Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Feb. 16-Mar. 1

Captain America, Paddington in Peru, a random Ferrante, JADE at the Brits

Mar 02, 2025

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Dregs

I suffered a minor but humiliating creative setback at the end of last year that I’ve carried with me into 2025 in a frustrating, staid way. I need to get over it, and myself, honestly, but despite knowing that’s what has to happen, I find myself otherwise incapable. I once remember a conversation with a friend who expressed that it always made them uneasy knowing I kept grudges. I don’t think of myself as resentful, or even especially grudge-motivated (or, at least, much less so since we had that conversation six years ago), but I do remember so much that’s ever happened to me and allow it to disrupt and unnerve even in the weeks and months and years after. There has been a lot of good, nice, new exciting stuff that’s happened since the year began, some of which feels overshadowed by my inability to get into any kind of creative or intellectual groove: I’m not reading well or writing well or thinking well. I’m not painting or exercising. I owe so many people emails!!! Some of that I can chalk up to “societal frustrations” — it would be insane to think anyone well-adjusted is having a good time right now — but I hold myself to an obscene standard in which case even two months of “feeling off” can feel like it’s actually been five years.

What I actually maybe need to do — something I’ve started to type out about 500 times since the start of year, finishing the phrase a different way each other — is go to the Met for several hours and hope that jogs something productive.

What little creative and intellectual energy I’ve had I’ve poured into this big feature I wrote for Vulture about film scores. I’d like to write in a bit more depth this upcoming week about the process I went through reporting and researching the piece, as well as look into some of the work I find particularly compelling in this modern era of film music. It was curious, and maybe a little surprising, even, to learn from people who read the piece that they really don’t like this era of electroacoustic film music. Obviously so much about art is context-dependent — for instance, I can’t stand Ludwig Göranssons’ Oppenheimer score — but The Brutalist, Conclave, Babygirl, Challengers, and Red Rooms especially all have fantastic music. I love the work of Jonny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Bryce Dessner, and Hildur Guðnadóttir. I’ve been to the New York Philharmonic a few times when they’ve premiered a piece of electroacoustic music — including one piece that had a drum machine — to the frustrated grumbles of people sitting near me. Forgive my millennial brain, but I am more than willing to give this kind of thing a chance. I love Western classical music more than many people my own age, but I do not think it is the be-all, end-all of expressive Romantic sound. Anyway! More on this whole thing later this week.

Some stuff I watched and read…

Paddington in Peru, Dougal Wilson (2025)

Watched at Regal Essex. I had basement-level expectations for this and found myself pleasantly surprised. I’m not asking a lot from this franchise: I just want to laugh at old British character actors and see the bear be a fuckup. My controversial opinion? I don’t think recasting Sally Hawkins is a mistake; I like what Emily Mortimer is bringing to the table. And you know what? It’s nice to see Olivia Colman not phone it in. Let’s not overthink this.

Captain America: Brave New World, Julius Onah (2025)

Watched at Regal Essex. I hadn’t seen a Marvel movie in six years — wow, these things really went off the rails! Worse than I could have ever imagined, really, somehow descending into both esoteric gloop that requires the knowledge of a TV show and four other movies picked at random with second screen-style dialogue in which the characters repeat why they are in the scene they’re in for the first three sentences of any scene. Sometimes it can be clarifying to see something so undeniably awful.

Mank, David Fincher (2020)

Rewatched on Netflix. I’ve had David Fincher on the brain lately since Carrie Coon was on Maron (run, don’t walk!) and I’ve had Mank fever — Mank chills? Mank aftershocks? — for the past few months, basically ever since I saw Furiosia because I love thinking about Tom Burke going, “Mank…. It’s Orson Welles.” I saw Mank in the winter of 2021 when I was coming down on mushrooms. At the time of release, I was fundamentally against whatever was going on in that movie and I was dreading watching it. I figured getting around to it while coming down from hallucinogenics might be the most charitable I could be towards the whole affair, and I found it neither good nor bad at the time of watching. On rewatch, it is both a deeply weird and basically normal movie1 — better and worse than anyone gives it credit for. I’ve softened on the Gary Oldman performance if only because it feels like a precursor to Slow Horses, and I still love all the politics and bit players with great faces in the mix. The biggest problem, really, is that it’s a movie you can tell was written by “someone’s dad”; in this case, that someone is David Fincher.

No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce, Haley Mlotek (2025)

Goes down best with the excellent Hermione Hoby essay in Bookforum. I’m compelled by Mlotek’s exercise in removing gender — as best as one can — from the notion of separation; what does it look like when two people are no longer in love and cannot make that work? Sad, mostly, and beautiful — once it dissolves into a flurry of literary references mixed with dinner party anecdotes I was really enthralled. The back half of the book, in particular, is giving Checkout 19 — a book I love. I am finding there is a rash and bizarre and annoying wave of misandry that feels very 2016 — understandable, I guess… contextually… — sweeping my feeds, and this was a powerful anecdote to that, even if it’s about not loving a man anymore.

Kala, Colin Walsh (2023)

I read this as a not quite Tana French substitute, and I liked it plenty though felt annoyed that — [my mom’s voice] — I solved the case before the book did.

Troubling Love, Elena Ferrante (1992)

Book about worrying you might become your mom and otherwise acting insane. Many such cases, as they say. Reminded me of Muriel Spark, kind of, though a lot less fun.

The Traitors

I am stressed out watching people with terrible strategy fail upwards, but it’s that exact thing that makes the show better than 90% of the things on television right now. In The Traitors, as in life, people who do not understand things or know how to pay attention get equal votes as everyone else.

White Lotus Season 3

I’m finding this so profoundly unenjoyable and borderline unwatchable. Mike White needs to be punished by being cast in The Traitors Season 4.

Brahms Piano Concerto No. #1

I think no one believes me when I say stuff like “this is stuck in my head” but the bit at 14:14 has been in my head for two weeks now. It’s such a great piano concerto; I think all of Brahms’ piano stuff in particular is underrated.

JADE at the Brits

Thank you ART. Thank you MUSIC. Thank you JADE!!!

The Oscars

This has been one of the most unpleasant and unwatchable awards seasons in recent memory, mean-spirited and devoid of laughter and fun. I am rooting for Daniel Blumberg and Ariana Grande, two musicians of equal skill, only one of whom will (probably) take home the prize. I am also rooting for Conan O’Brien!!!

Anyway

Can Timothée Chalamet beat Adrien Brody? Is Paddington Bear a capitalist? When is JADE dropping a full album? Was Jack Whitehall the right person to do the Liam Payne tribute (NO)? What have you been watching and reading and is anyone getting writing done or all we just staring at a spot on the wall?

Fran Magazine