Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Dec. 3-9

How many times can one woman promise to finish Daniel Deronda "for real this time"

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for for paid subscribers only but hey, how about another week free. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’m watching, reading, playing, and listening to. These posts will always begin with a quick personal blog before they’re paywalled. Paid subscriptions help stabilize my career in culture writing full-time, but readers — paid & not — are appreciated. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or Letterboxd (for free!). Thank you for reading!

Name drop

Maybe you know, maybe you don’t: Fran Magazine got a shoutout in yesterday’s The Morning newsletter courtesy of Melissa Kirsch at NYT. The blurb specifically recommended last year’s excellent end of year extravaganza. Do not worry — the extravaganza will return this year! Since yesterday morning, however, the magazine has experienced an influx of new subscribers. Welcome! Thank you for reading, thank you for subscribing. I will do all that I can that it is in my power to make this reading experience not stressful or confusing.

Outside of the end of year extravaganza — a once-a-year special occasion — and Middlemarch May — a month-long book club — Fran Magazine posts twice a week: regular issues on Wednesdays, Sunday Dispatch on (maybe you’ve guessed it) Sundays. The regular issues are usually focused to one particular subject: movies, television, books, theater, whatever. The Sunday Dispatch, typically limited to paying subscribers only, is a weekly cultural diary where I tell you everything I’ve watched/read/engaged with along with a few other links to things I/friends wrote. The Sunday Dispatch came out of the bonus section at the end of most issues, and usually because what I’m writing about during the week does not exist in a vacuum.

Why would I want to pay for that? you might be wondering. The media industry is really unstable. Though I freelance consistently as well as hold down a part-time teaching job, I have no real job security outside of Substack. Still, I pay for my own health insurance. I have no paid time off. I am granted a ton of privileges and flexibility as a full-time freelance worker, but there are a number of downsides. I began Fran Magazine in January of 2022 when I had a steady, contract position with another company. I was laid off from that job in March 2022. This past year, I had a different steady, contract position. I was laid off from that job in February 2023. I never know what will happen! But I know that Fran Magazine will be in your inbox, just about always.

Okay, that’s the spiel. Let’s see what’s on the ol’ camera roll and get into the nitty gritty of this past week.

yay!

Maestro, Bradley Cooper (2023)

Rewatched at Regal Essex. If you are new here, this is my third time seeing Maestro. I am done with theatrical viewings of Bradley Cooper’s second film — for now. I told Phil this week that I think it would be good for me to divest from Maestro for a moment, but then Maestro set up a pop-up Philly cheesesteak truck (?) in lower Manhattan and the Maestro Netflix box with the DG copy of the score arrived. Maybe I don’t know how to quit Maestro just yet.

Godzilla Minus One, Takashi Yamazaki (2023)

It’s my understanding that a lot of Godzilla heads, monster movie heads, disaster movie heads, actually good action/adventure movie heads, etc. are all really liking this movie. I have to say that I found this a bit slow with not enough Godzilla. I hear, from some, that “not enough Godzilla is the point,” and that “too much Godzilla is what ruined the American movies.” I love the final act. And I love the score!

Daniel Deronda, George Eliot (1876)

I can’t tell you the number of texts I’ve sent this past week claiming to be almost done with Daniel Deronda, but the truth is that I need two uninterrupted hours to finish the last 150 pages and then I will be liberated from my year of George Eliot — not that that’s a good thing, but I do feel as though my brain is perhaps working too hard for the first time in my life, balanced out only by the utter stupidity of the other book I am reading (see below). I was pacing around from room to room talking about how I want to finish Daniel Deronda sooner than later, and Phil said, “So you’re liking it?” and I said, “Um, not — I don’t know.” I think what I am enjoying most about reading Daniel Deronda is that it doesn’t really work — for every blessing, a demerit. It is more successful as ideas articulated through fiction than fiction that perpetuates ideas. The Gwendolen stuff is great — genuine tension, wonderful prose. The Deronda stuff is a bit more baffling. No 2016 misandrist “male tears” mug, but I have a hard time believing a guy could ever be like this.

