fellow film profs, rejoice!
“among a totally random population, levels of creativity for the people watching the experimental films were immediately higher compared to those watching YouTube videos”
www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...
Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers, a little jewel of a dramedy on the value of art and of the artist, built around an exceptional acting tête-à-tête between Ian McKellen and Micaela Coel, complemented by deliciously obnoxious comedic antagonism from James Corden and Jessica Gunning. In theaters.
@annakornbluh.bsky.social from a hater of the genre, these are some of the ones I really love: Amadeus, Malcolm X, Ed Wood, La Vie en Rose, The Color of the Pomegranates, Cantinflas, Camille Claudell, Lawrence of Arabia,I Tonya, The DivingBell and the Butterfly, Mishima, The Last Emperor
Oh tough one! I think it depends so much on the book...
Even when my book was a dissertation, I was thinking about the cover. I wanted a specific shade of pink (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican...).
That didn't happen, but I did get the image I wanted! & I like the cream/aqua the designer chose.
(Not because you talk about food but because the elite question is central to the essay 😁)
This is great! Congrats! I am working on an essay on heirloom maize so buying your book asap!
Radu Jude’s Kontinental 25, an unsparing film about the uselessness of guilt as a political emotion, focused on a mediocre bureaucrat who is a cog in the eviction of people for the real state development industry. In theatres.
2AM mainstream stuck in my mind playlist
Katseye-Pinky Up
Pink Pantheress & Zara Larsson-Stateside
Blackpink-Jump
Ella Langley-Choosin’ Texas
Holly Humberstone-To Love Somebody
Olivia Rodrigo. Drop Dead
Laufey. Madwoman.
Olivia Dean. Man I need
Jennie. Seoul City.
I made caldillo duranguense with white rice and flor de junio beans on the side
Indeed, the cinematographer also worked with Albert Serra in Pacifiction, also 4:3
Lav Diaz’s Magellan, brilliant, punishing and illuminating film exploring colonialism in three acts: its brutal violence, its psychological toll and the perspective of the colonized, shot in a constrained 4:3 ratio that sets up a visual dialectic with the extension of its epic. In Criterion Channel.
Three short books to wind down the evening while a dog sleeps on my lap and another one sleeps by my side: a love nouvelle of Oulipo spirits, one of those endearing light novels for lovers of books, and an essay on the bombing of La Moneda by the most relentless memory writer from Chile today.
Academic: University of Illinois press. Trade/ art: Fireflies. For edited collections: Critical perspectives on contemporary directors at Lexington Books (now under Bloomsbury). Also great: BFI world directors (also under Bloomsbury); Edinburgh’s ReFocus and Rutgers’ Global Film Directors
Simón Mesa Soto’s Un Poeta, a brilliant tragicomedy on the desire to find poetry while being plebeian, ugly, poor, unsublime, shot in 16mm to convey the rough edges of a life in artistic but aware of beauty, a real masterpiece, the most beautiful recent film about literature. Don’t miss it. In VOD.
A wonderful morning reading Toni Morrison’s enlightening lessons on Africanism in the US canon (imagine the privilege of taking such a class) and Namwali Serpell’s insightful book on Morrison, brilliant in its discussion of the writer’s difficulty and her genius in form.
Four excellent Mexican albums released in the past couple of weeks
Genki Kawamura’s Exit 8, a brilliant Escherian film based on a video game, perfectly choreographed and paced, very tense and devoid of explanatory dialogue, impeccable in all of its elements, so much so that I did not mind the natalist ideology it espouses. In theaters.
On my end, they have to take handwritten notes of both readings and class. The readings part, they should be able to do an impromptu 10-15 minute presentation out of the notes on any assigned reading. I grade the notebook midterm and final, this semester I am reading and grading in front of student.
This is exactly my experience. I would add that keeping a notebook has exponentially increased class participation
A lovely book structured like a dialogue that merges the classical aspects of Japanese culture, Nothomb’s memories, and how her fiction has dialogued with Japanese ideas. A gorgeously illustrated book, and enjoyable to those who have read Nothomb’s incredible novels.
It is overhyped but also worth reading. Lerner is a very talented writer as the stylistic and structural level and his works are very good, but I think his Achilles heel, similar to much US fiction is that he has a lot to say about the small world around him and not much beyond that.
Here you go
Tomorrow and Friday in Virginia Tech!
Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, a different film than the trailer sells, a messy but very good remix of the romcom through a gimmick that really works well, thanks to Zendaya and Robert Pattinson delivering with intelligence and charisma a screenplay that lesser actors would have killed. In theaters
Recent film arrivals
Four new arrivals I’m excited about