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- “For I am of the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.” — Christopher Smart
- Review: Hamlet (2026)
- “Those evils that inflame the imagination and make the heart sick, ought not to leave the head cool.” — William Hazlitt
- “I prefer a national film to an international film.” — Jean-Paul Belmondo
- “Sometimes I can sing it when I can’t say it.” — Carl Perkins
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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Henry IV, Part 2
- “I never was good at sightseeing yet it must be done.” — William Wordsworth
- “It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it’s true; I was raised in a freight car.” — Merle Haggard
- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Henry IV, Part 1
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Tag Archives: Germany
January 2026 Viewing Diary
The Sound of Falling (2026; d. Mascha Schilinski) It took me a couple of days to shake off the effect of The Sound of Falling. I saw it at a screening room on 29th Street. I knew very little about … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies
Tagged Australia, Canada, documentary, drama, dystopia, film noir, Germany, Isabelle Adjani, Norway, short films, Sofia Coppola, women directors
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Review: Sound of Falling (2026)
One of the best films of the year. lol Years are long, but don’t let this one slip by. I reviewed for Ebert.
2025 Books Read
I ended last year with a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s short stories, declaring I’d read all the plays in 2025. I mean, there were only five, sadly, due to the homophobic violence of his own society. I know these plays … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Austria, books read, Charles Lamb, children's books, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, David Lynch, Dubravka Ugrešić, England, essays, fiction, France, Frankenstein, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hungary, Ireland, Jane Austen, Janet Malcolm, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mark Danielewski, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Memoirs, nonfiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Roald Dahl, Robert Kaplan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Russia, sci-fi, Scotland, scripts, Spain, The Beatles, Twin Peaks, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
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“In America, sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it’s a fact.” — Marlene Dietrich
I knew why I love taxis, yes subways are only fun when you’re feeling sexy and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel well maybe a little bit — Frank O’Hara It’s Marlene Dietrich’s birthday today. When I interviewed Dan … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged Germany, Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich
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“I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.” — Rebecca West
It’s her birthday today. It is hard to talk about her without referencing the generations of writers she inspired, all of whom admit their debt. Robert Kaplan is the most open about it (in Balkan Ghosts, which launched his career, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Austria, Balkans, D.H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, France, George Bernard Shaw, Germany, Katherine Mansfield, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, nonfiction, politics, Rebecca West, Roman empire, Russia, Serbia, W.B. Yeats, war, Warren Beatty, Yugoslavia
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“I can only work against bourgeois society. I can never work with it or through it.” — Erwin Piscator
It’s Erwin Piscator’s birthday. Even if you didn’t set OUT to learn about him, if you have done any reading about actors/theatre in the 20th century – either in Germany or in America – you will run into his name … Continue reading
“Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.” — Walter Benjamin
“Often an era most closely brands with its seal those who have been least influenced by it, who have been most remote from it, and who therefore have suffered most. So it was with Proust, with Kafka, with Karl Kraus, … Continue reading
“As long as politics is this confused and evil, turning away from it would be cowardly.” — 20th century hero Sophie Scholl
“I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.” — Sophie Scholl … Continue reading
February 2025 Viewing Diary
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017; d. David Lynch) There’s nothing else like it in all of God’s green earth and I am just so grateful it exists. It’s so pure. Suze (2025; d. Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart) I liked … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Angela Lansbury, Canada, Cary Grant, Charles Beeson, David Lynch, drama, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, George Stevens, Germany, Ginger Rogers, historical drama, Howard Hawks, Jared Padalecki, Jean Arthur, Jensen Ackles, Judy Garland, musicals, Only Angels Have Wings, Oscar Wilde, Phil Sgriccia, Rita Hayworth, Robert Singer, romantic comedy, Sissy Spacek, sports movies, Supernatural, Thomas J. Wright, Thomas Mitchell, Twin Peaks, Vincente Minnelli, women directors
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