Eric Vilas-Boas
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ericvb.bsky.social
Eric Vilas-Boas
@ericvb.bsky.social
1.8K followers 540 following 520 posts
@vulture.com writer and editor covering animation, streaming, movies, and TV | die-hard fan of hiking and physical media

“i’m not a miracle worker, i’m a janitor”
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ericvb.bsky.social
One day, a weary blogger will publish the last "how to watch TK EVENT" post. When that day comes the world will not mourn.

But in the meantime I intend to keep tapping this sign while we can www.vulture.com/article/how-...
But the best way to watch this, and pretty much any live event, is a cheap antenna you can buy at a dollar store. The broadcast will be free after the cost of the device, which will deliver HD video marvelously. It will also spare you yet another streaming subscription — or handing your email or other marketing info over to a streaming company.
January 9, 2026 at 5:55 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
May we all walk in this world with the moral courage of Jafar Panahi
variety.com/2026/film/gl...
What is your reaction to Donald Trump saying, “I pray and hope that 2026 will be the year that we make Iran great again” and his pledge to strike Iran if protesters are killed, which they have been? Do you fear U.S. intervention in Iran? This regime has fallen already. And, as I have said before, the people who are carrying out the protests in the streets, they want to make that happen. Of course, international support can make a difference. But until people themselves decide to do something or not, nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to make any difference. It has to come within, from within the country, by the will of people. So you do not feel the need for U.S. intervention in Iran. Correct? You do not seem to understand. Let me say it again: Until people have the will to change something from within, nothing will be able to make that change. It has to be by the will of the people from within. You have repeatedly stated your desire and resolution to return to Iran as soon as your activities related to the promotion of this film allow you to do that. But given the escalating violence against protesters and dissidents in your country, and also given the fact that you have been given a prison sentence, are you having second thoughts? These developments make absolutely no difference in my decision. As I also said during my interviews in Cannes, it doesn’t matter what will happen to me as a result of this film: I have to go back to Iran. And I did go back to Iran [after Cannes]. I am the kind of person who needs to be in his country. I need to breathe there and work there. And even if they want to go ahead with that prison sentence, they can go ahead. Nothing will change my mind about going back. The real question is: why wouldn’t we want to stay in Iran? Why should it be us, the people, leaving?Whereas it is the regime and its representatives that seem entitled to stay there. We are entitled to our own country. It’s the regime that has to leave and go. Because it has fallen.
January 9, 2026 at 3:42 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
Bit more from her here, on the irony of the tools as described... www.vulture.com/article/open...
➼ Will the bet on Sora — which feels a lot like a play for Gen Z and Gen Alpha — actually pay off? Lin pointed out that the restrictions Disney and OpenAI will have to impose on the use of its characters will be strict, possibly strict enough that they’d be a turnoff for their target audience. “They’ve spoken about having these kinds of safeguards that will prevent any sort of disturbing or terms-of-service-violating content from being made,” she says. “But to me, that limits sort of what the novelty of this technology was about in the first place. If you can only generate things that are company approved, I don’t see what the purpose of investing in this technology is.”
December 11, 2025 at 8:22 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
NEW: Animation Guild prez Danny Lin speaks out against Disney's OpenAI deal. “It feels like Disney throwing in the towel, rather than competing with these tech companies,” she says.

