currently reading the big honking samuel delany memoir (the motion of light in water), which is a surprisingly quick read—he's so good at making writing fun without being overtly "style" forward. just started slow horses s1 AND true detective s1 AND i'm seeing Love Lies Bleeding today—does that mean i'm in my brave era?.......
you can borrow !! im also a big fan of heavenly breakfast which is very short....an amuse bouche if you will......jamie said LLB was NOT scary but i wasnt convinced....
been watching mad men for the first time and i finally got the season 6 DVD from the library! (after paying an insane $14 overdue fee??) i loved season 5 and its morbidity. i'd been trying and failing to watch this show for years but couldn't get past s1 bc i found advertising so boring lol so happy now to understand the references.
Had kind of a transcendent experience seeing Chinatown at the Egyptian in LA on 35mm (although kind of a dogshit print, which was disappointing). A movie I’ve watched many, many times but hadn’t seen recently, and it truly felt like watching it for the first time. Was kind of in awe at how dense and textured it is, and I found myself crying at the end, which had never happened in my numerous viewings!
In my quest to tackle the great horndog texts of the 20th century, I’m reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which has really taken me by surprise. As much about “trying to make sense of how to live in the world after the Great War” as anything else, which, in our present state of ongoing cataclysm feels as relevant as ever.
I also watched Timeline, which is suuuuuch a masterpiece of early aughts schlock. Deeply funny to send Paul Walker, a man with a voice that could have only been produced by Southern California in the latter half of the 20th century, rocketing back to 14th century France and have these medieval guys basically take his whole deal in stride.
You have me & Caroline on deck to watch Timeline sometime this week or next... I need to finish up my James Grays but this leapt to the top of the on account of a Tessa IG story... no small feat!!!
I read a great book called The Big Goodbye last year about the development of Chinatown. Really fascinating story that delves into the long careers of Polanski, Nicholson, Evans, and Towne and the ways they reflect the film's themes of corruption. Highly recommend it!
this week i started isaac butler’s book on method acting—not something i’m particularly interested in per se, but i love to be immersed in a twentieth century “scene” (im hoping it will be my new mike nichols: a life). and i remember being very moved by a review i read of it ages ago by natalie walker where she talks abt vanya on 42nd street. the first part is about stanislavsky and russian theatre history — really fascinating!
trying to find your new Mike Nichols: A Life is VERY real to me... my heart aches thinking about what a great month I spent reading that book. pls keep me posted on this one...
I watched the first half of Shin Godzilla last night and it is so great. Austin said it feels like a Wes Anderson movie and… it does! It totally does! Hideaki Anno you will always be famous.
I need to see it - Godzilla Minus One was my first Godzilla movie ever, and while I'm somewhat embarrassed to be afraid of disaster and disaster-adjacent movies (too real), I can't deny: Godzilla is a cool guy to look at and the score is amazing!
haha Shin Godzilla is my first Godzilla movie actually, though I have this weird wellspring of affection for like… Godzilla in general? I don't know why.
I subscribed around the time you had just finished middlemarch may but that kinda inspired me so im doing a (perhaps more basic??) middlemarch march 😅 i am def behind (a little over a third of the way through when march is half gone) but am enjoying it so far. Though like all books of this era from england it’s so easy to get lost in the sentences once it’s been going on for 10 lines in a book with the tiniest print!
Am also stepping out today to see the fugitive in a theater for the first time as a lot of critics i love and trust speak highly of it and its been a blind spot for me. Feels kind of sacrilegious to watch it without my dad but i hope he wont mind if i keep air force one in my back pocket
omg I hope you enjoy Middlemarch! I find I think of it all the time and it feels like the type of novel that will reveal a new aspect of itself to me on every subsequent reread (though I think I'm a few years out from diving back in).
And I hope you enjoy The Fugitive! similarly (as a Chicago native) it was the type of movie hyped to me for a long long time and really lived up to its Hollywood appeal - just a blast from start to finish.
Middlemarch is very wonderful! Totally relate to the sentence thing, I remember reading a similar indian history book at age 16 and getting to the point where I counted how many words in each sentence on one page and discovered the average was like 95 words. Sometimes you just gotta let them wash over you like the tide and hope you're absorbing it...
Saw Love Lies Bleeding and it's the best use of cigarettes in film since Maestro!!! Love gay cigarette movies. My book club suggestion is dune messiah lol. Have a good week fran
I also saw Love Lies Bleeding and thought it made a great use of RUGS as well - it's amazing how many rugs these morons owned. I thought it was mostly fun but also pretty bad... happy for Kristen Stewart though she's always a star to me.
