Film posters for Sirat, Greenland:Migration, Images, and Lady MacBeth

#LetterboxdFriday

The theme of this #LastFourWatched is stunning scenery in otherwise disappointing films

The announcement about Hampshire College’s impending closure was sobering. Especially for a parent with a child at Bennington. (Although Bennington should see more applications from Hampshire-minded students next year …)

I’m a huge fan of Mute Witness, and you’ve reminded me it’s time for a rewatch

Film posters for Game Night, The Addams, Lifeboat, and 1978’s Bird

A light movie-watching week:
- family rewatch of my favorite comedy of the past decade
- brilliant cringe-comedy
- minor (but still-relevant) Hitchcock
- poster for 1978’s Bird standing in for the funny, insightful (and unlogable) 2025 DIY documentary “Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching”

I’ve only watched one 2026 release twice in theaters—the joyous EPiC—but have given four precious stars to four other ‘26 flicks: The Drama, The Moment, Bone Temple, and Crime
101. A good start to what promised to be a good movie-viewing year!

Photos of film posters for Sisu: Road to Revenge; Field of Dreams; The Love That Remains; and Nuremberg

A fairly meh line-up for my #LastFourWatched. The most interesting of these is the Icelandic year-in-the-life The Love That Remains; the oddest was the struggle between earnestness and camp in Nuremberg. #LetterboxdFriday

-Rewatching The Secret Agent at the gorgeous Cine Magaly in Barrio Escalante in San Jose, C.R. was a moviegoing highlight of the decade. -Hail Mary on IMAX: Enveloping
-The Roses on the plane: Smart, funny, woefully underrated
- Spotlight on Netflix: Riveting

#LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

And to be clear, I never witnessed nor was subjected to any antisemitic, racist, or sexist behavior in my 20-year career at Cornell.

This survey is as much a joke as the administration that devised it.

There’s no establishing question to determine if any such incidents ever took place. And there’s no “I was never subject to nor did I ever witness any antisemitic behavior” selection either. Just “Other”

Screen grab of survey question about incidents of antisemitism at Cornell.

As a recently retired staff member of Cornell, I just received the survey. Why was I not surprised that this survey is completely biased towards finding fault with Cornell. Here’s the first substantive question:

But Aimee Mann only sings about one of them

This week, I borrowed a random stack of Blu-rays from our local public library, allowing me to finally catch up with De Palma’s PHANTOM, enjoy the noir nihilism of LAST STOP, and nap twice trying to get through BLACK RAINBOW. Plus the messy BRIDE! in cinema. #LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

#LetterboxdFriday
#LastFourWatched

Was inspired by the fellas at Blank Check to reevaluate YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, disappointed by the new TOXIE (but not by Bennington alum Peter Dinklage’s performance) & dazzled by both Ben Wishaw recounting his DAY and Jessie Buckley going BEAST-mode

“Do you have a pair of pliers handy?”

Film posters for Call Me By Your Name, The Alto Knights, Dead of Winter, and My First Film

Call Me … on the big screen at Ithaca’s Regal; so immersive that I was surprised it was still winter when I emerged. HBO: made for catching up with movies like Alto Knights (not terrible, just … why?) & Dead of Winter (solid). Thx to Mubi for making the locally lensed My First Film widely available.

Film posters for 10 Things I Hate About You, La Grazia, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The New Mutants

With the kiddo home from college, we (re)watched all of the X-Men films, concluding with the much maligned but actually pretty involving New Mutants. La Grazia was enthralling.

#LetterboxdFriday
#LastFourWatched

In his @cornellupress.bsky.social book, SOVIET SELF-HATRED, Eliot Borenstein tracks this same strategy/impulse in Putin’s Russia, but Russian alt-right trolls see themselves as brave, hypermasculine Orcs and their enemies in the west as conniving, effeminate Elves

Cover for the forthcoming Cornell University Press/ILR Press book, "From Popular Front to Cold War: The Interracial Left and the International Workers Order, 1930–1954," edited by Elissa Sampson and Robert M. Zecker, with cover art and design by Ben Katchor. The cartoon art depicts a street scene from NYC's Lower East Side, with a boy selling newspapers outside the IWO offices.