Spare, Prince Harry (2023)

Just got to the start of the second section where he’s in the army. Very boring — and yet I read on!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Sydney and I spent so much of summer 2020 eating in our TV room and watching Buffy and subsequently Angel up until late July or early August and gave up somewhere around the start of season six for the former and season three (??) for the latter. When Sydney went back to California for a few weeks, I speedran the fifth and final season of Angel — quite possibly one of the greatest, messiest seasons of television to ever exist. Phil and I had been threatening to restart/start a network TV show for a while now, mostly to have something on we can both do work or cook during. Buffy won out. Will we get through all of it? The first season here is mainly a slog, part of which is because the show hasn’t figured out that Angel — played by David Boreanaz, one of the most watchable people on modern television — is not a cool guy but actually a huge loser.

Disco Elysium

I am still playing the video game Disco Elysium. I’m making progress very slowly with little to know idea of what’s going on and what I should be doing. Right now, I’m on the fourth day and I’m helping the ravers establish a nightclub in a church (if this makes no sense to you — don’t worry. It doesn’t really make sense to me either). Has anyone who reads Fran Magazine played Disco Elysium? “How” did you play? What strategy, if any, did you use? What I like about Disco Elysium is that I can pick it up and put it down throughout the week. There’s no real skill I’m building besides reading, the main thing I am famously NOT doing with Daniel Deronda.

Strauss, Rachmaninoff, and Bryce Dessner

Saw at David Geffen Hall. This concert actually didn’t happen this past week. It actually happened over a week ago, but I forgot to write about it. Forgive me. I saw Richard Strauss’s Don Juan — awesome. I have to admit that I never think much about R. Strauss but maybe that’s a major oversight. The Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances were fun and strange. Bryce Dessner of The National, a band I don’t like, “premiered” a new(ish) work, a concerto for two pianos played by French sisters who look like this.

I liked the Labèque sisters. I didn’t love the piece. It grew on me throughout its duration in a way that made me wonder whether I liked it the whole time and I had to process it, or if it improved throughout.

The Caretaker and Moor Mother's Black Encyclopedia of the Air

Saw at David Geffen Hall. What, Lincoln Center twice in one week? What is this, the esteemed New York Film Festival? I loved Moor Mother’s Black Encyclopedia of the Air. The Caretaker is over my head but seems like a great guy. I didn’t know who either of these acts were prior to walking in the door, and that’s a great way to engage with art.

Merrily We Roll Along

To my surprise and delight, I’ve seen more Broadway this year than I have in recent memory. I love seeing plays and musicals (DO YOU SUBSCRIBE TO NOT BROADWAY), but I am more inclined to see the small stuff than the big expensive stuff. Merrily… I had to splurge! I had to. I had to. I saw some kind of local production of this show back when I lived in Chicago and loved it. I’d known that it was one of the less-loved Sondheim productions, but I found it both entertaining and deeply moving. The current Broadway cast boasts Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, and Daniel Radcliffe. These are just bucket list guys if you see shows like this! Jonathan Groff! He’s so weird! But he has the voice of an angel! How does he do it and what do he and Lea Michelle ever talk about! Lucy came to town, and Phil and her and I all went to see it. I thought it was really excellent — clever, moving, exciting. I count it among the especially great Broadway shows I’ve seen in the past few years, namely: sexy Oklahoma.

A couple of things I wrote this week

Maybe you saw or read them already. But here they are again!

• Timothée Chalamet’s Eternal Online Boyhood for Vulture

• May December May Cause Internet Brain for Vulture

• Every Celebrity’s a Writer Now for Vulture

• We Talked to the May December Kid Who Jumps Up to Touch the Doorframe to Impress Natalie Portman for Vulture

• Slow Horses Just Keeps Getting Better for Slate

• Two blurbs for The Best Cinematography of 2023 on Enys Men and The Eight Mountains for The Film Stage

This was a crazy week for Fran Hoepfner byline. I promise you’ll see a lot less of me in the week ahead, mainly because of how many of these pieces had been banked for over a month.

The More of Us There Are, The More of Us There Are

Last but not least, I want to shout out Harron Walker’s conversation with Nan Goldin in n+1. I have really admired n+1’s ongoing coverage of the assault on Gaza, and this conversation is clarifying and lovely. We have few heroes in this day and age. I count Nan Goldin among them.