Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Dec. 1-14

The Order, The Apprentice, Christmas cookies, Sunset Boulevard, a crazy Balatro video, and more!

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for paid subscribers only. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’ve been watching, reading, playing, and listening to over the past week. Paid subscriptions help stabilize my writing career, but all readers — paid & not — are appreciated. You can also follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd (for free!). Thanks for reading!

Moon went crazy this week

phil’s pic but I couldn’t not — you can see the whole face!

The year is ending! I am so tired, the apartment is so warm, but the sun returned after a full week of rain and clouds and I’d rather have it be 20 degrees and sunny than 40 degrees and pouring. Around this time of year, back when I lived in Chicago, I’d be putting out feelings towards any and all friends with cars to see who wanted to schlep out to Skokie¹ and go to King Spa. There’s much to love about living in New York, but there’s no Skokie here, which is a big issue. The only equivalent experience I can muster is putting all of my plants in the shower and letting them experience a warm rinse and some steam. Someone should really do that to me.

A few things I’ve written lately: Chris Feil and I went long on the emotional spectrum of Mike Leigh’s feature filmography, I did a little scene report at the Metrograph magazine/holiday party,² I tried to figure out what it was I liked so much about Wicked. I’m on this week’s episode of Blank Check discussing Twin Peaks: The Return.

Yesterday

Emma Stefansky

came by and helped me and Phil pack up all the boxes of the remaining mugs, and for the second day in a row, the moon looked absolutely insane. Emma pointed out that right at the moon’s four o’clock, you could see a little bright spot that was Jupiter³. Tomorrow night we’re going to see Interstellar on IMAX — a movie I like but don’t love, though it grows on me with each new rewatch. I wonder if I’ll feel more warmly towards it now that I’ve taken a quick peek at Jupiter mere days before rocketing into Nolan’s vision of outer space.

Is anyone making Christmas cookies this year? I am narrowing down my options. Last year I made these and these. Considering getting these guys in the mix? Open to all sorts of options and recommendations. It’d be fun to have something with chocolate this year, but I’m open. I can’t wait to spend a whole day baking watching Emilia Perez on the TV out of the corner of my eye.