I am so late to this, but I saw Problemista a few weeks ago and am dying to know the official Fran stance on it. Mostly on the score, which I can’t believe I’m not hearing people talk about more.
I would like to whole heartedly recommend a double feature of JLo’s recent visual album AND documentary (in that order). I am a JLo sceptic (I agree, in part, with Ayo), and there is something so fascinating about watching someone self-finance and create an absolutely mediocre piece of art. Also Baffleck appears frequently both on camera AND as her talking head interviewer (and possibly camera tech?)
I've been curious about this, and I've been watching basically every clip that comes across my timeline one way or another, especially the ones with Affleck - who appears to take this project about as seriously as she does (charming). I also agree with Ayo, fwiw....... and I WON'T apologize for saying that.
i have been largely illiterate recently but i am trying to continue my nabokov kick. finishing pale fire in the middle of a 16-hour flight on very little sleep was a religious experience but it also ensured that i still have no idea what was happening, so i am rereading. also doing ada.
film-wise i recently watched spring breakers...hmmmmm but also i liked those pink balaclavas. strangely enough i think early korine might be more for me if i get around to it.
Not yet but I am reliably informed there is a glass bowl that will break my heart. I read some of his lectures on literature (he has an unaccountable affection for Jekyll and Hyde) and a tremendously cathartic essay where he obliterates Edmund Wilson for daring to suggest that his translation is sloppy. I will probably love Glory and Pnin in particular, I think.
I’ve had such a great week of movie watching. A theater by me does surprise screenings the second Wednesday of the month, and I showed up and saw Mel Brooks’ The Producers for the first time. Pretty amazing to see such an early Gene Wilder performance. Also watched Hunt for Red October for the first time. Dad-core all around
Also started Beef (which it feels everybody else watched over a year ago at this point) and at first I felt unsure of its “A24/indie/cool” aesthetic but a couple eps in and it’s really feeling very unexpected and super moving—really loving it.
I watched Joyland a few days with my boyfriend and flatmate which mostly made me angry about the patriarchy but also made me miss living in a big city in India. Okay I gotta say there is something to watching a film that is not in English and understanding it mostly - interesting to see for example when the script had Haider start using a more intimate form of 'you' for Biba, the queen.
I finally finished The Ministry for the Future which was like... well researched but so bloodless. I'm now rereading Caoilinn Hughes back catalogue so I can discuss her new book once everyone else has read it when it comes out in April. I reckon The Alternatives is gonna be a very acclaimed 'climate book' because it IS deeply interested in human relationships.
also having a great time with arts festival season in my city, there is some very cool experimentation of stuff like didgeridoo and chamber music that fills me with joy and curiosity! and this week I'm going to a magic show to review for work!
I also have a question for the Fran Magazine community that I would like some ideas about: when, or whether, do podcasts count as art?
wow I wish I was going to a magic show for work... one of the biggest things I miss about Chicago was access to the Magic Lounge. I'm sure there's decent magic in NYC but I have no idea where to find it and worry it'd be six times as expensive as what I used to see in the midwest...
I agree re: Ministry of the Future which was fascinated but left little impact on me as a work of fiction after its opening 50 or so pages. The ultimate "plot" of it didn't matter to me, and I don't know that plot has to matter, per se, but I don't think the form did much for me either, and I found its ending altogether unsatisfying and kind of corny, all considered.
Podcasts certainly can and do count as art! I only really include them here if I have a binge on a certain pod or if there's an interview I like, mainly because I have a very hard time finishing a podcast episode, more inclined to skip around based on my own attention span (also why I can't really do audio books).
I started watching Taskmaster UK on your rec and i’m hooked !!! My partner and I started with the most recent series and we’ve been working our way backward — any fav series/contestants? After years of being burnt out on Comedians In General it’s wild to realize there’s a whole other crop of cool/funny/hot people across the pond …
oh man - lots of fav series with UK Taskmaster. offhand - 4, 5, 11 (MIKE WOZNIAK), 14, 16. People go nuts for 7 because of the Acaster of it all but imo Rhod Gilbert is the funniest of them that series. The only series I recall being lackluster was 12; though I love Victoria Coren Mitchell & Only Connect, she is one of the least game contestants and frustrating to watch.
I inherited a nintendo switch a couple years ago and have been slowly trying out the video game thing - I got a pokemon game and its been a lot of fun catching up on what I missed out on in the 2nd grade
I watched a lot of that Pokemon game get played at my old apartment (same with Elden Ring) and it always provided such a nice room vibe. You can't deny those are some of the cutest little vibes out there. You may like Mario Odyssey - gotta be one of my favorite Nintendo games I played on Switch (I prefer BOTW to TOTK too but that's more of an undertaking).