Read it at @vulture.com / Buffering >> www.vulture.com/article/open...
Will that be enough for the AI doomers and Disney creatives out there? Probably not. “It’s pretty baffling,” says Danny Lin, a storyboard artist for Disney and the president of the Animation Guild, for a brand known to be aggressively protective of its characters to hand them off to a third-party AI tool. “It feels like Disney throwing in the towel, rather than competing with these tech companies.” She adds: “Our members, the artists, technicians, and animators who created these iconic characters, are not being included in the conversation in terms of licensing compensation.”
December 11, 2025 at 8:21 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
you will be visited by 3 spirits
the trio from Tokyo Godfathers
December 9, 2025 at 4:09 AM
ericvb.bsky.social
devastating www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
You have chosen to spend every Christmas Eve flying around the globe giving gifts to all of the, and I’m quoting here, “good girls and boys.” Why did you decide that only good children deserve gifts? I wouldn’t say that I made the decision. I’d say that I’m following the traditions set forth by Christianity and other religions in which acts of good are rewarded, while acts of bad are punished. Christmas is a fun way to teach children that being good and kind can lead to positive results, even if being mean or a bully feels better in the moment. And so-called bad children deserve nothing. That’s not what I’m saying, Isaac. I’m saying that the better a child behaves, the better the gift they get. There are degrees of bad. A child who won’t play with his little sister might not deserve a Nintendo Switch 2, but, like, a baseball glove? Sure. I can do that. So if a very wealthy child gets everything they requested and a poor child does not, are you positing that the wealthy child is morally superior to the one who lives in poverty? No! What I’m saying is that overall—and I just mean overall—whether a child is naughty or nice does have an impact on what they receive. You know, in general. But you do make the list yourself, and you are the one who checks it twice. Yes, of course. It’s in the song. The fantasy is real. Subscribe today and start with our dazzling Trapper Keeper-inspired issue. So you are, in fact, the one who decides which children deserve nice things and which don’t. That’s unfair. I’m saying that, through the magic of Christmas, I can understand the heart of each child and through that special bond—
December 4, 2025 at 9:11 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
this whole thing is a time capsule from an earlier era of digital media vinepair.com/articles/lea...
Mike Nizza, Esquire’s head of digital at the time, recalls sitting in a meeting with a woman from parent company Hearst who was chiding him for not yet hitting the website’s traffic goals for the month. As this was occurring, he looked over her shoulder to the large, real-time traffic monitor on the wall in the newsroom. “I see Chartbeat go vertical to the point where it is completely maxed out. It hit the top of the screen and it couldn’t go up anymore,” Nizza recalls. It did well over 1 million unique views almost immediately. “This article was massive for Esquire,” recalls Eric Vilas-Boas, Esquire’s food & drink editor at the time, who also handled the social media rollout on the piece. “It was the heyday of Facebook, social [media] traffic, and buzzy headlines.” Hundreds of comments were left on the article. Thousands of Tweets. Tens of thousands of Facebook shares. And then it began to get written about and reported on by other publications, major publications.
December 2, 2025 at 9:17 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
that kind of day
repost count at 665 reposting something to get them to 666
December 1, 2025 at 8:57 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
WU-TANG FOR THE CHILDREN in the Zohran Mamdani signage
November 8, 2025 at 11:39 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
now seated at The Table of Success
Write ins 2827 votes Eric Adams 2424 votes
November 5, 2025 at 3:34 AM
ericvb.bsky.social
looking like a blowout
Latest NYT vote counts show Mamdani at 50% with 69% of the votes in
November 5, 2025 at 2:38 AM
ericvb.bsky.social
This is the good stuff. A full district by district breakdowns of how NYC voted, via @thecity.nyc -- www.thecity.nyc/2025/11/04/e...
a color-codes district by district breakdown map of how the five boroughs of NYC voted
November 5, 2025 at 2:26 AM
ericvb.bsky.social
If you see this, quote with a robot that isn’t from “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Doctor Who,” or “Transformers.”
The Gundam Mk 2 from Zeta Gundam, torso/upper body shot
October 31, 2025 at 11:32 AM
ericvb.bsky.social
Here's @tvmojoe.bsky.social on the HUGE ratings success of Dancing With the Stars this season (and beyond) — fueled by Andy Richter, Mormon wives, TikTok and more... www.vulture.com/article/danc...
CHART: Nielsen same-day ratings among Gen-Z viewers (adults 18–34) Dancing With the Stars is massively outperforming shows like The Voice and Survivor in 2025, compared to viewership in 2021 The Hottest Show on TV Is 20 Years Old Mormon wives, Andy Richter, and TikTok: Inside the ratings renaissance of Dancing With the Stars.
October 30, 2025 at 5:39 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
Hosoda's quote to AFP has made the rounds for years. With the chance to talk to him, it felt important to follow up.

His words to me: "I don’t really recall saying something like that or to that effect."

But he doesn't hold Miyazaki on a pedestal either: www.vulture.com/article/mamo...
CBR headline: "Does Mamoru Hosoda Criticism of Miyazaki's Female Characters Hold Up?" Anime News Network headline: "AFP: Mamoru Hosoda Criticizes Depiction of Women in Hayao Miyazaki Anime" Cartoon Brew headline: Mamoru Hosoda Says Hayao Miyazaki "Does Not Have Confidence In Himself As A Man"
October 1, 2025 at 5:08 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
Part of Hosoda's thoughts on SCARLET: "It’s supposed to be a kind of throughline about this general animosity, toward a cycle of revenge."

