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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Twelfth Night: or, What You Will
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- “I’m not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “[My ambition is to] give something to our literature which will be our own.” — Walt Whitman
- “I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.” — Agnès Varda
- “I never made a message picture, and I hope I never do.” — Howard Hawks
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- Reviews: Currents (2026)
- Reviews: Forge (2026)
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Tag Archives: Hungary
“I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.” — György Ligeti
György Ligeti – whose birthday it is today – was a classical composer, born in Romania, who lived in Hungary as a young adult, before fleeing Stalinist oppression to Austria. As he said in an interview much later, he lived … Continue reading
Posted in Movies, Music, On This Day
Tagged Hungary, Romania, Stalin, Stanley Kubrick
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“It’s just one of the mysteries of filmmaking that sometimes you do something that you don’t even think it’s important, then it turns out to be.” — Lili Horvát
Today is Hungarian director Lili Horvát’s birthday. The timing is fortuitous. I am overjoyed for the people of Hungary today, and also thinking of the theatre artistswho have been resisting within increasingly rigid and risky parameters. Back in November, during … Continue reading
Posted in Directors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged Hungary, romantic drama, women directors
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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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Happy Birthday, Vilmos Zsigmond
One of the best cinematographers ever. He shot Deer Hunter, Deliverance, The Long Goodbye, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These alone would put him in the history books. These are some of the most influential … Continue reading
On Lili Horvát’s Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
I haven’t been able to shake this beautiful Hungarian film, Horvát’s second. It’s streaming on the Criterion Channel right now. The film inspires RIFFS – I mean the title alone! – and so I wrote about it on my Substack. … Continue reading
Posted in Movies
Tagged As You Like It, drama, Hungary, newsletter, Sylvia Plath, What Happened Was
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January 2023 Viewing Diary
Friday Night Lights No time like the present. I binged this entire series in a couple weeks. This took commitment, and a couple days of sick leave, while trapped in my hotel room in Memphis, too sick to move. I … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Aubrey Plaza, Baz Luhrmann, Bette Davis, biopic, Cary Grant, comedy, documentary, Dorothy Parker, drama, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, film noir, Hedy Lamarr, Hungary, Italy, Jean Renoir, Little Richard, Poland, Pre-Code, Ralph Bellamy, Raoul Walsh, reviews, Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright, true crime, William Wyler, women directors
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December 2022 Viewing Diary
The Whale (2022; d. Darren Aronofsky) I thought it was appalling, and not for the obvious reasons. His body is viewed as literally a movie monster, with all these horror-movie shots of his gigantic ankles, etc.) It felt tired and … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged action movies, animation, Austria, Brad Pitt, Brian De Palma, Charles Dickens, Christopher Walken, Claude Chabrol, Claudette Colbert, comedy, coming of age, Czechoslovakia, Darren Aronofsky, David Bowie, documentary, drama, England, France, Germany, heist movies, historical drama, Hungary, India, Isabelle Huppert, Kentucker Audley, Natasha Richardson, Paul Schrader, Paul Thomas Anderson, Preston Sturges, Punch-Drunk Love, Russia, Sandrine Bonnaire, screwball comedy, thrillers, Ukraine, war, women directors
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