I definitely need to try Mario Odyssey. BOTW I tried but it was WAY out of my league, I did not have the gamer mindset to understand what to do or where to go… maybe I can work my way up to it
taking students on a field trip to see kung fu panda 4 this week so i’m sort of frantically watching kfp 1-3 to make sure i’m caught up on the lore (??). would not recommend…
i also started two new film studies classes last week and we’re watching keaton shorts rn. WOULD recommend!
reading The Sympathizer in anticipation/prep for the upcoming park chan wook X rdj miniseries. enjoying!
I really wanna read The Sympathizer! I was recently discussing with someone (embarrassed to have blanked) who said it really lived up to the hype around it...
I liked the first KFP that I saw upon the release (for no apparent good reason?)... it seems kind of baffling to me they're still mining that well but Puss in Boots franchise goes strong so why not the panda.
I have to shamefully admit that I really LOVE Jack Black's vocal performance in the Mario movie (and I will also go on the record to say that if that movie had NO needledrops and just Nintendo music, it would be a four-star hit to me) and wish I was seeing him in a movie every year, so maybe I'll cave to see the pandas.
the voice cast is genuinely so insane in these movies... number 2 is worth it for gary oldman playing a psychopathic peacock who years ago wiped out all the pandas in china (???) and is coming back to finish the job. wish i was kidding!
Somehow just watched Erin Brockovich for the first time, and what was I gonna do... NOT love Soderbergh's tiger-print "Zodiac"?
Amazing movie - lived up to every bit of hype... I rewatch scenes on Youtube like all the time.
currently reading the big honking samuel delany memoir (the motion of light in water), which is a surprisingly quick read—he's so good at making writing fun without being overtly "style" forward. just started slow horses s1 AND true detective s1 AND i'm seeing Love Lies Bleeding today—does that mean i'm in my brave era?.......
omg.... wait I want to borrow SD memoir....
GL at LLB - it is yucky/scary (I felt more disturbed than I thought I would) but can't deny that the girlies are hot...
you can borrow !! im also a big fan of heavenly breakfast which is very short....an amuse bouche if you will......jamie said LLB was NOT scary but i wasnt convinced....
imo pretty gory or at least addicted to making you look at its most gory shot several times.......
been watching mad men for the first time and i finally got the season 6 DVD from the library! (after paying an insane $14 overdue fee??) i loved season 5 and its morbidity. i'd been trying and failing to watch this show for years but couldn't get past s1 bc i found advertising so boring lol so happy now to understand the references.
I need to do Mad Men one of these days.... I had the same experience re: s1 many years ago and never went back but I am starting to regret that!
Had kind of a transcendent experience seeing Chinatown at the Egyptian in LA on 35mm (although kind of a dogshit print, which was disappointing). A movie I’ve watched many, many times but hadn’t seen recently, and it truly felt like watching it for the first time. Was kind of in awe at how dense and textured it is, and I found myself crying at the end, which had never happened in my numerous viewings!
In my quest to tackle the great horndog texts of the 20th century, I’m reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which has really taken me by surprise. As much about “trying to make sense of how to live in the world after the Great War” as anything else, which, in our present state of ongoing cataclysm feels as relevant as ever.
I also watched Timeline, which is suuuuuch a masterpiece of early aughts schlock. Deeply funny to send Paul Walker, a man with a voice that could have only been produced by Southern California in the latter half of the 20th century, rocketing back to 14th century France and have these medieval guys basically take his whole deal in stride.
You have me & Caroline on deck to watch Timeline sometime this week or next... I need to finish up my James Grays but this leapt to the top of the on account of a Tessa IG story... no small feat!!!
texting you about Chinatown <3
I read a great book called The Big Goodbye last year about the development of Chinatown. Really fascinating story that delves into the long careers of Polanski, Nicholson, Evans, and Towne and the ways they reflect the film's themes of corruption. Highly recommend it!
Timeline rules!
this week i started isaac butler’s book on method acting—not something i’m particularly interested in per se, but i love to be immersed in a twentieth century “scene” (im hoping it will be my new mike nichols: a life). and i remember being very moved by a review i read of it ages ago by natalie walker where she talks abt vanya on 42nd street. the first part is about stanislavsky and russian theatre history — really fascinating!
trying to find your new Mike Nichols: A Life is VERY real to me... my heart aches thinking about what a great month I spent reading that book. pls keep me posted on this one...
exactly…. truly a perfect bio. will do !!