I'm very excited to share the cover for a forthcoming @cornellupress.bsky.social book that I sponsored on the International Workers Order (IWO), a 1930-50s immigrant and minority workers' cooperative undone by the Red Scare. The cover art/design is by the inimitable Ben Katchor (Julius Knipl, etc.)

Microliteratures by Jesús R. Velasco. translated by Consuelo López-Morillas. foreword by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Anne E. Lester | Hardcover | Cornell University Press Microliteratures is an innovative examination of writings done in the margins of medieval manuscripts and early modern books. Not always as formal as glosses, sometimes feverish and abbreviated, these...

The margins were never empty.

MICROLITERATURES by Jesús R. Velasco uncovers the hidden world of #medieval readers who turned scribbles and side notes into a public, #political act.

#Reading will never look the same.

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

The Dutch World of Washington Irving by Elisabeth Paling Funk | Hardcover | Cornell University Press The Dutch World of Washington Irving tells an alternative origin story of American literary culture. In December of 1809, before finding fame with "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,".....

Before Sleepy Hollow, there was satire, #folklore, and... Dutch?

In THE DUTCH WORLD OF WASHINGTON IRVING, Elisabeth Paling Funk uncovers the hidden roots of America's #literary legend.

It all starts in 1809 with a prank and a pseudonym.

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

And a feisty Canadian superhero fighting off a rampaging monster from below the 49th parallel does have a satisfying resonance today

The cover of The Incredible Hulk, issue 181, with the Green Goliath fighting a yellow-and-blue costumed Wolverine, claws out, while the ape-like Wendigo charges in the background.

Hulk 181 famously introduced Wolverine in 1974, which is when 8-year-old me bought a copy at the local convenience store. If I’d had the foresight to hermetically seal it then, I could retire today. Ah well …It’s still a fun read, torn cover and all, fifty years later. #Marvel #comicbooks

And here’s what awaits attendees when they arrive tomorrow morning for the first day of #Kzoo2025.

The first person the bring me a Sweetwater’s donut will get a free ARC of Beni Kedar’s new book, “The Medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem.” (Just kidding ….)

Just arrived in Kalamazoo!

Film still of a woman telling a group, “He worked for a publisher. Not much of a job.”

#PublishingOnScreen

Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936). Jean Renoir (dir.), Jacques Prévert (scr.)

Photo of four stacks of comic books. Clockwise from top left: Black Panther, X-Men, Marvel Adventures feat. Daredevil, The Dark Knight Returns

Spending this rainy Saturday cataloguing my comic book collection (mostly ‘70s-90s) with the enthusiastic assistance of my 17-year-old daughter, who is amused by the back cover ads and impressed … OK, alarmed …by my ability to remember obscure characters and plotlines

Table in a conference center with books about New York State and a red table cloth proudly identifying the publisher as Cornell University Press

Welcome to Ithaca, Museum Association of New York attendees! @cornellupress.bsky.social has a table laden with new and recent books about all aspects of the Empire State - history, nature, biography, public health, even fiction - so stop by to browse, admire, and order (at a 40% discount)

I will be forever grateful I had the opportunity to meet Leonard Nimoy and tell him how much his portrayal of Spock inspired me as a half-Indian, half-English immigrant kid growing up in 1970s suburbia. He was, of course, gracious and kind as, I’m sure, my voice broke with emotion.

Or stop by @cornellupress.bsky.social’s stand at #RSA/SAA25 to hold the book and order a copy of the print copy (to complement your Open Access edition) at our too-good-to-be-true conference discount. (By law, I’m not allowed to state how big this discount is.)

Book cover for Laura Levine’s “Afterlives of Endor: Witchcraft, Theatricality, and Uncertainty from the Malleus Maleficarum to Shakespeare” featuring a painting by William Blake.

Book cover for Adhaar Noor Desai’s “Blotted Lines: Early Modern English Literature and the Poetics of Discomposition” featuring an illustration from a Renaissance writing manual.

Book cover for Christopher Lynch’s “Machiavelli on War” featuring a Renaissance painting of a battle

Today I crossed the Charles to attend #RSA/SAA 2025 for the first time and have been amazed by the enthusiasm at the book exhibit for our @cornellupress.bsky.social books like this ….