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.
On the once forgotten Hollywood storyteller and the recent biography that reminded us of her own story.
Subjective takes on four more Best Picture contenders: Marriage Story, The Irishman, Ford v. Ferrari, and Parasite.
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”.
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.
Chantal Akerman’s 1975 masterpiece is a nail biting Hitchcockian thriller about housework. Really.
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.
Christmas is a time for weird encounters and uncanny happenings.
On a coworker who spent a summer drawing thousands of whales in chalk and the great work of storytelling that came from that.
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.
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.
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.
On Hubert Selby Jr’s last novel and Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest”, two portraits of isolated men who are suffering.
This week, a bleak thriller from the 40s and a literary masterpiece that are both awash in sin.
On a surprisingly affecting short film in which stop-motion animated animals sing of their existential anxieties while working the night shift.
Murukami also reminds one of Kafka or Lynch in that he leaves many of his mysteries open and unexplained. Some will find this frustrating.
This week, I finally watched a marvelous landmark of world cinema: Satyajit Ray’s “Apu Trilogy”
A lively trip around the world to compare how different cultures bring out their dead.
Taking a look at a fantastic documentary about one of the world’s most singular filmmakers and one of his recently reassessed films.
This week I read two novels by Hubert Selby Jr. I’d never read him before. Selby buried me.
On Carlos Reygadas’s strangely sincere, beautiful, and deeply spiritual movie about infidelity among the Mennonites.