Read the rest @vulture.com www.vulture.com/article/mamo...
It’s just this sort of general climate and mood. Right now, conflict is happening more than in most modern eras that we’ve experienced. I don’t want to pick any specific event because this isn’t supposed to be a documentary. It’s supposed to be a kind of throughline about this general animosity, toward a cycle of revenge. It’s a more universal message. How do you escape this vicious cycle? Is it forgiveness? The purpose of the movie is to lead audiences in that direction. Still from new Mamoru Hosoda film Scarlet
October 1, 2025 at 4:57 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
Hosoda on searching for a visual language that can't be copied by AI: "The entire world is searching for this new animated look...." www.vulture.com/article/mamo...
On Mirai, you actually brought your own kids into Studio Chizu so that the animators could use their movements as references in their animation. So much of Scarlet looks hyperdetailed, often photorealistic, a blend of hand-drawn and CGI. What real-world references did you look at to create the world of the film? The entire world is searching for this new animated look. If you were to rewind the clock, you would be limited to certain styles of 2-D hand-drawn animation or 3-D texture. But I think right now we’re all searching for a new form of expression. Part of the reason for that, perhaps, is this coming of artificial intelligence. I think AI can do a great job of copying certain styles. But with the struggle that animators and directors go through, perhaps we all have to ask the question, What is that effort for now? So I think a lot of us are trying to pursue some new visual language that both hasn’t been done before but also can’t be copied by AI. In our case, we observe our surroundings, whether it’s movements or visuals. In Scarlet, there’s only one scene, I want to say, for which we used motion-capture: the dancing sequence. Everything else was hand-animated CG. The animators had to observe their surroundings, observe people move, and then subtract and abstract the key movements that onscreen deliver some kind of purpose or nuance. That’s what makes animation so attractive. Let’s stay on AI for a moment. How do you feel about the growing prevalence of generative AI right now? Do you see possibilities in the technology? We make animation from — I don’t know if I want to say thin air, but basically ideas translated through people. They manifest as visual expressions that move, that can deliver and carry some kind of message or feeling to audiences. And AI is greatly bridging that gap of going from idea to visual in ways that we’ve never seen any tool do in the past. I had the chance to chat at the Toronto International Film Festival with Domee Shi, who directed Turning Red at Pixar. When we were talking, she said, “If AI is happening, and it’s something that we can’t avoid, how do we face it? And how do we find a way to coexist with it yet still express our individuality?” In our chat, we thought that perhaps a lot of people are feeling the same way. Writers, lawyers, translators, interpreters, anyone whose intellectual, critical-thinking job can be bridged or at least greatly closed by AI — animators are no different. We’re going to come to a crossroads of: How do we find a way to coexist with this tool that can do so much in ways that we didn’t even expect? I don’t really have an answer, but I think the first task is to understand where we place the individuality of creators.
October 1, 2025 at 4:57 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
Here are Hosoda's thoughts on Miyazaki www.vulture.com/article/mamo...
I actually wanted to ask you about Miyazaki and what you thought of him. You were quoted by the Agence France-Presse as saying the following at Cannes in 2021: “I will not name him, but there is a great master of animation who always takes a young woman as his heroine. And to be frank, I think he does it because he does not have confidence in himself as a man. This veneration of young women really disturbs me and I do not want to be a part of it.” I wanted to ask: What did you mean by this? Several news organizations reported you were talking about Miyazaki. Do you stand by the quote? How do you feel about it now? To be frank, I don’t really recall saying something like that or to that effect. But the way you described it, it would be hard to think of anyone besides that person, in terms of whom it’s referring to. But I don’t know if it was a misunderstanding or a misquote or a mistranslation or if I did say it and just don’t recall. But yeah, I’m not sure what to say. I don’t think that sounds like me, in the sense that I don’t try to put down or have an ego contest with other creators. I think that kind of negativity I try to avoid. So perhaps the author of the article maybe used me as a mouthpiece and interpreted something I said in a different way and rewrote it. I don’t know. I don’t really see myself in direct competition with Miyazaki either. I see us more as coexisting in a sense of trying to do our own thing and express our own ideas and visuals through the medium of animation. I don’t know if that’s the answer you’re looking for. I’m not looking for any specific answer. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to revisit and follow up on the quote, because it had been out there. With regards to Miyazaki, there’s certainly a lot of praise and a lot of it is deserved. But there’s some that goes so extreme, that he’s a god, he’s amazing, he transcends all this. And perhaps I think that level of comparison and using that type of language to compare and then criticize other directors is, for me, a little questionable. I think there are a lot of projects that deserve a lot of respect, and some opinions on him and what he’s done just seem so extreme to me. And I think an extreme way of thinking like that is in some ways boring, because there are so many more amazing talents and directors and creators out there. In my case, I believe that diversity is what creates a lot of value in our industry and gives audiences different experiences and flavors of life.
October 1, 2025 at 4:57 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
The one from that era that my mind went to today was "Hell's Been Empty"

