Sunday Morning! “Pale Rider: the Spanish Flu of 1918” by Laura Spinney
Do you have any books lying around that you keep intending to read once the time is right? Laura Spinney’s “Pale Rider” is one of those books for me.
Category: Sunday
Sunday Morning! “Fever Dream” by Samanta Schweblin
Parenting is terrifying, if this novella is any indication. And Schweblin makes much of the sheer terror of parenting
Sunday Morning! “Wavelength” by Michael Snow
This week, I got to see a 16 mm screening of Michael Snow’s groundbreaking 1967 experimental film ‘Wavelength’ without knowing anything about the film or the director beforehand.
Sunday Morning! “Four Souls” by Louise Erdrich
A book about an Ojibwe woman’s path of revenge- following a longer digression about “representation” in fiction.
Sunday Morning! Hollywood’s Eve and Eve’s Hollywood
On the once forgotten Hollywood storyteller and the recent biography that reminded us of her own story.
Sunday! Obligatory Oscar Post Part 2.
Subjective takes on four more Best Picture contenders: Marriage Story, The Irishman, Ford v. Ferrari, and Parasite.
Sunday Morning! Obligatory Oscars Post (Pt. 1)
The glitz! The glamour! The self-importance! Gearing up for the 92nd Academy Awards with slightly (okay, largely) irreverent impressions of: “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”, “1917”, “Jojo Rabbit”, and “Joker”.
Sunday Morning! “Ducks, Newburyport”
Our minds are messy places. This novel takes you into the very nervous mind of an Ohio mother, housewife, and pie baker over the course of a thousand pages and mostly through one very long sentence.
Sunday Morning! “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles”
Chantal Akerman’s 1975 masterpiece is a nail biting Hitchcockian thriller about housework. Really.
Sunday Morning! “They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears”
A friend’s favorite book from last year, which describes a terrorist attack that either happened or did not happen, depending on which timeline we’re living through.
Sunday Morning! Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Christmas is a time for weird encounters and uncanny happenings.
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.
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”
