who, and where Wilson escaped from.
This Could Totally Become A Franchise
Everything about Shelby Oaks is expertly crafted, but I’m most impressed by how effortlessly it shifts between filming styles. It almost feels like the camera zooms out from the initial source of terror, giving us a more conventional supernatural mystery centered on Mia and her investigation. She repeatedly combs through the recovered footage for clues, but those investigation scenes aren’t presented as found footage themselves. That approach lets you experience Riley’s terror firsthand before stepping back to piece everything together alongside Mia.
Once I got to the big third-act reveal, I was a little underwhelmed because my immediate reaction was, “Oh yeah, that makes sense,” and then… that was it. Sometimes that’s just how movies go, and I’m not too upset about it because Shelby Oaks takes enough creative swings to make the entire experience worthwhile.
What I’m more interested in seeing, though, is a prequel that unpacks what else is on those tapes. Shelby Oaks ends in a way that hints at a sequel, though it works perfectly well as a standalone film. A prequel, however, would be next level. My thinking is that the tape Mia receives from Wilson is just one of many recorded during the 12 years Riley was missing. A found-footage compilation built around those tapes could make for some incredible worldbuilding that pushes Shelby Oaks into franchise territory, and that’s something I’d absolutely like to see.
I’m just spitballing here, however, and right now all we have is Shelby Oaks. Overall, I was impressed with the filmmaking and the buildup leading into the third act. I’ll admit I was a little underwhelmed by the conclusion, but I’ve also seen a ton of movies like this, so maybe I’m just being a tad cynical. I’d definitely recommend it to my horror-loving friends.
As of this writing, you can stream Shelby Oaks on Hulu.