This book single-handedly turned me into a John Garfield stan
this is huge..
perhaps a slightly different vibe from these two books but have you read Ninth Street Women?? the utlimate 20thC scene book for me!
no, it sounds amazing.. and, i imagine, full of good art world gossip. i love frankenthaler's work so much. thank you for rec !!
I watched the first half of Shin Godzilla last night and it is so great. Austin said it feels like a Wes Anderson movie and… it does! It totally does! Hideaki Anno you will always be famous.
I need to see it - Godzilla Minus One was my first Godzilla movie ever, and while I'm somewhat embarrassed to be afraid of disaster and disaster-adjacent movies (too real), I can't deny: Godzilla is a cool guy to look at and the score is amazing!
haha Shin Godzilla is my first Godzilla movie actually, though I have this weird wellspring of affection for like… Godzilla in general? I don't know why.
I subscribed around the time you had just finished middlemarch may but that kinda inspired me so im doing a (perhaps more basic??) middlemarch march 😅 i am def behind (a little over a third of the way through when march is half gone) but am enjoying it so far. Though like all books of this era from england it’s so easy to get lost in the sentences once it’s been going on for 10 lines in a book with the tiniest print!
Am also stepping out today to see the fugitive in a theater for the first time as a lot of critics i love and trust speak highly of it and its been a blind spot for me. Feels kind of sacrilegious to watch it without my dad but i hope he wont mind if i keep air force one in my back pocket
omg I hope you enjoy Middlemarch! I find I think of it all the time and it feels like the type of novel that will reveal a new aspect of itself to me on every subsequent reread (though I think I'm a few years out from diving back in).
And I hope you enjoy The Fugitive! similarly (as a Chicago native) it was the type of movie hyped to me for a long long time and really lived up to its Hollywood appeal - just a blast from start to finish.
Perfect day for The Fugitive!
Hope you dug the Fugitive!
Middlemarch is very wonderful! Totally relate to the sentence thing, I remember reading a similar indian history book at age 16 and getting to the point where I counted how many words in each sentence on one page and discovered the average was like 95 words. Sometimes you just gotta let them wash over you like the tide and hope you're absorbing it...
Saw Love Lies Bleeding and it's the best use of cigarettes in film since Maestro!!! Love gay cigarette movies. My book club suggestion is dune messiah lol. Have a good week fran
I also saw Love Lies Bleeding and thought it made a great use of RUGS as well - it's amazing how many rugs these morons owned. I thought it was mostly fun but also pretty bad... happy for Kristen Stewart though she's always a star to me.
Yes best rug movie possibly since Big Lebowski.
I am so late to this, but I saw Problemista a few weeks ago and am dying to know the official Fran stance on it. Mostly on the score, which I can’t believe I’m not hearing people talk about more.
I need to see! Hopefully this weekend - or next week... it's on the list! I opted for Love Lies Bleeding instead this past week..
I would like to whole heartedly recommend a double feature of JLo’s recent visual album AND documentary (in that order). I am a JLo sceptic (I agree, in part, with Ayo), and there is something so fascinating about watching someone self-finance and create an absolutely mediocre piece of art. Also Baffleck appears frequently both on camera AND as her talking head interviewer (and possibly camera tech?)
I've been curious about this, and I've been watching basically every clip that comes across my timeline one way or another, especially the ones with Affleck - who appears to take this project about as seriously as she does (charming). I also agree with Ayo, fwiw....... and I WON'T apologize for saying that.
i have been largely illiterate recently but i am trying to continue my nabokov kick. finishing pale fire in the middle of a 16-hour flight on very little sleep was a religious experience but it also ensured that i still have no idea what was happening, so i am rereading. also doing ada.
film-wise i recently watched spring breakers...hmmmmm but also i liked those pink balaclavas. strangely enough i think early korine might be more for me if i get around to it.
Have you done Pnin? That was my favorite when I read a stretch of them a few years ago...
Not yet but I am reliably informed there is a glass bowl that will break my heart. I read some of his lectures on literature (he has an unaccountable affection for Jekyll and Hyde) and a tremendously cathartic essay where he obliterates Edmund Wilson for daring to suggest that his translation is sloppy. I will probably love Glory and Pnin in particular, I think.
I’ve had such a great week of movie watching. A theater by me does surprise screenings the second Wednesday of the month, and I showed up and saw Mel Brooks’ The Producers for the first time. Pretty amazing to see such an early Gene Wilder performance. Also watched Hunt for Red October for the first time. Dad-core all around
Also started Beef (which it feels everybody else watched over a year ago at this point) and at first I felt unsure of its “A24/indie/cool” aesthetic but a couple eps in and it’s really feeling very unexpected and super moving—really loving it.
