Sunday Morning! “Have You Seen the White Whale?”
On a coworker who spent a summer drawing thousands of whales in chalk and the great work of storytelling that came from that.
Author: Rufus F.
Sunday Morning! Robert Bresson’s “Pickpocket”
This week I rewatched the wonderful Robert Bresson film Pickpocket and realized it’s one movie that plays like another until the last few minutes.
Sunday Morning! Beginning John Cheever
On a recommendation from a local poet, I have started reading the short stories of an American master of the form, and was greatly rewarded for the effort.
Sunday Morning! The City & The City
A fellow who doesn’t read much in the way of speculative fiction reads a wild novel about overlapping “unseen” cities, murder, and intrigue- and emerges with his mind in knots but still intact.
Monday Morning! More Selby Jr. and Beginning Bresson
On Hubert Selby Jr’s last novel and Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest”, two portraits of isolated men who are suffering.
Sunday Morning! “The Seventh Victim” and “An American Tragedy”
This week, a bleak thriller from the 40s and a literary masterpiece that are both awash in sin.
Sunday Morning! The Burden (2017)
On a surprisingly affecting short film in which stop-motion animated animals sing of their existential anxieties while working the night shift.
Sunday Morning! “Colorless Tsukuru Tzaki and his Years of Pilgrimage” by Haruki Murakami and R.I.P. Kim Shattuck
Murukami also reminds one of Kafka or Lynch in that he leaves many of his mysteries open and unexplained. Some will find this frustrating.
Sunday Morning! The Apu Trilogy
This week, I finally watched a marvelous landmark of world cinema: Satyajit Ray’s “Apu Trilogy”
Monday Morning! “Paris Without End: the True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife”
Moving out after a breakup delayed me from posting on time about this biographical history of a famous literary breakup!
Sunday Morning! “From Here to Eternity” by Caitlin Doughty
A lively trip around the world to compare how different cultures bring out their dead.
Sunday Morning! The Art Life of David Lynch
Taking a look at a fantastic documentary about one of the world’s most singular filmmakers and one of his recently reassessed films.
Sunday Morning! Two by Hubert Selby Jr.
This week I read two novels by Hubert Selby Jr. I’d never read him before. Selby buried me.
Sunday Morning! “Silent Light”
On Carlos Reygadas’s strangely sincere, beautiful, and deeply spiritual movie about infidelity among the Mennonites.
Movie Notes: First Reformed
A (fairly) recent movie asks if God can forgive us for what we’ve done to His creation.
Sunday Morning! “The Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa
On a Japanese novel and film that deal in different ways with the social pressure to forget.
Sunday Morning! Balzac’s Wild Ass’s Skin
The Balzac streak continues with a supernatural tale built on the fantastical conceit that our energies can be used to fulfill our desires or squandered and lost.
Sunday Morning! “White Girls” by Hilton Als
Here’s a book that takes cultural essay writing to a whole other level.
Monday Afternoon?!! Balzac’s Old Goriot & Midnight Cowboy
A day late and a dollar short with two stories of the rake’s progress.
Sunday Morning! Beginning Balzac & Eugénie Grandet
I suppose by middle age it’s high time I started with Balzac…
