Given the grip it exerts on the drag world in the US and beyond, it’s almost quaint to remember the janky beginnings of RuPaul’s Drag Race, which debuted in 2009 with cheap plywood sets, a “lounge” sponsored by Absolut Vodka and special guests including Michelle Williams (the less famous one). Now, it’s a high-gloss spectacle that has won 14 Emmy awards, is credited for bringing pageant-style drag fully into the mainstream and is a magnet for star guest judges including Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga.

There’s a sense that latter-day Drag Race is running on fumes, with 29 seasons including All Stars spinoffs and finale viewing figures that peaked in 2016. But the cottage industry that has grown up around it has never been bigger: former contestants like Trixie Mattel and Katya host a wildly popular podcast, while Bob the Drag Queen toured with Madonna and Jinkx Monsoon is the toast of Broadway with roles in Oh, Mary! and Chicago. Meanwhile, the show’s production company World of Wonder cannily keeps access to Drag Race’s 14 current international spin-offs exclusive to their own streaming platform, Wow Presents Plus.

Praise be to the drag gods (or, more accurately, World of Wonder founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato) for saving Stop! That! Train! from the straight-to-streaming kiss of death. Directed by Adam Shankman (2007’s Hairspray, The Wedding Planner), it’s a 90-minute madcap riot that deserves a spot in drag comedy herstory alongside White Chicks and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, stuffed full of mostly welcome celebrity cameos and sharp innuendoes, with every frame chock-full of a 30 Rock episode’s worth of visual gags.

Lately, the idea of a Steven Spielberg has felt endangered. For more than 50 years, his imagery has epitomized American movies, maybe even epitomized America. He has been at the center of an industry that, if it’s not dying, is certainly diminished. The sort of original movies that made Spielberg Spielberg are virtually nonexistent, even though the two major flavors that now define the industry — global box-office smash and best picture nominee — are, with Spielberg, indistinguishable (start with “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”). More than once, he inhabited both modes within one calendar year: “Jurassic Park” in the summer of 1993, for instance, then “Schindler’s List” at the end of Hanukkah, perhaps the most triumphant single-year change-up any Hollywood director has had. (He’s still the most commercially successful director ever, and he’s tied, at 13, with William Wyler for directing the most best picture Oscar nominees.)

Popular art has always bonded us to one another, no matter what might have been cleaving us apart, no matter how different our lives or how our responses to that art diverged. And Spielberg’s films have been a premium adhesive. Not only the ones he directed but the dozens of swooshing, indelibly kooky hits unleashed by Amblin Entertainment, his production company: “Poltergeist,” “Gremlins,” “The Goonies,” the “Back to the Future” trilogy, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Arachnophobia.”

Spielberg’s stardom arose from the collision of capitalism, audacity and creative vision. His movies emerged alongside the arrival of cable television and proliferating advances in personal computing and home entertainment. I watched “E.T.” at the movies, devoured it on cable, played it on my Atari and let Michael Jackson sing me a lullaby the movie inspired him to write. (Spielberg: so titanic that the other king of pop worshiped his thrillers.)

But a kind of cultural malnourishment has set in. While you once needed a pair of hands to count the major studios, we’re on the verge of barely needing one. And the best, most lucrative ideas entail microwaved nostalgia that we all know by its legal nickname: I.P. The takeovers and reheating, the obscure metrics that ensure we never quite know exactly how popular anything is, it’s dispiriting: Pac-Man eating ghosts, algorithms keeping secrets.

When movies play in only a handful of theaters to qualify for awards, and increasingly millions of us watch them on our phones, “that is not my definition of a motion-picture experience,” Spielberg told me. For that, he said, you need “an audience to be the accelerant of that experience, to be the contagion of making the experience even more profound for the individual in that crowded theater — or what we hope is a crowded theater.” Obviously, streaming changes that experience, denying us the companionship of hundreds of strangers either confirming or causing us to question our humor, our tastes, our responses.