I love original Producers - a total revelation. Probably my favorite Brooks? Just smile on my face all throughout.
I skipped Beef on release but might come back to it now that we have Netflix again. Steven Yeun forever...
I watched Joyland a few days with my boyfriend and flatmate which mostly made me angry about the patriarchy but also made me miss living in a big city in India. Okay I gotta say there is something to watching a film that is not in English and understanding it mostly - interesting to see for example when the script had Haider start using a more intimate form of 'you' for Biba, the queen.
I finally finished The Ministry for the Future which was like... well researched but so bloodless. I'm now rereading Caoilinn Hughes back catalogue so I can discuss her new book once everyone else has read it when it comes out in April. I reckon The Alternatives is gonna be a very acclaimed 'climate book' because it IS deeply interested in human relationships.
also having a great time with arts festival season in my city, there is some very cool experimentation of stuff like didgeridoo and chamber music that fills me with joy and curiosity! and this week I'm going to a magic show to review for work!
I also have a question for the Fran Magazine community that I would like some ideas about: when, or whether, do podcasts count as art?
wow I wish I was going to a magic show for work... one of the biggest things I miss about Chicago was access to the Magic Lounge. I'm sure there's decent magic in NYC but I have no idea where to find it and worry it'd be six times as expensive as what I used to see in the midwest...
I agree re: Ministry of the Future which was fascinated but left little impact on me as a work of fiction after its opening 50 or so pages. The ultimate "plot" of it didn't matter to me, and I don't know that plot has to matter, per se, but I don't think the form did much for me either, and I found its ending altogether unsatisfying and kind of corny, all considered.
Podcasts certainly can and do count as art! I only really include them here if I have a binge on a certain pod or if there's an interview I like, mainly because I have a very hard time finishing a podcast episode, more inclined to skip around based on my own attention span (also why I can't really do audio books).
I started watching Taskmaster UK on your rec and i’m hooked !!! My partner and I started with the most recent series and we’ve been working our way backward — any fav series/contestants? After years of being burnt out on Comedians In General it’s wild to realize there’s a whole other crop of cool/funny/hot people across the pond …
oh man - lots of fav series with UK Taskmaster. offhand - 4, 5, 11 (MIKE WOZNIAK), 14, 16. People go nuts for 7 because of the Acaster of it all but imo Rhod Gilbert is the funniest of them that series. The only series I recall being lackluster was 12; though I love Victoria Coren Mitchell & Only Connect, she is one of the least game contestants and frustrating to watch.
I inherited a nintendo switch a couple years ago and have been slowly trying out the video game thing - I got a pokemon game and its been a lot of fun catching up on what I missed out on in the 2nd grade
I watched a lot of that Pokemon game get played at my old apartment (same with Elden Ring) and it always provided such a nice room vibe. You can't deny those are some of the cutest little vibes out there. You may like Mario Odyssey - gotta be one of my favorite Nintendo games I played on Switch (I prefer BOTW to TOTK too but that's more of an undertaking).
I definitely need to try Mario Odyssey. BOTW I tried but it was WAY out of my league, I did not have the gamer mindset to understand what to do or where to go… maybe I can work my way up to it
taking students on a field trip to see kung fu panda 4 this week so i’m sort of frantically watching kfp 1-3 to make sure i’m caught up on the lore (??). would not recommend…
i also started two new film studies classes last week and we’re watching keaton shorts rn. WOULD recommend!
reading The Sympathizer in anticipation/prep for the upcoming park chan wook X rdj miniseries. enjoying!
I really wanna read The Sympathizer! I was recently discussing with someone (embarrassed to have blanked) who said it really lived up to the hype around it...
I liked the first KFP that I saw upon the release (for no apparent good reason?)... it seems kind of baffling to me they're still mining that well but Puss in Boots franchise goes strong so why not the panda.
first panda good! or at least "not bad." james hong kind of carries every movie ngl
I have to shamefully admit that I really LOVE Jack Black's vocal performance in the Mario movie (and I will also go on the record to say that if that movie had NO needledrops and just Nintendo music, it would be a four-star hit to me) and wish I was seeing him in a movie every year, so maybe I'll cave to see the pandas.
the voice cast is genuinely so insane in these movies... number 2 is worth it for gary oldman playing a psychopathic peacock who years ago wiped out all the pandas in china (???) and is coming back to finish the job. wish i was kidding!
Gary Oldman's 2010s will be studied one day
rushed KFP viewing does not sound very enjoyable but I hope your students enjoy!