I cant believe I had to do a deep dive on google to hunt down the original link to drop into web archive web.archive.org/web/20160323...
There are towns like mine in every corner of this country, and all over in between. Towns where conservative ideology evolves without natural predators, where the government is definitely coming any minute now to take all of our guns away and homosexuals are definitely going to create tax penalties for straights. Donald Trump has crushed his opponents in towns like those. For the most part, those responsible for conducting our national conversation like to pretend there’s something strange about all this. Like there’s no precedent for Trump’s rise and rhetoric, apart from pro wrestlers or fascist regimes. Like Trump metastasized out of nowhere, a newly discovered disease. But he didn’t. Sure, he’s got his wrestler and fascist tendencies, and they’re both deeply tempting comparisons to make, but they don’t tell the story. They mythologize a man who doesn’t need mythologizing, because he’s right there. Trump’s rhetoric is not absurd. It’s been around; there are precedents. Working-class conservatives have been drawn to entertaining and fear-based shows of strength for a while now. The best recent reference point for this is right-wing talk radio, and the man most emblematic of its effects is Michael Savage.
September 27, 2025 at 4:52 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
i was ecstatic to blurb Mamoru Hosoda's SCARLET for our walk-up to the great movies playing at NYFF. a good one, imo

read my bit and the rest of the flicks we're excited about @vulture.com www.vulture.com/article/most...
Scarlet Anime director Mamoru Hosoda’s latest effort is a gender-bent, action-fantasy blockbuster riff on Hamlet. After medieval Princess Scarlet’s father, the king, is murdered and usurped by her uncle, she swears revenge… and promptly fails and is also killed by the new tyrant. She is then transported to a liminal wasteland called “Otherworld,” a sprawling purgatory overrun with marauders, refugees, and the acolytes of her evil uncle, who she learns is also lurking in this dimension of the dead. Scarlet’s path of vengeance transcends space, time, and the mortal coil until she meets Hijiri, a paramedic from 21st-century Japan who joins her on her journey but slowly shows her an alternative to her bloodlust. Scarlet showcases some career-best storytelling and imagery from the director of Oscar-nominee Mirai (2018) and the richly accoladed Belle (2023). —Eric Vilas-Boas
September 23, 2025 at 6:55 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
the Clayface animation in this scene went soooooooo hard
September 9, 2025 at 8:31 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
Pete Townshend: "We’re a Who tribute band."
Why keep The Who going after Keith Moon and John Entwistle died? It’s a brand rather than a band. Roger and I have a duty to the music and the history. The Who [still] sells records —the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires. There’s also something more, really: the art, the creative work is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band. But apart from that, it does whet an appetite to think about how we should bow out in our personal lives — what we do with our families and our friends and everything else at this age. We’re lucky to be alive. I’m looking forward to playing, Roger likes to throw wild cards out sometimes in the set, and we have learned and rehearsed a few songs that we don’t always play.
August 19, 2025 at 2:53 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
like, this is a BEAUTIFUL movie. i'd argue the smears, in a few different ways, make it what it is www.vulture.com/article/kpop...
In the dance scenes, the hands and limbs of Mira and the other demon-hunting protagonists of K-pop trio Huntr/x stretch, their fingers gracefully elongated as their choreography demands. In one of their rehearsal scenes, Zoey frustratedly throws her lyric book and the book does a “wipe” smear, stretching into an arc offscreen as her body completes the full motion. In fight scenes, Huntr/x’s magic weapons trail light when the girls swing them. That trailing effect isn’t a smear on its own, but their blades also leave afterimages, duplicate smears, along their path through space. Those duplicates create an ambiguity: Is this a purely stylistic choice or is there a narrative reason their magic echoes through the air? They don’t exist solely to knit frames together. Like the movie’s flashy designs, exaggerated facial expressions (Tex Avery had nothing on popcorn eyes), and background jokes, the smears demand our attention.
August 19, 2025 at 1:11 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
Lou Reed being an absolute menace about his ice cream totally tracks www.vulture.com/article/davi...
remember when we met, he was eating an incredible amount of ice cream. I think he went through two of those quart containers of Häagen-Dazs ice cream in one sitting. We were like, Whoa.” Chris Frantz similarly recalled the hang at Reed’s apartment in his memoir, writing that Reed used a “bent and blackened spoon” and “didn’t offer us any ice cream or anything else.” He added, “it must have been four o’clock in the morning.” We
August 14, 2025 at 11:32 PM
ericvb.bsky.social
pretty excited for the 9/1 releases hitting HBO Max, but much MUCH more hype for the ones in the coming months. ANGEL'S EGG
• 🏆 Angel’s Egg (dir. Mamoru Oshii) (North American streaming debut, 4K streaming debut) • Liz and the Blue Bird (dir. Naoko Yamada) • Lu Over the Wall (dir. Masaaki Yuasa) • Millennium Actress (dir. Satoshi Kon) • Mind Game (dir. Masaaki Yuasa) • 🏆 Perfect Blue (dir. Satoshi Kon) (4K streaming debut) • 🏆 Shin Godzilla (dir. Hideaki Anno, co-director Shinji Higuchi) (4K streaming debut) • Summer Wars (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K streaming debut) • The Boy and the Beast (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K streaming debut) • 🏆 The Colors Within (dir. Naoko Yamada) (North American streaming debut) • The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K streaming debut) • 🏆 Wolf Children (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K streaming debut)
August 13, 2025 at 7:31 PM