During May I consumed so much Stefan Zweig, Nikolai Gogol, but also “Crime Wave” and “The Insider” and even “La Haine”
Continue reading...The Limey (1999): Mise-en-Scène and Glib Dialogue
“The Limey” is essentially a father-daughter story of a very strange sort, in at least two discrete dimensions. Masterful in mise-en-scène; a dilettante in dialogue.
Continue reading...Mary Stuart. The Maid of Orleans. Two Historical Plays By Schiller
Not so recently acquired: Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart and The Maid of Orleans. Two Historical Plays in One Volume!
Continue reading...April Absolutions: Reading, Watching
The highnotes: The Letter (1940), Hobson’s Choice (1954), Stefan Zweig, Henrik Ibsen.
The lownotes: The Matrix (1999) and its progency, Ender’s Game (2013), 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), The Bounty Hunter (1965).
Manic March 2024 Reading, Writing
David Graeber’s “The Utopia of Rules,” Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” Ida Lupino in “Women’s Prison.” Is it too late to punish the writers of “Road House”?
Continue reading...Frigid February 2024 Reading & Watching
The so-called Glaciation Trilogy and the only Hamaguchi film I hadn’t seen, as well as David Graeber’s “Utopia of Rules”
Continue reading...“71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance” (1994): Is Michael Haneke Anti-Narrative?
Elsewhere Haneke has described some of his films as anti-narrative. Is it true of “71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance”?
Continue reading...Reflections on “Benny’s Video” (1992): Image, Sound, Reality, Parental Neglect
The televisual void has sucked away all vestiges of reality from lived experience: Benny makes videos to capture what is missing.
Continue reading...“The Seventh Continent” (1989) by Michael Haneke
“The Seventh Continent” is Australia, where Georges, Anna, and Eva are going to live, right after they annihilate all vestiges of their material existences.
Continue reading...Cold January 2024: Reading and Writing
Greatest hits of January 2023: The Manchurian Candidate, Austerlitz, Blood Meridian, King Lear, and The Long Good Friday
Continue reading...The Arden Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
On the second series edition of the Arden Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”, both this particular 1991 printing as well as on the content more generally
Continue reading...Delicious December 2023: Read, Watched
The greatest hits of the last month of December: Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Broken Code by Jeff Horwitz, My Darling Clementine by John Ford and Memories of Murder by Bong Joon-Ho.
Continue reading...Nihilistic November 2023 Reading and Writing
Greatest hits include the 1942 film “The Glass Key” and the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” and reading Schelling and reading Schiller.
Continue reading...Ominous October 2023 Reading/Writing
Little aliens deeply impressed by the British Invasion arrived in Philadelphia, begged me to read and watch through October.
Continue reading...Pride and Prejudice, the Movie Tie-In Edition
Purchased the Movie Tie-In edition of “Pride and Prejudice” to my profound moral chagrin
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