Greatest hits of September undoubtedly include Curzio Malaparte’s unfinished novel “The Kremlin Ball”; they do NOT include watching “Jaws 2” or “Jaws 3D.”
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August August 2024: Reading, Viewing
Kept reading The Overstory” and should have finished it. Started “Homicide: Life on the Street” (1993-99), which has been a good thing. And “The Secret History of Science Fiction”
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- 2024-09-05
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report
Orlando Museum of Art: 10 Aug 2024
Going to a museum has always been an experience like going to church. Same reverence, quietude required. Except that at a museum I know what I’m contemplating.
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- 2024-08-13
- Idle Reflections
July 2024: Reading, Watching
Greatest hits: the Netflix Ripley series, “Blood and Wine” with Jack Nicholson, “Geology: A Very Short Introduction.”
Lowest lows: “The Flash.” What facile bollocks.
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- 2024-08-02
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report
June 2024 Reading, Viewing
Greatest Hits: Everett’s “Erasure,” Zweig’s “Mary, Queen of Scots,” “Code Inconnu.” Lowest Lows: “S.W.A.T.” (2003). Ouch.
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- 2024-07-06
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report
May 2024 Reading and Viewing
During May I consumed so much Stefan Zweig, Nikolai Gogol, but also “Crime Wave” and “The Insider” and even “La Haine”
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- 2024-06-03
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report
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.
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- 2024-05-25
- Idle Reflections
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!
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- 2024-05-21
- On Literature, Books New Acquisitions
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).
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- 2024-05-01
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report
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”?
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- 2024-04-03
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report
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”
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- 2024-03-06
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report
“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
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- 2024-02-03
- Monthly Reading, Viewing Report