The best A24 movies: Why this studio has such a solid rep

Chocolate and peanut butter. Beer and pizza. Buzz and Woody. Ruth and Gherig. There are just some things that work well together. And no matter what you do, you will never beat them and spend all of your time trying to find a more iconic pair than what already exists. I can count on one hand how many times I have smoked a cigar without an old fashioned in the other hand. And, there is a reason there aren’t more times…because, honestly, why would I waste the time smoking without drinking? Why would I waste chocolate without peanut butter? Why would I waste beer without pizza? I wouldn’t. And the Yankees wouldn’t have been the same without Murderer’s Row. And Toy Story would have been nothing without the rivals-to-friends of Buzz and Woody.

But how do you pair a cigar with the right drink? For me, bourbon mixed with sugar, bitters, and a bit of fruit is a good combination with anything. But I reached out to John Gaglio from La Aurora to get a little more guidance on how to deepen my pairing of the two, and here is what I learned.

One of the many times I watched The Gentlemen, I laughed at the scene where Matthew (Jeremy Strong) joked that it was illegal in France to name a pig Napoleon. Of course, there are ridiculous laws all over the place. Want a few? In Georgia, it is illegal to eat fried chicken with a fork. In Arkansas, it is against the law to say the name incorrectly. Which means Bill Clinton would have come after me for years of me saying “ARE-Kansas.” It is prohibited to sleep on top of a refrigerator in Pennsylvania. That means my cat is a thug in Penn. And one of my favorites: It is illegal for unmarried women to parachute on Sundays.

The point is that there are crazy laws all over the place that seem completely ridiculous, and there is almost always a story behind them. So, is the Napoleon pig law a real thing? Is it illegal to raise a swine and name it after the legendary French Emperor? Well, let’s dig in. Why? Because I am a nerd and I need company in the weeds.

We have some news on the movement of the next James Bond. According to reports, we are looking at the final four (we know of three). Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, Dunkirk), Callum Turner (Eternity, One Night Only), and Josh O’Connor (The Crown, Challengers) are all in the final running to portray the next 007. We also, allegedly, have a fourth, unannounced actor in the running. But of course we do. And since we have news and movement on the James Bond front, I started thinking about what the next movie will be about. That took me down a rabbit hole, and I landed on a question. What is MI6? James Bond’s employer is a shadowy government agency, like Jason Bourne’s Treadstone or Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Mission Force (IMF). But there is one major difference between them and the organization that signs 007’s paychecks.

His is real.