This is to say that what Steven Spielberg symbolizes, what he built in Hollywood and in our hearts, could be reaching its twilight. He is touched by our appreciation for all that he has come to mean to us. At that “Oh, Mary!” cast party, a stocky, ebullient woman approached and asked if she could show Spielberg the “Jaws” tattoo beautifying her calf. Of course she could. And even though Spielberg estimates that he has seen 30 of these since “Jaws” came out in 1975 (plus dozens of other tattoos inspired by his movies), he listened and marveled as though hers was his very first. Earlier, on the corner of 45th Street and Eighth Avenue, a young, fit guy with a blond ponytail sitting on a construction barrier looked up and said, with biblical concision, “Thank you.”

His name is Barry, he is a showman – as we all know. But late last year, after more than 50 years of constant performing, it began to look like the Manilow show was coming to an end. In December, the 82-year-old singer announced he was about to undergo surgery for lung cancer, and postponed his planned live shows. Thankfully, the cancer had not spread and the treatment was successful. But around the same time he released a new single, ominously titled Once Before I Go. The accompanying video showed him saying goodbye to his palatial quarters at the Las Vegas Westgate resort, where he has had a residency for the past eight years, and wistfully reminiscing over old costumes, intercut with footage of him in his 80s prime. It sure looked as if he was shutting up shop.

But no: “That was just an accident,” says Manilow of the video. Really? “Yeah, we didn’t do that on purpose.” The song was actually written in the early 80s by veteran songwriter Peter Allen, he explains, but he felt he was too young to sing it when he first heard it. “It’s a beautiful song and it’s got nothing to do with me. It’s saying goodbye to a romance, you know. But it just so happened that it sounds like I’m talking about myself.” Far from going anywhere, Manilow’s got a new album out next week, and a string of new tour dates lined up.

Doing Copacabana at karaoke was really good for my early-20s sex life.

All the best science fiction movies eventually get overtaken by reality. Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report predicted personalised advertising and biometric identification. Spike Jonze’s Her correctly guessed that AI would probably arrive as emotionally responsive digital companions that sound like Scarlett Johansson, rather than rampaging killer machines. RoboCop imagined militarised law enforcement on the streets of America long before the Pentagon decided to get in on the action.

Could Westworld become the latest science fiction franchise to catch up to the future? Deadline reports this week that a new film based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 movie about rich thrill-seekers heading to a techno-pleasure park for violence, fantasy and consequence-free debauchery is in the works at Warner Bros, with David Koepp attached to write. It will reportedly bypass the more recent TV reboot from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, which ran for four seasons between 2016 and 2022.

Am I alone in thinking this could be perfect timing? In an AI age in which humans increasingly seem to prefer artificial experiences to real ones, Westworld suddenly seems a lot more intriguing than it did in either of its previous iterations. This time out the resort might market itself as the first place in the world where your digital partner can finally receive a physical body, causing lonely people who have spent three years sexting a chatbot named Dakota-7 to flock there in their millions. The great thing about Westworld 3.0 is that the director who ends up shooting this thing – Deadline reports that a “major film-maker” is circling, with the internet already convinced that this means Steven Spielberg – might not even have to delve into the old robot uprising toolkit.

I worked on a movie with him within the last couple years. Really nice guy.

Zach King - Cardboard Wars (Remake of Star Wars 1977)

It’s the Star Wars original movie from 1977. Well, kinda. There are a few differences. Its slightly condensed with a few writing changes, it’s shot in a poorly lit warehouse, the cast features his friends and kids, and everything (but not everyone) has been replaced with cardboard.

Funniest thing I’ve watched in a while and sooo worth the 53 minutes. Extremely impressive level of quality for what is essentially a purposefully bad and absurd remake. It just makes you laugh out loud.

Thank you Zach King for this piece of genius. Mad props to Vader and Leia.