Monthly Reading, Viewing Report

Consumption, March 2020

Amidst the struggles of the era of COVID, one man kept consuming films and books ... valiantly.

3/31
A Quiet Place (2018)
Ségur, 10 pp

3/30
Ségur, 35 pp.

3/29
Laura (1944): Watched this in preparation for a BMFI online discussion. Really just a great, bizarre movie. Not a film noir in the style of Out of the Past or Double Indemnity

Dana Andrew’s peculiar detective falling in love with a phantom

3/28
Rango (2011): Lu was very impressed by the snake with a gun on the end of its tail.
Tolstoy, 25 pp.
Introduction by Mark Danner to NYRB volume Defeat by Ségur

3/26
Jack Ryan, 2.3

3/25
Jack Ryan, 2.2
Finished HP5: The best of the HP books that I’ve read so far, because of the political complexities it attempts to sketch and the psychological depth of Harry’s character. The book is so much an account of emotional turmoil, that the supposed war plot ends up mainly being an instrument to that end. In fact, the Voldemort plot is really the least of the book. This is about the pathetic but unavoidable myopia of teenage male adolescence, as much as it is about someone suffering enormous loneliness.

3/24
Présentation (1951), Éric Rohmer
Veronique and her dunce (1958)
The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963): An example of the fleeting infatuation that is nothing.
HP5, 142 pp.

Wooing the plebian titular character (The Bakery Girl of Monceau)

3/23
HP5, 100 pp.
Tolstoy, 5 pp.

3/22
Harry Potter 3 (2004), finished
HP5, 49 pp.

3/21
Harry Potter 3 (2004), 70 minutes
Jack Ryan, 2.1
HP5, 24 pp.

3/20
Tolstoy, 32 pp.
HP5, 31 pp.

3/18
Bones Brigade:An Autobiography (2014): Rodney Mullen was/is tightly wound
Tolstoy, 10 pp.
HP5, 115 pp.

“Wake up and smell the concrete.”

3/17
Mary Poppins Returns (2019): Really a departure from the tone of the original Mary Poppins

3/16
Run Silent, Run Deep (1948): Lu wanted to watch this because it was about submarines … and it’s good for what it is. Burt Lancaster steals the show, really.
HP5, 20 pp.
Bad Samaritan (2018): Ouch.
Finished Villette

3/15
Brontë, 20 pp.
HP5, 20 pp.

3/14
Brontë, 30 pp.
HP5, 20 pp.

3/13
Brontë, 30 pp.
LOTR: Return of the King (2003): Illicit pleasures

3/12
Brontë, 12 pp.
HP5, 50 pp.

3/11
Brontë, 15 pp.
HP5, 80 pp.

3/10
Brontë, 10 pp.
HP5, 10 pp.

3/9
The Expanse, 1.9-10

3/7
Blood Simple (1981): More of a vignette than a film. M. Emmet Walsh is the star of this uneven and early Coen brothers film. The first iteration of Anton Chigurh.

A bizarre meeting by the river with the depraved detective (L. Emmet Walsh)

3/6
Rousseau, Politics, 2 pp.

3/5
Paris Review, 15 pp.
Rousseau, Second Discourse, Dartmouth introduction, 15 pp.

3/2
Brontë, 35 pp.
HP5, 14 pp.
Tolstoy, 8 pp.

3/1
Brontë, 30 pp.
Rousseau, 5 pp.
Girard, 3 pp.

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