Goodbye, July! What a month it was, of crushing heat and hellish discourse about ancient Greek literature. Tom Holland appeared in approximately 3,000 YouTube challenges on his Kafkaesque promo tour for two movies. Spain recolonized Argentina or something. It’s been a lot! And now it’s over. 

But there is much to look forward to. At the end of August, I’ll be traveling to Venice and Toronto, and while I can’t bring you all with me (Delta Airlines said no) I will at least be sending back dispatches about what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, and (if you want) what I’ve eaten. Obviously, downtown Toronto is famous for its fine cuisine, but I will also try to choke down some pasta in Venice. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. That’s not for a month! 

Before then, we’ll have the Anthony Bourdain movie, the Anne Hathaway dinosaur movie (which is also a Sheila Lukins biopic), a new season of MTV’s The Challenge (!!!), the show based on Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards, and more. You can look forward to coverage of at least some of that stuff in these here pages. I hope you’ll stick with me. 

In the meantime, another weekend has arrived. I’m going to be in a farm house in Connecticut with a bunch of gay people because one must on occasion take in the airs of New England while feeling intense social stress. I hope plenty of you will be having fun with friends somewhere nice, too. But eventually the gossip and mimosa-guzzling will grow a bit tiresome and one might need a bit of alone time. It will be a respite, then, to creep up to your little guest bedroom and watch something on your iPad or whatever. Me, I’ll probably continue my journey with the mysterious series From, though let me tell you, the writing gets real rough in season two. At one point watching it, I thought to myself, “Was this written by a teenager?” I don’t think it was, but it has that feeling. 

If Canadian horror shows aren’t to your liking, you could try Furious, the new serial-killer thriller that is grim but compelling. Or you could sample one of the following.