Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Feb. 25-Mar. 2

Robert Altman! The House of Mirth! I finished the Naomi Klein book!

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for paid subscribers only. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’m watching, reading, playing, and listening to. Paid subscriptions help stabilize my career in culture writing full-time, but all readers — paid & not — are appreciated. Feel free to follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd (for free!). Thanks for reading!

It Happened To Me™: They Put Scaffolding Up Outside of my Building

I know from my years of watching How To with John Wilson that scaffolding is an important part of infrastructure that will one day save my life, but it is a crazy moment to be living somewhere for a while and then one day, just like that, even with an email warning — there’s the scaffolding, it’s right outside your window. Now that it’s there and finished being built, I do have to say that the urge to climb out onto it and chill is kind of profound, even though I know that’s not safe and I’m not good at climbing out of a window in the first place.

A bit of shameless self-promotion relating to the release of Dune Part 2: I got to interview Josh Brolin about his new Dune-related(ish) poetry and his time working with Denis Villeneuve. I also wrote a brief catch-up on the first one if you don’t feel obligated to go back and visit prior to seeing whatever the hell Austin Butler is doing in this new one. As for me, I am going tonight, so we can all talk about this next week. I’m really proud of how the Brolin interview turned out — it was a great, illuminating chat. He was extremely generous with his time and responses; I really liked talking to him. A.J. Daulerio of

The Small Bow

also interviewed Brolin for GQ in what is also a fascinating, lovely read.

I reviewed The Taste of Things for Bright Wall/Dark Room. I like this movie — with major caveats. Mostly that the movie is often ugly to look at and pretty silly. I mean, this isn’t not, like, a very French take on the Nancy Meyers thing. That’s okay, of course, but I don’t really see the profundities people seem to be taking away from it. Mostly it’s a nice time. She makes ice cream from scratch!

I also wrote about the state of the Best Picture race for Cultured Magazine with special thanks to This Had Oscar Buzz’s Chris Feil and Joe Reid. The argument comes down to plus ça change, etc. But maybe you disagree!

Right now I have one major tab open that I haven’t yet brought myself to read, and that’s Kathryn Schulz’s piece on solar storms. Remember “The Big One”? Remember Schultz’s article on “The Big One”? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not a week of my life goes by without me thinking about The Big One. Am I gonna be reading this new piece? You tell me.